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Family Matters (Week 1)
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When I was growing up, family sitcoms were a staple of television. Shows like Leave It to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, and Full House dominated the airwaves. What made these shows distinctive was their predictable formula: no matter how bad things got, families could resolve every conflict in 22 minutes.
The reality, of course, was far different from what we saw on screen. Those sitcom families always looked happy, always looked perfect. But real families don't work that way. Conflict doesn't resolve in 22 minutes. Yet these shows shaped our cultural imagination about what family should look like.
Here's what I want to emphasize: family matters. Not just as a theme, but fundamentally. The family has profound power to shape who we become.
Over the coming weeks, we're going to explore what God's Word tells us about family—about marriage, parenting, and practical things that apply to every person in this room. Whether you're single, married with children, a single parent, or in any other season of life, these truths apply to you.
Why does family matter so much? God designed the family to shape the people we become.
Look at what the research confirms. Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child writes: "Our early experiences and exposures, including responsive relationships with caregivers, shape the architecture of our brain, providing a strong or weak foundation for all future learning, behavior, health, and well-being."
But this isn't just modern science discovering what God already knew. Let's go back to the beginning.
Turn with me to Genesis 1:26-28. God says:
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.'"
Pause here, because there's something profound we must not rush past. You and I are created in the image of God—what we call the Imago Dei. Your value is not earned through accomplishment or the approval of others. Your intrinsic worth comes from the fact that God, the Creator of the universe, made you in His image.
Notice also: God did not create humans in isolation. He created them male and female. In God's design, there is no isolation. Before sin entered the world, before brokenness came, God's intention was clear: you are made for relationship.
In Genesis 2:24, we read:
"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
Family was God's idea. It wasn't invented by culture or government or the church. Family is part of God's created order. It was ordained and instituted by God Himself.
But what is the purpose of family? Why did God make it such a central part of human experience?
The family is intended to form us, to disciple us, to shape us into all that God is creating us to be.
Think about what family requires of us. It requires patience—we don't get to live alone doing whatever we want. There are other people with different ideas and perspectives.
It requires forgiveness. We live in a house with broken, sinful people, and we must forgive as we ask to be forgiven.
It requires sacrifice. I don't get to do whatever I want. I must sometimes put others' needs before my own. As a parent, my summer revolves around my children's schedules. I drive them everywhere because I'm trying to shape and form them into something better. That requires sacrifice.
Family requires responsibility and faithfulness. It's not a temporary arrangement; it's a lifetime commitment. My kids learn responsibility when I tell them: "I don't want to go to work today either, but I have to because I must pay bills and earn an income. You have to go to school because that's your job right now."
Family teaches us self-control. We must sometimes not do what we want for the betterment of our family.
And family teaches us grace—over and over, we extend grace and receive grace.
In Genesis 2, before sin, there is no shame. The man and woman are naked and unafraid, completely vulnerable with one another, with complete trust and no fear. This is the family we should strive for: a place where there is no shame, where you can be completely vulnerable and still be loved, where there is trust and no fear.
Here's where culture gets it wrong. We often think the purpose of family is for my happiness. A single person thinks, "I need to get married to be happy." A young couple thinks, "We need to have kids to be happy."
But Gary Thomas, in his book Sacred Marriage, challenges us with this profound statement: "What if God didn't give us marriage just to make us happy, but instead he gave us marriage to make us holy."
He's not saying happiness has no place in marriage and family. He's saying that's not the primary purpose. The data proves this. When parents have an infant, their happiness actually decreases, not increases. Why? Because having a child requires sacrifice, focus on someone other than yourself.
No, God's primary purpose for family is formation. Through family, we form other people—our children. But we also form ourselves. Family helps us love God more deeply and chase after Him, if we allow it to shape us rightly.
But then comes Genesis 3. Sin breaks the family.
Look what Adam says when God confronts him about eating the forbidden fruit:
"The man said, 'The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.'"
Notice what happens here. Adam doesn't take responsibility. He blames Eve, and he even blames God: "You gave her to me!" Instantly, sin transforms the family from "us" to "me."
Before sin, family was about what we're giving into this relationship together. But when sin enters, it becomes about what I get. It shifts from give to get. And selfishness—the root of so much family brokenness—causes us to focus on our own needs above everyone else's.
