Clough Proverbs Lesson 29
The Structure of the Family
Someone handed in
a card saying: why aren’t the questions submitted by the congregation answered
at the beginning of the service any longer.
The reason why they’re not is because there are no questions. There was one that was handed in two weeks
ago that dealt with the spirit and the soul and that’s my fault because it got
buried under my junk on the desk, and that is this question so I’ll answer this
before we work in Proverbs 4. In Bob
Thieme’s book, GAP, I understood that he believes that a person doesn’t have a
human spirit until he’s born again. Is
this what he teaches or did I misunderstand?
Well, in a way you misunderstood.
What Bob teaches there is that there’s such a thing as a soul format;
and this soul format is developed by God in the embryo; then at the time of
physical birth, not at the time of conception but at the time of physical birth
the soul format is joined by the human spirit.
But in the human spirit joins with the soul format since the fall, there
is immediate death produced. And so he would describe the unregenerate man as
lacking a human spirit. But not actually
from birth because for an instant he had it and then when it’s joined with the
soul format it dies. It’s his way of
explaining the soul of man and the damage done by the fall. I prefer, in contrast to say that there is a
spirit but a badly damaged one for the reason of James 2:26 and those of you
who have been with me in the Proverbs series in the introduction you’ll know
the other reasons why.
Today we want to
again go back to Proverbs 4, to the doctrine of the family. Proverbs 4 takes us one step further beyond
the third chapter where we had the personal dimension of divine viewpoint
wisdom. To appreciate the point made in
chapter 4 we’re going to have to do some extra study, study that we did to some
degree in chapter 3. Remember when we
worked through chapter 3 we had to trot over to Hebrews 12 to find out how
discipline that is mentioned in Proverbs 3 is carried out in the New Testament.
We’re going to have to do the same thing in this chapter so you will appreciate
that the advice given here is very seriously intended and is not something that
is just something for Sunday School or something.
To see this let’s
look at how wisdom once again approaches God, man and nature. Wisdom in the
Bible is grounded on one assumption, many assumptions but one key and if you
don’t grant this everything that you learn in Proverbs turns into just dust and
ashes; it turns into just so much advice and that’s all. But if you master this one thing that is
assumed, then you will see why all the admonitions, all the instructions given
in this book are very, very critical and that is that God has made nature and
God has made man by virtue of creation, but He has done more than that, He has
made man in the image of God. This means
that man, unlike nature, can also turn around and know God. Now nature cannot turn around and know God;
man is the only part of nature that can know God. So man turns around and He knows God. Both God and man are language speaking
beings, both have personality and both can transfer concepts and absolutes from
one mind to the other mind.
Communications can occur.
If that’s the
case, and God is the one who has made nature, then when God tells man, I want
you to operate this way and not some other way, then these instructions, called
chakmah, these instructions in God’s
Word are related to the way the universe has been made. In other words, these moral instructions are
actually operating instructions for this part of the universe. So they’re not
just random pieces of good advice dropped into your lap so you can decide
whether you like it or not. These are
instructions on how the universe actually operates.
So let’s remember
this when come to the family and let’s remember something else that we have
learned and that is that when we speak of Christ in the heart, which is our
terminology for Christian maturity, remember there’s kind of five stages in Christian
maturity. And these five stages can be
passed through in many different areas of life.
In other words, it’s not true that these represent absolute stages in
your Christian growth. You can pass
through all five stages in one and maybe not in another area of you life.
Let’s just look at
these five again and see where we stand as far as the family is concerned. Here’s positive volition, no growth without
positive volition; this is the sine quo
non of Christian growth. Above that
you have light, the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit; if the Holy
Spirit didn’t enlighten you you could wish and desire and wish and desire and
wish and desire from now until the rapture and there would be no growth
produced. So you have to have an
enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit, which shows you, therefore, that this
learning process is a process of growth.
The next step is the divine viewpoint framework. The divine viewpoint framework is absolutely
essential to master before any further growth can occur in this area. That means that in the mentality of your
soul you have to have doctrine and that doctrine has to be organized
categorically. And there’s no substitute
for this. We can’t emphasize that enough
because I’m going to make another statement that would appear to clash with
that one in a moment, but just remember that up to this point every one of
those steps is absolutely essential and you can’t go any further in the
Christian life without this. Now this,
by the way, is the stage that most Christians get off the train, right here,
simply because to pass through this third stage demands concentration, it
demands attention, it demands discipline in study and since very few have this
quality that means that very few ever get past this step.
