Herbert W Armstrong

   The one thing that Satan does not want is a family relationship in and around and through the people of God. He uses every trick he can to destroy the family. In everything that happens, he tries to break the family up, both in this world today, in the outside world, as well as in the Church of God.

   If you take a look at just 100 years ago or less, the family was a unique unit in the church, in the world as well as in the church, but in the world, it was a very unique unit and almost everything was done on the family concept. Things have become so bad in the past 30 or 40 or 50 years. They have now what they call the nuclear family. What they mean is not a family that explodes like a nuclear bomb, but just the nucleus of a family - mother, father, and maybe a child or two or three, and that's the nuclear family, just the nucleus of just what it takes to be the bare necessity of being a family where in times past, you would be in areas where the family would be an extended family. You would have the mother, the father, the children, but would have aunts and uncles, grandmas, grandpas, would have cousins, a batch.

   I remember as a young man growing up in Pennsylvania that whenever we would have a dinner at my grandmother's, there would be something like 25 or 30 grown-ups. There was 10 children on that side of the family, so there was all the husbands and wives, plus their husbands and wives - 20, 25 people. Then there would be as many as 60 or 70 grandchildren running around. I mean, you would be tripping over them. And there would be grandchildren from all the way up to 17, 18, 20 years of age, maybe some 22, 23, all the way down to great-grandchildren that were just born. You heard the announcement about the one child just born into the family, Collins family.

   And so you had that concept that whenever you went to Grandma's house, I mean, you went - I mean, you were lucky if you got to see Grandma. And it was a different world and a different time and a different age. And at the table where my grandmother would put out the meal would groan under the weight of the food that was on that table. I mean, you, you know, the table was something, if I remember correctly, something like 12 to 15 feet long. And it was just groaning under the weight of all the food that was there, and it was a time of being together with cousins.

   Sometimes that was the only time we get to see our cousins was once or twice a year. Simply, they used to come down on Easter and Christmas, something like that. We used to get together, they would come all the way down from tremendous distance away - Youngstown, Ohio, you know. At that time it was 100 miles, less than 100 miles. In those days it was like a 3 or 4 hour drive, and you would have to pack the car 3 days ahead of time. You would have to plan everything and you'd have a lunch because you couldn't go that far without having a lunch, and those were different days and different times.

   In the family concept which God developed really showed through in situations like that. You know, many of us today can look back and think back to the times when we were with our families, the extended families that we had around us, the families, our physical families that really provided a lot of joy and happiness. Maybe even today you have an opportunity on occasion to see some of your family, and it's just really nice, but you know, it never seems like you have what we had when I was a kid where you would have a family reunion.

   When we had a family reunion in my hometown, we used to - there was a park, it was Palmer Park and we would take the whole park. And there would be close to 1,000 people would show up for a family reunion. I mean, you have extended family, cousins and second cousins and third cousins, they come all the way from Scotland in some cases. And I have family right now that every year comes from Scotland to visit all of the Laughland in the United States every year or two they come from Scotland. There's 4 or 5 or 6 of them who come to visit all the clan in Pennsylvania and I guess other areas.

   So it was an extended family and when you talk family to this day, I don't know who's all in my family because there were just so many of them. You'd meet somebody there and you say, "Are you one of the family?" and see to be a friend or something that you knew years ago and didn't realize that they were part of the family, part of that extended family.

   This family has been destroyed in the past years. It's been completely eliminated. Husbands don't see the wife working. Wives don't see the husbands working. Children don't see the mother and father working because everybody is scattered out in a different direction. You have a family where you may have the grandmother in one continent, grandmother and grandfather in one continent, and the children and grandchildren in another continent scattered by great gulf of differences of areas, but there's also sometimes a great difference in the time that we spend together as families.

   The husband gets up in the morning and may leave before the children even wake up. And he comes home by the time the children are ready to go to bed at night, and they never really have a family relationship, even though they live in the same home. In many areas, one of the most devastating things we have is we don't have husbands in many of the homes because of the divorce. There are so many single parent families, it's unbelievable and that carries over even into the Church of God. And that's sad because that's something we've brought in from the outside, from the world. It's a worldly concept. It's a worldly thing that we've brought into the church.

   And the children don't really have time to spend with the parents and the parents don't have time to spend with the children. The husbands and wives do not have time to be together. There's not a grandmother or a grandfather. There's not aunts or uncles around to provide that close knit family unit that we should have. The family unit, and I can say this pretty safely, the family unit is destroyed. The family unit is destroyed in this day and age. There are very few what you would really call family units still in existence.

   Los Angeles area, that's a very unheard of thing to have a close knit family because this is such a scattered society, everybody goes their own way. Many of the families in this area - this is one of the concepts that one of the ways that the families are destroyed is that people in other areas of the nation have difficulty, so they move away from their families and come to California so that they can make enough money to survive.

   Last year I'm sitting there watching television. I was going from one station to another and they have this cable news and so forth and I stopped on that. And in there they had in Tujunga, in Sunland-Tujunga area on the cable network there. It said that there was going to be a picnic in the Sunland Park for the people from Donora, Charleroi, Monessen, and Monongahela, which are the four towns around where I live back in Pennsylvania. There are as many people living in this area as there are living back in my hometown.

   All the people from my hometown when the town died in 1959 when the steel mills were closed, many of them moved out. The city was at 13,000 and growing at that time. It's down to about 8 or 9,000 now. And so the people all moved out and most of them were in the Southern California area. I know of at least 10 or 15 individuals who were friends of mine when I was a kid back in my hometown that are living in the Los Angeles area. I have cousins here, I have family here. They moved out of the area of Pennsylvania and moved here because there's no way to live back in Pennsylvania.

   See, the dropping economy and the way that this world is has destroyed the family unit. You can buy a home in my hometown for $7,000. That's a two bedroom home. Three bedroom would probably cost you more. And that's ridiculous, isn't it, when you hear that the median price of, the median price of a home in this area is $75,000 and let me tell you, try to buy a home for that price in this area. And it doesn't work.

   They have so many people on welfare, so many people receiving aid in the state of California. The governor Deukmejian has called this the week of the family. This is family week. Because one of the reasons we have so many people on welfare is because they don't have the extended family. They don't have the experience. They don't have the example set before them of a working father and mother. They don't have other people to help them out so that they're able to overcome the problems of not wanting to work in this society.

