This Is Not Your Grandfather's Family, Part 1

Today, Chuck Swindoll on Changing Times. Men are hesitant to be men. Women are offended being seen only as feminine ladies who adore husbands and enjoy families, finding fulfillment in their husband's love and protection. Somehow, that's now a put-down for the woman. As a result, little girls aren't sure what it means to be a little girl.

Boys are confused knowing how to be little boys. This is not your grandfather's family. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll begins a practical series on marriage. It's intended to shine a spotlight on God's magnificent plan for husbands and wives, and to teach us how to navigate our shifting times.

Chuck titled his first message, This is Not Your Grandfather's Family. We're beginning today a series on the home and family in the 21st century. To help us do that, we want to read from the Scriptures for guidance, as well as look over an outline I provided for you. You'll find that in your worship folder, which you'd like to take out perhaps right now, and place it here in the second chapter of Genesis, where we will begin our reading together. Genesis 2, and I'll begin at verse 18, and then we'll move over to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Genesis 2, 18, Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man, to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Then, if you will, please turn to the fifth book of your Bible, Moses' final written work, Deuteronomy chapter 6, and we'll begin reading at verse 4. Deuteronomy 6, 4.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on your gates. Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. You shall eat and be satisfied, then watch yourself. That you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God, and you shall worship him and swear by his name.

Verse 24, so the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always, and for our survival as it is today. For the next few moments, let's play Let's Pretend. Let's pretend you're a modern day Rip Van Winkle, and it's back in the mid 60s, and you decide to lie down and take a nap.

When you do, your kids are all 10 years old and younger, and you got four of them. Your mate is right there nearby enjoying life with you as it is rolling along rather spasmodically. You're aware as you go to sleep that your times are a little uneasy. There's this unusual war going on over there in Southeast Asia.

Probably not going to amount to much. You're bothered because the president was assassinated, and now there's a 36th president who has taken office, Lyndon Johnson. You're getting a little concerned about your kids listening to the Beach Boys and watching the swiveling hips of Elvis Presley when they do allow that to be shown on television. You'd much rather be sitting by them. Well, you kind of endure the Smothers Brothers, and some of those off-color jokes on Laugh-In are sort of a concern to you.

You'd much rather they enjoy Lawrence Wilk on Saturday night or Bonanza on Sunday. Back in those days, weed is what grew in your garden, and pot is what you put plants in. A mouse was a rodent, and a coat was a soft drink. Gay meant you were happy. Back then, words like pregnant and abortion and incest and condom and homosexuality were never used in pulpits, ever.

Occasionally, you'd read some of those words and you'd pass on by knowing it's a little raw. Back then, beatniks had become hippies, but you weren't worried about them because you live in Texas. And they're all out there somewhere between Santa Cruz and Portland, Oregon, or maybe up at Cape Cod.

Nobody with hair that long could show up in your state, especially if they live in communes. Most of all, and best of all, you enjoyed your home. It was a safe place to be. You loved your kids.

They could still take bike rides leaving in the morning on Saturday and not come back till noon for lunch, and you never worried about them. You really didn't. And then last week, you woke up.

Kind of gives new meaning to the words shock and awe, doesn't it? You woke up. Not only are your kids surprisingly older, 50 and in their 40s, but your mate's gone.

She decided you never would wake up, so she walked out on you. And your homestead's been taken down, and now there are high-rises where pretty affluent people live alongside other high-rises. The neighborhood doesn't even look like the neighborhood used to look, and there's a green screen in the study. And amazingly, by simply pointing and clicking, pornography is on it. And prayer is illegal, and abortion is legal. And four-letter words are not only on most of the programs, including especially the late-night talk shows, that they're even used on newscasts and sports shows.

And sex scenes are not that uncommon in, if not the movie you've gone to see, at least in the preview of what's coming. Suddenly, we're no longer playing Let's Pretend. I remember distinctly back in the, I guess the late 60s, listening to a three-day lectureship by Francis Schaeffer. I sat spellbound as he made sense out of the art and out of the literature of our day and days past.

