Jack Graham - The Blessing of a Christian

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TOPICS: The Way Home, Family, Relationships, Parenting

I would invite you to take God's Word and turn to Psalm number 128. The title of this message is "The Blessing of a Christian Family". The blessing and the benefits of a Christian family. Life is all about relationships. And someone added, and the rest is details. And I believe that's true because when God made us man and woman, He put us together in family, families, and through the generations, through the millenniums He has been blessing the family. Jesus first public act of ministry at the wedding feast of Cana was a miracle for the young couple, when He turned the water into wine and blessed them with His presence.

And God has been blessing us with a Christ-centered marriage through the years if you have, indeed, put your faith in Christ Himself. Everyone ought to have three homes. You ought to have a heavenly home and know that you're going to heaven. So I should ask you at the very start of this message, before we talk about your home, let's talk about your heavenly home. Do you know for certain that if you were to die today that you would go to heaven? Not because of anything that you have done or achieved or accomplished, but because of what Christ has done for you. He took you place on the cross and died, and rose again, so that you can go to heaven.

And when we repent of our sins and receive Christ into our lives, we punch our ticket to heaven, if you will. And we're know we're going there because you may die today and you need to know that you're saved. Christ may come today and take us into his presence. "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord". So I ask you, first and foremost, do you have a heavenly home? And then God gave us not only a heavenly home and everybody should have a heavenly home. But then there's the family home. As I said, God blessed the man and the woman and brought them together. The Christian marriage is a man and a woman in a covenant relationship through Jesus Christ. And that home, that family, if God gives you children through birth, through adoption, through fostering, it's a beautiful testimony to God's plan for the family.

God does have a plan for your family and mine. And then everyone ought to have a church family. You ought to have a heavenly home, you ought to have a church or a family home and you ought to have a church home. Do you have a church home where you are faithful serving the Lord? We're not just a big church; we are a big spiritual family. We are the family of God. And I'm so glad that I'm a part and that you are a part if you are of the family of God. But of course, we're... and Jesus is the door to all those homes. He's the door to your heavenly home; He's the door to your family home; He's the door to your church home. So come to Jesus.

The family, your family should be celebrated and consecrated and dedicated to Christ. And Christians, Christ-centered believers, followers of the Lord Jesus Christ should have the happiest homes on earth. If you are following Jesus, if Christ is in your life and Lord of your life, then your home should be a happy place. It doesn't mean that it's a perfect place. There are no perfect families, including my own. But you can have a happy home, a happy family when your life is centered in Christ. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Psalm 128 is a portrait. Many of you have portraits of your families with all the children around you, and grandchildren, perhaps.

Well, God is painting a portrait here in Psalm 128. Psalm 128 is a psalm, a song for the family, a flourishing, fruitful family. And in this family portrait there is God Himself, but then a godly father, a faithful wife, growing happy, healthy children and a lasting legacy of love. Let's look at it, beginning in verse 1. It says: "Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see", watch this, "your children's children"! Amen?

Peace be upon Israel! And peace be upon you and your home. So we're going to break this passage of scripture down under several headings today as we paint this picture. Again, there are no ideal families, but this is the ideal family, the ideal biblical family. You know some people, they didn't get an ideal, they got an ordeal. And maybe your family and your home is more of an ordeal than an ideal. But you can have a new beginning with your family today. So let's talk first of all about what I'm going to call the consecration of the family, consecration of a Christian home. And that's verse one. Look at it again. It says, "Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord and walks in His ways".

The word blessed can mean happy. And written in the language of the Old Testament, the Hebrew language, the word blessed here is in plural. So it means multiple blessings; more and more blessings, blessing after blessing after blessings. And if the word means happy—and it can be loosely translated to be happy, true happiness—then it could be happy, happy, happy. Happy, happy, happy is the home where the Lord is feared and followed. So what does it mean to fear the Lord? When you read that it may be startling. Is God to be dreaded? Is God to be feared? Not in the sense that we run from Him, but in the sense that we run to Him and kneel before Him as God would be feared.

The fear of the Lord is absent in our nation these days. We could we should use a good dose of the fear of the Lord and the preaching of the fear of the Lord in these days, because God is to be feared. There is judgment that is coming. But for the Christian, God is to be feared in the sense that we put our faith in Him. A God-fearing man, woman is faithful. We worship God. We live in the awe and wonder of His presence. This is what it means to fear the Lord. And if you want it described, it's right there in the verse. It says: "to fear the Lord and walk in His ways", walk in His ways. So the fear of the Lord is to honor Him and please Him, and to live in obedience to His ways and His word. God it? That is the fear of the Lord.

