The authority of the Lord Jesus Christ is the foundation for God's order in the family, with husbands biblically designated as the head, mirroring Christ's headship over the church. It draws from Genesis 2-3 and Ephesians 5 to explain that this headship is not about being a boss but about loving, responsible leadership, requiring husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and wives to be subject to their husbands. The message emphasizes that rebellion against this God-ordained structure leads to societal breakdown and personal difficulty, urging both husbands and wives to embrace their God-given roles with unselfishness and mutual respect. Ultimately, a Christian home can find happiness and spiritual light by adhering to God's order, shutting out the world, and prioritizing prayer and scripture together.
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Thank you very much, Steve. We want to welcome each one to our annual Bible conference today. And we want also to invite everyone of our radio audience to attend this Bible conference. Our morning session will continue till twelve, and then a session this afternoon from three o'clock until five and we trust that you can be with us. You'll find the Gospel Chapel one block south of Glen Avenue between Bush-Wetnell and South St. Albans Street and we hope that you can come and be with us today.
Our first speaker now is our brother Mr. John Walden who comes to us from Colorado Springs in Colorado. Brother Walden is the director of the Christian Home for Children there. We've had the privilege of hearing a number of his messages on the Book of Romans on KTSC. And so we turn the first part of our meeting now over to our brother John Watson. John. Thank you, Brother Bob. My part of this conference will be concerned with the subject of the authority of the Lord. We live in lawless days. In fact, we're told in First John chapter three and verse four that sin is lawlessness.
The revised version calls it, sin is lawlessness. God is sovereign. The Lord Jesus Christ has a right to be Lord. And if you have accepted him, you have accepted him as Savior and Lord. If I shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, or Jesus as Lord, and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. So we owe him our allegiance and we owe him our obedience. I want to talk to you this morning about God's authority in the family.
From Genesis chapter two, I read at verse eighteen, and the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found in help neat for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh and stead thereof, and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. But then sin came into the world. The third chapter of Genesis describes the fall of man, the deception of the woman, and the deliberate sin of the man. He was not deceived.
We're told by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And so death has passed upon all men, because that all have sinned. And after he had told the serpent, Satan, what his punishment would be, in the third chapter in verse sixteen he said unto the woman, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband. That is, your desires, your wishes shall be subject to your husband. and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearken unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.
Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. I believe that all authority comes from God. I believe this is true of human authority in government. The powers that be are ordained of God. I believe this is true in the family. I believe that God placed man at the head of the family, and I believe that he made parents responsible for the children and that he made it mandatory that children should be subject to their parents. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I believe these things long before Dr.
Spock was ever heard of or any of the rest of his tribe. And now even psychologists are beginning to think that we've been on the wrong track and we're reaping the fruit of this now in a generation of rebels. I do not mean by that that all of that generation are rebels. Thank God for young people who are present here this morning at this conference. Thank God for all young people who want to be subject to the authority of God. But they are the exception rather than the rule of our day. And you know that as well as I did. What's going on on the campuses right now? indicates to us that we have raised a generation of rebels who do not want to be subject to any kind of authority.
I'm not saying that they don't have a legitimate complaint. I'm not saying that they ought not to be heard. But I am saying that their methods indicate that they are lawless. And lawlessness is sin. Now, God has himself originated the family. This was His plan. This is patterned after the divine organization of things, for that matter, because God Himself is a Father. And the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is a Son. They were eternally Father and Son. This had nothing to do with generation. There was never a time when the Lord Jesus began to be.
He is the eternal Son of the eternal Father. This is the teaching of the Word of God. And then we're told that every family in heaven and earth is named for Him, though that God Himself has set not only the human race, but even the heavenly beings in family. This is God's plan. Now, in planning the family, it was God's way to put at the head of the family one person. That person is the husband and father in each individual family. I have been in children's work for a third of a century.
My wife and I operate a home for children, which we founded. And I work with the welfare people a great deal. And in Denver, Colorado, we have the men who pioneer juvenile courts. The first juvenile court in the United States was in Denver, Colorado. They're not quite common. We found out that we can handle juveniles better in a separate court. One of the men in Denver, who is connected with our juvenile court system there, was very concerned about juvenile delinquency in the United States. He wondered, why is it that we have such problems here, with all of the advantages that we had?
