Household Worship - Part 9 - Authority

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Lesson: Household Worship - Part 9 - Authority Date: Feb. 9, 2025 Teacher: Pastor Conley Owens

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Dear Holy Father, thank you for this morning, I pray that you would bless our continued study of household worship and that you would help us to order our homes rightly in Jesus' name.
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Amen. All right. Okay, so today we're gonna be talking about authority.
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This is something that, as you know, I've been reading a lot of old books on household worship, books from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s primarily.
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One thing that they're frequent to point out is the need of a father to maintain authority in the home and by that, basically like that, yeah, that status by which he would be capable of leading people.
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A verse that comes up occasionally with this is Luke 24 32. They said to each other,
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Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road while he opened to us the scriptures?
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Like Christ had such an authority with his disciples that he was able to stir within them that kind of, you know, that kind of passion, that kind of zeal.
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All right, so we're gonna look at this under four different heads today. Duty of understanding, the duty of holiness, the duty of love, and the duty of discipline.
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These things, things by which head of household would maintain his authority over the, yeah, over the home.
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And if you notice, I do use the term householder a bit. The, I mentioned before, this is a term frequently used in older literature for the head of household.
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I've started kind of liking it, so I've used it a bunch here. Householder for the one who's holding the house.
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All right, so first let's start off with the duty of understanding. It's important for the head of household, the one who's going to lead a family worship, to have significant understanding.
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Thomas Doolittle said that a head of household without understanding is like a head, is like a family with a head of household that doesn't have understanding.
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It's like a body that has a head with no eyes. Okay, so yeah, you would think that the, you know, just like the head of the body is supposed to fill a certain task.
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It's not just the part that's higher than the rest, right? It's supposed to be able to see, it's supposed to be able to hear, it's supposed to be able to smell.
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It does a lot of, does a lot of things, and particularly it understands. Right, so in 1
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Peter 3, 7, it says, Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the women as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs of, heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
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Now, we've talked in the past about how these prayers are likely referring to family prayers, not just the prayers of a husband by himself.
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But here, what I'm pointing out is when it talks about living with your wife in an understanding way, a lot of people take that primarily to mean solely in the sense of being sympathetic, you know, understand her weakness, and that's the limit of it.
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The kind of understanding here that's required by husbands, though, is much more than that. To understand what she needs, it's not just to understand her, it's to understand the
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Word of God, it's to understand many different things. And so this should not be, you know, colloquially we'll use the term understanding.
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Like, he's a very understanding person, you know, to mean that he's very sympathetic, or he's very kind, right?
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This isn't just talking about kind. Of course, it is important to be kind to your wife, but there's much more than that that's required by a husband, much more understanding that goes into being a good husband, being a good father.
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That is not the limit of the understanding that's necessary. Yes. Yeah, I would say that that's included, right?
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Yeah, just, yeah, understanding the whole home, not just the wife, but also the children, also what the Word of God says, you know, etc.
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Yeah, some people would make the task of a husband to, you know, cater to his wife's desires, but that's not what it's saying.
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It doesn't say live with your wife in a, I don't know what that word would be, a compromising way or something like that, right?
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Catering way, yeah, catering way, a compromising way. It's not saying that's live with her in an understanding way, knowing what is actually needed in any situation.
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Is that... subservient? Yeah, that's another word. Yeah, in a subservient way. Yeah. All right.
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Men are especially gifted for understanding. We've talked about this before, but 1 Timothy 2, 12 through 14, just to read these passages again.
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I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over man. Rather, she is to remain quiet for Adam was first formed, then
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Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 1 Corinthians 14, 35.
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If there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. It's shameful for a woman to speak in church. Both of these imply a capacity of the man for understanding.
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This exists in multiple ways, right? Some of it is... Like there are just a number, there are a number of factors that play into this.
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There is, you know, like a raw sense of IQ. I did look up studies to see, you know, what current studies say, and most studies will acknowledge that men on average are six points higher in IQ than women.
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But then there are a lot of other aspects to it. You know, the man's...if the woman is taking care of kids and everything, she has less capacity and ability to dedicate time to study, right?
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There's also the emotional nature of a woman that's kind of described here, or like the ability to be deceived more easily, right?
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So there's things that are... that affect the understanding in that way. There is...
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Yeah, they're just, there are a number of factors that play into a man's capacity for understanding that...
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Yeah, God has not just...this is, this is a problem. A lot of people in the church will recognize that God has given people different roles.
