Our Vision for These Days 6: A Return to Domestic Piety
Albert N. Martin
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Albert N. Martin
Let us seek the face of God in prayer. As God has been gracious in past years to grant us special seasons of His nearness in these sessions together. We have reason to believe He has not exhausted His infinite grace and kindness, and yet, there is that fear, I’m sure, in the heart of every perceptive Christian: what would it be to be left at the mercy of our own resources? Let us cry that God will, indeed, graciously meet with us.
Our Father, we are mindful of Your Word which tells us, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his arm and whose heart departs from You.” You have said that such a one shall be like a heath in the desert. He shall inhabit a parched place in the wilderness, where no water is. Our Father, many of us who are Your children know what it is to inhabit the parched places that have come as the fruit of our own creature-confidence. We would solemnly repudiate all confidence in our own ability to understand Your Word, much less to minister that Word to others. Come then, we pray, by the power of Your grace and of Your Spirit, and so work in the mind and heart of every listener, and in the mind and heart and tongue of Your servant who attempt to speak Your truth. That together we may all be made very conscious that You have fulfilled Your promise to those who trust in You. You have promised to make them like a well-watered garden. O God, do that for us! We pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Now, for those of you who are aware of the schedule and the announced subjects for this conference, you know that the subject announced for today’s meeting is Our Vision for These Days. In October of 1988, this was the subject announced for the Monday night session of the conference in that year. Since then each year the elders have directed me to continue with that theme, and there has been—with but one exception—this Monday night emphasis upon Our Vision for These Days. Each time as I have begun to preach on a specific aspect of that theme, I have, first of all, given a word of explanation, explaining that the words “Our Vision for These Days” are simply used to express our perception of the most critical areas of need for the people of God and for our own generation, and what we—as the servants of God and the people of God—ought to seek to do in the strength of God to respond to that perceived need.
Our use of the term “our vision for these days” is but an application of what we read in 1 Chronicles 12:32 concerning the men of Issachar who had understanding of the times, that they might know what Israel ought to do. Or, in the language of the passage read in our hearing, it is our effort to respond in obedience to the injunction of the Apostle in Ephesians 5:15 and following. “Look, therefore, carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” So, in the use of this title “Our Vision for These Days,” we are seeking to capture our perception, our understanding of those aspects of God’s truth, which are most desperately needed by our generation.
I have always begun not only with a word of explanation, but with a word of disclaimer. We, as a group of churches represented by the men who are here, and, certainly, the eldership of this assembly, claim no extraordinary commission from God with respect to these matters; nor do we claim to have an exclusive commission with reference to these matters. We have no individual nor corporate, Messianic complex, but we are seeking to act as responsible men ministering to the peculiar needs of our own generation.
In the previous messages, we have addressed the subject Our Vision for These Days and have focused upon five areas of concern. Our vision for these days is one that desperately desires to see a recovery of the biblical gospel; secondly, a renewal of biblical holiness; thirdly, a return to biblical churchmanship; fourth, a restoration of biblical preaching; and in our study together last year, a recognition of the watchman identity and function of the pastoral office.
I wish to address the sixth area of crucial concern, which does, indeed, constitute a vital part of our vision for these days. I’ve stated it this way: it is the reestablishment of godly family life, or in the more antiquated terminology, the return to domestic piety. What we would call in current parlance “godly family life,” our forefathers designated as “domestic piety.” I must confess, there is something in me that has an affinity for the older terminology, but realizing that others may not quite be as skewed as I am somewhere in the deep depths of my psyche that I feel a stronger affinity to the term ‘domestic piety,’ I will work with the terminology ‘the reestablishment of godly family life.’
Now that this issue has been and remains a matter of deep concern within the ranks of those of you present in this place, is evident to anyone who has any connection with those who are here. The themes, again and again, in the various family conferences have directed our attention to various aspects of godly family worship life, or of domestic piety. The subjects that have been assigned to some of you and some of us who have preached at the various men’s and women’s retreats held by many of our churches—those subjects indicate that indeed this has been a matter of deep and pervasive concern amongst us.
Furthermore, if you are in any way aware of the rather lengthy series of sermons and adult Sunday School lessons taught in our respective churches, you will find that there have been repeated and often lengthy series of sermons dealing with various aspects of the teaching of the Word of God concerning godly family life. So, for me to say that our vision for these days, and to include in the hour those of us represented here, is not an overstatement. There is abundant evidence that our vision for these days is indeed one that involved the reestablishment of godly family life.
The legitimacy of taking up a concern well worked by the brethren sitting here is obvious in terms of the glut of statistics that continue to pour forth both from Christian and non Christian sources, relative to the breakup of the so-called ‘nuclear family.’ The frightening proliferation of illegitimacy in our country, and in the UK as well; the horrible tragedy of divorce that disrupts the family structure and leaves children vulnerable to all kinds of abnormalities. These things are a loud cry that whatever emphasis we have placed upon this subject, we have far from even begun to win the field in this area of godly family life.
In taking up the subject, I know it is a subject for which there is great, I trust, universal sympathy in those who sit before me today. What can I do in the time allotted to me when I’ve already said that there are represented by the men here, literally hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of solid, biblical exposition, application, and practical directives and exhortations just within this group? Obviously, all I can hope to do—in this one session—is to attempt to encapsulate this vision, and hopefully to issue a call to each one of us to a fresh commitment to the realization of this vision, under the blessing of the Spirit of God, and by the enablement of God’s grace.
Our vision for these days is the reestablishment of godly family life. I want to address the subject under four headings.
