Okay, I want to speak about the sufficiency of scripture for grandparenting. How many of you are grandparents? Raise your hands. How many of you have grandparents? Oh, this is going to be so practical.

You know, I've been looking at what the Bible has said about grandparents and I've concluded that the chief function of a grandparent is to have their Bibles open. And you'll see why I say that, because I'm gonna give you a whole doctrine of grandparents by the time we're done. You know, I grew up, I was saved during the Jesus movement in the 1960s and the 1970s. I was one of those young people at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. And there was a real revival that took place.

Have you ever seen that, the Jesus Revolution movie? Have you seen it? Yeah, okay, not that many of you have seen it. It's very interesting. What I loved about the movie is that they shot that film right in the, it looked exactly like It was in those same places.

But here's what I think a lot of people don't know about what happened during the Jesus Revolution. It was a revolution that caused thousands and thousands of young people to have their Bibles open. Like we would go to Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa on Sunday nights and Chuck Smith would open up, you know, to 1 Peter chapter one, verse one. And two and a half hours later, he would finish the book. And we loved it.

We wanted more. Why are you stopping? It's only been two hours. But it was hunger for the word of God. You know, during the early parts of the Jesus movement, people had their Bibles open.

It wasn't a movement of singing mindless mantras over and over and over again. It was really a revolution of the word of God. And I praise God for that. But a grandparent revolution is a revolution where the Bibles are open as well. So I wanna talk about the fact that scripture is sufficient for having a grandparent and being one.

And I wanna talk a little bit about the cultural forces that are at work that are driving grandparents into oblivion. I wanna talk about the Church of Jesus Christ that has a plan to mobilize the older generation. I wanna give nine marks of encouraging marks of grandfather and grandfather and mothers in the Bible. And if I can get to it I'd like to talk a few a little bit about how to be a good grandparent but it'll probably become obvious by the time I get to the end of it. Would you pray with me?

Lord, we pray that you would raise up a mighty generation. There are many grandparents to be in this room. Some of them are eight, nine, 12 years old, but you've called them to something that will last their whole life long and mobilizing them for your glory until their final breath. Thank you Lord for such a good plan. Amen.

Well, I've been a grandfather for 17 years, and I have 27 grandchildren as of yesterday. And the Bible says that there is a real blessing of old age. There's an actual blessing of old age. Proverbs 17, six says, children's children, by the way, that's code for grandparents and grandchildren, children's Children are the crown of old men and the glory of children is their father Grandchildren reflect a certain kind of glory to their grandparents You know in the Bible a grandparent is a symbol of authority, it's a symbol of wealth, it's a symbol of honor, it's a symbol of dispensing truth to the rising generation. And I'm grateful.

I'm grateful to be a grandfather. 18 of my grandchildren live close by like on a contiguous piece of property. And each Tuesday, the mothers of these children drop their kids off at our house and Deborah and I spend a half a day with them, teaching them, walking with them, swimming, doing all kinds of things. It's called Cousin Day, but we discovered that something happened. There was a town that was built in the woods that has a sign over called Cousinville.

And there's a young man who lives with us and he was observing what was going on and he wrote, he wrote about Cousinville. As many of my friends know, I stay with my pastor's family and most of his grandkids live nearby. So I stay posted on any general happenings. For almost a year about a dozen grandkids have operated a small town they have named Cousinville. Often the complexity of the city surprises me.

The oldest resident of Cousinville is 12, but even the two-year-old is involved. They have an established economy, legal system, real estate market, government, and so on. Most transactions occur in the denominations of under 10 cents. But the economy seems well balanced. One kid just came inside.

He informed me that for some time, He has maintained a contract with the city to keep the roads clean and raked because Cousinville is wooded and the streets need to be regularly raked. However, this guy also happens to be the mayor of Cousinville. Apparently, feelings of government corruption have been spreading throughout the town. Should the mayor be allowed to award his own company a large municipal contract, like the one of raking leaves? The unrest was a minor issue until the mayor recently proposed raising taxes.

See, Cousinville operates on a flat tax system. Every other play day, the residents of the municipality owe the city two cents. But the mayor recently suggested collecting taxes every payday. If you do the math, this effectively doubles the tax rate. Needless to say, the town was outraged.

