The Godly Home — Deuteronomy 6

0:00 We're talking about the family today. And talking about the family, family is is is God's favorite unit. And then it's the church because the church is emulated after the family. The family is where the things that God take place and where love is exemplified and true Christian life is proven. It is not a, an aberrant spectacle that only happens to a few people.

0:30 I hate the term dysfunctional families. There's no such thing as a dysfunctional family. It's just people who need the lord. And, when we put labels on things and and try to identify all the problems, we miss that God has given grace and he's working on everybody's life. So people are screwed up.

0:48 One day a little boy went to his grandmother who was staying with her son and daughter-in-law and the little boy came to his grandmother and said, grandma could you please croak like a frog? And she said croak like a frog? Can you croak like a frog? I guess I can. Would you please, please croak like a frog?

1:10 And she said, Okay. So she did her best frog imitation and croaked. And the boy jumped around and was just happy and dancing and giggling, clapping his hands and rolling all over the furniture. He said, what is wrong with you? Why did you do that?

1:24 He said, grandma, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He said, why? He said, okay.

1:27 Okay. I'll tell you why. Mommy and daddy were talking the other day and he said, when grandma croaks, we're going to Disney World. That's what families are for, you know. So let's look at a godly family.

1:46 Turn to Psalm 128. Now if you know me, you know we're going to run all over the bible, especially on this topic. Psalm 128. I love the Psalms. David had a heart in him to write half the Hebrew hymn book.

2:18 The Psalms tells me how to talk to God. God doesn't have a problem with you being angry as long as you don't live... Lose reverence. And through the Psalm, see emotion, strong emotion over and over again. We see how men of God basically emoted and cried out sometimes in anger, sometimes in frustration, sometimes out of fear.

2:44 And it's real life. It's life lived in prose and in poetry, but it's life. And and I I read the Psalms through every month. I read five Psalms a day. You read five Psalms a day in a thirty day month.

3:01 You read the Psalms through every single month. And I keep that as part of my active bible reading. You should do it. It doesn't take much that much time. And the thirty first of...

3:08 The months they have thirty one days, you read psalm one nineteen. And you you get into it and enjoy it and and make notes. If you have a clean bible, you are backsliding on God. You're supposed to write in your bible and make notes and highlight it. Okay?

3:22 There are people's bible look like they can put it back on their self and sell it. This thing is life book. Make it part of your intimate engagement. Psalm one twenty eight, we'll read all the way through it and then we'll make our prayer. Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord that walketh in his ways for thou should eat the labor of thine hands, Happy shall thou be and it should be well with thee.

3:45 Thy wife should be as a fruitful vine by the size of thine house like children like olive plants around thy table. Behold that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord. The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion and thou shall see the good of Jerusalem all the days alive. Yea, thou shall see thy children's children and peace upon Israel. Okay.

4:05 Our simple outline is four points. First, we're gonna look at the head of the home, then the heart of the home, then the heritage of the home, and then the hope of the home. The, head of the home, the heart of the home, the heritage of the home, and then the hope of the home. Let's pray. We thank you, great king, for the opportunity we have to stand in this place, to know you, to follow you, to, see what your word has to say in this, important age of a godless society.

4:34 We ask great king that as we look in your word that you would empower so that we might communicate effectively. Let everything we say honor you and bless the blessed name, the great name, the greatest name heaven and earth will ever hear. The name of Jesus Christ our savior, ask it. Amen. There is a dearth in most homes, not just in America, but around the world.

5:01 I've had the privilege of traveling, I'd say about three quarters of the world in my life, over 70 countries that I've traveled to, and I see the same thing. America is on the world stage. It is the it is the petri dish that everyone is looking at, but nobody else is doing any better. Don't think that America is the Sodom of the world. The rest of the world is just as sinful as America is.

5:27 But God has an answer for the world's problem, doesn't he? He's called the son of Jesus, his son Jesus, and he is the one that can transform a situation from unrighteousness to righteousness, from perversion to holiness. And we look at this passage of scripture as imperative that we apply these ideas, these concepts to what God has for us. Now, whenever you do a bible study, there are three types of studies you can do in a bible study. You can do a topical bible study, a semitic bible study, and a thesethetical bible study.

6:02 A topical bible study is a study that is not found verbatim on the pages of scripture, but it's still sensitive important in the scriptures anyway. For example a topical study that you could do is abortion. You won't ever find the word abortion in the bible but the bible has something to say about abortion right? Okay right? Oh, okay.

