Yeah, you. Oh, that's a fun video. We're so glad you're here with us on Father's Day. What a great day for us to be able to recognize, celebrate, and pray over our dads. I know we've got a lot of dads with us in the audience today connecting with us online. We're glad you're connecting there and at our other campus as well.
So we're excited about the message that ties in with that idea of the role of fathers as we go through our message series. But before we get to that, at the end of the service, we're going to have some giveaways for dads. But before we do that, I want to recognize and pray over the dads that we have in the audience.
So all dads that are here, please stand up. Just remain standing for just a moment, please. Thank you. If you would, keep standing for a few minutes. I want to pray over you because I want you to recognize, as I hope you already do, that being a father is one of the greatest honors you could have, that God would entrust you with that responsibility. And you play an integral part in God's story for the world in your role as a father.
So let's pray today for all the dads.
Father, we thank you for all the fathers that are attending services today at Lakeshore and around the country and the world in churches. For they're taking a lead and taking this step today to come into your house to honor you and worship you. What a great example they're setting today, Father. We pray for your blessings on them, for you to grant them greater wisdom and discernment and direction in their role as dads and grandfathers.
Father, we just thank you for how dads have blessed so many families. And we know not every family has had the father presence that you designed families to be like, but we're thankful. We're thankful for all those men who have stepped up to help fill those gaps and have the influence over the young people coming behind them that you want us to have.
Father, guide us in our ability to impact the generations yet to come. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.
Let's thank those dads one more time.
Well, welcome again. Welcome, Smyrna Campus. We love you guys. Glad you're connected there. Happy Father's Day to all the dads there and everybody online as well. We're glad that you're with us today.
We are, on this Father's Day, going to be in Exodus chapter 6, the second half of this chapter, beginning with verse 14. If you want to be turning there, we're going straight through the book of Exodus. If you missed any of these messages, they connect to each other going through the book here. So you can go back to our YouTube channel. All the messages are archived there so you can catch any that you might have missed.
There are, how many of you, I just want to do a little survey. Smyrna Campus, you can do this too, anybody online. How many of you have had your genealogy traced through some company or service that does that? Anybody? All right, I see a few hands up here at the Antioch Campus. Maybe some at the Smyrna Campus as well.
You could even go beyond the genealogy now. You could send in your DNA sample and they'll track, you know, trace all the way back on your DNA to see different family traits and things maybe that have been passed along or countries of origin and regions of origin that you might have for your family. It's pretty interesting.
I've always been a little afraid to do that because I know a lot of people in my family that I don't want to go back much further. So I'm thankful for my family, but they're, you know, most of us have some characters in the family.
There was one genealogy services company that had this advertisement. They said, "Find your relatives for you $100 and up. Prevent relatives from finding you $1,000 and up." You may have some relatives. You may have relatives you don't want to know about or want them to know about you.
But there was another family that was really proud of their family history and family tradition. Their family name was the Taylors. And their ancestors had traveled to America as pilgrims on the Mayflower. They included congressmen, successful entrepreneurs, famous sports figures, television stars. They decided to research their family history and have someone write a book of their family history.
So they found this genealogist and writer to help them with the project. The only problem was they uncovered one great uncle, Jefferson Taylor, who had been a convicted criminal and executed in the electric chair. And the writer said, "Don't worry, I can handle that in a tactful way in the book of the family history."
So here's what she wrote about this, okay, about Uncle Jefferson Taylor. It says, "Great Uncle Jefferson Taylor occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution. He was attached to his position by the strongest of ties. And his death came as a great shock."
It all depends on the spin, right? The spin that you put on it when it comes to your genealogy. Most of us, if we look at our family tree carefully, we're going to have some really good parts. And we're going to have some parts that maybe aren't that great. I mean, we all are flawed human beings. We all have sin and failures and shortcomings.
And I know they came up with a term many years ago now called dysfunctional family. And you've probably heard that term, maybe used that term. And friends, I want you to know, if you have a dysfunctional family, you are in good company. I have never met a family that didn't have some dysfunction in it.
Now, I know there are greater levels of dysfunction. And some families certainly excel in that area. But we all have some dysfunction in our families. And that's true as we're looking at the Exodus narrative. When you look at Moses and Aaron, we're coming to a section here beginning with verse 14, where he gives us their genealogy, a picture of their history, of where they come from.
And I want to read through it. And here's what I want you to do. Follow along with me and guess how we should pronounce these names. Some of these names are really... We don't know how they were pronounced originally. We don't have a record of the sound of how some of these names were said.