1) The reestablishment of godly family life ideally begins with the contracting of godly marriages.
The first is this: the reestablishment of godly family life ideally begins with the contracting of godly marriages. I have said ‘ideally’ because I recognize that according to the Scriptures—in keeping with the experience of not a few of you sitting here, though you now have, by the grace of God, what could be called ‘a godly family life’—it did not begin with the contracting of a godly marriage. It began perhaps with two starry-eyed kids running off and thinking that everything would turn out beautifully because you “loved one another.” After finding out that a marriage ring and marriage vows and a honeymoon did not mean that you rode off into the sunset to live happily ever after, perhaps it was the very beginnings of the disintegration of the relationship that made you accessible to the gospel. God may have brought some of you to repentance and faith at relatively the same time.
Others may have borne the burden of a divided marriage, such as we read about in 1 Corinthians 7. Some of you may sit here this day bearing that burden. I am not insensitive to those realities, but in seeking to issue a clarion call with respect to our vision, I am stating that the reestablishment of godly family life ideally begins with the contracting of godly marriages.
If we are to see godly marriages contracted in the ranks of our churches and within the orbit of our influence, what is it that we must seek to maintain in our own thinking, and impart to the thinking and the actions of our children? Let me answer in three categories.
1- We must maintain biblical standards for the selection of a marriage partner.
It is not without reason that when God begins to describe the circumstances in society at large, which ultimately lead to God inundating the ancient earth with the judgement of the Flood, that the emphasis in Genesis 6 falls upon a practice in which men and women no longer maintained what we today would call ‘biblical standards’ for the selection of their marriage partners.
Look at the text in Genesis 6:1, “And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God
We are introduced in this chapter, in the first statement that leads to the dis-ultimate destruction of the Old World, by a situation in which the concerns of godliness no longer dominated in the selection of marriage partners. Rather, it was beauty of face and of form. The sons of God saw what? Not the character of godliness, but they saw that the daughters of men were fair. They married on the basis of what could be known by one long gaze upon the face and upon the body. There was no concern with respect to what lay beneath the surface of the fair face and the shapely form. The concerns of godliness, the concern that the sons of God would marry the daughters of God and that together they would be committed to the rearing of a godly seed, gave way to the philosophy that if it looks good, grab it.
If we are in any way to see in our day the reestablishment of godly family life, we must use every means at our disposal to pass on to our children—hear me parents—and to regulate our assessment of those whom they may begin to be interested in, in terms of godly standards; not carnal standards, personal taste, personal ambition, social standing, or our own unmortified pride.
Are you prepared, mom and dad, proudly to introduce to anyone in the circle of your influence, a relatively plain Jane whom your handsome son has set his eye upon, because he is seeing through her relatively plain face, and less-than-beauty-queen figure? The graces of a thirst after God and a love for Christ; the adornment of a meek and a quiet spirit; a selfless commitment to serve others; a passion to know God and walk with God; to be a woman of whom there is no explanation but that she is full of the Spirit of God. You see, mom and dad, your own stinking pride has got to be mortified!
Are you prepared should your daughter find her heart beginning to be drawn with romantic interest with the thought of a potential marriage partner; someone who in terms of his background, training, and natural endowments was never cut out to make his way up the corporate ladder, never cut out to be a “white-collar executive”? He may have gnarled and scarred hands from his manual labor. The cut of his suit may not quite be the kind of thing you would expect in a fortune five-hundred company office. But what she has seen in that man is the assertiveness of a man who knows his identity as a man, and who has a heart after God. He is committed to a life of universal holiness; prepared to bear the burden of godly manhood as a leader of his home, and provider for his family. Woven through the texture of that male strength is the tenderness and the sensitivity which Paul describes as the meekness and the gentleness of Christ. She sees beyond what society would call his blue-collar, second-class position, as far as his occupation, and beyond, perhaps, the absence of some of the refined polished, social graces that others may have. She said, “That’s the kind of man I want my sons to become, and I want my daughters to identify with, as godly manhood. The characteristics I see in him, I want them to see and look for in their potential mates.” How about you, mom? Are you ready to introduce him proudly to your friends?
You see, it’s not only an issue for you singles to come to grips with. It’s an issue for you parents to come to grips with. If we are to see an reestablishment of godly family life that ideally begins with contracting godly marriages, all of us together—singles, young men and women, parents, and pastors along with them—we must maintain biblical standards for the selection of a marriage partner.
2- We must maintain biblical standards for the goals of potential marriage partners.
Secondly, we must maintain biblical standards for the goals of potential marriage partners. As a relationship begins to blossom, and you—as parents, pastors and friends, intimate associates—have input, you begin to ask the young couple, “What are your goals for this potential union? What is it that you are building in your mind as your green castle? What is it to which you’re prepared to give yourselves in your marital lives?” Unless we are hammering out for them those goals that ought to reflect sensitivity to biblical norms, the world will not be at all fastidious about impressing its standards and goals upon them.
Should the goal be that they have this much and that much accumulated in terms of earthly possessions in the first five years of their marriage, and therefore, deliberately marry choosing not to even attempt to bear children for the first five years? Should the goals be that they make a half-hearted try at bearing children during the next five years, while they pursue this, that, and the other? If it’s convenient, maybe children will enter the picture after the tenth year. Are you allowing that perspective to take root among the young people in your assembly, among your own sons and your own daughters? Are you allowing them to conceive of a situation in which it is considered normal that both the father and the mother would be working outside of the home in separate careers?
