“Home Is Where You Find Out What You Are Made Of”

If you have your Bible with you this morning, you can turn to the book of Ephesians. I think the plan is going to be this.  Today we're in Ephesians 4, if you want to use a pew Bible, you can find that passage on page 978.  

There is one more chapter left in 1 Corinthians; we've been doing a series in, and, Lord willing, we will try to close that out next Sunday and then follow up with a serious digging into the scriptures into how they reflect on family life in today's culture, looking at some issues, maybe you can help me a little bit.  Now, for those of you who are 40 and up, you can do this real quickly in case you're embarrassed about your age, okay, but what I would like to do is, I'm taking a record and I want to know your weight when you were 20, and, …..no, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant to say, that's a slip.  What I want to know is just how many people in here are 40 and up, would you please raise your hand.  Okay now that gives me a level to go on, a base.  How many of you 40 and up, let me ask the whole question, have heard of a thing called "My Space" and can define it?  My friends, do you live in the 21^st Century?

There was a statement I read this week in a book where I've been doing some research that said, "Parents, you need to grow up and live in the new world."  Well, the new world to me was what Columbus discovered. [Laughter]  Wasn't it? Isn't that what we learned in history? There is a new world that most of us parents don't live in unless work has forced us, a hobby has led us, or either that or you just have too much time on your hands to sit in front of the computer screen.  Myspace is one of those things we'll learn about and I'll offer you a couple of resources, because if you are interested in being an effective parent and you have teenagers at all, you need to know how to navigate your way through their world, not to spy on them, but so you can talk with them in the language that they will understand you and so that you can …..act like a spy every now and then and find out what's going on at Myspace.  Some of us have the opinion that things like that are all of the Devil and no good, but my friend, that's the new world, so why don't we figure out how we can use it for good, because a lot of people have.

Now, that's for the future and some things we're going to look at.  This morning is Mother's Day.  Mother's Day sermons are very intimidating.  I feel somewhat like the British psychologist, who, when doing his Ph.D. work, his thesis was something like this, "Six Theories for Effectively Rearing Children."  Years later he wrote, "Now I have 6 children and no theories."  [Laughter]  Feel that way? Have you felt sometimes that when you started your parenting out through the early years of your children, you were doing a pretty good job.  You had a formula you followed, the formula seemed to work. Some of you, as a matter of fact, the formula worked until your kids were 15, 18, 25 and somewhere along the way they went off the deep end and that's just not the way it was supposed to work, because you were taught from the Bible by your pastor or spiritual leader that if you did A, you would get B.  That doesn't work in family life. If you plant a tomato seed you're going to get a tomato plant.  But one thin you cannot do is plant grace in your child's heart.  Does that relieve me as my responsibility as a parent? In no way!  I can give them Biblical instructions, I can give them a  model  of Christianity by how we live as parents, we can bring them to church, we can give them good books to read, but we cannot put grace in their hearts and that is to keep us from two extremes: Pride, when our children turn out really good, and despair when they have turned out really badly.  Do you know any good parents who have bad kids? And do you know any bad parents who have good kids?  Do you not find that one of life's strangest anomalies?  Now I'm very well aware that some of us are conditioned to think that if I have been a good Christian parent, I will have good Christian kids.  And that theory works as long as there are enough facts in your home to prove it.  But some of the Godliest people I know, who were excellent parents have had extraordinarily rebellious children.  And, I cannot for the life of me, in the light of scriptures, find it possible to look down my nose at their parenting skills, nor to heap guilt upon them for all the things they should have done and didn't. 

