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Colin Smith: People say, "Well, here's how it's got to be: God first, your family second, and ministry third." Who's heard that? We've all heard it, haven't we? I have never found that helpful for this reason: How in all the world am I to separate loving God, number one, from serving God, number three?

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, all of us have probably heard something like this: God first, family second, ministry, job, or something else third. But it sounds like you're saying that's probably not the most useful way to look at this.

Colin Smith: That's right. And another way in which the same mindset is often expressed is with the idea of balance. You've got to balance between family and ministry. I can understand what's meant by that. But think what's implied by it. That means that serving the Lord is on one side of the balances, and my family are on the other side, weighing against serving the Lord.

I mean, that's not where any Christian person wants his or her family to be. We want to be with Joshua. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So here's the principle that I've found helpful: Forget balance and pursue alignment. That's the principle of Joshua. He's not saying there's me and then there's my house and they're two different things. He's saying, "Me and my house, we want to be aligned. We want to serve the Lord together."

We're going to look at what it means really to live for the Lord with your whole heart and to do that in such a way that your children are brought into that as well.

Steve Hiller: Well, we're going to look at that from Deuteronomy chapter six. So join us there as we continue a message, "Tell Your Children Why." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Align your life around one consuming passion for the Lord. Now, Moses is going to tell us how to do that in just a moment. But I want you just to notice before we get there that aligning is not the same as prioritizing. People sometimes say this—have you heard this? I've heard this so many times, and I've never found it helpful.

People say, "Well, here's how it's got to be: God first, your family second, and ministry third." Who's heard that? We've all heard it, haven't we? I have never found that helpful for this reason: How in all the world am I to separate loving God, number one, from serving God, number three? I am to love God in obeying His commands and in placing my life in its totality in the hands of Jesus Christ, who is Savior and Lord, and lays claim not to a part of my life, but to the whole of it.

So prioritizing doesn't help me here. He lays claim to my family as much as He lays claim to me. And aligning is not the same as balancing. That's the other thing that's so often gets said here. Have you heard this one? When it comes to loving God and loving your family and all of the tensions that are experienced in all of our lives, and people often say this: "Well, now, what you have to do is you have to keep a balance. You should have time for ministry and you should have time for your family and you should love the Lord and you should love your family. Keep a balance."

Whenever people say keep a balance, it always sounds good. But I have to tell you that in my life, I have been amazed at how it is a surprisingly unhelpful concept. Here's why it's an unhelpful concept. If I've got to keep the balance between loving the Lord and loving my family, it means that the Lord and my family are evidently poles apart. They're on opposite sides of the scale, being weighed against each other.

I don't want my family being weighed against the Lord. I want my family being weighed for the Lord, don't you? So balance doesn't help me, any more than prioritizing, as if there were different things that I'm trying to do and I just must make sure that I do enough for the Lord here. It doesn't help me. That's why what I'm challenging us to today is to align your life and then, as we'll see, your family, around one single passion which is serving the Lord.

We are not looking to maintain a balance here. We are looking to achieve an alignment. Now, you say, "That sounds good, but how am I to do it?" Well, Moses tells us exactly how we are to proceed with that in these verses. You have to begin with your own heart. Verse six: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And then Moses says, "These commandments are to be on your heart." It has to begin there. Otherwise, it's all hypocrisy.

But it doesn't end with your heart. It's to flow from your heart into your conversation. Verse seven: Talk about them when you sit at home. So now we're into the realm of family conversation. And Moses is saying, "Now don't let the love that you have for the Lord in your heart simply stay there. Don't let the work that you're doing for the Lord remain private to you. Don't let the giving that you are giving to the Lord remain in a purely secret sphere as far as your family are concerned."

No, bring this into your conversation. Open to them what is the great passion of your heart, and let them as they grow and in an appropriate way begin to see the passion that drives you. Now, important question: What exactly is or are the commandments that Moses is speaking about here in verse five? Luther makes this comment and I think this is very helpful.

He says when Moses talks about these commandments that you're to talk about and are to be pressed into the core of family life, he says he is not talking about the Ten Commandments in general, but he is talking about the first commandment in particular. That's the whole point, as we've said. Chapter six and verse five is a positive statement of the first commandment: what it means to have no other gods before you.

In other words, he's not saying, "Look, when you sit round the table, you need really regularly to have discussions about why we as a family don't do murder." But there might be a few cases where maybe you should talk about that, but he's not saying that that's to be pervasive of family life. He's not saying that you've got to be talking every second day about why as a family we don't do stealing.

What he's particularly saying here is that what is to be pervasive in family life is why it is that we love the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul and with all of our resource, why it is that we're living this way, and why it is that the Lord Himself has become the driving passion of your life as a father and as a mother. You're bringing that into your conversation.

