The biblical concept of family, encompassing both the domestic unit and the assembly of believers. Drawing from John 13:34-35, it highlights Jesus' new commandment to love one another as a provision for unity, particularly in the absence of Christ. The message contrasts worldly views of marriage and family with a biblical perspective, stressing loyalty, mutual support, and the permanence of marriage, urging against divorce as an easy alternative. It also explores the roles of husbands and wives, emphasizing spiritual leadership and voluntary submission, and encourages parents to cultivate an expectation of their children following the Lord.
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Oh, for the joy of being the fourth speaker on a hot Saturday afternoon. Such joy is excelled only by the patience and endurance of the audience. I think if anybody is a likely candidate for assassination, it would be the fourth speaker. But a simpler course would be to fall asleep, at least a little more happy for my family. I'm reminded of, this is the time of afternoon when a lot of people get drowsy, I'm reminded of the preacher that was a little annoyed by somebody nodding off in his audience, and he said, Deacon, Deacon, wake up that man, wake up that man, Deacon. And the Deacon says, you wake him up, preacher, you put him to sleep.
So if I can keep you awake for the next few minutes, I'll count that a privilege, and if I can put you to sleep, I'll know that I've ministered to you in a different way. And I won't be offended. whether you wake or sleep. But we're going to start out with, or go back to John chapter thirteen. And in case any of you were not in the morning session, I would like to say that we're talking about the family, two families, the domestic family, mom, dad, and the kids, and the assembly family. And we use as a text that beautiful verse in Psalm The Lord set us a solitary in families.
The ministry of our Lord to put us into families. And He puts us into two families. We have a family that we started out with. Most of this, sometimes folks don't have a family. He puts us into an assembly family as well. And that's a great privilege for those that have no family. I met a young Cuban fellow down in San Diego. where they're doing such a tremendous work among refugees and where the Laurel Bible Chapel is people in Laurel Bible Chapel have sponsored in a whole bunch of Cubans from Fort Chaffee the rejected men men that had no families or left them back in Cuba and maybe they were criminals and maybe not and nobody would admit anything but they just had nobody and dangerous some of them perhaps and very risky thing but a blessed ministry and one of those young fellas been raised on the streets of Cuba of Havana as an orphan no family just nobody to bring him up you know just survive by stealing and he got there in Fort Chaffee and those missionaries that had come back from South America went out there and sponsored him and moved him to San Diego and ministered the word of God to him and he got converted and he was just so happy about that He
liked that song, I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God. First time in his life he had a family. So even if you are so unfortunate as not to have an earthly family that has had any meaning to you, you can be a part of the family of God. The Lord delights to put people into families. And we noticed in John chapter thirteen that the Lord Jesus, on the night before he died, verse thirty three, gathered his disciples around him and he said, Little children, yet a little while I am with you, you shall seek me. And as I said unto the Jews, where I go, you cannot come. So now I say to you, a new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another, that you love one another.
And this is verses famous, as I said, it's always treated as a command or to love one another. But I like to look at this verse, not so much as a commandment, but a provision. The Lord Jesus sets up this family relationship the night before he dies by saying, little children, calls them as children. Doesn't do that in other places. But he does it here. Little children. That makes them brothers. And he says, I'm going away. I'm going away. But I'm not going to leave you alone. You have each other. Now, I've been the tie that binds. You've all been loyal to me, but you haven't been loyal to each other. You've all related to me, but you've been rivals of each other. And we use the illustration of President Reagan's cabinet, which has had a great deal of internal dissension from his high-ranking officers rivaling each other until perhaps George Shultz came along, and maybe that's going to change the picture.
The Lord says, you've been like that. Politicians angling for position in my cabinet. But now I want you to be like a family, like brothers, that belong to each other and in the loss of your father, I'm your father here, he's saying little children. In the loss of your father, now you brothers, you stand together as brothers. Now, grown men don't express their love one to another by saying gushy things to each other. I don't think I've ever gone up to my brother and say, brother, I love you. And he's never said that to me, and there are people that find that rather easy to do. And people, perhaps in the younger generations, are finding that a lot easier than men of my age.