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And I mean, I, you've all heard Tim say this before, but yeah, this is something I've thought for a long time too, is that a lot of people will acknowledge that God has given people different roles, but they will, they feel uncomfortable acknowledging that God has actually gifted them for those roles.
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Like God has indeed gifted people for those roles, right? So men are gifted for the role of husband and father.
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Yes, what is that? Right. Not all men or something.
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Right. Yeah, so the observation here being that to say that the man is more gifted is not to say that the wife has no gift in this area at all, right?
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Yeah. Okay, householders who lack understanding bring shame on themselves.
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Ecclesiastes 10, 5 through 6. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were an error proceeding from a ruler.
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Volley is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. Proverbs 26, 1.
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Like snow and summer, or rain and harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool. Yeah, it is frequently the case that, you know, there will be someone in a position without a lot of understanding, and it brings shame on them.
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Shame from those he is over, right? Because they recognize what's wrong. Shame from people on the outside who see what's happening.
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And you all know that this is like very naturally the case, especially when kids become teenagers, and they start becoming aware of more things, and they're aware of their parents' faults, and this combined with, you know, a hubris that doesn't it doesn't recognize their own faults that well.
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And so they begin to realize where their parents lack in understanding, and this can breed contempt, right?
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It's a very common feature of teenager years. It doesn't have to be, but often is.
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My point being that, yeah, as people notice a lack of understanding in those who have authority, it breeds contempt.
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And there's no reason for that. You would not want to be guilty of that, right?
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You don't want blood on your hands for that. You want to, yeah, have sufficient knowledge so that if anyone were to make an accusation like that, it would be on them and not on you, right?
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That you have done everything in your in your power to have the right kind of understanding that is needed for whatever role that you may have, and here for the role of being a householder.
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Here's a quote from Thomas Doolittle. Naturally, men are endued with greater powers to understand than women are, and this is a
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Thomas Doolittle's yeah, Puritan. And a master of family hath more had more time to get knowledge than children and servants had, and if he had not attained to more, it is a shame and reproach and renders him more contemptible in the eyes of those that are subject to to him who has not that reverent all of him and authority as they would have authority were accompanied with knowledge.
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Right. You can imagine in household worship, you know, if you are teaching from the Word of God, if you're making application from the
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Word of God to the family, right, and your wife and your kids think that you're, you know, you're a fool, right?
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Or they know that you don't really know what you're talking about, etc. Like, none of these would be excuses to not engage in family worship, but—or to not lead in family worship, but yeah, you want to remove that as much as possible.
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You want to have understanding so that you are, you know, so that you command respect. Okay, so what kinds of understanding?
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First of all, knowing the Word. Proverbs 19 .2, Jude 10.
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But these people blaspheme all they do not understand. They are destroyed by all—they like unreasoning animals understanding instinctively.
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So Jude 10 talking about the nature of false teachers really to yeah, have have difficulty in understanding the
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Word of God, and so they just they just mock it and blaspheme it, right? But then the things they do latch on to are the things that are very natural and sensual to them.
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Whenever I read that passage, I always think of my interactions with Aryans, you know, those who would reject the reject eternity.
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It's like they blaspheme what they do not understand, you know. They haven't taken the time to sit down and maybe think that, you know, maybe this is a difficult topic that requires a little more thought, and I can't just say, oh, well, that doesn't make sense to me.
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Therefore, it doesn't make sense at all. And so they blaspheme what they don't understand, and they mock the eternity, and they are destroyed by the false beliefs that they understand, like underreasoning animals, right?
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You wouldn't want this to describe you. You would want to know. Yeah, you would want to have knowledge so that if you're zealously leading your family in family worship, it would not be said of you that desire without knowledge is not good, right?
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You want to, yeah, have sufficient knowledge for the task. What does it look like to be studying the
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Word? I mean, part of it's just obvious. You open the Word, you read it. If that is the limit of the way that you study the
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Bible, though, if you really are just kind of reading it and not spending time on it—the Bible talks about meditating on the
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Word of God. Okay, if you're just reading it and just letting the words go through one ear out the other, you know, retaining a little bit about it, but you're not meditating on it, on the implications of it, etc.,
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this is not the kind of study that the Bible has in mind. The Bible has in mind not just a hearing the Word, but a meditating on it.
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Now, there are helps that can help you do that. Obviously, you know, there's Scripture memory that's involved here.