So it begins in your heart, it extends in your conversation. Thirdly, it will be seen in your example. Tie them, verse eight, as symbols to your hands. That is still the love of the Lord with all heart and soul and mind and strength here. The point is simply that the hands are the means of action.

And so he's saying let this love that you have for the Lord that begins in your heart and that is now permeating your conversation with your family, it must also be seen to be put into practice by your family. And that will happen through your commitments and through your choices and through your ministry. If you want to align your family around a single passion for the Lord, you have to step out and lead by example.

Real, tangible, observable things. Don't just talk about it; do it. And then fourthly, it permeates into the family itself. And that's the point of verse nine: Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. In other words, here, bring your children increasingly into the consuming passion of your life. Let them be part of it as they see it. Let them participate in it.

Steve Hiller: Pastor Colin Smith in a message called "Tell Your Children Why" here on Open the Bible Weekend. Now, we're going to pause here, but we'll get back to the message in just a moment, so I hope you'll stay with us. By the way, if you ever miss a broadcast, you can listen online. Come to our website, openthebible.org. You can also listen through the Open the Bible app, which you'll find for free at your app store.

But whether you listen to Open the Bible Weekend on the radio, online, or through the app, it's all made possible because of your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand new 30-day devotional book. It's the third in a three-part series. This one is called "Grow in Love." And we'd love to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month.

You can find out more or give online at openthebible.org or call 1-877-OPEN-365. Again, that's openthebible.org or 1-877-673-6365. Back to the message. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Bring your children increasingly into the consuming passion of your life. Let them be part of it as they see it. Let them participate in it. That's the teaching here. Let me just give a word of personal testimony and a word of encouragement. Seeing a passionate love for Jesus Christ in my father and in my mother has, in God's mercy, had a profound shaping influence on my own life. Profound. Lifelong.

My father worked two jobs when I was young in order to sustain the family. Some of you know what that's like. You know how utterly exhausting it is. He was on the church board. They called it deacons, but that's what it was. He was on the church board. I think of days when I was young when he was working early shift and then went to a board meeting for the church at night that went past midnight.

I promise you, our board meetings never go past midnight. But in Scotland, they did. He taught a Sunday school class and edited and produced the church's monthly magazine. It was a family business, really. My mother typed it and then duplicated on the old Gestetner. Who remembers the old Gestetner? Oh, yes. Friday night, collating, covers, inserts, stapling, and then to church for Sunday morning.

My folks lived a verse of Scripture that—oh, that God would burn it into our hearts today: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." And I knew, and I thank God for this, that with all the immense pressures that I could not really have fully understood at that stage as a child, that my father and my mother loved me with all their heart, and that they wanted me to catch a glimpse of living with one single passion for the Lord. And I saw it. I saw it.

We've tried in a smaller and, I think, in a much lesser way to do this with our own children. When we came over here, what do you do getting to know a vast congregation like there is in the Orchard? And it's larger now. There were 800 members at that time. We decided we'd have all 800 members round to our home. Can you imagine it? It took a year of Sunday evenings to do it.

I remember sitting round the table. The boys were ten and eight. And saying, "You know, here's a way in which we can show our love for the Lord by showing that we love these people. And what do you guys think about us all pitching in and doing this together? It'll be every Sunday night for a year." I talked to David about it just this week. I said, "Do you remember doing that?" "Oh, yeah." Opening the door, doing the name tags, taking the cookies round.

People say to me often, "How do you protect your children from the pressures of ministry?" Folks, my children have been incalculably blessed by exposure to ministry. The people they have met. The experiences they have had. The life lessons and the sheer laughs that have been in the middle of it all. It's the tapestry of a family that's trying to live what it means to say, "As for me and for my house, we will serve the Lord."

And so many of you are doing this in wonderful ways. Ways that fill my mind and heart with admiration and sometimes awe. Opening your home—hospitality. Worshipping together, serving together as a family. Conversations in the home in which you're saying, "Now, Dad has been asked to do this and we think that this is right. Can we all get behind this as a family and support Dad in this because this is a way in which all of us through him can contribute to the work of the Lord?"

And the same for Mom. And here is something else now that we can all do in different ways. The creativity, the imagination of working out not how do we balance two things that are poles apart, but how can we begin to live increasingly what it means for Joshua to say, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." That's alignment. And it's a whole world different from prioritizing and balance.

Think of it, folks. Let this single thought run deep in your life and stay with you as you raise your family. The parents who said, "We can't enter the land because we've got little children," led their children into the desert. And the parents who said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," that was the generation that led their children into the Promised Land. You get it?

Don't live for your spouse or for your family. Align your life and therefore your family—it has to be in that order—around one consuming passion for the Lord. And here's the last thing in these last few minutes: Let the cross explain the consuming passion of your life. Let the cross explain the consuming passion of your life.

Now, you see in verse 20 that was read for us earlier, as you live with one consuming passion for the Lord, you're beginning to live out what we've been speaking about in these earlier verses in the chapter. Something is going to happen: Questions will be provoked. This kind of a life will always need explaining.