Now if you manage
to pick up divine viewpoint framework, that is you know the various basic
doctrines of Scripture and you are at the same time convinced they’re true and
they’re not just doctrines hanging in mid air, but you are convinced they are
really true, then you’re ready for the fourth step which is an experiential
encounter with the love of God expressed in and through other believers, namely
the body. But you don’t get to step four
unless you first have step three. Now
this is exactly where so many people are fouled up, right in the city of
The reason why you
are not prepared to see the love of God until you have passed through this
stage is because God could do something in your life and you’d never even
recognize it’s from Him. Or Satan can do
something in your life and you think God’s doing it. In other words, you’re confused because you
can’t interpret experience properly; you have no basics, no framework, nothing
in which to analyze your life. So this
is why the fourth step does not come before the third, and this is why there’s
no shortcut to it. They say well, all I
ever see is people just studying the Word, studying the Word, studying the Word
and I don’t see any fruit on them. All
right, if you don’t see any fruit that’s fine, they’re never going to get any
fruit anywhere else either. If you think
you’ve got another system that you’re going to come up with that’s going to
bypass the local church for the sake of some little click or if you have some
system that you think you’re going short-circuit all this, there’s some easy
way to grow in the Christian life, then you are transgressing the structure
that God has built into the universe.
Then finally, on the top of it all is tremendous
fulfillment.
Now what has this
got to do with the family that is mentioned in Proverbs 4. Last week, remember the first four verses
particularly spoke of two generations of believers. “Hear, ye children, the instruction of a
father, and attend to know understanding.
[2] For I give you good doctrine; forsake ye not my law. [3] I was my father’s son, tender and only
beloved in the sight of my mother. [4]
He taught me also, and said unto me,” and then beginning at “said unto me” is a
series of teachings that Solomon is passing on to his son, one of whom was the
dumbest clod who ever lived in the history of Israel and obviously said that
even though Solomon had begun a fine tradition in his family unit, it never got
beyond the second generation. But David
is the first one; “my father’s” verse 3 is David. The man who’s doing the speaking is Solomon,
and who is he talking to? The third
generation, Rehoboam. By the way, verse
3, the language there, where it says “my father’s son, tender and beloved,” if
you want evidence that that’s referring to Solomon I refer you to 1 Chronicles
22:5 where the same language is used for Solomon.
The idea is that
in the family unit, the third divine institution, remember there are three
basic institutions from creation; the first one is responsibility, the second
is marriage, the third is family, and God has structured human society this way
so that the third divine institution becomes the basis for all authority in
time. Where a child learns authority is
in the home from the father, and lesser so from the mother. So basically the father is the one who
teaches the concept of authority to his children, and of course, in a
permissive society, where you do not have a concept of authority or in a
heavily domineering one where the authority is all screwed up; the child grows
up in the family unit never having the categories of authority impressed upon
his soul and therefore this child, having not learned about authority over here
in the third divine institution, becomes a Christian somewhere along the line,
he turns into a believer and there he’s in trouble and this shows you why these
institutions can’t be violated, even for the sake of evangelism, because when
you violate this institution you destroy the building of categories in the
child’s soul which makes him unable to appropriate spiritual truth in the
Christian life. He has no concept of
authority. How is he going to relate to
God the Father? Why is God called God
the Father and not, say, God the King.
Why does God use the word “Father” for Himself and not King? It’s because “Father” is more authoritative
than the title “king.” All government is
the fourth divine institution; that happened after the third, not before
it. So your basic fundamental location
for authority in society is in the home and in the family. So the family institution teaches authority.
Now a second
principle comes out of this, the corollary to the first one and that is that if
you have authority you obviously have authoritative teaching which develops
into tradition. And tradition is not
always bad; in fact in the family tradition is very good. In fact, most of your learning has been from
tradition. You learn how to speak your
language by tradition. You learn to
speak language by tradition, you learn to think by tradition, you learn to
respond to life by watching the habits and thought patterns that are built into
your life from home. So we can say this:
that since the believer, let me correct it, any man, because the divine
institution applies to both believer and unbeliever, man is unlike the animals
and the reason is that whereas the animal has many instinctive behavior patterns
man has learned behavior patterns. Man
has to learn how to behave. Animals
actually master their environment quite rapidly because they have instinct. But we do not have instincts; a young child
has very little instinct, except how to get in trouble but apart from that he
has very little instinct.