As long as the Word of God clearly says that the older women are to train. The word for ‘train’ is not a standard word for ‘teach.’ It literally means, “To bring to sobriety.” The older women are to help the younger women to think biblically sobriety about their God-given role, tasks, and place, according to the Holy Ghost, through the Apostle Paul.
Let’s look at Titus chapter 2:4. “Train the younger women to love their husbands to love their children, to be sober-minded, chaste.” Then their is a compound word in the Greek, the word ‘worker’ and the word ‘home.’ It means exactly what it says. “Workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands.” Look at the issue that’s at stake. “That the word of God be not blasphemed.” How can the Word of God be blasphemed if a woman does not have as her primary orientation in her goals for marriage everything that relates to the domestic sphere? Love husband, love children, worker at home, kind, in subjection to her own husband, that the Word of God be not blasphemed. Why? Because that God-assigned sphere of her primary commitment is so plainly taught in the Word of God, that for anyone to claim to love the God of the Book and be obeying the God of the Book, and live in any other sphere, is to cause people to blaspheme!
I say, if we are committed from the depths of our being to see a reestablishment of godly family life, then my brethren, my brothers and sisters, not only must we maintain a biblical standard for the selection of marriage partners, but maintain biblical standards for the goals of potential marriage partners. Will they seek things and along the way, as is convenient, the Kingdom of God? Or will they view their union as a means further to pursue in strict obedience?
Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Are they marrying with a view to turning inward upon themselves, seeking to find in one another—by a selfish insulation from a life of service to others—happiness that will always allude them? “For he that would save his life shall lose it.” He that would save his marriage by feeding all of the energies and interest inward, will lose the very happiness that is sought! That couple that loses its own self-centered life, as Jesus said, “The same shall save it.”
If there is to be the reestablishment of godly family life, it will ideally begin with the contracting of godly marriages. Brethren, it will not be a pattern amongst us unless we maintain biblical standards for the selection of marriage partners, maintain biblical standards for the goals of potential marriage partners, and thirdly, maintain biblical standards for the commitments of marriage partners.
3- We must maintain biblical standards for the commitments of marriage partners.
I do not stand here to be your instructor, only your reminder. When our Lord Jesus was questioned about the naughty issue of divorce, do you remember what He did in Matthew 19:5-6? He pointed them back to the beginning. “From the beginning it was not so. He who made them in the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh.’ What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” I am called a
It will not do to take the position that Dwight Hervey Small has taken in recent years, and others with him. They say that if along the road in the marriage it becomes evident that the relationship is going sour, the spark is gone, and nothing can rekindle it, or if the marriage has borne the shock of some unusual area of disruption through unfaithfulness or through lack of fulfilling this or that commitment, we just need to recognize that this was a marriage God never made and declare the death of something God never made! That’s how he conveniently opts out of what therefore, God has joined. What sophistry! Yet, it’s hailed by evangelical leaders on the book jacket, as a marvelous restatement, reapplication, and more realistic insight to the Scriptures that meets the needs of our present day. So now the Bible must be twisted to a Covenant-breaking age? If we are to see the reestablishment of godly family life, brethren, we must maintain biblical standards for the commitments of marriage partners.
You parents and pastors involved in pre-marital counsel, if there’s anything that you underscore ad nauseum, underscore that once you walk that aisle and consummate that relationship, you’re in it for keeps. If it becomes a living hell, you’re living it, or lay ahold of the grace of God to change it, but out of it you cannot jump, because things ain’t all you dreamed they would be! Now, granted, sexual infidelity does give legitimate warrant for the marriage to be dissolved. It is not a command, and the desertion of an unbelieving partner that cannot be rectified. (1 Corinthians 7.) My brethren, my sisters, apart from those two except clauses in the Scriptures, the commitment is for keeps.
Some of us had no premarital counseling, none whatsoever. We did have perhaps some good examples of what a solid marriage was, but there were few, if any, books written from a Christian perspective. We just thought, “If I love her, she loves me, we both love the Lord, and we get married, it’s all going to work. Just like that.” No. It doesn’t work out just like that. I stand before you as one who can testify that the first two or three years of our marriage had lots of tears. There were lots of late nights sitting up with tears and an open Bible, but wrestling through, “How can we make this thing work?” One thing we knew we could not do was look back over our shoulder for a way out. It was either through the difficulties and into a God-honoring marriage, or suffer with all the unresolved areas of promise.
In a day marked, I say, by Covenant-breaking, may God help us to pass on as a legacy to our young men and women this biblical standard for the commitments that the marriage partners make one for the other. I lay before you that first heading in our vision, that we see the reestablishment of godly, family life. It ideally begins with the contracting of godly marriages. We will not see the contracting of godly marriages unless these three principles take root amongst us.
2) The reestablishment of godly family life is built upon the nurturing of a godly husband-wife relationship.
Secondly, the reestablishment of godly family life is built upon the nurturing of a godly husband-wife relationship. God has so ordered it, that He gives every couple at least nine months to work on being a good husband and a good wife, before you have to begin to learn how to be a good mommy and a good daddy. Now, God could have made us that our gestation rates were the same as rabbits. He could have, but He didn’t. He didn’t! In the very physiology of the way God has made us, He is making it abundantly clear to us and in the Creation order that it is in the establishment of a stable, godly husband-wife relationship that the godly family finds its contours and its foundation.
What is the essence of those roles in relationships? I’m not telling you anything new. I know that. If you came here hoping to hear something profound, might as well get up and go out. You’re going to hear things now that some of you have heard many times, but have you really heard them?