Parenting, home life is where reality happens.  No place is more real than home.  Now I say comments like that to couch us in reality!  But I never want to weaken the resolve of parents to do what’s right.  We never compromise.  We never change our lifestyle.  As a matter of fact, our teenagers especially will be like the raptors, the Velociraptors on Jurassic Park.  Remember the first one? The story was they were very intelligent creatures.  They hunted in pairs.  (I'm not saying your teenagers will hunt in pairs - [Laughter] ) But they said that they tested, of course this is all movie stuff, but they tested the electric fence and would keep touching it and testing it, finding the weakest point so they could get outside of the boundaries.  That's what teenagers do to their parents, they're touching you, testing you, all the time to find your weakest point where they can watch you break down and get over the wall!  Do you remember doing that to your mom and dad?  You say, "I just can't fathom doing that."  Let me put it to you this way, when you were a teenager and you wanted to do a certain social activity, did you know if you should go to your mother for some and your father for others? You are a Velociraptor! [Laughter]  You were testing the fence in a very, uh, by the way, you know what we found out when our kids were younger? It took us awhile to catch on.  There are some smart kids in this church because they found a new way to test the fence.  They would ask our children if they would go on a social even with them somewhere.  And they would work it to where our kids asked us first, because they knew that if they went back to their parents and said, "Well Pastor Tony is letting them go," it was an IN! [Laughter]   Now that was creative.  I was impressed.

Parents, we want to build you up.  We want to do it in a sense of reality, and so my wife found something or was e-mailed something that I think for mothers, and I'm reading ones that I believe you would appreciate coming from someone who has no idea of what motherhood is about by experience, your male pastor, but being a father and having a wonderful wife for a mother for my children, maybe you would appreciate the humor and the reality of some of these statements.  They all have to do with entering motherhood, and the phases you go through from first baby to second baby to third baby.  After the fictional ones, I'll give you a couple of real ones.

Preparing for Birth:

First Baby:              You practice your breathing religiously.

Second Baby:          You don't bother because you remember that the last time breathing didn't do a thing. [Laughter]

Third Baby:            You ask for an epidural in your 8^th month.  [Laughter]

The Layette:

First Baby:              You prewash newborn's clothes, color-coordinate them and fold them neatly into the baby's little bureau.

Second Baby:          You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains. [Laughter]

Third Baby:            Boys can wear pink, can't they? [Laughter]

Worries:

First Baby:              At the first sign of distress, a whimper, a frown, you pick up the baby.

Second Baby:          You pick the baby up when her wales threaten to wake your firstborn. [Laughter]

Third Baby:            You teach your 3-year-old to rewind the mechanical swing.                                [Laughter]

Diapering:

First Baby:              You change your baby's diapers every hour whether they need it or not.

Second Baby:          You change their diaper every 2 or 3 hours if needed.

Third Baby:            You try to change their diaper before others start complaining about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees. [Laughter]

Somebody who had children wrote this!

At Home:

First Baby:              You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.

Second Baby:          You spend a bit of every day watching to be sure your older child isn't squeezing, poking or hitting the baby.

Third Baby:            You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.

[Laughter]

 One more.

Swallowing Coins:    I think everybody has had at least one child that swallowed  a coin.

First Child:             When the first child swallows a coin, you rush the child to the hospital and demand x-rays.

Second Child:         When second child swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin to pass. [Laughter]

Third Child:            When the third child swallows a coin, you deduct it from his allowance.  [Lots of Laughter]

There must be more mothers in this section than this section because you all are laughing louder!  [Laughter]  

It's really bad to tell family stories in the pulpit when they are sitting in the pew, an I'm not talking about my immediate family, but I won't mention any names of the family that is kin to me that's members of this church, Brenda and Harry Allen, but, by the time their fourth arrived, Kevin, Kevin had a bad habit of being very young and being able to climb, and he had produced the ability to climb right out of his crib, but not to fall and land properly. So as good responsible parents, they took an extra little mattress or pillows and put them beside his little crib in case he decided to climb out.