Now the reason for
that is that God has so made man that man must learn and the third divine
institution is the place where he learns most of his behavior patterns. Now just so you really get what I’m talking
about here, by behavior patterns I refer to responses to situations in life,
for example, responses… let’s take one illustration here, response to an
authority that gripes you. When somebody
in authority tells you, “you do that!” and you don’t like it, you’re going to
have a response of some sort to that kind of a thing. And a child growing up in the home is going
to watch how their parents respond in similar situations; he’s going to respond
the same way. In other words, the
children pick up behavior patterns from their parents. The parents don’t have to sit down at
This is why
Proverbs 4:2 says “I give you good doctrine; forsake not my law.” Now beginning at verse 2 you have a statement
about the father teaching a child something and he’s saying, child follow
me. Now doesn’t that refute what I just
said? I just said that the child
automatically follows the parent. Why,
then, in this passage does the father say son, learn from me. The reason is there’s a hierarchy of behavior
patterns that is based on the word “life” from Scripture. Remember we defined four levels of life in
Scripture; we have just normal breathing, and this is the only way you can tell
some people are alive. I’ve often
wondered sometimes when I talk from the pulpit as I look out, some people have
tremendous problems with insomnia and they’ve tried Sominex and the only thing
that seems to work is to trot in on church at 11:00 o’clock because from 11:00
to 12:00 each Sunday they can catch up on all the lost sleep that they’ve lost
out on all week. And it works
marvelously with some people, actually it is tremendous and I don’t bother to disturb
them, every once in a while I slap the pulpit because I just want to see how
far under they are, and if they hop I know they’re pretty close to the surface
and if I don’t we may even call an usher to come tap them to see what’s going
on. But nevertheless, breathing is at
least one level of life; it’s the most elementary form of life but
nevertheless, for some people will be just thankful for that.
Then we come to
the next one and that is God-consciousness and you have to be at least 4 or 5
years old before this happens because you have to have [can’t understand word]
authority at using language and thinking.
And then we have the gospel level and this is where the person becomes
aware of their spiritual state. And at
this point the person realizes there’s a sin problem separating them from God,
realizes the solution is in the cross of Christ, and accepts Christ, and they
graduate to the third level or intensity of life. And then finally maturity. Now up until the gospel, these lower levels
of life are more automatic than the higher levels of life. And as you go up the span here there’s more
and more role of responsibility. And so
when David teaches Solomon, David is teaching Solomon about the higher levels
of life. Solomon is already a believer
and so Solomon, to master the higher levers of life, such as chakmah in the spiritual domain, Solomon
must respond by his volition. He can
watch his father, David, respond to life’s situations but to get understanding
that goes along with the learned behavior patterns he must exercise his
volition and his choice. And if he
doesn’t exercise his choice he’s never going to learn it. So therefore we have said that there’s an
element of volition involved as well as the family tradition.
Now I’m giving you
these two themes, these two parallel and sort of contradictory themes because
today we’re going to finish with a few verses in Proverbs 4 and then I’m going to take you
through a little tour of the Word to show you how this principle has worked out
in history. So there’s two things that
function inside family: one is the automatic learning that the child gets and
you can’t do anything about this as a parent.
In other words, the only thing you can do is to make sure that what they
do learn is good, not bad, but you can’t stop them from learning. Just the child being in the home, this is
automatic. They are, so to speak,
programmed to do this, to mimic you, mimic all your responses, watch how you react and carry it further. So that’s one theme. The second thing, however, is that the child
is held individually responsible and so there’s individuality and then there’s
family tradition, both of these elements.
Now in this
passage, in Proverbs 4 the individual initiative is stressed, but it is
stressed all the while assuming the first principle of authoritative family
tradition. David is trying to get
established in his house an authoritative family tradition that is of the
divine viewpoint category and David wants Solomon to pass it on so they can set
this up from generation to generation in that family unit and therefore use the
third divine institution for what it was designed for.
Last week we ended
in verse 9 but before we go any further I want to go back and look at verse 8
again. This is going to test some of you
people that are legalists but that’s all right, you ought to be tested. If you could make it through last Sunday
night with God giving hemhoroids to the Philistines then you can obviously make
it through this morning. But it’s
marvelous to sit up here and watch how people respond to this. Every once in a
while people walk in here and some people have been coming in here for a long
time and they’ll sit in the pew and know that they want to laugh, but on the
other hand they don’t consider it dignified and they just can’t relax enough,
so they kind of sit there and hold it in.
And it’s very funny and very amusing.
Let’s just relax, the Word of God was written by God the Holy
Spirit. And obviously God has a sense of
humor or He wouldn’t have written Scripture this way. If God was uptight and as straight-laced as
some of you people He would have written the Scriptures in an uptight
straight-laced way. So every time you
have this tension between what you’re used to doing and how you’re used to
acting, you are facing the difference between human viewpoint, really,
tradition that you’ve picked up from some place, and the divine viewpoint of
Scripture. And the divine viewpoint of
Scripture is very relaxed, and treats life as it is.
