Parenting Through a Family Crisis
00:00:00.000 | How do we parent through family crisis?
00:00:08.600 | In today's scenario, a husband and a wife are at odds.
00:00:13.320 | Son is pitted against father.
00:00:15.800 | Daughter is pitted against her mother.
00:00:18.240 | Even the daughter-in-law sides with the daughter against mom.
00:00:22.560 | And all of the compounded animosities towards the mother weigh heavy on the father.
00:00:28.600 | It all appears that a man's worst enemies are inside of his own home.
00:00:34.760 | So when a family breaks apart like this, what is a man to do?
00:00:41.040 | This scenario is what makes the 7th chapter of Micah so bleak.
00:00:45.440 | It's the worst of times.
00:00:47.580 | The culture is fracturing apart due to sin.
00:00:50.600 | No one can trust anyone.
00:00:52.360 | Closer to home, families are falling into crisis.
00:00:55.480 | It is a time, warns Micah, to "put no trust in a neighbor, have no confidence in a friend,
00:01:03.000 | guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms."
00:01:08.000 | From a wife, that is.
00:01:10.020 | For the son treats the father with contempt.
00:01:13.020 | The daughter rises up against her mother.
00:01:15.560 | The daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
00:01:17.800 | A man's enemies are the men of his own house.
00:01:23.520 | As Micah 7, verses 5-6.
00:01:26.880 | Considering the pain of such chaos in society and in the home, Micah models two things in
00:01:31.280 | verse 9.
00:01:32.560 | He honestly reckons with himself and he lays hold of his hope in God.
00:01:37.960 | "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him.
00:01:43.600 | Until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me, he will bring me out to the light.
00:01:48.800 | I shall look upon his vindication."
00:01:53.640 | Here's Pastor John in a 2010 sermon explaining this text's relevance for the broken family
00:02:00.480 | today.
00:02:02.920 | What makes verse 9 at the beginning so stunning, "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because
00:02:12.840 | I have sinned" is because he says it in the vortex of being sinned against.
00:02:20.720 | You know this is one of the hardest things in the world, don't you?
00:02:26.680 | Friends, family, work.
00:02:31.480 | It is impossible without the Holy Spirit.
00:02:35.480 | So he knows he's being sinned against.
00:02:38.480 | He knows some of the accusations against him are wrong.
00:02:40.920 | He is going to be vindicated in something.
00:02:44.480 | And he knows that God is for him and not against him.
00:02:48.160 | God will bring him out into the light out of darkness.
00:02:51.400 | He will vindicate him so he's bold in his confidence in this assertion.
00:02:57.200 | Amazingly bold.
00:02:59.400 | Nevertheless, nevertheless, what he draws attention to, to explain the Lord's indignation
00:03:08.040 | is his own sin.
00:03:09.440 | "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him."
00:03:15.160 | So my answer to the question, why is he brokenhearted?
00:03:20.640 | I'm arguing that the posture for parenting with hope in the worst of times is a brokenhearted
00:03:26.840 | boldness and I'm asking first, why is he brokenhearted?
00:03:31.360 | And the center of the answer, the core of the answer is not their sin against him but
00:03:37.120 | his sin against God.
00:03:38.880 | That's the core of his answer.
00:03:41.880 | And that's the core of parenting.
00:03:43.960 | It's the core of parenting.
00:03:46.440 | If it doesn't happen, nothing else is going to go right.
00:03:51.240 | Nothing.
00:03:53.080 | Wives and husbands, here it begins.
00:03:57.120 | Or here it starts over.
00:04:00.040 | The posture of parenting with hope in the worst of times is the posture of brokenhearted
00:04:06.080 | boldness and the brokenheartedness is first, centrally because of his own sin.
00:04:13.600 | That is a great battle that we face and we can only find it by God's grace.
00:04:21.080 | I pray for you, God, grant that all of us would be given the miracle by the Holy Spirit
00:04:29.680 | of the kind of humility that in the midst of being sinned against, mainly emotionally
00:04:35.760 | owns our sin against God.
00:04:39.800 | Miracle.
00:04:41.320 | Healing miracle.
00:04:43.080 | The kind of thing that could give hope where you thought there was none.
00:04:48.000 | None.
00:04:49.640 | When you stand before God on the judgment day to give an account, guess what?
00:04:57.620 | He will not give you one minute to itemize the sins against you.
00:05:05.680 | Not one.
00:05:07.960 | For several reasons.
00:05:09.400 | Number one, he has a book.
00:05:12.140 | He doesn't need your help.