One night, Brenda and Harry were lying in bed and they hear this BOOM, thud! WAAAAAA!  Harry gets up out of bed….stomp, stomp, stomp….runs down there, gets to the door and starts to open it, and the crying stops.  He went…. Never even opened the door and went back to bed and they got Kevin off the pillows the next morning.  [Laughter]  

Oh…..when we still lived in Florida, Anthony wasn't born yet, Hollie was crawling around and toddling around, we were decorating the Christmas tree, of course, down there with all the windows open and the flowers in bloom.  The lights, thank God for Christmas trees that already have lights on them, we have one of those.  It keeps me from being unpastoral at Christmas.  But we had to put our lights on then, and we had them all strung out on the floor making sure they worked, and we looked over at Hollie, who was a rather rambunctious little one.

[My mother's here.  One time she was in Florida keeping her and Hollie found her way into her bedroom and locked grandma out of it and wouldn't let her in! [Laughter]  She had to go get a guy at church next door and he had to take the doorknob off [Laughter]  Sorry!  Getting a little too reminiscent here, sorry Hollie! 

Anyway, she picked up the thing of lights. We didn't think anything about it, it wasn't plugged in, but she looked at it and decided that that little light bulb probably tasted good and she went "Chomp."  Now Hollie is third born.  Joie looked in her mouth, I took my finger and got it all out and we finished decorating the tree! [Laughter]  What would you have done with your firstborn?

Now, those are all funny things, and just as we have laughed much at home, we've cried much at home and we've cried much about home, haven't we?  Home is where you find out what you're really made of.  It was Howard Hendricks that said, "If your Christianity doesn’t work at home, it doesn’t work and don't export it." 

If you want to find out if you are real or not, don't ask your coworkers.  That's a far second best.  Definitely don't ask the people you go to church with unless you have a proper discipling, intimate relationship with someone, ask your family, if you have the guts.

There are three questions I want to ask from a passage of scripture this morning that is not significantly or should I say specifically about home life, but the Apostle Paul in the Book of Ephesians, has drawn a masterful, doctrinal foundation for the glories of our faith and the securities we have in Christ. Then he moves to a seamless explanation and directional teaching for living the Christian life.  He talks about church life and unity in church.  He talks about our personal life, he talks about our work life, he talks about our married life.  He talks about spiritual warfare and there's not a break in any of that that is significant that I can see.  So, I think in Chapter 4, all of what he does qualifies for the functional foundation on top of the doctrine that teaches us how to live at home. 

Let's take a look beginning at Ephesians Chapter 4, verse 29.  Very practical, very self-explanatory, but I want to look at them just a bit:

"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as it fits the occasion.  That it may give grace to those who hear and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.  Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Three questions:  What is the sound of your household, or what are the sounds that come out of it? What's the symphony of music that's played there, or is it a cacophony of sounds that is rather contorted?

Second question: What is the catalyst for changes to take place at your house? Every home is in the process of change, no home stays at the level, you are either improving or you're declining, no home stays level, because we're all growing, we're aging, we're maturing, we're learning, so we're either going up or we're going down, but we are not level, so the question is, from this passage of scripture, "What is or what are the catalysts for change at your home?"

Third, Who are the role models for your household?

First, what is the sound of your house? Verse 29, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as it fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear."

You know, there are some Bible verses that are convicting just by what they say and it takes no explanation for them.  "Let no corrupting talk,"  that word, corrupting, has to do with the issue of being rank, foul and putrid.  It is typically used for rotten trees and rotten fruit.  The trouble with that command is, our tongue is attached to our heart, and Jesus said that the mouth  speaks out of the abundance of the heart.  So, when Paul is telling us to not let corrupt communication come out of our mouths, he is actually talking about our heart primarily and our tongue secondarily.  He wants us to recognize the power of the tongue in two ways.  James taught us the power of the tongue in its uncontrollability.  No man, he said, can tame the tongue.  So, before you start whipping yourself about how you've used your tongue at home, let's get an accurate picture.  Let's find out that you don't have the ability to tame your tongue on your own, but God has the ability to do it or he would not have commanded us to halt the corrupting talk and to begin the talk that builds up.  Your responsibility as a parent is to recognize that you are now Bob, the Builder!  You have the responsibility of building your children up and your chief tool is your tongue.  Tough work, huh? 