What's wrong? And many began to make a study of the various countries and their comparative problems. He found out that the country that has the least juvenile delinquency in the entire Western world was Italy. And he became curious about why this was, and he went over to Italy and spent a summer there. And he tried to get among the people, and when he came back, he wrote an article on this, which was published in papers, perhaps you saw it, published across the United States. The consensus of his findings was this. The reason why they have so little juvenile delinquency in Italy is that there is no question in anybody's mind in Italy about who is the head of the family.
Papa is the one that they obey, and he may be an absolutely worthless gate, but the mother and the family, his wife, never says one word against him, and the children never question his authority. He is given absolute authority. And this is quite a challenge to a man because they have men there who are like men here who are not what they ought to be. But nevertheless, whatever a man is in Italy, he is the absolute sovereign in his own home. And consequently, they have had almost no juvenile problems there. What's the situation in the United States? Everything.
The movies. The comic strips. The jokes. Everything is aimed at putting down the father in the United States. He is a bumbling second raider. The buying in the United States is entirely in the hands of women. They spend eighty percent of the money in the United States, and money is power. In many cases, they are the chief wage earner. We have more working mothers in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Now, I certainly would be the last one to criticize any woman who is doing her best to make a living for her family or who needs to work because of illness or some other reason.
I'm not talking about that situation. Now, I'm talking about this covetousness that has moved the woman out of the home, into commerce, so that the family is more dependent upon her earning oftentimes than on the fathers. and the children are left to shift for themselves. The breakdown of the family in the United States signals the breakdown of our country. What the home is, is what the church will be, and what the nation will be. And you know this as well as I did. Now let's face up to it a little bit. Let's see what are the responsibilities of headship. We're told in the fourth chapter, the fifth chapter of Ephesians, from which I would like to read a little bit just now, We're told that God's order is that the wife should be in subjection to her husband and that the husband should be most loving to the wife.
Instead of you husband saying, well, if my wife were subject, I could love her, and you wives saying, if my husband was loving, I could be subject to him, why don't each one of you find out what your own responsibility is and face up to it and ask yourself honestly, am I doing what God expects me to do in my own family? And you young people, please think this thing through before you get married. Girls don't marry a man that you can't be subject to. And fellows, don't marry a girl that you can't love as Christ loved the church. Don't just get moon-struck. Don't just let the physical chemistry lead you into some kind of a union.
Find out whether you can really take this place this divinely given place. This is what he said. Wives, verse twenty-two of Ephesians five. Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior or preserver of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands as long as they agree. No, that isn't what it said. That was the reverse vision. Let me give you what it says in the Scripture. Be subject to their own husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. Either love of his wife, love of himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherishes it, even as the Lord the Church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that you reverence her husband. Now just as the bride for Adam was taken from his wounded side, so the bride for Christ, the Church, is the product of his suffering and of his wounded side. Somebody has said that God took the bone from the side of Adam, not from his head, lest she should reign over him, and not from his feet, lest he should trample her under feet, but from his side, so that she might be next to his heart and under the protection of his arm.
Now, that isn't just sentiment. That's exactly what God intended. And this is exactly what happened in his own giving of his life for his bride, the church. you and I have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and we belong to him and we who make up the church and by that I do not mean an organization but the body of Christ composed of all true believers we are to be subject to Christ he has the place of headship I want to talk about this later on in the conference now this is the picture to us of what ought to be in the family the husband has a responsibility to be as loving and careful of his wife's welfare as Christ is of the Church.
And the wife has a responsibility to be as subject and as obedient as the Church is to be to Christ. And you can't get around this. This is God's order. Any rejection of this, any turning away from this, is going to result in difficulty. So you see the responsibility of headship then entails, first of all, the responsibility of love. It's not lordship. It's not in the sense of being the boss in the family. It's in the sense of taking the place of leadership. Now we're told in First Timothy chapter three that an elder must be one who has his own family in subjection.
