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[MUSIC] I am glad I trusted you. Amazing grace, How sweet the sound

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That saved a wretch like me I was once not alone. I found a time of love. I invite your prayerful attention to Psalm 33 and 12. For some time now we have been engaged in a sermon series based on the book of Psalms going

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through the book and we come today to the 33rd number of the psalm and verse 12 is the passage of scripture which is the basis of the message. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage." Would Repeat those words after me.

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Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. The people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The subject of the message, let there be family.

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Let there be family. We come to know ourselves Within the context of family life, in the family circle we are born, nourished, and nurtured.

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The family is first and foremost among social institutions. Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home. Robert Frost says, "Home is the place that when you have to go there,

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they have to take you in." Today, in a commercial way, there's a great deal of emphasis upon mother, as Mother's Day.

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We in the Christian family have directed this toward the celebration of the festival of the Christian home, focusing on Christian family life.

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And to focus on Christian family life is not only to honor mother, the queen of the home, but it is to focus our attention upon what constitutes a Christian family.

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to focus our attention on the celebration of those who have lived exemplary lives before us and to somehow rededicate ourselves to those virtues that make for good family life. Home and family are cherished words because they have to do with our fondest memories,

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our most coveted hopes. The Bible has a great deal to teach us about home and family life. We live in a time when it seems that

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The foundations of the home are threatened. Threatened by permissiveness, threatened by irreverence, threatened by unfaithfulness. The biblical faith teaches us the values of the covenant community.

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that which binds us together in a spirit of solidarity so that we are one people called family. Let there be family. Out of the family relationship comes this word, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." Blessed be the people who honor honor the Lord as the ruler of their lives.

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Blessed is the family that honors the Lord as the head of the house. This word emerges in an atmosphere where there are many families, families with different lifestyles,

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Families with different belief orientations. Families that worship different gods. Because the Hebrew people are surrounded by other nations. And these nations somehow are not nations

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that honor the God that they serve. And yet, here is a word that not only was significant for the Hebrew people in ancient times, it has significance for us today.

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The Psalmist is aware of the fact that to be a part of a family is to have a unique relationship. He belongs to a peculiar people,

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People who are different. People who have a special niche in history. Every one of us is a part of a family. And we ought never forget that.

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I can remember on numerous occasions that when I would be going out somewhere and before I left the house, after having gotten dressed and everything, mother would say, come in here, boy.

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And I would go in, she said, now you're going out, but remember who you are. That's all she had to say. Remember who you are.

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And somehow in the midst of all of this, as we celebrate the family today, we have certain memories, some of those experiences we did not fully appreciate when they were being

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experienced, but as we look back on them we can see that they had a great deal to do with shaping our lives for good. I've heard many talk about going to the table for grace and the prayer would just be too long and they would be anxious to get the food and sometimes would have to be reprimanded.

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But that prayer came to be appreciated as the child grew older. This past week, I visited the Gatesville Correctional Institution for girls, women.

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A young lady had read in an Austin newspaper something about our singles group, decided to write us. She felt led of the Lord to write us and I read the letter in prayer meeting a few weeks ago and so I was in that vicinity so I decided to

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go by and see her and when I went in to see her she came she was first of all shocked. She said who could be coming to see me? I don't have any family. Nobody cares about me and when the word came down that she had guests she was wondering who it could be and she said to me you don't know just how much this

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means to me to know that I have family that there's someone else somewhere else who cares about me and there were tears in her eyes as she talked about family and identifying herself with our family here at Ebenezer, of being someone who cares, who's reaching out.

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Oh yes, she said, I've made some mistakes. You see, I'm here and I've learned a great lesson because I went astray. I thought I was, I thought I really had it made.

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I was popping pills and doing this and that, and finally I end up here. But to have family. So let there be family.

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What does that really mean? Oh, it's one thing, brothers and sisters, for us to come here Sunday after Sunday. And some of us, I notice, you know,

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when I say even have a spirit of fellowship, some of us come and sit in one place and we don't move around, shake hands with nobody else. You know, we just come in.

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Some come in late, sit, get up, go out. But really what we're talking about is having a relationship. And really sometimes how you sit has to do,

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has a whole lot to do with your relationship. People who don't want to be bothered with anybody else, they come and sit as far from other people as they can. But somehow we ought to somehow get closer together

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and our physical arrangement, I think, ought to have something to do with our spiritual concern for each other. Family.

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Family. Family. Blessed is the nation, blessed is the people, blessed is the family whose God is the Lord. Now in the family to which the psalmist refers as blessed, first there is a recognition of God as creator.