The elections were just around the corner and the mayor did not have a snowball's chance of winning the reelection. When all was said and done, a populist candidate won by a landslide. Central to his campaign was the promise, no new taxes. There was now a new mayor in Cousinville. The word on the street is that the political situation is still unstable though.

I hear rumors that there is some frustration with the new mayor's lack of experience and that several administrative blunders have already been made. One frustration is due to the rise in homelessness. Cousinville now has a homeless population of one. So it turns out this one girl's business venture failed. She had to sell her property to pay the debts.

A well-to-do cousin purchased the property and now leases it to a more prosperous merchant. Only time will tell how the economic disillusionment will work itself out. I will never not be amazed at how complex the society that these young kids have managed to maintain with zero adult intervention. Like Deborah and I just found out about this on the back end. We didn't know a thing about it.

Takeaways, homeschool your kids and give them time to build in the woods. Postscript, postscript. Law enforcement is an important part of every government. In this case, the chicken coop is nearby. It serves as a makeshift prison.

If you can't endure the smells, don't commit the crime. You know, there are actually eight of the residents of Cousinville in this room today. They're back there at that table. There's still debate over who's the real mayor. Well, okay.

So we live in a world where there are very, very strong cultural forces at work that separate the generations, that believe that it's really a good idea to separate the old people from the young people. And many people actually believe in America that when their child turns 18, they're done. They wash their hands, they go get a motor home, they go from campground to campground, they go play shuffleboard, They move into the retirement community where they can play cards with people. This is how so many function in our society. But the Bible makes it very clear that parents and grandparents have a very significant ongoing role to play.

This element of Christian culture is a strong argument against fragmented families across the generations. And the Bible tells us how to think about all of this. But the biblical vision is a complete subversion of the Marxist vision of the family, which seeks to fragment the family, to divide the generations for one single purpose, to indoctrinate them personally, without the effect of a wiser and older generation. Curtis's message on that was so helpful and so powerful about the Marxist vision of the family really is to separate the generations, to divide and conquer them with false doctrine. So we have ourselves living in the midst of Strong cultural forces.

Timothy Paul Jones writes this. The church has assimilated the world's perspective on senior adulthood and grandparenting. A perspective that sees senior adulthood as sort of a seconded adolescence, filled with maximal freedom and minimal responsibility. There's a great book that was written about this by Josh Mulvihill called Biblical Grandparenting. It's actually a tremendous doctrinal study, but also sort of a sociological analysis.

He points out that if you look at the titles of children's books, you can see how downgraded the role of a grandparent is. Here's one title, grandmas are for giving tickles and grandpas are for finding worms. You got bumper stickers, we're spending our children's inheritance. How profane is that? That's totally against the biblical vision.

Josh Mulvihill, in his book, Biblical Grandparenting, he explains it like this, today a godly grandparent is self-focused, emphasizing fun as the goal with grandchildren, disconnected from the younger generations of their faith community, or living a separate life from their adult children and grandchildren. The Bible never encourages a season of retirement to travel or play. The Bible never endorses self-indulgence due to a lifetime of hard work, amen. The Bible tells you a completely different story, And it does not describe old age as a season of play disconnected from the younger generation, living a sedentary life, playing cards with your old friends who are gonna die soon. You spend your time with the younger generation.

So there's much, much, much to say about this. I will stop, but in our, just to summarize, in our culture, old people are marginalized, or wrinkles are not fashionable. But the truth is that 50% of the people in this room will become great grandparents and 94% of parents with children will have grandchildren in America. It's a really important recovery of something really good. I mean, we've seen how the culture disfigures everything.

And as it turns out, our culture has disfigured the whole role of an older generation. So, but the Church of Jesus Christ has a plan, has a plan for the rising generation. The Church of Jesus Christ has a plan to rebuild from the ruins of our culture. And it's about one generation teaching the rising generation. And there are so many places you can read about this in the Bible, I'm just gonna camp on a few.

In Psalm 145 verse four, it's really a psalm of praise. It's David's last authored psalm in the Psalter and he speaks of praising God from one generation to another. 145, four, one generation shall praise your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts in Psalm 22 verse 30 believers Are recounting the deeds of God to the next generation From a heart that's full of praises, here you have happy old people who are singing the praises of God to the next generation. It's a Messianic Psalm, but it has a double meaning. Apostarity shall serve him.

It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation. They will come and declare his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has done this. That's Psalm 22 verse 30. In Psalm 71 verse 18, David is in his old age probably after Absalom's rebellion. He's looking back on life and he says this, For you are my hope, O Lord God.

