Family of God No.1 It's Members

Let's sing. Let's sing Father your love is precious beyond all loves. Father your love overwhelms me.

It's 101 if you can't see the overheads. Let's sing of Father God, his concern for you and for me. Let's listen to that being played and as it is let's fasten our minds on those things that God has done for us these past few days and offer our thanks to him.

Let's turn in the Word of God to the epistle to the Ephesians and in the third chapter you find the Apostle Paul as you do so often in his letters praying. The prayer is very similar to what you discover in the first chapter but he uses a term which I think is very pregnant, that is full of meaning and which I want in a moment or two to try to explain at least in some measure. Ephesians 3 and verse 14 we'll read the whole of the prayer.

If you've got the NIV with you then read it out with me, verse 14 through to the end. For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. A little while ago I brought to you a series of addresses on the fatherhood of God.

I based my remarks on the story of the prodigal son and shared with you perhaps from a new fresh angle my understanding of that particular story and why our Lord related it. That led me on I trust guided in some measure by the spirit of God to bring you a series of addresses on our Lord's final message to his disciples. You remember it commenced with the great thought of our hearts not being troubled and then our Lord went on to use the imagery of the vine and its branches.

Once more I was able to emphasize the doctrine of the fatherhood of God. But now it seems right to me to have a look at a further consequence if you like a further development of the Bible's teaching on the fatherhood of God and to focus our attention on the family the family of God. And some of the things that I'll be sharing may come with a forcefulness almost verging on bluntness.

If so well I don't apologize but I do ask you sincerely to take my conclusions to the word of God. If you discover I'm in error then reject my conclusions for the only thing that's of value is if the preacher is explaining and focusing in your understanding what the Bible really teaches and allows in terms of convictions. But I do want to emphasize this particular aspect of biblical teaching at least for a week or so.

I don't apologize for bluntness incidentally don't misunderstand me. I hope this doesn't sound too pious but the prophet never apologizes for his message. You must take what I say weight in the balances of scripture accept it or reject it as the case may be.

My function is but to deliver it. Here then is the apostle Paul he's in jail and he's the most remarkable man in those unpleasant circumstances you find him praying. Now if I was he I would have been praying for my release.

He wasn't. He was praying for a group of people to whom he makes reference in these terms. I kneel before the father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

He is praying to the father on behalf of the family. Now I wonder what you understand by the word family. I wonder what is your grasp of the meaning of the word church because it seems to me that we need to do some biblical correction in the comprehension that most people have in regard to these two terms.

It's good to meet together as a family. I was preaching at the turn of the year at the New Life Church up in Darrington and my good brother and friend whose ministry I appreciate Graham Jefferson he commenced the service by saying to the friends as Ian did in almost a similar fashion this morning here he said good morning family or rather good evening family and they responded. I was at a church just a month ago no three weeks ago a very traditional Anglican church solidly evangelical and it was the evening service and incorporated into the service was communion.

At one point in communion following series three that's the order of service that the Anglicans have or some of the churches have they were asked to greet one another with a kiss of peace and what happened was quite seemingly not in any way disorderly some literally greeted one another with the kiss of peace they obviously knew the person alongside them others just put their arm round one or two just gave a handshake and so forth. And I guess in one sense there is value in both of those approaches. I never feel as someone leading a service I have a right to embarrass my congregation but I have a right to lead and to make opportunities for fellowship as possible within the participation of the whole strata of worship.

We do want to create a family spirit in the church don't we and yet having said that immediately you've got to back off and to say what the Apostle Paul doesn't mean when he's talking in terms of the family and then you've got to try to approach Scripture again and come to it positively and discover what he means and what the whole gamut Old Testament and New Testament of the Bible means when it refers to the people of God or the family of God. It takes more than just the creation of some sort of family spirit to make us into a real Christian family and this is my burden if you like this is a prophetic element within my message at this moment. To what degree here in the tabernacle are we a family? How do we express our family spirit? We want to feel it don't we? How does a church family behave? What is its life? What are the responsibilities of ordinary members of the family? So is it possible? Let's try and nail this one.