We take what we hear from Ephesians 5, and we collate it with 1 Peter 3:7. “Husbands, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor unto them, as unto the weaker vessel.” What is that distinctive role of the husband that he is to cultivate? He is to cultivate a loving, assertive, communicative, sensitive, and nurturing headship over his wife. That’s his job description. That’s to be the way he relates to his wife. The husband is the head of the wife. It’s assertion. It doesn’t say he ought to be, he ought to make an effort to somehow dethrone her and get into his place. The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church. It’s not a matter of whether or not you’re the head, it’s a matter of whether or not you have the holy gumption, divine wisdom, and grace to be what you are, or to wimp out!
God has constituted you the head, but He says “husbands love” in that posture of headship. “Love your wives.” He doesn’t say, “Rule them. Govern them.” “Love them as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church.” So ought husbands to love their wives, as being their own bodies. They ought to love their wives as themselves. Add to it Peter’s words, “Dwell with them according to knowledge,” and what do you have? You have the husband in utter dependence upon the Holy Spirit, and in constant seeking by the Spirit to mortify his native sensitivity; his native tendency to abuse his position of authority and headship; his native tendency to draw into his own little world and not communicate; his native tendency to judge his wife’s actions and reactions in terms of his own male perspectives, and not seek to know her, to get beyond her eyeballs and under her psyche; to get under her skin, to think and to feel as she thinks and feels. He is to cultivate a loving, assertive, communicative, sensitive, nurturing headship over his wife.
You see, in all of the preaching that we do on Ephesians 5, there’s something that is assumed in the passage. It’s not directly and explicitly mentioned, but surely it’s assumed. “Husbands, love as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it.” How do you know He loved the Church and gave Himself for it? How do you know He nurtures and cherishes it? How do you know He’s going to present to Himself a glorious Church? How do you know what you must do in that process of ongoing purification? It’s because He’s opened His heart and His mind in His Word. He’s communicated His heart to us. He is no mute Christ who expects us to somehow read the unspoken symbols of His love and of His nurturing care.
I love the imagery one author in an excellent book on Christian manhood took from words used of a past precedent in our country. He said he was a man of steel and of velvet. With respect to the commitment principle, a willingness to bear the burden of leadership, and all that goes with it, he was a man of steel! But with respect to how he impacted others, there was the softness, the invitingness of velvet.
Is not that very principle augmented to infinity seen in our blessed Lord Jesus Christ? Little children were not intimidated by Him. When he needed one for an illustration, He could say, “Hey son, come here. Sit on my knee for a minute.” A little kid doesn’t stand off in a corner cowering before this austere figure. A woman taken in adultery does not run away from Him, stands ashamed, yes, but there was something so graciously inviting about His demeanor. Yet, it’s that same Christ who with manly courage and manly strength weaves His scourge of cords, goes into the temple, and singlehandedly drives out all the beasts, overturns the tables, and cleanses His house. A man of steel and of velvet.
My brethren, if we’re going to see the reestablishment of godly family life, it will be built upon the nurturing of godly husband-wife relationships; which means that we men must first of all be committed to cultivating by every discipline and means of grace at our disposal, a loving, assertive, communicative, sensitive, nurturing headship over our wives. No wonder this instruction in Ephesians 5 follows hard upon the command, “Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” After giving us five participles which show—as we might call, ‘the continuing conduits of a Spirit-filled life’—when he gets specific he focuses upon the husband-wife relationship first of all. For surely, a man, every son of Adam, regardless of how God scrambled him up in his mother’s womb with what we might call the inclinations to a more gentle, less volatile temperament, such a man will need to be full of the Spirit to cultivate the steel of holy assertiveness, though he may not need anywhere near as much grace to be sensitive, nurturing, and gentle.
You see, at some point or another, in terms of the way we’ve been put together, every one of us, as men, will need to be filled with the Spirit if we are to nurture our relationship to our wives along biblical patterns.
When we bring together Ephesians 5, Titus 2:4, Genesis 2, 1 Corinthians 11, what’s the basic picture we get of that which the wife is to be in relationship to the husband? She is to cultivate a loving—yes, a loving—relationship. As Paul said, “The older women are to train the younger women to love their husbands.” Though loving the husband is not mentioned in Ephesians 5, surely, if the paradigm is the relationship of the Church to Christ, what is it that constrains you to submit yourself to Christ? Is it not the love for Christ that the Spirit of God implanted in your heart when he brought you to faith in Christ? You have a faith that now—according to Galatians—works by what? It works by love.
The duty to love is not explicitly mentioned in Ephesians 5, but it’s assumed in the whole thrust of the passage. It’s explicitly mentioned in Titus 2:4, that women need to be trained how to love their husbands in a biblical way.
According to Genesis 2, the woman’s identity is bound up in her being a helper answering to her husband’s need. You see, this is the real heart of the nub of aggressive, intelligent feminism, if I may call such madness ‘intelligent.’ The thought that a woman’s identity is in any way connected with a man’s, that is the thing that raises the red flag. The intelligent, the well-schooled, the articulate feminist is committed to this principle. “I am what I am as a woman, without any reference to men whatsoever.” Tell a woman, “Look, the very rationale for your existence, the way you exist, is that you were designed to be a helper answering to the man.” You’ve thrown down the gauntlet, my brother. No, God threw it down in Eden, and He never picked it up.
So, for you, dear women, it is to cultivate a loving, cooperative, respectful, responsive submission. Let the wife see that she respect her husband. I say cooperative, because in this very passage, though the fathers are addressed explicitly in the nurture of the children in verse 4, the children are commanded in verses 1 and 2 to obey father and mother, to honor father and mother! Clearly indicating that the father and mother are cooperating in giving directives, in giving counsel and guidance in the molding and in the nurturing of their children.
