The Family You Choose (From Our 10-6-24 Worship)

West Side Church of Christ - Elkton Ky

Watch Video Version Here: https://youtu.be/Zd0wqHjQZxA

Transcript:
Good morning.

So we had our fall harvest fish yesterday. You know, janitor making a prayer this morning. I had him request for that. And there's a lot of things that people that we found out that that's needed. But families was one of the things that really keyed in on us this weekend because of the people we meet and how we approach things and how we try to reach people's lives.

A lot of this. Through family, through family actions and through family, things like that. But think about this morning. What comes to mind when you think of the word family? Everybody has a picture in their head of what you think a family is.

You think about that one? Is that is that? Is that the perfect American family?

There's a good one.

No dysfunction in that family.

There's a there's a there's a governor. But even even that family is, you know, when I put that picture up, you kind of see, Oh, do you have that feeling like, Oh, that's a good family. But was it out? Was it without dysfunction? Probably not.

I look through the Old Testament and all the all the people that we have in the Old Testament, starting from Adam and Eve, I could not find the perfect family. I could not find it.

And if it's not, if it's not written down for us in the Bible, why do we, why do we assume that we have to be the perfect family? You know,

we have those, we have those things that we can think about, you know,

now y'all know that's a dysfunctional family,

but you know, everybody, everybody has, everybody has had your family picture. You know, it's all it's all a photo shop and crops and and sometimes we take we take this head, put it on this body. You know how you like you wanted to look the perfect picture. You want the perfect picture. You want to be perfect.

But how much chaos and how much sometimes disorganized goes on before that picture is taken.

You don't have to answer. I know I've been there. It's sometimes this it's like it's like herding cats to get everybody together. You know, at one time. Stop. Let's let's take this. Let's take this. Let's take this perfect picture. We wanted. We wanted to look like this perfect picture. But family goes beyond that.

We all know that we with all the characters in the Bible, they're all dysfunctional. all of them have their issues and have their things. But in the end,

in the end, there's a lot of good that comes out of families. You take you take this church family here. The things we started a year ago in trying to reach people and trying to save souls. I know we have changed people's lives and we have changed families.

There's a story right there.

The story right there. Just

I picked up just a few verses to key in on to think about family. God instituted family early on informed Adam. He said, Let us make man in our own image. Let us

When he's to me, it sounds like that God is already a part of a family when he says, Let us because it was God that the father, the son and Holy Spirit. So there's there's already there's already a family unity type thing started before we were. We were here. That's reason family so important. Therefore, a man shall leave his father, mother and hope fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

So when the earth moment when God created Adam and Eve, he knew that they need to start replenishing earth. So that's where that family here just started to get going. So now we have we have we have we have Adam and Eve. We had the family had the nucleus going. We have things going on. We're starting to raise kids.

We're starting to do things.

I know y'all heard this this passage before train up my train up a child in the way that he should go. And when he's old, he would not depart from it. Train up the child as a family. Who's responsible for training? That child should be. It should be a parents. We should have a close enough relationship with the Lord that that we want to train up a child in the right way.

And sometimes I know that's difficult to do at times, but it's something that I think that is that is instilled in us that we have that responsibility.

If we start off in Genesis creation of the world and then families created and then through us in the Old Testament, we have the things that help that family to be more nurtured and closer to God.

You ever thought about the last verse in the Old Testament,

the last person, Old Testament, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the Children and the hearts of the Children to the fathers. Lest I come and strike the land with the creed utter destruction. He's talking about the family there. He started off in creation, but the family Old Testament ends with family.

I really think that the key part right here is turning the hearts of the fathers to the Children that have time first. It's our responsibility as as as fathers and mothers. It's our responsibility to turn the hearts.

We have to be the ones that's responsible for that. I could just kind of find that interesting as I was doing this, this study that the last verse in the Old Testament has something to do with the family.

And then as you, as you open up, as you open up the New Testament, it's like, like from, from the time that this verse was written until Jesus comes on the scene, there's a, there's about 400 years God doesn't speak. But I find it interesting that when you open up the New Testament and turn to Matthew, the first thing you start seeing is the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

Talking about the family. Now during that time,

who your father was or who your, your, your, your ancestry or what geology was, all that was very important to you because that determined who you could or could not be. Or what you what kind of occupation you may have. You know, you're pretty much you didn't have a choice. You know, sometimes you have a choice.

You were born into that. It's kind of like sometimes sometimes when you have a choice, you know, I sometimes wonder where we would be today if we had a choice of who which family we want to be born into. We didn't have that choice.

And if I was talking about, you know, that God formed us in the moon before we were born, think about that. Think about he already had a personal

direction to you before you even born to put you in a family situation. So as we as we talk about that, and that means certainly looking at the geology of Jesus and you think about You consider and think about, man, my family is really messed up sometimes. But you read the genealogy of Jesus and you'll find everything in there.

You know, even sometimes, sometimes matching when he's writing it, he's kind of, he's kind of soft on speaking certain things,

you know, but there's a lot of things in his in his in his life where him and his family In his family tree that you wouldn't think the Savior of the Lord would come from because you had there was adulterers, there was murders...