You are my trust from my youth. And to this day, I will declare your wondrous works. Also, when I am old and gray-headed, oh God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come. What a great vision statement for an old person is to declare the strength of God to the rising generation. Hey, that's what I want to do.

In Psalm 79 verse 13, you have this idea that God's sheep show the praise of him to all generations. This is an actual delegation to all of God's sheep. He writes it like this, we will show forth your praise to all generations. In Psalm 78, the generations are challenged to recount the praises of God and to proclaim his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. And the psalmist describes several results of this duty to sing the praises of God to the next generation so that they don't forget the works of God and so that they would obey God.

Here's what we read there in Psalm 78 verse 4. We will not hide them from their children, teaching to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded the fathers that they should make known to them, to their children. What was that testimony in Jacob and Law in Israel? It was Deuteronomy six, what Kevin Swanson just brought before us.

But the results are that, verse six, that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments. In that, in verses six and seven, is a picture of a hundred and fifty years. It's a picture of four generations. It's a picture of a man and a woman, a father and a grandfather investing in four generations at one time. That's the biblical vision for grandparents.

And you who are young, you who are, you know, eight, 10, 12 years old, Prepare yourself to be a grandparent who will sing the praises of God to the next generation. Your own children's children, literally. Quite likely, many of you will have children and they will have children and they will have children. 50% will be great grandparents in America today. And that's not even talking about your demographic, okay?

You are a weird demographic. You're having a lot of children. You know, it's so funny to me when we have a conference, you know, like the average family size, you know, is like six, you know, but the average woman in America has 1.7 children today, it's crazy. 1.7 children. But you guys are different.

You're having children. And there are more grandparents and great-grandparents in this room than you'll find in any demographic in America today. I praise the Lord for that. It's really neat to see. The rising generation is having a lot of children.

And they're not afraid to have children because they're not afraid of the bad guys. Because they know they have the word of God and they're gonna fill their homes with the goodness of God. You know, all of this is summed up in Deuteronomy 6. Now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you're crossing over to possess. When you're wandering in the wilderness of the secular nations, you have the word of God to pass on to the next generation.

It's such a glorious thing. But in our culture, grandparents are put out to pasture. And now, you know, dropping a grandchild off at the grandparents' house has been replaced by dropping them off in daycare. And that's not really the biblical vision. Thankfully, Proverbs 20, 29 says that the glory of young men is their strength and the splendor of old men is their gray head.

That exalts the position. Let's talk about grandfathers and grandmothers in the Bible. Now, these exact words only occur a couple times, but they're in the Bible. You know, you have in Exodus 10, six, and you have a grandmother called Lois in 2 Timothy 1.5. But there are many terms that describe this in the Bible.

When you read children's children, or sons' sons, or forefathers, you are reading the language of grandfathers and grandmothers. So it's all over the Bible. When you read the words the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you're reading about your great-great-grandfather, your great-grandfather, and your grandfather. This is a biblical vision of family life. This is a biblical vision of culture that's established from strength across the generations.

Where the older generation is teaching the younger generation, The younger generation is honoring their fathers and mothers and their grandfathers so that they'll be wise so that they'll get a jump ahead on life instead of beat their head against the wall by acting stupid. But our culture wants, apparently wants children to be stupid because they extract them from our relationship from older people who have wisdom. It's good to have gray hairs in a church if you can get them. Sometimes you have to grow them. Because the older generation didn't follow God, that's a great tragedy.

You know, that's why you don't have that many Titus II women in the church. We need to grow them up right now. You little girls, set your mind on it. Be the tightest two woman when you're 55 years old. So that you can counsel the younger women who are pulling their hair out.

And you can tell them, honey, it's gonna be okay. In Psalm 103 verses 17 and 18 you find this same language, but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children. That's the language of grandparenthood. In Jeremiah chapter two, verse nine, the chapter that we've based, or the book of the Bible we've based this whole conference on in Jeremiah 29, four and five, build houses, plant gardens and dwell in them. In Jeremiah, God says, I will bring charges against you against your children's children.

I will bring charges. But that all happened because the fathers didn't lead their families, and the nation fell into apostasy. And God would destroy them, because God pours out his wrath upon the nations that forget his ways. And one of the fastest ways you can forget God's ways is to neutralize grandfathers and fathers, especially fathers. I'm gonna give you some inspiring pictures of grandparenting.