The wife is to cultivate a loving, cooperative, respectful responsive submission. Would we see the reestablishment of godly family life? Then we will only see it as it is built upon the nurturing of godly husband-wife relationships! The essence of those relationships is captured—if not exhaustively, at least in the broad strokes of Scripture—in what I’ve attempted to set before you.
In addition to this, the husband and wife are together to cultivate a sensitive, selfless, mutually satisfying, intimate life. They are to cultivate. It is not something that comes naturally for most people. To copulate is a natural, biological urge and function, but in 1 Corinthians 7 the Word of God says, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But, because of fornications, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.” End of discussion. Anytime a husband has urges that might tempt him to go elsewhere to have them released, let him be intimate with his wife, and vice versa. Do what comes naturally. No. No. No. The passage does not stop there. “Let the husband render unto the wife her due; and likewise also the wife unto the husband.” Ah, here the feminist screams. “The wife hath not power over her own body, but the husband.” Here all self-centered machoism also screams. For what was good for the gander is good for the goose. “Likewise the husband hath not power over his own body, but the wife.”
In terms of this responsibility to cultivate a sensitive, selfless, mutually satisfying, intimate life, the husband and wife in this passage, stand as equals under the lordship of Christ, and under the principles that were so clearly expounded to us last time by Pastor Brevard from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. Cultivate. Do you see what that means? It means that there’s got to be a willingness to communicate verbally. There’s got to be a willingness to take time, and cultivate openness to bring the cross of Christ into this realm of our lives, that in its power we may slay, on the one hand, all prudery leading to an awkward silence, so that a husband does not know how to render to his wife, because she’s mute. She was told that sex is dirty, that good girls don’t think about these things, much less talk about them. How can a man committed to obey Christ obey Christ if the wife will not communicate, and vice versa? It is the cross of Christ that enables us to slay prudery, and all thinking concerning our intimate life that would keep us from obedience to this directive.
I ask you, as parents, are you preparing? Wives especially, are you preparing your daughters chastely, wisely, by bits and pieces, not only in terms of your general attitude, your intimate life with your husband, but by explicit instruction as age and readiness and circumstances demand? So that when they walk down that aisle, and your husband gives that young woman—we hope a pure virgin—to that godly young man, mutually selecting one another on the basis of biblical standards and principles, she goes off on her honeymoon with realistic, biblical expectations, and solidly, biblically framed perspectives of her intimate life.
You, fathers, are you doing this with your sons? I have been appalled, at times, when I’ve spoken to young men just before their wedding. They had gone through the pre-marital counseling tapes, and I may have given them certain literature a week or two before. When I’ve said, “Now, how much has your dad spoken to you about these things?” They say, “Pastor, he didn’t tell me nothing.” Many times, Christian fathers.
We have a responsibility—particularly in the light of this text—to avoid sexual impurity. “Because of fornications, let each man have, let each woman have.” Dear brethren, in this age, if we do not have, as a sacred wall around us in this sensitive area, a selfless, mutually-satisfying intimate life, we’re going to be sitting ducks with scandalous impurity! Involved in that, of course, is something some of us don’t want to face.
God said to Ezekiel—in chapter 24, verses 15 and 16 of Ezekiel’s prophecy—some strange words. God was going to have strange dealings with him, but He could say to the prophet, who was no spring chicken at the time, “The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, ‘Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke; you shall neither mourn nor weep, nor tears shall run down. Sigh, but not aloud, make no mourning for the dead; bind thy headtire upon thee..I spoke unto the people in the morning; and my wife died.”
God describes His wife, and it’s the only place I know in Scripture where God uses that terminology. He said, “Ezekiel, I’m going to take away from you the desires of your eyes.” Imagine if Ezekiel had turned and said, “Lord, what in the world are you talking about? She ceased to be the desire of my eyes long ago. She’s become such a fat, slobby old woman. It takes all the grace I can muster to look at her with any sense of delight.” Ezekiel, apparently, didn’t have to say that. Whatever age had done to put a sag here and a droop there, she was still something to look at.
Furthermore, to show that he only had eyes for her, the Lord said, “Today I take away the desire of thine eyes!” Ezekiel didn’t say, “Which one, Lord? Which one? There are four or five that I look upon from the pulpit Sunday by Sunday, Sabbath by Sabbath, wishing that I had them in bed!” No! When God said, “The desire of thine eyes,” Ezekiel knew that his wife was that, and he knew there was only one who fit the description.
Now, you dear wives, that’s the challenge upon you, to continue to be the desire of your husband’s eyes, to carry yourself and keep yourself; not to defy age and gravity and wrinkles, and the loss of subcutaneous fat in the balls of your face. No! None of that foolishness. There is nothing more stupid-looking than a seventy-year old woman keeping their hair jet black and trying to rub out her wrinkles with pink mud. I need not say, I trust, anymore on that, but I hope I’ve carried your conscience.
Do we have a vision to see reestablished, godly family life? Then it will be reestablished not only as we encouraged the contracting of godly marriages, the nurturing of godly husband-wife relationships, but thirdly, the reestablishment of godly family life is augmented by creating godly parent-child dynamics.
3) The reestablishment of godly family life is augmented by creating godly parent-child dynamics.
I didn’t know what other word to use. I didn’t have enough time to use Rodale’s Synonym Finder and root around to come up with a better one, but you know what I mean by dynamics. Basic chemistry. What kind of electricity flows between people? What drives, as it were, the relationships?
