A. One day a Sunday School teacher was trying to drive home the importance of family life.
1. She illustrated her point by referring to the commandment “honor your mother and father.”
2. Then she added, “Now that we know God’s command for how we are to treat our parents, can any of you tell me a commandment that deals with how we are to treat brothers and sisters?”
3. There was a long pause and then one boy’s face lit up as he said, “How about ‘You shall not kill!’ ”
B. Today, I want to talk about how the first of the ten commandments also applies to families.
1. The first of the ten commandments is: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2-3)
2. In our series on counterfeit gods, we have been learning how other things or other people can become counterfeit gods by taking the place in our lives that belongs only to God the Father.
3. Family is one of the best gifts that God created for us, and yet it is one of the gifts that can easily become an idol.
4. Let’s spend some time exploring how that can happen and how to keep it from happening.
C. Let’s start with a story from C. S. Lewis’ book called The Great Divorce.
1. In the allegory of this book, Lewis examines why people choose for or against giving their lives in full commitment to God.
a. Lewis shows that when we make that choice, what we are doing is standing at the very gate of heaven and choosing between the eternal glory of God and the empty illusions of earth – it is what he calls “the great divorce” between heaven and earth.
2. In the allegory, Lewis puts us on a bus with a group of fellow ghosts who have finished their earthly lives.
a. They are on their way to be dropped off at a kind of way station in which they will make their decisions about eternity.
b. We know that salvation doesn’t work this way, but it helps illustrate some important truths.
3. For each newcomer who arrives at the way station, there is a bright, shining figure who steps out of heaven to receive his or her old friend, and to encourage them to make the full journey to heaven and the presence of God.
a. These bright, shining figures are not angels, but are acquaintances from life who have been saved and are in heaven.
4. Pam is a woman who has arrived at the way station and is disappointed to see that the person from her past who meets her from heaven is her younger brother, Reginald.
a. She had hoped that the person who would meet her would be her departed son Michael, to whom she had devoted her life.
5. Reginald explains to Pam that she isn’t ready to see her son yet.
a. He explains that she must first be eager to see God himself, and then all the other wonderful blessings of heaven will be available to her.
b. She must understand that God isn’t simply a way to get to heaven; rather, heaven is a way to get to God, and Pam must approach it that way.
c. Reginald says, “I’m afraid the first step is a hard one. But after that, you’ll go on like a house on fire…when you learn to want someone else besides Michael.”
6. Pam doesn’t know what her younger brother is talking about.
a. She says, “Well, never mind. I’ll do whatever’s necessary…The sooner I begin it, the sooner they’ll let me see my boy.”
b. Reginald says that it can’t begin with that kind of attitude.
c. He says, “You’re treating God only as a means to Michael.”
d. She must learn to want God for his own sake.
e. God can’t be second in her affections; he can’t even be tied for first.
7. Reginald continues with the explanation, “You exist as Michael’s mother only because you first exist as God’s creature. That relation is older and closer.”
a. He goes on to explain to Pam that “human beings can’t make one another really happy for long…you can’t love a fellow creature fully till you love God.”
8. It becomes clear that Pam’s love for her son was something of an obsession in life.
a. After her son died, she kept his room just as he left it for ten years.
b. Pam neglected her other children, her husband, and her parents, to the pain and disappointment of them all.
c. Everyone and everything was sacrificed on the altar of her adoration of her lost son.
9. Pam declares to Reginald, “No one has a right to come between me and my son. Not even God.”
a. And it becomes clear that with that unchanging attitude, Pam has chosen her own eternal destination.
b. In C. S. Lewis’ view, it’s not so much that God won’t let us into heaven; it’s that we won’t let ourselves in.
c. If we can’t learn to say, “Thy will be done,” then finally God must sadly say, “Okay, then thy will be done.”
D. Some of us might be uncomfortable with what C. S. Lewis has written and what it means.
1. We might protest, “Shouldn’t God give the woman credit for her powerful love? At least she loved someone; it just happened to be her own son. And what could be more noble than a mother’s love for her own child? That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, right?”