6:21 I'm wondering if I'm in the right place. Okay. The Bible talks about abortion. That's a topical study. Use the scripture to mine out what God the Holy Spirit wants to say to people about abortion.

6:32 However, the medical bible study is where you have a theme that runs through the bible on the pages of scripture and you you can exhaustively teach on it. But when you have a the medical bible study, you need something important. It's called a locus classicus. Alright, now that, I only say that to let you know that I went to seminary. But locus classicus means best text.

6:58 It is the launching point. It is the hub, the location in the Bible that gives the most attention on that subject. For example, if I said, hey, what is the locus classicus for love? What would you say? First Corinthians 13.

7:14 You'd use that as your hub and you'd spoke out because it's not the only place in the Bible that talks about love, but it is centrally the best text to start your study from. You launch from there, you can do an exhaustive study. If I'd say, hey, what's the locus classicus for faith? You would say, Hebrews 11. Somebody over here knows the Bible.

7:32 Hebrews 11 and you spoke out from there and do an exhaustive study both in illustration and illusion on the idea of faith. So that's what a themetical bible study is. But a thesetical bible study is a thesis. Something that you take one passage and you mine through that passage. Sure, you might go to other passages of scripture, but you're basically trying to draw out of that passage what you need to teach.

7:57 And that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna do a thesethical bible study. A a a bible study means you have a... Need a thesis statement and it's right there in verse number one. Blessed is everyone that feareth the lord that walketh in his ways.

8:10 Now what's amazing is as we take that that thesis statement, you would think that the thesis is gonna be on blessing. Well it is. But he defines for us that the blessing starts in the home with the relationships in the home. What is required out of the family. And remember something ladies and gentlemen, it is a hellish statement that has found a proof in the world that it takes a village to raise a child.

8:37 No, it takes parents to raise a child. Don't ever let quip and epigrams replace what the scripture teaches. Bible says God sets the solitary in family, not in villages. In family, I don't want the government raising my children. I don't want the government telling me how I should raise my children.

8:55 There have been abuses sure. There have been situations where children have taken advantage of in their family fine but it does not negate the fact that God has ordered for people to live in family. In family, in relationship And that dynamic relationship is father, mother, husband, wife and children. So that's what we're looking at today. We're looking at the family, the godly home.

9:36 Okay? But the whole idea is the father is the image that shows the honor of the family. He's the one who is the... He is the the progenitor of the integrity of the family. He is the progenitor.

9:53 He is the priest and he's the property owner. That's the whole idea. He's the one that makes sure that the family is fed. Sure. Nobody's saying a woman can't work, can't woman can't have money or anything like that, but it is the responsibility, God given responsibility of the man to feed the family, feed the flock.

10:13 That's it. It's his duty. And that is imperative because through the flowing of the man as the head of the home, the miraculous witness of the family is shown to the world. I know we got great kids. Everybody, you know, my son can throw a football 900 yards or my daughter can play every instrument in the orchestra or whatever.

10:37 You wanna switch that? Your son can play all instruments, your wife daughter can throw the football. It doesn't matter. But the the real truth of the miraculous wonder of this home, God imaged it to be through the father. Now it's not saying anybody else has a lesser role, but the father is the one who answers to the world.

10:56 So let's look at what the father's responsibility is. First of all, as head of the home, he's supposed to be the protector. He's the protector of the home, either through logistics or actuality. He's the protector of the home. It is imperative that the world see that a man is the head of his home.

11:20 It is imperative. Not only is he the protector of the home, he's the prophet of the home. Now you know there's there's two definitions biblically for the word prophetes. One is to foretell and one is to foretell. Fourth telling is to preach that which has already been established to reveal to others what God has already said.

11:40 To foretell is to tell what God is going to do in the future and miraculously predict exactly and accurately what God is going to We don't need the office of the foreteller anymore. That was established as the foundation of the church. But those who get up and open the word of God and and from the spirit of God using the word of God under the power of God to the people of God, preach the word of God. That is a prophet. That's idea.

12:02 And that's the whole idea with the home. In the home is the microcosm of the church. The father is supposed to be the prophet of the home. He is the one that's supposed to be the example of how the the the home knows and studies the Bible. He should be the Bible expert and everybody's trying to take him and learn from him and grow and learn from how to study and how to relate scripture and how to interact with the Bible and live it.

