“I have
chosen Abraham, so that he will direct his children and his
household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what
is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for
Abraham what He has promised him.”
(Genesis 18:19)
Let’s begin with a key foundational
understanding: The Hebraic
Restoration is our Father’s
means of returning those who love and follow His Son Jesus as
Lord of their lives to the trust-filled,
obedience-based lifestyle of the
Bible’s first recorded Hebrew, Abraham. Why should we
today pay particular attention to this Patriarch? Because he
fulfilled what God requires of every father, “to direct his children and his household after
him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and
just.”
Abraham obeyed God by leaving
everything that was familiar to him (Genesis 12:1).
This man was able to trust God so
completely that he was willing to sacrifice his only son,
Isaac, the one from whom would emerge the human lineage of
Jesus (Genesis 22:1-16).
Because of Abraham’s obedient
trust, God blessed him through an eternal Covenant (Genesis 12:
2-3).
Our Lord valued Abraham’s
obedience so greatly that He shared the Gospel with him in
advance (Galatians 3:8).
God declared Abraham to be the father of
all who put their trust in Jesus (Romans 4:16).
Consider what it must have been like to be
Abraham’s descendants, regularly hearing of the depth of
both his trust in God and his obedience to Him. Today the life of our spiritual ancestor,
Abraham, harbors far greater implications for fathers in
particular and their families than most Christians have ever
considered.
• If you’re a father or
grandfather, what reports of faithful trust and obedience have
your children heard about you?
• Does anything about your
relationship with God inspire them to live likewise?
Almost every day the news vividly depicts
the curse of God on this nation because fathers have neglected to
emulate the trust-filled obedience of Abraham in his
love-enacted relationship with his Lord. That flagrant
disregard for parental responsibility has elicited a
devastating response in this younger generation: self-absorbed,
entitlement-demanding, perpetual adolescents who perpetrate without conscience whatever evil they can imagine.
Why has this leap into individualist
narcissism exploded so dramatically in the past two decades?
Because fathers failed to role
model and instruct their children
“to keep the way of the
Lord.”
The Psalmist’s lament is tragically
contemporary: “The wicked
freely strut about when what is vile is honored among
men” (Psalms 12:8). What has
happened to this nation to release such disdain for biblical
boundaries—and who is to blame? Too many older people
fault the younger generation but refuse to acknowledge their own failure to obey God’s
Word and personally instill a heart of obedient trust in their children.
Here’s how it happened. For several
decades the spiritual training of children throughout
Christendom has been outsourced away
from the home to the religious
establishment. The bitter fruit of this pattern? Within two
generations Bible-based believers in this nation have dropped from 65% to 4%. The culpability
can be squarely placed on grandfathers
and fathers who forsook their
biblical responsibilities to God and to their children.
Fathers have failed to discern God’s eternal goals for each generation that is under their watch. Nor
have they exercised His methods for spiritually training the next generation.
Our Father purposes in every generation that His
righteous commands be fulfilled by each one who knows and
follows Jesus as their Lord. Think about it. Both the ancient
Israelites and we today have the same call: to reveal our Lord to all
peoples of the earth (Isaiah 43:21; 1John 1:1-3). We who love
Jesus are empowered by His indwelling Spirit to walk in the obedient trust that can penetrate the world’s darkness.
Observe [My commands] carefully, for this will show your wisdom and
understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say,
‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’ (Deuteronomy 4:6)
Our awesome God, Who alone created the
entire universe, calls upon His children to reveal Him and His
righteous commands to the world (Matthew 28: 18-20). Through
the love-motivated lives and testimony of Jesus’
followers, He wants the world to know that in Christ alone is found the
salvation of mankind (Luke 10:2).
In every
generation our God desires to use
those who belong to Him to accomplish these purposes. He first
called the Israelites to do this, but they lost sight of His
goal and failed. For the past 2000 years He has intended to use
those who belong to Jesus to represent Him to the world in the
way His Word calls for. Yet among westernized
“Christians” in particular, this vision has been
replaced by a self-centered, me-first perspective that for the
most part serves self.
