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Sermons: Campbell Road Church of Christ
What is a Family?
Do you ever had an experience where you were asked a question about something that you knew you should be familiar with, but as soon as the question is asked, you kind of find yourself getting a little nervous because you realize you don't really know it as well as you thought you did? This has happened to me several times throughout my life, and usually it happens with something that I spend a lot of my time around, and then I get asked a question about it, and I realize I don't know it quite as well as I thought it did. I'm kind of unfamiliar with what should be familiar, and as I was thinking about this idea, I decided to test myself this week. I decided to ask myself, lonely my office sometimes, what color my mailbox is? Because I've used the mailbox probably a hundred times, at least since I've been here for the past year, and I thought, "Okay, well, what's the color of my mailbox?" And I finally decided, "Okay, I don't know for sure, but it's either black or gray." And maybe it's kind of like a dark gray, so I'm going to go with gray, like it's definitely black or gray, I'm going to go with gray. Go back home, look out my window. My mailbox is as green as it can be. It is forest green. I mean, I was completely wrong. I was convinced, but I was completely unfamiliar with something I'd go to every single week. And I'm like going to lose a whole lot of sleep over not knowing the color of my mailbox, but sometimes we can do the same thing with more important things, things that we should be familiar with, things that we see and interact with every day, but maybe we don't know them quite as well as we think we do. And so we have a question this morning. The question for us is what is a family? And when we look at some of these important questions and maybe we can't answer them as well as we thought we could, or we don't know maybe as much as we thought we did, it kind of wakes us up to realize things. And the fact is that we all have families in some shape or form where we are familiar with our family, we're familiar with other people's families that we interact with. And if we aren't very familiar with what a family is, we especially know that the world isn't familiar with what a family is. And so that's our question this morning. What is a family? And maybe we could go about answering it with asking other questions like what does a family look like? Lucy has introduced me to some TV shows that I never watched when I was a kid. And the reason is it's TV shows that my parents watched when they were kids. And one of the shows is The Waltons. If you've seen the show, you know it's about this family that lived in rural Virginia during the Great Depression. And it's a husband and a wife with several of their kids and also there's their parents are there as well. There's three generations living within the home. And it always ends in the episode with the same scene of the lights are out and all the family tells each other good night before they go to bed. And the Waltons were a hard working family, an honest family, a good family and in many ways the show was supposed to portray the ideal family. And this was really common in television for a long time, especially at this time when the Waltons was airing. But then there was kind of a shift because people stopped wanting to see only ideal pictures of families and they wanted to see more of reality. And so you kind of get to the 90s and the 2000s and reality TV becomes really big. And there's nothing wrong with reality TV. But I think there was a subtle shift in what our culture thinks about families. Because if we move away from an ideal and we try to search for reality, sometimes what we'll end up with is thinking that there's not an ideal at all. And so we end up with shows like The Modern Family that ear not too long ago. And it's a show about three different family units and they're all tied to this one grandfather and one of the family units is what we might call the nuclear family. It's a husband of a wife and then their kids. The grandfather is married to his second wife and taking care of one of her children. And the third family unit are two men that end up being married to each other and adopting kids themselves. And so we look at these things and we ask what does a family look like and we might ask the question who had it right. Was it the Waltons? Was that the ideal for God's family? Is it the modern family? Who's to say what the ideal family is? Is there even a standard? Might also ask what is the family for? What is the job of a family? What is the family supposed to be about? What are they supposed to do? What are they supposed to stand for? And we might ask what does it really mean? Just what does it mean to be a family? And is there even a standard to answer these questions? Is there some kind of ideal that we can reach for? And where do we find the answers at? Let's begin in Proverbs 3, I think it's going to help us with our question this morning. Proverbs 3, let's begin in verse 5, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding, and all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones." We find a few truths in this passage in Proverbs 3. Number 1, when we're making decisions, we should not be leaning on our own understanding. There is a standard that God has set, and it's up to him for us to lean on. And the second part of this is that we should acknowledge God in every choice that we make. Not only is God made a standard, but we should respect that standard in all the choices that we make. And the final part of this is that God knows how to bless us even better than we know how to bless ourselves. And when we follow his ideal, and when we lean on his understanding rather than ours, we're going to end