12:25 That's the whole idea. He's supposed to be the prophet of the home, the one who preaches. But also he's supposed to be the priest in the home. Now understand what I mean by priest. What I mean by priest is he leads in worship.

12:37 He is the one that shows that there's interaction between us and God and this is how we worship him reverently and this is how we don't worship him irreverently. So the father is supposed to be both the protector, the prophet and the priest of the home. Let me show you. Let me give you an example. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter six and verse four and five.

13:00 Now, Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four and five is, is the end of the the the lesson that Moses is trying to teach Israel as a life model. You remember that the book of Deuteronomy, Deuter means second. Nomos is law. It's the second law. It's God's truncating, putting in cliff notes form, the whole law that he has expressed in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.

13:26 So it's called the second law. And and and the key word in the book of Deuteronomy is remember. Remember. Remember. And so God is giving them a small, capitalized version of the whole law in the book of Deuteronomy.

13:40 So Moses starts in chapter five, verse one, he says, these books words I say unto you this day, you shall do them, learn them and keep them. So in other words, he's saying, learn the law. And then he says in verse number 29, oh, that there was a heart in them that they would fear me and keep my ways that it might be well unto them and their children for forever. So first God says, learn the law. Then he says, live the life.

14:07 Live the life. But here in chapter six verse four, hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one God. He's one Lord. Okay. That's imperative.

14:19 That's called the great Shema here. Oh, Israel. If Israel had just followed this part right here, they never would have the history that they have now. And this is what he says to them. He says, You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all thy might.

14:38 Love him, not only learn the law, not only live the life, but love the Lord. And these are keys that you need to take and make the prerequisite of your home, men. Teach your children the law. Teach them the life, live it in front of them. And most importantly, be a person of passion.

14:58 Show them how much you love the Lord. Love him. Love him. 11 times in the book of Deuteronomy, God says, hey, listen to me. Love me.

15:10 Love me. Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. That's your spirit. All your soul, all of your imagination, and with all your might, all of your ability. So love the Lord.

15:41 So yes, learn the law, live the life, love the Lord, but leave a legacy guys. Leave a legacy. Show them that your very existence, when you walk, talk about it. When you sit at your table, talk about it. When you go in the way, talk about it.

15:57 Talk about the law. Talk about the law. Talk about the Lord. Talk, talk, talk about the Lord. My godson, Micah, he was my first male godson.

16:11 I had... I have so many godchildren, I don't remember them all. But, out of 14 tries, had 14 goddaughters. And then Michael was born and, he was a part of my life. And, when Michael was about eight years old his father and I had to go to Midland, Michigan.

16:32 And Midland, Michigan is about 90 miles, 70 miles, 90 miles from Detroit. And it was the dead of winter about this time of year. And Mike, his father Sanford had to sing and I had to preach. And so Michael wanted to come with us. We said, okay, Michael, come on, go with us.

16:49 And he said, can I bring my friend? And was friend was an unsaved kid, but his age and he went to school with him. So yeah, you can bring him. So Sanford was driving his station wagon, his old Chevy station wagon. And the interesting thing was that Sanford had four ball tires.

17:06 I didn't know it at the time. But we're driving, driving, driving and we reached that point that every man dreads, the middle of nowhere. And right as if on cue, two of Sanford's tires blows out. And I'm telling you, only thing you could see in the whole area is air... Aircraft beacons.

17:29 There was no houses. There was no gas stations, not even signs just there. I said, Sanford, give me key to your trunk and let me get the spare out and we'll hobble to the next gas station. He said, I don't have a spare. You don't have a spare.

17:45 And it was like negative 90 outside. It was freezing. And, so, the little boy in the back, Micah's friend begins to say, oh, we're gonna die out here. We're gonna just freeze to death. I guess he just seen the movie Day After Tomorrow.

18:00 And just, you know, he sees icicles falling on his face and all that kind of stuff. And and and Micah did something crazy. He said, don't worry. My daddy hasn't prayed yet. And I looked at Sanford.

18:13 Sanford looked at me. Good idea. So just as we're about to bow our heads in prayer, it felt like the floodlights of heaven just hit the car, boom. And we turn around and the biggest tow truck, this thing could tow the Titanic. This guy gets out and he looks around and he says, you got a blowout.

18:35 Oh, you got two blowouts. He said, well, I'll put the spare on you for you. I won't charge you. And we said, don't have a spare. He said, oh, wow.

18:41 Okay. He said, well, I'll tow you as far as I'm going, we won't charge you anything. And we said, wow, thank you. He said, there's plenty of room in my cab for everybody. It was, it was like a bus in there.