We are 500 people or thereabouts who are related into the fellowship here at the tabernacle. Can 500 people plus be a family? The first thing that I want to say when the Apostle here prays for the Christian family the first thing at a negative level is this, he is not praying for the nuclear family. What do I mean by the nuclear family? Well father, mother and if you take the average statistic 2.4 children in this country that makes up the ordinary family, the nuclear family.

It's a concept that's quite modern actually I shall be dealing with that at length in a moment or two's time but what I want to tell you is that when the Apostle kneels in his jail and he addresses the heavenly father he is not praying for immediate blood relatives. It's very rare if ever and I'll sustain this point substantiated in a moment, it's very rare if ever that the word family in scripture refers to blood relatives in the nuclear sense of mother, father and the two children. You see we do tend in our Western society don't we to live in very close circles, you know, God bless me, my wife, our two kids, us four no more.

That's what they say in the north of England not as a serious prayer but sometimes it's a reflection of an attitude which is most disagreeable because it's unbiblical. Now the Apostle here is not praying for the family, he's not praying for the family circle in that respect. Neither do I believe the Apostle Paul would have much truck for the cosmetic introduction or trying to bring out a family spirit at a very superficial level.

You know you get that sometimes in the more poor quality programs on television don't you? I once sat through one and a half times, I couldn't take the second part on the second occasion. One program, I've forgotten its title, some of you might know it but it was something like a holiday camp and they had the greatest ability in English eloquence by one person saying to the other ho de ho or hi de hi and then you've got the response and it's all very jolly. This was the idea presumably behind the whole thing or you get the sort of comedian who bounces onto the stage and introduces himself to the people by saying it's nice to see you and then they make a response to see you nice or again something as eloquent.

Now the Apostle Paul would not I think really be wanting the leaders of the Christian church in his day to go to the platform assuming there was one and use any of those two techniques. And yet having been a little bit unkind with British comedy, let me say that I do understand the necessity to try to make people feel at home and at one. I'm not criticising that.

I'm only saying this, that you can't do it just like that. You can't create a family spirit in a local church by just getting people to get up and have a walk around although I'm not necessarily opposed to that. It's more than just a handshake because the man at the front tells everyone to turn up and shake hands.

It's more than that that's required to give the sense of family as the Apostle Paul understands it and prays for it. I had a letter written me just a couple of weeks ago, no a little longer, five weeks ago from an elderly lady. She wondered if she could join the tabernacle.

Actually we dissuaded her from so doing because she was some distance away and it seemed more appropriate that she continued in a local church. She said in her more local church, she said in her letter to me about what she needed and I'm not talking incidentally about a 17 year old, I said old lady didn't I? I guess she was in her seventies. She conceded in her note to me what she wanted when she came to church and she said this and my heart warmed to her comment.

I want more from the church than someone giving me a handshake on a Sunday morning saying how are you but not really wanting to know. You've got the point? You see a cosmetic spirit doesn't sort of address that need does it? Not at all. The Apostle Paul's not praying for this when he's got in mind the family of God.

Not an individual family unit, nothing wrong with that as I shall substantiate again in a few moments time. Not the creation of a cosmetic family spirit. Not even a nationalistic concern.

You see the Apostle's a Jew isn't he but he's gone beyond his Jewishness. I mean he doesn't in any way apologize for it of course but he's gone beyond the heresy that taught that because a person was a Jew he was therefore loved by God in the sense that he could do no wrong. Abraham was his father therefore everything was right with the world.

The Apostle once thought that but he jettisoned such heresy when Christ stopped him on the Damascus road. Now you do get a sort of nationalism even today in the 20th century. I go down to South Africa fairly frequently.

Afrikanerdom is replete, is full of that idea because we're Afrikaners, because we're God fearing people therefore we are the people of God, we are the family of God. There is no such thing as a nationalistic claim in making you part of the family of God. Nor incidentally are you part of the family of God simply because and let me perhaps have another run at this remark, the Apostle Paul when he's referring to the family of God is not identifying a group of people who theologically agree.

You see I do believe in trying to preach the gospel and teach the Bible as accurately as possible. I think that's mandatory, that's compulsory upon me. But I don't believe that people are satisfied if they come to church on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening or both if all they receive is a correct exposition of Scripture.