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Family is not an accident. It does not appear by coincidence or happenstance. The family is the creation of God. We've had a hard struggle when we consider the black family.

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We've had a hard struggle. We came to this country in the midst of a struggle on slave ships, we've had a hard struggle. Even now, when we look at the black family,

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a large percentage of black children die. Our mothers have children that die at the time of infancy. We've learned a great deal. A report that was made over at the Civil Rights Conference a few weeks ago at LBJ School of Public Affairs, they were talking about some progress we had made in that connection.

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used to be when I was a boy that many times older people would be boasting of the fact that a person gave birth to a 10-pound child. They have discovered more and more that many times the risk involving both the child and the mother was greater and considerable improvement has been made.

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But still when we look at the record, the infant mortality rate in the black family is still too high. So we still have a great deal of progress to make when it comes to just physical birth. We look at the record and we see a rising tide of teenage pregnancies.

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This is not only true of the black family, it's true of all of the families in our nation. And so we need to look and to hear, not only to look at it, but to hear this word, blessed is the nation

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whose God is the Lord, blessed is the nation. Now, the family that the Psalmist is talking about is a family that honors the Lord. And honoring the Lord as creator means, first of all,

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that we recognize the fact that the family is the creation of God. Real family has to come through relationship to God because family is the creation of God.

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It is one of the orders of God. He so arranged it. When God said, let there be light, and there was light, there was earth, there was sea,

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there was sky, that the same God who created this universe is the same God who brings into creation the family. We made Adam and Eve bone of bone. Adam says this is bone of my bone,

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which means there is relationship that God in this creative act was saying, let there be family. Let there be family.

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Oh, I know we live in a time when it's not very popular with many people. with many people to talk about marriage. I listened to an interview the other day

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Betty Davis and she was saying that her mother had taught her that marriage and sex went together and that just didn't make any sense to her. Well, if everybody thought something differently

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we would tear down the whole structure of family life, family life, that did the very heart of our life together, our relationship as husband and wife and as children.

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You know, you can read in philosophy about a kind of order where people will mate and then the children will be taken and farmed out here and farmed out there

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reared by the state, but to develop family life according to the divine design is to have a relationship not only one to another but to have a relationship to God. Let there be family. Let there be family.

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Why know that there are many things that we ought to be concerned about. Black Enterprise in the most recent edition talks about the black buying power being some of $150 billion. But it hastened to point out that a disproportionate amount of that is used for health and beauty.

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We spend a whole lot of our money trying to be pretty. A great deal of it is spent on hair care, you know, jerry curls and dying our hair and doing all of those things. And that's wonderful to look beautiful on the outside.

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That's wonderful. And we're spending a disproportionate amount of what we have in order to look good on the outside. But really what I'm concerned about here today

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is that we would have beauty within and that those inner qualities that necessary for the development of family life would be paramount among us as a people. God has set in solitary all of the families of the earth. God in his

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creative genius says let there be family. Let there be family. And so what makes family is more than blood ties. It's true that blood is thicker than water, but it's also true that the spirit, the spirit is mightier than the flesh. It is only when God breathes into Adam the breath of life, it's only when God puts

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his spirit into Adam that he becomes a living soul. So it is God's spirit dwelling with us, working in us and through us that makes family. Cain and Abel are brothers in the flesh,

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but Cain kills Abel and then inquires of God, am I my brother's keeper? God wants us to be family, to be brothers and sister, to be related to one another in his spirit.

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And when God is honored as creator, his spirit is the source of our being. His spirit orders our lives. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. The nation is made up of families.

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are made up of individuals and individuals have to be fashioned into a unit of social cohesiveness. They must be fashioned into solidarity. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. So if our nation is to be strong, we must have strong family life. Strong family life. President Carter took over as our leader. It is said that he called

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together the members of his staff and he told them that those who didn't have a good family life, those who were shacking up, not married, that they had a certain period of time to sort of straighten up. And the press didn't take that too kindly. They said that this man here, this so-called born-again Sunday school teaching Baptist, you know,

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with his faith, that where'd this man come from? You see, there's been sort of a departure from family life. There's a departure from what the scripture really teaches about the covenant community.

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And somehow, somewhere along the way, it's good for us to sort of come together and look at really what makes family anyway? What makes family?

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You know, there's some people who are related to us by blood that are as far from us as east is to west. Oh, they're in the family as far as being blood, kid. But there is nothing that you really have in common.

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But to really have family is to somehow have a spirit that binds together, binds together family. Let there be family. And the covenant community is that relationship

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which is established among persons because of a common relationship with God. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

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We are truly family when we honor the Lord. And so it has to do with creation. It has to do with having a common source from which we come and to which we are related.