I saw him as something of a prophet. I'll never forget how we ended the lectureship and where I was at the time, sitting between good friends as we were all busy taking notes from this unusual man standing there in turtleneck sweater and knickers. He closed his lectures with these very words. Someday we will wake up and find out that the America we once knew was gone. The room was as silent as you are right now.

He turned and with the explosion of applause, standing ovation, we said farewell. That day has come. I don't speak today as a politician. I don't know that life and I have no interest in that personally or professionally. I speak today as a dad, as a granddad, as a pastor of this church, as a husband, as a friend.

My message is pointed and direct, but it's not meant to sound cranky or old fashioned. I have no interest in returning to yesteryear. I love the conveniences and delights of this current time.

I wouldn't go back if I could. I wouldn't be another age if I had the choice. But being the age I am has given me, shall we say, a fresh and a little more clear perspective, much of which I'll be sharing with you in our series together on the family. Don't turn me off, please.

Don't see it as some old fuddy-duddy sort of getting a lot of crankiness out of his system. I speak today hopefully to help you see some things you've not seen before or perhaps you haven't thought about for a long time. Now, you talk about major changes and radical changes. I sat down at my study and on an eight and a half by eleven piece of tablet paper, I wrote out three and a half pages of changes, single space. So I have condensed those to a few that I think are worth mentioning that describe our times.

Listen closely. Same-sex marriages are now legal and you are considered a person of hate speech if you will speak out against it. Condoms are now distributed freely and without parental approval to the young based on the fact that they promote safe sex even though no one would ever say they're safer than 85 to 87 percent. And I also ask you on your own to describe to yourself what safe sex means. Domestic roles are no longer clearly defined, at least they're not as defined as in 40 and 50 years ago. The masculine father who enjoys his role and delights in being a spiritual leader and truly a man.

The feminine mother who delights in her role and sees the joy and the dignity of being the mother of the young and of growing children. The authority of parents and the corresponding obedience of children, never knowing that rebellion is even a possibility, though all of us have rebelled at times. And the home is no longer a safe place. I just finished reading a number of pages out of the day America told the truth by Patterson and Kim and was taken back once again with their statement that America is the most violent country on the planet. And the home is often the core of the violence. It isn't uncommon now to read of wife and or husband abuse, of child abuse, of the sacredness and the permanence of marriage being trivialized. We are no longer really shocked to read of mothers who kill their children or of wives who run over their husbands, deliberately murdering them. If you're a person of some financial means, you're considered foolish if you marry without prenuptial contract.

And there is this myth that life doesn't really begin at conception in the womb, but whenever we say it does. Affairs and unashamed acts of adultery are not new, though they are certainly more common. Now the difference is they're in the church. Men are hesitant to be men. Women are offended being seen only as feminine ladies who adore husbands and enjoy families, finding fulfillment in their husbands' love and protection.

Somehow that's now a put down for the woman. As a result, little girls aren't sure what it means to be a little girl, and little boys are confused knowing how to be little boys. And there of course exists the misguided stance that homosexuality is a valid and acceptable lifestyle.

And if you disagree with that publicly, you're homophobic. And now since it takes a village to rear our children, we're not sure as parents that we're qualified to do it on our own. So we're unsure of our roles. And because of the fallout of all its moral sewage that's now flowing through our homes, pornography is taking a major toll. If the statistics I read are accurate, some of the better estimates are that about 50% of Americans view it regularly, many of them children under 12. Some of you.

This is not your grandfather's family. This is another world. And we live in it.

And we must make a living in it. And we must continue on through it, and none of it comes as a surprise to God. I have observed in my years on this earth that there's sort of an evolution of responses. First, when some of this occurs, for the first time, there's shock. I remember the chill that ran down my spine when I read the article of the mother who drowned all of her children.

And a number of others I could mention. Too horrid to repeat. Shock is then, because of the frequency of such similar amazing and shocking events, turns to acceptance, which is a big leap. Who am I? Just one. Who are we?