And most of you fellas my age might find it very difficult to go to a fellow Christian, another brother in the assembly, and say, brother, I really love you. And we were raised maybe in a little different culture, and we find that rather difficult. But love is expressed among grown men much more in loyalty. Loyalty. If your brother's in business, if he's a farmer and you're a farmer, you're pretty protective of him. You're not competing with him. You maybe compete with some man down the road, but you don't compete with your brother. And if he gets in trouble, you go to his rescue. And if you get in trouble, he comes to your rescue. If you get in financial difficulties, he doesn't try to put you under financially, but he'll try to bail you out. And so the love relationship between brothers is expressed by this loyalty.
this loyalty, this supporting, this supportive relationship, this cooperative mutual relationship. We have a family relationship and we want to see our brothers and sisters and members of our family move ahead. You see that in the business world. McDonald and sons, retail clothing or something. You know, here's a father and he draws his sons into the business and he's not threatened by his sons being in the business. They're not his competitors. He wants to get them going. There's a loyalty there, a family loyalty. And then you'll see somewhere else Franklin and the Franklin brothers, maybe they produce tractors or something, you know, and brothers go into business together and try to avoid, generally speaking, a competitiveness between them.
Now, brothers have fights and difficulties, but you know what I mean by that loyalty, that standing together. And I think that this is a concept that we need to have of the assembly. The assembly is a family. The Lord intended it to be that way. We stand together. We don't compete with each other. There's a loyalty and a unity in the local assembly, just as there is in the domestic family. And that means that you don't just walk out on a family because you get offended. Now, many Christians don't have this concept of the assembly. I'm trying to build a concept. Doctrinally, we're all right. We all know what the assembly is.
And doctrinally, we all know what the family is. But we find when it comes to practical realities of things, what we know doctrinally doesn't get deep down into our hearts and doesn't affect our thinking. And a concept is not just thinking on the surface, but it's a deep-rooted understanding of a thing that affects your behavior. We'll get to that when it comes to marriage. That obviously many people today don't have a very biblical concept of marriage, and that's why marriages break up so easy. And in the local assembly, people get offended, and maybe I say something wrong, and they get mad at me, well, I'll go somewhere else.
And just like that, I never say to my brother, I won't be your brother anymore, because I don't like what you did. I'm going to join another family. You just don't do that. You can't anyway. And that's the way it is. It should be in the family of God. We just don't do that. Now, of course, we do make a big change of families when we get saved. I left the church that I was raised in, because it wasn't a church where the gospel was preached and where the family relationship of born-again Christians was. When you get saved, you change families. But after that, you don't just keep on changing families. They get a little term that sometimes they use in Wheaton. Some people will get involved with a local church and stay with it, and other people become church hoppers and just go from place to place.
And when you get outside the circle of assemblies, as you and I know them, you find that the concept of the local church is even weaker. We have our problems with it. But people in other evangelical circles probably have a less biblical, deep-rooted concept of the church because of the fact that most other churches, higher ministers... And people very often relate to the church in terms of the minister. And they think of the church as an audience where you go to hear the preacher. And if they change preachers and you don't like that preacher, then you go pick another church. Especially a problem in big metropolitan areas where there's all kinds of choices. Not so much maybe a problem in smaller cities.
But I know I find a lot of my friends in other evangelical circles beside assemblies, they really conceive of the church as an audience. I remember years ago saying to a woman in New Jersey when I lived there, I said, what church do you go to? And she said, I go to such and such a church. He's a very good man. Now, grammatically, you see, that's not sound. I'm a magazine editor, you know, I think in terms of words and grammar. I go to such and such a church. He's a very fine teacher. He, a church, no, no. She left out a sentence, you know. It was just understood. I go to such and such a church. The pastor is Reverend so-and-so. He's a very fine teacher.