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It has to do with creation. God has created us. God somehow has called us into being. And he has called us to be family.

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That in fashioning our lives here as a church family, as fashioning our lives as separate units, that he has called us to be family. Let there be family.

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So it has to be, my brothers and sisters, in two relationships. First, in the relationship of creation, and the second in the relationship of history.

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When God created the world in seven days, he rested on the seventh day, and then there was the next day. The theme that was selected for the World Fair

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in Montreal in 1967 called Expo 67, used the eighth day, the eighth day, the eighth day. We have the seven days, but then the eighth day is when man begins to make his history.

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What do you do on the eighth day? So the eighth day is important. We all, so to speak, in the Vards, in that eighth day, we are making our own history day by day.

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God has given us this day as a new day, And this is our eighth day. We are all going beyond that seventh day. We are writing a new history.

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But it's important that in writing this new history that we recognize the hand of God in our lives. That we recognize that not only has God created us, but that God's hand is working in our lives.

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And that we must somehow permit him to guide us. Oh, His hand is there whether we recognize it or not. But oh, how wonderful it is when we permit that hand to lead us, when we let that hand fashion us,

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when we let that hand strengthen us, and we honor Him in family life when we do that. What does the Bible mean by family? It's really pointing up that covenant relationship

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where we make promises. A couple stands at the altar and makes a commitment. Each says to the other, I promise to love you in sickness and in health.

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Promise that is made there. For good times and in bad times that we make this promise, That no matter what may happen in life, that somehow we will be together,

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but together under the leadership of the Spirit of God. That's Christian marriage. This is what we promise. And that is but an expression of a covenant relationship.

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And that covenant relationship is a relationship which one has not only to another, but to the Holy Other, we have it to God. And so people promise to be faithful to God

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in our relationships, all of our relationships, to be faithful to God. And the Bible has a word for that, Hesed, H-E-S-E-D, that God somehow is faithful,

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that God is loyal, that God is steadfast in his love, that we can always depend on God. That's good news. That's good news.

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Oh, we stumble, we fail. And as we look back, we recognize, well, I may not have been the kind of husband that I'd like to have been.

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I may not have been the kind of wife that I would like to have been. I haven't been the kind of child that I would like to have been.

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I'd like to live my life over. We can all somehow look back and we can rejoice and we can appreciate many of the things that happen in family life.

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But one thing is certain, that in the midst of it all, God has been steadfast in his love. That God has never changed, that God has always been there.

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He's always there. And that's what it means to have good family life, to know that there is one who is always there. As I look back on this day,

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I can remember many difficult times, but even in the midst of it all, when I only had one outfit to wear, one pair of pants and a shirt,

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and mother would wash it at night and get up and iron it the next morning so I could wear it to school. And sometimes it would be a little damp

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from the ironing board. And I'd go on to school, and whenever I was on program, even though she was only making $8 a week,

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but she would take off to be there on any great program day that I was there. And I came up knowing that even though I didn't have this and I didn't have that, that mother was always there.

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Always there, always saying, "Go on." Always saying, "You can do it." Always being that strong arm on which we can lean. Well, that's the way God is.

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And whatever we have seen that is good in our families and mothers and fathers is an An expression is a manifestation of the love of God. And you're blessed when you have that. Blessed whenever God is honored,

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blessed whenever we somehow reach out with his love. That's a blessing. It's a blessing to the person who does it, it's a blessing to the person who receives it.

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Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. We come now to the hymn of invitation. We extend the privilege of the church. Let's have God

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through Jesus Christ as Savior, as Lord and Lord. Hymn number 220. Let's all sing that hymn. God will take care of you. It's a hymn of faith.

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Knowing that when we trust Him, when we're faithful to Him, And we don't have to worry about what he'll do. He'll see us through. As we say in this camp, "A Christian is a Christian."

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[MUSIC PLAYING] I wish that I saw your shoes. In our kids' day, for their sweet high, God will take care of you. ♪ He is the King of all the land ♪

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♪ God is with him, God is with him ♪ ♪ God is with him, God is with him ♪ ♪ Who can create ♪ ♪ Amen ♪

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♪ He is a heavenly Lord ♪ ♪ God is a heavenly Lord ♪ ♪ Who takes all trouble ♪ ♪ With a smile ♪

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♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ And when it was years from now ♪ ♪ Oh say ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ Of you ♪ ♪ Through every day ♪ ♪ Go all the way ♪

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♪ We will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ Through every day ♪

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♪ Always ♪ ♪ He will take care of you ♪ ♪ Long live the Emperor ♪ [Music]

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you [BLANK_AUDIO]