   You know, when I was growing up, I see many of the examples of very hardworking men. In my hometown, when you worked in the steel mills, you had to be a hard worker. You had to be or you starved in those days. Today, if you don't want to work, you kick back and you find some way, some government agency to take care of you.

   And one of the problems that we do have in the Church of God is we have many men who do not have good jobs. We don't have men who want to go out and work for a living. They want positions. Look, "I'll be glad to start working in your company. Let's see, make me vice president." You see, rather than wanting to work for a living and to make money and to have a work ethic and that's something you can only be brought about by seeing the example of that.

   Governor Deukmejian and I think all of the people working in the social welfare system understand that one of the reasons that we are collapsing, we don't have the money that we should have for other programs is because these things have been taught to the people by not having good, solid, firm family leadership.

   Can you name me a program on TV today in which it has a father as a good strong image in the family? Not very many, if any, that I know of. I remember one show it was about a black family. And it, I don't know what the name of it was. There was a, was this young comic J.J. or something like that, some tall, slender kid is real, real funny, and they had one individual in there. I'll never forget him. I don't know what his name is really. He ran the family. He was tough and he told the family and he kept the family going in the right direction. You know what happened to him? They killed him off after the first year. And they made the mother the head of the family.

   You know, most, I would say maybe not all, maybe of not all, of the anti-social behavior that we have in the world today can be traced to failures in the family. Traced to failures of leadership as the father would lead the family and the mother would set the example. Marriage is a good example. People in marriages today look at what their mother and father did and how they interacted, and that's the way they interact with their mate whenever they're married. And if you sit there and you watch a very poor relationship between your mother and your father, or if there's no mother or no father in the family, then you will tend to act the same way in marriage.

   And so what happens is that you see the wrong example and then that goes into the family relationship, and then you do the same thing when you're married. That's why it's very important to take a look at the family and the background of the family of the mate that you were planning to marry, to see what happened in that family because the chances are that those same pressures that caused that family to be the way it is will be present in your marriage.

   It says in Exodus 20, if you go to Exodus 20. Exodus 20: in verse 5, in its Ten Commandments, there is a statement put in that shows us something about the family relationship. Exodus 20:5, "You shall not bow down yourself to them nor serve them," and it's talking about idols and graven images. "For I, the Eternal your God, am a jealous God." And then he adds a thought: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me," and it goes on to say, "showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments," because if you don't keep the commandments of God, the sins in the family will be passed on to your children.

   The sins that you do will be passed on to your children, whether they're physical sins or spiritual sins. If you intend to be pregnant, sit down and drink a lot of alcohol, smoke a lot of marijuana, eat wrong as much as possible, and I guarantee your child's chances of survival will drop tremendously, and you'll have a weak, sickly child. But if you take care of yourself during pregnancy, if you work on yourself, you eat right, you sleep, you're balanced, then your child will have a much greater chance of being a happy, healthy child.

   And if you go out and you live in a family relationship where the family is a wrong example, that example will be passed on to the children, even into the third and the fourth generation. And you see the statement in verse 6 about showing mercy is really beautiful because when you're called out of this world, you're able to stop that which has occurred in your family that you were raised up under, if it was a bad example, and changed it to a good example. But it'll be extremely difficult for you if you were raised under a bad example. It will be very difficult. You know why? Because you won't even recognize that you're doing it wrong. You'll think it's right. "This is the way dad did it. This is the way Grandpa did it. That's the way I'm gonna do it because it must be right. Look at me, I come out perfect." You see?

   And that's a sad situation because many of the problems that we have in marriages and in the family, we don't even recognize as wrong because we think they're right. We've been raised in it. You know, we've been brought up that this is the way it is. This is the way it's always been. Ever since day one, that's all we remember was this way of life. So it must be right. And sometimes we don't make the changes because we think that the way we are living is the best way possible, but that's not the way God says we should live.

   It says He shows mercy unto thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments. You see, that's what love is, keeping His commandments and showing Him that you do love Him, finding out what it says in the Bible about His commandments and the way to live, and then doing it. It's as simple as that and as hard as that, and as difficult as that.

   The relationship in a child's marriage, when they're raised, grow up, and then get married, will be a reflection of what they saw in their parents' homes. The children today will react towards authority in the same way that they see their parents, their mother reacting to the authority of the husband in the home. And also the way the husband will be under church authority or under the authority of the boss that he works for or whatever. And that sets the example for the children right now.

   What you are doing right this minute is setting an example for your child. They're watching, they're watching you, even the youngest of children, they know, they're starting to learn at a very young age what's right and what's wrong.

   I was noticing last week in Glendale, I looked over and there was a young lad about 4 or 5 years of age. He was standing there and his mother and father were there and there was another child and there was a little girl sitting in front of him. And I looked over there and I saw him and he's, he's standing there and he's, you know, he's got this smile on his face, you know, you could see trouble was coming. So he's standing there, you know, bored, nothing to do. He looked up at his mother. She wasn't watching. He looked at his father. He wasn't watching. He looked around. He didn't see anybody watching him. The girl's sitting there. She turns around and looks at him, and he's just rocking back and forth, you know, just, he knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew what he was doing, and this is about 4 1/2, 5 years of age. And he did that for about 10 minutes with this girl. And he was having fun. And he was sitting there, you could see him trying to think of what can I do to stir up something to have some fun while services are going on. Kids are that way. They're learning right now.

   Whenever you have a family relationship, and the word family in Hebrew is very interesting. It comes from the word "bare," B-A-R-E. It's very interesting because the family, husband and wife - nudeness, bareness, that's one thing, or also bearing yourself to other people as far as being able to talk to other people, close relatives or friends that you can talk about and bare your soul to them, say "I'd like to talk to you about this" or "talk to you about that" because you're family, you can understand. And you see, that's the family relationship.

   The word means also and it has the connotation of circle of relatives. Circle of relatives. So when you talk about brother or sister, you're talking about even it could be a nephew, as I'll show you later on, or it could be a cousin or it could be some distant relationship. Opening up yourselves to others in a circle of relations or family or relatives in a spirit of help and cooperation, and that's what the Church of God is - a circle of relatives helping each other, working together, bearing each other's burdens in helping each other to make it into the kingdom of God.