up being blessed further than we could ever bless ourselves. When we think about this morning, what a family is, I really want us to focus on what the purpose of a family is. Because I think if we get that, what a family is supposed to be about, then all the other things are going to fall into place. And the fact is God has given us an ideal of what he wants for the family. And what we're going to do this morning, while we could spend some time in the New Testament and we will, I really want to focus mainly on our points coming from the first family back in the Garden of Eden and seeing really what God's ideal was for the family and the beginning. And the first thing we're going to see is that a family, it's a family that works. God's ideal for the family is a family that works. So reading Genesis, chapter 2, verse 15, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it, and to keep it." Adam's job was to work. We actually find earlier in chapter 2, before the earth is fully done in its creation, they were told before man was put on the earth that there was no man to work the ground. The ground was made for man to work. Adam was supposed to work in the Garden. Sometimes we get the idea that Adam and Eve were just kind of sipping lemonade in the Garden, but they weren't chilling by the pool. They had a job to do, to work and to keep it. He was made as a helper for Adam, to help him in his work. And so man was made to work, and we also will find in the beginning of Genesis that man was created in God's image. They were supposed to do things like God. And what has God been doing for the first six days of creation? He's been working, he's been doing work. And then finally he's finished with his creation and he rests and he looks at man and he says, "Now it's your job. It's time for you to work." And so at the beginning of Genesis we see a God that works and we see the first family that works as well. We tend to view work negatively a lot of times I think today. We view work as something we do from nine to five in order to get to the things that are really important in life, to really live true life. We work so we can get to the weekend. We work so we can get to a vacation. And then I'm going to really live life. And if you're lucky you can make enough money to retire early so you can really start living life earlier than everyone else. But Genesis has something to say about this. Genesis portrays work as an essential and integral part of our lives. We are made to work. Now it's not to say that our life is all about our career or that it's wrong to want to retire but the point is that we should have a mindset as God's people and God's families of work, a mindset of work. The truth is that raising a godly family takes work. There are no shortcuts to invest investing in your family. It takes effort and when we do take shortcuts it affects our families. There's a danger today I think to prize efficiency at a high place. We tend to praise things for being efficient today. I mean it's really what our country runs off of. We want all of our companies and all of our businesses to be efficient. And we all know the maximum right work smarter, not harder. And there's nothing wrong with being efficient in and of itself. Trust me when our daughter was born and there was a decision to be made I didn't realize there was a decision to be made about diapers. Because supposedly there are diapers that you can like reuse. I didn't know that existed. But the choice for me was really easy. We're going with disposable. I'm going to go the efficient route, the work convenient route. That was not a question for me. I don't live very far from this building, I'm just right down the street and I own a bicycle. But I can count on zero fingers the amount of times I have rode my bicycle to this building. I take my car. Okay, there's nothing wrong with being efficient. But there is a danger in trying to be efficient and sacrificing the more important things in life. I text more than I write letters, it's not because I text a lot, but I don't write letters all that often. But I think we all realize when there's someone that needs encouragement and there's someone that you know that they are going to be affected more with something that's handwritten. That is from you and it's personal. But do we make the choice to go just the efficient route because it's easier? There are some people since COVID-19 that have decided that streaming a local church service is just as good as being with the brethren. I mean I can get on my screen and be on my TV and I can see songs being sung and I can hear the Lord's Supper talk and I can have a sermon and I can do it all in my PJs. It's really convenient. And they might even think, well what is my family really missing out on and not being at the building? I mean we have it all right here. I don't even have to drive in. Dude, do we see the danger of just having a mindset of efficiency? A mindset of efficiency starts to look at people and things just as a means to an end. And if there's a shortcut, you're going to take it. A mindset of efficiency isn't driven by love for others. It's driven by what's easiest for me. But God didn't design the family to do the easiest and most efficient things. He designed them to work at the most important things. Just a few things I want to talk about this worry about what we might work at in our families. This is for all of us but especially I think this applies to our children. Do we work a quietness and focus? Notice what God says to Joshua in Joshua 1 verse 8. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success. God wanted Joshua to have focus. God wanted Joshua to meditate on his word. God wanted Joshua even in the quiet times to be thinking about his word. Are we teaching our families to exercise focus and to be comfortable with quietness? I don't have all the answers to this. I don't have all the to-do's of how to make this happen but I do know it's important for us. Maybe that looks like sometimes we just decide to turn screens off. The TV is just going to be off for a while. The devices are just going to be off for a while and we're just going to give our family some time to breathe and to think for a while and to talk with each other and just to shut the world out for a little while. The world will do all it can to make you busy with things and to attract you to things and put things in your mind but it's our decision to put in the work to keep those things out at times so we can train ourselves to be okay with quietness and to be able to focus. Why is that important? There's going to come a time when our kids need to sit down with a book and they need to be able to focus and they need to be able to be okay with quietness and to be able to get this word into their heart and that's a skill that we have to help teach them and that's not the same for every child. It's not as easy for every child but it is something that we should be working towards. Do we work on effort and integrity in our families? And integrity, Christians should build failures that put effort into everything they do. Whether that's the father going to work, whether that's the mother working outside the home, inside the home, whether that's the children going to school, whether that's working at VBS or helping out another member in the congregation, do we put work and effort into what we do? Paul will speak in the beginning of Ephesians chapter 6 and he'll talk about how children need to honor their parents but then he'll speak about how fathers need to instruct and discipline their children and then he follows that up with this in Ephesians 6 verse 5. Bond servants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with the sincere heart as you would Christ. Not by the way of eye service as people pleasers but as bond service of Christ doing the will of God for the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man. Paul just before this has said fathers teach your kids and teach them how to be disciplined and he follows it up on an example of how even slaves, servants should work with discipline and integrity for their masters, how much more so for our children and our families. No matter what you're doing, are you doing your best? Are you going through the motions in your work? Do you do things during your day that you think, well, no one else is going to see me. So it's really not that big a deal. Paul's telling us God sees, God sees it and he's the one we're really working for. Sometimes it's really easy, it's easy for me, you're going to hear this morning to complain about our culture but sometimes the fact is that because of our culture the way it is, it makes it easier for us to shine at times. I grew up going to Walmart as my grocery store. I grew up in Northwest Arkansas, it's a Walmart country, I had a mom that worked for Walmart and so we always let the Walmart grow up. And growing up, they used to be open 24/7, this is pre-COVID-19. And so people didn't stock the shelves during the day, you didn't really ever see workers stocking shelves, that mostly happened at night. But now fast forward to 2024 and they're not open 24/7 and so you're always seeing people stocking shelves and especially when I go to Walmart now in the evening, I'll see mostly teenagers and they're doing their job of stocking different items in the store and this allows me to witness something. To witness teenagers in a quote unquote "normal job" in America today. And especially when I go on the evenings, there's something that I see that really surprises me. If I had to guess put a percentage on it, maybe 80% of the time, I will see one of those teenagers on their phone in some way, shape or form. They either have a head P-send, a headphone, a earbud and they're listening to their phone or maybe they're putting items on the shelf and their phone is laying by them or sometimes I just catch one of the kids just like on their phone oblivious to the world around them. And that amazes me but to be honest, if I asked one of them, I would not even be surprised if I asked them, "Is it okay for you to be on your phone?" If they told me, "Yeah, my boss doesn't really care" and if they mint it. Parents, if you have kids that work, teach them not to be on their phones while they're working. I hear sometimes us talk about and kids talk about, "I can be at work and I can do this job that I'm working and I can just be on my phone 80% of the time, like it's cool." It's not cool, that's embarrassing, that that's not the type of mindset God's people should have for work, even if it's allowed or not. Parents teach your kids and show your kids to work with effort, to work with integrity regardless of what the rules are from their boss, just because they know it's glorifying God when they do it. What is a family? A family is a group of people that work, but a family is also a group of people that represent something. We see in Genesis chapter 1 verse 27, "So God created man in his own image, and the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." Mankind was made in the image of God, mankind was made to be image bearers for God, the idea is that if God is not directly in the world to be seen by the world, he can be seen by his creation. The Roman Empire did a lot of image bearing. They would build statues of the Caesar of some of the emperors, and they would put them all across the empire. And they would also use coins to have their faces engraved on that, things that people could have access to and see. And lots of the times it was portraying the Caesar, the emperor, and the ideal type of situation. He was either in his royal garb, and maybe even like a warrior outfit at times, to kind