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There's reading other resources that will help you meditate on a particular theme in Scripture or a topic of Scripture.
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I know that not everybody enjoys reading the same way, but if you are thinking about this as a duty, you would be less inclined to say, well,
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I'm not much of a reader, therefore, you know, I've known lots of people in lots of churches, you know, men who—and
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I understand God has not called every man to the same, you know, level of study, but there are a lot of people who just identify with this and just say,
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I'm not a reader. You know, this isn't really what I enjoy spending my time doing. I prefer just to, you know, you know, read the
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Bible. I don't have time for much more reading beyond that, but if you think of this as a duty, you will be inclined to actually read up on more things, not just make that excuse.
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You know, I—man, there's lots of things about having a home that I would not say I enjoy, right?
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Like if you have a plumbing issue, you don't say, ah, I'm not really into plumbing, so I'm just gonna let the water spray everywhere in my walls, you know, and not call the right person to fix it or whatever, right?
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You don't do that kind of thing, or you don't say, I don't, you know, I'm not much of a politics guy, so I'm not gonna learn what the tax regulations are so that I pay them.
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You know, then the cops are gonna come after you, right? There's all kinds of— there's all kinds of things where you could say, well,
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I don't enjoy that that much, so I'm not gonna develop understanding in it, but if it is something that you have a duty toward, then even if you're not as gifted as the next guy or not as called as the next guy to go deeply, you can still go somewhat deep, you know.
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So yeah, I would encourage you on all those fronts. Yeah, I think it's good also to be making the right comparisons.
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Obviously, the standard is Christ. That's hard to compare yourself to.
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I grew up for a long time thinking that I understood the Word of God well because I understood it better than all my peers, right?
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And that was not the standard. They were not. I didn't really mean much at all, and then when
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I started realizing that like I needed to know the Bible much more, and I got myself into trouble because I didn't, you know, as well.
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Yeah, I need to go a lot deeper. My peers are not the standard here. Yes. Dyslexia.
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Yeah. Yeah, there are audiobooks. There's all kinds of helps. You're right. We have less excuses than ever for a lack of understanding.
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Do you know how many light bulbs it takes to change a dyslexic? The joke is the question.
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Okay. All right. Beyond the Word, householders should know his household members.
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Proverbs 27, 23. I'd like to read more than just that passage that's quoted, so go ahead and turn there.
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Proverbs 27, beginning in 23. I'll give you one more second there.
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Okay, 27, 23. Know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever, and does a crown endure to all generations.
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When the grass is grown, excuse me, when the grass is gone and new growth appears, and the vegetation of the mountains is gathered, the lambs will provide your clothing, and the goats the price of a field.
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There will be enough goat's milk for your food, for the food of your household, and the maintenance of your girls. Okay, so know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to your herds.
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Why? Why? Because the stage that you are in is not the stage you're in forever, right?
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For the for the flocks, you know, the grass is grown and the new growth appears.
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Vegetation of mountains is gathered. Lambs will provide you clothing. You have to be preparing for the future.
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You have to be thinking forward, right? If you have kids, you need to know their condition well because this time is short.
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You don't have all the time in the world to take care of them, so you need to, yeah, be actively knowing about them.
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Yeah, this could include all kinds of things, you know, knowing what their hobbies are, knowing what their interests are, knowing what their weaknesses are, knowing what their strengths are.
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Yeah. Ways that you can do this include communicating with your spouse, right?
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I often, yeah, realize that I'm oblivious where I shouldn't be because I haven't, like, checked in with Sarah on certain things, right?
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And then I check in and I realize, wow, it's been, like, six months since I checked in on this and I wasn't aware that, you know, this is what they're doing right now in homeschool or whatever the case may be.
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So yeah, you should know your household members. This is part of the task. Any questions about this?
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Yeah, I feel like a lot more, um, you know, especially, especially not just in family worship while you're making applications, but also especially in discipline, you know, when you're disciplining your child.
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Trying to figure out why it is that they sin, like, what is their desire that leads them to sin is important.
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Because if you end up just correcting the behavior, you're not really doing the full task of discipline.
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You need to be correcting the heart as well. That's kind of the point behind the book
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Shepherding a Child's Heart is it's not enough to just correct behavior. You need to be shepherding their heart. And you can't do that if you don't know the condition of your flocks, right?
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If you don't know the condition of your flocks, you're going to be misguided and just correct behavior, and you're not going to be correcting their actual, the actual sin within them.