   If you go to Galatians 6, please, Galatians 6. One of the requirements of the church, Galatians 6, starting off in verses 1 and then unto verse 2 (Galatians 6:1-2). "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual" - that eliminates a good deal of people. But "you which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness."

   Now, if you see someone who is overtaken in a fault, the ones of you who are spiritual and everybody immediately says, "Well, that's me, I can do anything I want restoring this brother." That's not true. That's not what it's talking about there. You don't sit down to them and tell them all their faults. You don't sit down and try to convert and convict someone. That's not your responsibility. But if you are spiritual, you restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself also, lest you also be tempted.

   You see, because if you're not spiritual and you stand there and you try to tell somebody something, then the attack may come on you to show you that you are not as strong as you think you are, because what happens to an individual who's trying to correct somebody, what they do is they go and say, "Well, you know, your problem is you're sinning and you're doing this wrong and you're doing that wrong." And Satan says, "Oh boy, this is the perfect candidate for me."

   What it's talking about is verse 2, "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." Even AA recognizes this. They have a situation where someone is an alcoholic. And if they are tempted to drink, what do they do? They call someone, they have someone they can call, someone that's appointed for them, that the individual can call them and talk to them and say, "Look, you know, I really want a drink" or whatever they do, and they talk to them. They say, "No, you know, now is the time not to drink. Now is the time to..." and then they, whatever they tell them to do or they help them to do.

   That's the same way we should be in the church of God. If someone has a problem or a fault, instead of correcting them, instead of you counseling them, you should help them carry their burden. You should go to and say, "Brother, I'm with you. You know, I'll be praying about it. If I can do anything, let me know. If you want to talk, give me a call. If I can help in any other way, let me know, brother," you see the family relationship and bearing each other's burdens and helping each other and carrying each other's burdens. That's what it's all about.

   We are to encourage. And we do not try to tell somebody what they should do or what you did. "Well, you know, when I had this smoking problem, this is what I did." You know what you do when you do that? You set yourself up as the perfect example. And you see, you may not be the perfect example, and what may work for you may not work for somebody else. And after a while, everybody you talk to, you're telling them how perfect you are because of all these problems that you've overcome. That's not the way to be. That's not the way to be.

   How many here is the perfect example? How many of you are the perfect example? None of us are the perfect example. In fact, we're probably the wrong examples. You see? And we have to be very, very careful what we say to our brothers. See, we're a light. Let our works show, not our mouth show. What we should be doing is being a help to a friend, to a brother, encouraging, lifting up, helping, strengthening them, not telling them what they should do or how they should do things. It's a matter of encouragement one to another, bearing one another's burdens.

   In 1979, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a team that was a very good team, mediocre to good. And in that year as they were playing for the pennant, someone come up with the idea of trying to lift up the team's spirit. And they come up with a concept. Well, one man came up with the concept. The concept was "we are family." We are family.

   One of the older players on that team, Stargell, Willie Stargell, who was at the end of his career, became known as Pops Stargell. So what would happen was that whenever someone would do a good job on the field, something would happen. That Willie Stargell would issue them a little star that was sewn onto their cap for some spectacular thing that they had done as a sign of recognition, as a sign of encouragement for what the team had done during that year. And near the end of the year as they went into the World Series, there were many of them that had stars all around their caps, quite a few of them, for spectacular things they had done throughout the year.

   In 1984 and 1985, with drugs, with show boat, with individuals who were trying to make their mark in society, the team collapsed to last place with the worst record in baseball, and one of the worst records ever as far as baseball is concerned. Because in the team, they had people who were individuals, who were superstars. They had a lot of superstars. But they didn't have a team. They didn't have a family.

   And I can tell you whenever certain individuals go to a team, I can tell you usually that that team will not win anything for that year, even though they're superstars. I've noticed over the years that players who were so-called superstars who were not team players, who were not those type of individuals who would work together, they would collapse.

   I remember seeing Reggie Jackson in, must have been in 1960s, the early 1960s up in, maybe it was in the late 1960s or early 1970s in Oakland, and they were on 3, and I think World Series or pennant winning teams and playing the World Series, at least 1 year I can remember going to the game and seeing him play. And then he got transferred to or he moved or however they do it, getting extra money or something to go to another team. And then I could watch the team that he went to not do well. And any team that Reggie Jackson is on doesn't do well because there becomes a spirit of contention on that team.

   You know, you take someone like the Los Angeles Dodgers. They recognize that concept. You know, Dodgers have a very, very good team spirit. If they have somebody who thinks, "Well, look, I'm better than everybody else," even though he may be, they say, "Fine, San Diego would love to have you." Because they are trying to develop that unity of spirit, that working together, and that's in a physical relationship. That's in a baseball team that really doesn't mean anything because you can be on top one year and the next year you can be on the bottom.

   How much more so that relationship, that spirit of cooperation of working together so that we can be family together and make it into the kingdom of God. You know, we only have one superstar in the Church of God, that's Jesus Christ. Everybody else is just a team player, no matter who you are, no matter what your position is.

   We are the children of God. We are the children of God. Do you understand that concept? The song was talking about the Father. Yeah, what is your relationship to God Almighty? It's not some distant, you know, he's gone way off someplace. Yes, he is our Father. That's the concept.

   We have been begotten - I'm going to get it out yet - begotten to a lively hope by the spirit of God that is in us. It makes us the sons of God. It makes us the daughters of God. It makes us the children of God.

   Take a look at Romans 8. Romans 8, please. And what it says about our relationship to the Father. And I don't think that we really understand this relationship. I know in dealing with some of the brethren in the church that they don't understand this relationship of a father. Or because they had a physical father or no physical father, they don't understand the concept of father in this way and what father means to us.

   Romans 8:9. "But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his." If you don't have the Spirit of Christ, you are not a Christian. You see, you can call yourself a Christian if you have the Spirit of Christ, but it goes on and over and above and beyond that because it says in verse 14 (Romans 8:14), "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

   So we can have people sitting here today that are Christians, having the spirit of God, and say "I'm a Christian," you say you're right. Then you can say, "Well, I'm the son of God," and so you're wrong. Because you can get that spirit and then turn away from that spirit and do the things the exact opposite of what God wants you to do, and you won't be the Son of God. You will abort yourself. You will pull yourself out of the family relationship.

