Scripture Reading:  

• Joshua 24:13-15 
• Ephesians 5:22-6:4 

Opening Prayer: 

Father God, we thank you for the honor and privilege of gathering here this morning to worship you. I pray that you will open our hearts and our minds to receive your word. I ask that you give me words to speak, so that we would depart from this place with a heart on fire for you. Amen. 

Introduction: 

Last week we continued our sermon series “The Heart of a Disciple” by learning what it means to be teachable. We looked at Acts 10, when God brought Peter (a Jew) and Cornelius (a gentile) together in order for the gospel to cross over racial, political, and religious divisions. We learned that we all have room to grow in overcoming our personal prejudices and our cultural biases, but if we remain faithful to Christ and work to remain teachable, there is no limit to what God might do in and through us.  

This morning we are concluding our sermon series, with a simple reminder that discipleship starts at home. When we talk about the great commission to “be [Christ’s] witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) we sometimes skip over the fact that this global mission starts at home. Your mission field is wherever God has chosen to place you, and that includes the family he has placed you in. At the same time, family can be a difficult mission field. Your family sees you at your best and your worst, so there is no way to fake it with family. You also cannot get rid of them. Friendships can end, but family will always be your family no matter how much you might want it to be otherwise.  

I was blessed to grow up in a great family with a godly father and mother, but they were not perfect, and neither was I. There are things I need to forgive them for and there are things I need to be forgiven for. At the same time, I am grateful that I grew up with parents that wanted me to grow in faith and to walk with Jesus. I know that for many of you that was not your home experience. Sometimes the household looks like a father or mother who was a Christian doing their best, but for whatever reason their spouse was absent, disinterested, or even hostile towards the faith. I have worked in more than one situation where the child is coming to church with a friend or a grandparent, but their parents have no desire to follow Jesus or to encourage their kids to walk in faith. I also know of situations where one member of the family (a father, a mother, or even a child) begins to take their faith seriously and the light they bring to their family ends up transforming the entire family. I remember one former student of mine who came to faith in Jesus, and then lead his own father to faith. My point in all of this is to say, obedience to Christ’s call to make disciples may begin within the walls of our own homes.  

Generational Discipleship: 

Joshua 24:15 contains one of the most widely quoted lines of scripture, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Many people can recite the passage from memory, even if they do not know where to find it in the Bible. Some of you may have this verse on display somewhere in your home, as both a reminder and a prayer. But like many popular verses, it is easy to forget the context.  

Joshua was arguably the greatest military leader that Israel had ever seen. His predecessor Moses had led the people out of slavery in Egypt and had been a spiritual leader throughout their forty-year wilderness journey. Before he died Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy to guide the people long after he was gone. Moses could not enter the promised land with the people of Israel, but with the Holy Spirit’s guidance he wrote the book of Deuteronomy to encourage the people to remain faithful in the land and to always remember God’s goodness and faithfulness towards his people. 

Like Moses before him, Joshua led the people for many years through both victory and defeat. There were times when Israel was faithful, and God moved in awesome and mighty ways. There were times when Israel was faithless and disobedient, and God allowed them to experience defeat and loss. The whole time Joshua was with the people leading them, and eventually the promised land was settled, just as God had promised. Like Moses, Joshua grew old in years, and just as Moses had done in his old age, Joshua gathered the people and gave them some final words to guide them after he was gone.  

Joshua wanted to renew their covenant promise and to give the people a strategy of victory, through which they could keep the blessings of God ever upon their families and their nation. He retold their history, reminding them of all the ways that God had been good to both this generation, and their ancestors before them. He told them of God’s grace in choosing Abraham, the father of Israel, and calling him out of paganism to follow the one true God in faith. He told them about God’s grace that freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and how His judgment had passed over them so that they might be spared even when Egypt was not. God had delivered them from the wilderness journey, from the Amorites, the Moabites, and the curse of Balam. God had delivered them from Jericho, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hethites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. I love the way God summarizes all of this in verse thirteen:  

I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.’ 

Joshua 24:13, ESV

Joshua is commanding the people not to forget God’s past goodness and faithfulness throughout the ages. It was not so much about remembering great men and women of faith, though there is value in that, but it was more so about remembering how God had protected, provided, and blessed the people in good times and in bad. But how would the people remember these testimonies of God’s faithfulness if they were not passed down from one generation to the next? 