18:51 And he hooks us up and we start heading far. So I turned to him and said, so how far are you going? Midland. I said, wow. I said, we're going to Midland too.

19:03 He said, great. I said, why are you going to Midland? He said, I'm going to some service. One guy's gonna preach, the other guy's gonna sing. And Michael goes, see?

19:19 Yeah. The father should be the heart of the home, but to your children, you should be the hero of the home. Look at what he says later on that same chapter, Deuteronomy chapter six. Notice, he says this, verse seven, and thou shall teach them diligently into thy children. Thou shall talk with them when thou sitest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way.

19:40 When thou liest down, when thou rises up and thou shall bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be his front between thine eyes. Then notice what he says down in verse number 12. Then beware, beware lest thou forget the Lord which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Why? Verse number 17, you shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statues which he commanded thee and thou should do that which is right and good into the sight of the Lord that it might be well with thee and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord your God swear unto your fathers.

20:18 Verse 20, and when thy son ask you in the time to come, in other words it's going to happen, saying what meaneth these testimonies and statues and the judgments which the Lord your God have commanded you? Then you shall say unto thy son, we were Pharaoh's bondsmen in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of Egypt. Here's the point that the the crowning memory of your child is the miraculous things that you could not do, but that the Lord did because of you. The father is the spearhead of the miraculous action that your children would remember that when you see as in verse number 11 that you live in in houses you didn't build, had drink from wells you didn't dig, vineyards that you didn't plant, cities that you didn't create, Everything that was done was because of the good hand of the Lord. Your children will remember.

21:09 I remember when we had no absolutely no way to survive, but God came through, and my father gave God the glory and took no credit. That's your role as the head of the home. As the high priest, you constantly remind the family, it's not about me. It's not about you. It's not about your mother, but what the God had done for us that nobody else can do.

21:35 And what happens is the God has an active memory of the miraculous. One of the most horrible, damnable things of most churches and most Christians is they have no testimonies. No present tense realities of what the impossible God did for them, and the home should be the seedbed of that action. And that's why the world doesn't believe us because we've relegated God to someone that's pie in the sky by and by when you die. But the Bible said this is the day that the Lord has made.

22:11 We will rejoice and be glad in it. I have a twenty four hour active miracle I can talk about because he's active in my life. He planned my day. Everything about my day as in my father's control, I don't believe in luck. I don't believe in half hands.

22:24 I don't believe in circumstance. My father ordered the day so I can only do one thing, and that's praise him. And that's why kids leave us and go away to colleges or get in situations and they have no no miracle testimony of their family. The reason why I am the person I am today is because every single day in a fatherless home, I pass by my mother's bedroom on the way to my bedroom and hear my mother praying. And I wanted the God of my mother because when my mother prayed, God acted.

22:58 And every single morning when I get passed by my mother's bedroom to get ready for school, I'd hear my mother praying and she said, God, oh, please let my sons grow up to be godly. Oh, God, please don't let them grow up to be criminals. God, please let my sons grow up to worship you and to magnify your name. Lord, you know I don't have anything to feed them with. You know I don't have any money, but God I want the best for my sons and God answers those prayers.

23:21 Now I don't know about your theology, but my theology is set in place. I know for a fact that my mother stopped the Vietnam War. And you say, Dwight, that's crazy. No. I'm being honest with you.

23:38 It's a fact. You don't have to believe me. You can be dumb. But my brother Ricky, name is Derek, we call him Ricky, was set to turn 18 February 12. He just had his birthday.

23:52 And the moment he turns 18, he's gonna be drafted to go in the Vietnam War. My mother prayed every single day from my brother who was 17 forward. Lord, don't let my sons go off to war. Lord, don't let my sons have to go to a godless war. God, hear my prayer.

24:12 Lord, give your mercy and grace. Lord take care of my boys. I don't want my boys to go to war. Now 01/21/1974, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger heard God say, Dorothy doesn't want her sons going to war in this thing. And the Vietnam War was over.

24:38 Now you might say, well, Dwight, there are other women. Listen. My mother stopped the Vietnam War. And that's my testimony. I wanted that God.

24:49 I wanted that God. My mother prayed. And let me tell you something. It was a dangerous thing to be on the bad end of one of my mother's prayers. There should be miracles in your home.