   If you are being led by the spirit of God, if you're being submissive and obedient to God, and you're trying with all your heart to live God's life in his way, then you are the Son of God. And in verse 16 (Romans 8:16), "The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit" that whenever you were converted, the spirit in man that was in you was opened up like an ovum. And the Holy Spirit was placed in there like the male sperm, impregnating that and making you at one with God as a begotten child of God.

   "It bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." That's your relationship to your Father, God Almighty. You are the children of God. And then if you are the child of God, if you are the children of God, then your children are the grandchildren of God. And your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren down the line are related to God and have access to God's word through that.

   "And if children, then heirs." Heirs of God, heirs with the kingdom, and joint heirs with Christ because he is our brother. That's our relationship. God is our Father. Jesus Christ is our brother. We're in a family relationship here because if Jesus Christ is your brother by the Spirit of God that's in you, and he is my brother by the Spirit of Christ that is in me, then we are brothers also or sisters. Now that wouldn't be right. Will be brother and sister. You see the relationship? It's a sister with sister because if Jesus Christ is your brother and it's someone else's brother then you're sisters.

   It's a family relationship that we're in with God Almighty. Our God is our Father. "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." Because we are in this family relationship, because we are begotten like Him, we will be born again into the kingdom of God like Him, like our brother Jesus Christ.

   So we're in a family relationship. God Almighty is our Father. That's what you call Him - our Father. Christ is our brother. These family ties tell us about our relationship with the God family and with God Almighty and with our brother, and with each other. You see, we are all part of the family of God. We're one extended family. Not a nuclear family, because you can't survive as a nuclear family in the church of God divorced from other people.

   Because those who are not a part of the church, those who are divorced from the church, those who are on the sidelines of the church, not coming to Sabbath services on a regular and routine basis, kind of trying to do it on their own, will eventually drop off the vine because they won't be a part of the family. They won't have the nourishment. They won't have the encouragement of the brothers trying to help them to make it into the kingdom of God. They won't have that attachment to the family.

   You are part of a family that extends around the world. Even though you may not know that individual, there's one in, was in Poland. He is your brother. Even though you don't know him, he is still your brother. And when you met him and you can sit down with him and you could talk to him, you'd find out you have something in common with him. If you could speak the same language.

   And you have people in the church of God who are entirely opposite. One person has a certain type of personality, another person has another type of personality, and in the world, you would probably never be friends because you'd have nothing in common. But being in the church of God, having God's spirit, you have something in common. And so you can sit down with anybody in the Church of God and able to converse with them and talk to them and enjoy their company and have fun with them, because we are family. We are the family of God.

   We need to understand that our relationship to God, to Jesus Christ and His people is a close intimate relationship that transcends physical family. And that's very important - that transcends physical family and physical relationships. We are brothers and sisters. God is our Father and He is the Father of all men through Adam. He is the Father of all men through Adam, but we, the people of God are his children in a special select covenant through the Spirit of God, which makes us entirely different than the other sons of God, a special separate covenant that God has with each one of us individually.

   In Romans 9 and verse 8. Romans 9:8. See, the Jews did not understand this because they had Abraham the father, and they thought that they had a special relationship. Christ tried to tell them, "You don't, you don't understand." That is, it says in verse 8, "They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God." They are in the physical sense, they are as eventually they will be the children of God, but he's talking about right now, they are not the children of God. "But the children of the promise are counted for the seed," you see, and you are the children of promise.

   You are here because of the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You were called and selected, not because you were something special, but because God had to fulfill a promise. He promised Abraham something and then he was going to fulfill it and he will fulfill it because you are the children of promise. The world is not. That's why God is directly involved in your life. That's why he's with you.

   You know, I read about the fact that you will go through much tribulation or you will have tribulation before you are glorified. You'll suffer with Him before you're glorified with God because he's working with you as a Father works with a child. As a father working with a young child, that's how he's working with you. He's not working with someone down the street. He's not working with the people over and only at this time. Not the way he's working with us. They have chosen to go their way. They have chosen to do what they want to do.

   But you are like a little child in his family, and he's standing there watching you going up to the stove and getting ready to put your hand on the stove. He says, "No, don't do that." Smacks your hands. "Don't do that." And you go back and you put your hand up there, smacks your hands and "No, don't do that." You go back and you go back and he's working with you. The individual over here puts his hand up against the stove, he gets burned. He just gets burned. But God sits there and he works with you directly. He works with you day in and day out to teach you something, to teach you how to live like your Father, God Almighty.

   That's the whole purpose of us being in the church, other than the preaching of the gospel to all the world as a witness, is that we're here to develop the character of our Father. We're here to develop what our Father has as character. That's why we go through the suffering. That's why we go through the problems and the difficulties we have. Because if the first time we reach for the stove and God said, "Don't do that," we say, "Yes, sir," and walk away, we wouldn't have to be spanked. But that's the problem with us. We don't listen. We don't hear. We don't understand. We don't pay attention to what God is trying to tell us because it's so easy to pay attention to something physical, but not to something spiritual. We don't hear what God is saying to us. We are not attuned to what God is saying to us.

   And over the years I've been trying to tell you to get off the physical and on to the spiritual so you can hear what God has for you. So you can short change, you can short circuit the problems and the difficulties you're going through. So you can hear what God has to say for you. And I can sit and talk to people and I can tell them, "Look, this is what the Bible says, this is what you're doing wrong," and they can't hear me. They're completely deaf and you know what happens? I know when they go off and do their own thing that they're going to be coming back in pain and misery. You know why? Because at the time they wanted something so bad that they didn't care. They could care less about what God had in mind because "I want what I want now." And then 2 or 3 or 4 years from now, you know what's gonna happen? They'll be in pain and misery and hurting. And then I won't be able to do anything. I won't be able to help. There's nothing you can do at that point. After everything is wrong, after everything has gone wrong, it's too late to come back and say, "How do I write it now?" It's too late.