Let me ask you a question. You walk into a home, and you’re there for about fifteen minutes to half an hour. The husband and wife are present, and there are children say from at least three years old onward. It’s not fair to judge it below three in any given half-hour period. You may have a little one-year old who is cutting certain molars, and the two-year old that just came off the whooping cough. They’re all out of their patterns, and you might totally misjudge the climate of that home. So let’s make a fair assessment. There’s a structure where in the interest of charity you can make a fair assessment. You walk into a home, and if you’re in that home for half an hour you say, “Is this family life the way it ought to be?” What are the things that usually stand out in bold relief as the primary characteristics of that kind of home that makes you respond that way?
Think for a minute. Think of the homes into which you’ve walked. I hope it’s been true of many of the homes into which you men have gone in this week. This is one of the reasons we open our homes to you pastors. If what is preached is not being validated in our homes, it’s time we knew it, faced up to it, and did something about it. What are those major dynamics that, without even analysing it, you pick up on them and you say, “This is family life the way it ought to be.” I suggest it will usually be at least these three things. Tell me if these do not carry your own conscience, and answer to your own visceral sense of what makes a godly family.
1- There is a pervasive climate of principled love.
You’re in that home for half an hour and you say, “Whatever the glue is that keeps this thing together, it’s got written all over it ‘principled love.’” It isn’t that everybody is going to everyone else every five minutes, stroking them and saying, “Oh sweetie. Honey. Sweetie. Honey Sweetie.” But when it’s time for the husband to ask the wife when you’re going to eat, you don’t get the impression she’s somehow the higher servant. She is his wife. The very way he asks her, “Honey, when will dinner be ready?” You sense with his eyes, by the tone of his voice, that she’s a noble woman, not the servant under his feet. When she responds you sense in her tone no irritation. “You know honey, it will be on when it’s ready!” You sense in the way she responds that she’s glad to give a sense of direction to the noble leader in that home who’s seeking to orchestrate the next major activity of the household, and for the guests. Her response is indicative of a principled love.
When the dad tells the kids to wash their hands, the way they respond you sense that their obedience is not a hushed, “Yes, daddy,” for fear they will get caned forty times in the shed if they come down with one spot of dirt. No. You sense their response was one of loving obedience. Isn’t that the thing that dominates in the dynamics of a home that when you go into it and say, “This is what a home ought to be.” It is the presence. It is the activity. It is the oozing out of all of the interrelationships of the climate of principled love. You know that if you’d stayed long enough, you’d be able sit there with 1 Corinthians 13 and have it exegeted before your eyes. You’d say, “Ah, there’s love that’s suffering long. Ah, there’s love that’s not quickly provoked. Ah, there’s love that’s believing all things, putting the best construction on things.” You’d see 1 Corinthians 13 lived out before your eyes.
2- A pronounced atmosphere of mutual respect and appropriate submission.
We’re on the realm now of manners and courtesy. No demeaning of the kids so that they hang there heads with unnecessary embarrassment. The little ones and not-so-little ones may have their part in getting the table set. When one of them is bringing out the plates, lo and behold, being conscious that visitors are present and a little bit awkward in their presence, he drops the stack of plates. How did dad respond? “You dummy!” Did he go over and say, “Son,” or, “Sweetheart, daddy knows you didn’t mean to do that. Maybe next time you ought to just bring out two plates at a time.” You sense that the father respects that dignity of the child as an image-bearer of God. Though he’s in authority, he treats the child with dignity. Though he is head over his wife, he treats her with dignity.
That’s the very thing that is captured in that word in 1 Timothy 3:4 with the requirement for an elder having his children in subjection with all semnotetos, that is, with respectability, with dignity. A pronounced atmosphere, mutual respect, and appropriate submission. Then there’s a third thing. Tell me if this doesn’t answer to your viscer as well.
3- A profound sense of distinct masculinity and femininity displayed throughout the whole structure of that family.
When you go into a home, have been there for a while, and say, “This is what a home ought to be.” This is one of the other major dynamics you’re picking up. There is a profound sense of distinct masculinity and femininity displayed throughout the structure of that family, because the matters of masculinity and femininity are in the earliest years and all-the-way-through fundamentally imitative and assimilative.
A boy understands what masculinity is by what he observes and absorbs from his dad. Long before dad can conceptually and biblically expound to him the biblical doctrine of masculinity, he is, as it were, impregnating the soul and the psyche of that boy with what masculinity is, by the power of imitation and the power of assimilation.
Likewise, a mother and a wife with femininity. If she is dressed with that beautiful adornment that Peter says is a meek and a quiet spirit, in the sight of God it is a great price. God’s not impressed with the external adornment that may cost much. When He sees that inner adornment of the meek and the quiet spirit, He says, “That is a great price. That is there because My Son died. That is there, because on the grounds of the death of My Son, I’ve imparted My Spirit to that true daughter of Abraham. By the mighty operations of the Spirit given to her gratuitously on the grounds of the suffering, the bloodletting, and the substitutionary curse-bearing of the Son of God, I see the meek and the quiet spirit.” It is a great price.
So, when you go into that home you sense that there’s only one pair of hands, and who wears them. You don’t have to be there three days to find out who’s calling the shots. If you’re there for half an hour, and you sense in this man there is this expression of sanctified, but real, aggressive, hands-on directive in the ordering of the affairs of that home. You sense in his wife that she is there almost as his shadow, an extension of his mind and will. When you’ve worked this way for years it’s spooky at times. You seem to be able to pick up the vibes of each other’s minds when you’re in other rooms in the house.