A common thread in Christian history
recounts in part why the world has not been told about the One
True God:
• During the early 4th century
Christianity became a political force—an ecclesiastical system emulating
the Roman Empire government. Its vast, ever-growing resources
were used to construct grandiose edifices to sustain an image
of strength and control for the powerful few. Any attempt to
bring Christ to the nations was under the guise of forced
conversion at the edge of the sword.
• To maintain its dominance, the
ecclesiastical hierarchy displaced
the father in his primary
responsibility to raise up a godly generation who would reach
the world for Jesus.
• The result? Rather than fulfilling
the Kingdom purpose through unity
of the Spirit to evangelize the world,
Christianity has split into 38,000 competing expressions.
People have been seduced into religious complacency and
disinterested ignorance of the eternal purposes of God. Far
from receiving God’s blessing, this fracturing of the
body has brought about a curse! Can you deny it when you’re inundated with
reports of widespread clergy sexual misconduct and divorce
rates that exceed that of unbelievers?
By God’s grace it’s time for
fathers and grandfathers to rid themselves of the smug
complacency they’ve given way to. The Bible affirms that
the primary place for spiritual training is the home. Our Father sees
“family” in terms of generations. He purposes that one generation would build on
the Biblical wisdom and applications that have been passed
along and role modeled by prior generations.
Remember, our God wants “godly generations” (Malachi 2:15), people wholeheartedly eager to
show their love for Him by doing His will. Fulfilling His
purpose calls for a determined intensity that’s
reiterated by Jesus to those who love and follow Him:
Love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today
are to be upon your hearts.
Impress them on your children. Talk about
them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road,
when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as
symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write
them on the doorframes of your
houses and on your gates.
(Deuteronomy 6:5-9)
Keep in mind that loving God and loving your neighbor as commanded in both Testaments are expressed as His people live out the commands He has given! Learning to do this happens first in the home.
Home-grown training especially by fathers is emphasized by the
apostle Paul: “Fathers, do not
embitter your children; instead, [you] bring them up in the
training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Because of the inter-generational
understanding of “family” in the Bible,
“fathers” here includes grandfathers. Both
generations of fathers must uphold their responsibility for the
spiritual training of succeeding generations. Nowhere does God’s Word allow for children to
be outsourced for others to spiritually train —NOWHERE!!!
“He will turn the hearts of the
fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to
their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a
curse”
(Malachi 4:6).
Today many fathers are leading their families
out of the religious system establishment. But, too many of these are
also neglecting to follow through in their FULL responsibility
to God to raise up a “godly
generation.” Sadly,
they’re self-satisfied that they’re no longer
looking to others to spiritually train their children—but they’re not filling in that very
necessary need either!
The hearts of fathers of each generation who claim to
belong to Jesus must be turned fully to what the Bible requires
of them in training their children. That’s what love for God and love for others
means—lining up with God’s perspective and
following through! And in response, the hearts of the children
will be turned to their fathers and grandfathers for wisdom and role modeling a way
of life that displays loving God and the wisdom of living by
His Word.
This can only happen when men fear God
sufficiently in awesome reverence to fully obey Him. It’s
grievous that Paul could be addressing many in this generation
of fathers and grandfathers when he mourns, “There is no fear of
God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18). Earlier we cited that God intends
for His own to disciple a Godly generation so that they might
go forth to reach every tribe, nation and language for His
Name’s sake (see Revelation 7:9). Such an intention calls
for both wisdom as well as the power of His Spirit to carry out
His will.
Where does the wisdom that God teaches, His holy perspective which our
children and the world need to learn, begin? His Word makes that clear: “The fear of the
LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10; see also 2:1-8). All Abraham needed
was to look around at the natural world and realize that
Someone far greater than himself had created it (Romans 1:
18-20). That’s the general
revelation of God’s existence
that’s evident to anyone with a will to see! In any generation that
one realization should inspire holy fear and awe.