And he must be one who rulers well his own household. Not to rule here doesn't mean to ruin, but to rule simply means to guide and to take the place of leadership. There are many husbands who are not the head in their own families because they will not take that place. I remember speaking on this one time and the lady came to me afterward and said with tears in her eyes, she said, I wish my husband would take the place of leadership in our family. But he won't do it. He won't even correct the children. He says to me, you take care of that. He isn't interested in taking the place of leadership. He doesn't even take out the Bible and read the scriptures and pray with the family.
I have to do the whole thing. And I said, well, my dear sister, I'm certainly not condemning you. That's a failure on his part. And I have found that most wives are happy when their husbands take the place of leadership. They are responsible to do it. And God will never bless the family where this is not done. It is not transferable. It is not something... that you can pass on to your wife. You must take the place of responsible leadership in your family. And don't say that you send your children to Sunday school. You don't send children anywhere. You think you're doing so, but you lead your children whatever direction you're going.
And if you are neglecting the things of God, you can expect the same thing to happen in your family. It may happen in spite of your example, but anyway, this is what you can expect if you neglect to do what you ought to do. Now as to the control of children, God has said, under the law, and you'll find this in the book of Deuteronomy, if you care to read it in the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, beginning at verse eighteen, he tells us that if a son was rebellious and disobedient, under the law, this is now, under the law of Moses, then the parents were to bring this son to the judges and to say, This son of ours is rebellious.
He is a drunkard. He is a glutton. He is whatever is wrong with him. And then it says, they shall stone him with stones. I know there are a lot of people who are going to scringe at this very thought. They're going to say, oh, dear me, you don't think we ought to... No, I don't think you ought to do that. I'm not suggesting that we make a capital punishment at all. I mean, for this particular scene. But I am saying this is what happened under the law. This shows how God hates rebellion. Let me tell you something, young people. As long as you're going to stay under Dad's roof and eat his beans, you do what he tells you to do. That's God's order.
When you're there in that home, you do what you're told to do, and you'll be happier, and so will everybody else involved. After all, you haven't had the experience. to make the decisions yourself, how do you know what are the right rules? You've had no chance to try these things out. You have your ideas, of course. But those ideas are very immature, just as all the rest of your emotional stability is immature, and you need to learn these things from experience. And you'll find that your dad and mother are not asking anything very unreasonable of you at all when they ask you to do what you're told. This was questioned constantly with me, and in the last thirty years I've seen the thing grow until I have more rebels to contend with now than I ever had before.
But we've always had this problem. I remember many years ago talking to some of the boys at the home about obedience, telling them some of the things that I want it done. Then I said, do you have any questions? And one little fellow, about twelve or thirteen years old, said, yes, I want to know why do we have some mind at all. Well, he asked me, and I told him. I made it very plain to him why he had to do it. I said, I'll be glad to explain to you every one of my rules. But you're going to do what I tell you to do, whether you understand it or not, because this is God's order. God's order is that the children should be subject to the parent. In the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter six, in verse one, we are told, children obey your parent in the Lord, for this is right.
And then he goes on to say, that this is the first commandment with promise. Under the law God said, Honor thy father and mother, that it may be well with thee that thou mayest live long upon the earth which the Lord thy God has given thee. And so it is God's order that the child should be in subjection and obedience to his own parents. What he does after he leaves the home is not the responsibility of the parents. but they are responsible so long as he is there to see that he does what he is told. And I have found that teenagers are really grateful to know where the fences are. They may not always say it out loud, but they do want to know what is expected of them, and they do feel that parents who want to know where they are at night are parents who care, and that parents who don't say anything about what time they get in at night.
our parents who really don't care very much about what happens to them. Recently there was a write-up in Life magazine about a colony of hippies in one of the islands off the shore of Greece and one of the young men there was a son of a doctor in the United States and he said, I wanted all the time I was through my teen years to talk to my dad. I needed his advice and help and every time I came to him to see him He either reached for his billfold or his checkbook to give me some money to get rid of him and to get me out of his presence so he could go ahead with what he wanted to do. He said, my dad told me that I ought not to drink, and he had a bar set up in his basement.
