The God Built Power of Family - Pastor Greg Addison - August 16, 2026

Sermon from Pastor Greg Addison on Sunday morning, August 16, 2026.

Ministering to the heart of the Western Arkansas River Valley for over 165 years. Welcome to Chapter and First- the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church, you'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg Addison, our ministry staff, and guest speakers. Thank you for listening!

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Transcript

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Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church. You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers. Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Turn with me your Bibles to Jeremiah 29. And while you're turning, I want to give you a little bit more information. As you know, we uh have a mission trip to England coming up November the 2nd through the 10th. And so we have a few people signed up. We need a few more. It's going to be a great trip. As you know, we have a partnership with a church in London and Stone Baptist Church, Pastor Joel. And we are working with Stone to revitalize a church in Ainsford, England, which is uh about 20 minutes or so outside of that end of London. And if you watch Brit Box or Acorn and you see those beautiful little pastoral English towns where a murder happens every day, so they have a TV show. Uh that's what Ainsford looks like. And so it's a great, it's a great little town. There's a castle built in the 1600s. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff. It's great, it's fun. So we're going. We're going to do a couple of things. Uh we're going to do some simple light construction. We're finishing some apartments in the upstairs of the church that are designed for interns. And so you don't have to be good at construction. You just come hold nails, paint something, whatever, sweep up. I mean, it's all good, right? Then we're going to invite people in the neighborhood to church, make connections, and then it's a special weekend for them there. It is that weekend, that that end weekend, is uh their England's version of Veterans Day or Memorial Day weekend. And so there's a big celebration that happens in the town there, and uh the church historically has been the host of this event or one of the hosts, and so the whole town comes out, it's an incredible thing, and then we get the opportunity to be there and help host and meet all these people and invite them to church. It's a great experience. I mean, this is an incredible deal. This is better than a vacation, and you get credit in heaven for it. How awesome is that! So we'd love to invite you to come. We'll have some folks be out in the lobby, give some more information about that. We're very, very excited about that. And then uh one other thing I want you to know if you look at your sheets there, you'll see as everything gets cranked up, awanas and all of that. We have a couple of our Sunday school teachers, Ian Bullock and David Burton, uh, who are going to be teaching through the book of Revelation on Wednesday nights. And so it's a great uh opportunity. These are some gifted teachers that study these things, and it's been interesting as we go through all of these minor prophets and these prophecies, and we've referred to some of those end time prophecies and seen some of that. It's great to begin that study and to be able to match those up. So, just a couple of the wonderful things that are happening. We had a great morning at our Chaffee campus this morning. We had a baptism you'll get to experience next week by video. It was a wonderful day. And I know we're having a wonderful day here on Promotion Sunday. And one of the reasons we like Promotion Sunday is because all the ministry for kids and families and Promotion Sunday and all the students that are here and all the things that are happening like that. And family is a part of the DNA of our church, but it's a part of the DNA of the body of Christ. In fact, God made the family, he made it very specific, he made it very powerful. It's incredible to see what God has built in family. He made the family long before he made the nation of Israel and the structure of worship there. He made the family long before he made the church. He made the family in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and all of that, and he established family as his foundational structure for how life works. And in our culture today, there's a the family has been constantly under attack, but it really is very much now. And so today, what I want to do is just give you a positive vision and restate that ground that God built families, God designed the family, God loves family, and he loves your family. I want you to see that today. In a very interesting passage of scripture to have that built in that I think makes it in a very powerful way. Here in Jeremiah, you know, as a church, we're reading chronologically through scripture, and we're in the life and ministry of Jeremiah. Jeremiah the prophet. So Jeremiah's calling as a pastor was to preach to the children of Israel that they had sinned, and they had sinned so long and had offended God for so long that he was going to exercise judgment on them as his people to discipline them for their sin. And so what's happened is he pronounced judgment that the nation of Babylon would conquer Jerusalem and Judah, and they would deport many of them and take them away as captives to the land of Babylon. When they got there, as life is unfolding, there were some false prophets that came up, and they started saying, ah, God didn't really mean 70 years. Y'all repented, everything is better, he's going to take