   Young ladies in the Church of God who grow up in the Y.O.U. and they go out into the world because they want that dashing daring husband now. That individual out there who is tall, dark, and handsome with a little spiffy mustache and just the right type of beard, dressing in the right clothes. For the young lady that the man sees, the young man in the Church of God who's dressed just right and does all the right things and all the right moves. And they get attached to them and they go out into the world thinking they've really got something good. Not realizing that disobedience to the word of God is going to bring suffering.

   And you know what happens? In 2 years they're back. 2 years they're in a pit so deep that they can't get out and come back. Because they can't hear.

   One day I was standing here and I told Mr. Harry, I think it was Mr. Harry or Mr. Smith, I said, "You know, these signs over here, I'd like to have 4 or 500 of them for Glendale and Reseda." You know what the signs were? "Reserved for the deaf." Because we're all deaf when it comes to listening to God. That's why we suffer so much. And if you're not suffering, you're even in worse shape. Because either you're super righteous or God is not working with you.

   Why does it look - I mean, let's, let's think about it. Here's the guy over here working mowing right now, he's taking care, he's gonna cut his grass today. He's got his lawn mower running. Everything is going very good for him. He lives in a $200,000 home up here in the hill. Everything is going good for him right now. Why is that? And you're sitting in here and you have all these miseries and problems and difficulties. You have a minister standing up there shouting at you and hollering at you, huh? "Woe is me," you say.

   It's because God's working with you now. He's addressing your problems now. This individual over here has to have his problems addressed in the future. And at that time, it may be extremely difficult. And what happens to him 10 years from now, may be a lot different than what's happening to him right now. You see, you know what's going to be happening to you 10 years from now. You know what's going to be happening 200, 200 years from now or 1,000 years from now. You're gonna have your problems addressed. Things are gonna be going along so that God is working with you, and you're gonna be right there close to God, if you are obedient to his word. So that no matter what happens to you from now on into the future, it's for your good. It's to glorify you so that you can be glorified with God Almighty because you are the sons of God. You are the children of God. And he's working with you.

   Hebrews 12, Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12:6. "For whom the Lord love. For whom the Lord love, He chastens and scourges every son whom he receive."

   If your father and mother, those in the Y.O.U. and the Y.E.S. and even younger, chasten you, scourge you, telling you what to do, it's because they love you. Because they don't want you to go through the same things that they went through. They're trying to save you heartache and heartbreak. They're trying to save you from having the problems and the difficulties they had to experience.

   "And if ye endure chastening," see if you go all the way to the end. If you endure that to the end, "God deals with you as with sons." If you cut and run or you break and run or you break and leave, then there's no hope for you. It's enduring to the end. Enduring to the end will have God dealing with you as with sons. "For what son is he whom the Father chastens not?" You see, every father chastens his children, period. If he loves them, he will stop them from going the way that they should not go. "But if you are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then you are illegitimate, and you’re not sons."

   The people in Ole right now are not the sons of God. He's not dealing with those individuals over there. He's not dealing with them. I hope none of them is listening on the radio. Yeah. He's not dealing with them.

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   So you had that, he is a God of mercy. He is your Father. You can go to him and say, "Father, please help." And you can go to your brothers and sisters, and they can encourage you and they can help you to endure. You see, that's one of the problems whenever you do have difficulties, you have a sin. The tendency is that Satan puts into your mind to draw back from the people of God. When you do that, he's got you. Because the whole purpose of the Church of God is for you to get nourishment from that, to be close to the people. So the more problems and difficulties you have, the closer you want to be to the people of God, not the further away. And so that's what happens. We move back from that relationship with the church, with our brothers, with our brother Jesus and with God the Father.

   One purpose for Christ's first coming was to reveal the Father. He came to reveal the Father because they didn't understand that concept. They didn't understand who God Almighty was. He deals with us not as some distant God, but as a loving Father. Sometimes we think of him as standing up there in heaven or sitting on heaven and his throne, having about 8 billion angels with lightning bolts, waiting to throw them down at us every mistake that we make, and that's not the way he's dealing with us. He's dealing with us as a loving Father deals with his children. He's dealing with us to help us out of our problems.

   You know, the reason we have the trials, the reason we have our weaknesses and our illnesses and our sicknesses, the reason that we have things wrong in our life is not because God is giving them to us, it's because we're not obeying his law. And so when we don't obey His law, if we go to Him, He has mercy to forgive us and help us out of that trial.

   You see, if that man over in Ole’s, catches a cold or a flu or a sickness, what does he do? He takes, you know, new formula, super giant, 76 year contact. Right? And then he goes out and infects everybody else around him. And if we're sick and we're dying and we're out, we go to God and God heals us. And I think one of the reasons we have illnesses in the congregation is because God wants us to see, wants to see us praying for each other, wants to see us encouraging each other, getting our minds in the right direction so that we are healed.

   You see, we have people right now with sicknesses and cancer. They can be healed just like that. If you're spending your time on your knees asking God for them, the faith to be healed. We have direct access to God. No one else has that. That's what the veil pictured when Christ was crucified. The veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom.

   Anyone could go into the holy place, which is the first large room in the temple. But between there and the Holy of Holies, which was God's throne room representing the very throne room of God, there was a veil, you see, that separated the Holy of Holies where God resided from where anybody else could come. The priest could come into the holy area. Only the high priest could go in once a year into that area. But when Christ died, that veil was rent from top to bottom to signify that you can go into the Holy of Holies, that you can go into the very throne room of God to talk to your father. That you have a relationship with God Almighty from that point on. And until Christ died, that relationship was not open. Until Christ was crucified, until the moment he died, you did not have access to the Holy of Holies.

   It says in Hebrews 10. Hebrews 10:19. "Having therefore brethren, having therefore brothers, sisters, boldness to enter into the holiest, the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh."

   That veil was the ripping apart of the flesh of Christ, that he would die and pour out his blood and his life for us so we could have access to God Almighty. We are reconciled to God by the blood of Jesus Christ, by his death. And so when you go in there, you see you have a new and a living way in which you can address the Father. You have a new and a living way in which you can be in a relationship to God Almighty. And it's a way that no one else in this world can have. It's a way that no one can have unless they are the children of God, unless they have God's spirit and are being led by God's spirit. And being led, you have to listen, you have to see, you have to hear, and you have to do. See, there's something there that God says for us we have to do to be His children.