And my mother said, don't experiment with drugs. And you ought to see her at medicine cabinet. It's a miniature drug store. She has to take pills to get her started in the morning and pills to keep her going in the day and pills to drop her into bed at night. And she says to me, don't tamper with drugs. So he said, what am I to expect? I wanted the help of my parents, but they never had any time to give to me. Now we have a responsibility to see that our children do what they're told. If you want to read a good book on the guidance of children, don't read Spot. Read the book of Proverbs. Read the book of Proverbs. And you'll find out that the book of Proverbs will give you all you need to know, about the care and feeding of children.
You'll find out that this book will tell you exactly how you ought to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Remember the example of the Lord Jesus himself. Our Savior was the Son of God with divine wisdom because He never ceased to be God when He became man, and yet the Lord Jesus, as a child, although He was able to answer as well as to ask questions, and astounded the doctors in the temple. Still when his father and mother, rather his mother and his foster father, for Joseph was not his actual father, but when they came and got him to take him back down to Nazareth, it says he went with them to Nazareth and was subject unto them.
Now they were just peasant people. They were not well educated. I'm sure that they were just very human. I'm sure that they didn't always know the right answers, and I'm sure that they didn't know anywhere near as much as Jesus himself knew, but he went down with them and was totally subject to them. And this is our example, and young people will do well to heed this. We're told in First Samuel chapter fifteen, and I think it's about the twenty-third verse, that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. God hates rebellion, whether it be the rebellion of a wife against her husband or whether it be the rebellion of children against the parents.
God hates rebellion. It's an indication of the sin of the human heart. The original rebel was the devil himself. He rebelled against God and then the next rebel was Adam and he rebelled against God. Now Adam's rebellion came in his failing to listen to the voice of God and his listening to the voice of his wife. This is not to say that a husband should never listen to his wife, but he certainly should not listen to his wife if his wife's advice is contrary to the advice of the Word of God. And that's what Adam did. He did what his wife wanted him to do instead of doing what God had told him to do, and he became the second rebel.
And the human race has been going in that direction ever since. The Antichrist, who is going to be revealed after the church is taken home to heaven, at the beginning of the Great Tribulation period, the Antichrist is called the man of sin. And the word for sin there in II Thessalonians chapter two is the word for rebellion. So the Antichrist is literally the man of rebellion. And the world is going to be filled with rebellion such as we have never seen once the church is taken away, taken home to heaven. I'd just like to say a little bit about how to avoid these family problems because they're difficult. We know they are, and I don't claim to be an authority.
They say an expert is just an ordinary fellow away from home, and so I suppose in that sense I qualify as an expert, but only in that sense. I can tell you that having been married for thirty-eight years, I certainly do not know all the answers, but I have been most fortunate, and I am thankful for it. that God gave to me a wife who has been willing to accept the place of subordination in the family. She had taught school for ten years before we were married, and I was manager of a business. We weren't kids, so you got married a little later than most people. And I knew that we better talk a few of these things out.
So whenever I had opportunity to visit her and talk to her, I discussed with her what are we going to do now when we're married about this problem and that problem. Her sister, who was married at eighteen and still had stars in her eyes a year later, said to her, I don't think you ought to marry that man. She said, why not? Well, she said, you argue with him too much. And the fact that you argue now means that you're going to have a terrible time after you're married. why she said I was married to my husband for a year before I knew he had any faults. And my wife just threw her head back and laughed at that, you know. She said, well, God has plenty of them. And I think I know most of them.
But she said, we're going to talk these things out now rather than afterward. And this is exactly what we did. I remember we discussed one night about what are we going to do if we come to the point where we cannot possibly agree. I said, I don't want to be the boss and I certainly don't want you to be. But what are we going to do when we can't agree on something after we're married? And she swallowed it a couple of times and said, Well, then we'll do it your way. And she has stuck by that for thirty-eight years, for which I am profoundly thankful. And that's God's order. It's not a matter of who is the boss and the family at all. It's a matter of headship. When God created man, he made it to be this way.
He made the first man to be the head of the first family. And he has never changed this at all. This is reiterated often through the Scriptures. Now, if you're willing to do this, if you're willing to obey God's word, you can save yourself all kinds of trouble and difficulty. I'd like to suggest, too, that if you want to make this work in your own family, that you learn something about unselfish and loving care. You know, the human race is inherently selfish. All sin is really selfishness at base. Why is it that the people steal?