So I'm just going to act like I know how to say them and go through it fast. What I have learned as a pastor is if you say all these really fast, nobody knows if you got it right or not. So I'm going to read through it. You follow along with me here, beginning with verse 14.
These were the heads of their families. The sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, were Hanak and Pelu, Hezron and Carmi. There were the clans of Reuben. The sons of Simeon were Jemul, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shal, the son of a Canaanite woman. These were the clans of Simeon.
These are the names of the sons of Levi, according to their records. Gershon, Korhoth, and Merari. Levi lived 137 years. I like that they put that in there about Levi, a long life there. The sons of Gershon by clans were Libni and Shimei. The sons of Korhoth were Amron, Ishar, Hebron, and Uziel. Korhoth lived 133 years.
The sons of Merari were Mali and Mushi. That's a cute little name there. I don't know if they were twins or not. Got a birthday party for Mali and Mushi. These are the clans of Levi, according to their records. Amron married his father's sister, Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amron lived 137 years.
The sons of Ishar were Korah, Nepheg, and Zichri. The sons of Uziel were Mishael, Elizabethan, and Sithri. Aaron married Elizabeth, the daughter of Abimadad, and sister of Nishan. And she bore him Nadab, and Abihu, and Eliezer, and Ithamar.
The sons of Korah, are you following with me here? Here we go. The sons of Korah were Asir, Akalah, Abassah. These were Korahites clans. Eliezer, son of Aaron, married one of the daughters of Phuteel, and she bore him Phinehas.
These were the heads of the Levite families, clan by clan. It was this Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, "Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions." They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, this same Moses and Aaron.
Hallelujah. All right. I probably got about half of them correct. But you don't know, right? You don't know for sure either. You could tell me it was supposed to be that. You don't know. Okay. So let's take it easy. We're all in this together. Nobody knows.
Okay. And you wonder, you know, as you read through scripture, especially if you go through like reading your Bible in a year and things like that, you'll get to these sections where there are these genealogies. And the temptation is always to kind of just skip them or just kind of go fast, you know, and make an attempt at reading it. And you give up and move on.
Because sometimes we get the idea it's not that important. And I don't even know why they put that in there. But there's a reason for this genealogy and for all the genealogies that are in scripture. There's more than one reason. There's a lot of good reasons those things are included here.
One is the Bible wants to present information upon which we can see evidence that is accurate and true. And genealogies help present to us records, some of which can be checked extra biblically, but other records from the time. And we can see that they spoke of real people that lived in that time.
And they got it right about the time period and the area where they lived and who was the rulers in that area at the time. And it's evidence for the reliability of scripture. That's one reason it's there.
Another reason it's there, remember the promise that was made back in Genesis. One was coming through the born of a woman who would crush the head of the serpent. Then later, to Abraham, he says it's through his family and that lineage that this one was going to come who was going to bless all the world, all peoples in the world.
So genealogies help us see that God kept his promise just like he said he would. It's the exact lineage that he said it was going to happen through and come through. And so these genealogies do matter. When you get to the genealogies of Jesus, they matter. Because it traces back to God's promise that through certain lines, through certain people, the Savior, the Messiah.
It's evidence for the Messiah being Jesus when you see these genealogies. What a great thing that God has done for us to give us these genealogies.
But there's another reason that I want to focus on today. There are others too, but another one I really want us to focus on today is this. We don't know a lot about all of these people, but we know something about some of these people in this genealogy.
And you know what we know about this family? It was a mess. It was a mess. A messy family tree. It was confused. It was hard to understand in some parts. There were great failures. There were also some really good people and some really good accounts and some good things that happened in some of their lives.
There's a little bit of everything in this genealogy. So why does God include this genealogy at this point in this part of the Exodus narrative with all the good and all the bad that's in there?
Well, I'm convinced that it's because of what he says in verse 26 and 27. Let's look at those verses again. It was this Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, "Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions." They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, this same Moses and Aaron.
Now I read it in a dignified way, but if you really get the gist of what's being said here, here's how you read it. You would say it. Yeah, believe it or not, this is the same two guys that God called to do this great work of bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. Can you believe it? Out of this family God called these two characters to go back to Egypt and talk to Pharaoh, the most powerful man on the earth at the time and lead them to be freed from slavery in Egypt.
Can you believe it was this Moses and Aaron that God chose to use? That's the gist of what he's saying here. When you see this family tree, can you believe God picked these guys to do this great work that he's called them to do?