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So yeah, it's good to ask questions to know to figure these things out so that you can try to correct them. And your kids aren't going to tell you, right?
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Like, they don't understand themselves. It's like, this is part of the task is like for you to know them better than they know themselves.
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You know, children really don't know themselves that well. You've got to be able to look and try to figure out what's going on so you can, so you can really help them in a way that they can't help themselves.
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Okay, any questions about that? Yeah, everyone.
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Yeah, yeah, everyone. Yeah. Oh, well, yeah,
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I mean, they should have insight into, you know, if they're studying scripture, etc.,
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that should give them a pretty clear view to what drives behavior in the home from everyone, right?
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I would say that, I wouldn't want to say that in such a condescending way to say that like, whites don't know themselves or whatever, the way that I would be willing to with children.
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But, at the same time, yeah, I mean, I think that's true of like pastors, right? You know, go to the counseling room.
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The pastor helps you figure out yourself, right? And he doesn't necessarily, he's not necessarily in your home, you know, able to under, know all your behavior, but in a short period of, a relatively short period of time, he should be able to assess what's going on because he has a depth in the
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Word of God that would give him some insight into, into how the heart works to be able to figure out these things faster.
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So, let's see, what am
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I missing here? Sorry, I was trying to look at the first, yeah.
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Not sure why that didn't come up the first time. Okay, for the Word of God is living and active, sharp with any two -edged sword.
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Piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. First Corinthians 14 also talks about people's, you know, people having their own hearts disclosed and revealed through the preaching of the
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Word. Like someone who's gifted with the Word of God should be able to have a lot of insight into the character of another who has not had as much time to study the
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Word. So yeah, I would say that this is, that's true of a husband's duty towards his wife and anyone else in the home.
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All right. John Gill in 1 Peter 3, 7, right? 1 Peter 3, 7 being the verse saying to live with your wife and with understanding.
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This knowledge, right, this, this understanding that's supposed to be had is of themselves.
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Okay, so, you know, he's not just limiting it to understanding your wife, but understanding yourself, their wives, and their duties belonging to the conjugal state.
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In other words, like what marriage is and what, what he needs to do in marriage, and the laws of God and man respecting it.
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So not just, not just what God's Word said, but even what, even what society, you know, currently indicates.
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What the laws of man require, right? If you're not, of course, yeah, we're in a society that doesn't really uphold marriage with many laws, but if you're in a society that does, that has tried to discern how to rightly uphold marriage through good laws, then yeah, it's important to know what those things say.
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And according to their knowledge of the gospel and the Christian dispensation, which in no way breaks in upon, but strengthens and encourages to the observance of things belonging to natural religion and civil life.
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And according to that superior knowledge of things, which generally speaking men have to women, as also wisely, prudently becoming their character as men and Christians.
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You'll notice these older authors did not hesitate to observe that men have a capacity for superior knowledge, right?
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That sounds, I know that sounds offensive in our generation, but they did not hesitate to say these things just as very like obvious observations to them.
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Yeah, so this understanding, do not, do not think of that understanding as just being like a sympathy.
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It's, it's way more than, it's way more than being capable of sympathizing. It's knowing lots of, lots of things.
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So yeah, men should develop understanding. Okay, any questions on understanding?
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All right, that burnt half our time, so we'll go through the others faster. Duty of holiness.
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Rulers are to be righteous. Proverbs 16, 12, it is an abomination to kings to do evil, for the throne is established by righteousness.
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You know, if you want to, if you want to rule is because you are good.
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You know, another way of thinking about this is like the notion of meritocracy, right? What is meritocracy?
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It's the rule of those who have, who have done the most. You know, righteousness is talking about like a positive good here.
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You know, so the throne is established by, by righteousness. If you're, you know, if you are not doing good, right?
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If you are not exercising your yeah, if you are not behaving in a way that is right, you're going to lose that authority or that sense of authority even.
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Of course, you'd still have the status, you know, wife should respect her husband even if he is not acting in a way that is becoming of a husband, but it's going to be a lot harder for her to obey him.
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Psalm 78, 72, with upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand.
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Who is this talking about? Anybody know? Anybody want to guess? What's that?
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With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand. It's David.
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It's talking about David. Yeah. Yeah, another king. All right, worship leaders are to be righteous.
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First Timothy 3, 2 through 4. Titus 1, 7 through 9.
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I'll not read this whole thing, but both of them talk about him being above reproach, and it describes other good characteristics, and it ties us together with keeping children submissive.
