“The Context Of Home Life”

Let's take our Bibles and get to Genesis 3.  We are beginning a series on The Family today.  I don't know of anything to talk about that demands transparency and reality more than this, talking about Christianity, the Bible and today's family.  So, through our time together, I'm going to be as clear as I can.  I am going to be clear about spiritual issues and the things that we must be aware of if we intend to have a Christian family.  I'm going to be clear about issues of the day.  I will not be indiscreet, but it is really hard in our day and time to say everything that needs to be said in a church environment.  Usually if I offend anybody by my plainness, it's the adults, not the children or young people, because the children and young people have already heard it.  We just try to keep them from hearing it in our home.  What I would like to happen is for them to hear what God says about the issues that they deal with and give them a foundation to walk upon.

So, just to lay it down flat and level where anybody can see it, the Biblical record stands that family life is difficult.  Too many times we preachers have taken the Bible out and painted a flowery picture of what the Christian home life is.  We are right in teaching you to strive for what the Bible tells us we are supposed to strive for, but we are wrong when we give you an idealistic picture that is totally uprooted from the scriptures.

Help me out for just a moment.  I want somebody to name for me by first names, the name of the model family in the Bible. [Long pause]  Don't you read your Bibles? That's the point, there isn't one!  There's not a model family in the Bible.  I get really irritated and upset every time I look for a Godly father to be an example in the Bible.  There is only one that I know of that significantly has left us a record and he's so hard to find most of you don't know his name, couldn't spell it and I have a heard time saying it, if it's REchab, Rechab, or REChab.   If you want to find him in the Old Testament you'll find out that a father had influence over generations the behavior of his children, so we know it's possible, but the Bible doesn’t tell us by example that it's going to be easy.  The Bible tells us by example it's going to be hard, but why?  We shouldn't fret over that.  God's just telling the story of life as it is.  The question, we need to know why it's hard, so we need to get to the crux of that issue.

Today, we're going to try to find the context in which you do family.  The arena, the atmosphere, the soil out of which we try to grow a family and I think that will be helpful to all of us to see that.  Now, we will learn, I hope, as we go along to distinguish between the issues of the day and the issues of the ages.  One classic mistake we parents make is we concentrate too much of the issues of the day in our children and too little on the issues of the ages.  How many of you parents are struggling with (don't raise your hand please) the issue internet usage and your children? How many of you struggle with the use of a cellphone and your child?  Have you ever thought about it, parents, that when you have that rule that when your child goes somewhere they are supposed to call you when they get there and if there's a change of plans they are to call you when they leave and tell you where they are going next?  You know that's been rendered obsolete with cellphones, because you can be anywhere in the world and call on the cellphone and say you're down the street at Johnny's house.  Do you trust your children?  You shouldn't!  Don't look at me like that!  You can't trust yourself!  We know better than to trust humanity without guidelines.

So we worry about those things, we worry about cars and earrings and tattoos and hair and clothing.  Those are all issues of the day and I'm not saying they are not important, they've got to be dealt with, but you've got to get to the root of the matter and find that they are all rooted in one of three things, the world, the flesh or the devil.  And then you look and you find out that things that we think are the issues of the day, that because of those three things come out that they are not issues of the day at all!  We treat homosexuality as if it is a new issue in humanity and we're stunned that it is so flagrant in our society.  Why?

It was addressed in the Old Testament centuries upon centuries ago.  We're worried about drugs.  Pharmacology was addressed in the New Testament, more than likely in the Old.  We worry about rebellion and witchcraft and all these kinds of things.  There are old as the hills; they are not issues of the day, they are connected to issues of the ages.  Do we know how to deal with those things?

We want to get a Biblical view of life because Christianity is the only, if you want to use philosophy or system, or faith, it is the only faith that gives us an overall view of life that helps us understand why the world is the way it is, why our family is the way it is, and why we are the way we are.  And, first of all, this message is addressed to each of us as individuals more than it is to somebody else in our family besides us.  It is our flesh that causes us to apply sermons to other people.  Did you get that? Are you with me? You don't listen to sermons saying, "Oh, I wish she were here to hear this, it would be perfect for her."  No, that means it is perfect for you.  What in the world are you doing thinking about somebody else needing God's correction and instruction when you are here to think about yourself?