2. What we must be sure we understand is that the place that God has in our lives must be over and above any other, and the love we have for God must be first and greater than any other.
3. Just as Reginald had explained to Pam, our relationship with God must be recognized as “older and closer.”
4. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God, and the second is to love one another. (Mt. 22:37-39)
5. Our relationship to the Father is more basic to who we are and to why we have been created.
6. We are intended to love our children, parents, siblings, and spouses wholeheartedly, but always in the context of our primary and foundational love for God.
7. Our love for God must be our deepest love and it actually becomes the source for every other love, for only when we love God properly can we begin to love others properly.
E. Jesus made this startling and shockingly clear when he spoke these words: 25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:15-16) [Parallel Passage – Matthew 10:37]
1. We know from the full counsel of Scripture that we are to love everyone, and not hate anyone.
2. So when we dig a little deeper here, we discover that in Jewish culture, hate was used to express a lesser form of love.
3. The New Living Translation conveys the true idea of the verse when it says, “You must hate everyone else by comparison.” (Note the parallel passage in Matthew 10:37-39)
4. So Jesus was not discussing any lack of love for family, rather he was discussing the centrality and sheer magnitude of our love for God in comparison to our love for others.
5. God must be the only one on the throne of our hearts.
6. God will not share the throne of our hearts with our spouse, our children, our parents or friends.
F. Let’s look at a few Biblical examples where people faced the challenge of the god of family.
1. We will look at one example of someone who failed miserably by putting his family ahead of God, and then we will look at examples of people keeping God in His rightful place ahead of family.
G. The good, bad example comes from the Old Testament and is about a priest named Eli.
1. Eli was the priest of God who was given the task of raising and training Samuel the prophet.
2. Eli had two sons who were also priests of God, but they were not acting appropriately.
3. We are first introduced to them with these words: Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. (1 Samuel 2:12)
4. One of the evil things they were doing was helping themselves to the meat brought for sacrifice before it was properly offered to God.
5. The Bible says this about their behavior: Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt. (1 Sam. 2:17)
6. But that wasn’t all they were doing, the Bible says: Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. (1 Sam. 2:22-24)
a. So, Eli’s sons were committing sexual immorality and were treating the offerings to God with contempt, and all Eli could do was tell them I don’t like hearing about your bad behavior?
b. As a spiritual leader, at a minimum, Eli should have removed his sons from their positions of leadership, and likely should have had them executed for their crimes.
7. Because of Eli’s failure to lead as he should have, God sent a messenger with these words for Eli: “Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?” (1 Sam. 2:27-30)
a. Did you notice the words “honor your sons above me.”
b. When we serve the god of family, that’s what we do, we put our love for and allegiance to our family ahead of and above our love for and allegiance to God.
c. The messenger went on to prophesy that both of Eli’s sons would die on the same day as a sign to Eli about his failures, and that God would raise up a different priest from a different family who would be faithful to God – that person was Samuel.
8. I hope that all of us will learn from Eli’s bad example to never put family over or ahead of God.
9. I wish we had time to talk about how Hannah, Samuel’s mother is a good example of someone who put God first by giving her son to God for his full-time service.
H. The second example I want to point to is the good example of King Asa (1 Kings 15, 2 Chron. 15).
1. After the kingdom of Israel divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and southern kingdom of Judah, Asa was the second king of Judah to reign after Solomon’s son Rehoboam.
2. The first king after Rehoboam was Asa’s father, Abijah who was a bad king and only reigned for three years.
3. When Asa became king, God sent him the prophet Azariah with these words: “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: The Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” (2 Chron. 15:2)
4. The Bible says: As soon as Asa heard these words, the prophecy of Azariah the son of Oded, he took courage and put away the detestable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities that he had taken in the hill country of Ephraim, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was in front of the vestibule of the house of the Lord. (2 Chron. 15:8)
5. Asa gathered a large assembly in Jerusalem and they all made a covenant to seek the Lord, with all their heart and soul.