I have great respect for men like Charles Spurgeon and some of the great preachers of his era and going on into the 20th century and the early part of this century. But sometimes I wonder to myself when I think of their massive congregations, to what degree were those congregations participating in what it really means to be a member of the family of God. You see we need more than just the attempted eloquence of the preacher in the biblical explanation of the portion of Scripture to make up the family of God.

A successful church family is not to be measured by the number of people that you can pack into the pews in a building and the accuracy of the message that's preached. It might include that, I'm not too sure, it might. But it goes miles, miles, miles further than that to have a full grasp of what the family of God is about in the estimation of the New Testament writers and indeed the Old Testament.

So these were my negatives. Talking of the family of God, the apostle here and elsewhere is not referring to blood relatives as such. He doesn't want and the New Testament never gives the impression that simply producing a happy spirit is the same as benefiting from what is the family circle of God and the atmosphere that that should have when it's present together.

It's not a national concept, it's not people coming together in theological agreement, it's not just a successful church. Do you know one of your problems in understanding Scripture? Now that's not an immodest comment because I've got the same problem because we share 99% of us the same nationality. You were brought up in the British educational system.

You are immersed in European culture and you have taken some of your cultural prejudices and traditions, nothing wrong with them, and from that perspective you have begun to understand the New Testament and the Old Testament. And what you mean by family, you have taken the New Testament and the Old Testament writers to mean by family. Now that's not so.

You see there is no such thing as the nuclear family, mother, father and two children, referred to in the Old Testament and New Testament when the word family is used. It's always a much, much bigger concept. You didn't follow? Here's an illustration.

Do you remember Pastor Joseph Mosambi? He was with us in the tabernacle, those of you who don't know, for several years. No, he was with us for three years, several years ago. He helped me here as he was taking a course at London Bible College.

He's now, or was, he's just moved into another area of ministry in Nairobi. He was the leader of the Bible Society of Kenya, a very, very influential man, had in some degree the ear to the president and often consulted on television and the media as to what a Christian standpoint really represented. I remember taking Joseph Mosambi on one occasion visiting on the Maybridge Estate.

There's a little lady who's now in heaven, so I can't embarrass her by relating the story to you now. There's a little lady who we went to visit near the Anglican Church on the Maybridge, and she must have been 80 years of age. She was a Cockney.

She had a blind husband, and it was interesting, the actual conversation which developed. You know, Cockneys sometimes, I'm going off the subject a moment, but I'll come back to it in a second. Cockneys sometimes can have a curiosity that they will give expression to, whereas more sedate people in the south of England will have the question, but they won't put the request.

She said to Joseph, are those your own teeth? And I sort of blushed to my roots. And then she said, can I feel your hair? Because she'd never seen anyone with such frizzy black hair before. At least she'd never come up to handling distance.

Anyway, Joseph took it like a good African and acknowledged the peculiarities of Europeans. But, and now I get to my point, when we were walking down the path to my car after the visit, he was stunned. He was shaking his head, and he said, you know, this could never happen in Kenya.

I said, what? He said, two old people like that, one blind and the other needing a great deal of assistance with her arthritic condition, living on their own. It was his first grasp of the nuclear family as practised by us in Britain and largely in Europe. Now, I say that not to condemn our practice, but to show you that the Asian and the African and the Oriental way of looking on family is completely different from our own.

And the Bible is an Asian book. And to understand some of its teachings, you need to take off your European spectacles and put on your Asian spectacles, or otherwise you will make conclusions which the Bible does not really permit. And in the Old Testament, when the word family is used, on the rare occasions you find it, particularly in the NIV translation, it's in the sense of clan or household.

Moving to the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, what have you? You have the story of one household after another household after another household. But it's never just mum, dad and the kids. It's the servants and the au pair.

And all those who are attached to that particular unit that are known as the house of Abraham or in Exodus, the house of Moses or in the book of Samuel, the house of David. You cannot find in the New Testament one reference to the word family used in the way that you and I traditionally use it. There are only three occasions when the Greek word patria, P-A-T-R-I-A, is found.