There are nine of them that I want to give. First of all, he's a teacher Psalm 71 16, Deuteronomy 6 4 through 9, Deuteronomy 12 28. Grandparents are actually required by order of God to teach their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren. It's a responsibility, it's a distinctive responsibility, it's a command of God for grandfathers to gather their grandchildren and teach them. And yes, you have handed authority over to your children to raise their children, but that doesn't mean that you're done teaching them.

And children actually should have an open heart for the teaching of grandparents if those grandparents are godly. One of the problems that parents often have is they don't have godly grandparents. And so they actually have to restrict their time with them. That's a tragedy, but it's so common and very, very difficult to deal with. But God has put grandparents in the place of teacher.

Secondly, second blessing, a giver of an inheritance, a giver of an inheritance. Proverbs 13 22, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous. Now, my view is that the inheritance is a double barrel. It's two things. It can include a financial inheritance.

If parents in God's providence can put their children in a place where they can be even further ahead financially, sometimes money is a harm to children, parents have to figure that out, but There's strength that's built up through the generations that should be wisely disseminated, but there's biblical inheritance. There's treasures in the word of God that are indispensable. The greatest treasure you'll ever give your children is an inheritance in the Word of God. It's the best inheritance. You know, a few months ago, Deborah and I went to the funeral of one of our dear friends.

This man, he died in his early 50s. But about 18 years ago, he really, he was really convicted about teaching his children the word of God and walking with his children. He was hearing people like me and Kevin saying, look, your life needs to look like Deuteronomy 6, where you're teaching your children and you sit in the house when you walk by the way, when you lie down or rise up. And I was saying things like, look, man, if your life doesn't look like this, you gotta figure out how to make your life look like this. Or at least take some steps, start taking some baby steps.

You know, take one step at a time at least. You gotta, but you, because you don't, you don't wanna be 70 years old and say, wow, I totally missed the opportunity. You don't wanna say that. But this man who died in his 50s, 18 years before, He was hearing all that. And he had a big job at the Toyota Corporation.

And he realized that the way that life was structured in Toyota, he wasn't gonna be able to do that. So he quits his job. And he took a massive pay cut and he started mowing lawns with his kids. And he started doing everything he could to work with his kids. And somehow they survived.

By the way, I know dozens of men like this that did this 15, 20 years ago. I'm, I, I, It's dozens is a massive understatement. And so that's what he did. And he walked with his children And he died in his early 50s. He was a happy man, he was just a very wonderful friend.

But at the funeral, it was one of the most thrilling funerals I've ever been to in my life. His six children all went up to the microphone and guess what came out of their mouths? The word of God. They quoted long passages of scripture that their dad taught them and They recounted the ways that their dad just taught them the Bible. One child after another.

It was so thrilling. They had treasure that was given to them, to their father. You know, their father never got rich. But his children got rich. He was poor, yet making many rich.

Just like the Son of God. But don't miss the opportunity. Don't miss the opportunity. Give an inheritance to your children. And if your grandparents, you do the same thing.

You give an inheritance to your children and your children's children and their children after them so that the children that would be born would also have that inheritance. That's the vision of Psalm 78. You give an inheritance. Third, the third blessing of gray hair, it's a recipient of honor. The central text on this is really the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother.

That has to do not just with your direct father, it has to do with your father's. It has to do with actually the authorities that God put in your life. But There's this great verse in Proverbs 23, 22, listen to your father who begot you and do not despise your mother when she is old. Buy the truth and don't sell it. A recipient of honor, that's the one blessing of grandparenthood.

Here's a fourth blessing. In the Bible, God desires grandparents, not just to be honored, but also to be provided for. You can read about this in Mark 7, 9 through 13, Matthew 15, 3, 1 Timothy 5, 4. In Mark, you know, it's the passage about Corbin and where children were excusing themselves from providing for their parents because the priests talked them into giving their inheritance to the church okay and Jesus is saying you nicely set aside the commandment of God for the traditions of men The commandment of God is you take care of your parents until their last day. The traditions of men were no, give all your money to the church and let your parents die.

