Bible Verse: 1 Peter 2:4-10
WELCOME
Pastor Cris Paavola:
Good morning. Yeah, what an awesome moment to celebrate with Greg, just a baptism like that. It’s cool watching God do a 180 on someone’s life and just seeing him and his spirit at work and no one’s beyond reach. It’s just awesome. And I love what Greg said in the video, the baptism video that we were watching just before the service where he kind of acknowledged this is not just something that’s for his life and something that God is doing in his life. This is something God is doing in his family’s life. This is like a story that he’s writing in the life of his family. And what happened today, what you guys just watched is a moment that is changing the direction and quality and trajectory of a family’s life.
SERIES
And that’s, I mean, honestly, it’s like a perfect backdrop to what we’re talking about today because today we are kicking off a brand-new series called A Healthy Family.
And this applies to all of us, right? Because I know your family’s not perfect, but every family can be healthier. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about. And I’m excited about this for a series because I think this applies to all of us on this day where kids’ ministry kicks back off and everything gets rocking and rolling again down the hallway there. But I think this applies to all of us because if you’re single, this applies to you because you’re thinking about the kind of spouse you want to meet and what kind of family are we going to build someday? Or if you are married without kids and you’ve got young kids, you’re like, okay, this is the kind of family that the things that we need to institute while the kids are young or preschool, middle school, elementary school, high school, doesn’t matter the age, you can always be healthier.
And then if you’re empty nest or maybe retirement, you can think about we’re still a family and things have changed, but how can we continue to be healthy as a family even in this season of life? Or even if you’re in retirement age and you’ve got grandkids and your kids have families, you could think about what is the influence that we can have on them and how can we pray for them and help them and encourage them and equip them to be a healthier family. So this is something that applies to all of us.
When I look at families and I see families who have struggles or just life gets in the way and the family sometimes gets along, but sometimes they get at each other, there’s four culprits that I tend to see again and again. And so we’re going to talk about all four of these over the next four weeks.
CONFLICT ATTITUDES ROLES FOUNDATION
So, we’re going to talk about today with the healthy foundation and what that looks like. Week two, we’re going to talk about healthy roles. And I think that’s going to be a really interesting conversation because we don’t really talk about that very much. We’re going to talk about healthy attitudes, how we interact with each other. And then week four, we’re going to get into healthy conflict. It’s inevitable. We’re going to have fights. So how do we do this in a healthy way that doesn’t go nuclear? And it’s just every week I think it deserves to be a standalone week.
And I want to let them all be and exist on their own so we can think about it fully and thoroughly together. Starting with week one here then today where we’re talking about a healthy foundation and what this looks like. And I think all of us have an idea. Anyone ever done foundation repair in their house? Ever had to do a foundation repair? Anyone? Okay. Yep. It ain’t cheap and it is not easy. It’s super invasive. My neighbor back in St. Louis, the homes were like hundred year old homes, very old homes. And one day he just noticed the doors weren’t shutting quite the way they should. And then he started noticing drafts a lot more. And then they started smelling moisture in the basement and they got inspection and sure enough they had some foundation. It was super cool to watch actually how they fix it, the equipment they brought in, but he had to take out a second mortgage to pay for the foundation repairs because it’s a big, big job, man.
FAMILY FEUD
And when you talk about foundation in a family, it’s trying to get down to the most important aspect of a family.
And if I asked you guys, if we pulled this room of what’s the most important part of a foundation of a family, you’d get a bunch of different answers. Actually speaking of family, family feud style, they did a question on this of what’s the foundation of a healthy family? And it was family feud, right? So we asked a hundred people, what’s the foundation of a healthy family?
WHAT’S THE FOUNDATION FOR A HEALTHY FAMILY
And if you were guessing answers, what are some answers you would guess on there?
This is family feud. Faith? Parents? Trust? Communicate?
Love 26
Communication 21
Trust 14
Time Together 13
Respect 9
Faith 8
Honesty 5
Commitment 4
Okay. Number eight was, that’s your job. You’re the studio audience. You’re supposed to. No, I’m backing up. We’re doing this the right way. Number eight. That’s perfect. I’m Steve Harvey, I guess, or something. No, we’re not going to do that for all eight answers. That’d really be overkill. So here’s all eight answers. Honesty. Number eight was commitment. Number seven is honesty. Number six is faith. Number five is respect. Number four is time together. Number three is trust. Number two is communication. Number one is love. I think those are pretty good answers. I think most of us would say something on that screen. I’m going to just throw a curveball at you though. If you were going to ask God what is the foundation of a healthy family, he wouldn’t say any of those. He’d say one thing and it’s not on the screen.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
And it’s going to be surprising. It’s simple, but it changes the way we think about family. And as we talk about this, I think you’re going to see just the opportunity to be a healthier family according to what God says and how it’s different than what we might say. And so we just heard this reading from the Apostle Peter talking about foundation. He’s kind of, I think, using his inspiration, the story that Jesus tells about foundations. He tells this famous story about building two different people build a house, one on a rock, one on sand. And then the apostle Paul also riffs on this idea of a foundation and what is our foundation in faith in a letter that he writes to a group of people in a town called Ephesus. And so in this town, as the church is growing, suddenly there’s a church meeting in the living room of this home in Ephesus.