25:27 The mother has that great ability to be a barometer. She is the thermostat. She's the one that says here's the tone and the temperature of the home. She's the one who can take that quiet voice and talk to her husband saying, you're being too stern, junior. Your daughter needs you to wrap your arms around her, not scold her.

25:50 You need you need to you need to take that vacation and not work on your car, but just play ball with your son. That's that's what you need. The mother has her ear to the heart of every person in that room. You see, God wired us differently. Men think globally.

26:19 Okay. Women think locally. Man says I've gotta I've gotta raise $50,000 to put in my kids' college fund. I've gotta work seventy five hours a week. And the wife says, no.

26:35 You need to play house with your little daughter. You don't want your daughter to go to college hating you. You don't wanna go to Harvard and get a great law degree and forget you. If she has to go to junior college, if she still loves you and loves the lord, that's success. Amen.

26:50 Okay. The woman is the heart of the home. She's the one who can speak something with her smile. Father does it with his eyes, but a woman does it with her smile. I can look at my wife and know either something's very wrong or something's very right.

27:14 And women, I'm gonna tell you something. Use the power that god has given you. Don't displace your husband. And here's another thing. Don't compromise your husband.

27:28 It is not my children above everything else. It's your husband above everyone else. Don't ever forget that. Your kids are gonna leave. And maybe twenty five years later, come back, but children gonna leave.

27:46 God put you and that man together. I want you to understand something. The miraculous relationship of a husband and wife is miraculous for one reason. Everybody else in that family, you're related to by blood. Guys, you're related to all your children by blood.

27:59 You're not related to your wife by blood. Ladies, you're related to every child in that family by blood. You're not related to your husband by blood. The miracle is that God has done something beyond the sense of familial blood. He's made two independent people, one in spirit, one in flesh, one in purpose.

28:18 That's the miracle of the home that you decide to love him. You decide to not not fileo him but agape him. You decide to not fileo her, but to agape her. Love that is undeserved, unwarranted, and needs no no aspect of reciprocation. I love you because I love you.

28:41 I have a statement for love, and this is what it is. I love you not because I need you, but I love you because you need me. And I refuse to rob you of that love and let someone else who recognizes your wants as needs and tries to supply your wants and don't fulfill your needs. You see what you've done in marriage, men and women, is you've said to that other person, I love you not because I need you. I realized that you need me.

29:09 God put me in your life because you need me. And I am going to mine out of our relationship your needs and seek to fulfill them. And as your needs are met at a basic level and they grow and they evolve and they become deeper, I will evolve and I will grow and go deeper. So I am with you at every aspect of your life, meeting your need. And that's love.

29:31 That's love. Ladies, you're the ones who set the tone and the temperature of the home. It is required that you stay right where God needs you because when you're gone, when you're missing, when you're out of place, the whole home falls apart. It is imperative. That's why Proverbs 31 is written.

29:59 Proverbs 31 says all the characteristics of a virtuous woman. Now notice it doesn't say a virtuous wife, but the implication is there because it talks about her husband. It's very clear that you are the one who makes that house his home. So if we have a locus classicus on the virtuous woman, what is the locus classicus on a godly man? Psalm 112.

30:26 When you're independent in your own time, go back and read Psalm 112, it's only 13 verses. And you look at every single time the Bible says his home, his heart, his seed, his desire, his affairs. And just do a study on that. Make your husband learn it by heart. And you'll see it's the locus classicus on manhood, guys.

30:48 It is imperative that you know that. It is it is the constitution of your world. How you're supposed to run your life in your home. Imperative. The ladies are the heart of the home.

31:27 On five different occasions in the book of Deuteronomy, Exodus, and also in the book of Acts. Yeah. The book of Acts. The question is asked, what meaneth these stones? What meaneth these statues?

31:39 What meaneth these laws? What meaneth these observances? Why do we do it? Hey, dad. Why is it that we go to church every Wednesday night?

31:47 Why is it we have to be at church early for breaking the bread? Why is it that we go to to conferences and retreats and things like that? Why do we do that? Well son, remember when you were sick and the doctors gave up on you? Yeah.

32:01 Well, they were only practicing physicians. So we didn't stop at them. We went to the great physician and that's why you're still here. Why do we act the way we do? Why is it that you won't let me go away with this group of kids over here?

32:16 Well, son, they don't follow the same God we do. You know, the same God that you prayed when your mother was not doing well and God heard your prayer. Yeah. That's the God we serve. They don't serve that God.