   God is our Father. He is the head of the family. The head of the family, in every marriage, in every family, in every relationship in the Church of God, right here and right now, God is the head. He is the number one. The household that we belong to is named after him.

   If you take a look at Ephesians 3. So we are not the Church of Christ. We are not the Nazarenes. We are not the church of allies. We are the Church of God. We are named after the Father, God Almighty. And it says in the resurrection we'll have the Father's name on our head. It will be imprinted in our minds. We will have the name of God Almighty.

   Ephesians 3:14. Paul says, "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named," you see. We are named after him. We will receive his name upon the time that we are born into the kingdom of God. It's just like any family has the surname, the name of God Almighty, the Father. You see, we have that special relationship with Him. The church is kept in His name. We are the begotten sons and daughters of God Almighty.

   And when he begets us, we're put into the church, which is our mother who nourishes us and feeds us because at this point we are only begotten children of God. And someday we will be born into the kingdom to be just like our Father, to have the same characteristics that he had, to have the same power, the same might. Everything just like God Almighty. When I talk about worrying about problems and pain, it'll all disappear. When you have that, when you've attained the resurrection, all of this will fade into insignificance.

   In I Peter 1:3. I Peter one in verse 3. We have that relation with God Almighty. We are His children. We are His. We are begotten by Him. He is our Father. We know who our Father is. We know who is working with us. We know the relationship we have with Him.

   I Peter 1 and verse 3. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy," I Peter 1 and verse 3, "hath begotten us again," a spiritual begettal. See, because we have been begotten once as physical beings, now we are begotten again as spiritual beings "unto a lively hope." How? "By the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." By His death, we had access to God Almighty, but by His life, we have now access to be the sons of God born into the kingdom of God.

   If we live the life that Jesus Christ lived, if we allow Jesus to live in us, to have his spirit in us, to help us to live that way, we are the children of God. And I hope when you leave here today that you have that pounded into your mind that your relationship with God Almighty is with a Father and his Son, no matter how old or how young you are. No matter what your sex is, you are a child of God. He is your Father, and that you're able to get down and talk to him like a son would talk to a father, like a daughter would talk to a father.

   One of the biggest problems that we have today in the church is the fact that the children do not have a relationship with their father. And so when they grow up and they come into the Church of God or baptized into the Church of God, they don't have the right relationship with their father in heaven. Because Satan has distorted that.

   And that's why you have to make sure that your children have the right relationship with you, mother or father, that she or he could see the parents, the right type of parenting, the right type of understanding who the supreme authority is, because that relationship they have with you will also carry over into that relationship with the Father. They're able to talk to you, they'll be able to talk to God. If they can see you as a merciful, loving, yet firm father or mother, they will have that same relationship to God.

   Look at your children. Look at the way they act. That tells you something about how you raise them. And many of you who have very young children, now is the time to adjust your parental procedures, to adjust the way that you're raising your children. Some who may be married in the future and have children, now is the time to look at how are you going to raise those children? How are you going to bring them up?

   Because if they see you as a parent, running around screaming and hollering and throwing things, beating them with whips, chairs, or anything you can get your hands on, blowing your stack, always hurting them, how do you think they're gonna picture God Almighty? What do you think the picture of God that they're gonna have? And some of us have been raised that way, haven't we? And so when they look at God, what do they see? They see not a merciful, loving, kind Father. They see someone who is sitting there ready to hurt them at a moment's notice. "Move one and I'll get you. Even turn your head and I'll smack you." You see, that's the problem. That's the problem.

   That's why the child rearing booklet, the child rearing articles that were in the Plain Truth, you ought to go back and reread those occasionally. You got to take a look at your child rearing practices. What you parents today are doing is establishing how your children will react to an authority figure in the future. And how your children react to the ministry today will tell you something about how you are raising your children. It's very important to take a look at that. Because if there's a weakness there, there will be a weakness as they grow older and try to interact with God Almighty.

   Someday we will be born again as spirit beings in the kingdom of God as his children. We'll be like him with his characteristics. It's the only way you can make it into the kingdom of God. You have to have his characteristics at that time.

   I John 3. I John 3. I John 3:1. We have to understand this relationship. We have to beat it into our heads until we know, until we know what we know. "Behold what manner," is I John 3 and verse 1. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us." You see, he has bestowed love upon us "that we should be called the sons of God.” He has loved us so much that he calls us his sons. “Therefore the world knows us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear," at Christ's second coming, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

   In other words, we have to be spirit beings to see Christ that is coming as a spirit being. "We should be called the sons of God." That's how much love that God has for us. And it says there that "beloved now we are the sons of God," excuse me, at the end of verse one. "Therefore the world knows us not, because it knew him not."

   So you can't train and teach your children, and you can't have many associations in the world. Now, you have family in the world, you have friends in the world. But you have to be very, very cautious about that. You have to be very, very cautious about living in the outside world and how much you're attached to the outside world. Because you're setting an example for your children, you're setting an example for yourself.

   If you want to be able to grow, do you think that you can grow if you're always attached to the outside world? How much do you think you'll grow if you're always with unconverted people? That's a tough question for some of the people who have unconverted mates. How much can you grow if you're always around unconverted people?

   It says, "Therefore the world knows us not because it knew him not." Why do we have a church? Why do we have brethren? Why do we have sisters? Because that's our family. And that's where our attachment is. That's where our whole life should be centered around the Church of God. That doesn't mean that you're supposed to drop all your family and friends. I'm not saying that. But you have to be very cautious about those type of attachments.

   What if you have little children and you take them to your family, you go over to Grandma and Grandpa, Grandpa's walking around smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and cussing all the time. How much of an example is that to your son or your daughter? How much of it is an example to you?

   And let me tell you, you get caught in it, you know, my wife and I do not go shopping from before Thanksgiving until after the 25th of December. You know why? If you go into the stores, Kmart, any of them, you know what's playing in the background? Got this music playing. You're walking along, and next thing you know, you're singing Christmas songs. Why? Are you doing it intentionally? No, you're not doing it intentionally. You would never do it intentionally, would you? But you know what happens is it's so subtle and it's there. You don't even notice it's there. You just pick up the tune. It's all favorite tunes you used to have, huh? And all of a sudden you're singing and humming along and you don't even realize that you're paying homage to Satan.