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You know, it is... Those are not entirely...the way they're presented, they're somewhat distinct things, but they're not unrelated.
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You know, it is by righteousness that you have an authority over your children to keep them submissive.
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And this is true for pastors, especially, you know, if they're not above reproach, then even if they say true things from the
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Word of God and they make right application, it won't be received the same way. They won't speak with the same kind of moral authority.
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But then on top of that, they will be less inclined to say the right kind of things because of their own sin. So, they become effectively worse rulers, but both objectively and subjectively, right?
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Both in the ears of the hearers, as well as the thing that they are saying, both of those will be tampered with by a lack of holiness.
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Do you have a question? Okay. All right.
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Leaders are to be examples in righteousness. Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the
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Word of God, considered the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Let me skip ahead to Joshua here.
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Joshua 24 15. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Notice that...and you know, this is a...
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Hebrew does not work the way that English does, so that like me always has to come last. But notice that he does put me first, you know, but as for me and my house, you know, he is...
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he's not doing something apart from his...sorry, he's not asking his family to do something apart from him, right?
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He is doing it and then leading his family, and that's the whole point of leading, right? Is that you are setting an example.
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1 Peter 5 3. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. Notice how these are set in contrast with one another.
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That is to tell you something of what domineering is. A lot of people think of domineering as something like asking hard things.
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Good leaders ask hard things, okay? That's not domineering. Paul asked lots of hard things from his congregations.
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Good leaders ask for hard things. Domineering is asking something that you wouldn't be willing to do, right?
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But being examples to the flock. If you are an example and you are living up to the standard that you are calling people to or to a higher standard than the one you are calling people to, that is perfectly appropriate.
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But if you're not doing that, right, and you're just saying, you know, yeah, do what
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I say, not what I do or something like that, right? Which... it's appropriate occasionally because we should be commanding what's right regardless of whether or not we're perfect.
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But yeah, that is the domineering thing, right?
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So a lot of people think, yeah, a lot of people think domineering means asking for hard things.
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It's not asking for hard things. It is the kind that would sit back easy while they ask others for hard things, okay?
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But if you're doing hard things and you're calling your family with you in hard things, that's not domineering.
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If those things are right, anyway. So one example I think of with this would be like, you know, the famous scene of Governor Newsom at the
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French Laundry, right? Well, everybody else isn't allowed to be in groups as large as he was in in the restaurant.
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And so nobody is allowed to go out and eat, but he gets a little private party at the
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French Laundry. They let him in because they're all shut down. And he has his— yeah, he has his dinner at the nicest restaurant in the world pretty much.
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So that's domineering, right? Requiring of other things, things that you're not willing to do. It's like, you all don't, you know, get into groups that are this large and go to restaurants, but I will.
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That's domineering. All right. Father's righteousness is a blessing to his children,
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Proverbs 27. The righteous who walks in his integrity blessed are his children after him.
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Why is that? Why does his righteousness lead to their blessing? There are many different reasons we could say, but at least one of them would be that he's able to father them well if he's righteous.
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He's able to, you know, lead them and command them with a real kind of authority.
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Quote from Oliver Heywood, If the master have by gross sin, passion, pride, too much lenity, which
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I think means leniency, or imprudent behavior, forfeited his authority, or by tyranny have abused it, that he become contemptible.
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He will hardly keep up family worship. Children or servants will be ready to laugh him to scorn, as not able to rule himself, therefore little fit to rule others.
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And they think they have good reason to ramble abroad. They will be under no government and will come none to prayers.
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This is their sin, but there has been too much occasion given by their weak or willful masters.
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Therefore I advise that you maintain your authority and use it for God. Yeah, so this language of maintaining authority through keeping up with understanding, love, holiness, and discipline, this is the way
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I frequently spoke, like authority is not just the the formal status.
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It's also the, you know, the informal organic, you know, reception of your words through your, yeah, through people recognizing that you have a, your words ought to be heard.
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You know, because you are one who is righteous, you are one who does have understanding, who does love them, etc.
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Okay. All right. Any questions about holiness? All right.
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Love. Householders should lead out of love, 1st Peter 5, to shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.
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Not for shameful game, but eagerly. Okay, so yeah, you should be, you should want to care for your family.
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If you do it out of compulsion, that is, yeah, a demonstration that your heart is not really in the right place, and that will be sensed, right?