00:05:15.760 | Number two, you'd get it wrong.
00:05:18.800 | Your memory's not good enough.
00:05:20.800 | Number three, you'd use it for self-justification.
00:05:24.840 | You don't get one minute at the last day to talk about anybody else's sin.
00:05:29.840 | None.
00:05:30.840 | Just your own.
00:05:32.280 | So how do you parent in the worst of times with hope?
00:05:37.960 | How do you parent with hope when the family is divided three to two?
00:05:42.880 | Two to three.
00:05:44.560 | You look to the Lord, you cry to the Lord, verse seven, and then you cry to him with
00:05:50.440 | two deep, spirit-wrought, word-informed convictions.
00:05:57.240 | Are you getting there?
00:05:59.160 | Only God can get you there.
00:06:01.000 | Preaching helps, but only God can get you there.
00:06:03.840 | I'm trying to build into your life right now, as parents, or to be parents, or every single
00:06:08.280 | people, I'm trying to build two deep convictions, governing convictions, emotionally effective
00:06:16.960 | convictions.
00:06:17.960 | Two of them, broken-hearted boldness.
00:06:22.080 | A conviction, "My sin is my biggest problem.
00:06:26.320 | My sin is our marriage problem.
00:06:28.640 | My sin is my parenting problem.
00:06:30.920 | My sin is my work problem.
00:06:32.520 | My sin is the church's problem, and I don't deserve anything from God."
00:06:40.520 | We are not and never will be perfect parents.
00:06:43.100 | We have sin.
00:06:45.080 | Call it anything you want to soften it.
00:06:48.960 | We're not foolish.
00:06:50.360 | We're not naive.
00:06:51.360 | We know we've been sinned against.
00:06:53.000 | Wives sinned against us.
00:06:54.480 | Children sinned against us.
00:06:55.880 | Pastors sinned against us.
00:06:57.920 | We know that.
00:06:59.440 | That's just not the core of our issue.
00:07:02.280 | God will not call me to account for anybody's sin against me, none.
00:07:06.760 | He will call me to account for one thing.
00:07:08.720 | How have I responded?
00:07:10.840 | Have I been a sinner?
00:07:12.920 | And I have.
00:07:14.460 | Only the Holy Spirit can make us feel this guilt as we should deep down.
00:07:18.240 | So that's the first conviction I'm praying that God would work in our hearts.
00:07:23.480 | Number two, there is no God like our God.
00:07:26.200 | I want you to be so deeply convinced that he pardons iniquity, he passes over transgression,
00:07:32.760 | he relents from anger, he delights in steadfast love.
00:07:37.360 | I want you to be just as deeply convinced of that as that you are a sinner.
00:07:44.620 | Do you see how these work together?
00:07:45.940 | This is so important.
00:07:47.220 | Get the next 60 seconds.
00:07:49.900 | Deep, deep sense of conviction for my own sin in the midst of being sinned against.
00:07:55.380 | I'm emotionally governed here by my own failures and I am being humbled by that.
00:08:01.660 | That's a miracle.
00:08:02.760 | And over here is a massive, strong, unshakable conviction.
00:08:06.660 | This God that rules the world pardons iniquity.
00:08:10.020 | Do you see how they work together?
00:08:13.180 | This one causes me to be more amazed at the pardon.
00:08:16.700 | But unless I'm confident in the pardon, I'm going to lie to myself.
00:08:19.540 | I am.
00:08:20.540 | I'm going to short circuit this conviction.
00:08:22.580 | I will not let it go to the bottom.
00:08:24.380 | I can't because it's devastating.
00:08:26.260 | It's just too devastating unless I got this fixed.
00:08:30.100 | Got that?
00:08:31.340 | You got how they work together?
00:08:33.180 | It won't work.
00:08:34.180 | You can't have a God you're super excited about because of his pardon if you don't go
00:08:37.860 | here.
00:08:39.100 | And you can't go here unless you've got a God who's super excited, who's super exciting
00:08:44.460 | in his pardon.
00:08:45.460 | And if you say, "That's, that's, that's, uh, that won't work."
00:08:50.180 | I'm saying it's a miracle.
00:08:53.020 | It's a miracle.
00:08:55.700 | I can't explain the Christian life.
00:08:57.500 | I can't explain the new birth.
00:08:58.740 | I can't explain conviction of sin.
00:09:00.940 | I can't explain how God shows up and does two things that depend on each other at the
00:09:04.940 | same time.
00:09:05.940 | He does.
00:09:06.940 | Most of you have tasted it.