So it all starts there. This is foundation. Happiness is not in the size of your house, or the style of your furnishings; it's not in what you make or the trips that you take. It's certainly not in possessions. The true happiness that comes in your home is in the Lord. "Those who labor in the Lord", or "Those who try to build a house without the Lord labor in vain", the Scripture says. Happy, happy. Such a wonderful word. It speaks of the joy and the happiness and the pleasure that comes when you are underneath the multiple blessings of God. I dare say when you pray for yourself, you pray for your family, whether it's over a meal or by your bedside, when you pray, I'm sure you praying, "Lord, bless our family; Lord, bless our children; Lord, bless my wife, my husband".

So this is what we pray, the blessing of God and the blessing, the happiness, the joy. Where does that come from? The source is Jesus Himself. "In your presence, Lord, is fullness of joy, and at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore". And when your home is centered in Jesus Christ, He brings His joy with Him. Even in times of sorrow and grief and pain and suffering, His joy prevails. So there is this beginning of the home, the foundation of the home, which is the consecration of the home, that you would consecrate your lives to the Lord. But then there, as I've been talking about the celebration of the home, that the home should be a place that is happy, where we can celebrate life together. And then there's the contentment of the home.

Notice down in verse 2 it says, "You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands, and you shall be blessed", happy, "and it will be well with you". That is, you will live in satisfaction. You will live in contentment. There's a lot of discontent among families today; never happy, never satisfied with what we have. And yet God has given us so much; much, much more than we have in just the things or the possessions we have, or the kind of house that we live in. When Deb and I got married, we were college students—54 years ago this past May, just a few weeks ago—and we got married and we moved into married student housing, Hardin-Simmons University.

Nineteen years of age, both of us. And we had this little house that we rented. I remember the rent. It was $56 a month. And that was running it close to get to that, I assure you. And then when we moved to Fort Worth to go to seminary, the church there, my home church, provided us a home to live in. It was a little home across the street where our first child, Jason, was born. And we lived right across the street from the church and just walked back and forth. And it was such a great time, just the three of us then, a young family. And then we went up to Oklahoma to be pastor. Hobart in southwestern Oklahoma, and the church had a beautiful parsonage. You ever heard the word parsonage?

Well, parsonage is the home that churches provided for their pastor. And such a generous thing to do, and churches typically everywhere did that. And so we had a parsonage there. And then when we moved over to Duncan, Oklahoma, a county seat town up in Oklahoma to be the pastor, they also provided a home for us, a parsonage for us. And so we moved down to Florida and the church there, the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach had a beautiful, they didn't call it a parsonage. It sounded something more sophisticated that it was a pastorium. Kind of sounded like a place where you lock people up. But we lived in he pastorium down there. And I'm telling you, it was spectacular because it was right on the water of the Atlantic Ocean.

And then we came here to Dallas, and we bought a home in north Dallas. And then a few months ago we sold our home in Frisco, and we are building a home. It's going to take about a year to build. In the meantime, we're back in a rental. And it's a lovely place. It's just a couple of minutes from here. I could walk to church. It's like being in a pastorium again. And we're living in this rental. And in moving to this rental, something happened, something we had to do, and that was to clean out a lifetime of stuff that we had accumulated. And some of you have done this.

So we went through and we were going through all these things, things and things and more things! And you know, I'm a hoarder, so I kept a lot of things. And there were press clippings for my baseball career, Scott. And there were trophies from the kids and uniforms and valentines and boxes and boxes of stuff and clothes. You know, most of us have a big in and a little end of the closest, right? So there was, you know, the big in, and the middle and the little end. All these things that we took a lot of time, it was a lot of work to throw away the accumulated stuff of a lifetime. But you know, it's a reminder of a very important lesson in life. We don't own anything that we have. We're all renters. This world is not our home; we're just passing through. We're going to leave all that stuff to somebody else.

And again, the kids mostly don't want the stuff anyway. Now it's good to give your kids a legacy and an inheritance if you're able to do that. But the kids don't need all the possessions. They need you, they need your presence, they need to be able to look at their home and say, you know, it is well. Is it well in your home? Is it well in your marriage? Is it well with your children and your grandchildren? It is well with your soul. That's what he's saying here. If you have a home, a Christ-centered home, then no matter what kind of stuff, Deb and I made a commitment a long time ago; you should make this commitment as well, and I'm sure many of you have, is "Lord, You can have it all. Everything we have belongs to You. If you choose to take it away, that's Your business because it's Yours anyway".

And we are just stewards and money managers of what God has given us. And we want to be faithful with the things that God has given us. Not hoarding things and keeping things, but spend a life, giving things away. We don't own it. How much pain and suffering is in a marriage, a family with children because of just so much focus on things and stuff and who gets what. A contented home is one that is satisfied at any circumstance of life, whether we have a little or whether we have a lot, in good days and bad days that we are content in Christ.

So that is the contentment of the home. But let's talk about companions in the home. We already introduced you to the man who is to lead with character. There's nothing more important, gentlemen, than character and integrity in your life; that you would be a man who fears the Lord and is faithful to God. Men, it starts with men of character. But then a wife with commitment for, the Scripture says, look at the Psalm again. Verse 3, "Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house..."