us home, it's going to be okay. And so God instructs Jeremiah to write a letter to the exiles in Babylon to explain to them that God meant what he said, that they are in judgment. It is going to be 70 years, but there is a future and a hope after that discipline had occurred. And within that structure of discipline, God gives this powerful foundational message about families. So I want you to read this with me, beginning in verse 1. Jeremiah 29, verse 1. This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining exiled elders, the priests, the prophets, and all the people Nebuchadnezzar had deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. So there you get. So he's reminding them this is why they're there. Then he says, in verse 5, you would think after that, you've sinned, you've been deported, all that, you'd start getting some stuff about hellfire and brimstone or baptizing or repenting in sackcloth and ashes and all of that. But God's message to them is fundamental, and here it is. Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Find wives for yourselves and have some sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage, so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there as a people, he's talking about. Do not decrease. Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, that city thrives, you will thrive. For this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says Don't let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you. And don't listen to them to the dreams you elicit from them. For they are falsifying, prophesying falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them. This is the Lord's declaration. In other words, he puts an exclamation on that point on that. These guys that are telling you you're not going to be here 70 years and all that kind of stuff, they're just wrong. I didn't send them. I already told you what I was doing, and he's reaffirmed this. Verse 10 for this is what the Lord says when seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place, Jerusalem. For I know the plans that I have for you. This is the Lord's declaration. Plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with your whole heart. Now, just the thought. He says, verse 13, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with your whole heart. I will be found by you. This is the Lord's declaration, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you. This is the Lord's declaration. Now here's just one thought. When God writes this letter, this is an emphatic letter. How many times did you see us read the phrase, this is the Lord's declaration? It's at least five times in there. He keeps saying, This is what I'm telling you. This is what I'm telling you. This is what I'm telling you. This is what I'm telling you. And so there is an emphasis on this. There is a profound picture of God giving this particular message we're reading and putting his imprimatur on it so everybody understands this is how God is going to work. Now, how he's going to work, how he's going to build his people and prepare them for the future he has for them, how's he going to do that? Y'all go get busy, you get married, you raise families, you build families, you teach your children to walk with me. That's how we're going to do this, through family. And so here's the big idea for the message today. And this is what I want you to see in this deal. God has created such power in his plans for the family that we should expect his promise for the future. As we build our families, as we pursue the Lord in that, there is a future and a hope for them. Whatever your family is, whatever the situation is, whatever the struggle is, God has built in that journey and power. And then he says, we should impact the culture around us. And the most powerful way we will ever impact the culture is through families. It's through families. In fact, this is how God designed it from the very beginning. He designed in the Garden of Eden family, Adam and Eve, babies coming through Adam and Eve after marriage and all of that. And he is creating, this is how the humus race will flourish and move forward. And even more than that, this is how people will learn to seek me and follow me. And then that just continues to go. When he creates the nation of Israel to be to bring the path that he brings Jesus into the world, he does it through Abraham's family and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When they are in Egypt in bondage, and God removes them from Egypt and He brings them to the land of Canaan, and he starts to tell them, I'm now going to build you a nation, and this is how we're going to build the nation. The fundamental process of building the nation is families. He says, You'll marry each other and you'll marry followers of me. And as you move into Canaan, you will not marry pagans and lost people who will draw your attention away from me. He says in Deuteronomy, in those verses that we love to teach when we're talking about parenting, you teach your children these declarations of the Lord, the word of God. You bind them on their foreheads, you bind them on their wrists, you teach them when they wake up in the morning, you teach them when you walk in the way, you teach them when they go to bed at night. You raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. When we get to the New Testament and Jesus is come and He's created a way of salvation, and He is creating the church, the church that we're all a part of. He tells us there again what marriage is. Marriage is God's most complete picture and tangible human picture of salvation. And it's designed to work that way. God's plan has always been for people to meet Jesus through their