God’s Family Plan, Part 2

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Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Knotts thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message is powerful, God’s family plan. From creation to conception to commitment, God has provided a blueprint for marriage and child rearing. While His plan is perfect, people are not. We make mistakes which sometimes jeopardizes our families. In our current culture, marriage is becoming indistinguishable from the way God designed it. But there is no viable substitute for God’s family plan. We see that when the Bible talks about they knew each other, it was far beyond just the physical sexual intimacy. And so God performed this first marriage. But you know what is very interesting? Let me throw this out here. We have to get to chapter 4-1 before we see that they finally got around to obeying the commandment they got in 128, be fruitful and multiply. Didn’t we read it? God gave them two commandments. Two! Two! Some people say one, and they automatically think don’t eat of the tree. Before he gave them that one, he said be fruitful and multiply. If they had obeyed that commandment and got busy being fruitful and multiplying, they may not have been hanging around that tree. I mean if they would have obeyed that first commandment and found out it was something they could do and they would enjoy doing it, they may not have been worried about eating some piece of fruit off of a tree. But they obviously didn’t get around to doing that. Instead, they got off of what God said. They didn’t obey the first commandment to go and be fruitful and multiply, and they disobeyed the second commandment, you can eat everything but this tree. And it wasn’t until after the sin, after the fall, after they got chased out of the garden, that they obeyed God. But the problem is, that meant that their seed now was born in sin. If they had been fruitful and multiplied when they were told to, and she would have conceived and had children, those children wouldn’t have had this in nature. I don’t know if it means anything to you, but I think it’s pretty interesting. So here’s the thing. God loves weddings. He performed the first one himself. And the Bible begins with the wedding, Adam and Eve, and it’s going to end with the wedding. The marriage supper of the Lamb. In Revelation 19, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Have you RSVP’d? Because you can’t get in if you don’t RSVP. Amen? And here, think about this. Jesus began his public ministry. The first miracle that he performed was at a wedding. God loves weddings. It was his idea. It wasn’t Adam’s idea. Marriage is God’s idea, not Adam’s, not man’s. And therefore, since it’s his idea, we need to go with his blueprint. You know, they used to call marriage holy wedlock. The two were locked into one another. And today, people don’t like to use that word because it’s like, I don’t want to be in a prison. Don’t lock me in. Marriage is not a prison. The matrimonial lock… is to keep intruders out. Amen? God said he’s going to leave his parents and cleave to his wife. And Jesus said what God has put together, let no man put asunder. God said the ish and the isha are to cleave. And who today has the authority to change it? The Hebrew idea, the biblical idea of marriage is that marital love grows deeper and deeper as the couple matures. Amen? Now, biblical marriages, after this, you know, God’s the one that arranged this marriage. And after that, the parents used to arrange the marriage for the children. And in some cultures today, in India and such, they still do. Amen? I’m not telling you, I’m not saying that I’m a proponent of that. I’m just trying to make you understand background behind some of the things why marriages like it, God created to be. You know when Abraham was getting old and he wanted a wife for Isaac, what did he do? He sent his servant Eliezer to go all the way back home to Syria. I said, I don’t want him to marry one of these women around here. This was before the law of Moses, people. He said, go home and get a wife. Amen? And so Eliezer did, and you can read it. God, you know, worked it out that he met the right girl, Rebecca. He met the right one. She was beautiful, and she was kind, and she was considerate. And then the best news was she was in Abraham’s family. So she was eligible. You’ve got to get somebody in God’s family. Amen. If you’re trying to marry a sinner, they’re not eligible. They’ve got to be in God’s family. He said, be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. And so here’s the thing that I think is so powerful. This is the point I want to make. He went there. He told Rebecca about Isaac. She willingly, willingly left her father, I mean her mother, her uncle, because her father I think was dead, and all of her family and everybody she knew in her whole lifestyle. She just packed up and went with this servant to go marry some man she never met. She never even saw him on Facebook. Amen. She’d never met him on Skype. And she willingly went there. And when she got there and Isaac saw her coming, he loved her. How does that happen? Let me tell you how it happens. Because in the biblical thought process about marriage, if God brought you together, somebody say, if God brought you together, if he joined you in marriage, then that love will grow and blossom and flourish. If God brought them together, and they did, they instantaneously fell in love, and their marriage lasted and survived. So God, that means that love should grow warmer and