Now ladies, maybe you're looking at that and say, "Well, that doesn't sound very distinguished, like a clinging vine in the house". No, it doesn't mean clinging. A vine is something very valuable in the Hebrew lifestyle, and the fruitfulness and the flourishing of a vine was vital to many of those homes and families, very sustenance. So when it says a wife is to be like a vine cherished and holding tight, wrapped around the life and the love of her husband, flourishing and beautiful.

So the companionship of marriage. And then there's the children in the home. We celebrate and then calibrate those children. I'll tell you what I mean by calibrate in just a moment. We celebrate them because Psalm 127, the passage just before us, says that children are a gift from the Lord, so celebrate the gifts of God. Someone said children will make you poor. No, children will make a poor man rich and a rich man poor. But really, children will make a poor man rich. And if God gives you children, either by birth or by fostering or by adoption, these are God's gifts to you. They're not in the way; they are the way to blessing in your life. We're blessed by our children. We're thankful for our children.

And I can remember when I became a dad for the first time and I prayed, Lord, whatever I do in life, help me to be a good dad. Help my children to know that I love You most of all. What I hope and pray they will say is that dad was the same at home as he was at church. The kids just want you to be real, not perfect. God knows I'm not a perfect dad or a perfect man in any way. But you want your children to say that you as a parent loved them and led them and lifted them. That there was joy in your home, in your family. And that your dad, your mom loved the Lord, feared the Lord and walked in His ways. That's what you want your children to say when you're gone, and your grandchildren after them. There's a lot of laughter in a home that's filled with the Lord.

There's a guy by the name of Bob Benson. He wrote this years ago, and it was so good, I've kept it and looked at it over time. I wanted to share it with you. It's called Laughter in the Walls:

I pass a lot of houses on my way home. Some pretty, some expensive, some inviting. But my heart always skips a beat when I turn down the road and I see my house, nestled against the hill. I guess I'm especially proud of the house and the way it looks, because I drew the plans myself. It started out large enough for us. I even had a study. Two teenage boys now reside there. And it had a guest room. My girl and nine dolls are permanent guests there. It had a small room Peg had hoped would be her sewing room. The two boys swinging on the Dutch door there now. They claimed it as a room of their own, so it really doesn't look right now as if I'm much of an architect. But it will get larger again. One by one, they will go away; to work, to college, to service, to their own houses. And then there will be room, a guest room, a study and a sewing room just for the two of us. But it won't be empty. Every corner, every room, every nick in the coffee table will be crowded with memories. Memories of picnics, parties, Christmases, bedside vigils, summers, fires, winter, going barefoot, leaving for vacation, cats, conversations, black eyes, graduations, first dates, ball games, arguments, washing dishes, bicycles, dogs, boats rides, getting home from vacation, meals, rabbits and a thousand other things that fill the lives of those who would raise five. And Peg and I will then sit quietly by the fire and listen to the laughter in the walls.

Let your house, your home, be filled with laughter, not just in the walls, but on the walls of your hearts. Make the memories, both good and bad, that sustain you; when God was there, showed up when you needed Him the most. Pray for God's blessing on your family. Pray for a family where there is laughter, where there is love, where there is Jesus. There's one more thing that I want to talk about, and that is the continuance or the conservation, if you will, of the home. Look at those last verses of our Psalm once again. It says, these are verses 5 and 6. "The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life".

So a lifelong prosperity that comes from God, because Jerusalem was the home of the Temple and the place of the Lord. And so this Jewish man is talking about Jerusalem and the prosperity that comes from there all the days of your life. And he says, "May you see your children's children". Here is your legacy. Here is your life lived out in future generations. It is the legacy of the children, I close with these words: There was a dad who wrote these words. "If you had it to do over again".

And he said: If I had it to do all over again, here's what I would do: I'd love my wife more in front of my children. I'd laugh with my children more at our mistakes and our joys. I'd listen more even to the youngest child. I'd be more honest about my own weaknesses and stop pretending perfection. I would pray differently for my children. Instead of focusing just on them, I'd focus on me. I would do more things with my children. I would be more encouraging and bestow more praise. I would pay more attention to the little things, deeds and words of love and kindness. And finally, if I had it to do all over again, I would share God more intimately with my family. I would use every ordinary thing that happens in every ordinary day to point them to God. If I had my life as a mom, a dad, a parent to do over again, this is what I would do, he said. But here's the thing. We don't get do-overs with this.

So this message is a kind of reminder to all of us, dads and moms, of what is most important. Not the kind of house you live in, but the kind of home that you have, a blessed Christian home, walking in the fear of the Lord in the ways of the Lord. So that's a reminder to all of us to keep going. It can be overwhelming, I know. But we do have the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ to enable us, empower us. The Christian life is a series of new beginnings. And you can have a new beginning and your family can have a new beginning if you will give your life to Christ and follow him first and foremost. No, you can't do it over. But you can start right now by following Jesus and leading your family well. You want a blessed family like that? Start today.