I'll say this again, maybe I hope so, maybe twice through the sermon, but the issue we learn today is that in the home, you as an individual are the focus for change.  The other people in your family are your focus for love.  The trouble is we get it backwards.  We make ourselves the focus for love, "Why don't they love us?" and them the focus of change, "Well, if they would just change everything would be okay."  That leads to great frustration.  If we're going to do this, if we're going to succeed, we are going to have to come dressed for the job, especially parents, but this applies to children in the home no matter  how old they are or not.

Colossians Chapter 3 (don't turn there, please) in verses 9 and 10 talks about "Putting off the old self and putting on the new self which is being renewed in the image of its creator." It’s a metaphor of changing clothes.  If you want to be an effective parent, you, the parent have to change clothes.  You see, if you don't have on the right clothes you can't get in the game.

The other day one of our children had to go somewhere to a school function.  It took about 3 trips….we weren't even in town.  We were coming back from a trip out of town and going straight to the function.  It took about 3 trips between 2 of the siblings to get everything this particular child of ours needed at this function; clothing, pieces of information crucial to what they were doing, and, what was the reasoning, "Oh, I forgot!"

I was about to get frustrated until I remembered something in my past when I was about the exact same age.  I was in junior high.  I played basketball then.  I wasn't very good, but at least I was on the team and we had an away game, so we were responsible to load our gym bags, put everything in there we needed, our shoes, sox, uniform.  I get there, we're in the locker room, I ZIP, open up my little Fairdale Bulldogs gym bag and I'm looking around.  Some idiot forgot to put my uniform in here!  [Laughter] Well, that idiot was me! I was the one responsible for that.  Can you imagine going to a game and forgetting the uniform you are supposed to wear?  Well, I got a….. had a session with the coach that I can't repeat here, and then after that I marched out with the team and sat my little self on the bench in street clothes while my team is out warming up in proper uniforms.  Somebody walks by, "Tony, are you okay? Are you sick?"  No, I forgot my uniform. [Laughter]  "What'd you say?" I forgot my uniform.  Do you know how embarrassing it is to show up for the game, not have the right uniform and be put on the bench?  Sometimes that's how we show up for family life, and we spend too much time on the bench, not dressed for life and we're just watching as a spectator instead of being involved.

So, what we want to do, did I tell you to turn to Genesis 3, excuse me, Genesis 4, it's on Page 3 in the Blue Bible in your pew.  We want to look at Genesis 4.  This is the first family.  Now before the fall, Adam and Eve could have been a great example to us, but they fell into sin, and it was after their fall into sin and getting booted out of the Garden of Eden, at which God placed a Cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden. So, in my mind, I'm thinking that wherever it was Adam and Eve began to settle down, the garden was probably still in sight.  It wasn't destroyed until the flood.

One thing that did go through my mind…. If I say the word, cherub, what do you think of?  I think of a little, round, pudgy, naked baby with wings on its back. [Laughter] Because that's what we think of cherubs, isn't it? Oh, precious little cherub.  We have an uncanny ability to turn the Bible upsidedown. Supposed Adam and Eve would have walked up and there's this little unclothed baby with wings on its back guarding the gate to the Garden of Eden and they wanted to go in….Oh, excuse me, honey, [steps right over the cherub].  [Laughter]  No, they walked up to the Garden of Eden and there is this divine flaming sword and this massive angelic cherubim in which no army of humans would have tackled.  One of those angels eliminated Sennacherib's entire army by himself!  That's just a simple sidelight to say, Be careful how you read God's book.  Don't let the world tell you what it says, let it tell you what God says about the world, and that's the Biblical perspective we want on the home.  We want to see God's view on life.

Genesis Chapter 4, Verse 1 tells us this:

"Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying 'I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.' And again, she bore his brother, Abel.  No Abel was a keeper of the sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.  In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.  And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.  So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.  The Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.  Its desire is for you but you must rule over it."