of show the ideal warrior and emperor. Other times he was just in his normal robe as the ideal citizen. There's even a statue that was of Julius Caesar that has a little baby Cupid hanging from the hem of his outfit to show that, yes, he's powerful, but he's also loving and benevolent. And there were also faces of the Caesars on coins, and at one point in time they ended up saying that they were sons of God, they were deities, and all these things are supposed to represent the Caesar or the emperor to the nation and present them in a favorable way. And that's exactly the job of Adam and Eve in the garden. That's the job of mankind in the beginning, that we are supposed to be image bearers for God, not cold, dead, stationary representations, but living, moving, breathing representations of who God is so God can look, his people can look at us, at families, and see God. You know, you might be in the Roman Empire, and for a long time, if you're in a smaller town, never see one of the statues of the Caesar of the emperor, but maybe at one point in your life, you finally get to go to one of the bigger cities, and you get to see finally the statue of the Caesar, and you finally get to see what he's like. The truth is that sometimes our families are the first place that people will see what God is like, that people will see God in us, and what we do. That's our job, that's our role as a family to portray God to the world. But being an image bearer for God doesn't happen by accident, especially when we think about our kids. We have to teach our children to be image bearers. We have to teach them what it means to be in the image of God, to be an image for the world, to be in his likeness. And most of the time, we think about this idea as something we're just born with. We're just inherently born in the image of God, and there's truth to that, right? Genesis says that we are made in his image, James will say, "Don't curse people with your mouth that are made in his likeness." Paul will say, "Man, don't pray with your head covered because you are the image of God." There's an inherent sense to it. But I would suggest to you that most of the time in the scriptures when you read about the image of God, it's the idea of something that is your purpose and your work, and something you're growing into, it's a transformation, like places like Colossians 3 and 10. And I've put on the new cell, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator, being renewed into the image, in Ephesians 4 and 24, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. The image of God is the new person we're being made into, and so what that means for parents is that we have to help our children know what it means to be in the image of God. We have to teach them to be molded into the image of God, and here's the thing. The world is going to hate you for it. The world does not love that idea. The world will say, "How dare you teach your child who they're supposed to be? How dare you brainwash your child about who they're supposed to be?" I am worried about my children one day being brainwashed, but I'm not worried about Christians brainwashing them. That's not my fear. It's the same world that will say, "Don't put any kind of restraint on your child even to the point of we can't even tell our child what their gender is." That's how back we're a world is. They say, "We look at a square and we can't say it's really a square because maybe it wants to be a circle, but God isn't in the business of asking His creation what they want to be. God's in the business of telling His creation what they are." That might sound rigid at the face of it, but here's the truth. God is going to tell you what you are that gives you more life and meaning than the world will ever give you. They will tell you you can be an animal or you can be something that you're not. But God is trying to tell us that we are His precious children and we represent Him. He's giving us a higher calling than the world will ever give us. But here's the thing for His parents. God isn't staying in your house every day. You are. God isn't sitting at your kitchen table. You are. God isn't talking to your children every day in the home. You are. You are God's representative in the world. You are the one that gets to help to shape them and to mold them to show them what it means to be an image-bearer. And while you might not be fighting against the most leftist liberal ideas of identity in our world, you're definitely fighting against this. You're fighting against voices that say, "Don't put any kind of guilt on your children. Never shame your child. Only encourage them. Don't push them too hard any direction. We need to let them make their own choices. Just don't force it." Now if it comes to choosing the dog or cat, by all means, go for it. But does that work in all of life? Since when did we start telling our junior high children that they need to make the most important choices in their lives? Do we do that with school? I mean, can you imagine that that would go? Your eighth grader, right? You just get to have the choice whether you're going to go to school today or not. I thought, well, we do. Well, we tell them who they are and what they're going to do. You are an eighth grade student and you're going to school. I'm dad and I said so. We don't let them make the most important choices in their life. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4, we're going to pick up in verse 11. Here Paul is talking about how the church has been equipped by the role that God gave to it, but I want to make a point on the illustration he uses at the end of the Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 11. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. And so we all attain the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Notice verse 14, "So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cutting, by craftiness and deceitful schemes." Paul says the church needs to be equipped, it needs to be taught so that we stop being like children. Children are easily deceived. Children can be led astray, children need to be taught and instructed. And that means that we don't only provide our kids with encouragement. Don't let the world guilt trip you into never placing guilt on your children. Our culture today in America is king at double standards, did you hear the one I just gave you? They will guilt you and end up putting guilt on your child. And sometimes it's really effective because guilt is a very useful tool. Here's the thing, Jesus was not afraid to use guilt and shame in order to instruct his children his people, his followers, just one example, Peter in Matthew's Gospel makes the great confession that Jesus is the Christ. And Jesus says, "Blessed are you Simon, and he encourages him, and he blesses him, but then immediately after that Matthew records for us, Peter then takes Jesus aside to rebuke him. And what does Jesus do? He calls him Satan out loud to his face, and then he had one of Peter's peers write it down in a book so the whole world could read it, including during his lifetime. I mean, talking about using shame and guilt, pretty rough for Peter. Jesus was not afraid to use guilt or shame. It doesn't mean that he didn't love Peter. It doesn't mean that he didn't love people when he did it, but he used it as a motivation for his people, for his children. Jesus had no issue with it, and we shouldn't either. There's a memory I have when I was maybe late elementary school junior high, and I was in my living room with the rest of the family, and we were all just kind of lounging around them. The couches, the TV was on, watching some show I'll never remember, and I remember my dad was trying to convince us all to go out and do something as a family together. I don't remember what it was, but he was really trying to encourage us, "Let's get up and let's go and let's do something together as a family. Let's do this together." And I remember we were not taking the bait, we were not buying it on it, we were like, "No, we're just going to stay here, we're pretty good, we're out on the couch." And I remember my dad kind of feeling a little bit defeated in that, a pause for a while, and then he said something to the effect of, "All right, I guess we'll just make a memory together tonight, saying nothing, watching TV." And I will never forget the shame I felt in that moment, how selfish I felt in that moment, and how I never wanted to act like that again. I guarantee you, Peter never forgot what Jesus said to him, and that motivated him. People look at that when my dad said to me that day in the living room, and they say, "That's too rough, that's too far, that's too forceful, no, that's being a father, that's being a dad." And motivating your children to do what is right, there's going to be times when your child is trying to make a choice, and you know it's the wrong choice, and they need you to teach them through encouragement and through showing them what's wrong. They have a responsibility to teach our kids, to guide them into being image-bearers for God. The final thing I want to point out this more is that a family, God's ideal family, is a family that loves. How are we going to find this in Genesis, in Genesis 1 and there, excuse me, Genesis 2, 24, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and old fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh, they shall become one flesh." So there were two people, and now they're going to become one, and one family. They were meant to be just like God created them, Eve was taken from the very flesh of Adam, she was his flesh and blood, and now the writers using this picture to say the relationship they're supposed to have together, they're supposed to be one, they're supposed to be one in mind, one in their interests, one in their standards, and this example was showing to future families what it means to leave your father and your mother, to leave the dependence of those families and become one family, someone that's dependent on the other person. We don't use the word in Genesis 2, but it's what it's describing. A family loves each other, this is a description of love, which is starting with one other place with me this morning, turn it first, Sean. Sean is commonly known as the apostle of love, and he has some things to say about that. First, Sean, chapter 4. First, Sean, chapter 4, we're going to pick up in verse 7. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God but God because God is love. And this, the love of God, was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the perpetuation for our sins, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. That John isn't speaking specifically to the family here, to our homes, that it applies in our homes and our families. He describes what the love of God is and how he showed it to us. He showed it through his son, his son that he sits, a son that came to the world in order to be rejected and to die. God showed his love through endurance, through suffering, through mocking, through blood and sweat and tears, through sacrifice. He showed his love through death. The love that a family has is not just a simple romanticism or emotionalism. Those things are important, but a family that loves each other is a love that sacrifices. When we ask the question, what is a family, the answer is a family is a group of people that love each other like God loves. I don't know what that sounds like to you, but that doesn't really sound like bringing my wife flowers or taking the kids on a vacation. There's nothing wrong with those things, not at all. But your wife's husband's, your wife doesn't need flowers and your kids don't need another