6. There is an interesting additional development recorded in verse 16: Even Maacah, his mother, King Asa removed from being queen mother because she had made a detestable image for Asherah. Asa cut down her image, crushed it, and burned it at the brook Kidron. (2 Chron. 15:16)
7. Maacah was actually Asa’s grandmother, but we notice how he corrected and disciplined his own grandmother – he removed her from her royal position, and he destroyed her idols.
8. Do you think Asa loved his grandmother? Yes, he did! He loved her enough to make it clear that God needed to be first in her life, just as God was first in Asa’s life.
I. Perhaps the greatest OT example that illustrates the battle of keeping God on His throne over and above family is the story of the testing of Abraham.
1. We don’t have time to go into great detail, but you are familiar with the story – not too long ago we preached a series on the life of Abraham.
2. As you will recall, Abraham and Sarah waited 25 long years for Isaac, the son of promise to be born.
a. That was certainly a test of faith for them to have to wait so long, and they failed to believe at times along the way, and so Abraham and Sarah tried to bring along a son through a surrogate, and they ended up with Ishmael – which caused lots of problems.
3. So after Isaac was born, things seemed to sail along pretty well until Isaac was about 16 years old.
a. In Genesis 22 we read about an assignment God gave to Abraham: God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Gen. 22:2)
b. You might find it interesting that the very first time in the Bible where the word “love” is used is right here! “Your only son Isaac, whom you love.”
c. When we read this story, we know that it is only a test, because we know the rest of the Bible that had not yet been written, and know that God forbids the making of human sacrifices, but Abraham didn’t know that at the time.
4. No parent in the world can hear the story of Abraham and Isaac without trembling.
a. We know what it’s like to adore our children.
b. Every one of our children is special to us, and we would give our lives for any of our own children without even stopping to think about it.
5. I want to encourage us to extend the parameters of this story, because it’s not just about kids.
a. Who do you love so fiercely, so protectively, so desperately?
b. For whom would you lay down your life? A younger sibling? The parent you have always been closest to? Your spouse? A best friend?
c. Those who are true “family” are always more than biological.
6. Something we must keep in mind is that God’s greatest gifts are also His greatest tests.
a. The more beautiful and precious something or someone is to us, the more capacity it has to become an idol.
b. The challenge for us is to love and appreciate God’s gifts without worshiping them.
c. We must keep things in proper order and on its proper shelf, so to speak.
d. We must learn to be able to love God’s gifts in a way that makes us love the Giver of the gifts all the more, and certainly to love the Giver more than we love the gifts.
7. Back to Abraham’s story…as you know, Abraham started out the first thing the next morning.
a. It was a journey of several days, and Abraham took along several servants and Isaac.
b. When they neared the mountain, Abraham told his servants to stay behind while he and Isaac went to worship, and then he told them that we would return.
c. The NT writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham reasoned that God could raise his son from the dead, and so Abraham was fully prepared to take Isaac’s life.
d. The Bible tells us that as Abraham and Isaac made their way up the mountain Isaac asked “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
e. Abraham replied, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
f. When they reached the summit, Abraham built the altar, laid out the firewood, then somehow bound his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar.
g. As Abraham raised his knife to kill his son, God’s voice from heaven stopped him, saying: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” (Gen. 22:12)
8. Abraham had passed his test – he had shown the depth of his commitment to God, and had shown that his love for his son was in a proper relationship with his love for God.
J. Before we move on to the application of all of this to us, let’s allow another important truth to touch our hearts.
1. When God had given that assignment to Abraham, he was living in Beersheba, a small oasis in the desert, and yet God sent him on a three-day journey to Mount Moriah.
2. Why did God send Abraham to that place to lay Isaac on the altar?
3. One thousand years or so after Abraham, King David, the second king of Israel, bought a piece of land and built an altar for worship to God, and later David’s son Solomon would build the great temple of God on that land in Jerusalem.
a. Can you guess what that piece of land was? Mount Moriah, the same place God had sent Abraham.