families and for the families to raise their children up to meet Jesus. That's how it works. And in today's culture, the family is under attack. People are saying they don't want to get married. There's no reason to have kids and all this other kind of stuff. Well, God has designed a power in the family that gives us hope and future. And so let me just get you to that point. Here's truth number one. It's extra powerful, I think, in this time to talk about families when you realize that they are being told this in the context of God has put them in the woodshed disciplining them for sin. But even in that context, he says, I have a future for you, I've promised you a future, and this discipline is a part of fixing what's wrong and getting you back on path and being ready for the future and the hope that I have for you. And so this first truth applies in every part of our lives to us. God's working in us, even when it's in a time of disciplining us for sin, is always designed to move us forward in our walk with Him and move us forward into the plan that He has for our lives. Here's what happens when you get saved. You come to Jesus when you realize, okay, I'm a sinner. I've looked at this mess of my life and sin and I have this guilt, and I realize I can't fix any of this. And someone tells you about Jesus, you meet them at school, or somebody in your family, or you come to church and you hear the gospel, or someone meets you out somewhere and they share Jesus with you, and you realize, man, I can't fix this, but Jesus stepped out of heaven to die on the cross to pay the price for my sins and to forgive me so I can have a relationship with him. And you realize how much Jesus loved you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him will never perish but have everlasting life. And you say, I wanted that forgiveness, and I want to be in that relationship with him, and I want to know that plan he has for me. How do I do that, Pastor? And someone tells you, you take your life, everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be, and you give it all to Jesus. You ask him for forgiveness of your sins, and you place your faith and trust in him, and you give him all of your life because you realize in that moment, if he loved you so much that he died for you, he'll do more with your life than you could ever imagine. Now, what is it that he's doing with our lives? Well, he is transforming us and changing us and shaping us as he builds a relationship with us. He's transforming us into the image of Jesus. Well, listen, that's not always an elegant process. I mean, sometimes we mess up, sometimes we're hard learners. Sometimes we struggle through these lessons. Sometimes we get off track and have to be brought back on track. And that's what God's discipline is. He interrupts us when we're sinning or about to sin or going off on this wrong track, and he disciplines us, but his purpose of discipline is always to get us back and to move us forward in his relationship with us. And look at this is a beautiful passage to understand that. Look at what he says. I have a plan for you, good and not for evil. I have a plan for you, a future and a hope. He tells them, even here in Babylon, when you're in judgment, I want you to increase, not decrease. This is not to make life worse for you or to make you worse. This is to get you back on track to see the future that I have for you. Look, this is a generational process. He has said 70 years, that is multiple generations. And so he's like, listen, I want you to have kids and grandkids and family, and I want you to experience this joy, and I want you to increase because I have work for you to do. I have a plan and a future for you, and I am trying to get you out of where you were and back on track for what I've planned for you. Listen to me, wherever you are today, God's work in your life is good. God's work in your life is to get you aligned with Him. If you're in the woodshed or the doghouse, listen, it's not fun. We've all been there. I've probably been there more times than you have. Be sure and look and see my name where I scratched it on the wall there. But listen, even that, God designs in his grace and love to fix what is broken, to change the course of what is wrong, and bring you back to him to walk with him. God's grace is always there, even in those moments. Scripture tells us that we are not to despise the disciplining of God, because it is the very name tag that we wear that we are his children. You discipline your children because you love them and because you know a future for them and you want to help and shape them to be who they can be. And this is a beautiful picture of that right here in Scripture. And then in the midst of that, when he says, how are they gonna increase? How are they gonna be prepared for that future? Well, family is integral to that. It is the way God has always built things to work and grow. Truth number two is this in God's plans, the family is always fundamental to his plans. God's plan for the family is fundamental to his plans. How is it that people, as God designed it, not broken world we live in, I want you to think for a minute, how are people supposed to learn about Jesus? From mom and dad. From the picture of love in their home, from them pointing the way to Jesus. They should know that salvation is wonderful because they learn that in the context of the love and picture of salvation that comes from mom and dad. God's plan is for his people, and God has designed it to be that way from the beginning. And if God designed it that way, then he would have put power and hope in the family. And in our culture, we need to be reminded that family is good and family is blessed, and