Now, she just left that phrase out, that middle sentence. I go to such and such a church. He's a very fine teacher. Very fine man, whatever it was she said. And I've watched that and I've seen that that is the concept of that countless evangelical Christians have of the church. It is an auditorium or an audience where you go to listen to the preacher and you talk to people outside of assembly circles and you say what church you go to and you'll sometimes get an answer like that and you'll realize that the person's not telling you what their church is, they're telling you who their preacher is and why they like him. Now that's a concept that we're not as vulnerable to in assemblies because we don't tend to have a hired minister.
We may have resident workers that stay with the church, but you don't go by an assembly and see on the board in the front, so-and-so is the pastor, you know, the name under the giving of prominence to a preacher's name is much less in assemblies than it is in other churches. But we still have to wrestle, I think, with this concept of the assembly being a family. A family that you don't walk out on just because you don't like what some brother says or because you have a little tiff with somebody. And then when you bring that over into the field of marriage, into the field of the domestic family, see, it's the same principle. And these messages in mind may get a little confusing because I'm going to keep jumping back and forth between the assembly family and the domestic family.
And one reason I'm doing that is deliberate. because I want to build that concept that the local church is like the family at home. And I found that many of the principles of how you operate a family are the principles of how you operate a church. And sometimes we want to know how things should be done in a local church and we relate it to the family and we find the answer. We'll get to some of those things as we go along here. But let me talk about this matter of loyalty as it relates to the domestic family think back to the book of Genesis or maybe let's go to Ephesians chapter five that would be a good a good passage to look at we get the same thing in Ephesians five verse thirty For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.
For this cause, now that begins a quotation from Genesis two. Not because we are members of his body, but Paul is quoting Genesis. And for this cause, that is because Eve was made from the rib of Adam. For that reason, because Eve was made for the rib of Adam, the words for this cause are a part of the quotation from Genesis. 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 one flesh now I I find that a rather confusing passage and rather difficult to explain and I may not have it exactly right but I want to try to explain it to you as I understand it Adam and Eve were one flesh not because they were married but because of creation She was literally made from the body of Adam.
And as such, they were one flesh that is even more than the relationship between brothers. Now, my brother and I have the same parents. And so we have, in our bodies, we have some genes or chromosomes that we got from our father and some from our mother and some from our grandfather and grandmother and so forth. My sister has red hair and my mother had red hair, but I don't have red hair. But, you know, we're Scandinavians and none of us are blonde. But when I get a daughter, she turned out to be a blonde. So that's got to go back along the line somewhere. And there's a relationship in generation that comes along, but it's mixed.
Because I don't have the same chromosome structure in my cells as my brother does or my sister does. Nor as my mother did. And yet, when a child is raised, it comes to life in the mother's body and grows to a place of birth in the mother's body, there's certainly a physical relationship between mother and child. But yet their chromosome structure is not the same. But when you come to Adam and Eve... They had the exact same cell structure. They were one flesh in a way that even a mother and a child aren't. Now, as I see it, what the Apostle is saying here is that in marriage, God views the original relationship of one flesh as being restored.
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and be joined unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. In marriage, even though it's not true physically, it's not physically true that my wife and I are one flesh, and yet it's spiritually true. God sees us as being so close together as Adam to Eve, rather than as mother to child. I am closer to my wife in the sight of God. The family relationship is stronger in the sight of God, and it should be in my sight, than my family relationship to my mother or father or brothers or sisters. And for that reason, a man leaves mother and father and brothers and sisters and is joined to his wife. Now, that is not the thinking of the world.
And you know what happens. I think of a case very close to us in relationships, a young woman who is now living with her third husband, twice divorced. And the other two husbands, both of whom I'm known, they're gone, they're out of the picture. I'll never see them again, probably. But the lady and her parents, through the various trials she's been through, her parents, who are very close to my wife and I, she's always been in contact with them. She's never left her mom and dad. They've stood her through all the marriage problems she's gone through. They've stood with her through all these problems, see. And I think this is the concept that you have in most worldly people, that the ties to mom and dad, they never get broken.