4. And then, one thousand years or so after David and Solomon, on that same piece of land, another Father sacrificed His Son – but this time it was no test.
5. The Bible says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)
6. What God had asked of Abraham, but did not finally require, He was willing to do Himself, because He loves you and me that much.
K. Let’s ask a few questions that might help us determine if our love for our family is in a right relationship with our love for God.
1. Question One: When it comes to your happiness and sense of well-being, are you looking to God first for those things, or are you looking first to a spouse, children, parents or friends.
a. We use the phrase “worship the ground they walk on” – if that is the case in any of our relationships, spouse, kids or parents, then something is out of kilter in that relationship.
b. If the thought of losing any person or relationship causes us to conclude that life would not be worth living, then that person or relationship has too important a place in our lives.
c. If a parent is attempting to feel successful vicariously through their children’s accomplishments, whether they be academic, athletic, financial or social, then something is not right with the parents spiritual relationship with God.
2. Question Two: Who are you more interested in keeping happy, your parents, spouse, children, friends, or God?
a. As an adult child, are you still trying to win the approval of your parents? Or is God’s approval enough?
b. As a parent, are you still trying to win the perceived “love” of your children? Or are you secure in God’s love for you?
3. Question Three: If there is a conflict between what God wants you to do or what your parents, spouse, children or friends want you to do, whom do you obey?
a. Are you allowing your husband, wife, parent, or child to keep you from serving God as you know you should?
b. Are you keeping your Christianity hidden so as not to be rejected or ridiculed by someone important in your life?
c. If your family member begins to live in a way that is opposed to God’s will, do you change your beliefs to accommodate your family member?
4. Question Four: Are you trying to get from others something that you should only be getting from God?
a. As we discussed last week: We can’t expect things or people to fill the God-shaped void that God made within us on purpose – to draw us to Him.
L. Let me clarify and emphasize again that our family relationships should be characterized by love.
1. When we love God first and most, it doesn’t mean we don’t love our families, it just means we love them differently.
2. In reality, the most loving thing we can do for anyone in our lives is to have God be in His rightful place in our life.
3. When we make others the center of our lives, rather than having God at the center, we don’t do anyone any favors.
4. The supreme act of family love is to set our hearts on God, first and foremost.
5. When Jesus is truly my Lord, then I can be the best husband, father, and friend.
6. When God is in His rightful place in my life, then I am in the best position to receive God’s blessings in all my relationships.
M. Let’s end with Kyle Idleman’s devotional thought “Jesus My Everything.”
The god of family painted a beautiful picture. It showed a dinner table at Thanksgiving, with all the faces looking hungrily toward a baked turkey. Parents, children, and grandparents were all there, and it was so clear they loved one another.
Who wouldn’t respond to such a scene? It’s what we all want. The god of family may have been the most deceiving of all the false gods, because he seemed so decent and proper. He offered something that is already one of God’s greatest gifts. But he offered a distorted version of it.
What he offered was not truly a family but a cocoon, a place to shut the world out. He offered obsessive relationships, in which everyone must play god to someone else. He called all of it love, but in retrospect, it looked more like desperation. We made demands of our marriages until we exhausted them.
Jesus showed us what family was supposed to be. He helped us understand that all of the relationships inside the home are reflections of what he is to us. It’s the love of Christ that teaches us how to love each other. We said, “Family is everything,” but it wasn’t until Jesus was our everything that we discovered everything family can be.
N. And let me add this: When we are in a right relationship with God, then God is our Father, and Jesus is our Brother, and the church is truly our family.
1. I am reminded of that day when Jesus’ mother and brothers came for him and stood outside waiting for him.
2. Jesus was inside teaching a crowd, and when He was told His family was outside seeking Him, He said, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:33-35)
Resources:
gods at war, Kyle Idleman, Zondervan, 2013