God created family, and there is hope and power in the family. God wants our families to flourish. And whatever's going on in your family, you have some that are good, and you have some that are struggling, and some that are in these times of difficulty. And it is important to be reminded that God has built future and hope in his structure of the family. And whatever your struggle might be, or wherever it came from, you just need to be reminded at a fundamental level that God has put his thumbprint on the design of family and built power and hope in it just for you and for your family. Now, understand this. When the children of Israel got off and they stayed off track, and it was so bad God had to judge them in this way. One of the major sins that they did was they married outside their faith. They married people that were pagans and that didn't worship God, and that drew their hearts away, and it drew them away from Him, and that's one of the major things that led them to pagan worship and rejecting the person of God. How many times did we read in the life of David, in the life of Solomon, these other kings, they married some pagan lady, some prince of some other princess of some other king or something, and the Bible says it turned their hearts away from God. Now, listen, that's not a female thing. It just happened to be a guy who married a woman. Men can lead the hearts of women away from God just as easily. So it's a picture of the lossness of someone who has rejected God, leading a Christian away from that. And we are told to be on warning of that. And when they married, they violated God's law, when they married people who were lost in our modern culture language, or people who were not followers of Jehovah in the Old Testament. In fact, in a few books, as we begin to study Ezra and Nehemiah and all that, when those return and people are starting to be returned as God promised they would, one of the major sins that they point out that they that God requires them to change to bring out revival is fixing the family and the structures. That they've married outside their faith and wreaked havoc with all of that. And so for them to return to the Lord and this discipline to be effective and to put them back on track and all, that meant putting their families back on the track that God had planned families to be on. But in that track is the path to a future and a hope. Now, I don't have time to go through all of that because that's not the point of today. Today we're trying to build just this picture and promise of the power of family. But I want to just really quickly give you this is how God structured family. So in Ephesians chapter 5 and 6, don't turn to it. This is going to be a sermon for free in the middle of a sermon, right? And so here's what he says, and it's the best place to illustrate it, that marriage and family is God's most complete picture of salvation. He built in the picture of salvation and the search for the Lord in the structure of how he commanded families to work. He put Adam and Eve in the garden, he gave them certain roles. When they didn't follow those roles and they stepped away from the Lord, it broke them, explained in there what happened to men, what happened to women, how this works. You get to the New Testament and we start talking about God's redemption. And here's what he says in chapter 5. It begins with give your life to Jesus, follow him, imitate him as he follows the Lord, surrender yourself to the Holy Spirit. And so it is that individual's salvation. It is a person who gives their life to Christ and understands the gospel and is walking with him. And then it says, now here's how we apply this in all these contexts, and he comes to family. And he says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. How did Jesus give himself for the church? And so he says in this picture of salvation, husbands play the role of Jesus, and we're acting out what that sacrificial love looks like. And then he says, wives, submit yourselves to your husbands in everything as to the Lord. Yes, I used the S word. Unapologetically. Here's what happens. If this picture of Jesus and his sacrifice for us draws a person to Christ, they need to know how to be saved. And how do you give your life to Christ? I've already said it once. You take everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be, and you give it all to Jesus. You are submitting your life to him. The Bible says if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And so that confession means that I'm surrendering my life to him. And so someone wants to know how to be saved. The wife plays out the role for the children or other people around. This is how you get saved, accept the love. Now, in a practical way, what happens is you have two people who are spiritually getting rid of selfishness in their married life, and the husband is dying on the cross for his wife. If you die for someone, there's nothing left. And the wife is submitting herself and everything to her husband just as to the Lord. That's what the scripture says. And so there's nothing left if you give it all up. We give an invitation at the end of the service, and somebody comes down this aisle, and Pastor Matt is standing here, and they say, Man, I got all excited, Pastor Matt, I want to give 98% of my life to Jesus. What's Jesus going to say? Well, where's the other 2%? Right? And so now what you have is two people who are being taught supernaturally through the power of God and their salvation to come together and to love each other sacrificially the way Jesus loved us. And in that now, children come through mom and dad and through married life because the most important thing in a child's life is to