The Proverbs knew the power of the tongue.  Solomon wrote these words:
Proverbs 15:1 " A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

I'm sure in your household your teenagers never get sarcastic or raise their voice; however, in the rare occasion that they do, I'm sure you stop  for a minute and quote this Proverb to yourself. [Laughter] "A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger," and then you go, "Now, honey, just what is it that has you so stirred up? How can I help you?"  Blechhhhhh…..

It's like they've got this probe that goes right to your heart and you like come out and before you know it, your tongue attached to your heart, it starts saying things and your harsh word just causes their anger to go straight up!  The Proverbs say, "A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit."

Proverbs 12:18 says, "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." 

Now, I have two warnings about getting into verbal jousting with your teenagers.

You have to realize that your mind is at a different stage in life than their mind is and you think arguments should be logical.  You WILL lose!  Because logic does not enter their brains.  It's not because it's a fault, it's because of where they are in life. So you need to assume the parental role and stop  the argument and start thinking, because if you don't stop  the argument and you let their illogical statements get inside your skin, your words are going to become like thrusts of a sword because you've got a greater vocabulary and you've got more experience in pushing buttons and doing harm with words than they do, and if you don't get control  of it, you can slice up the heart of your child and make it very difficult for them to communicate.  That's no excuse for back-talking your mother.  That will not stand at my household.  I am like a Sherman tank if any of the kids sass their mother and they know that. 

I was reading one of the books on Myspace and the author of it said when he was 16 he thought he was big enough to say something very derogatory to his mother, not realizing that his dad in his former life was a steeplechase guy.  He said "I sassed my mother and my dad leaped over the kitchen table, grabbed me by the throat, and as he was holding me against the wall with my toes dangling, I realized I was not big enough to do that yet." 

Poor guy, you know, today if somebody did that to their child they'd get arrested for child abuse, but, I'm not saying you need to pin your boy against the wall, but a little corporal punishment never hurt anybody, done rightly.

So, what's the sound of your house?  Look at what the Bible says your tongue can do.  Verse 29, it's very plain: "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth."  My tongue has the power to corrupt, to be foul and putrid. To be like a rotten tree that bears rotten fruit, or, he turns it around.  "Let only things come out of your mouth such as is good for building up, constructing the home, laying a foundation, putting up the framework, putting on the roof, so that when your child goes out, they have been given every positive instruction for how to live a productive life.  Your tongue has the power to do that. Your tongue can corrupt, Don't let it.  Your tongue can build up, do it!  Amazingly the Bible then goes on and says, "Only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion." You need to be aware of the moment.  Some teaching moments are better than others.  Why? That it may give grace to those who hear.  It's a powerful statement. 

Now we can't give grace like God does.  For us it means to confer a favor or to give pleasure or profit.  I would like to think as a parent that my tongue give pleasure and profit to my children far more than it does pain. 

Don't take it too far.  I'm not telling you not to have confrontation with your children.  Expect it!  You're foolish if you don’t.  You live in a household full of sinners and you're one of them.  It will come.  But remember, parenting and the respect of parents made the top 10 in God's words to human beings, "Honor your father and mother," so that is a drastically important element in your children's lives.  Give them the parents that they need.

So what's the sound of your house?  Every now and then we might get embarrassed at the Rose household if a church knocked on it when the screen door was opened. You want to know the truth? We don’t' have a screen door!  Ha, ha, ha!  [Laughter]  Do you have those same fears?  You know, sometimes family life just catches us, and one pastor, wisely said, "If you want to find out what you're filled up with, see what spills out when you get jostled." 

This passage of scripture is to teach us to live the Christian life at home, that reacts properly instead of merely acts properly.  Preaching a sermon is acting properly.  Responding to my teenager properly when they've pulled some stunt is reacting properly because I'm filled with the Spirit and by His control I have control  of my tongue.  What is the sound coming out of your house? 