deeper with a married couple, even as they age and get older, long after the real passion and fire and passion of the early years of sexual intimacy. When that has waned, okay, it wanes, but the love should grow deeper and warmer. So what happened? Of course, we know that they had children, and one of them was Jacob, and we know Jacob inherited the promises, and you know that’s a whole story unto itself. When it came time for Jacob to get married, now we know, just skipping all of the activity, we know that Esau was the firstborn. He should have got the birthright and the blessing, but because of all the stuff that happened, he didn’t. and now Jacob’s got the birthright and the blessing. He’s got it. They want to make sure he marries the right girl. You know why? At this point, Esau had already married two, not one, but two heathen women. And the Bible says they vexed the soul of Rebekah every day. And she did not want Jacob to marry that because, remember, God was going to send the Messiah eventually through this line of Abraham. Now it’s Isaac. Now they’ve got to get the third generation. And it’s got to be Jacob. He’s got the blessing. He’s got the birthright. He’s got to marry a godly woman. And I know we always think that the only reason why that he fled and went to Syria is because he was afraid that Esau was going to kill him. But if you read the scripture, that’s not the only reason. The Bible says his parents sent him to get a wife. And when he got there, he saw Rachel and he fell in love with her and he wanted to marry her. And the good news was she was eligible. Amen. Because she was in the family. He didn’t know that when he saw her. He found out, wow, this is great because she is my cousin. I can marry her. She’s in the family. And so he made a deal with her father because he left home. He had no riches. He had no gold. He had no bride price. And the father of a girl got a dowry, got a bride price for his daughter. And he didn’t have any. So he made an agreement with her uncle Laban that he would work seven years. Seven years for free he would work for her. Amen? And the Bible says something that is astounding. I want you to go just jump to chapter 29 and read one verse. Some Hebrew scholars say this is one of the most romantic verses in the entire Old Testament.

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And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed unto him but a few days for the love that he had unto her. Amen. Amen. He served seven years for her, but seven years, when you are in love, seven years is like a few days. Now, on one hand, it may seem like an eternity because he couldn’t get her until after the seven years. Yes. You understand that? He didn’t get her on credit. So on one hand, it might have seemed like a very long time. Amen? But on the other hand, because, here’s the point, because he loved her so much, seven years was a small price to pay. Seven years of sacrifice and work without salary, without money, just room and board. That was nothing. It was like a couple of days hard work and hard labor because of the love that he had for her. And I want to say to husbands and fathers that are here today, you go to work every morning, you get up early and you go out to work and you work hard. You put in a lot of hours. Some of you do a lot of backbreaking work or you have done it. Maybe you’re retired now, but over the years you put in backbreaking work, long, hard hours for your family, for your wife and for your children. And why did you do it? It was not too hard. Because of the love that you had for your family. Because the love that you had for those little children. Your body sometimes hurt you. And sometimes you were worn out. But you got up the next day and you did it again. And you did it because when you came in at the end of the day, those little kids were going to run up and say, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Amen? The sacrifices that you made personally to care for your family, that they could be cared for and protected, were nothing compared to the love that you had for them. Because you see, today, modern marriages give and take, give and take, give and take. But biblical marriages give and give, and give and give, and give and give. Because that’s what our Father God does. He gives and He gives and He gives and He gives. And Jesus gave and He gives and He gives. And He said, so ought men to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. And that’s the Bible idea is give and give and give, not give and take. I want to tell you, here’s a good place to tell you this little cute little story I heard. This man went into McDonald’s, and it was a line. He had to stand in line to get waited on. While he’s standing in line, he couldn’t help but notice that an elderly couple was seated nearby. And they had one meal, one McDonald’s meal, one cheeseburger, one pack of fries, and one drink. And he was standing there. He’s watching as the husband, an elderly couple now, took the meal. And he began to slice the cheeseburger in half. He cut it in half and he put half in front of him and half in front of his wife. Then he took the bag of french fries, one for him and one for her, two for him and two for her. Then he took the cup of soda and he had another empty cup and he poured some in there so she got half and he got half. And it really touched that guy’s heart. And he went over to him and he says, excuse me, sir, but I couldn’t help but notice that you’re having to share your meal. And if you don’t mind, I would like to buy you