be able to look at mom and dad and understand what the gospel is. That's what our purpose is as parents. I've given you this before multiple times as a church. Our goal and our role as parents is to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord so that when they are adults, they will walk with Jesus and marry people who walk with Jesus and raise their children to walk with Jesus. That's what our goal is as parents. And so the Bible continues there in Ephesians chapter 5 and 6, and it tells us that we are to raise, as parents, raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We're supposed to raise them up to know who Jesus is and see who Jesus is. We're not supposed to raise them on the ball fields. We're not supposed to raise them to be doctors and spend more time doing our homework than they are learning about Jesus. We're not supposed to raise them at the lake. We're supposed to raise them to walk with Jesus. Period. Period. That's it. And then, children, you're to obey your parents. Why does that happen? Well, here's what happens: the nature of sin is rebellion. All of us sin and falling short of God's glory. And what is sin? It is telling God, I'm going to do it my way, and you're not God, and I'm not going to do it your way. And so a child to be raised to walk with the Lord has to learn what I'm going to do is recognize that I'm a sinner, and God as creator has the right to determine what is sin and what is not. He has the right to give commands. And in my life, I have to realize that sin is the failure to submit to his authority. And when he puts parents in our path and we have to obey them, I am learning to submit to authority, and that is all a lesson to learn. That one day when I realize what my sin is and I need to give my life to Jesus, I need to submit to that. My testimony, when I share my testimony, is this I was raised with a mom and dad who loved Jesus and went to church, and from the earliest memories that I have, they would raise us and they would spank us and they would discipline us and they would do all that. Don't talk back to your mother, don't beat on your little brother, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so they would begin to say things when I was old enough to say, you don't understand this, son, but one day you'll understand. I have to punish you because this is wrong, this is sin. And the Bible teaches you that punishment must be sin. But one day you're going to be old enough to know that Jesus loved you enough that he took your punishment for you on the cross. Over and over and over and over. Five, six times a day, a lot of days. Mom and dad will have to tell me that. And then when I was a nine and a half-year-old boy in church one Sunday, I was sitting right there in the balcony on the front row, my people in the balcony. I've told y'all before I was raised in the balcony right there. Wave at me. I was sitting right there, and I can't tell you what the sermon was, but when the pastor got the invitation, he said, Listen, no one will ever love you as much as Jesus. He took your punishment on the cross. And all that teaching from my parents made me understand. I was trying to do life my own way. I was rebellious, and I needed to submit to Jesus and give my life to him. And as a nine and a half-year-old boy, I walked down the aisle. I came down this aisle. There's a deacon named Dewey Burton standing right there. He was friends with my dad, and I said, Mr. Dewey, Jesus loved me and paid the price for my sins, and I need to give my life to him. And I gave my life to Christ. That's the testimony. That's how it's supposed to work. Now, here I want to share this with you. Not every family looks like that. Not every family has that structure. But here's the beauty of God's word: it teaches us that structure. And whoever you are, and whatever path you came from, you can step out in faith and Jesus enter your family and build your family just like this from where you are and experience the future and the hope that God has planned. You have not lost anything by not having that same background. In fact, you get to be the person who brings Jesus into your family. And the promise of Jesus and the hope of family is always there for us. And it is always there for you. And whatever issue, whatever struggle, whatever you have, I don't know all those journeys, and I don't know what that journey might be, but I can tell you if God built the promise of salvation into the marriage structure, then he built all of those things. If marriage is a picture of salvation, then it is a picture of salvation. And what that means is salvation works. The Bible says, for God so loved the world, he gave his only son, that whosoever believed in him will never perish. It did not say, you might not. You might not if it's not broken. You might be if whatever. No, he said, if you place your faith in Jesus, you will never perish but have everlasting life. No one ever had to return their salvation with the receipt because it was broken. We believe the Bible teaches, once you're saved, you are always saved. Jesus didn't give you 10-year life if you behave properly. Jesus gave you eternal life. And then he begins in that process that we looked at in chapter one. Even in discipline, God is blessing and working and teaching and has a plan for you and is bringing you that plan. And somewhere, somehow, people have to be reaffirmed in the promise and hope that God has built into family. Now, we live in a fallen world and it doesn't always work that way. I understand that. But listen, it would work that way a whole lot more if we believed it and got to owner's manual and attacked it with everything we have. Because we believe it's true. Multiple