It will puzzle the children because it will be obvious to them that what's happening in your home is different from what is happening in the home of their friends. And so what's going on in your home will need explaining if you're walking down this path. And so it says, verse 20, "When your son asks you"—not "if," because if you're on this path, the question will be provoked—"When your son asks you, what is the meaning of the stipulations and decrees and the laws that the Lord our God has commanded you?"

If you love the Lord, that is the question that you are going to be asked. "Dad, why are so many people coming to our home? Why are we giving all this when it could be used for other things? Dad, other families aren't like this." Christopher Wright, who has a great commentary on Deuteronomy, has a marvelous comment on this.

He says—and if you have your eye on the page here at chapter six, you'll see his point—he says it would be very easy to jump from the question of verse 20 to the answer in verse 24. See question, verse 20: Why do we keep these laws? Answer, verse 24: Because the Lord commanded us. You see that? And Christopher Wright says most parents will have felt the temptation to answer their children's "why's" in similar fashion: "Why are we living like this? Well, it's what the Lord says."

But you see where he's going here. Before we get to the Lord who commands in verse 24, we have the Lord who redeems in verse 21 through 23. You see, "Why are we living with this one consuming passion for the Lord, Dad?" Verse 21: Tell them we were slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out with a mighty hand. "Son, if it wasn't for the Lord and for His mercy, I'd be a slave today, and so would you. Everything I have is what I've received from the hand of the Lord, Son. He's the one whose grace has redeemed me from the past, and He's the one whose promise opens the Promised Land for the future."

Christopher Wright has this beautiful comment: When the son asks a question about the law, the answer is the Gospel. And to quote him directly, he says, "The meaning of the law is to be found in the Gospel." Do you see that? He's asking a question about the law: "Why are we living like this, Dad?" And the answer is: Because of what the grace of God has done in my life, Son, and in your mom's life, Son. Tell them that.

And this is the Old Testament. Even in the Old Testament, God is calling parents to do more than teach their children a moral code. It's about loving the Lord, Son, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. That's far deeper than morality. And here are fathers and mothers living with such a deep passion for the Lord that their children are beginning to ask, "Dad, how come? Dad, how is it that you've sustained love in your marriage?"

How wonderful to have your son ask you a question like that. "Dad, how is it that you endure through difficulty? Dad, why is there this contentment in you? It's very different from what I see in some other dads." And when he asks you this question, tell him what the Lord has done for you. Tell him what the Lord means to you. Tell him the Son of God loved me as He loves you and gave Himself for me, Son, as He gave Himself for you.

Live for your family and you will lead your family into the desert. Live for the Lord and you will point your family to the Promised Land.

Steve Hiller: I don't know about you, but I found this idea of achieving alignment so helpful. You know, I've heard the whole balance thing, priority thing before, but this idea of achieving alignment—that is such a practical and helpful thing, isn't it?

Well, you may want to go back and listen to this message again. You can do that at our website. Come to openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also get a copy of this message on CD, or even better, this series that it comes from. It's called "Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start," and it's a look at the book of Deuteronomy.

Ask about that when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365. Or you'll find ordering information at our website, openthebible.org. Well, Open the Bible is able to be on this station, make the podcast, the app, and all the ministry tools available because of your financial generosity.

And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we'd love to say thank you for your gift by sending you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand new 30-day devotional book called "Grow in Love." And Colin, why did you write this book?

Colin Smith: Well, this is the third in a series on faith, hope, and love. And of course, the Bible says that these are the three things that are going to remain. It's very striking. Paul says everything else is going to pass away, but faith, hope, and love—they're going to abide, and the greatest of these is love.

So I'm absolutely convinced that the greatest need of the Christian church today is a fresh outpouring of faith and of hope and of love. I mean, think about it. Everybody is looking for love. Everybody wants to find hope. Everyone needs someone to believe in. And God has given us these things in Jesus Christ. And the more we grow in faith, the more we grow in hope, and the more we grow in love, the more effective we're going to be in the world and the more we're going to be like our Savior.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to send you, as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month, a copy of Colin's new book, "Grow in Love." If you want to find out more or give a gift right now, you can visit our website. Just come to openthebible.org or call 1-877-673-6365. That might be easier to remember as 1-877-OPEN-365.

And again, the website is openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time. Open the Bible Weekend is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: Hi, this is Pastor Colin again, and I want you to know about Watch Your Doctrine. Watch Your Doctrine is a six-session course that is geared for leaders but accessible for every believer.

The six sessions will introduce you to six central truths of the Christian faith: how we know God, how God speaks to us, how sin affects us, how God's Spirit brings new life, how we're made right with God, and what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

There are questions at the end of each session, and you can use them on your own or you can discuss them with a friend. For more information or to begin this free online course, visit openthebible.org/courses. That's openthebible.org/courses.