Because they selfishly want what belongs to other people. Well, there are two sins, covetousness and stealing. Why is it that people commit sexual immorality? Because they are profoundly selfish. Why is it that people murder? Because somebody is in the road. And that's why, I was very much surprised to read the other day, This is why that eighty percent of the murders in the United States take place within the family. It's because of the selfishness of the human race. We do not like to have anybody get in our way and hinder our own selfish plan. And because this is true, sin is rampant in our country because our country is so selfish.
If you will be honest in the presence of God, you husbands, you may find out that you are very selfish. What you think is a dog's life is just simply that you want to eat all you can and then sit around and growl. You are complaining because you are not given your rightful place and you're not willing to take the responsibilities of your rightful place. and some of your wives are having problems because you are not willing to be subject to your husband. One lady said to me, she was a Christian, she said to me, now look, the Bible says that if a wife is to learn anything, she's to ask her husband in whole.
Now she said, what sense would that make? You know that my husband doesn't know half as much about the Bible as I do. What good would it do to ask him anything? I said, I didn't write the Bible and I'm not about to change it. If God says that's what you're to do, why don't you try it? it might make him steady. And a gleam came into her eyes, and I knew that her husband was in for trouble right then. She said, I'm going to do that very thing. And so she did. And the first question that she asked him, he said, well, I don't know anything about the Bible. Well, she said, the Bible says that I'm supposed to ask you. He said, is that in the Bible? And she showed it to him. So she said to him, it's up to you to find the answer for me.
So he got his Bible after dinner that evening and he went over to a Christian neighbor's house and he said, I'm on the spot. He said, my wife asked me a question and showed me in the Bible and I'm supposed to answer. And you have to help me to find the answer. So he did help him to find the answer and he came back and gave the answer to his wife. The next night she had another one for him. The poor fellow didn't get much done for about a year except running back and forth and getting answers for his inquisitive wife. But do you know what it did? It developed him into a Bible soon. You think God's ways don't work? Why don't you try them? If your husband is not taking his place at the head of the house, why don't you say to him, gently, of course, but firmly, this is your responsibility, after all, because the Bible says so, and I want to leave it in your hands.
And you may be surprised at how loving he becomes. when he suddenly finds himself in his proper place in that family. If you and I would do exactly what the Lord tells us to do, we might save ourselves a great deal of trouble. Now, I'd like to suggest, too, that the Christian home, the Christian family can be a much happier one if we learn to shut the world out. You need to have some time alone with your own family. I think sometimes Christians are so busy that we neglect our family. This is what is said in the first chapter of the Song of Solomon. I was busy tending other people's gardens, and I let my own grow up in weeds.
Maybe you need to spend some time with your family. And I don't mean watching the boot tube either. I mean spending some time over the Word of God. I mean getting into the Scriptures with your family. I don't make it endless. Don't bore your children. But read it in an interesting way. and shorten them so that their attention span will grasp it and have prayer with your family. I found that very few Christian couples are praying together. And this is plainly taught in the Bible that your prayer, plural, be not hindered. My wife and I have found that this has been one of the most helpful things that we've ever done to pray together.
We have found that when we pray together, I mean literally, allowed each of us praying together, that you can't stay mad at each other and that furthermore you hear a great deal that you would never hear any other way because you have to be honest when you get into the presence of God and when you hear your wife pray you may learn some things about her feelings and about her inner being that you don't know and vice versa and if you will read and pray with your family you will be able to shut the world out. You remember that when the plagues came upon Egypt in the book of Exodus, one of these plagues mentioned in the tenth chapter was the plague of darkness.
But it says in the twenty-third version of Exodus chapter ten that the children of Israel have light in their dwellings. Now that was the original electric light with no wiring. God saw to us that there was light inside of every Israelites' dwelling when there was total darkness, a total blackout in the land of Egypt. Well, you and I live in spiritual Egypt today, and there is a total blackout. But God has promised us that in Christian homes there will be light in our dwelling. And our business, then, is to obey that light and to recognize the authority of God.
And this... delegated authority which he has given to the father as the head of the family and to the parents as being responsible for the children. And the Lord bless these few thoughts to us.