I mean, even if you just look at their individual lives, it's not great all the time. Moses murdered somebody, right, before he was called to do this. It's this Moses and Aaron that God calls to this great work.
Now, the reason I believe God makes sure this is in here is so that you and I could understand God can use us too. That our family tree, we've got some good stuff. I bet you've got some great people in your family tree. But even if you don't, even if you can't trace your family tree, it won't matter. God still has a plan that includes you.
Your part and be included in this plan for the healing of the broken world that came because of sin. He wants you. He wants to use you. You see, he can cleanse and restore and empower and indwell even Aaron and Moses from this family to do all the great things that he was calling them to do. And he can do that for you and for me too.
I've said and I've joked all along, if you go back far enough in any family clan, here's what you get to. We all came from dirt. We all came from dirt to start with. I saw a meme just yesterday. I showed it to Sue Ann. I'd seen it before, but it had Adam and Eve's baby pictures. It had a pile of dirt and a rib. We all come from dirt.
And so what I'm going to do today is spend some time talking about how in this family tree, we see that they had some of the same problems that families have today. And I want us to see today on Father's Day how dads, moms, all of us, and the role God has called us to, God can use us. He is using us, if you're already a follower of Jesus.
He's using us for his plan and his story to heal the brokenness in our lives and the lives of those people around us. And I want to start out by talking about what psychologists have come up with this term. And it's really a scriptural term as well. And that is the strongholds.
They get a hold of people in life that are negative, that hurt, that bring harm or damage to yourself and to your family, these strongholds. Now, depending on your church background, when I say the word strongholds, if you came from a charismatic background, you might be thinking about demonic strongholds. And that's part of what the scripture talks about.
But what we're talking about in this case, in this family history, obviously Satan is behind any of the negative destructive stuff that happens. But what we're talking about is the daily struggles and strongholds that get a hold of our lives we think sometimes disqualify us from being used by God.
And if we let them rule and reign, they can keep us from being used by God for these good purposes. Here's how Dr. Eric Mason explains strongholds. He says, "A stronghold is a mindset, value system, or thought process that hinders your growth, the growth of others, and your exalting Jesus above everything in your life."
I like that description because he's talking about believing the wrong things, believing false things, being deceived by Satan to think a certain way about things that's not the way God wants you to think about those things. That's how a stronghold takes hold in your heart, in your mind, in your life.
He goes on to quote David Wilkerson who said this, "A stronghold is an accusation planted firmly in your mind. Satan establishes strongholds in God's people by implanting in their minds lies, falsehoods, and misconceptions, especially regarding God's nature."
What's being described around the idea of strongholds is that we believe something or see the world in such a way that's distorted from the way God intends it to be. So I want to spend some time just mentioning, first of all, some very common, four of the most common strongholds that are hurting families today in our world, okay, that are hurting.
And dads, this is important for us to know so that we can protect our families. One of the roles God gave to the dad, to the father, is to protect the family. And so these strongholds are things that we need to protect the family from. Now, if the dad's not present to do that, then others have to jump in and try to take this on. And you can, and God will help you with that.
But that's especially supposed to be a stronghold. And so we need to protect the family from that. The role of the father in a family is to protect the family. One of the biggest strongholds in our community right now is addiction. And in our community around Nashville, the biggest area of addiction that's destroying families in our day is drug and alcohol addiction, by far.
It's the greatest destructive force tearing down families in our culture today. When you read Moses and Aaron's genealogy, you see some of this in their genealogy. You see people who were getting drunk and doing really bad things under the influence of drugs and alcohol. And you don't think about drugs back then, but yeah, they had drugs back then too.
Yeah. And by the way, alcohol is a drug. So they're both drugs. But drug and alcohol addiction is destroying families. And when you think about it, it's a drug that's destroying families. When families are destroyed, what happens to the culture? The culture is destroyed. It's torn down with the destruction of families.
Satan understands the best way to tear down a people is to destroy the family unit. It's to tear down the family unit. If we can break that apart, if we can eliminate that, having a strength there, we can destroy a culture very quickly. And we see it in history. It has happened. It's a cycle that has repeated over and over again in history with great societies.
When the family unit was not valued anymore and honored anymore as God designed it to be, those cultures ended up being destroyed as a result. And that's not the only thing that happened that destroyed those cultures, but that was a big part of what brought down some of the greatest societies that have existed on planet Earth.
And so we need to be careful to protect the culture of the family. And addiction to drugs and alcohol will destroy the culture of the family. And so we need to destroy those families. You probably saw in the news like I did this past week where detectives had to go into a home. They found the corpse of a baby in that home. It was decaying and rotting and it smelled awful.