32:26 We're trying to win them. We don't want to be one over to what they think. We were talking the other day at Ray's house and Laura had asked me how did I learn Greek and Hebrew. I knew the entire Greek alphabet when I was nine years old. And my mother didn't teach me Greek, but the men of our church did.

32:48 The men of our church were committed to the idea that they would never be stagnant. Something we had at the church I was at previously, Berean Chapel, we had the Berean commentary where the elders would come together and take a book of the bible and study it for a year and as they went through it verse by verse, they would write a commentary on it. And in our church office, we have the Berean commentary and we paid for it to be bound in a book. So any member of our church wanted a copy of the Berean commentary on the book of Romans or on the book of second Chronicles, they could just go into the office and get it. Why?

33:25 Because we can't afford to be stagnant. There are young lives here who are impressionable and they have three d virtual imagery on their computers and they have games that take them into situations that we will never allow them in, that give them situations where they can actually kill somebody. And we get mad when somebody wants to teach them a Bible verse. And we get stuck in the mud and still try to use flannel grass and the world's got holograms and and foolishness like that. And we want church to remain like it was in 1914.

34:10 Paul asked me to come to his assembly in Seattle. I went to the assembly in Seattle. He says it's a New Testament church, right? I said okay. So I went out there and Phil walked me around and I I spoke that morning and then after church is over we went to dinner and he said what do you think of the church?

34:27 I think it's wonderful. I said, think you need to put a fence around and charge people $10 to come see it so they know how church was actually run-in 1853. Our kids have to look forward to the legacy because they're the heritage of the home. Slowly but surely fathers as your son gets older include him into the decisions, the godly decisions of the home. Ask what he sees when he's a teenager.

35:08 Ask what he thinks when he's a young adult. Ask what he would do when he's a young man about to get married. Then as you get senior, said, why don't you do it? Why do you do it? Teach them to respect women and honor women not as objects but as people.

35:35 Teach them to be gracious and polite. Teach him on a firm handshake. You know, it bothers me. Motion on me and shake my hand feel like I'm grabbing a wet fish. Tell him to look in the eye and stand up straight.

35:51 I think Jesus was the most manly godly man there ever existed. You don't have anything to be ashamed of. It has nothing to do with your stature. It has nothing to with your build. It has nothing to with your looks.

36:19 She'll bring home a man. There are young ladies who don't have the benefit of a father, and when they start dating, I say, listen. You start dating, before you make any commitments to this guy, let me meet him. Let me grab him by the collar and bring him up close and let him smell my breath and see if he looks me in the eye. See if he's worth it.

36:43 You'd be surprised how many young men can't look a man in the eye. He's not worthy to get married. Throw him away. The right guy is out there. You gotta trust your father in heaven.

36:55 The right guy is out there. Ladies and gentlemen, your children are the proof of god's grace in your home But here's the last point, the most important one. The hope of the home is the holy spirit. Oh my god. It is my prayer.

37:15 That when someone steps on my property, when they step on our walkway, when they walk on our grass, they'll know that Jesus lives here. I want people to come in our home and notice the difference. I want you to come in our home and see how we act and how we live, not just a clean, sterile environment, but something's different here. I want the hopeless to find hope. I want the helpless to find help.

37:46 I want the things that we say and the things that we do to be a testimony in our neighborhood. When I bought our home, I bought our home from a very godly Christian woman. Name was missus Battle. And we moved in and everything's fine but as you know you still get other people's mail for the rest of your life. Okay.

38:09 You can put all the kind of warnings to the post office. They don't live here anymore. He's dead. All that kind doesn't matter. You're still gonna get their mail.

38:17 And we've been in that house almost twelve years. We still get her mail. But I called her on the phone not long after and I said, Mrs. Battle, I have some of your mail. Do you want me to bring it to you?

38:26 She said, no, no, Dwight. I got to come there around there anyway. And so I waited and around 01:00 in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. I went to the doorbell and Mrs. Battle was there, but not only Mrs.

38:36 Battle, but about 15 other people. And I said, a welcome wagon. And she said, hello, Dwight. This is Mrs. So and so she lives right across the street.

38:45 She's a believer. She loves the Lord. This is your neighbor next to you. His name is Paul. He loves the Lord.

38:49 He said, go to such and such a church. He said, I know you're a traveler. I know you're a minister of the gospel. I'll be praying for your house. I'll be watching out for your house.

38:55 You don't have to worry. Then the lady behind me, she's a believer. She goes to such and such a church, her pastor's name and so and so. And each one she introduced them as she introduced them, she introduced them their salvation, their testimony, their walk with the Lord. I said, wow, that's great.