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You know, pastor or congregations can often sense it when their pastor is not there because they want to be there, but just because, you know, they lack other career options or or whatever the case may be, right?
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Yeah, like, like it says here, not for shameful game, but eagerly, right? There should be a yeah, there should be a willingness to do the task, not just because you have to.
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There should be a joy about it, you know. John 10, 11,
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Jesus says, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, right? He desires their good.
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Householders who, who, who? Apparently I typed that out wrong. I typed several things there wrong.
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Yeah, pastors, or householders who teach without love are nothing. 1st Corinthians 13 too, and if I have prophetic powers and understanding all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love,
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I am nothing. Okay, so 1st Corinthians 13 talks about several things that you could do, but if you don't have love, you are nothing.
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All those things are for the end of love, right? The only reason why God gave people prophetic powers, the ability to speak in tongues, etc.,
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right, was for upbuilding. That's kind of the point in 1st Corinthians 12 through 14.
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And so if God has put you in a position where you are supposed to lead, if he's given you understanding and the ability to lead, and you do it without love, then you are not—that doesn't matter, you know, how quote -unquote faithfully you're doing it, even if you're moving mountains.
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If you're not doing it out of love, you are nothing, right? So there's a, there's a real command to love.
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Householders who love desire to persuade, Philemon 1, 8 through 9. Accordingly, though,
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I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you. Now I might lack some of the words necessary to describe what's going on here in Philemon, but it's interesting how
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Paul says this. He's bold enough to command Philemon to do. You know, Philemon ought to set
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Onesimus free, given all things considered. And Paul could command that, given his apostolic authority, but because of love, love being the motivating factor, he desires instead to persuade, you know, he desires him to know what the right thing is to do, rather than just to command and require it to be done.
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So this is a, you know, the householder desires that, that when he corrects his family, when he leads his family, he's actually changing their hearts, you know, persuading them so that they want to do this thing.
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This is what love does. Love wants them to want to do these things, right, as opposed to one who just wants to get the thing done.
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Right? And so he just commands it so that it will be done. Doesn't really care whether or not they are changed in heart.
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Right? So, so love is necessary if you're going to have an attitude that desires to persuade.
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But then on top of that, love also, if someone can sense your love, love also grants persuasive power.
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2nd Timothy 2, 4, 24 through 25, And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently and during evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.
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God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth. Yeah, there's a, in rhetoric, in formal rhetoric, you know, there's three categories.
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There's logos, pathos, and ethos, right? And I'm probably pronouncing those wrong. I pronounce two of those
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O's differently. But yeah, logos is like the, or logos,
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I guess, and I don't know how you pronounce it in Latin. What's logos? Yeah, well, that's in Greek, right? I don't know if in Latin it's different.
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Or maybe these are all just Greek words. Are they just Greek words? Maybe they're Greek. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they are all
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Greek words. Okay. So yeah, logos. All right. So that would be like the actual logic, right?
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The word that you're saying, that you're making the right argument. All right, the second part of rhetoric is pathos, where pathos, where you're persuading and, you know, demonstrating that you really care about this topic and about your audience, you know, and that persuades them.
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And then there's also ethos, which is where you are, where they know that you are embodying this too.
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You're speaking a place for moral authority and not just hypocritically commanding things that you aren't doing yourself, right?
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So but that pathos, you know, is important. If your audience does not know that you care for them, if they don't think that you care for them, they will be less inclined to to be persuaded.
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Now, that's not an excuse for them not to follow God's word, but it does mean it will be harder for them to hear you.
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All right. Householders who speak hard truths will have their love questioned. Galatians 4 .16,
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have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? This is true in every circumstance. You know, it's true for pastors to say hard things.
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People will wonder whether or not they really love them because they're not used to hearing things that make them feel bad, right?
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Or you know, if you discipline your child, of course that discipline can be misinterpreted as a lack of love when it is supposed to be love, right?
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And so even if you are doing it in a loving way, it will be easy for the one on the receiving end of correction to question your love because when they feel pain, they will be inclined to think of it as, you know, hatred, as harm, right?
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And so if you are to speak hard truths, you will have your love questioned. That gives you all the more obligation to maintain a demonstration of love so that it is less able to be questioned, right?
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This is what Paul's doing in Galatians. He's like, I'm telling you hard things right now, but you know that I love you.
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I've proven that to you, so don't question it now while I'm telling you this. All right, and last we'll talk about discipline here.
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Householders should command his house to— yeah, more bad grammar here.