And all around that home, they arrested the people in the home, the mom and the dad and even others in the family that were there. It was drug paraphernalia all over the house while that baby rotted and died in that house. Addiction to drugs and alcohol destroys lives. And that's why the safest thing is to never start, right?
That's easy to say if you're not there, if you've not done that, if you've not gotten connected or involved in that or addicted to anything before in your life. It's easy to say, "Well, you should just stay away from it." But once, here's the thing about addiction. Once you are addicted, then it's got a hook in you, a grip in you, in your heart, in your mind.
It's not just, "Well, I should just stop." Now, you're able to stop quickly and easily just by deciding to stop. But not everybody works that way. Not everybody's chemical makeup is that way. Not everybody's mindset is that way. There's so many contributing factors to why people abuse drugs and alcohol.
A lot of it has to do with their family history, with how they were raised, with what life experiences and traumas they went through growing up that led them to that. Both my parents had alcohol addictions, and they battled it their whole lives. And I grew up with that, and I saw that. And I know a big part of that for my family, especially for my dad, was fighting in the war and seeing what he saw in the war.
And he came back with that addiction to smoking and to drinking, and he just battled that. It was such a, what he saw, he never would describe in detail because it was just too hard for him to even talk about. And alcohol would numb that a little bit, right? It would allow him to have some escape from it for a little while.
And so I could see the why behind a lot of people that end up being addicted to drugs and alcohol. But I can also see the damage that it's bringing to them. I experienced it myself. I know what it can do. And as a pastor, I've witnessed it in so many families.
And the most deceptive thing about drug and alcohol addiction is the alcohol and the drugs tell you you're not addicted. They tell you you're in control, that this is not a problem for you, that everybody else telling you you're doing too much is, they're the problem. You've got this. You're in control. That's what drugs and alcohol will do. They'll lie to you and tell you that you're really the one controlling this, not the drugs or the alcohol.
If you are battling with that right now, we're going to talk about some steps to take to help with that. But I would encourage you to start with recognizing that that addiction, unless it's handled in the right way and responded to in the right way, it doesn't get better on its own. And it will only get worse in the consequences that it brings. Just know that right up front.
The second addiction in that area that is really affecting our culture and our society is sexual immorality. It is rampant in our country and in our culture. The morals and the standards for our culture have truly changed dramatically in one lifetime. When I was a younger person growing up, there was a natural order to the way people did things.
You didn't, weren't sexually, well, you were told, taught not to be sexually active until you got married. And that was to be exclusively between a husband and wife, a man and a woman, and a marriage covenant together. That was for the generation after that. The second addiction in that area that is really affecting our culture and the consequences of that is that it's not the norm anymore.
And that's not what most people are even being taught anymore growing up in this country. So you have what the Bible calls sexual immorality not only being practiced, it was always practiced to some degree, but now you see it being practiced more, but the difference is it's now not only accepted, it's promoted as a good option for you, as a good choice for you to take in your life, as the norm now.
And then there's another growing thing that's connected to all of these. And that is, I've just labeled it selfishness. And what it is, is this philosophy of life that life should revolve around you. That everything should cater to you. And that means your feelings. Just how you feel about things. Everybody should just be willing to go and do what they want to do.
And that's what I'm saying. You should go along with however you feel about it. And not only accept it for you, but have to say it's good. Right? You want to, if this is your philosophy, then it's not enough for people to say, "Well, that's your life, you can do what you want." Now they have to celebrate how you feel about that and what you believe about that.
Right? And so what the Bible calls sin, we have to say now, you don't have to, but what we're being taught to do, encouraged to do, is to say, "Celebrate even what the Bible calls sin." And it all comes back to a selfish way of living life. If I feel like this, that makes it right. That makes it okay.
Our feelings are ruling if we have a selfish society. And what happens in a selfish society is, instead of creating harmony, what does it really create? Conflict and division more than ever before. Because your feelings aren't my feelings. And my feelings aren't your feelings. And my feelings aren't your feelings. That doesn't create unity. That creates division. If we're letting feelings rule our culture.
And that's where we're at now, to a large degree, in our culture. So there's addictions, there's sexual immorality, there's selfishness, and then there's another one. And this is one of the most dangerous ones for Christians to fall into. This is a stronghold that I call apathy. Where you get to the place that you just don't care.