My wife and I at times have said, “Something’s going fishy here.” I’ll come down from the study and say, “Honey.” She says, “Yes? I think I know what you’re going to say to me.” Sure enough, she does. Why? Because though the relationship is one of submission and headship, it is a relationship fundamentally of spiritual, and in the truest sense psychological intimacy, constantly nurtured by communication and self-closure. Still, there is not a totally ironclad predictability. At times my wife will throw something at me way out at right field and I’ll say, “Honey, I never would have thought that!” She gets a twinkle in her eyes and says, “Well, I just want to keep you honest. I just want to keep life interesting.”
Notwithstanding, the principle, you see, is that in such a home there’s no question. Given all due diversity of temperament, some women are more bubbly, some more reserved. It’s not a matter of temperament! It’s a matter of a spiritual grace wrought in the texture of the soul, by the Holy Ghost.
It’s very interesting with the children. You see the little boys trying to do what dad does. If dad was the gentlemen who pulls back the chair for mom, he proudly goes around and pulls back the chair for his sister, because that’s what a man does. He treats a woman with the symbols of her dignity. He doesn’t demean her, because she’s the weaker vessel. He gives her honor, because she’s the weaker vessel.
I just found out something this week. I never bothered to ask, but it’s nice to know if someone should ask me. We’ve had so many weddings here. I’ve given away my two daughters. Do you know why the bride is always on the room’s left hand when they stand down there? Do you know why? I didn’t know why, but Reader’s Digest just helped me find out this week. In the days when warriors would at times take their brides by force in the towns that they conquered, taking them back to their own domiciles, they kept their right hand free in order to draw their sword and fend off the critters that might come and take the beautiful young women that were taken out of town. That was supposedly given as the real reason.
Whether that’s so or not, brethren, in all seriousness, do you see the principle? The word chivalry and the concepts of deference to women, honor to women, men standing when men enter a room, are things that are looked upon as social anachronisms in our day. No. They were symbols of masculinity and femininity that had percolated down into what we call innocuous social customs. It’s a tragedy! They’re well-nigh gone, because that which supported them and gave birth to them is gone. If we are to have godly family life reestablished brethren, sisters, we must have a profound sense of distinct masculinity and femininity displayed throughout the entire climate of our home. That means the kind of clothing that we ordinarily have in our homes, because an image is being assimilated and imitated.
Let me just touch very briefly on what again has been amplified in great measure by many of you men with your own people. As I say, in one sense, I would feel an element of embarrassment that I was insulting your spiritual intelligence by going back on such fundamental issues. Did not Peter do that when he said, “I tell you these things not because you don’t know them, and not because you aren’t practicing them, but I think it right to stir you up by way of remembrance”? (1 Peter 1:12-13.)
If we are to have the reestablishment of godly family life, then we must see that such is crowned by the impartation of godly discipline and instruction. The godly family life that ideally begins with the contracting of godly marriages, moves to the nurturing of godly husband-wife relationships, is augmented by creating godly parent-child dynamics—such godly family life is crowned by the impartation of godly discipline and instruction.
Here, of course, the water-shed text was read in your hearing. Ephesians 6:4, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them.” This is the totality of their God-given humanity. As fallen image-bearers, marred image-bearers, yes, “But nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. While the fathers have the primary administrative leadership in that impartation of godly discipline and instruction, mothers are the well-informed, cooperative aids in the task, as verses 1 and 2 clearly indicate. “Children obey your parents,” assuming that the mother is involved in the giving of directives and of instruction and correction. “Honor they father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise.”
Here, my brethren, the materials available to us in our day are shamefully profused. There is not an aspect of what it means to impart godly discipline and instruction that is not received more than adequate, exegetical, and applicatory treatment in all series of sermons, books, seminars, conferences, and retreats. You see, the problem with many of us now is not knowing. It’s the problem that James had to address. It’s being hearers only, and not doers. Because, we know if we’re to do what this text says—to nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord—we have got to make ourselves aware of what is involved in a full-orbed commitment, or a full-orbed character development in our sons and daughters.
What is involved in reasonable, physical culture? What is involved in mental discipline? What is involved in aesthetic cultivation? A host of other things that are involved in nurturing them. All that God has made them, with all of that potential, this is not something to which we can give a little attention once in awhile and hope everything will turn alright, because we have family worship, go to a Baptist church, homeschool them or send them to a Christian school. It’s a task that demands constant, wearisome vigilance. Constantly looking for the indications of character weaknesses and tendencies which you see if not corrected here at the point of the triangle there is only this much distance between a virtue and a vice in any given area, but you see out there, twenty years later.
I thank God for a mother who was always looking from the point in the triangle down the road to a thirty, forty, fifty year old man. Her words still ring in my ear. When I’m tempted to cheat on that next dimension of pushing an issue to the point where I could with real certainty nail down the significance of that word or phrase, and I’m tempted to back off, her words ring in my ear, “Son, the job worth doing is worth doing well. Wrap the cloth around your finger, and poke it in the corner when you scrub the floor. The scrub brush leaves that little bit unwashed. The floor is not scrubbed until the corner is clean.” No time? She didn’t have an automatic washer and drier! Never had a day of paid help! Bore eleven children! No time?
No will. That’s the problem. No will! Can you do this, women? If you’re honest—and if you’re not honest I challenge you to be—get a three by five card, put it by your telephone, and when you get on that phone mark the time; when you get off, mark it down. Total up how much time you’re yacking on the phone throughout the day. Then total up how much time you’ve sat with your sons and daughters working on facets of character development. Look the ugly reality square in the eye, and go down on your knees and cry to God for forgiveness.