Let’s go back and
examine one more thing about verse 8. In
the analogy the believer is cast as the husband and wisdom is the wife. The reason for this is that the wife is the
helpmeet, the ‘ezer, which is the
same word from which we get Eleazar, or the Eben-ezer of Scripture that we’ll
cover tonight. It means helper, one
alongside to help. Now the wife is
always cast in that role and so the second divine institution is pulled into the
Proverbs framework to illustrate the believer’s relationship to wisdom. Now obviously the husband and the wife
originally, in the second divine institution, had a command of God to subdue
the earth and part of the subduing was to produce children and to produce a
family, so that the fruit of a marriage would be children. And these children would go along and help
subdue the earth under the Adamic family of Genesis 1. So whenever a family is exalted, even far
into New Testament times, the blessing of a father is his children. So
therefore the children are produced out of this family relationship and
obviously you don’t have to take a modern course in sex education to realize
their [can’t understand phrase] it.
Now one of these
is described here in Proverbs 4:8.
“Exalt her, and she shall promote thee, she shall bring thee to honor
when you embrace her,” and the word “embrace” is chabaq, and chabaq means
to sexually fondle, and if you doubt that translation turn to Song of Songs
2:6, just relax, I already see someone saying I know what’s coming now. I’ll give you several references on how this
is used. “His left hand is under my
head, and his right hand doth embrace me.”
The same passage occurs in Song of Songs 8:3 and also Proverbs 5:20 but
all of these passages refer basically to a fondling that occurs during
sex. And that is the image that is used
here to describe the believer’s attitude toward wisdom. Now this is given to communicate; it is given
in the illustrations of everyday life that most people will understand because
God’s Word doesn’t care for your legalistic hang-ups; God’s Word cares about
whether you understand what God is trying to say or not, not whether you like
it or dislike it. And so this is describing the believer’s attitude toward
certain things, and in particular toward wisdom. Now as the husband and the wife have sex and
produce children which is the glory of the marriage, since the fall sometimes
they’re not the glory of the marriage, but originally that was the design; when
this occurs the analogy is the believer makes love to wisdom and produces fruit. It is a sexual analogy. And this means the
believer has to arouse wisdom, the idea is that effort is required. But once the effort is made wisdom
automatically gives the fruit. In other
words, wisdom comes forth with the fruit, but there’s effort that is required
to start, but up to a point, and then wisdom blesses.
Now that is the
promise of Proverbs 4:8-9. He is talking
about the believer devoting his attention to wisdom, meaning that he has to
love, he has to chase after, he has to initiate. And sometimes wisdom is elusive, as every man
has found a woman can be. Sometimes they
want to say yes and they have their famous ways of saying yes by saying no
about 500 times just to see whether you’re strong enough to insist. Women have this little game they like to
play. Well, the idea is that wisdom is
the same thing. And wisdom will play the
same little game and so you have to come chasing after her, and the idea of that
is that you have to have persistence and patience to get it but if you do and
you reach the point then it says “she shall bring thee to honor,” Proverbs 4:8,
“bring thee to honor” is again the analogy of having children and having a
large family, blessing.
Now, having seen
that and seeing the role of wisdom, that wisdom will give a crown of honor, the
idea is that David wants to develop in the Davidic dynasty this kind of a
relationship. He has taught, as best he
can, Solomon. He wants Solomon to teach
Rehoboam and then he wants this to go on down in history so that the Davidic
dynasty has a family wisdom that is kept within it. Now here’s the advantage of setting up family
wisdom. Let’s take David as an
illustration. In David’s case, say David
mastered so much divine viewpoint; now he had a lot of areas out here that
maybe he couldn’t master, but in his lifetime David mastered that much. Solomon, being brought up as a son under
David, at an earlier age had a far more efficient rate picked up that same
amount of divine viewpoint wisdom and in his generation can add to it and can
expand it, in a way which he couldn’t if he had to learn it all through scratch
in every generation. The idea is, then,
that by setting up a wisdom tradition in a family unit you can accumulate
wisdom rapidly. And over three or four
generations you can have a tremendous storehouse of wisdom.
Now in another
sense, to show you how this operates, this is one thing that has been wrong in
the United States for generations. Three
or four generations ago a family would raise children and by the time those
children got to be, say in high school, they knew their ancient languages, they
knew the classics, they could think their way through most of the great
literature of the world, and so by the time they got into the adult levels they
were able to go on and master real good stuff.
Now what happens today? The
generation starts out and they have to start from scratch in every single
generation and this is why we have actually a stupid generation today. We are, all of us… don’t compare us with one
another, if you want to see how Christians really operate don’t look at anyone
in this generation. If you want to see
what a real Christian is like you go back two or three generations and look at
their lives and then you will really see something that will appall you because
you will go back and you will see people who knew the Word of God so much that
they could stand up for three or fours at a time and work through the great
areas of predestination, sovereignty, free will, sanctification, and deal with
all these areas and be very, very familiar with them.