I don't care what anybody else does. I don't care how you want to live your life. I just don't want peace. I just want to escape. I just don't want to have to deal with it, right? I just want to move out in the country somewhere, up in the mountains, or out to the beach, and just have peace. And let everybody do whatever they want to do. Apathy.
You see, the problem with apathy is the opposite of the life God calls you to as a Christ follower. He calls us to engage in the culture, not to escape the culture. He calls us to be involved as living examples of love and truth, and what's right and what's wrong. He's calling us to be the people that point people to Him.
You can't do that by being apathetic about everybody else. You have to care about what everybody's believing, what everybody's thinking, and about what everybody's doing all around you, if you're going to be fulfilling the mission that you're going to be fulfilling. You have to realize that God has called you to as a Christ follower. Apathy never fits that. It never fits that.
And way too many Christians just want to check out, because it's hard. It's hard to be engaged in the culture when they aren't believing what you believe, and wanting to live like you live, and wanting to follow the teachings of God and honor God. It's hard to engage in that culture.
In America before, years ago, it was easier to do that because more people were doing that too, and supporting that too. Now that's not the case. It's gotten harder to actually engage the culture now than it's ever been in my lifetime. And maybe you're feeling that, and you're just wanting to escape.
I see more and more Christians, their goal in life is to just get away from it all. That's what their whole life is about, is just getting away from it. Things are getting worse in this neighborhood, I'll just move further out. Things are not really good at my job, then I'll just leave that job and run to another one that I think is going to be a better environment, right?
We just keep running and running, and churches are just as guilty because churches in America have kept relocating further and further out into the suburbs so they can be the big mega churches in their communities instead of engaging the culture right where they are.
And that's one reason I love Lakeshore so much, is our leaders haven't chosen to run away from that. We can't. We care about our community. We care about the people who live around us. We care about Satan gaining ground here when we want God to gain ground here.
And he put the church here to gain ground for the kingdom. That's what we exist for. And so we don't want to let those strongholds take over our lives. In Moses and Aaron's genealogy, you see every one of those that I just talked about. Every one of those strongholds were part of his family heritage.
And maybe one or more of these are part of your family heritage too, like they are in my family heritage. Now, I don't push this on anybody else. It's something they have to do. But when I saw what alcohol did in my family, when I got married to Sue Ann, I made a covenant with her that I would never drink a drop of alcohol. And I haven't since we got married.
Now, that doesn't make me any better than anybody else. Here's what it makes me. It makes me aware of the problem, the potential problem, because of my family heritage that I don't want to ever become a stronghold in my house, in my home, in my life.
Now, for you, it may not be alcohol. It may be other things on this list. Or maybe some things that aren't on this list that were part of the strongholds in your family. And you are the only one who can decide how you respond to that.
You see, some of the strongholds, if you look at it from a positive side, there's some good things that you can consider. There's strongholds, too, right? Maybe you grew up in a praying family, and that was a stronghold, you could say, in your family. That's a good one. You want to continue those good ones, right?
I see so many people who say when somebody died in their family, "Oh, they were the ones that held the family together. They were the rock of the family." Well, guess what needs to happen now? Somebody else needs to step up and be that for their family. Don't just write it off now because that person's gone.
If there were some good things there that should continue for your family, what should you do? Step up and be that man, be that woman for your family. Don't just act like it can't be that way anymore. You can't have that for your family anymore. Of course you can.
But the next generation has to pick up the baton and go with it. You can't just expect it to happen without somebody taking that onto be that person. Moses and Aaron had to choose, are they going to take up the baton of doing what God was calling them to do?
And their family heritage, they had some people who had done that, but not everybody. But now it's up to them. If they're going to honor God and fulfill God's plan and purpose, they have to pick up the baton for their generation and do that. Just like we have to decide that for our families.
So I want to spend the rest of the time here quickly talking about breaking cycles of the bad strongholds in your life. What are some steps to take? Well, the first one seems like, you know, from a pastor, the most obvious one, surrender to Christ. That's where you got to start.
You got to bring everything under the lordship of Jesus in your life. If you're going to break these strongholds in your life, any of these strongholds, and any that aren't on the list that you want to break. Here's what I know about alcohol and drug addiction. Here's what I know about sexual immorality. Here's what I know about apathy and all these things is only the power of God can redeem us from those things.
I know there's some good programs out there to help with these things. And I'm not going to downplay any of them. Many of them point you to God. Point you to depending on His power, His strength. But I'm telling you, if you leave that element out, you're not strong enough to do this consistently over a long period of time.
You can have moments of success, days of success, weeks of success, maybe even months of success by your own willpower. But friends, unless there's a transformation of your life, this is not going to stick. There has to be total transformation and only Jesus provides that.