all another meal. If you’ll let me, I want to get you another meal. Oh, no, no, no, the husband said, uh-uh. We’ve been married for over 60 years. And it’s always been 50-50. That’s the way we do it, 50-50. And the man was like taken aback. He says, oh, okay, all right. But he noticed that the husband was sitting there eating his half, and the woman was sitting there with her half in front of her, but with her hands folded on her lap, just sitting there watching her husband eat. He said to the woman, he says, excuse me, but aren’t you going to eat your food? She says, oh, yeah. But it’s his turn with the teeth. Now getting back to Jacob. He had to wait seven long years to get his bride Rachel. And the day finally came and they were married. But the next morning when he woke up and looked, it was Leah, the elder daughter of Laban, Rachel’s older sister. And he jumped out of bed. He was furious and he ran and he got laid. But he said, you have deceived me. You have tricked me. What have you done to me? I’ve worked all that time for Rachel and you gave me Leah. And of course, he explained to him the custom in here, son. I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but here the custom is the older daughter has to be married first. Amen. He said, but I tell you what, if you work another seven years, I’ll give your Rachel two. But this time, folks, this time Jacob said, deal, but I want her up front. I want her up front. And let me tell you something, everything goes back to the Bible. That is where the tradition came in. Now, brides don’t wear veils anymore today. They don’t, very few. But back when I was way back, when I was a young girl, you not only wore a veil, but it was over your face. And when you got up to the altar, what did the father do? He raised the veil, and that came from this. Make sure you got the right one. That tradition came out of this episode. Amen? He said, all right, it’s a deal, but I want her up front this time. The point is this. He worked another seven years, and the Bible says that he loved Rachel more than Leah because Rachel was the one he fell in love with from the get-go. Now, obviously, he loved Leah. He wouldn’t have had six kids with her. Amen? But he loved Rachel because she was the one that he wanted. Here’s the point. When you love your wife, when you love your family, you will gladly go to work. You will gladly support them. You will gladly take care of them. I’m not going to say that you don’t over some days feel like taking a vacation and not coming home. But the fact is, is that’s a fleeting thought while you’re tired and exhausted. And especially if you’ve got a wife who does not appreciate what you’re doing. All right, I’m going to talk to some women here now. If your husband takes care of your family, then you need to appreciate him. I realize maybe you’re working too. Amen? Maybe you say, but I work too, I work too. Well, I’m not going to get into all those semantics. That wasn’t God’s original plan. I realize that necessity has caused that to happen today. But we need to give the men the respect that they are due and that they have earned and that God wants us to give them. Now, let me say this. Maybe you don’t have custody of your children. Maybe their mother does or their grandmother. This does not negate your responsibility to provide for them. If you don’t pay your child support, you’re sending the message that you don’t care about your children. I said, that’s the message that you’re sending to them. I don’t care that you say, but I don’t have enough money to do this, that, and the other. Your first responsibility is to take care of the children that you brought into this world that God gave to you. It’s not the state’s responsibility. It’s not Uncle Sam’s responsibility to take care of your children. It’s your responsibility. I believe in social services benefits to be there for people who truly need them when they’re down. But it is not to be a lifestyle because men are not taking care of their own children. It should be there as an emergency thing for when things happen. Sometimes you lose your job, you got hurt, you can’t get another job. That’s what it’s for. It’s not for one generation to pass it down to the next generation, to the next generation, because they keep having children by men who do not care about those children. They don’t care about them. They go into the next woman, have some more children. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 5.8 that if a man does not take care, provide for his own house, he has denied the faith and he’s worse than an infidel. He’s worse than a heathen. He’s worse than an unbeliever. And if you are paying your child support, like you should, but you’re doing it because you don’t want to lose your job, You know, if you work for the government, you got to keep all your financial things in order. You can’t be having warrants because you owe child support. So if you’re paying your child support because you don’t want to lose your job or something else, you’re not a true father. And you’re not a real man. And you’re certainly not a real Christian. And please, please do not gripe about your having to pay child support in front of your children. Do not make them feel guilty because you got to pay child support and now you’ve got money issues. It’s not their fault. It’s not their fault that their parents aren’t together, living in a financially stable home. Of course it’s going to be hard for a man to have to live on his own and pay all his own stuff and support children from a first marriage. Now turn