And Jesus chastises these people for a tradition that was a corrupting tradition because it meant that their children were not providing for their parents. For Timothy 5,4 makes it very clear the family must take care of its own. Family takes care of its own as the first line of defense for a widow or for really anybody. And if the family is not there for a widow, then a widow above 60 years old with certain criteria can be protected by the church. But families have a responsibility, in the word of God, to take care of families.

And that too has been lost. You know, we wanna put our old people in old folks' daycare centers, instead of families taking care of them. And I'm not here to say that it's always wrong to put somebody in an assisted living center. Sometimes that can be a helpful thing. I would say that's the last possible thing you should do.

You know, you know my mother said 96 years old and you know she needs to be around little kids running through the house and puppies and things like that. You know, my mom, my mom is on her exercise bike three miles a day, six days a week. How about that? Try to keep up with that, man. Yeah, that is convicting.

William Barclay says, the raising of children requires tremendous sacrifice, and It is only right for children to make sacrifices for their parents. John MacArthur says this, the Old Testament law of honoring one's parents meant that as long as a person lived, he was to respect and support his parents. During the first half of a person's life, the parents give everything they have to supply the needs of their children. When they get to the point of life when they're no longer able to meet their own needs, it becomes the responsibility of their children to take care of them. That's God's way of making families stick together.

Parents raise the children, and when the children are grown, they take care of their own. So that's the way it is, you know, God has designed that children should take care of the parents, I've tried to make this very clear to my own children. You know, I had a big death insurance policy, you know, a term insurance policy for many years, and I just let it lapse. I just let it lapse. I don't need it, because I, well I certainly hope my children will take care of me.

They will. Now if I die, Deborah will be taken care of like a princess for sure. Me, you know, we'll see. But God has designed it so that children will take care of their parents in their old age. This is the blessing of a family in the world.

The fifth, a communicator of a multi-generational vision. That's Psalm 78 telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works which he has done. This means you gotta have happy grandfathers. They're always talking about the praises of God. They know God is strong.

They're not afraid of nothing. They're happy. They know that God is in control. God is sovereign. Nothing can hold back God's hand.

And God is good and he always takes care of his own people. A multi-generational vision. You want to have happiness roll from one generation to another. And it takes happy grandparents. It's funny, you know, it says, we will tell them to their children, tell them.

The Hebrew word is yada, yada, yada, yada, to tell. Oh, that's so funny. There's just so much to say. Six, a source of joy. Grandparents are designed by God to be a source of joy.

This is in 2 Timothy 1.5. Paul, in this passage, is full of joy when he thinks about Lois, the grandmother of Timothy. He's thinking about Lois, this woman who taught her grandson, this grandmother. And it fills the apostle with joy that this boy had a grandma that taught him from the time he was little. We don't know what happened with Timothy's father.

He doesn't seem to be in the picture. He might have been a Gentile. We don't know. But it brought Paul joy that this boy had a grandmother who taught him. Number seven, a reflection of the blessing of old age.

Children's children are a crown of old men and the glory of children as their father. That's Proverbs 17 six. That means grandchildren reflect a certain kind of glory to their grandparents, i.e. Cousinville. Got it?

You have a grandparent, he has a symbol of authority and wealth. He has a crown on his head. It's composed of his grandchildren. That's what the Bible says. Number eight, a fruitful palm tree.

Psalm 92. It's a picture of a date palm in the Middle East. Date palms bear fruit well past 150 years. And so, the psalmist in Psalm 92 verse 12 says, the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

You have this fruitfulness on the one hand and strength of the cedars of Lebanon. On the other hand, those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. Now you have a picture of this. It's actually, we'll get to the context in a minute, it's an old person. This old person is planted in the house of the Lord and is flourishing in the courts of God.

This is the centrality of the church of Jesus Christ, to flourish and make a church flourish. And then he says, they shall bear fruit in old age. They shall be fresh and flourishing to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock, there's no unrighteousness in him. A fruitful palm tree bearing fruit 150 years.

Isn't that interesting? That palm tree bears fruit for the same number of years as is depicted in Psalm 78. 150 years. You, your son, your grandson, all the days of your life, your children's children and the children who would be born. Number nine, a confident optimist.

God has actually designed and called grandparents to be optimists and confident. Isaiah 46. What you have here in Isaiah 46 is Isaiah, he's really in old age, he's embracing the truth of God for his life, even in old age. Isaiah 46, 4, Even to your old age I am he, and even to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made and I will bear, even I will carry and I will deliver you.