In Acts 2, beginning of verse 36, remember Peter's preached that first gospel sermon. He says, "Let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah." When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. They said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
Here's what he told them to do. "Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for who? For all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call."
You see, that's where it starts for you and for me if we're going to break strongholds in our lives, surrendering to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. For Moses and Aaron, it was surrendering to God himself who was calling them to this life he was calling them to. For us, it's surrendering to God through his son, Jesus Christ and the provision he's made for us on the cross.
You have to start there. Now, then you look for that other help, right? If there's an addiction that you're trying to break, then you need to surrender to Christ and then let Christ empower you and help you. You could go through AA. You could go through different Sober Living America that we partner with here at Lakeshore.
You could go through these other programs and they're good and they've got good principles and good practices. But you need to combine that with a total surrender to the Lordship of Christ because his presence and his power and his provision is the only thing that'll get you over the top. No matter how good the program is.
Well, the second step we need to take to break these strongholds is understand that our responsibility is to teach our children too, take that seriously. That we're supposed to be teaching the generations coming behind us what God wants for their lives.
Remember in Deuteronomy, he's talking about this same story we're in in Exodus where they are going further along in the story when they're about to enter into this land God is taking them to. In Deuteronomy 6, the beginning where he says, where verse 4 God says to them, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength."
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. So it starts with us, right? Then he says, "Impress them on your children." That word in the Hebrew translated impress means to use great force and constant pressure to put this into your hearts and minds of your kids.
This is a constant pressure of putting it in there consistently over time. Impress them, it says, on your children, right? Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. What does that cover? All the time.
This should be your life with your kids, teaching these things all the time. Just as you're doing life, you're teaching them. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. In their culture, that meant they had things that they would wear and do that would symbolize that they belong to God, they honor God, and they would carry around scriptures with them that they could pull out and read and all of that.
It was a constant saturation into the lives of our kids, the teachings of Jesus Christ. I want to tell you something. We've got an amazing children's program and youth program here at Lakeshore. And these volunteers and staff, they do an amazing job. Let's thank them one more time here.
But we have your kids for an hour or so on Sunday. Maybe. Maybe another hour or so on Sunday night or Wednesday night with a youth program, right? Who are they with the rest of the time? Yeah, you. But don't underestimate you and the environment you put them in the rest of the time, too.
What's the school environment you've got them in like? What are their teachers like? What are their coaches like? You see, they have a lot of time with your kids. And that culture out there around us in our community right now is not what it was when we were growing up.
And the schools are not like they were when we were growing up. And the curriculum they're hearing at school is not what it was when we were growing up. Friends, we're going to have to really press into our kids more than ever the teachings of God, set the example for them because it says, put it in our hearts first. They need to see that.
In Ephesians 6 and verse 4, he says, "Fathers, dad's day, all right? Do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." And in the Greek, training means like military training. And he's not saying be like a military house. That's not what he's saying.
He's saying make sure, though, you're actually training your children in the instruction of the Lord. When we say military, sometimes we think, you know, if you've ever been in the military, you know it can get pretty rough sometimes. Well, sometimes parenting's rough, too. You have to do some hard things. You have to say no. They want you to say yes.
You have to say, "Do this instead of that." You have to say, "That's not acceptable, but this is." You know, it's hard, but it's training that needs to take place. And I'm just going to say this, parents. Listen to me, please. Stop trying to be the cool parent. Please. God didn't call you to be the cool parent.
He called you to train your children in the instruction of the Lord. And he didn't call you to train your child to be the best athlete. He didn't call you to be the best athlete. Or the best musician, or the best actor, or the best something else. He called you to train them up in the instruction of the Lord.
Now, doing those other things, they're not evil. They're not bad. But what's taken over our culture is more parents are training them in more other things than they are training them in the instruction of the Lord. And the training in the instruction of the Lord is being left out.
Oh, but we've got them at church. We got them in the youth program. Yeah, we get a couple of hours for your kids. And we're going to teach them the truth of God's word while they're with us. But friends, training happens all the time.
And if you're not training them in the instruction of the Lord, guess what Satan is making sure happens to them? They're getting training in the instruction opposed to the Lord in a big way. And that's why I think more and more we have to engage in teaching our kids the way we should.
Church, our church, Lakeshore, we want to partner with you. As a parent, grandparent, someone who's raising up kids right now, we want to partner with you. But friends, don't expect the church to replace what you're supposed to be doing with your own kids and your own grandkids. It can never replace what you're supposed to be doing.