One is in the Acts of the Apostles. It concerns those who are of the family of Abraham. The other is in the beginning of Luke's Gospel which refers to Joseph as being part of the family, the clan of King David.

And the third is here, the Apostle Paul praying before the Father for the whole family in heaven and on earth which derives its name. You see how you've got a completely different perspective already? If you've been listening to what I've been saying about what it means to be part of the family of God. Now don't misunderstand me.

I am not of course trying to say that the nuclear concept of husband and wife and two children is illegitimate. That of course is the heart of the biblical household. All I'm saying is that it always goes beyond that.

Now those of you who have been in my marriage classes over the past few years. And there's an increasing number of people who have been married at the tab in the last 36 months. You will know that one of the things, if you shake your heads and recall what I was teaching you.

One of the things that I predicted to you would become a problem in your marriage was the very thing that God had given you. A husband or wife as the case may be. A flat or a house or some rented accommodation as the case may be.

One of the problems would be that you would retreat into a sort of exclusiveness. And what God gave you, you now put a drawbridge to. And when you go home, up goes the drawbridge.

And you've got the British mentality. Right in your outlook. The Englishman's home.

His castle. The very thing that God gave, instead of helping you in your pursuit of what is the purpose of God for your life. Can become something that you wrongly use to the extent that you retreat into an exclusive position.

Which the Bible gives you absolutely no reason for doing. No permission for so doing. There will be a sense in which you love your wife more than you love anybody else.

Or your husband as the case may be. And your children. But if that exclusive love for wife, for husband, for family prevents you from showing a love that is practical and real to other people.

Then your concept of what family means is as far removed from this book as the Book of Mormon is from the Book of the Bible. I say that strongly. I say it strongly because I feel it strongly.

What realistic care, says David Watson, a man I admired a great deal. Before his premature death, he wasn't that much older than myself. What realistic care can be given to the single parent, to the widow or to the widower.

To the numerous single and divorced members of many churches. What about those who have suffered mental illness. Those who have been emotionally crippled by hurts or starved of love.

Those who find forming relationships more difficult than most. If it is God's plan to set the singles in families. What practical measures can the local church take to see that this actually happens in its own ranks.

You know sometimes our single people feel that in one sense. In one sense they are a little different from anyone else in the church. I want to help them for a moment.

Because you see those of us who are permitted to be married in the plan of God. Can sometimes use the gift of marriage in a very very wrong way. Watson writes again, for many, not Watson actually, an American man by the name of Pulkingham writes.

For many marriage has become the last desperate hope for dependable relationships. It then becomes a kind of hiding place for people and is presented as the ideal love relationship. It appears as the only option, the last desperate hope of finding a meaningful relationship.

You couldn't have said that in the days of the Bible. You couldn't say that in Asian or Oriental culture. You can only say it in a European civilization which makes the nuclear family almost the epitome of success.

You've not quite made it unless this is description of you or descriptive of you. That my dear friends is not what the Bible is talking about when it refers to the word family. We are part of the family of God.

And within that family there are many permutations of relationships. When the Apostle Paul was preaching as his ministry is depicted in the Acts of the Apostles, he always went to family households, didn't he? Lydia's family converted. The jailer at Philippi converted.

Stephanos and his household, they convert. There is a concern for the Apostle Paul in his ministry to affect more than just the nuclear family. He moves into the households where there are friends and servants and so on and so forth and he preaches the gospel to all of them.

And then these family households, these units, they federate with each other and they form the local church. How do you describe relationships here in the temple? Let me put this in a biblical illustration. I don't believe that the Roman Catholic theologians have got this right, but nonetheless I'll use their illustration and then I'll give you what I understand the Protestant interpretation to be, which I think is correct.

Here is our Lord, right? He's on the cross. He's gone through the agony of Calvary. Now our Lord is always sensitive, isn't he? He's always sensitive to his mother.

A good Jewish man never forgets mother. Mother has great importance in Jewish family life. And here is Mary.

Who is going to look after Mary? He's only got hours left and he's on the cross. He can't help her now. So what does he do? Well, he moves the only thing that he can in his body.