Second, what are the catalysts for change in your home?  Verse 30, powerful verse: "And, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption."  It is not altogether clear why Paul immediately jumped from such a practical thing to this personal nature of the Holy Spirit except for the fact that He is the Spirit of truth and he cannot stand it when our tongues speak untruths or in untruthful manner, in unholy ways and in divisive ways because he is the one Spirit.  But look at it, I want you to just see a couple of things.  You have to have the Holy Spirit of God to do what is asked of you in this passage of scripture.  It is humanly impossible.  But, now look at the personal nature of his presence and power in your life.  It is said in the negative, but it reveals much.  "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God."  It means to cause him sorrow.  It's a command to us.  That means he's a sensitive Spirit, that means he's a personal Spirit, he's just like the Father and the Son.  He's now weird, he's not wacko, he's not way out there.  He's personal, and by the use of our tongue and by the use of our lives we can cause him to grieve.  But Paul said I want you to know this Spirit lives in you; I want you to know he empowers you for this kind of living, and this is the Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  He's telling us this is for our whole life.  The sealing goes back to our new birth. The redemption is talking about the full redemption at the end of time.  So, he's saying for the whole of your life, I want you to know not only is your salvation personal, but your salvation is secure, it won't be taken away, and during the time between your sealing and the final redemption, there is an ongoing salvation and he's given us a picture of it in the verses before.

Look up at Verse 22 please.  He's in the middle of a command and he says,
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

The picture is changing your clothes, and that is what Christian living is about and especially at home.  You were sealed, you were saved by grace through faith according to nothing that you did, it is a free gift of God.  But my dear friend, as soon as God puts you in his family, he is also the one keeping you to the end, but in this part of the keeping, he asks and expects your cooperation.  Your sin was forgiven but your flesh was not taken away from you and you still have the capacity to sin, so the way he helps us understand that is from when we were born again until the day we die and go to heaven or Christ comes back, we're in a continual change of wardrobe, taking out the things of our soul that are bad, putting in things that are good.  So, if you will notice, he then gets very specific about our old closet. 

Verse 31:

"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice." 

Bitterness is a figurative term.  It speaks of a person who has a sour, crabby and repulsiveness in his demeanor.  It brings a scowl over his face and it infuses venom into the words of his tongue.  That's what bitterness is.  That's something that is in our heart that affects these other things.  Our wrath: That's just this vein of anger that kind of flows through our hearts.  There's our anger that expresses temporary excitement and passions, outbursts of anger where we scream or say things we shouldn't.  Clamor is also that, very similar, outcry, a shouting, a cry of strife.  Slander is the speaking of evil about someone behind their back, and malice is another comprehensive word that means badness or bad heartiness.  It's the root of all these other vices and we have a command, it's an interesting command.  Look at how it's written.  "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger, clamor, slander be put away from you.  Now, if you look at that you think, "Well, somebody else is doing it," and you are exactly right.  You can't do it, but you have the power of the Holy Spirit to let him pick up, carry away, take those things away and make a clean sweep.  Do you ever have help to get this done!  You have the right arm of God to have this done in your lives, but you've got to change the clothes and you've got to be specific.  And spiritual color blindness is no excuse for what happens here.  If any of you are married to a colorblind man, on days you don't feel like being merciful to him you let him pick out his own clothes, don't you? So he goes to work in things that go horribly together.  But, there is no such thing as spiritual color blindness because God names the color of the clothes we put on and he matches them perfectly, and if we're going to grow, our clothes much match.  Because bitterness and forgiveness do not go together as garments for the soul.  So, what's the catalyst for change in your home?  Why am I dealing with this catalyst issue?  The catalyst in the Christian home is not mom, it's not dad, it is the Holy Spirit of God as mom and dad depend on him, model  that which is slightly above being earthly because we have his power, and our children see our grace, they see our soft tongue and, on top of that, when we blow it, they see our humility as we get before them and apologize for what we have done wrong.  Be ready and willing to apologize to your children. You will make mistakes. And that allows you to enter into their heart because they see you as a real person who is honest and loves them, and God's grace will allow you.  