Let's get God's view on life.  God explains for us the context of the home.  I have already laid a little bit of that down for you.  You've got Adam and Eve, perfect humans, they sinned against God, God punishes them and yet at the same time God protects them.  He's a great God of grace. He's given Eve this promise that her seed is going to crush the head of the serpent, so she's waiting for this man-child to come along who is going to defeat the Devil, who tempted them and then in turn they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden.  It is possible that when she says "With the help of the LORD I have gotten a man-child" that she's thinking maybe this is the one who will deliver us, or it is also possible in the grammar that she is saying "God created us, now I've created a man."  We don't know if it is worship on Eve's part or pride on Eve's part; hard to tell by looking at it in detail.  But they are outside of this Garden of Eden.  They cannot go back in.  They are no living with each other with this sin nature inside of them that they incurred when they sinned against God.  They are not separated from him in a way they had never known. They were used to walking with God in the cool of the day.  Can you imagine family devotions at Adam and Eve's house?  They weren't just reading out of a book and using their imaginations of what it was to walk with God, they were telling Cain and Abel what their experience was with God in the Garden.  They were describing the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were describing what a perfect earth was where there were no thorns and no death.  They knew all of these things, that's how close they were to perfection in time and distance. But, however, we find early on that sin is immediately pervasive.  That is one of the things that our heart and the devil keep us from seeing.  Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked beyond all cure, who can know it?"  And the most deceitful thing about the human heart is that it deceives us in thinking that our heart is deceitful…. somebody else's might be, but not mine, I know myself!

Uh huh.  The eye of the soul is just like the eye of the mind, it can see everything but itself.  I can look at you but I cannot look at me, not without the help of the mirror of God's Word and the same is true of you.

So, what happened to Cain and Abel.  We'll focus on those first 7 verses and let's look and see what his response was.  Sin was crouching at the door, he had the opportunity to do well or to not do well.  So, here's his choice, Verse 8:

"Cain spoke to Abel, his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him."

We'll just stop there because if we go on with the rest of the story it is Sermon No. 2.  You get the picture that God is laying down for us?  You're an inch from perfection.  You're the first family on the earth.  Now, please keep in mind that the author is not concerned with chronological time at this point.  There are more people already on the earth than just Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel.  He's telling the story of God, Cain and Abel.  He's not telling us a detailed history of earth.  If you read the story you find out even in a phrase that we see in one of the verses that we read, it says, "In the course of time" [in verse 3]….we have no idea how long that was… how many brothers and sisters to Cain and Abel were already on the earth, what kind of little society had already begun to develop by the time the murder takes place, but these, as far as we know, were the first two born.  And God is saying, "Sin corrupts people and then sinful people corrupt homes."

So, the bad news? Everybody in your household, everybody in mine, everybody in this room, everybody on the face of the earth is infected pervasively with sin.  I'm not talking about doing sins, that's secondary.  I'm talking about what we are!  I'm talking about that's why family life is difficult. Then, God reveals the core of our personal problem.  He shows us how it's manifested; Verse 3 please:

"In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground.  And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions and the LORD had regard for [he accepted] Abel's offering but for Cain and his offering he had no regard [he did not accept it]."

So, what was Cain's response? Did he look at God and say, "Oh, did I make a mistake, God?" What is it you would like for me to do to change this?" Just like you and I would have…. No.  This is just like you and I would have, verse 5:

"But for Cain and his offering he had no regard.  So Cain was very angry."