around and get a second marriage, get some more children, and he’s going to have to try to support two whole families. Is that easy? Of course not. That’s why God didn’t plan it that way. But if it’s happened because we live in a fallen sinful world and some of this stuff happened when you were still out in the world and you can’t go back and unscramble eggs and it’s done, what’s done is done. You better be faithful to all your children and do not gripe in front of them and make them feel guilty. Amen. That’s all I’m going to say. Because I know of cases of this personally. Now, if you are a good father and you do provide for your children, whether they live with you or whether they don’t live with you, whether you get them full time or you only get them some time, if you’re a good father and you are serious about your responsibility and you take care of your children, I say God bless you, I commend you, but your responsibility does not end there. It doesn’t end there. And I’m going to finish with this thought. God holds you responsible to bring them up in the ways of the Lord. It’s not enough just to give them shoes and clothes and food and a nice house and a cell phone and an iPad. All those things are wonderful if you can provide them for your children. But God expects you also to bring them up in the ways of the Lord. He holds fathers responsible, not just mothers. You don’t have to turn there, but I’ll give you the reference in Deuteronomy 6, 5 through 7. He says, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might. These words I command thee today shall be in your heart. And here’s the crux of everything I’m about ready to say. You’ve got to get it in your heart. If it’s not in your heart, you cannot impart it to your children. You cannot impart to your children what’s not in your own heart. He goes on to say, and you shall teach them diligently… to your children and talk of them when you’re sitting in your house and talk of them when you’re walking by the way and talk of them when you lie down at bedtime and talk about them when you wake up in the morning. God not only wants you to provide financially, He wants you to provide spiritual training for your children. You are to bring them up in the ways of God, and you can’t do it if it’s not in your heart first. We all know the famous verse, Proverbs 22, 6. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Do not wait until they’re teenagers or even preteens or tweens. If you wait then to try to get God’s word in their heart, you’re going to have a hard row to go. God’s word, you’ve got to get it in when they’re little. And if you get it in when they’re little, it’ll help you get through the terrible teens. Amen. I didn’t say the terrible twos. I said the terrible teens. Because they’re coming. I don’t care who you are or who your children are. They all go through changes in the teens. And they’ll be a whole lot harder. if you haven’t put the seed of God’s Word in there. Because if you put the seed of God’s Word in there, even though they get rebellious, and even though they get, you know, really hard to deal with, eventually, eventually, they’ll get through that time, and they’ll start being the one talking about the Bible. And you’ll think, wow, I didn’t even know they knew that. Well, that’s because they got it from you. Or you brought them to church like you’re supposed to. And let’s, you say, well, can you tell me anything in the New Testament? Yeah, I’ll give you New Testament, because I know we stayed all day in the old, but I’ll finish with Ephesians 6, 4, which corresponds to Colossians 3, 2, 1. Whenever you read Ephesians, you should read Colossians and vice versa, because in many ways, they say the same thing. Ephesians is a little deeper, but there’s things that he says in Colossians that he’s repeating what he told the Ephesians, but he might add a little something to it. So it’s good to read those two epistles together. In Ephesians 6, 4 and Colossians 3, 5, he says, and fathers. Somebody say, he’s talking to the fathers. Provoke not your children to wrath. And in Colossians he adds, lest they be discouraged. What is he talking about? If you’re always on their case, that is putting them down and only dwelling on the negative things they keep doing, the bad behavior. If that’s all you do and you don’t balance it with the positive things, because every child’s got positive things too. And they will come out when they get through that stage. Amen? But if you’re always dwelling on the negative and you never bring a balance in with the positive, you may wound their spirit. And you may destroy their self-worth and make them feel worthless. These children that are committing suicide and all of this because they’re bullied at school, that’s a terrible thing. Well, that’s just an outgrowth of taking the word out of school and prayer out of school and all things God out of school. And children that are raised with no training. But even if your child becomes a victim of bullying at school or wherever, if when they come to your house, when they come home, you are always telling them, you’re smart, you’re intelligent, you can do this, you can do that, that bullying stuff will not be able to have, it’ll come, it’ll… Glance off more like hitting a shield because you have girded them with the truth of God’s word of who they are. And they’ll be able to recognize that’s not true, what they’re saying. They’re the ones with the problem, not me. Amen? So he said, don’t provoke them lest they be discouraged. Now let’s go on and finish the verse and