   You see, that's how subtle this world is. That's why it's so important that you really watch your contact with the world. Working out in society, in an office down in Los Angeles with 3,000 unconverted people jammed into about 200 square feet really makes it difficult to be a converted individual. The language you hear, it's hard to get it out of your mind. It's very, very difficult. So that's why it's very important that you watch your family contact. We have to become like God. We have to become like-minded with Him. We have to live like our Father and develop his character, and the only way we can do that is be around our spiritual family. God Almighty, the Father and our brothers and sisters, and Jesus Christ, our closest confidant, our high priest working with us directly all the time, become like-minded like God Almighty.

   I John 3, and let's start off in verse 7. "Little children, let no man deceive you." I John 3:7. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sins from the beginning." He is the father of this world. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin."

   You see, whenever you're born of God into the God family, you will never sin. "For his seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil." You can tell who the children of God are. You can tell who the children of the devil are if you can look and you can watch and you have spiritual discernment. "Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother," you see.

   It's all a part and parcel of loving God the Father and loving your brother. You have to do what God wants you to do. You have to live in a righteous manner, not perfect, but to the best of your ability. That's why we should never judge because none of us are perfect. No, not one. We do the best we can. We live the best we can, but we do make mistakes.

   The Father has a way of life that he wants us to live, that develops our character, and that's the way of the law, his law. Christ was sent to be an example to us as an older brother to show us how the law was to be kept in the Spirit, and he was that example. We read the Bible, we can see what he wants us to do. We can see how that example is, is right here before us in the Bible as a light to show us. We can see that the Son of God should conduct himself in a certain way because if you are to be the Son of God, you must conduct yourself in a certain specific way.

   In Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5, starting off in verse one (Ephesians 5:1). It's a command to you and a command to me. "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." Imitate your father. Act like your father. Learn from your father. Gather information, see the examples, see the light, and then live just like him. You see, and that should be an awesome command to us parents because that's what our children automatically do to us. They watch, they see, and they ape us. That as they grow older, they see television, they see other individuals, peer pressure and they start to ape the rest of this world. But your example has to be much stronger than the example in the world.

   "And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour." This is the way Christ, His Son lives. This is the way you should live. "But fornication, and all sexual uncleanness, covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints."

   We have to be shining examples to the people in the world. We are not to be contaminated by them. We are to show them what the right way of life is. We are to show them the way that we should live and the way that they should live. It says "Neither filthiness, nor foolish, nor talking, nor jesting," which means rude talking or jesting in a negative way. There's nothing wrong with jesting in the right in the proper way. But not foolish jesting, not jesting in a negative way, "which are not convenient" or not proper, "but rather giving of thanks. For this we know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater," if you covet something more than you do God, you're an idolater, it says, "has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

   You see, you have to stay away from these things. "Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things comes the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience." You see, you do these things, you live this way, and that's why you have the problems and the difficulties. That's why the wrath comes upon you, because God has built into his law a specific way. And anybody who lives this way on a continual basis after they are the children of God, then they have nothing but the third resurrection to look forward to. And that's where the wrath of God will come upon the children of disobedience.

   "Be not ye therefore partakers with them." Stay away from them. Don't be involved with them. Stay away from that way of life, "for you were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit" - and in the original Greek, that's what it says. It doesn't say the spirit. It says the light - "is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them."

   They don't have concourse with them, don't have a lot of interaction with them, don't have a real buddy, buddy relationship with them. Because if you do, you'll end up doing these things. You'll end up being a part of it. You'll end up being the darkness just like they are. And God says, don't do that. You have to, as it says in verse 17, "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is." You see, verse 20 "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

   You see, that's what we should be doing, thanking God, being close to God, being a part of his life, understanding what his will is, and not a part of the outside world all the time, because you will become contaminated. You will learn their ways. You will learn the evil ways.

   We must be careful of our entanglements in the world. It could be a wrong example for us and for our children. That's why it's warned. We are warned in II Corinthians 6 to be very cautious about being around unconverted people, not entering into any very close relationships with them, business relationships or any other sort. It's why we talk to our children, help them to understand about not marrying outside the Church of God. Because marrying outside the Church of God can be one of the most devastating things that can happen to a human being that's ever been attached to the Church of God. So very, very important that you're very cautious about the way you live and who you're around.

   Says in verse 14 to II Corinthians 6 (II Corinthians 6:14), "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial" or Satan? There is none. There should be no relationship. "Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?"

   And when you have the Spirit of God in you, you are the temple of God. You are part of that temple. What relationship do you have with people that are idol worshippers? "For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you," because if you touch the unclean thing, you know what happens in all the ceremonial laws shown in the Old Testament. Whenever anything clean touched anything unclean, the clean became unclean. Something unclean touching something clean does not make the unclean clean. It makes it just the opposite. Whatever was clean becomes unclean.

   It's so easy to be sucked into this world's ways. Go out and go shopping for 4 hours tomorrow and see if you're not having little Christmas melodies running through your mind over and over again. You become unclean and you don't even realize it. You don't even think about it. You see, it's not something conscious, it's something very subtle.

   And if you do all these things, and if you have that right relationship with God, and you stay away from these relationships outside the church, He says, "And will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." You see, when you have that relationship, he'll be your Father, and you'll be his sons, and you'll be his daughters.

   And if you have unconverted mates or you're around unconverted people all the time, you have to make a special effort. You have to make a very special effort to be around God's people every chance that you can. Bible studies, social activities and all the activities that we have in the church, service projects. So that you're spending time with God's people. You're spending time with the people who's setting the right example, encouraging you and helping you. People who are trying to do the same thing that you're trying to do, make it into the kingdom of God. People who are striving and working for the preaching of the gospel and all the world as a witness.

   And I guarantee you, if you spend much time with people outside the church and not a balanced time with people in the church and God's people that you're going to have a much greater difficult time to make it into the kingdom of God, to be there to resurrection. It just happens that way.