Neglect of spiritual responsibility by
fathers and grandfathers today isn’t a new issue. The
Older Testament ends with the warning that the hearts of
fathers and children will turn to one another or else
catastrophe on a national level will arise. (See Malachi 4:6). Even
2400 years ago there was an unwillingness of fathers to
righteously parent their children, and a resistance of children
to receive fully from their fathers. But does that nullify
God’s will for the generations? Not at all! Rather, every generation of fathers must fully turn their
hearts to the children and instill in them the wisdom by which
God would have them live.
You may wonder, what keeps each generation
of fathers from fully turning their hearts to the children of
the next generation? Why did God have to repeatedly remind
Israel of the responsibility of fathers and grandfathers to
teach the generations to come to testify about God and trust
Him? (See Psalm 78:3-7, for example.) Each generation must resist
their own sin nature and its attraction to demonic seduction if they
are to genuinely love our Lord and obey His commands (John 14:
23,24).
When a generation of fathers fails to
resist their sin nature and gives way to demonic seduction,
they not only sin against God by not raising up a godly generation, but they
also sin against their own children and their children’s
children.
Without the foundation of God’s Word,
each generation of children is deceived, cursed with the spirit
of delusion by which the world lives. They’ll live by the
lie that there are no righteous standards of God. That’s
certainly what our sin nature wants to believe! And be-cause
fewer and fewer are even aware of God’s wisdom to impress
into their children, “For this
reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will
believe the lie” (2
Thessalonians 2:11).
If these children are outsourced to public
education, which is an institutional system organized to feed
government demands, their condition will be all the worse. The
Humanism which denies that there are any God-given standards is
the worldview that penetrates every course of every public
institution of higher learning. That’s what flows out of
the public universities that are producing today’s
teachers. The intentional hidden
agenda of public education today
feeds the self-absorbed sin nature of today’s youth: “Do whatever feels good!”
Consider this appalling reality: Instead of
each succeeding generation of fathers adding to the applied wisdom
of God’s commands, today each generation must start anew in learning
and applying them. Because they haven’t received as a spiritual inheritance an
accumulation of the wisdom of past applications, only 4% of America’s
young people today even believe in the Bible as God’s
holy Word.
From generation to generation our legal system has
done a better job than families do in building off historical
truth. Our judicial system has a body of past applications of
laws called “legal precedence.” Judges today can
draw off the wisdom of past applications of law in order to
render objective verdicts. This is important to judges because
they have a goal—just and impartial decisions.
Our military does a better job of passing along wisdom
from one generation to another than today's families do. The
military organization understands its purpose: In order to
defend this nation it must ALWAYS be prepared to achieve
victory. Accumulated wisdom from past conflicts factors into
this goal.
For fathers and grandfathers to possess
this same dedicated focus for their own families, they must
have a firm grasp of God’s eternal purpose—the salvation of them and their families. Each generation of fathers is responsible to
ensure that as far as it depends on their loving obedience to
God, a godly generation is raised up who will be welcomed into
heaven. Since every generation dies, the eternal and most
important issue is this: Will you
and your descendants be welcomed into heaven or suffer
condemnation in hell?
Each generation of fathers and grandfathers
must ensure that not only they themselves are heading for the
narrow gate by the grace of Jesus (Matthew 7:13), but must
also exercise intentional purpose to help succeeding
generations find welcome.
• How high a priority for you is the
eternal destiny of all those you care about?
• What are you willing to do on their
behalf to afford them every opportunity to be welcomed by Jesus
in heaven?
“As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows
over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no
more” (Psalms 103:15,16)
It’s probably not been long since you
attended a funeral. I, Mike, was raised with a large number of
relatives and family friends living nearby. It seemed like we
went to two or three funerals a year as I was growing up. I
used to wonder about all the effort put into burying
someone—the abundance of flowers, the expensive casket,
the many people who took time off work to attend the service.