But you can go and break your marriage ties. Go and get divorced and marry somebody else and get divorced again and marry somebody else. That's the way the world is thinking. The world does not think family in relationship to marriage, not permanent family. And what I'm saying to you is that if we think biblically about marriage, then we will have to build into our thinking, deep into our thinking, deep into our hearts, the concept that divorce is not an alternative to problems in marriage. Divorce is not an alternative. I leave my father and mother and I'm joined in my life. And when I have problems in my family, divorce is not one of the possible solutions.
Now, divorce has become so easy in this country, so easy that divorce is the number one solution lots of times. Well, we'll try a counselor, but if that doesn't work, we'll break it up. See? And if you rule it out, If you rule it out in your thinking, divorce is not an alternative. All right, what are the alternatives? Well, we can go to the pastor for help. Well, we can talk to some of the elders. Well, we can sit down and try to talk things out ourselves. Well, we'll have to find some other solution, but divorce is not one of them. Then your marriage has a chance to survive and be happy. But when divorce is such an easy alternative, that's the way out that people take. Now, it's inevitable in talking to such a large audience.
that there will be people here who have been through the divorce route and perhaps remarriage. And when I say these things, they might be very painful to you. And I'm sorry about that. It's not my intention to look at the past in this message, to pass judgment on anybody, to tell you how you should have done it. I'm looking at the future. And if you've been through the trials of divorce, you probably know better than anybody else here that it is no matter how necessary it might have seen that it's still a very painful and devastating process. And all I say is this, start where you are now. And if you're in a second marriage, then look at this second marriage in terms of divorce is not an alternative.
And this time I'm going to think it through biblically and have that in mind. Now, I grant you also that it takes two people to have that kind of thinking. And if only one person has it, then inevitably situations will come up and divorce will happen anyway. It's got to be in the thinking of both people. Now, young people, when you come to the matter of marriage, get this thinking in your mind right from the beginning. Marriage is permanent. Listen to those vows when you go to a wedding and hear what they are and realize that the world makes a mockery of the marriage contract. If I go down to buy something from you, will you sell a...
one of you, brethren, sells tractors. And I go down to buy a tractor, and I sign a contract to pay for that tractor. And then I decide after I've used it and worn it out and banged it up, that I don't want to pay for it. And I'm just going to not pay anymore. And I tell you, I want to break the contract. Well, you can take me to court on that. I signed my name. I signed a contract. I made a down payment. And I can't get out of it that easy. When you come to marriage, people do three things. They make public vows in the presence of witnesses who sign their names. They make vows in public. And they sign their names.
This is not so conspicuous in the United States where the marriage certificate is signed maybe the night before at the rehearsal, but in Canada, the marriage certificate is signed during the wedding ceremony. They call it signing the register, and it's an integral part of the marriage ceremony. When after the bride and groom have said their vows, they may go around into the back room and they sign their names on the marriage certificate or the church register or whatever it is, and then they come back out again. It's an integral part of making a legal binding contract. And then they pass the rings. What token do you give that you will keep this covenant and perform these vows? If it's a double ring ceremony, you say that to both the bride and the groom, and they both give a ring.
If it's a single ring ceremony, as used to be common, you say to the fellow, what token do you give that you will keep this covenant? And you say to the girl, do you receive this token in pledge that you will keep this covenant? So you pass a token, you know, like a down payment or something. And a triple bond is established in a wedding, taking a vows publicly in the presence of witnesses, signing your name, and passing an official, a token of the pledges that have been made. And yet that contract in our society is hardly binding at all. Much less binding than the signature to buy a tractor. But that's not biblical thinking. And when you come to the matter of marriage, you make sure that it's in your understanding, in your mind, that marriage is permanent.