Even to gray hairs I'll carry you." That means that a man is confident in God that God will carry him, that God will shepherd him, that God will say to him, you are my son, That God will say, I've hemmed you in behind and before. I've laid my hand upon you. Where can you go for my spirit? God is with you. This is the promise of God.

He says, I will be with you. There's such a joy in even growing old because you know that you can be confident, you can be optimistic about the days to come. There is testimony in the Bible about ungodly grandparents. Second King 1741 is one of them. They served their carved images and also their children and their children's children have continued to doing as their fathers did even to this day.

It's a curse to have an ungodly grandfather. It's a blessing to have a godly one. So there's a flyover doctrine of the whole idea of being a grandparent in the Bible. But it actually begins before you're a grandparent. As you fill your heart with the testimonies of God so that you have something to share for the rest of your life until your final breath, where you look for every opportunity to create camaraderie.

You teach your grandchildren and their children after. You have a strategy, you have a plan, you've got to allocate time in order to do that. And I'm here to say, go memorize Scripture with your grandchildren, that's what I'm doing. And they can sing the praises of God along with me. In order to be a immobilized grandparent, you need to be a good parent so that your children will want you to come back, so that they know that you are good, they know that you have their best interest in mind.

You know when you're living long distance away the realities of life have created so many long-distance grandparents. What do you do with that? You know, Kevin was addressing that in his messages here. You know, we do live in a day where you can zoom, you can memorize scripture over Zoom, I've done that with grandchildren. Deborah's grandmother many years ago would send audio messages to her grandchildren.

She lived in Chicago and she would make these little cassette tapes. There are different ways to do that. You can become a pen pal. Nobody writes letters anymore, but you can, if you live far away from your grandchildren. Here's the reality.

Don't miss this. The best things your children will inherit, you will give them before that you die. And the best inheritance is the word of God, without question. It's a blessing if parents and grandparents can be in the same local church. Kevin actually started out his talk talking about that.

There's a tremendous benefit of the generations being tightly knit. And I want to say, if you can do it, if it's practicable, if it's wise, then do what you can to worship in the same local church. There's a tremendous advantage. You know, it happens often that children may want to go to a different church than their parents after they get married. And, You know, that may actually be the best thing to do if that church is an apostate church or a wayward church.

Godly children might have to leave a church that their parents go to. So there are situations, there are different family dynamics. I'm not here to say that it's a biblical requirement that you go to church with your children and your grandchildren. There are just too many exceptions and difficult things about that. But what I'm here to say is that there's a particular blessing when all the generations are united around the same preaching.

They're hearing the same things. They sing the same songs together. They gather together and they're brought into the same prayers in the prayer meetings. They're united together in life, in the Word of God, in the prayers. The generations together provide wisdom for young people that need answers.

The generations worshiping together are challenged on the same level. They're working through a lot of the same biblical requirements. The generations together subverts the fragmentation of our culture. The generations together fosters connections that actually facilitate generational unity when there's love. Generations together maintain common relationships in that church and they have bonds of love in the body of Christ.

And of course, you know, there are reasons why A family couldn't go to the same church. I could list 10 different reasons. But I just want to say there's a particular blessing. If you're in a good church and you're a child growing up in that church, don't just automatically think you should go to another church. There really are blessings of being with your parents in the worship of God.

The generations together create a common culture. But the greatest inheritance you can give your children is a vision of the greatness of the sovereignty of God and parent and grandparents are actually issued the same command as parents to teach their children so y'all grandparents you're not done yet you're not done until you're dead. That's actually what Deuteronomy 6 says. You're not done until you're dead. Here's the language.

You, your son, and your grandson, all the days of your life. That means until you're dead, okay? And so resist the culture. Practice civil disobedience against this family-fragmenting culture that puts your grandparents out to pasture. And you grandparents don't think that you're done at all.

Pray. Teach your children the word of God. Walk with them in ways that are appropriate according to the authority of your children over your grandchildren. Grandparents have to respect the authority of their children. There's a new government that's established when your children get married, and You have to respect that government.

And frankly, your grandparenting is only possible if they allow it. So pray for them. That they would have an appropriate understanding of things and that they would be wise as well because they have difficult decisions to make, especially if they have disobedient or rebellious grandchildren. So there you go, give the treasure, give the treasure. And I can't wait to go back and see what's happening in Cousinville.