Therefore, in his final words to the people, Moses said:  

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 

Deuteronomy 6:6-7, ESV

Moses saw the importance of teaching the next generation. He understood that faith needed to be woven into the family so that it would be interwoven into all we do.  

I feel like there is a tendency in church life to really push parents to get their kids involved in church activities. Church involvement is critical, and I do not ever want to downplay its importance in a child’s spiritual development. However, I want to remind parents and grandparents in the room that your children or grandchildren’s spiritual development is too important to outsource to someone else.  

Do not misunderstand me. Sunday school is awesome! Youth ministry is awesome! Kids ministry is awesome! They have my heart more than most ministries but understand that the world’s best Sunday school teacher or youth minister will have an hour or two a week to disciple your child. Some of you spend more time with your kids in the car getting to and from school or sports activities in a day than a Sunday school teacher or youth minister will get in a week. Also, you know your kids and grand-kids better than I ever will because they are yours.  

Ideally our ministries to students and children are a fun way to reinforce the things they are learning at home. I know some parents freak out because they think I am asking them to prepare to teach a Sunday school lesson at home every night. I am not saying that. I am saying that you should talk to your kids about God. Talk to them about what you are learning and how you are growing. Encourage them to talk to you about faith matters. If you are not praying with them, then start today. Talk about God’s Word. Share stories of God’s goodness in the past and share how His goodness is showing up in your life today. It does not have to be complicated. It is simply bringing God into your family life on more than just Sunday morning. You have the whole church to back you up and support you, but that is what we really are. Parents, you are on the front lines, and you are your child’s first teacher, first responder, and first example.  

We can look at this as a burden, or we can look at it as an opportunity. I enjoy few things more than watching young believers grow in faith. I am looking forward to all the conversations, questions, and opportunities I will get to have with my daughter as she grows up. I know some of those conversations will be challenging, but I want to be the one who has them with her. I want her to know that Jesus loves her and that her dad is here to help her follow Jesus.  

It is not something I would encourage you to put off. If we assume that children move out of the house sometime between the ages of eighteen and twenty, that means that by age nine or ten you have already spent half the time living under the same roof that you are going to have with your child. Maybe more because once they turn sixteen and get a car the time spent together drops even more. Do not waste it.  

Joshua understood that this was a commitment that needed to be made in every household. That is why, in Joshua’s final words to the people, he said:  

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” 

Joshua 24:14-15, ESV 

The call to “fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness” (v 14) is preceded by the memory of what the Lord had done for the people to bring them to this point in their life. It is followed by an acknowledgement that blessings will not pass from one generation to the next without each generation taking up the call to serve the Lord.  

Understand that each generation sets the bar for the one that follows it. If we are growing in our faith and helping our children to grow with us, we are raising the bar. If we are coasting through life, whether we realize it or not, we are lowering the bar. Children look to us in words and in actions to see how they should live. That is a little scary to think about, but it is true.  

The Biblical Family: 

The apostle Paul, in his letter to the church in Ephesus, also stressed this point. Now I want to preface what I am about to teach by encouraging you to hear this with a growth mindset. I believe that much of the Christian faith is reaching for an ideal that we, as sinners, will never fully live up to on this side of eternity. At the same time, we should not think of this teaching as impossible or unrealistic. We certainly should not think that, because this is difficult, we should not hold it up as our standard. Remember, it is always better to raise the bar and miss than to lower the bar to a point where we are comfortable but never challenged. It is in the challenge and in the striving that we grow.

So what does the Apostle Paul have to teach us in regards to God’s good design of the family? Let’s begin with the men in the room. In Christ, husbands and fathers find the model for sacrificial love and strong but gentle leadership. Fathers and husbands, God’s word calls us to lead our family in godliness and to make sacrifices to do all we can to ensure that our family will one day be presented holy unto the Lord.  

Fathers are commanded to raise up children with gentleness, not provoking them to anger, but also in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. I often joke with my wife that she will have to do the discipline in our household, because I cannot bring myself to discipline my daughter. I say that as a joke, but biblical discipline is not something I can pass off to my wife. As a father it is my calling to discipline and instruct my children. It is my duty to teach them how to follow God and to correct them in love when they stray from the path. This is a holy calling.  