And divorce is not an alternative. And that you're not going to opt out. You're not going to make a trial marriage or something like that. And if it doesn't work, go somewhere else. Because that's defying the Word of God and the ways of God. Now it'll make you a little more cautious about getting married. Make you a little more cautious. And young ladies and young men, if you find that your parents are very unhappy about the partner that you're getting serious with, then don't rebel against your parents, but pay attention and at least find out why. My twenty-six-year-old daughter got married last month. She got married to a fellow in Eastern Canada. He called me long distance to ask permission to marry my daughter. And she's twenty-six years old.
She doesn't need her father's permission to get married. Not according to our laws, she doesn't. But you know, it's a rather nice thing. Some of those old-fashioned things are carried out like that. And the father's blessing is on the marriage. and you know if the father says to the fella i've got some objections about this some reasons why i think you shouldn't marry her if he's smart he'll listen and if the girl is smart she'll pay attention and girls listen to your mothers mothers have a way of seeing through young fellas that even fathers don't have a mother can spot a bad marriage partner for her daughter a lot easier than the father can spot it.
My wife said to me something about a young man that was interested a while back in one of my daughters. And I hadn't spotted it at all. But I had to think about it. I realized she was right. And I was sort of glad that it was somebody else that called me or whatever the case may be. So your parents have some experience with human personality that you don't have. And I'm not saying that if Daddy says no, that you have to say to the fella, nope, not going to marry you. You're an adult. You've got to make your own decisions in life. But if Daddy says no, or if the elders of the church say, wait a minute, hold on, then I would reevaluate the whole thing.
I would sit down with the person that objects, and I would say, please help me understand what the objection is. and and let me talk it over with you and see if i can understand it and certainly if nothing else reevaluate the reasons they give you and see if maybe they're right and if you're uncertain hold off a little while because you're you're about to enter into a family relationship in which biblically divorce is not an alternative now when we come to this verse it says in here my the wind has turned my pages i'll go back here to ephesians five 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, one flesh. Now, that's not, as I see it, a reference to the sexual union.
I'm sure a lot of people have interpreted that way. I think it's a reference to the concept of reestablishing the first family ties that were there when Eve was taken from Adam's rib. But... I believe this is the case that the Bible uses this expression or uses this sexual relationship to illustrate the the fact of being one flesh it doesn't establish it but it does illustrate it and so the Apostle Paul says he that is joined to a harlot is one body with the harlot for the Bible says they shall be one flesh and that means that the sexual relationship pictures illustrates the establishment of the unity between husband and wife that you find in marriage, that closer unity than the unity between even mother and son or mother and daughter.
Even though the child was born, came to life in the mother's womb, yet there's a closer relationship in God's sight between husband and wife. And the sexual relationship illustrates that. And so to enter into a sexual relationship with someone who is not your marriage partner is to defile the plan of God and to defile marriage. And so in the very next passage, and maybe we should turn back to this because it's so important, and keep your place in Ephesians five there. And this is first Corinthians chapter six, of course. First Corinthians chapter six, toward the end of the chapter. Verse sixteen.
What? Don't you know that he who is joined to a harlot, a prostitute, is one body? For to, saith he, says God, shall be one flesh. And then in verse eighteen, flee fornication. Flee fornication. Run away from everything that is immoral. Fornication. Fornication is a big word in the Bible. It's larger than the word adultery. It's a word that has to do with any kind of immorality. Any kind of physical sexual immorality is called fornication in the Bible. Adultery is fornication. Pre-marital sex is fornication. Homosexual behavior is fornication. And a lot of just general misbehavior in a sexual way would come under the category of fornication.
And the Bible says run away from it. Flee it. Now, when you have a passage like Ephesians six, when it talks about the devil... The way to resist the devil is to stand up and fight. Stand, therefore. When the devil attacks you, you stand up and you use the armor of God as we were hearing and you resist the devil. But the Bible tells us when it comes to fornication, which is a sin of the flesh, you run away from it. You turn your back and run. You don't do that with the devil, but you do that with immorality. You get out of there. You remember when Joseph was tempted by that Egyptian woman, Potiphar's wife, And come lie with me. He says, why didn't he say to her? Why didn't he witness to her?