Every funeral ended with us at a cemetery
where the final prayers and goodbyes were said before the
casket was lowered into the grave. One afternoon at the
cemetery the realization of the final end of ALL humans really
struck me—we ALL die one day. At that moment was launched the very beginning
of my spiritual pilgrimage that ultimately led me to embrace
our Father’s Covenant and follow Jesus as Lord of my
life.
Now in our 60s, the words of the Psalmist
have even more meaning that spurs the two of us to purposefully
press on to make Christ known across the world:
Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake
me, O God, till I declare your power
to the next generation, your might to all who are to come... May God be gracious to us and bless us and
make His face shine upon us, that
Your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all
nations (Psalms 71:18; 67:1,2)
If you’re younger it may be difficult
for you to realize that you are aging, and that one day you may be old and
facing death. But there’s something you can do right now
in order to not fail the generation(s) behind you: Internalize God’s
eternal perspective of you. Recognize that there are eternal
consequences of not loving Jesus and walking in His steps of
obedient trust. Without the covering of His blood by faith, we
stand condemned to face God’s deserved wrath for our sin.
(See John 3:18.)
Don’t imitate your forefathers who
practiced religion but neglected to apply God’s Word to
their own lives and those of their children. Even a cursory
knowledge of God’s holy standards in the Bible broadcasts
that the United States has now become a reprobate nation.
What you have under your control is to love God responsively:
to align your way of life with His commands found throughout
the Bible. The Bible isn’t God’s means to add to
your knowledge so you’ll become prideful, nor His guide
book to increase your worldly abundance. Rather, His Word
exposes the darkness of your own sin nature so that you may
obtain His grace of forgiveness through repentance and trust in
what Jesus has done on your behalf.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper
than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing
soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12)
Repentance is the sorrow of conviction you
experience when you realize that you’ve violated
God’s holy commands. And, repentance requires that you change course from the path
of serving your sin nature; to do a 180º shift to make His
commands your way of life (1Peter 4:1,2). That’s why He
promises out of love to indwell you by His Spirit—so you
can be strengthened and encouraged to do His will and bring
others into His King-dom! (John 14:15-17). While you still
breathe it isn’t too late to yield to His call to repent
and to conform your life to His gracious commands by His Spirit
in you.
For you fathers and grandfathers
who’ve failed to personally instill God’s Word in
your progeny, ask their forgiveness. Offer to help them make
God’s Word a way of life so they may receive His blessings.
In the remainder of this Lifebyte are
several important issues for you to consider. Examine yourself
and your household to see how you’re abiding by
God’s standards and where you fall short. Wherever you
find that you’ve sinned, repent! Turn from it and cry out
for the grace to live as God would have you.
Fill in each and every old attitudinal and
behavioral rut with God’s way so that your repentance is complete. In
essence, as we repent, our spirit yields to His Spirit in us,
and we’re changed to become more Christ-like in our
motives and actions.
“The first thing Andrew did was to
find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the
Messiah!’”
(John 1:41)
Out of love for our Lord do you have the
eager, responsive heart that propelled Andrew? When he found
the Truth he did something about it—he ran to tell the
brother he loved! What have you done with the truths our Father
has revealed to you?
• If you’ve gone through Demolishing Strongholds, how many other people have you helped get free from
besetting, agitating spirits? Or, have you let yourself slip
back into the same ruts of behavior and/or strongholds? Do you
still attend a congregation or fellowship gathering that
hasn’t been freed from strongholds? If yes, why?
• If you’ve gone through God’s Instruments For War, how has the Spirit been able to use you to
bless others? How many other people have you helped discern
their spiritual gifts?
• If you’ve learned the
rudiments of biblical confrontation from our book Growing Relationships Through Confrontation, how many others have you taught how to
effectively confront so that love can grow?
• If you’ve read The Gospel of the Covenant is the Pilgrimage to Salvation, how many copies did you hand out to others you
care about who have yet to be found in Christ?
“Fathers, do not embitter your
children; instead, bring them up in the training and
instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians
6:4)
Bitterness is
a major curse that’s passed on to children by fathers who
fail to personally teach them God’s ways with a loving
heart. A child can become bitter through bad experiences, from
unfulfilled false expectations, or because of a sense of unjust
treatment. Not being taught God’s way by a father and/or
grandfather opens the door for bitterness; into that void the
world’s values, ways and goals insinuate themselves.