All right, did
they get that in their generation? No,
the Puritans over several generations accumulated that with the result that
after two or three generations they were able to produce a very powerful witness
in the world, a witness that is still being felt, and this is what is wrong
with us; in our family units there is not this accumulated reservoir of
wisdom. And it shows because every
generation comes along and has to work on it.
Let’s take an
illustration; first let’s go to the principle of what we’re talking about and
the principle is found in Exodus 20:5 and then we’ll take two illustrations,
one from the Bible and one from the modern world to show you how this principle
plays out in the family problem. Remember we have two elements in the family;
we’ve got the first divine institution which is responsibility, which is
individual, and we’ve got the second one which is the third divine institution
and that’s authority, and that’s tradition, and that’s behavior patterns that
are picked up in the home. These are
two, what appear to be conflicting principles.
And in Exodus 20:5-6 God applies Himself to these two principles of the
family unit. Remember Exodus 20:5-6 are
said about what God is like, these are not principles just for the Law. Now it turns out the Mosaic Law incorporates
this aspect of the nature of God but God is immutable, God didn’t change, God
wasn’t some other kind of God and then on Mount Sinai He suddenly say you know,
I don’t like the way I am, I’m going to change my character and now I’m this
kind of a guy. God didn’t change, He’s
immutable.
So Exodus 20:5-6
reveal a truth about God’s character that has always been there for centuries
and centuries back to Adam and back to eternity past. God says, “I, the LORD thy God, am a jealous
God, and I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation of them that hate Me.”
Now that is how God ties the first and the third together. What He is saying is that if you have
generation one, let’s draw the generations, G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4, there’s four
generations. He is saying if you start
off with a pattern of negative volition and you have, say –R learned behavior
patterns and let’s call this #41, in other words there’s a style, a family
style of rebellion against God. You can
rebel against God many different ways and there’s a certain family style that
is developed by the first generation of rebellion.
All right, the
second generation that grows up under the first learns that style of revolt and
so even though these people may become believers, hopefully they will, but even
though the second generation becomes believers, when they are out of fellowship
they will revert back to that thing that they picked up in the home. So they
will have to struggle with this –R learned behavior pattern #41. Now, if they are not believers and if this
second generation rejects Christ and never accepts grace and goes their own
way, then they have nothing in their nature to combat this learned behavior
pattern with the result that it grows, and under defiance learned behavior
patterns may pick up to 40, 41, 42, maybe a whole cluster of things that
develop around this thing that’s started in the family.
And then we come
to third generation and the third generation is a group of people who learned
under the second generation, and they were taught because of the third divine
institution. And the third divine
institution originally was designed to school the children in godliness. But after the fall the schooling factor keeps
on but the godliness doesn’t. So the
family still schools the children after the parents, that can’t be erased
because of the institution in creation.
But the direction the training takes is affected. And so the direction, it’s very easy God
says, to develop this thing. So a hatred toward God can be propagated from
father to son, and father to son and so.
Now when He says I
have designed the family institution to propagate truth, but God took a [can’t
understand word], remember back in the Garden of Eden, after the fall, remember
what God did to Adam and Eve? He took
them out of the Garden. Why? Because
there’s a tree there that had they eaten it they would have been physically
immortal. And God… actually it was an act of grace of excluding Adam and Eve
from the Garden because if you had these people out of fellowship, you had them
with a fallen nature, living forever, they would have been condemned to live
forever like this. So it was an act of
grace that God kicked them out of the Garden.
Now here you see
another act of His grace. He designed
the third divine institution for immortality; in other words, there wasn’t
supposed to be death when the third divine institution was originally
formed. This is why it’s got this flaw
in it. The family was to go on and on
and on and on and on and on, but when death came after the fall, then we have a
problem because when death comes so does evil and evil begins to eat away at
this thing. So what is God going to
do? He says I’m going to allow this
thing to go on four generations, and no longer.
In other words, learned behavior pattern #41 will persist in that family
unit for four generations and God’s going to cut it out. And He will either make the fourth generation
childless or he will lower the boom so hard that they will learn and never go
back for at least one or two more generations, there’ll be a gap. So this is teaching us that God after the
fall has, you might say, a sterilization process that He uses in history to
clean out family institutions that pick up this accretion. This is why civilization could continue; if
God was not this kind of a God mankind would have long ago destroyed himself. The accumulation of sin within each family
would have been so fantastic that nobody would survive. But God cleans out periodically a family;
that includes your family. If you can go
back in your family tree you would probably see that God had one, two, or three
more times in the past thousand years in your family tree cleaned your house
out good because of a certain habit pattern.