Why didn't he give her the gospel? He got out of there and he ran, left his coat behind, but he ran. See, that's the Bible teaching. You run away from that type of temptation. You flee it. You get out of the situation that puts you because he was a very human being and he was tempted. That's why. He was a human male. And he knew the answer was to get away. And Paul says, flee fornication. So... Bear this in mind. Let's keep ourselves pure. And you young people that are not married yet, keep yourselves pure for the day when God gives you a partner who will be your life partner. And you can go to that person with head held high because you know that you have not entered into an adulterous, immoral relationship. And you can be one flesh with that person in a real way without ever having to think back in the years that follow and say, I wish I hadn't have done it.
And the same way with those of you that are married. You're one flesh with your wife. You're one flesh with your husband. And keep it that way. And keep yourselves pure. Live for the Lord Jesus. Now notice the little verse I skipped over. Verse seventeen. But he that is joined under the Lord is one spirit. Not one flesh. We're not one flesh when we're joined to the Lord, but we're one spirit. Now here's the unity of the family of God. We talk about the two families, the domestic family and the assembly family. We're joined to the Lord. We're one spirit with him. We're to go back to Ephesians five. verse thirty one talks about the husband and the wife and verse thirty two says this is a great mystery but i speak concerning christ and the church and we're one spirit with the lord we're part of the family of god and there's a purity there all right let's learn then to think family In respect to husbands and wives, in respect to the assembly, and in respect to your children.
Think of your children in the sense of a family for the Lord Jesus. Learn to think family for Jesus with regard to your children. Now, I have watched Christian families for many years. When my children were very young, I used to watch older Christian families, and I'd say, I'm going to watch these families whose children have gone on with the Lord so that I can raise my children the way they do, so my children will go on with the Lord. And I'm going to watch these families whose children rebel so I don't do it the way they did. And you know what I concluded after all these years? I don't know the answers. I've seen families that were very careless and worldly, and their children have went on for the Lord, and I've seen families that were...
intolerant and domineering and their children went on for the Lord. And I've seen the same kind of families where they didn't go on for the Lord. And really, I don't know what the answer is after all these years. There is no pat formula for raising children. And all I can suggest is that there are some things that are helpful when it comes to raising children. I want to talk more about this tomorrow. I want to talk about family devotions and family discipline. Now, there are some things that are helpful, and one of them is to have an attitude about your children, an expectancy that your children will go on for the Lord. You build that into your thinking. You live your lives with the expectancy. Of course they will go on for the Lord.
And that seems to have a very positive influence on the children. Now, there's two verses in the Bible along that line. And both of them we sort of lose track of in the King James Version, because they use the word house. instead of family where we would say today family they say house Joshua said as for me and my family we will serve the Lord he made the decision he had that attitude can you imagine the effect of that on his children there's a commitment as for me and my family we will serve the Lord He brought his family along with me. He expected it. He knew they'd go with him. He had that confidence. And then in the famous Gospel verse, Acts sixteen, what shall I do to be saved?
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and now shall be saved and thy family. And thy family and thy house or family. But what does that mean? Well, it may simply mean that if the family is willing to believe they too will be saved, and it does mean that certainly, I think it means a little more than that. I think that's a promise to be claimed. You believe in God, you believe in the Lord Jesus, and you're going to be saved, and your family's going to come along with you. You believe him for that too. Claim that as a promise. But I have watched Christian families that act as if they expect the children to be rebels. They grow up, the children grow up knowing that the father and mother expect them to be rebels. And you know what happens? They're rebels. It just seems to work out that way.
Now there's exceptions. He can't overrule the free will of the child. He has to make his own decision. And that's one reason why all the formulas have to be moderated by the fact that some children will say yes to Jesus and some will say no. We can't take away their free will, although we certainly influence their free will the way the Holy Spirit influences us in regard to salvation. We influence them by the attitude we set up in the homes. And when we have an attitude that they're going to rebel against God and they're going to act like wicked people, they do it. They do what we expect. Now, just a word to fathers about raising daughters. I've raised three daughters and I only have one son. And I think I've tempted at times to feel that...