39:06 Well, the crowd dispersed. She came in. I gave her a meal. I said, Ms. Gallo, before you leave, I got a question for you.

39:10 I said, Yeah, what's that? I said, How in the world did you move into a neighborhood with all of these Christians? She said, They weren't when I got here. You are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill that cannot be hid.

39:30 You are the salt of the earth. Two dynamic illustrations Jesus gave to talk about your impact on the world around you. Salt had four distinctive aspects about it that cannot be ignored. First, it had the the thirst effect. You eat salt.

39:48 It's gonna make people thirsty. They're gonna desire water. And guess what the living water is? The word of God. Also, the treasure effect.

39:57 Salt was used as payment for people who worked, and that's where the word salary comes from. The word salt. When somebody didn't do their job, they said they're not worth their salt. Okay. Then it's the time factor.

40:11 They didn't have ice boxes and didn't have refrigerators and all that kind of stuff. So they had to salt down their meat to preserve it. We're we're preserving the world. If the Christians were not here, the Bible tells in second Thessalonians chapter two, the whole world would go crazy and it's evil. You think it's bad now, just wait until the Christians are taken away.

40:29 And lastly, the taste factor. Salt makes food taste different. If you take salt out of a salt shaker and dump one on a steak and take a bite of that steak you'll say, boy, this salt tastes steaky. No, you say this steak tastes salty. Why?

40:49 Because the salt is able to absorb itself into the culture of the meat and radically change the flavor of the meat and not lose its identity. That's the whole idea. We are in this world. We're not of this world. We're supposed to be in this world and we're supposed to dynamically affect the culture around us and not lose our identity.

41:07 That's why your children should be in public schools. That's a sore topic. That's why you don't run away from class... From from from careers. The reason why Hollywood is such a mess is because Christians say that's a worldly profession.

41:22 Every profession is worldly. The reason why we have such horrible representation in the legal system because people say that's a worldly profession. We need some godly Christian actors. We need some godly Christian lawyers. Please.

41:40 Somebody said what's the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? One's a bottom dwelling low life and the other one is a fish. And that's because Christians ran away. The hope of the home is the Holy Spirit. And I I and I say to you this, if your home is not a house of prayer, there's not much hope for your home.

42:04 The word of god must must be the prevalent prevalent thought in your home. If that happens, two things will happen. You'll see God keep his promise, and you'll see your children grow up godly. My prayer, my prayer, every single day when I pray for each person in my home is an end result and then I say to god because you promised me, lord. You promised me.

42:41 I've seen god do miraculous things. Saints of god, don't bend, don't fold, don't give up, don't give in, don't give out. You go forth in Jesus name and boldly proclaim his name and don't be worried about the consequences. I'll leave you with this last story. I was at an Egyptian brethren conference in Pennsylvania, which in of itself sounds like an oxymoron.

43:30 He said, hi, brother Dwight. And I do with most guys that I meet their brothers, I went to hug him. Yousef said, don't. Don't. Don't.

43:37 Don't. I said, okay. I said, maybe in Yemen, men don't hug men. You know. He said I'm sorry brother but you need to understand something.

43:47 I said what? He said I was raised all my life a Muslim. He said my father made his Hajj and then every time a young man, he said I have six brothers and two sisters, but each time my brother reach the age of 25, my father would go with him and he would go to Mecca and he would make his Hajj. That's how devoted we were as Muslims. He said, well, one day, 300 Christians came into our village and they had Bibles printed exactly in our language and our dialect and they had tracks to go with those Bibles that explained the gospel of Jesus Christ.

44:26 Our men came in mass and slaughtered them. Men and women were had their heads cut off. They were disemboweled. They were women were raped and then we burned their bodies in the middle of the village. We burned every Bible, every track and we cheered for a week.

44:44 And their body sat there for months. He said one day I was coming back from school at the time, he said I was 20 years old and he said I looked under the porch and I saw something. I saw a book and a piece of paper. I realized as I got it that it was a a bible, one of the... That the missionaries had left pristine, not a burn mark, no dirt, and the track that went with it.

45:08 He said, I'm gonna sneak this in the house. I'm going back to university in the fall. He said, I'm gonna destroy these Christians. I'm gonna know their Bible so well that I can make fools out of them. As he took his Bible in the tracking house, he said, I'll start with the track.