He moves his eyes and he attracts the attention of John. And he says to John, you read it in John's gospel, don't you? Son, behold your mother. And he turns to Mary.

Woman, behold your son. Now the Catholics think that there is the church being entrusted to the bosom of Mary. I think they've got it wrong.

But what I do believe to be the correct understanding is this, that Jesus is showing to us, I don't want to read too much into it, but I think this amount must be read out of it. Jesus is showing to us that there are relationships in the family of God which go well beyond blood relationships. You see, here's the Apostle Paul illustrating the point.

The last chapter of the letter that he writes to Romans, he makes reference to a friend of his, Rufus. And he's grateful for Rufus and he's also grateful for Rufus' mother, your mother and mine. Not so? He writes to Timothy in the first letter that we find in the New Testament addressed to this man.

And he speaks of Timothy in terms of my son. The next letter it will be my dear son in the faith. He goes on to tell Timothy how to treat older men.

He goes on to tell him how to treat older women. He says, treat them as though they were your mother. He says, treat the younger men as though they are your brothers.

He says, treat the younger women as though they were your sisters with all purity. He's broken down, you see, completely the concept of the nuclear family. He didn't have to break it down because it never existed in his mind.

He's thinking of the family of God, of all those people in the congregation that is pastored by Timothy and he shows him the relationships that are to exist within that church family for it so to be described. Now I'm running out of time and I can't get to my conclusion so we'll keep those back for next week. But I send you home with this, at least I send you to the communion table with this thought in your mind.

The Christian family and the concept of the Christian family needs perhaps to be corrected in your mind. I speak with tender hearts to young people, young married couples, mums and dads in this church. God has blessed you.

Don't take what God has blessed you and put the drawbridge up and keep that to yourself. Those of you who were never gifted with partners, don't always allow that to seem to you to suggest that in some sense God has bypassed you from his greatest blessings. He has brought you into a church fellowship where as brother and sister you can communicate and relate and be loved and express love.

And my dear friend, I speak to the whole church, the elders, the deacons, the lot of you. Unless Worthing Tabernacle can relate its ministries to this concept of family then all we are are 500, 600 people packed into pews on a Sunday listening to a reasonably accurate address. But it's not the outworking of the family of God.

It's more the assembly of theological students coming together for one lecture once on a Sunday or twice on a Sunday if you come to evening class. I'm not saying that we haven't entered into, many of us, the biblical expression of the family of God. Don't get my last remarks as though they implied that.

I am however putting before you what is the biblical perspective of family and I'm asking you and you and you, your house, your little unit, where you live, who you are. I'm asking you to work it out with me because I need help to work it out in our church fellowship. What it means to be part of this family and how we can contribute to the well-being of the family so that across the board everyone feels loved and everyone is doing the specific task that God would enable them to do.

That's the concept we need to work through more and more. Some of you won't like it and you'll just linger at the edge. Well God bless you, there's no more I can do.

I can just be the prophet and proclaim the messages I've indicated half an hour or so ago. But this I ask you to consider. Take what I said, get the tape, put it alongside scripture and if what I'm saying is right and you need correctives in your life, make those correctives.

If what I'm saying is wrong, then just forget it. Let's pray. Father, to you this word is often retained in the minds of these people.

If this was your word for this company at this time and help us to work it through more practically in Sundays to come and during the week and every hour of every day for the Saviour's sake, Amen. Let us still receive your light Till from o'er the living world A message to each divine Place according to thy will Sweetly may our spirit Love insincerely I behold love like death And hope destroyed And pains and sins And what is more Thou, O Christ, art all in all Father, help us to work those rich words of Wesley out. Deliver us from being parrots, singing things that we're not putting through into action.

And for every beloved brother and sister here who teaches me in their lives and their example what it means to be part of the family of God, I thank you. Help us all to learn from one another and gradually make us into the people that bring pleasure to you as we take the burden of this ministry and we exercise it within the capacities that are ours by your Spirit and the capabilities of our physical strength. Bless us as we come around this table, many of us now and speak to us again of the compassions of our Lord Jesus Christ and your great love to the world through Him.

And as we pray in the power of the Spirit, Amen.