That word, very, it has a picture with the word as if there is a scale from 0-10. 0 is no anger; 10 is way past the boiling point, and what the picture of this word is that Cain was up to a 9; just like that with God, "What do you mean, my offering is not accepted by you?"  It's just like us.  We look at God and say, "I don't like the way you are running life." It's the nature of us.  That's what Adam and Eve did in the garden.  That was the lie Satan gave them, "You can be like God." Oh, okay, well I'll be my own God, and that's what Cain is doing.  There is some significant difference in the bringing of Abel's offering and the bringing of Cain's offering.  There are some hints in the text.  Abel obviously knew what to do.  Cain obviously knew what to do and Cain didn't do it, he did it his own way and when God confronted him, God was very kind.  He said, he asked him about it, he said, "Why are you angry and why is your face fallen?" You know, questions are the tool that God has given us in language for one person to probe another person's soul.  A good counselor is not the counselor that is always giving you information, it's the counselor that asks you questions, because you see when you ask the right question, what it will do is it's like a probe that touches the most sensitive part of your soul, and you get a reaction!  And God doesn’t have to guess around, he already knew what the problem was but he still used the method of questioning and he asked Cain what was wrong and he touched the sore spot.  But then he gave Cain grace and he said, "But if you'll do well, will you not be accepted?"  Now that word is the opposite of fallen.  His face, his countenance had fallen; it's saying you'll be lifted back up, Cain.  "Humble yourselves under the might hand of God that He may exalt you in due time."

God reveals the core of our personal problem, we want to be in control.  We want things our way and when we don't get them our way we get angry…. Very angry.  That all lays the groundwork for point No. 3. This is where it gets personal.  God then shows us after he explains the context of life, we are in a fallen world, we are all sinners; we are going to have problems.  He reveals the core of our personal problem and that is sin itself that causes us to want to be in control , causes us to want things our way, it's pervasive all the way through us, we may hide it, we may cover it, but it comes out sooner or later, and then in this text, God shows us the course of life.  This gets detailed.  How does this happen?  What is it? Can I understand something from here so I can learn not to be like Cain? So I can do well and my countenance gets lifted back up? Is there some way I can avoid this sinfulness of sin? Can I get it under control?  What is it I need to do?  Let's take a look.  If you will notice in this course of life, things are going fine.  Cain makes some kind of mistake in bringing his offering to the LORD.  Nothing has escaped the sight of God.  He lovingly confronts Cain.  When you, as a child of God, sin and many times as someone who doesn’t even know God, he confronts you with your wrong.  Now, he'll do it in three ways.  He will do it through creation, just through common knowledge of the world through the manifest  glory of God in creation, he will do it through your conscience, your conscience is going to say something to you, "This can't be right," or he'll do it through Christ.  Very plainly for the believer, through Christ, he will confront you with something wrong and that's exactly what happened to Cain.  We see first there is confrontation.  Verse 6:

"The LORD said to Cain…."

Joie asked me, she said, "What was that like, God speaking to Cain?"  I don't know.  I think it was just verbal.  He walked with his parents in the garden in the cool of the day.  They had no Bible. There were very few people then, so I think this was just exactly what happened…. I think God talked to Cain.   And Cain was not taken back by that because he spoke with God, so it wasn't a strange thing to him, but God confronted him. 

"The LORD said to Cain, 'Why are you angry and why has your face fallen?'"

Now God obviously didn't ask that for information, he already knew.  God never needs to gain information from us.  He asked it for Cain's perception, to back him up and say, "Okay, what's the real situation here, Cain?" You have immediately reacted based upon your nature but what's the real problem? Cain here comes to a crisis in his road.  God first gives him a warning, here's the warning, the question, "Why are you angry and why is your face fallen?" Grace and warning: "If you do well, will you not be accepted [will you not be lifted back up, you'll get rid of this anger, your face will be lifted and you'll do well.]  And if you do not do well, God says, "Cain you've got a choice to make, you've got responsibility here, sin is crouching at the door."  The warning is "Sin is crouching at the door." It's laying there.  The picture of that is like an animal at rest, laying down at ease, but on the ready.  Just like a cat… have you ever watched your little house cat, looks like they are not paying attention to anything and then all at once, up they go and they are after something they see.  That's what the picture is.  Sin is crouching at the door.  Now, Cain, you've got to respond here, response is next, and that's the ball in Cain's court.  He's either going to receive the counsel of God or he's going to reject the counsel of God.  What happens?  The warning goes on, "Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you [that means it wants to have dominion over you], but you [Cain] must rule over it."  Cain had a response, okay, he fed his anger and he planned and premeditated his brother's murder. 