Fathers, I also hope you know that they way you act at home will either be a living example of the way our Heavenly Father loves, leads, and disciplines, or it will be a stumbling block for your children to overcome later in life as they seek to understanding their relationship with their Heavenly Father. Fathers, when your children see you, do they see a reflection of their Heavenly Father’s love? Do they see Christ in you? I understand that we will all fall short of this calling at times, but please understand the calling is there. As husbands and fathers, we need to disciple our families in spirit and truth with gentleness and love. 

What about women? Wives and mothers are called to models of Christian service and submission. You are called to be a model of the church’s submission and service to Christ. Now in our modern era of woman’s liberation, many people get hung up on the idea of submission. To be honest, many of them are hung up for good reasons. When the person we submit to is not being Christlike, it does not work as God intended. Let this be another reminder to husbands to be godly men worthy of following.  

We may be tempted to dismiss these commands as outdated gender roles or cultural norms that no longer apply to us, but the Bible does not allow for this interpretation. These roles are meant to be an expression of the unchanging gospel of Christ’s relationship to the church and the church’s relationship to him. Jesus in his humanity submitted to the will of God the father, taking on the role of a servant. Jesus was the leader who sacrificed himself out of love. As Christians, we submit ourselves to Christ and give our lives to his service.  

If it helps, think about it like this – a democracy of two will never work. Someone must lead and someone must follow, and when wives follow their husbands with love, faith, hope, and trust our marriages model to our children and to the world around us the beautiful relationship that Christ has with his church. Wives and mothers disciple their family by leading the way in service and teaching by word and example what it means to glorify God through humble, gentle, and loving submission.  

Lastly, Paul devotes the least amount of time to children. They are simply instructed to obey their father and mother in the Lord, and to honor their parents. This simply means that as long as you are under your parents’ authority you should obey them. The only exception being if a parent ever commands you to sin, in which case you obey your heavenly father. However, the command to honor your father and mother has no such exceptions attached to it.  

Not all parents deserve honor or respect, but as Christians I believe we should honor and respect them regardless. The Christian faith is never about what we deserve or what other people deserve. It is about grace and mercy. Even if honoring your father and mother feels the same as the command to love your enemy, do it. It may be hard if you came from a less than honorable family but do what you can to show honor and respect to the people who brought you into this world even if that is all they did.  

The ideal we always strive for is a husband who leads with sacrificial and Christlike love, a wife who serves her family as a model of Christian service, and children who recognize their parents may not be perfect but still choose to honor and obey them in obedience to God. When families work this way, every part helps the other parts to grow in godliness. When any one of these parts stops working as God intended it hurts the whole family unit, but that’s not an excuse for the other parts to stop doing their part.  

And while Paul does not take time to address it here, single people are not excluded from this conversation either. Paul himself was a single man, and he saw his singleness as calling and as an opportunity to devote himself all the more to the Lord’s service. You may be familiar with the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child.” I think there is a lot of truth in that.

Family can be challenging, wonderful, stressful, and delightful all at the same time. Family is also the place where most of us are given the most opportunities to show the love of Christ day by day. Family is the place where we our stories of God’s goodness are told, and where soul-shaping conversations are had. The Biblical ideal is one that we all fall short of at times, but even when we fall short, we have an opportunity to model repentance and reconciliation for our family.  

As we seek to make disciples, let us not forget that our first mission field might not be out there somewhere. Maybe the place God is calling us to start making disciples is within the walls of  our own homes.  

Prayer of Decision: 

Father God, as we come to this time of decision, I pray that your Holy Spirit would move in us today. Family is a difficult thing for many of us to address. Some of us may have family hurts that are still healing. Some of us may feel a sense of inadequacy or guilt about ways we have failed to live up to your standards. But we know that our families are not an accident. You gave us the families that we have for a reason, and I believe that reason was to be a light for the gospel. I thank you for the great husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, grandparents, and children who are gathered here today. Give us the wisdom to take what we heard this morning and use it to be faithful disciples, wherever you call us to go. We ask these things in your Son’s holy and precious name. Amen.