game night. Your family needs a leader. Your family needs a father that's willing to be there for them when it is the hardest to sacrifice their own desires and their own wants to provide for their family, not just monetarily. Our families don't need mothers that are just worried about putting their kids in the coolest clothes and decorating their backpack so they feel seen and good. Our family need mothers that work and put in effort and they're not anxious about what their kids look like, but they're anxious about that child's soul. Our family need our families, need children, that are willing to do the hard things, that are willing to do the things that take sacrifice for the rest of the family, even when it's inconvenient. We don't do the hard things because we love them. We do the hard things because we love our families. And that takes training. What does Paul tell Titus about what the older women should train the younger women in? To love their husbands. And we look at that and we think, "Okay, Paul said the guys over at Crete are lazy and they're liars, but I think the women are kind of slow. Like they don't know how to love their husbands, come on." No, they didn't. They need to be trained in that because it's not just emotionalism or romanticism. It's honor and it's duty and it's sacrifice and it's service and that takes training and it's not just for the wives, that's for our whole family. A part of learning that kind of love requires us to know where the sacrifices and the service needs to be made. I'm a father. I'm a husband, so I'm going to end with the father's share on his thought. Our culture tells us more and more to live life outside the home. To live life outside of where our families are at and the fact is you can't really change our world. You can't change the culture. Many of us just work outside the home and that's the way it is. There's something necessarily wrong with that. But we do have choices to make. You have choices about promotions that you take. You have choices at times to make, "Am I going to work an eight hour a day or a twelve hour a day? And am I going to do that every day?" You have choices out there in the workplace, but you also have choices inside the home. Because while it's not wrong to work for eight hours a day outside the home, we need to realize that when we're outside the home for those eight hours, we left our primary duty back home for eight hours. Our most important job is the job we left at home for those eight hours. I'm not saying that to guilt trip us, those that work outside the home. I'm saying that so that we realize that our duty and our job is with our families. So when we get home, our mindset shouldn't be, "I've done my duty, I've been the provider for the family, I've done my job, and now it's my time to rest." Our mindset should be, "I need a make up for lost time. I need to be with my family, and I need to work with my family, to do my duty, to teach my family." There's a question that revolves around Christianity today, and it's a question of whether Christian women should be career-oriented. They should have the answer for you, answers no, and this is why, because it should be no for men as well. It should be neither the father or the mother that is career-oriented. We should be family-oriented. That's where our true work is, that's where our true love lies. What is a family? It's a group of people that sacrifice themselves and each other to love each other, even when they're tired or when it's hard. When we ask the idea of what is a family, I feel very unequipped in answering that. I don't have all the answers for what it means to be God's ideal family. I have more questions than answers for my future of being a father and a husband, but I do know where to find the answers, and I do know that there is an ideal that God has set for us. And if we at the very least start pointing our standards to that, we're going to be taking a step in the right direction. God does have an ideal family. It's not the modern family, and it's not even the Waltons. It's a family that works for and represents and loves God and works for and represents and loves each other. That's not always going to be easy. Jeremiah writes to the nation of Israel. But they're going to go into Babylonian captivity for 70 years. They were going to die, but they were just going to be out of place for a while. And what does he tell them to do while they're in Babylon? He tells them to build a home and to build a family. Don't just sit in sulk, Israel. Don't decrease, increase, because if you don't do that, your children are going to pay for it, and so Jeremiah encourages the people to build while they're in Babylon. And the first step of that was convincing them that they were going to be in Babylon. Brothers and sisters, we are in Babylon, but it's not time to sit in sulk. There are going to be things about our world and our culture that we just can't change. There's going to be schedules and routines that we have to fight against, but it's not our job to sit and just take it. While the world around us discusses what a family is, our job as Christians are to build homes, to build families, and to show the world what a family is. My family has been blessed for the past year being here, and we're going to continue to be blessed because of the families that we've learned from. I just want to encourage us this morning, because keep building families, families that work, and families that represent, and families that love. Thank you for connecting with us this morning. We're so thankful that you were able to do that. If you have questions, we'd love to have the opportunity to talk to you. You can contact us at www.thebibeway.com or questions@thebibeway.com. Questions@thebibeway.com. We'd love to have you in person come if you can, but thank you for connecting with us.