Just a couple. So we then decide to be indifferent about it. I'll live my life and I'll let others live theirs. I certainly don't want to be misunderstood or unpopular.

Apathy reigns. I remember a friend of mine who taught math in high school. Tough subject for that age, huh? And kids couldn't get there early enough to get a backseat. A couple of the boys that really hated the subject were forced to sit on the front row. They sat right next to each other, these two athletes, and they thought they would endure another class.

And they yawned and rolled their eyes and snoozed and poked one another. And finally the teacher, my friend, got his belly full of it and he turned around with chalk. And chalk sparking over the room, he smears A-P-A-T-H-Y on the chalkboard.

Big, inch-high letters and underlines it. That is the problem in this class. One kid says to the other, Apathy. What's Apathy? And his buddy says, Who cares? Who cares? There's a plan underway to desensitize us. Never doubt it. In an article titled The Gospel According to Saint Madonna, out of a magazine called The Advocate, which is a homosexual magazine, entertainer Madonna understands this all too well. In an interview with the publishers of The Advocate, the queen of shock rock assessed the impact homosexual imagery in music videos will have on straight viewers.

These are her words. They, meaning the American public, digest it on a lot of different levels. Some people will see it and be disgusted by it. But maybe they'll be unconsciously aroused by it.

People keep seeing it and seeing it and seeing it eventually. It's not going to be such a strange thing. Another producer of a homosexual cable show said their goal, and I quote, is to desensitize the audience so that people will realize we're just like everybody else. May I pause here and put your heart at ease? I realize in a congregation our size, there are many who struggle with some of the things I'm addressing.

I'm too much a realist to live in a dream world. I've spent 40 plus years in ministry not only addressing these things, but trying my best to help those who struggle with them. If you are a homosexual, you are welcome in this church. If you struggle with some of the things related to home and family battles, you're welcome in this church. We want to be of help.

We want to offer hope. There isn't one cell of my body that has hate in it for any of you. I missed you greatly while I was away on vacation. I thought a lot about these things thinking, is this the message I want to deliver my first Sunday back?

Sounds like I've gotten older and crankier while I've been gone. On the contrary, my love is deeper and my appreciation for this congregation is broader than it has ever been before. It only deepens as the years go by and that includes all, visitor, friend, member alike. We may not agree with the lifestyle and we may not agree with the way you're acting it out, but we want to help you see in the Scriptures there is hope.

There are answers you've not been able to find in the system that's long since lost its way. And my hope is that we as a flock will broaden our arms and open them to those who are different than we are, understanding that if they can't find hope here, there isn't another place they can. Well, we're off to a good start in this relevant series on marriage and the family. Recognizing our changing times, Chuck Swindoll titled this first study, This is Not Your Grandfather's Family. And to learn more about this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. And then I'm pleased to tell you about an engaging resource from Chuck Swindoll. It's a daily devotional that contains more than enough chapters to take you through the entire year. Titled Wisdom for the Way, this deluxe leather-soft edition features daily reflections on topics such as dealing with discontentment, developing personal character, and finding purpose in your job. Plus, the book includes thought-provoking questions and space for writing your personal thoughts.

To purchase a copy right now, go to insight.org slash offer. Or call us if you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888. Recently, we've heard from friends all around the world who've affirmed the value of these daily visits with Chuck. Many have told us that they can trace their listening back 10, 20, 30 years and more. It's wonderful to see what God has accomplished through this legacy of God's faithfulness. What began on a handful of stations in 1979 has now grown to more than 2,000 stations worldwide.

And the program is translated into multiple languages as well. And it's because people like you have stood by our side. We believe the best days are yet ahead as we deepen our friendship with partners like you. To give a donation today, go to insight.org slash donate. You can also partner with us by calling us if you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888.

Or once again, give a donation online at insight.org slash donate. Chuck Swendoll continues his message called This Is Not Your Grandfather's Family, Thursday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, This Is Not Your Grandfather's Family, was copyrighted in 2004 and 2006. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2006 by Charles R. Swendoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.