Now one further
thing before I show you this example; what kind of habit patterns are most
critical? What is this –R learned
behavior pattern, say #41. Why are some
behavior patterns worse than others? The
reason is to think in terms of Satan and the angels, and then think in terms of
men. Ask yourself a question? Are there ways that men can sin that angels
can’t and the answer is yes, because men have physical bodies? And therefore we have lusts of the
flesh. And these will precipitate in us
negative volition and negative volition in turn is fanning this and producing
–R. So we can have sins of the lust of
the flesh but angels can’t sin this way; they don’t have any flesh to have
lusts. So the angels sin by the lusts of
the spirit or the lusts of the mind. How
did Satan sin? It was an outright
defiance against God’s authority. Now
those are the sins that you might say are more spiritual, it’s a funny way to
use the word “more spiritual” but nevertheless, I think you see the point that
the angels can sin in this way and they’re not even bothered with the lusts of
the flesh.
Therefore,
conclusion—what sins are the most satanic?
Sins that are lust of the flesh or sins that are just absolute defiance
against God’s authority. Obviously it’s
the second category; all right, those are the sins that God will not permit in
a generation. Any sin that cuts across
and rebels against His authority are the ones He cuts out and this explains why
you can have families with, say chronic alcoholism in it, you can have families
with wine, women and song types and you wonder why they never get it? Because
apparently from God’s perspective that family underneath all the lusts of the
flesh still have an openness of the spirit so that if there is one they can
accept Christ as Savior. By constantly
staving out evil out of every fourth generation God keeps the human race open
to redemption. If God didn’t have this
process of sterilization periodically in
a family, eventually you would have people that were beyond redemption. In other words, they would have so hardened
their heart that it would be impossible for them to trust the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now let’s take an illustration
of this and to give us an illustration I’m going to go to Abraham, so let’s
turn to Genesis 11 and we’re going to study the four generations in Abraham’s
family and watch how one of these behavior patterns got started with the first
generation; it was amplified in the second, amplified further in the third
until finally in the fourth generation God cut it out.
Genesis 11:31;
Genesis 12:1 chronologically occurs before Genesis 11:31, God had called
Abraham and given him a call, but Terah… see, they’re down in Ur, Ur is over
here in the Middle East and Haran is up here.
Terah is Abraham’s father and he hears that Abraham has been called to
get out of Ur. So Terah takes the family
and goes to Haran, but stops there. He
is supposed to continue and go on down here, at least Abraham is and he
doesn’t; he stays in Haran. Why? Because he is linked to his father,
Terah. Now at this point God is breaking
a family up. There have been four
generations ending in the man Terah. And
apparently there is a sin pattern in that family that requires a break at this
point. Therefore, when God speaks to
Abraham, and is quoted in Genesis 12:1, He says, “Get thee out of thy country,
and get thee out from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house,” in other words,
get out! Break the family tie at this
point. So God at this point breaks off
the family and Abraham, as it were, starts out a new thing.
And this is an
illustration in history where a family takes a new fresh course. The family continues physically; genetically
the genes are still there, but environmentally and spiritually there’s been a
break. The son moves off, and the
family, as it were, starts out afresh.
So Abraham breaks the family ties so beginning with Abraham we have a
legitimate illustration of a first generation, we don’t have to go back to
Adam, the first generation begins with Abraham.
Now, he is commanded to break his tie, but when Abraham breaks his tie
it’s as though he starts out with a fresh slate. Here’s his family slate; we’ll call it the
Abraham family slate. And it’s all
erased, it’s blank now, Abraham has a right to start all over. But being a fallen man and having a sin
nature, there’s always the possibility of Abraham starting out a new
–R learned
behavior patterns. In other words Terah
might have had –R learned behavior pattern #62 and Abraham is coming out with
learned behavior pattern #43.
In other words,
it’s possible for Abraham to start off a new thing, and sure enough, that’s
what he does, because beginning in Genesis 12:10 no sooner does Abraham get
down in the land but “there is a famine in the land and Abraham went down into
Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land. [11] And it came to pass, when he had come
near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai, his wife, Behold, now I know
that thou art a fair woman to look upon; [12] Therefore it shall come to pass,
when the Egyptians shall see thee, they shall say, This is his wife: and they
will kill me, but they will save thee alive.