 The catalyst? The catalyst is the Holy Spirit of God.  The sound is that of construction going on, positive words that build one another up.  The power for the tools of the tongue is the Holy Spirit of God.  The wardrobe is specifically laid out for us in the Bible and some of it he is getting ready to tell us.   

Verse 32:

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you."  [That's this month's memory verse]

Wow! "Be kind" is a command that we do.  We are responsible for that. It means that we are useful.  It means that we are worthy, that we are good and benevolent.  "Tenderhearted" to these Greek Christians, it meant literally healthy bowels because their insides is where their emotion and their intention came from.  And then look at the most amazing command of changing clothes, "Be kind" --that's hard; "Be tenderhearted - that's next to impossible, "forgiving one another" -- is impossible.  It means exercise grace freely towards others in forgiving.  But look at the ground upon which God asks it.  Interestingly, ours is present tense.  But he says "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving - present tense all the time- one another; as God in Christ forgave you. That's in Aorist tense; that means it's DONE!  And God did it for us.  You are in the state of, it is indicative of you that you are forgiven and with that knowledge then you can forgive others.  And then what's the catalyst in your home? The Holy Spirit gives you the power.  What's the sound of your home? Is it a symphony of building things up?

And then the final question is, "Who are the role models for your household? You should have many.  You need to teach your children to read.  You need to find if there are any role models that in industry, in sports, in entertainment, yes you should.  You should find out if there are believers there that you could look to and find out how to survive and live and thrive in this world.  But your chief role model is God, himself, Chapter 5, Verse 1: 

"Therefore, be imitators [mimics] of God as beloved children."

Parents, if you want to be an effective parent you must continue to be a child.  I can remember when the children were little and they'd get stuck about whining on something, they'd be tired and they'd whine and they'd whine, and I'd be patient and I'd be patient and I'd be patient, and they'd whine, and they'd whine…. I'd lose my patience and then sometimes almost suddenly , the Holy Spirit of God would say, "Hey, Tony, do you remember what you've been whining to your Heavenly Father about? He has not yet lost his patience with you." If I don't know how to be a child to God, which means that I have trusted his son as my only hope of heaven, that he is my eternally, holy, Heavenly Father, in whom all things exist, or 'from him, through him and to him are all things', I depend on him as a child, then I am better readied to be a parent.  Therefore, be imitators of God.  Now, how did God act? As beloved children, here's how God acted, "and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Yes, the parental life, and in particular motherhood, is terribly sacrificial, but your sacrifice will never come close to outdoing the sacrifice that Christ made for you.

We need to be done.  Do you think your kids are going to survive? 

Barry St. Clair is a man who has been in youth ministry for years.  A counselor friend of his sent him this note:

"To the kids who survived the 50s, 60s, and 70s"

First we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.  They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright-colored, lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets.

When we rode our bikes we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking. 

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags. Riding in the back of a pickup on a warm day was a special treat. 

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink from one bottle with four friends and no actually died from this. [Laughter]  

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it but we weren't overweight because we were always outside playing.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.  No one was able to reach us all day and we were okay.

We would spend hours building our go-karts out of scraps and then ride down the hill only to find out that we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem. 

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-Boxes, video games, 99-1000 channels of TV, no DVD movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet, no internet chat rooms.  Yes, that really was true, teenagers!  We lived in caves, too! [Laughter]  

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.  We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes nor did the worms live in us forever. [Laughter]

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door, rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.  Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.  [Imagine that!] 

We misbehaved at home or at school and our mother would say, "Wait till your father gets home." Then our father would say, "This will hurt me more than it will hurt you," [Laughter]  but we didn't believe him because the spanking did hurt. 

The idea of parents bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of; they actually sided with the law.

There's a lot of jest and a lot of truth in that.  I read it to close the sermon, to drag us back to reality, to send us into reality.