times I've married people who are divorced from each other. I can't tell you how many times in the times of struggle people are in, they come in and we get down God's word and they start studying God's Word, or they go to a biblical marriage conference, or they start studying books, and they get into whatever, and they just get reconnected with husbands love your wives, and wives give yourself to your husbands and everything, raising their children and all that. Listen, we live in a fallen world, but that does not stop God's promise and hope. And it is here for you. Regardless of where you are. God paints this picture for his children who are in a place of captivity because of discipline. And he reaffirms the promise and hope, and that the path is through families. Let's go back and look at it again now. The plan for the family is fundamental and integral to God's plans. Listen, again, here's what he tells them. In the midst of all of this, his first and primary message to them is build houses and live in them. He's not talking about the structure of the house, he's talking about build a home. Build a home for your family. Put your focus on building a home. Work together. Follow his plan. Look at what he says. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Is that a weird thing for you to tell somebody when they're in trouble? What's he trying to say there? That God's word and his plan for the family has financial structure in it, how family works. And he's saying, listen, as part of building your home, build your finances. Do things the way I taught you to do them. Build a garden that sustains and provides for your family. We teach financial peace here. There's all kinds of counseling for all of that. We've taught messages, I don't know how many about how to build a budget in a biblical fashion and all of that. And God is calling them to return to Him and look at how He's designed life and build life that way. That's what He's calling them to. And He's saying, Listen, I'm doing this because I have a future and a hope for you, and I want you to increase, and I want you to impact the place where you are, and I am putting all of this in your family, and it is all at your disposal if you will obey me and step out in faith and build a home. Build a home. And then he tells them this look, marriage is integral to that. Find wives for yourselves and have sons and daughters. Man, we live in a culture today where people are down on marriage and they don't want to have kids. Listen, God designed this to be a natural, beautiful, wonderful process. Man, this is, he has given hope in all of that. And God is reaffirming here: listen, do this. Go out. Get married, have babies. The pastor told you, get married, go have babies. Take care of your kids, have fun with them, make a wonderful home. That's what God said, do here. And then here's the next thing. Some of this I didn't understand right here. It took me a while through life to sort of figure this out. Find wise for yourselves, have sons and daughters. I got that. That's awesome. Have a son and a daughter. It's awesome. Find wise for your sons. I'm looking forward to that day. My son doesn't have one yet, but we're working on it. By the way, ladies, a handsome body bit. Oh, I'm getting distracted. This is the part I struggle with right here. Give your daughters to men in marriage. Like, I struggle with that. I gotta tell you, that's a burden as a dad of a daughter. Like, really? Do you know what boys are like? I was one, I know. Right? And so I just believed with all my heart that the rapture was gonna happen and we were gonna be taken home to heaven before I had to watch my daughter drive off in a car with some jerk 17-year-old. And it didn't happen. And I kept thinking, I must be living in Babylon. What am I doing? And so then I thought, well, at least I won't have to suffer through the marriage, right? I won't have to deal with that part. Like, really? I'm gonna give my daughter marriage some jerk. One of the guys in my church in Cabot, where our kids were raised when they were that age, he used to come up and say, Pastor, you talk big about all that. Wait till some hairy-legged boy shows up to your house and asks for your daughter. And that happened. And I weeped for a week. It was terrible. I thought, this is awful. Like, who is this jerk, right? And then, look at what it says. God revealed the beauty of his plan so that they may bear sons and daughters. And I had grandsons, and all of a sudden, Corey is not some hairy-legged jerk. He is my favorite person in the world because he'd given me two grandsons. That's how that works. Y'all get that? And so listen, he's saying 70 years, that's multiple generations. He is casting the vision for families and extended families and being involved and having that vision for them. My dad used to teach a class at the church where I grew up. Something snagged back here. I got preaching in. Okay, I'm better. So my dad used to teach a class at the church where he grew up for grandparents, biblical instructions for grandparents from Scripture. It's pretty incredible. My dad's name was Gra Gras. Like, what kind of name is that? We all have fun picking our names, and our daughter Mary was the first grandchild, and so dad had his name picked out, my mom had her name picked out. Janet's parents had her their names picked out. And my mom was Graham, my mother-in-law's Patty, and then each of the granddads, and then my daughter starts talking, and she starts talking early, and she was really bright. And so she'd say Patty, and she'd say Graham, and then she'd look at my dad and go, Graham's groggrah. Well, that's not really his name. And then she would go to Janet's parents