And then there's another step we can take to break these strongholds, and that's serve others and set that example for the generations coming behind us. Be a servant. You see, we live in a culture that praises not servitude, but you're a leading, successful leader in the country, right? You're a successful leader in your business. You're a successful leader in your community.
That's what gets praised. And that's what gets the attention. And so we as parents and grandparents and just adults that have children looking up to us, sometimes our biggest goal is to get them to see us as a leader when our biggest goal should be to set the example of what it means to be a servant in the kingdom of God.
Do they see you serving? Is that the example they see in your life? Are you letting yourself put your own ego out of the way to serve others? In Philippians 2, verses 3 and 4, it says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others."
Ha! Be a servant. Set the example of a servant to the generations coming behind you. Moses and Aaron, it looks like they're being called to a leadership role, and they are. They're going to have to do some leadership things and going before Pharaoh and all that.
But guess what? Moses would have been very content staying out in the country with his father-in-law taking care of the sheep until God called him to engage with his family. And Moses said, and served them in this way.
I've seen so many people in America, in American church, whose goal is to retire and take it easy. Moses was there. He was retirement age. You know how old he was when God called him? 80. He was past retirement age. Right? And he could have said, "Lift a youngin', take care of that."
But you know what they needed? They needed a mature man to take care of this. They needed somebody who had lived some life, who had had some experiences, who had made mistakes but found God's grace and knew what that was about. They needed somebody that could pour some wisdom into them that the youngins didn't have yet.
And that's what the church needs from the older people today too. Instead of checking out, you need to check in. You need to contribute with the freedom that God gives you. If you are able to retire from your job, that's great. Hallelujah. Praise God for that.
But that just frees you up to do some great things for the kingdom. It frees you up to do some things you weren't free to do before. It frees you up to invest in the generations coming behind you. People sometimes will ask me, "Pastor Andy, you've been doing this a long time. When are you going to retire?"
I said, "I don't know. Whenever God gives me time, I'm going to retire. When God calls me home." Now I may not always be able to do what I'm doing now for the rest of my life, but I'm never going to quit pouring into the kingdom of God. And neither should you.
This is not something where you reach a point where you don't need to do this anymore. This is something that's a life calling for all of us. Because the people coming behind us all are looking to us and they need us and they need the wisdom that we can bring and the experience that we can bring.
And they need us. And they need the wisdom that we can bring and the experience that we can bring. And they need us. And they need the experience that we bring. Even the failures and mistakes that we've gone through, that's part of the wisdom that we can bring to them and warn them about, right?
Some of you are here just to serve as a warning, I can tell you. But God can use that too, right? To make a difference for those coming behind us. Which leads to the last thing. And that is to advance the kingdom. We break strongholds by understanding that the most important thing we have to do while we're here is advance the kingdom.
And that's what we're here for. And that's what we're here for. For the kingdom of God. You know the Great Commission, Matthew 28, says this, Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore, this is by whose authority? Jesus. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teach them to obey everything I've commanded you until you retire."
Is that what it says? You reach age 65, you can take a break. No. He said, "Surely I'm with you always. How long? To the very end of the age." How long do we need to keep doing this? Until Jesus comes back. That's the end of this age.
See, the age we're in is the age that will lead up to the coming of Jesus. And until that happens, what do we need to be doing? Advancing the work of the kingdom. Bringing more people to Jesus.
Here's the amazing thing about the correlation between Moses and Aaron and the great commission that God has given us. You see, Moses and Aaron are called to go and deliver the people from bondage and slavery, right? A whole people of God were bound by. Now, their sin had brought them to that place. That's part of why they're there.
But they wanted out of that place. And God chose Moses and Aaron to go and deliver them from that place of bondage and slavery. Now, remember everything there we said is pointing forward, right? Everything in Exodus is a type or a shadow of what is to come.
And he had already said to, in Genesis, to the serpent, right? One's coming. Crush the head of Satan. He said to Abraham, one's coming through your family line, who's going to be that savior, that Messiah, that deliverer, that the whole world's going to be blessed through, through your descendants.
And now he's saying to Moses and Aaron, here's what I want you to do. And the actual deliverance came as a part of putting the blood right on the doorposts of the homes. The families covered by the blood of the lamb were saved and delivered and freed from bondage and slavery.
Do you see anything pointing towards something else? To the work of the kingdom of God today, which is to present Jesus, the lamb of God to the world who needs to be covered by his blood to be delivered from the bondage of sin and death.