[13] Say, I pray thee,” that you will be my sister. In other words he passes his wife off as his
sister in this thing. Now what does that
demonstrate? It demonstrates a distrust
of God’s love in the extreme. In other
words, Abraham has a distrust of God in an area of crisis. In other words, when it gets down to his
physical life he cannot trust God. He
can trust God to provide, to move into the land, he had no problem there but
when it came down to his actually physical life… now you watch this because
it’s going to play out in his family.
The father,
Abraham, had a problem trusting the Lord in this area. Fine; all right, Genesis 16. [Tape turns]
…promised him a seed and in Genesis 16:1, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no
children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.” And his wife got to meditating about God’s
promise and Sarai got the idea some day of Abraham shacking up with Hagar and
coming up with the promised seed. And
this is her human viewpoint scheme. So
again this was a crisis, an absolute crisis in Abraham, because obviously
Abraham couldn’t transmit the progeny unless he had a son, he couldn’t fulfill
the Abrahamic Covenant. So we see the
physical life and the question of a son, a very critical area in Abraham’s
personal life. He can trust God for
other things but when it gets into this area he has trouble.
Now so far, not to
bad; but now Genesis 20:1, we have a recurrent phenomenon, “And Abraham
journeyed from there toward the south country [Negev], and dwelt between Kadesh
and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar. [2]
And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, She is my sister,” so here we go
again. He’s afraid for his physical life
and now this –R learned behavior pattern, we’ll call it #43, which is failure
to trust God in the areas of physical deliverance in his Son, the real critical
area, and so he has this learned behavior pattern. Why is it becoming a learned behavior
pattern? Already it’s becoming automatic
to the man. He had one experience down
in Egypt? What happened? He gets into a
similar jam and what does he do? He
reverts right back to that and every time he repeats it gets that much more
ingrained into Abraham’s soul. So
Abraham is ingraining his soul with this behavior pattern.
Now God is going
to deal drastically with this thing and so in Genesis 22 God attempts, and is
partially successful and partially not, God designs a little test to hit
Abraham at just this point. He take
precisely the two things that Abraham’s weakest in, trusting God to provide son
and trusting God to prevent physical death, and He arranges a test of Abraham
sacrificing his son, a perfectly designed test; a tremendous crisis for that
family, and Abraham could do like a lot of believers, oh God, oh God, why did
you let this happen to me? Well the
reason He let it happen to you is because He is trying to get that thing out
from under your soul, so God is going to deal drastically with Abraham in this
area by giving him a fantastic test, and the object is if Abraham can come through
this test he will destroy this learned behavior pattern away from his mind,
away from his soul. And that’s why Abraham is suffering here. Abraham’s suffering an extreme crisis in his
personal life because God is trying to deal with this behavior pattern that
he’s getting established.
And also, another
fringe benefit; one of the observers to this thing is Isaac, who is the second
generation of the family; in other words, Isaac is involved in the test so not
only does the test hit Abraham at just the critical point but it also hits
Isaac so Isaac, who has learned this behavior pattern from his father, will as
a child, have gone through and watched his father come out of that behavior
pattern. So this is a very, very
important test and as we know, Abraham passed it.
However, in
Genesis 26:6 we have Isaac doing the same thing. He’s on a vacation, the same problem comes,
what does he do, Isaac dwelt in Gerar, [7] “And the men of the place asked him
of his wife; and he said, She is my sister….”
So obviously Isaac has learned this pattern of response. Instead of trusting the Lord to provide what
happens when the heat’s on? He reverts
back to what he learned from his father.
Now we’ve got one generation, Abraham; we’ve got the second generation,
Isaac. Isaac has picked up a learned
behavior pattern from his father. So
every time Isaac gets out of fellowship he shows his carnality in the same way
his father did. And not only that but we
have Isaac marrying a woman who is a schemer like Sarai. It’s amazing, and I’ve watched this, it’s
amazing in counseling how many times this happens, somebody will come out of a
home where there’s been a great pattern of misbehavior on either the man’s part
or the woman’s part and they’ll go right out and marry one just like them. It is phenomenal to behold. And after about four or five years they
wonder, how the heck did I do this and they’ll go right around and marry
somebody exactly the same. It’s amazing.
The same thing in this family.
We have Isaac marrying
Rebekah, Rebekah is just like her mother-in-law and her mother-in-law was a
schemer and any time that they could bypass the plan of God she’d figure out a
way and Rebekah is the same way. And she
puts Jacob up to this plan of stealing the birthright out of Esau. Now where did Rebekah learned that from? Obviously she was coached in it by
participating in this second generation.
So in the second generation you’ve got that same behavior pattern going
on.
Now Jacob starts
off, what does Jacob do? In the third
generation Jacob steals the birthright from Esau. Isn’t that doing the same thing, instead of
trusting the Lord to provide what does he do?