We’ve found that bitterness has
be-come the most tolerated sin within western Christendom. Not
surprisingly, the most common demonic stronghold besides deceit
is bitterness. Bitterness leads to emotion
guardedness—the inability or
unwillingness to give others the affectionate love needed in a
relationship. Those who never allow themselves to feel have a
difficult time forgiving others, and find they hold grudges a
long time.
Bitter people may cast off restraint and
adopt the world’s values to satisfy their carnal desires
(1 John 2:15-17). In one way or another, by their bitterness
they defile everyone they encounter (Hebrews 12:15), including
their hapless children. Their refusal to forgive often ends in
divorce.
• Have you seen any of the above
symptoms of bitterness in your children or grandchildren?
• Have any of your children or
grandchildren been divorced because of your failure to instill
God’s Word as a way of life for them when they were
receptive to your input?
• Have you asked their forgiveness for
not being the father/grandfather God called you to be?
“Fear of man will prove to be a
snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe”
(Proverbs 29:25)
Many years ago the founder of a popular
men’s ministry used our workbook Demolishing Strongholds with
his staff. The change in these people’s lives was so
dramatic that he wrote a lengthy letter to his constituency
touting the value of the book. In the weeks to follow, however,
a number of Evangelical pastors warned him not to support the
book, saying ”deliverance is too hot a topic to get
involved with.” Because of that one man’s fear of what
others thought, thousands failed to hear about and experience
the freedom the people on his staff had received.
We can certainly identify with how saddened
Paul must have felt when he wrote about how his good friend,
Barnabas, was led into hypocrisy by the fear that Peter gave
way to:
Before certain men came from James, [Peter]
used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began
to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those
who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray (Galatians 2:12,13).
• Do you live in fear of anyone? Who
comes to mind that causes apprehension for you?
• If you’re a husband, to whom
does your family turn the most for guidance and
correction—you or your wife?
• Do you fear having to leave your
lukewarm or unbelieving faith community in order to be true to
our Lord?
• Do you fear confronting your friends
when they use God’s Name as a swear word, or when they
try to include you in activities you know displease Him?
“If you belonged to the world, it
would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the
world, but I have
chosen you out of the world.
That is why the world hates you”
(John 15:19)
Christian pollster George Barna has found
that the majority of self-identified Christians hold the same unbiblical values as
unbelievers.
• Other than attending religious
services, what biblical distinctives and values separate you
from the world? What biblical distinctives and values separate
your children and grandchildren from those of the world?
• What in your life would cause the
“world to hate you” and our Lord to commend you?
• Do you fear representing Jesus
through testimonies to unbelievers? If yes, consider our
Lord’s warning:
Whoever acknowledges Me before men, I will
also acknowledge him before My Father in heaven. But whoever
disowns Me before men, I will disown him before My Father in
heaven (Matthew 10:33).
“The righteous are as bold as a
lion”
(Proverbs 28:1)
If you find it hard to live as the person
your Lord needs you to be as His representative and child,
examine yourself for for any unrighteousness. This may come
through: 1). unconfessed sin; 2). unde-molished strongholds;
3). old symptoms of demolished strongholds that still filter
and control your actions because they haven’t been
replaced by God’s ways.
The righteous ARE as bold as a lion. They
don’t have to make themselves so, they ARE by the
assurance of His Spirit in them! That’s how you recognize
a righteous person—by their boldness and willingness to
represent Jesus out of love for Him and for others.
• Scrutinize yourself and your family
life:
Do you excuse
unrighteous activities in your home—TV programs, Internet
sites, reading materials and music, and anything else that
allows sin to go on there?
• Next take a close look at the people
in your faith community:
Are they
still in bondage to their strongholds?
Do you
recognize a pattern of tolerated sin in their lives?