we’ll be done here. But bring them up in the nurture of and admonition of the Lord. Nurture, what does that mean? Specifically, the Greek means the training up of a child, including education, discipline, teaching, and get this, and rewards and punishments. Rewards and punishments. You’ve got to have a balance. Children need to be punished on certain things. They need to be punished. And when you mete out the punishment, you better stick to it. If you don’t stick to it, they learn very quickly. Next time, they don’t have any fear of being punished because they know all they can do is whine a little bit and you’ll let them off the hook. If you say you are not going to that event and you mean it, you better not back off. You better not let them go or they’ll know next time your word means nothing. But you also need to reward them Reward them if they get a good report card. Reward them if they bring that C up to a B. Reward them. Take them out somewhere. Go get them something. Give them some money. If you can afford it, you should reward them. Amen? Admonition. It means to advise, especially to advise publicly. So how do you advise publicly? So admonition means to advise, especially to advise publicly. Didn’t say berate. Didn’t say scold. Didn’t say shout at, yell at, put down publicly. But to advise publicly. And that sounds a little like, I’m not sure I get that. How do you do that? Well, I can tell you some ways that you do it. First of all, you bring them to church. You bring them to church where they can hear messages like this and teachings like this. You bring them to Sunday school where the teacher has a message that is apropos for their stage of life and growth. Amen? And you live a godly life before them. You walk the talk. Amen? You treat their, if you’re a father, you treat their mother with respect. Amen? And mother, you treat the father with respect. If you have issues with one another, you don’t scream them and yell them out in front of the kids and call each other all kinds of names and put them down. Because if you do that, your son is going to grow up to treat women the same way. They won’t respect women. In fact, before they grow up, they’ll already be getting in trouble in school with their female teachers and female principals because they’ll think, you know, I can treat women any way I want. They see the way the father treats the mother. And your daughter will grow up and, God forbid, think it’s okay to marry a man who talks to her like that, who can talk to her and put her down and maybe smack her around. Because they saw their father do it. Amen? These kids are out there writing all these raps and they, oh my God, what they say about women. Where do they get this stuff from? Why would they belittle women and say such terrible things about women? It’s because they saw the men, the grown men around them treat women that way and they think that’s okay to treat. It’s funny. It’s okay. It’s not. So if you want to nurture your children up, then you have to live the life before them. And you may be having marital problems. Well, you need to get counsel for them if you are. And if you’re trying to work it out within yourselves, make sure you do all your real serious arguing out of earshot of the children. Don’t make them feel like they’re responsible and don’t have them growing up to think it’s okay to treat a mother that way or a father that way. If you’re always saying, my husband, he’s nothing but a bum. He’s a no count. Well, maybe he is. Maybe he’s not supporting your kids. Maybe he’s not doing right. You just go downtown and get whatever paperwork and legal stuff you need to do and take care of it. And get the law on his case. They’re still the father. And maybe one day they’ll wake up and be sorry and try to forge a relationship with their children. And all that poison’s been sown there. Amen. Amen. I hope you are enjoying and learning something from today’s timely teaching, God’s Family Plan. Man was not created to be in isolation. God said it is not good for man to be alone. So he created a helpmate for Adam, an opposite. In creation, opposites attract, and when they bond, the elements of life and viability are formed. this is how god created eve she was not inferior to adam they were both made in the image of god male and female and when male and female come together in the conception of a child they become co-creators with god but bringing a child into the world is more than a biological event God especially ordained fathers to bring their children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Moreover, it is not the state’s responsibility nor Uncle Sam’s responsibility to provide for children. It is the parents, and God especially holds the fathers responsible for their provision. Christians in this world are not of the world. And we need to go back to God’s blueprint of marriage and family to understand how his laws in the kingdom of God work. The friction that often exists between male and female and husband and wife will quickly diminish when we see the relationship from God’s viewpoint and not that of this ungodly anti-Christian society. This informative practical teaching, God’s Family Plan, is available on CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request SK177. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to soundoffaith.org where you can also order on MP3. But to order by mail, send your minimum love gift of $10 to P.O. Box 1744 Baltimore, Maryland 21203 and request SK177 for God’s Family Plan. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.