You know, the real key in child raising is with the mother. If my children go on for the Lord, I have to credit my wife. She's the one who spent the time with them. I was out in the Lord's work, traveling, visiting night after night. She's the one who spent the time with them. Undoubtedly, it's my wife that gets whatever credit there is. But there's an exception to that. And that is this, that the Father is the key... with a young woman, with a daughter, no matter how much the mother spends time with the daughter and teaches her everything, the father is very often the key to the spiritual success of that daughter. It's his attitude toward her that is very crucial to her. She may be very close to her mother, but her self-esteem depends on what her father thinks of her.
And if dad looks at her and he says, My, you're a pretty girl, where did you get that beautiful dress? she has a little bit of self-esteem she feels good about herself and if dad snarls and one is too much money you're spending on clothes and he he he obviously doesn't think much of his daughter if he if he has a low opinion of his daughter then what happens to her is that she needs a male she needs a male who thinks a lot of her and some cluck of a character comes along, some young fellow who's not worth his salt, comes along and pays a little attention to her and sweeps her off her feet and off she goes with some guy who's not half of what she is.
Later on she regrets it. But a father protects his daughter from that kind of reaction to unworthy fellas by holding her in a very high place, by acknowledging her talents, her school ability, her athletic ability, her spirituality, whatever it is, and not putting her down, but building her up. So you dads, remember that and pay attention to your attitude toward your daughters. It's more critical to their survival spiritually, I think, than even what mother does for them. Your attitude. Well, how's my time? I haven't got too much time here. I want to move on a little bit now, getting close to the end here.
I want to talk a little bit about headship in the home. And while we're in Ephesians, let's go back to chapter five here, a little farther back in the chapter. And verse twenty-two. Verse twenty-two. 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 the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands and everything. Now, I read that passage, which is addressed to the women, and I want to talk to the men.
I'm the man I like to talk to men. And I want to say to you, men, that this passage does not give you justification for being bossy. John R. Rice wrote a book years ago about bossy women, and bossy women are abomination, but so is a bossy husband. And the headship of the home is not the right to be the dictator in the home. It's not the carte blanche to be the boss. Being the head of the home doesn't mean that whatever you say goes and the wife and children better pay attention to it and do it your way. Headship in the home is a spiritual leadership. A spiritual leadership. And we learn this from the Lord Jesus in no uncertain terms.
He says, among the Gentiles, if you want to be the head, you're the boss, and everybody does what you say. But with me, he says, if you want to be the head, then you have to take the humble place. And the Lord Jesus did not boss his disciples around. He did not domineer them. He led them. He's the shepherd, but not the American shepherd that gets a bunch of dogs and sticks and drives his animals along, but the Middle Eastern shepherd who walks in front of them, they follow and they come along with him. The headship of man is the spiritual leadership of the home. And it is not the right to be the boss, or even to make all the decisions.
Marriage is a partnership. Marriage is a mutual thing. Husband and wife together make decisions. I've been married for just over thirty years, and I can't think of probably not two times in all of thirty years, if I ever said, this is the way we're going to do it, and said to my wife, this is it, that's what we're going to do, period. We've lived our lives together by making decisions together. We talk things over. We reach decisions. and we act accordingly. And marriage is not the husband giving the orders and the wife obeying those orders. Marriage is a partnership. Well, then what does submission mean? Well, first of all, notice that the command regarding submission is addressed to the wife.
The husband is never told to put his wife under the yoke. It's a voluntary thing. That is, it's a voluntary in the sense that I don't mean that the woman can say to the Lord, I won't obey your command. Her relationship to the Lord is not voluntary. She has to obey the Lord. But to her husband, it isn't. Husbands, get your wife in submission. It's wives, submit yourself to your husbands. And it's up to the wife to do it. It's not up to the wife. It's not up to the husband to put her in submission. And you notice the same thing is true about the elders in the church. The Bible says, submit yourselves to those that are in oversight, to those that are over you. But it never says, elders, go around with a big stick and beat all these Christians into line. Submission in the assembly is a voluntary thing.