And in this living room, all of a sudden, because the church is the church, it’s this diverse group of people. You’ve got young and old, black and white, rich and poor, male and female, slave and free Jew and Greek, and this smattering of people is all meeting together in this thing called church and Paul wants to make something very clear to them.
19….you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens in God’s people and also members of his household.
Ephesians 2
So, he writes these words in a book that’s in your Bible called Ephesians in chapter two. And he says, “You are no longer foreigners and strangers.” Look around guys. I know this room, you guys don’t know each other. You don’t look like each other. You come from different economic classes and social statuses, but you guys are no longer strangers. “But fellow citizens in God’s people and also members of his household”, your family. Look around you. The people sitting around you in this living room or even in this room right now, look around you. This is your family, forever. Get used to them. You’re going to be seeing a lot of them. This is your family, this family of faith.
20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
Ephesians 2
And then he says, “This family is” built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” That’s a long handed way of saying one thing. What’s the foundation of the apostles and the prophets?
What do prophets do? Let’s reverse engineer this. What do prophets do? They prophesy and people are like, “Hey, that’s an interesting prophecy. You should write it down.” What do the apostles do? They tell people about Jesus and they talk about doctrine and then people go, “Oh, that’s interesting. You should write it down.” And then they take the writings of the prophets and the writings of the apostles and they put them together. And what do we call it? The Bible. You guys, this book that’s in front of you, the book that you brought here, the book that we call the word of God, it is written over thousands of years by dozens of authors in several languages across multiple continents. It is a remarkable book because it has one message and the message is Jesus, but we call it the word of God. It’s the Bible written by the prophets and the apostles.
So what Paul is saying is the foundation of the family is the word of God and the cornerstone of that foundation is Jesus Christ himself, is the chief cornerstone. Now, the cornerstone, we’ll get to this a little bit later, but in antiquity, it was a big deal. Now it’s a little bit more of a symbolic piece of a building or something when it’s constructed, but back in the day, the cornerstone was the most important piece. And because where you set the cornerstone determined the orientation of the rest of the building and the entire structure was in relationship to the cornerstone. You better get that first piece right. And Christ, who Peter in our reading called the rejected cornerstone by people became the chief cornerstone of God’s church. I don’t know if you’ve ever laid tile on a floor, that first piece is the most important because if you’re off on that first one, then the rest of the kitchen is going to look janky.
With Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
Ephesians 2
And so, the cornerstone is the most important piece. And he’s saying basically the word of God is the foundation and the cornerstone of that foundation is the word made flesh, Jesus.
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE FOUNDATION
OF A HEALTHY-ER FAMILY
And then he continues, we’ll come back to this, but in Jesus, the whole building, the whole church, this thing called the family of God that we’re talking about is all joined together and rises together to become a holy temple to the Lord. And in him, you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. But it’s all in relationship. It’s all oriented around the cornerstone and resting on this foundation of the word of God. It’s the foundation and the cornerstone.
THE WORK OF JESUS IS THE CORNERSTONE
OF A HEALTHY-ER FAMILY
And I want to kind of talk about these two, kind of in reverse, starting with the cornerstone.
THE WORK OF JESUS
The work of Jesus, what Jesus has done is the cornerstone of a healthy family because these words that Paul write aren’t just true of you, they aren’t just true of the church, they’re true of your family.
If it’s true for the church, it’s true of your home. The work of Jesus, what he has done is the cornerstone of a healthier family. So let me connect the dots on what this means. Some of you have grown up in homes where meritocracy is everything. You’ve got to prove your worth. There is a high and unrelenting standard that you need to meet no matter what, and you need to perform and execute and meet the standard of excellence that we have. This is our O’Doyle rules, right? This is our standard of a family.