Anger is a root sin.  Anger that comes out of pride, which is the main root, I want life my way, is going to get life your way.  Temper is okay.  Anger at certain points is not to be controlled, it's to be destroyed.  Anger is one of the triggers that opens the door to sin.  Do you get the picture? Sin is like it has a life of its own.  It is outside crouching at the door of your soul.  All this is actually taking place on the inside.  We can't say God did it.  Sometimes the devil tempts us, but if you'll notice the devil, the devil isn't even mentioned in this passage.  James says, 'Let no man say when he is tempted he is tempted of God, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.  And when lust is conceived it brings forth sin, and sin when it is finished brings forth death."  There's a progression and God is trying to warn Cain of the progression.  So, sin is crouching at his door.

Years ago when we lived in Florida, we took probably just our two oldest children to what was then a small Lion County Safari.  It's still there.  Sometimes we frequent it on vacations.  At that time we weren't nearly as safety conscious because we drove your car right through the lions' part and the lions were just right out.  There was no barrier between you and your car.  By the way, to demonstrate how sinful people are, now they do have, when you go through the lions, there's a fence and the lions are inside that, and there's this huge sign before you go in and they tell you on the CD that you are listening to in your car, "DO NOT ROLL YOUR WINDOWS DOWN."  Now, we go in and there are some other cars in there and there's this truck with a worker in it sitting there watching the lions, and I'm thinking that would be kind of neat, but what a boring job, sitting there, I wonder what they do all day.  Well, some sinner in the other car that has to be rebellious rolled their window down to take a picture! God spoke, "Roll your window up!" That's what the guy was in the truck.  He was God with a loudspeaker warning Cain not to roll his window down because we told you not to roll the window down!  What is it in us that says we got to roll our window down? Sin!  It's not cute.  It's not living on the edge.  It's stupid!  Did you ever see America's Funniest Videos where somebody was feeding the bears where I'm confident there is a sign that says, "Don't feed the bears" and they were going to be smart.  They took the peanut and rolled it up in the electric window where there is that much open… The bear is trying to get it and he's not dexterous enough to get it, so he puts his claws inside the little crack and proceeds to pull the window out of the car!  That's exactly what sin does.  We give it a little crack.

We were going through Lion County Safari, the lions were there.  They were just laying down.  As a matter of fact they looked real sleepy.  There was a lioness, her back hips were laid over, her front paws were kind of like this, you know, the aggressive King of Beasts or Queen, just laying there like this.  There was a whole group of egrets in the pine tree right beside them.  A wind gust came up, those egrets went like this and swooped down and, I guess the lowest one was maybe 12 feet off the ground.  The sleepy crouching lioness when SHWOOOOP! 12 feet high, [smack] between her front paws back down to her lazy position! [Chomp, chomp] [Laughter] It was amazing!

That is sin!  Now the New Testament hints that anger is also a way to give the devil a foothold, and the New Testament tells us that the devil is what? A roaring lion waiting to pounce and then it's too late, my friend.  Sin is crouching at the door, its desire is for you.  Its desire is to dominate you.  You cannot win a willpower fight with sin. You need God's power.  When you let it in the door, my friend, there is no stopping the flood, you are now dominated.  What does he tell Cain? But you MUST rule over it. Listen to this great New Testament verse, Romans 6:14:

"Sin will not have dominion over you [it will not dominate you] for you are not under the law but under grace."

You as a believer in Christ have the power to rule over sin!  If you think you don't, it's not a weakness in God, it's a weakness in our faith.  It's not willpower that causes us, it is worship power, because if we see Jesus Christ as our heart's satisfier instead of this pleasurable sinful experience as our heart satisfier, if he's our chief satisfier, it's easy to say "No", but if Christ is dull and weak and distant, it's easy to say "Yes" to immediate gratification.  Confrontation…. Sin crouching at the door, bad response, sin pounces, it dominates us when we should have been in charge and what happens is you go further from Eden.  God sent Cain wandering.  Further from Eden means further from God.  It means further from Heaven. It means further from what we were supposed to be, and the further we get, the easier it is to go farther away.