You, men, get honest about how much time is frittered away that could be spent pouring over the wonderful legacy of stuff that has been reprinted, taken up out of the rubble of indifference, and brought forward in our day. There’s the trilogy of books that our Brother George McDearmon has helped to see the light of day, and the reprint of John James’ book on Female Piety. My wife has been reading sections of it to me. It’s profound and moving in its insights! Spend the time absorbing these things, and asking God for wisdom to know how to impart them to your sons and your daughters.
Dear people listen, if you think, if the Lord tarries, just because our kids sit under sound preaching, sound teaching, under catechized, homeschooled, and in a Christian school it’s all going to turn out alright, God have mercy if any of you are around long enough to see the fruit of what will happen in the next generation if we are not committed to pay the price to crown our godly family life with the kind of discipline and instruction that shows at least a measure of sensitivity, the full spectrum of concerns of the book of Proverbs. Solomon is concerned to instruct his son not just in a modicum of basic, biblical principles about knowing God and hating sin, but he instructs him in the full spectrum of the issues that he will face in life. He doesn’t assume he’ll just know how to do the right thing, doing what comes naturally.
Our vision for these days—surely brethren you would agree with me—it is that we would see the reestablishment of godly family life. I submit to you, if we are to see that with the blessing of God, and by the enablement of the Holy Spirit, then we must come to grips with these principles and many more that I have sought to set before you tonight. Such family life ideally begins with the contracting of godly marriages, is built upon the nurturing of godly husband-wife relationships, is augmented by creating godly parent-child dynamics, and is crowned with the impartation of godly discipline and instruction. When we hear those things we say, “Who is sufficient for these things?”
We can come back to Ephesians 5, “Be filled with the Spirit.” You can’t be filled with the Spirit unless you’re indwelt by the Spirit, and you can’t be indwelt by the Spirit while you’re yet an impenitent rebel against God. You who are parents and have the awesome privilege and frightening responsibility of the nurture of those lives, if there were no other reason for you to repent of living for yourself, loving your sin, and going to Christ to become a Christian, this were reason enough: lest you betray the souls of your own precious children.
I urge you, if you’re not in Christ, take the shortest route to get to Him. If you’re in Him, and I assume on good grounds—I believe that the majority of you here are—I urge you to be constantly filled with the Spirit. Do not grieve Him by unconfessed sin. Keep short accounts with God. Do not quench His influence by stiff-arming the arrows of His truth that have found you even tonight! Ask God to have mercy upon you. Find a secret place before you pillow your head, and have dealings with God. If the climate of your home is not that climate that we described with those dynamics, gather the family and tell them, “God has shown me! This is what our home is; this is what it ought to be. Daddy confesses his sin, and daddy’s committed to seeing a transformation.”
I close with this one simple anecdote. A number of you will be able to relate to it. It’s been very humbling and encouraging to hear how many of you have taken the series, and how to follow up the training of your children and used it in various ways in your own assemblies, and to meet people in conferences. The rest have indicated how God has used that.
One of the strange ways that God used it in our own assembly was with a couple that I’ve had counseling with over a number of years, on a number of occasions. There were some real tension in the relationship. It wasn’t open, wasn’t a scandalous, but was real to them, real to the progeny in the home, real to me. We reached an impasse. We sort of put in on the back burner for God to take the situation in His hand in His own way and time. Lo and behold, I was in one of the opening studies speaking about the climate of the home, that we ought to seek to create, one of love, warmth, and acceptance, as opposed to one of tension, bitterness, and rejection. Apparently God sent an arrow to the heart of that husband. That marriage was several decades old. He went home, and in my understanding he said something like this: “Honey, that was a description of our home. It’s not right. It’s got to stop, and by the grace of God it’s going to stop.” It has stopped.
Somebody had to come to the place where they said, “Enough is enough.” Are you in that place? I ask you pastors here, since the only requirement in 1 Timothy 3 that is amplified is ruling well his own house. “If a man rule not well his own house, how shall he take care the Church of God?”
Can you invite your people into your home, and could they go away saying, “I don’t know what it is, but the dynamics of that home is what a home ought to be!”
Could someone sit down with them and say, “Let me help you. Was it that in that home you sense a climate of principled love?”
They say, “That’s it!”
“Was it that in that home you sensed that there was a climate of submission to authority, but with respect among all?”
“That’s it!”
“Was it that in that home you sensed the man was a man, the boys were boys, the woman was a woman, and the girls were girls?”
“That’s it!”
Would they be able to say that of your home? You answer before God, but answer honestly. May the Lord help us, that we, His servants, would never, never think we can afford to coast, but by the grace of God be standard-bearers in the restoration of godly family life in our generation. Let us pray.
Our Father, we thank You that Your Word is a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our pathway. We pray that the principles and precepts of Your Word that we have together considered, may take deep root in all of our hearts, and taking root downward, O God, may it bear fruit upward. May there be repentance where repentance is in order. May there be renewed encouragement where that is in order. May there be confirmation where that is in order. Lord, use Your Word in all the ways that You know is needed in the hearts of Your people. Seal that Word, and may it bear fruit unto everlasting life. Thank you for this day. Thank you for one another. Thank you for Your mercy. Thank you that we’ve been privileged to meet in the peace and safety of this building. Thank you for all of Your mercies. Dismiss us now with Your blessing and Your grace resting upon us and working mightily in us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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