The people are instructed to submit themselves to the elders, but the elders are never told to stake out their territory and put the people in submission to them. You see, that's the way the Lord Jesus was with us. We talk about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And we say that we are to be in submission to Him, but that's us talking it over. That's not the Lord Jesus coming along and saying, get down on your knees, do what I tell you. He doesn't beat us into submission. He draws us with love. Husbands love your wives. Draw your wives into following you by the way you live your life, by the example you set, by your spirituality, by your godliness, by your love, by your example. Don't beat them into submission.
And the Lord Jesus calls us. Come unto me and be saved. Come unto me. He says he calls people to him. He invites people to come. And we know the Bible talks about obeying the gospel and obeying obedience to the Lord. But the Lord doesn't enforce that obedience on us. He leaves it up to us to see whether we'll come or not. He doesn't force anybody into heaven. When you become a Christian, he doesn't force you to keep on walking with the Lord. Some older Christians live for the Lord, and then after the years go by, they begin to drift away from the Lord. They forget, you see, that following the Lord is still a voluntary thing. You can stop walking with the Lord today if you want and go back to the world. And you may pay a stiff penalty, but not from the Lord, but from your own decision, what you sow you reap.
And there is a certain sense, now I guess I can't say this. dogmatically and completely but there certainly is a sense in which the concept of biblical submission is voluntary it is imposed upon the one who is to submit and not the one who is to be submitted to so the husband then to be the head of the home has to be a spiritual leader worthy of being followed to set an example by the way he lives his life and not to be a little Adolf Hitler in the home There's a very beautiful story of the headship of the Father in this July-August issue of interest. There's up here in the table, I'm trying to get rid of them so I don't have to take them all back to Eaton, save on the gas mileage if you take those copies.
It was Father's Decision, a true story by Janet Daniel. Janet Daniel is out in Colorado Springs in Rustic Hills Bible Chapel. A very fascinating story about a situation that arose in their home regarding a summer vacation. And a daughter, the daughter was requested to go back to camp to be a camp counselor, and mom thought that was right. She should do that and skip the vacation. She wanted to serve the Lord. She wanted to give up the time at the cabin, and daddy said no. And he had his reasons. And mother could have fought back, and she said, no, I'll have to let dad, I'll have to listen to him at this point. And it turned out, well, the conclusion of the story is, let me just read you a few words out of it here.
Thou knowest the need of a young girl's heart. Let me first. Thou knowest the need of a mother, the true need, the long-range need to follow her husband, even when it looks like the wrong path. Thou knowest the way of a father, the true need, the long-range need to stand strong and lead with courage when thou hast spoken to his heart. Now, that's the headship of the father in a home. It's a beautiful story. And if you have missed it, take one of those magazines, even if you've got one home and read it again. Submission to our Lord Jesus is a pattern for submission, of course, in the home and in the assembly, and the decision-making process in the home is not the Father decides and everybody else takes orders.
A family should talk things over. Submission in the assembly is the same way. The assembly is a family and elders. If you are in the practice of making all the decisions for your assembly behind closed doors and then announcing to the assembly what you've decided, then I challenge you to seriously consider the Book of Acts and look at all the assembly decisions in the Book of Acts and see if those decisions were not made in public. We have sunshine laws in Illinois, and I suppose you do here in Iowa too. School boards can't meet in private. Town councils can't meet in private. All the meetings have to be public, except in certain areas, like who are you going to hire and what are you going to pay salary-wise.
But in most areas, all the meetings have to be out in the public, so the taxpayer can be there. And as I read the New Testament, the Book of Acts, it seems to me that all assembly decisions, except maybe disciplinary decisions,