Consider this: I saw a picture online of a man who built a mini drone with a cabin so his injured bird could experience flight. On the surface, it seems caring. But zoom in on the bird—it doesn't look happy. The bird is trapped in a tiny cage, claustrophobic, strapped to a flying machine. The owner posts it on social media, receiving accolades for his "care." But here's the truth: it was about the owner's benefit and image, not the bird's wellbeing. And that same dynamic happens in families. We convince ourselves we're doing what's best for someone else when really, it's about our own selfishness.
If you look at the families in Genesis after chapter 3, they're all broken:
Genesis shows us God's ideal design, but it also shows us what sin does. The consequence is brokenness.
Here's the critical truth: what happens in your family does not stay in your family.
If you grew up in an angry home with lots of yelling, that was familiar to you. So you assumed it was normal. Then you started your own family and took what was familiar with you. You yell and scream and resolve conflict the same way.
If you grew up in a home with little affection, you assumed that was normal. So you grew up showing little affection.
If your parents rarely said "I love you," you probably don't say it either.
Your family shapes who you are. Those people shape the world.
The danger is this: if I take unhealthy things from my childhood and carry them with me, I don't just bring them into my marriage and parenting. I bring them into the workplace, my school, my relationships with neighbors, the entire world around me.
This is why the first thing a licensed professional counselor works through with you is your family of origin.
But here's the hope, and it's essential: Your family of origin might explain you, but it doesn't have to define you.
Listen to what Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:18-19:
"Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot."
Yes, you inherited sin. Yes, you inherited junk from your parents. The sin of Adam is passed down through generations. But here's the gospel: you have been ransomed from those futile ways. Not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
I know some of you grew up in homes marked by abuse, abandonment, addiction, or divorce. You walked through real, heart-wrenching pain. Those are real wounds you must work through.
But those things do not have to define who you are.
Why? Because the cross redefines us. The cross says you don't have to be broken anymore. Your sin doesn't define you. You can look to Jesus, the blood He poured out for you, and you can have new life. Your old self is gone. You have new life in Him. You can be restored, redeemed, and made whole.
One of the biggest challenges of raising a family in our culture is this: How do we define success?
Our culture—and often the church—defines success as: my children become rich, happy, famous athletes with lots of stuff. Yet look at our culture: many people have all of that and are miserable.
What if we redefined success? Success is raising a child who loves Jesus. Success is forming a child who chases wholeheartedly after Him.
Whether they are rich or poor is secondary. The primary thing is that I want a generation—my kids—to love Jesus and chase after Him with their whole hearts. If they accomplish that, that is success.
My part in the forming is asking: How am I caring for them? How am I loving them? How am I instilling and discipling into them who God has created them to be?
As we kick off this series, I want to leave you with three questions to wrestle with this week—questions to discuss with your spouse:
Question 1: What did my family give me that I want to keep?
Look back at your childhood. What positive, wonderful things do you want to pass on to the next generation?
Question 2: What did my family give me that needs to stop with me?
Addiction, anger, fear, shame—these things get handed down from generation to generation until one person says, "No. This stops with me. It's not getting passed to my children."
Question 3: What am I trying to intentionally build in the people around me?
God has ordained the people in your sphere of influence. If you're a parent, your primary call is discipling your kids. But God has also put other people in your life—your parents, siblings, neighbors, students if you're an educator.
We were not created for isolation. God created us for relationship. How are you being intentional in those relationships? How are you intentionally pouring into the people God has placed around you?
Heavenly Father, we're grateful for this series and this concept of family. Lord, as we unpack this in the coming weeks, stir up in all of us what it looks like to be a family chasing wholeheartedly after You.
We know there is brokenness in this room. Many have come from families marked by selfishness and sin, and they've learned unhealthy habits and patterns. God, help us see the hope. The hope from 1 Peter: we have been made new in our relationship with You.
When we put our faith, our hope, our trust in You and the cross, it's not about our own merits or what we've done. It's what You've already done for us. Help us experience that truth in our lives—not carrying the burden of our past, but walking with victory into our future, in Your power and Your name. Amen.