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Householders should command their houses to worship. Genesis 18 .19,
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For I've chosen him that he may command his children in his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the
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Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. Okay, so God chose
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Abraham to command his children, particularly in the worship of him, in the things that were to happen later, not just during his lifetime, but to command his offspring to follow the
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Lord. Some people see religious things as being matters which are out of bounds for commanding.
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You would only want your children to do this of their own. You need them to come to these conclusions on their own and decide to worship
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God on their own. And so, you know, we don't tell them they have to go to the church, go to church. They get to stay home if they want to, that kind of thing, right?
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Or I don't make them come to family worship. No, you should. You have an authority to command these things, to require these things.
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Householders should use discipline alongside of instruction. Ephesians 6 .4, fathers should not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the
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Lord. Discipline and instruction go together, right? If you are not— you can instruct, but if you're not willing to correct, then with discipline, with the means that have been given you, you should not expect the instruction to stick.
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And that would apply even to things like attending family worship, right?
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Like if there are household members unwilling to attend, especially children. Yeah, you should be willing to use the rod of discipline on children.
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The head of family has to take care that none of the family withdraw himself from any part of family worship. That's the directory of family worship, paragraph four.
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So, yeah, what kind of things would you discipline for? So there's failure to attend.
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That'd be one. Bad attitudes during family worship. You know, it's common that, you know, if it's early in the morning and someone didn't get enough sleep, they'll, you know, mope around and be a pill, right?
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Or they'll refuse to sing when it's time to sing, or they won't pray when it's time to pray. These are all things that are on the table for discipline.
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These are all things that you have the authority to command as a householder, and that if they refuse to do, you know, they are sinning in that, and it is right to correct them for that.
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Do not think of these things as being outside the scope of your authority. Playing games while in family worship.
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You know, I think it's been at least once, you know, my kids have done the trick where I've got the
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Bible open and they've got another book on the inside, right? Reading Jeronimo Stilton or whatever, like that's happened at least once, you know.
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That's something that warrants discipline. Right.
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But also for outside things, right? Like things outside of, think outside of family worship too, right? If you are very lenient in your home, you don't require they actually obey you.
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You give commands, and they know that they can get away without doing those commands, right? That reduces your authority in family worship too, right?
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If they know that you're not someone they have to respect, right? You're not someone they actually have to obey.
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Part of the point of having this role in this going together, you know, being a father in the one sense and being a father in this family worship sense, is so that you have a particular ear with your children that no one else in the world does, and part of that comes from like they really have to listen to you in a way that goes even beyond how they have to listen to the pastor, right?
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The pastor does not have the authority of the rod of discipline over them. Like there is a pairing of these two just like we saw in Ephesians 6 -4 that is good and from God, and to fail to use that even outside of family worship will reduce your authority in family worship to command and require things and to explain things, right?
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So yeah, maintain your authority in the home. Don't throw it away. It is given to you so that you can have godly offspring as it says in Malachi, right?
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All right, this also applies to wives. Now obviously, well maybe it's not obvious, but husbands do not have the authority of the rod over their wives or that is not the means of discipline that they have available to them, yet correction and reproof and even perhaps in some senses discipline is appropriate for husbands to wives, and what
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I would mean by that is within those things that the husband does have, you know, if he has control over the assets, then you know he could refuse to let her use the credit card or something like that.
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I don't know. These are things where, you know, I mean that's frequently appropriate, right? If a wife is on a spending spree or whatever and refusing to take the family, the assets serious, then it would be right for a husband to take that away from her.
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Like this would be the kind of thing that I have in mind when I'm talking about a husband using the word discipline for a husband to wife.
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It would be something like that, but regardless, a few quotes that I think are helpful here that reference scripture a few times.
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That's why I don't have a lot of scripture written here, is because these refer to those sufficiently. Upon this ground, no doubt it is noted of many good husbands who were without all question loving, kind, meek, and mild husbands that they reproved their wives as Jacob, Job, David, and others.
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Contrary is a servile and timorous mind of many husbands who are loath to offend and as they think to provoke their wives, and thereupon choose rather to let them continue in sin than tell them of it.
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Wherein they both dishonor their place and the image of God, which by virtue of their place they carry, and also in effect in truth hate their wives, which the law implieth where it saith.
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Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart, but thou shalt plainly rebuke thy neighbor and not suffer sin upon him.
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Okay? So love and rebuke go hand in hand. A lot of people think they're loving by not rebuking, but the opposite is true.