He’s got a gimmick—I’m going to get that birthright if I have to steal
it from my brother. Now God didn’t tell
him to steal it; God would provide it but nevertheless Jacob stole it. So
Jacob, then, in the third generation is manifesting the same thing.
Not only that but
if you turn to Genesis 31:19 you’ll find that Jacob marries a woman that’s just
like his mother. So not only do you have Sari who’s a schemer, not only do you
have Rebekah who’s a schemer, but Jacob turns around and in Genesis 31:19 he’s
married to Rachel and she’s doing the same thing. Again, instead of trusting the Lord to
provide, “And Laban went to shear his sheep: and Rachel had stolen the images
that were her father’s.” This is the
money, he was worth a great deal and Rachel wouldn’t trust the Lord to provide
in the area of material things and so in this third generation Jacob marries a
woman and she’s doing exactly the same as his mother did. His mother put him up to a scheme, now he
goes out and marries a girl and she’s doing the same thing.
So by the third
generation we’ve got a problem here.
We’ve got a learned behavior pattern that is very, very strong, so
therefore, finally we come to the fourth generation of the twelve sons, and God
says all right, I am going to purge this family of this problem. Now why do you suppose God is going to purge
it? For one thing He’s that kind of a
God. He is going to in this stream of
tradition that is developing; He’s going to cut it short. He’s going to wipe out that behavior pattern. Now that doesn’t mean that the future sons
won’t have other sins over here but that one is going to come to a screeching
halt and how God does it is He puts him down into Egypt and to cool their heels
for 400 years, and that’s how God deals with that situation.
So here is at
least one biblical example of how we have a family who is involved in this kind
of thing. Now let me conclude by citing
a modern illustration of this. I’m
quoting from the book by Dr. Kurt Koch, Christian
Counseling and Occultism, in which he points out in the people who engage
in cultic processes, séances, various things like this, that these people
develop psychic damages that occur to the third and fourth generation. And there is some obvious illustrations that
he gives in his book and because of our time I don’t have time to deal with
them all so I’ll just take two illustrations from this book.
“A man in a
pastoral interview, which was concerned with his psychic disturbances, reported
the following: In our village there was no physician; my great-grandmother
versed herself thoroughly on all kinds of absurd curative crafts, especially on
conjuration. She was a much sought village doctor. Moreover, she was regarded as a pious woman,
since in her practice she conjured by the three highest names. Although she had a charm for every ailment of
man and beast, yet could she not control the psychic sufferings of her own
posterity, and so her children, down to her great-grandchildren, the manifold
psychic disturbances are represented.”
“Example number
61: A young lady in an interview
concerned with various psychic assaults, such as troubled faith, temper,
extreme sexuality, depressions, an [can’t understand words] of occult relations
involved an interesting picture. Her
grandmother was a conjurer for many years; her oldest son, the father of example
61, was harassed by suicidal thoughts.
The second son hung himself; the first grandchild had spells of
mania. The second grandchild is example
61.”
And he goes on to
point out that this is not just subjective things such as infective type of
insanity or heredity schizophrenia or
something, it is accompanied by object phenomenon, such as telekinesis, things
that other people can observe. And so since there are these para psychological
phenomenal attendant with it, obviously then there’s some more to it than just
simple heredity.
So we have two
illustrations; one from Abraham, one from the area of the modern world and the
psychic disturbances and spiritualism where we see damage patterns traced down
to four generations. God cuts them off
because God is interested in preserving our family for blessing.
Shall we turn in
conclusion to Proverbs 4:7; in Proverbs 4:7 we’re exhorted to seek wisdom, and
it says, as we said last the chief thing of wisdom is get it. We close with this note, thinking of the fact
that you are not an island unto yourself but that each person here today is a
product of a family and you might consider what you have personally learned out
of your family background that is antithetical to the Word of God. You might consider and even pray that God
would show in your life things that you have picked up, perhaps unconsciously,
ways you respond to things, ways and patterns of behavior, maybe some of which
you are not conscious of but nevertheless patterns of behavior that are
preventing and stunting your spiritual growth.
This is an area, perhaps, which if face forthrightly from the Word of
God and as wisdom says it’s up to your responsibility to purge it because God
promises I will bless them that love Me down to thousands of generations; it
can be done. You can work against, you
might say, your spiritual inheritance and you can do this by getting with the
Word of God and making it apply in all areas of life.
With out heads
bowed….
(1) Positive
volition, (2)enlightening ministry of Holy Spirit; (3)divine viewpoint framework
(know basic doctrine and are convinced they are true). (4) experiential
encounter with the love of God expressed in and through other believers, namely
the body. (5) tremendous fulfillment.