00:09:09.660 | You have.
00:09:11.220 | You need to go deeper, but almost all of you in this room, I would guess, have tasted what
00:09:14.780 | I'm talking about.
00:09:16.560 | So those two deep convictions, brokenhearted boldness, are what I mean by parenting with
00:09:23.620 | hope in the worst of times.
00:09:26.900 | We assume a posture in the vortex of being sinned against, and we don't even know, is
00:09:33.180 | it mainly me or mainly them?
00:09:34.260 | I can't even figure this out, right?
00:09:35.660 | We don't even know.
00:09:36.660 | But in that vortex, we own what we know.
00:09:41.500 | I'm a sinner, and he's a great Savior.
00:09:44.140 | So how do you close?
00:09:46.660 | You close by saying, "Okay, we're Christians, and we know now that from this side of the
00:09:55.420 | cross, if I look at that where God bought my pardon, both of these are intensified,
00:10:04.380 | aren't they?
00:10:06.860 | Not lessened, intensified."
00:10:11.220 | You don't really know how grievous your sin is until you watch Jesus die for it.
00:10:18.020 | You don't.
00:10:19.180 | You can't.
00:10:20.180 | You just can't know how bad it is.
00:10:22.280 | You can't feel how bad it is.
00:10:23.680 | The whole point of how gory the cross is is how gory my sin is.
00:10:27.300 | That's the whole point.
00:10:28.300 | You just can't know.
00:10:30.500 | Therefore Christians have an edge on guilt.
00:10:32.860 | We're bitter at it.
00:10:34.940 | Hopefully.
00:10:36.160 | We should be the guiltiest people on the planet.
00:10:39.500 | We should be more devastated than anybody.
00:10:42.020 | We've seen the glory of the cross and the confidence level of our hearts that he passes
00:10:51.840 | over this horror should rise with every scream from his mouth on the cross.
00:11:01.380 | So on this side of the cross, what changes is now we see the price that was paid.
00:11:06.860 | It intensifies how wretched I am, and it intensifies how utterly committed our covenant God is
00:11:13.380 | to pay for it and draw us into his family in spite of it.
00:11:17.660 | It's just incredible.
00:11:19.300 | And you know, for Micah, Jesus was just a prophecy.
00:11:25.540 | You remember it?
00:11:26.540 | I'll read it to you.
00:11:28.020 | It's chapter 5, verse 1 or 2.
00:11:33.420 | But you, O Bethlehem, from you shall come forth one for me who is to be ruler in Israel.
00:11:42.220 | He shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord.
00:11:48.420 | That shepherd laid down his life for the sheep.
00:11:53.060 | And now we see in that the greatest clarity of our sin and God's commitment to rescue
00:12:00.820 | us from it.
00:12:02.140 | Christ took our judgment.
00:12:05.140 | As humbling and hope-giving, this excerpt came to us from an anonymous man who is parenting
00:12:10.940 | through family crisis right now.
00:12:13.540 | And that's the title of the sermon, which this excerpt came from, "Parenting Through
00:12:17.220 | Family Crisis," a John Piper sermon preached on March 21st, 2010.
00:12:22.140 | The whole message is online at DesiringGod.org.
00:12:24.500 | Well, thanks for listening to today's clip.
00:12:27.420 | If you have a clip ministering to you right now, send it to us.
00:12:30.400 | You tell us what bits of Piper sermons are impacting you, and we share that clip with
00:12:33.580 | others.
00:12:34.580 | If you've got one, email me.
00:12:35.580 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in
00:12:39.300 | the audio, and tell me how it impacted you.
00:12:41.100 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:12:46.580 | That's an email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:12:50.580 | Well, what does it feel like to be abandoned by God?
00:12:55.980 | Or can we even say that?
00:12:57.180 | Does God abandon us ever, or is this only a felt experience?
00:13:01.980 | We have several questions on the topic, historically called "spiritual desertion," and I'll pose
00:13:07.780 | those questions to Pastor John next time.
00:13:10.100 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday.
00:13:14.700 | We'll see you then.
00:13:15.180 | [END]
00:13:15.680 | 1.
00:13:16.680 | What is the meaning of "spiritual desertion?"
00:13:17.680 | 2.
00:13:18.680 | What is the meaning of "spiritual destruction?"
00:13:19.680 | 3.
00:13:20.680 | What is the meaning of "spiritual desertion?"
00:13:21.680 | 4.
00:13:22.680 | What is the meaning of "spiritual destruction?"
00:13:23.680 | 5.