Subject: Family
Golden text: Hebrews 10:24-25 English Standard Version, copyright by Crossway Bibles
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
II Chronicles 11:5
5 Rehoboam lived in Jerusalem, and he built cities for defense in Judah.
11 He made the fortresses strong, and put commanders in them, and stores of food, oil, and wine. 12 And he put shields and spears in all the cities and made them very strong. So he held Judah and Benjamin.
13 And the priests and the Levites who were in all Israel presented themselves to him from all places where they lived. 14 For the Levites left their common lands and their holdings and came to Judah and Jerusalem, because Jeroboam and his sons cast them out from serving as priests of the Lord, 15 and he appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat idols and for the calves that he had made. 16 And those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came after them from all the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord, the God of their fathers. 17 They strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and for three years they made Rehoboam the son of Solomon secure, for they walked for three years in the way of David and Solomon.
18 Rehoboam took as wife Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, and of Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse, 19 and she bore him sons, Jeush, Shemariah, and Zaham. 20 After her he took Maacah the daughter of Absalom, who bore him Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith. 21 Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and concubines (he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and fathered twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters). 22 And Rehoboam appointed Abijah the son of Maacah as chief prince among his brothers, for he intended to make him king. 23 And he dealt wisely and distributed some of his sons through all the districts of Judah and Benjamin, in all the fortified cities, and he gave them abundant provisions and procured wives for them.
21st Century Science and Health, copyright by Cheryl Petersen
Progress comes from experience. Humanity is improved as the mortal is dropped for the immortal.
Material sense and self must be regenerated. The old self with its practices must be dropped. Nothing fleshly or sinful is spiritual. The death of fleshly perceptions and habits, not the death of material organisms, is what reveals spirituality and Life—harmonious, real, and eternal.
Divine Science separates error from truth, and breathes through the sacred pages the transcendent sense of life, substance, and intelligence. In this Science, we discover person in the image and likeness of God. We see that people have never lost their spiritual estate and eternal harmony.
Humanity must learn that the influences of propaganda or crowd thinking are powerless. Crowd thinking is oppressive, but only a phase of nothingness. Christian Science devastates the vacuum of evil thinking and preeminently promotes good-will and virtue in families and therefore in the community. The Apostle Paul refers to the personification of evil as “the god of this age.”[1]
Through many generations, human beliefs reach diviner conceptions and the immortal model of God’s revelation is finally seen as the only true conception of being.
Science not only reveals reasonable possibilities, but also prompts human beings to discover what God has already done. You must trust your ability to experience goodness and to bring out better and higher results. Don’t become a sluggard. Don’t fear failure, but overcome it.
With one Parent, God, all people would be family, with one Mind, good. The family would consist of Love and Truth, and have unity of Principle and spiritual power which constitute divine Science.
Mark 3:7-21
Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. 11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.
13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. 14 And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 15 and have authority to cast out demons. 16 He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 17 James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); 18 Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”
21st Century Science and Health
Jesus pushed the boundaries when it came to fleshly or family ties. He said: “Do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.”[2] Again he asked: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”[3] Answering his own question, he pointed out that it is they who do the will of the Maker. Jesus recognized Spirit, God, as the only source and origin of all.
Whatever holds human thought in line with selfless love, receives directly the divine power.
I was called to visit Mr. Clark in Lynn, who had been confined to his bed six months with hip-disease. On entering the house, I met his physician who said that the patient was dying. The physician had probed the ulcer on the hip, told me the bone was decayed for several inches and showed me the evidence. The doctor went out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and sightless. The dew of death was on his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments, his face changed; its death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids closed gently and the breathing became natural; he was asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and said: “I feel like a new man. My suffering is all gone.” It was between three and four o’clock in the afternoon when this took place.
I told him to get up, dress himself, and eat supper with his family. He did so. The next day I saw him in the yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed that he went to work in two weeks. The discharge from the sore stopped and the sore was healed. The diseased condition had been there ever since he was a boy when he had injured himself after falling on a wooden spike.
Since his recovery, I have been informed that his physician claims to have cured him and that the patient’s mother has been threatened with incarceration in a mental health facility for saying: “It was none other than God and that woman who healed him.” I cannot attest the truth of that report, but what I saw and did for that man and what his physician said of the case, occurred just as I have narrated.
The whole human family can be redeemed through the excellence of Christ—through the perception and acceptance of Truth.
Acts 16:25-34
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. 27 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. 34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
I John 3:1-3
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
21st Century Science and Health
Mortals can never understand God’s creation while believing that human beings are creators. Whether marriage or reproduction happens or not, God’s children, spiritual beings, already created, will be recognized as we awake to the truth of being.
In Science we are children of God, but whatever is of human cognizance doesn’t belong to us, for materiality or mortality is the misinterpreted image of spirituality.
Contradictions are found in both the theories of creationism, also known as Intelligent Design, and evolution. James Watson, in his book, DNA: The Secret of Life, wrote, “There are those who will continue to believe humans are creations of God, whose will we must serve, while others will continue to embrace the empirical evidence indicating that humans are the product of many millions of generations of evolutionary change.” [4] God did not create something out of nothing; God did not create human fleshly beings to submit to and obey Him. Mortal humanity is not the real identity of people. The First Cause isn’t changeable, passing through matter only to return to Mind or go down to dust and nothingness.
Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the divine idea—the reflection of God—has come with some degree of power and grace to all prepared to receive the Messiah, or Truth.
Moral freedom is found in Soul. Guard against narrowness and jealousy because they restrict productive behavior. Home is not a boundary of the affections, but is a framework from which to grow spiritually.
Circulate happiness and compassion in the home and community to promote the sweet interchange of confidence and love, but be sure not to generate a wandering desire for incessant amusement outside the home circle.
Spiritual harmony constitutes individual and collective happiness, strength, and permanence.
[1] II Cor. 4:4
[2] Matt. 23:9
[3] Matt. 12:48; Mark 3:33
[4] Watson, James, DNA: The Secret of Life. (Alfred Knoff, Distributed by Random House, New York: 2003)
The Lord’s Prayer with a Christian Science interpretation (in italics) from 21st Century Science and Health:
Our Father in heaven,
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,
Hallowed be Your name,
One sacred nature,
Your kingdom come,
Your government is come; You are ever-present,
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Enable us to know—as in heaven, so on earth—God is omnipotent, supreme.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us grace for today; feed the famished intentions.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And Love is reflected in love.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
And God does not lead us into temptation, but delivers us from sin, disease, and death.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.[1]
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
Christian Science Bible Lesson-Sermons 