We're called to the greatest mission on earth. Today is to advance the kingdom of God that brings salvation to a lost and dying people. And our work is not done until Jesus comes back.
And your family tree does not make you unqualified, no matter what you find there, to be used by God in this great mission that he's called you to. And your family tree doesn't excuse you from it. And your family tree doesn't mean it will naturally just happen unless you choose Jesus and serving him.
Maybe there are those here today who are ready to take that step. You see, you can not only break a cycle with the help of Jesus, you can start a brand new one, a better one. You could start a lineage starting with you that is so much greater and better and more effective for the kingdom than anything in the past.
If you just surrender it, you're going to be a better person. You're going to be a better person. If you just surrender it to him and let him take you from where you are and use you to lift up Jesus to the world.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you that in Christ, we have this example of redemption and renewal, breaking of cycles through the power of the blood of Jesus, the power of his resurrection.
We see in Moses and Aaron how they, even this Moses and Aaron, with that family tree, were able to be used by you for something so powerful, so great, that pointed to Jesus coming to deliver us all. Father, if you could use them with their family tree, you can use any of us with ours.
I pray for those here today who might be ready to take that step of surrendering their lives to Jesus, that as this invitation is offered, your spirit would prompt them and they would be obedient to your call. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
So we stand and sing. We invite you to come right up front if you have a step of obedience you need to take today.
You are God. You are good. You are God. And you are good. You are good. And you are my...
Everyone, have a seat. We had a couple of prayer requests I want to share with you real quick, so come on up.
We can get this mic to work. You wanted a mic, right? No, you didn't.
My... And she comes today asking for prayer. She's had a job that's ending, and she's needing a new job very quickly. So let's be praying for her to be able to have that provided.
I know God's already gone ahead here to make provision for that. So let's lift up both of these needs in prayer.
Father, we come to you on behalf of both of these requests, knowing that you hear the prayers of your children, and that you don't just hear the noise. You listen, and you know us personally, intimately. You know every detail of our lives.
So when we come to you with these prayers, it's not that you didn't know what we're going to ask for. It's that you want us to see you as the source, as the answer for the needs in our lives, so that you can show us your faithfulness.
So we pray that we would see your faithfulness in these requests. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.
God bless you. Thank you.
At this time, we're going to have a time of communion around the Lord's table. And Walter's going to come and lead us in that.
As we come to the end of our time together today, we're going to have some giveaways for the dads real quick. I hope all the dads got a ticket when you came in. If you didn't, go back out to the lobby there real quick. Walter's back there. He'll be glad to get you a ticket if you didn't get one already.
We've got three drawings we're going to do. And the first one is for the grand prize right here. This is a very nice cooler. And it's really nice for more than the reason that it's a really good high-end cooler. It also has in it some steaks and brats and hot dogs and all that good stuff.
So a little Father's Day gift to one of the fathers today. Candy, will you help me out? Just bring the bucket up to me and I'll draw a name out. Shake it up really good.
All right. I don't want anybody accusing me of anything here. Here we go. My name's not in here, by the way.
All right. Here we go. All right, dads, look at your tickets real quick. 396-524. 396-524. Come on up.
All right. Here you go, my friend. A verification. Yeah. Yeah, I guess he gets it. All right. Congratulations. Happy Father's Day to you. Thank you.
All right. But wait, there's more. We have some gift cards as well for second prize here. We're going to draw another ticket.
All right. No pressure, right? All right. 396-563. There he is in the back. Come on up, Jeff.
I've definitely got to check this ticket. I got to be sure. All right. Yeah. He did win. Okay. Congratulations.
But wait. There's one more. Another gift card we're going to give away. Let's see. All right. 396-531. All right. All right. Come on up, brother. Congratulations to you. Happy Father's Day.
That's it, man. You got it. All right. All right. Good.
All right. Good. We're so thankful for all the dads here today. We want to thank you. We want to, again, just continue to thank God for the good work of dads that are trying to do the right thing and be the right example and teach those coming behind them. Thank you for all that you do along those lines.
Don't forget, if you like to worship, they're giving them an offering. We have offering boxes available, one in the back of the auditorium, one in the hallway as you exit. You can drop your offerings in the top slot there. You can also give online at lakeshorechristian.com. Just click on the gift tab there.
And then, of course, you can mail in your offerings to the church office as well. Jeremy, where you at, man? Come on up here, buddy. Jeremy's going to close us out with a couple of other announcements and with prayer. Thanks, Jeremy.
on Jun 16, 2024