And if you don’t meet that standard, there’s guilt and there’s shame. If you make a mistake, you lose value and worth in the family. That is how some homes are run, but not you, not in a family that has Jesus as the cornerstone because the work of Jesus, what he has done is the cornerstone of your family. Now, instead of meritocracy and performance-ism, its grace, it’s mercy. Jesus, the word made flesh, fulfilled every righteous requirement of the law and he fulfilled it in full with his life for you. And when he dies on the cross, he says, it is finished. Not it is started and you run the ball over the goal line now. Not it is possible for you. Not it is halfway done and you got to finish it. No, it is complete. It is finished. It’s done. And now you are valuable, not because of what you can do, but because of what Christ has done.
You have worth, you have meaning, you have value because of who you are in the family. And that’s value that was conferred upon Greg in the waters of baptism. You are a child of God. And that changes how we relate to each other because worth is something you have, not something you earn. It’s given.
And I guarantee there’s someone listening, someone watching, someone in the room right now who that’s all you needed to hear today. You just need to remove meritocracy from your family and begin living with one another as if you already have value. And that’s all you need to hear and you can daydream the rest of the sermon. That’s fine. But Paul points out that the work of Jesus is the cornerstone, the thing we orient all of our interactions with each other on what Jesus has done, but it’s a part of a bigger foundation of the word of God. The word of God is the foundation of a healthier family, the word of God.
THE WORD OF GOD
And that changes things. So one of the things that makes St. Mark distinct, and we’re not the only church that thinks this, but it’s really important to clarify. We first of all believe that the word of God, that book that’s in front of you, the book that you brought, the book that you read, the Bible is eternal. The Bible is eternal. It’s permanent. It lasts forever. The word of God endures forever. We believe it’s eternal. And most churches in America would agree with this, but if you ever leave Battle Creek or you ever end up at another church and you’re looking around, be discerning, be shrewd. And you go to websites of the church and you’re reading about what they believe and they say the word of God is eternal, you’re like, okay, good. But it’s not just that. We also believe the word of God is inerrant.
And if you ever read a belief statement of another church and it doesn’t say inerrant, they believe it is with error.
We don’t. I’ve written sermons about this. You can go back and look at a reasoning for God series in our archives as we’ve talked about this a little bit more in depth. And also a series that we did last November called Christian Witness in a Complicated World where we talked all about the authority of scripture. We don’t put ourselves in authority over scripture. People who put themselves in authority and churches that put themselves in authority over scripture believe it is with error and they are the judge, jury, and they decide what it should be. But when we put scripture in authority over us, it’s because we believe it is without error. It is the word of God. It is in errands. And we can talk all about what that means, but in relationship to your family and being a healthier family, when you make the word of God the foundation of your family, it’s two things.
It’s permanent and it’s perfect.
FIRST QUESTION: OTHER FOUNDATIONS
And that’s a game changer. And when I say that, there’s two questions that come to mind. The first one being, well, as opposed to what? If the word of God is the foundation of our family, well, what else could be the foundation of our family? And there’s a lot of things. This weekend, all week I was in Detroit at a hockey tournament for my son’s hockey team. And you can make travel sports. You can make sports the foundation of your family. You absolutely can, but injuries happen. Sometimes kids get burned out. Sometimes you don’t make the team. Sometimes you don’t get the scholarship.
Now, my son’s on the team. We had a great weekend. It was a lot of fun, but it shouldn’t be a foundation. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. It’s important, but it’s not permanent. And you can do travel sports, but it shouldn’t be your foundation.
Let me give you another example. Money. I have seen family, so have you, you’ve seen families where money is the be all end all of what we do. It is the foundation of our family. And I’ve seen money, not the lack of it, the abundance of it, tear a family apart. You can make money the foundation of your family.
You can, but sometimes the stock market crashes. Sometimes you have medical bills that rack up and bleed you dry. Sometimes you make a poor investment and the money’s gone. You can make money the foundation of your family. You can. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. It’s important, but it’s not permanent and it’s not a wise foundation.
I’m going to keep pushing in. I’m going to offend you eventually, okay? I’m just going to keep pushing until I do. I’ve seen family make family their foundation. Listen, okay, hear my heart in this, but listen. When you make family the foundation of your family, that’s putting a lot of pressure on imperfect people. Sometimes there’s a black sheep.
Sometimes there’s irreconcilable differences. Sometimes people pass. Sometimes your kids graduate and they leave home and then they get married and they decide to spend Thanksgiving with their in-laws. Family is important. It is absolutely important, but it shouldn’t be a foundation. At least it’s not wise because it’s good, but it’s not perfect. It’s important, but it’s not permanent and it’s not a wise foundation. In fact, those words that we saw earlier from Family Feud, like the foundation of a family is things like respect, communication, trust, love, honesty, all that stuff. Remember that? Okay. Remember? It was like 10 minutes ago. You guys remember? Okay.