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They're hating them. Right? And so this is especially true with husbands. Husbands are in a particular place.
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Like you have a responsibility to all your brothers, but you have a special responsibility to your wife, and so to refuse to rebuke your wife in a matter of sin would be to hate her.
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Right? But this is common. Right? Contrary is a servile and timorous mind of many husbands who are loath to offend and as they think provoke their wives.
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Don't think that way. Don't think, oh, I've got to, you know, happy wife, happy life, got to keep her happy.
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Right? That's the end goal, and so let's just keep her happy at all costs. But you're just feeding all kinds of unhappiness if you do not, if you are unwilling to correct.
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There was another quote that I didn't write down on the sheet that I wanted to read to you. What was it? The other quote was also from Gooch.
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It is good advice that no man be guilty of that which he repudieth in his wife. Okay, so first of all, you shouldn't be a hypocrite when you reprove.
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But it is no good rule to say no man ought to reprove his wife of that whereof he is guilty.
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So in other words, being guilty of something does not absolve you from addressing it in your wife even.
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Right? You can't just say, oh, I've got a log in my eye. Guess I don't have to worry about the speck in my brother's, right?
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Yes, get the log out of your eye, but you need to, you're still your brother's keeper, and especially your wife's.
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Okay, Daniel Caldry, Westminster Divine. He's answering the question here, can
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I command my wife to attend family worship? Is that like within my realm of authority? And the answer is yes.
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How could Joshua say that if one principal party is free to do whatever they want? He can't say that.
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He'd just say, I will, and hopefully my family will too. Yeah, yes.
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Yeah, you should not, yeah, go ahead, Josh. The question is, how are we to understand taking the log out of your own eye?
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Yeah, I don't believe the passage absolves you of the responsibility. Yes, you are to remove it, but you are to address the sin in others.
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And depending on what it looks like to remove it, if it's something where, let's say it's going to take time, you know, it's not something you can just do immediately, then seeing something else in someone else is not, you don't go, well, okay,
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I'm going to wait three months until I've got my situation under control. Yeah, exactly.
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That's a great example, and that's usually, and husbands typically understand that, right? They'll often say, hey, like both of us are out of shape.
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We've both got to do this, like do this with me. Yeah, and that's a good example. It's not, yeah,
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I spend five months getting fit, and now I tell my wife she's got to get fit too. Yeah. Okay.
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All right. Daniel Caldry, again, for a family already constituted but corrupted and needing reformation, the same course must be taken as in reforming a corrupted church, for as they are preaching in catechism, and all ways of instruction are first to be used by the minister, the chief officer thereof.
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And after that, the practice of that knowledge must be pressed by admonition, reproof, exhortation, and lastly, these proceedings prove ineffectual.
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The exercise of discipline and censures upon willful and stubborn offenders. So discipline and censures.
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Now, obviously, discipline is going to take a different shape with a wife than it would with children, but notice he says censures, right?
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That's like statements of disapproval, like public statements of disapproval, right?
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You could imagine if there were a case where a wife is not attending family worship, right, because she is disobedient, then it would be appropriate, even the husband would typically want to preserve his wife's honor and the status of the children, to not just say, oh yeah, this is normal, or pretend like everything's fine.
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Say, no, this is wrong of your mother to be doing these things, etc. A statement of censure is appropriate.
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That is part of the penalty here, is that she be dishonored in the eyes of her children in this particular way as her husband speaks truthfully of what's happening.
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Censure is different from censure. This is not talking about censorship like on TV.
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Censure is a statement of disapproval. So yes, it is bound up in the idea of excommunication because excommunication involves censure, right?
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It involves a statement of disapproval. Any questions on any of this?
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I know a lot of these could have used a number of other examples. Studying over this stuff, it did make me think about the connection of the rest of household life with household worship, that it is important to just maintain a brightness in these areas in order that your voice be especially heard in family worship.
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So hopefully you don't think of family worship as just something that happens during family worship, but something you need to be, something that you need to be preparing for and maintaining at all times by, you know, increasing your understanding, righteousness, and discipline, and whatever the last one was, love.
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Yeah. Yes. All right. Anything? I guess we can close in prayer a little early.
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Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. I pray that you would help those heads of households here to maintain their authority.
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I pray that you would help also those within their households to respect their authority and to hear them even when they do not perfectly maintain that authority.
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We ask that you would make the homes of your church shining examples of what you would have them to be.