45:18 It's small enough to get me going. And he said, this track was so well constructed as I began to read it, I couldn't put it down. And it led me verse and page to the passage that the bible supported what they were saying. He said, I couldn't couldn't wait to get home every day to start keep reading this track in this bible, this track in this bible. He said something began to happen on the inside of me.

45:40 All... Every time I heard the word Koran or Islam or Allah or a Muslim or or Mecca, something inside of me would churn to say this isn't right. Eventually, I went through the track and I went through the whole bible, at the back of the track it says you can know Christ as your savior. He said I came to the realization after reading this track and reading this bible that everything that the Quran presented was a lie. Islam was a lie.

46:04 It was a falsehood. That Allah was a demon guy. And it showed me how to ask Jesus Christ into my life. And I got down on my knees in my bedroom, and I asked Jesus Christ in my life. And people began to notice all around me, Yousef, you're different.

46:17 You're glowing. What's happened to you? And he said, I don't know. He said he said, I I had this this this this life in me that I had never known before. He said, I had a joy and a walk that I had never known before.

46:28 I'd rush home and I'd read my Bible. He said, I finished the entire Bible in a month. A month. I know some people who can't finish Jude in a month. And he said, he said, I I I just just had to have the word of God.

46:46 He said, after a while, father says, Yousef, what's, what is it, my son? You, you look one of his. I said, you know, and he said, I know what happened. And my father found out I was a Christian and soon the conviction of the Holy Spirit. After he'd read Matthew 28, go into all the world and preach the gospel.

47:07 He said, I had to tell my father. So, I sat my father down and for the first ten minutes, nervously, I I compelled him and said, I am not lying to you. I'm not trying to dishonor you. I'm not playing a joke on you. What I'm about to say to you, father, is the truth.

47:21 I will not recant from it. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, father, I renounce Islam. The Quran is a lie. Allah is a demon. I have accepted for life Jesus Christ as my lord and savior and the Bible is the only word of god.

47:41 And he said it three or four times in three or four different ways. He said, his father got enraged, broke everything in the house, broke out every window, broke every chair, broke every lamp. And then he called for his sons and he said, told his sons, kill him with the death of a thousand cuts. When his sons realized that he wasn't playing, he was serious, they took out their long curved knives and began to dig in his body and cut him and slash him at the throat. He said as they threw him out in the house and kicked him and he fell in the dirt and the excrement, blood everywhere.

48:10 He passed out from the pain and from the loss of blood. He said he felt something very strong, some person very strong lift him up and carry him away. And the only doctor that would see him was a veterinarian. And he cleaned out his wounds and then he said he remember traveling long times in and out of consciousness but he had to drive a 100 miles to find a doctor that was not a Muslim that would treat him and after 42 operations and a loss of 26 feet of his intestines, Yousef opened his eyes and realized that he was alive by the grace of God. And he said, Brother Dwight, when my father heard I was still alive, he took his knife out and cut my oldest brother's throat and let him bleed on the ground.

48:56 And he's going kill all of his sons. And his second son said, dad, you have the right to kill me. But just just think one thing, dad. Could it be that Youssef's god is god? And then he pulled up his shirt and he said, brother Dwight, this is why you couldn't hug me.

49:13 It looked like a bowl of spaghetti. He said, I'm still bleeding. He said, I need several more operations. They haven't fixed everything. He said, but this is what's left of me.

49:25 I said, wow, Youssef. I apologize. I've never heard anything like that in my life. I said, brother, what are you gonna do now? And he got a weird look on his face and he said, what am I gonna do now?

49:55 Teach them to love god with all they have and let your family be a testimony of god's greatness and his grace and his promise to you is he'd never leave you, never forsake you, and never fail you. In my darkest hours, when I thought all was lost, I could scream toward heaven, but you promised me. And God did the miraculous. I could bore you with testimony after testimony. I have one last admonishment to you and I'll take my seat.

50:27 Let god be god. Lord, may be true of your people that we see you, Jehovah Sabbath, Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Rohi, Jehovah Meshaddam, Jehovah Shammah, Jehovah Shalom, Jehovah Jireh, the god who's more than enough and that we cling to that truth more than anything else and bless our homes father as we seek to honor you every day of our lives. We ask this in the blessed name of your son, Christ, our savior. Amen. Jesus.

51:15 There's just something Jesus let all heaven and but there's something about that name Can we sing it one more time? After the rain Jesus Jesus kingdoms shall all pass away but there's something about that name but there's something