   We are family. We are family. We must be a circle of relatives supporting each other, knowing each other, able to work together, treating each other like families.

   Look at what Paul told Timothy in I Timothy 2. I Timothy 5. Look at what Paul said to Timothy. He says "Rebuke not an elder," or an older man. He's not talking about a minister, but he's talking about an older man, "but entreat him as a father." So that whenever you see an older man in the congregation, someone who is much older than you, as someone who is obviously at the age where he could be your father, you treat him like a father. You treat "the younger men as brethren." It's family relationship. "The elder women as mothers; and then you treat the younger as sisters, with all purity." You see, you treat the widows with special respect because that's all part of our family. See, we're all in a family relationship. We're all together as a family.

   You know, one of the reasons that God picked Abraham, in which the blessings would come both the physical and the spiritual because he was a family man. He lived in a family way. He taught his family. Everything he did was in a family environment. Family to him was very, very important.

   Look at Genesis 11, Genesis 11. Take a look at Abraham and how he conducted his life, how he lived. It starts off in Genesis 11 talking about his living with his father in a family relationship. His brother's son Lot was living there also.

   In Genesis 11, in verse 27. Genesis 11:27. "Now these are the generations of Terah," which was Abraham's father. "That Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees." That's where they were from. "And Abram and Nahor took them wives." Then it says in verse 31, "And Terah took Abram," which means exalted father. Abram means exalted father. "His son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran."

   Now at this time, Abraham is 75 years of age. He's still living with his father. 75 years of age, his nephew Lot was still living with him. He said in Genesis 12:1. Excuse me, in verse 3. "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." All of the families of the earth shall be blessed through Abraham eventually. Because that was the man he had picked. He was his seed in which Christ was to come, and eventually that all nations would have the physical and the spiritual blessings that God had promised to him, to your children of the seed.

   In Genesis 13 and verse 5, we have a situation in which Lot, his nephew, and him were having a slight difficulty. Genesis 13:5. "And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together." They had so much, so much of the flock, and so many herdsmen that they were getting in each other's way. "And there was a strife."

   Now notice this is not between Abram and Lot, but it was "between the herdmen of Abram's and his cattle and the herdmen of Lot's cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land," you see, they were all in there packed in together, "and Abram said unto Lot." This is what he did to resolve the situation. Notice how he does this. "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and your herdmen; for we be brethren."

   See, we're the circle of relatives, we're friends. We're right here together. We're brothers. "Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left."

   "So Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Eternal, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar" where the river is, where the Nile River is, where it was green, it was lush, it was beautiful, and evidently around Sodom and Gomorrah and the other 5, all those 5 cities in the plain. That was a beautiful area, just like a garden.

   So Lot it is, come on, and he looks up and says that's the best, that's what I want. What did Abram say? Fine. "Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom."

   He let him have the best of the land. He says, "Look, just to avoid a problem, just to avoid difficulty, you know, you take the best, wherever you want to go, you take it, I'll take the other area." You see, and this was his nephew. He could have just said, "Hey, I'm the boss here, you know, I'll take that, you take what's left over." He didn't do that.

   Then while Lot was down in that area, there was fighting going on. There were 5 kings who came up against the 5 kings of the plains there where Lot was living. There were 4 other kings who came down from the north to attack and to take over that area. They captured Lot and they carried him away.

   And in Genesis 14:12, these four kings who came down from the north, "they took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner: and these were confederate with Abram."

   See, these were his confederates. He was there. He said, "Hey, look, Lot was taken captive. He's running up over the hills. He's gone. He, everything he had was taken away." "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive," he armed his trained servants, now you have to remember now all the water plain around the Jordan now, where these cities were, were all taken captive. Everything there was taken captive. He could have walked down now and had all this plain to himself. What was the first thing he did.

   "He heard that his brother was taken captive," now notice it's his brother, his nephew is just as his brother. "He armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan," which is all the way in the northern part of Israel. "And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them." They divided the troops up. They came in by night. They attacked and they smote all these four kings "and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand" or the north side "of Damascus."

   So he went a long distance to get him back. "And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people." He brought back Lot, everything that Lot had lost, and then some, and he gave it all back to Lot and sent him back up again in Sodom and Gomorrah in that area.

   What happened to all those things that Lot had? It was all destroyed, wasn't it? It was all destroyed later on. All those physical things. He took the best place, the plushest place. His uncle Abram went up and got him and brought him back down, took care of him, put him back in that area. He got entangled in the world. What happened? He lost everything.

   Abram's name was later changed to Abraham, which means a father of a great multitude in Genesis 17. The reason Abram or Abraham was chosen for the covenant, it was because of his interaction with his children. Genesis 18:19 says, "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." If they could not have commanded them, if he could not have taught them in the right way, the blessings would not have been able to come to his people. I mean, the family relationship was very important in selecting of Abraham for the specific purpose that he had, and Abraham is our father.

   God is our father. He's a loving, kind, gentle father. He's firm but loving. We must recognize that relationship. We must recognize him for the loving God that he is. He's our father. We must really recognize our true relationship with him because sometimes we forget it when we're down here fighting in the dust. Down in the mud and the garbage, it's sometimes hard to lift up your head to see the eagle soaring above us, isn't it? We have to be able to understand that God is a loving, caring, kind, gentle, firm Father. A father like we've never had before, a Father that puts all other Fathers into insignificance.

   In Galatians 4. Galatians 4, we have to recognize who he is. We have to recognize the love that he shows us in Galatians 4:6-7. Something we have to keep in our minds and we have to continue to keep this in our minds as we approach the end.

   Galatians 4 verses 6 and 7. "And because you are sons," and daughters, because you are the children of God, "God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father," the Aramaic word for Father which had a greater connotation than what we could ever understand today. You see, the spirit of God was put in your heart so you could understand the concept of a loving Father. He is the Father, Abba. "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son."

   A servant at this time was not allowed to call the head of the house Abba. He had a different term in which he had to address the lord of the house as master or lord, but the son, the heir, those who lived in the house who were children of the master of the house, were called his sons, and they could call him Abba Father.

   You know, God is our Father. Never forget that. We have a special relationship with Him. We are brothers, sisters of Jesus Christ. We are the children of God, and then you have to remember that we are family.