and she'd say Patty's grogras. And then when we were talking to her home, she'd talk to Patty about Patty's grog and dad's groggras. Like, how did you get grogger? Like, what is that? That's not even a word. What is that? But man, she was bound and determined, and then my brother's son came along and he dopped it right into that, and they became grogras. Then my dad got uh shortened to grow, and so he was grow. So her dad was grogras, my dad was grow. That's how we differentiate it. I'm telling you what, my dad relished the title Gras greater than any name or title he could have ever had in his life. And it was awesome, and he loved it, he got it, and from that I learned. And this is what family looks like. This is what God has planned, this is what God has purposed. And so what we need to do is learn to pursue this. Listen, we have a lot of single adults in both of our churches, college, young adult, young professionals. Listen, let me tell you, ladies, you are a blood-bought princess, daughter, adopted into the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You are joint heirs with Christ. Do not go marry some pagan that won't take care of you. Somebody needs to tell you that. And fellas, the same thing. I used to get in trouble. My first job ministry, I was a singles pastor, and I used to tell all the guys, listen, fellas, whatever you do, stay away from Barbie dolls. And all the law, all the all the ladies would get mad at me, and I said, I don't care, don't be one. Right? You need to marry, you need to, you are a blood-bought, adopted son of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and a joint heir with Christ. Marry someone who walks with Jesus, and y'all go build what God had planned. Because life is hard. And man, you get in struggles and things are difficult, and everybody, every marriage hits hard times. All these struggles we're talking about, but listen, when you got two people who know Jesus, you got way more tools and way more hope and way more power to work through those and move forward. Because you both know Jesus and have a framework for the family. And then here's the last deal. God's people are to build families together. Now, church family, right here. I'm probably not going to hear a lot of amens here for a minute. Let me read to you what the Bible says. Jeremiah 29:1. This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to remaining exiled elders, priests, prophets, and all the people Nebuchadnezzar had deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. Now let me ask you a question. They are pilgrims in a foreign land. They are living in Babylon, and they are supposed to return from marrying pagans and walking away from the Lord and all of that, and they're supposed to return, and they're supposed to find wives for their sons, they're supposed to find daughters, uh, find husbands for their daughters, and all of that. Let me ask you, how are you supposed to do that if you're not in church? How are you supposed to do that if your church is not building families and spending all of its focus on helping raise families who will build homes and live in them, plant gardens and grow from them, and are commanded to find wives and sons, find wives for their sons and husbands for their daughters. He wrote this to everybody. This is a collective deal, and what that means is everybody has to be a part of this. Everybody is building families. The number one priority of church is to support families. And that's everybody in every generation. You never retire from family ministry. If you're a grandparent, if you're a great grandparent, if you're a parent, it is your job to bring your generational knowledge, experience, and encouragement into all the families that are raising their kids at home. Now, if you think that's just Greg being Greg, why does the Bible say older women teach younger women how to love their husbands and love their kids and run their house? That's scripture. Families, young families are clamoring for multi-generational contact and influence. Statisticians that study church life tell us that when kids walk away as teenagers from the church, it's because they don't have at least seven multi-generational adult relationships that are real, functioning, meaningful relationships. In church life, we don't mean to because we're trying to help folks and we're trying to get them involved and get them connected. But the law of unintended consequences is when we do age-divided Sunday school classes and age-divided ministries and all that kind of stuff, we ended up segregating the church. Not because we were trying to separate generations, but because we were trying to help people find a handle to get involved. So when you come and you visit, we want you to be in Sunday school, and we're going to try to help you find people that are doing the same thing you're doing. But that means we have to work that much harder in how we do ministry to break down these generational barriers and get that influence involved. I have young adults in our church in their 20s telling me, Greg, what other granddad can I meet? What other granddad can I meet? Point me out to another businessman who's retired, about to retire, has done it well, because I'm on the front end of my deal and I want to know how to do that. Help me learn how to do that. I mean, that's what happens. We have now in the state of Arkansas, especially, we are five generations in to the majority of people being raised in broken or dysfunctional homes. And that means this is a place of wound and a place of need, and we as the church have hope and we have the answer. We have exactly what we're talking about. God is saying, listen, there's a future and a hope. And here's