You know what I notice about all those words? They all depend on you. They’re good, but they’re not perfect. They’re important, but they’re not permanent. And when we put our foundation on something that depends on imperfect people, it’s not wise. And when the word of God is a foundation for your family, it’s perfect and it’s permanent and it doesn’t depend on you. It depends on a trustworthy, faithful, perfect God. And it’s wise to make that your foundation. It’s huge, guys. So that’s the first question. You hear a phrase like this, the word of God is the foundation of a healthier family, and you go, okay. As opposed to what? First question. The second question is, okay, well, how? How do I make the word of God the foundation of my family? How do I do it? Is this like a user agreement where you scroll to the bottom and you hit, I accept the terms and conditions that I have fully and faithfully read and you didn’t read it, right?
None of us do. Yeah, right. I accept. Is that what we’re saying? You just got to accept it and not. No, no, no, no, no. Think about a foundation. Think about a foundation of a home, right? It’s a foundation because everything rests on it. Everything leans on it. Everything is connected to it. Everything touches it. That’s what makes it a foundation.
And so for your family, to make the word of God your foundation, you touch it, you connect it with it. You read it, you rest on it, you lean on it together. Your family, listen, you guys, your family will be healthier when you read the word of God together. It will be. I know some of you like, oh, one of you reads the Bible, but to read it together does something to you. You start leaning on it and you start orienting yourself to it and building on it and reacting to it.
YOUR FAMILY WILL BE HEALTHY-ER
WHEN YOU READ GOD’S WORD TOGETH-ER
So, here’s how we’re going to do this week. This is my challenge for you this week. I would love for you to all spend the next seven days, every day to read the Bible together, but I think for some of us who have never done this before, seven days, okay. So we’re going to lower it to three days.
Three days, I’ve got three readings for you guys to do, and they’re just short readings. It should take less than three minutes. So in less time than it takes to heat up a frozen burrito, you and your family will read these words and then ask a simple question, how does this affect our family? How does this change us?
How is this important to us as a family? So they’re on little business cards. I’m going to ask Tara and company to hand out these cards. We’re going to do a little reverse offering. We’re going to pass the basket here and one per household, just take one of these business cards. It has three Bible readings on it and a little question at the bottom. You read these and you figure it out. Maybe it’s before you go to school, that’s when everyone’s together. Maybe it’s at the dinner table finally when everyone’s, before we dine and dash off to our evening activities, or maybe it’s right before bed. We’re all home at 9:30 and so we’re all going to read. Three days this week, we’re going to read this and then just see what it does to your family.
But I promise, I promise your family will be healthier. That’s what you want. I promise your family will be healthier when it rests and leans and touches the word of God together. And when you do, you’re leaning and resting on something that is permanence, that outlasts you and any earthly thing, any relationships, and you’re resting on something that’s perfect, which is good news for imperfect people and your family will be healthier. Let’s pray.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, first of all, we need to acknowledge to you that we’ve fallen short in this in so many ways, Lord. First of all, we confess to you that we have often made a foundation of our lives and a foundation in our homes that’s built on something else.
We’re sorry and we need your forgiveness. So forgive us, Lord. Renew us and lead us so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your holy name. And I pray for every person in this room, every home that’s represented, everybody watching online, every person who hears the sound of my voice and the homes that they represent as well, God. I pray that this would help them meet this challenge and just find three times where they can sit together as a family and read your word together and that God, your word would be living and active amongst them and that it would have an effect on them.
So let your word be living and active. And God, we close all of this with the words that the word made flesh. Our cornerstone, our chief cornerstone taught us to pray as we say together:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hollowed by thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever and ever,
Amen.
Pastor Chris Paavola:
I forgot to say one thing, and I think this is kind of important. Sorry buddy.
A week and a half ago, I was talking to a family who’s trying to wrestle Sunday morning sports and they’re like, “My kid has sports on Sunday morning. What do I do about this? I feel like I’m compromising the foundation of my family and how do I handle this?” And I’m like, “I get it. The struggle is real.” The beautiful thing about the word of God is that it travels, right? And even when life is hectic and chaotic, you can always come back to that point of spending time in his word together. That’s the first thing I would say. The second thing is in a live stream, it’s awesome. Today, my son is going to watch a live stream on his way back from a hockey tournament while he drives. And if you’rewatching now, “Hey buddy, how you doing? Hope you play well in 40 minutes.” But yeah, I mean, those are things that make this calling that we have and this aspiration accessible and realistic for you.
And so just remember that the word of God travels, and so when life is chaotic, it is consistent. I got there. I think I’m done now. Okay. Go ahead, Grant.