Now, for your encouragement, that's home life!  Wonderful isn't it? It really is good that we are told that because then we put the home in its real context.  You say, "Well, that sounds terrible.  I don't have a murderer in my home!" No, but you have people in your home who have the seed of murder in their heart.  Do you ever hate? Do you ever lust? Do you ever covet? Wanting to do it is also a breaking of the commandment, not as severe breaking as doing it, but wanting to do it is breaking it.  And, sometimes our wants, if we don't say "No" to them begin to dominate us.  We can't turn the computer off.  We can't stop going places.  We can't say "No" to the adulteress or the adulterer.  We can't no to drugs. We can't say "No" to where we've been visiting the computer through Myspace.

Well, what do we do about it? What can be done about it?  You see, Cain's view got so skewed once sin pounced on him, Abel became Cain's problem. That's what happens when you get angry with people.  They become your problem when the problem is really you and your anger.  Eventually God was Cain's biggest problem because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. So, what practical can we get out of this?

First, we need to recognize the context of the family, and admit what is at the core of our being, not our family's being, but our as an individual, and then to recognize, and I'll explain how in just a minute, we're wrapping up, by God's grace that I need to make a radical  change of course, radical!  Every one of us in our family, in all our families is a sinner.  We are in the context of a fallen world and sinful people, what then does this mean?

1.                 It means you and I, as parents, have got to stop  parenting out of fear.  If there is anywhere parents parent out of fear it is Christian people.  We're afraid our kids are going to get tainted, we're afraid of what somebody's going to think about us, we're afraid they are going to be immoral, we're afraid of what the church is going to say, we're afraid they're going to do this, we're afraid they're going to do that and the only fuel in our parenting is fear of what other people think or fear of what the world is going to do to our kids, and what does that do to our kids' faith? It makes them think that our God is really, really teeny, tiny.  Never underestimate the power of God through grace in the human soul!  Environment is not trump in the human soul; it is not the top card.  Family of origin is not the trump card in the human soul; temperament is not the trump card in the human soul.  God's spirit is.  Sin has sentenced us to death, but 1 Corinthians 15 asks, "Death where is your sting? Grave where is you victory?" Because Jesus Christ has overcome death.  We're worried about the Devil, we're worried about the Law that condemns us because we are sinners, and what does Colossians 2:13-15 tell us? It tells us that Jesus make an open and public display on the cross, defeating Satan, washing away, taking away all that was written against us.  We, through Christ, can go free and can conquer sin!

2.                 Your chief perspective in the home is to change yourself and to love your family, not to love yourself and change your family!

God knows all that is going on. It seems like quite a negative story,      but when you stop  and think about it, that's the only real explanation for why it's so hard and God has the only answer for changing that. We must get real.  We've got to quit seeing little naked babies as cherubs with wings on their backs guarding the Garden of Eden.  We've got to turn the Bible and the world right side up instead of upsidedown.  We've got to quit treating sin like a pet cat at home that we hold in our lap and realize it's a crouching lion that can snatch you out of midair and devour you.  We get to live in reality and what's the greater reality? "For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son."  Adam blew it, Cain blew it, we've blown it.  Jesus left heaven, took on flesh and came to this earth.  He walked in the midst of the roaring lion.  He faced him alone on the Mount of Temptation and he defeated him like we have to through the Word of God.  He lived that life and died on the cross with all our sin and sinfulness and acts of sin put upon his shoulders; "he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him," and now for those who have placed their faith in Christ, he has said, "Sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under the Law, but under grace.  You can conquer!  You can change your clothes.  You can put off the old self, you can put on the new self, and you can come dressed for the game, ready to play.

Parenting is not for wimps, but a Christian who has faith in Christ is everything but a wimp.  Are you praying for your children? So, we need to get real.

The first question you need to really answer is, "Am I a Christian?" Am I truly resting on Christ alone for my salvation and do I see him as my highest treasure?