the plan. Here's how you do it. And we have all these people that know what the answer is and how to do it. And we need to invest ourselves in families and children in the next generation and support this so it can go exactly like God says. He didn't write this to a husband and a wife telling them to do something. He wrote this to everyone who is a part of the family of God. And we have got to be invested at every level as much as we can. And there is no such thing as retiring from family ministry. Okay, I preached enough. Just go volunteer somewhere and get involved. Truth number three, and this is the final. This is it. I don't have to go in along this. Just look at what he says. When they're doing that, when they are stepping in as families and they are increasing, not decreasing, because God built blessing in all of that. Here's what he says. Yeah, you're leaving in captivity, but look what I'm going to do in you when you increase. He tells them in verse 7, pursue the well-being of the city I've deported you to. That means they're supposed to go out and get involved in the culture of the place that conquered them. You know what that means? That means run for office. It means vote. That means volunteer in organizations. It means when you go play baseball, football, flag football, basketball, cheerleading, gymnastics, whatever it is, you go in that place, but you go in as a Christian. And you're not yelling at referees and you're not pushing kids to be perfect and try to make the major leagues. You're going there to bring Jesus to family and the culture in that community. We hear all these stories about people screaming and cussing reps and doing all this kind of thing. How much better that would be if the people of God were involved in the ones who are doing it. And we bring with that engagement, we bring our prayers for the people we're involved with. Look at what he says. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, on the behalf of the city. That's why we're praying for schools. And if you haven't gone and gotten and signed up yet, go. I signed up for three or four. I can't remember. I got to keep checking. The ones that I have contact or God's give me a heart for or playing strategy for. I went and did that and I signed up for them, and I'm praying every day for those schools, and that's what we do. We are praying for our community. We are praying for opportunities for people to be saved. We are praying God to open doors for our influence to have an impact. And we have a testimony. We have a testimony of what God is and who he is and how he brings that. And we bring that testimony in that, and we are working for the well-being of our community. And God makes it clear to them listen, when the community thrives, you thrive. Would you rather be a Christian in Fort Smith, Arkansas, or would you rather be a Christian in Saudi Arabia or Iran? Are you glad we're doing church the way we're doing it now, or would you rather be with Pastor Joel and his people who love Jesus and are trying to fight back against the culture of London and England and all of that? Where would you rather raise your family? God's given us the privilege. Now, listen, those families are doing incredible work, and man, if you want your life to change, you go to London and you hang around Pastor Joel and you'll learn what it means to have a passion for your people. That's one reason we go there. We need to learn that. But listen, where we are here, we need to be bringing Jesus into everything we do. We bring our testimonies, we bring our prayers, we bring our engagement, and what happens is the testimony of Jesus is glorified. The testimony of Jesus impacts the culture. When they see God's people increasing and not decreasing, they want part of that, they want to engage that and they come and get saved. And so God has built so much power and hope into marriage that it literally can impact a pagan culture like Babylon. What God's promise is. And man, family is awesome. God made it awesome. He made it wonderful. He gave you a plan. Your decision today is to go get the plan and pursue it. I want you to bow your heads. Lord, we come and we. Remind them, even if we're in Babylon, you're still at work, you still have a plan and a future and a hope. Lord, I pray that you will challenge us as a church to be more in families. To be more. For everyone to be a part. For us to have a vision, just as Jeremiah wrote to the priests and the elders and the prophets and the leaders and everybody. You've written it to us. Lord, help us to be faithful and powerful and servant-hearted and loving. And Father, I pray you'll use us. Not because we deserve it or anything else, but your work in us, you will use us for the well-being of our community to make a difference with the gospel. And Lord, this morning, if there's someone who needs to be saved, I pray as we sing, they'll be saved. They'll come and they'll give their life to Christ. Lord, I pray if folks are struggling, there'll be an opportunity. We can minister to them and make us sensitive and caring and help us to pray and help us to step in and support and to love. And Lord, I pray if there's someone who needs to bring something to you today, that they'll bring it to you in this time right here. Lord, we come and we just we want to follow, help us, guide us, give us the faith to follow you.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

It is in Jesus' name we pray, and everybody said. We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus. Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you. Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can. Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith at First Baptist Church.