Do their
lifestyles fail to motivate you to become more Christ-like in
character and to fulfill your part in His kingdom according to
His will for you?
• If you answered “yes” to
any of these questions, why do you still take part in these
activities and join with others who do as well?
If there’s unrighteousness in your
family, you must confront it! If you find unrighteousness in
your faith community, you must confront it or leave if they
refuse to repent. (See Matthew 18:15-17.) If you refuse to do
so, you may be evidencing a cowardice that denies Jesus as your
Lord. And that puts you in detest-able company before Him.
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the
sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters
and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of
burning sulfur. This is the second death (Revelation 21:8).
A coward lacks the courage to undertake or endure
dangerous or unpleasant situations or circumstances even if
these are the will of God.
• Are you cowardly?
• Does your life reflect a lack of
trust in God?
• Do you delude yourself into
believing that your cowardice to publicly confess Jesus as your
Lord and obey His commands will still bring you a heavenly
welcome?
“For the love of money is a root of
all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered
from the faith and pierced themselves with
many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:10)
If you resist pursuing money as an end in
itself, you’re demonstrating an authentic trust in God as
your ultimate Provider. The writer to the Hebrews makes this
connection: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be
content with what you have, because
God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I
forsake you’” (Hebrews
13:5). From our Lord’s vantage point as Creator of
everything, your trust in His love for you, His reliability, His truth,
and His power is foundational in your relationship with Him. Your trust in God reveals your total acceptance
of Who He knows Himself to be—a God Who is TOTALLY
trustworthy.
Wholeheartedly pursuing money for
self-fulfillment or to assuage anxious worry is the antithesis
of trust in the God Who knows what you need. (Matthew 6:31-34).
If you’ve retired and have accumulated wealth so that
your life feels secure, be alert to the fact that it can
disappear overnight. Consider Paul’s admonition:
Command those who are rich in this present
world not to be arrogant nor to put
their hope in wealth, which is so
uncertain, but to put their trust in
God, Who richly provides us with
everything for our enjoyment (1Timothy 6:17).
If you haven’t pursued wealth, you
can identify with the Psalmist’s cry when you’re
around those who call themselves “Christian” but
have made earthly wealth and security their chief pursuit: “O LORD, by Your hand save me from such men, from men of this world whose reward is in this
life” (Psalms 17:14a). This man cried out to God to
“save” him from such people. Should a follower of
Jesus accept their goals and values without a word, allowing
them to blindly pursue the broad path of destruction without
warning them of its outcome?
• As a parent or grandparent, what do
your children see as the goals and motives of your lifestyle?
• Do they hear testimonies reflecting
your trust in God? Or, do they hear you concerned about and
pursuing the values of this world?
Conclusion
You can probably sense that very shortly
our Father is going to confront the sins of this nation in an
undeniable way. The chastisement that is coming will test and
refine the faith of many (1Peter 1:6,7). Sadly but inevitably,
the lukewarm and half-hearted will deny Jesus as Lord as they
have in every generation where God chastises His people to
purify them.
As a loving Father, our God may already be
disciplining you so that you will flee sin and repent of any
unrighteousness in your life before the Dark Days of Chastisement come. Take a
lesson from David when it comes to going through difficult
times:
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but
now I obey Your word. It was good
for me to be afflicted so that I
might learn Your decrees. I know, O LORD, that Your laws are
righteous, and in faithfulness You
have afflicted me (Psalms 119:67,
71,75).
Now is the time
for you and those close to you in the faith to rid yourself of every sin and anything that hinders you from being the bold representative to the world
our God privileges His own to be.
The United States is already experiencing
the dire consequences of its sin-borne guilt. Only widespread
repentance, beginning with the family of God as Peter calls
for, can change our future. (See 1 Peter 4:17-19 for
“marching orders” if you’re loving and
serving Jesus.) You may not be able to save this nation, but
through your trust-based obedience and wholehearted love you
and those you care about can be assured in Jesus.
We leave you with this guidance of hope:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God’s will is—His good,
pleasing and perfect will (Romans
12:2).
