Doctrinal Training: Roles in the Home

I am going to read us a very relevant piece of scripture and then I'm gonna pray and we'll get right into it. I'll tell you what I'm trying to do and where we're trying to go. The scripture, I'm sure you're familiar with it, it is 1 Timothy 2.

I'm going to read verses 9 through 15. This is not an ex-post or somebody raging on the internet. This is the word of God. So listen to it. For it was Adam who was first formed and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into trespass.

But she will be saved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with self-restraint. Let's pray. Lord, you have given us your word. It is perfectly true. It is sharp.

It cuts us. It cuts through our lofty ideas that we would hold up against your own. And yet, Lord, as your people, we hope and desire to be a people that yield to what you say. And Lord, as we read a text like that, we see how not only the culture at large gnashes its teeth and rebels against the clear orders that you have laid out, but also to our great shame, many in the church cannot read a passage like that without bending over backwards to try to soften what you've said.

So Lord, give us ears to hear tonight. Give me wisdom to not go ahead of what you've said, but also, Lord, in the very same vein, to not lag behind what you've said. And Lord, may our families be blessed in this place.

And may that emanate forth to be a blessing to the community around us as people see how our families are different, are ordered differently, how we have husbands and wives who live not only peacefully, but live lovingly and joyfully and raise children who are discipled in your ways.

Lord, we long for that, and we know that we have no power to accomplish it. It's only through the leading and direction of your spirit. And we pray that that he would guide us tonight and that we would hear, understand, repent, confess, and be resolute and steadfast to change our course and do what we need to do.

Why Complementarianism Falls Short

It's in your name I pray. Amen. The reason I actually lengthened that text I was going to just read verse 12. I lengthened it out and read the whole thing. I think the reason why I'm not going to, I don't really want to comment on the culture a lot.

This is really targeted at our families, and it's targeted at what's going on in the church, not all the churches, in this church, and what we hope to be and what we hope to accomplish in trying to align ourselves with what the word of God says.

And we do have to note though that it's difficult, and there are a lot of forces arrayed against us. And I know that you guys, like, you guys are people who are not overly impressed by what our pagan culture says, okay, but I can tell you, and I see it over and over again, one of our dear friends who's a fellow member often modesty posts on social media, he actually did this afternoon, and it will not be long before women who go to churches in this area are raging at him and telling him that he is a caveman and that he's wrong and maybe not even a Christian, and we see it all the time.

This happens all the time. And one of the reasons why is because we have for too long been embarrassed about what the word of God says about what men are expected to do and what women are required to do, okay?

And I say it that way for a reason. I hopefully can unpack that. One of the things that we deal with is even within conservative churches, and this one, and if I was polling all of you guys, I don't know what answers I would get.

I should probably be a better pastor and do this, but many people would describe themselves as complementarians. You've probably heard that before. It's a word that frankly sounds made up, and it was basically made up years ago, and the two most notable people behind that were a guy named John Piper and a guy named Wayne Grudem.

I have read their works extensively. I like both those men. I really dislike a lot of what one of them in particular says, but I like those men, and I think that they were trying to move the ball and trying to stem a flood, and what was happening is in the church until really the late 80s, feminism just completely, the overt kind of feminism completely dominated the church.

Women pastors everywhere. Women explicitly and visibly in control of the church in the largest denominations, and there was a fight, and there are many men who are still very notable today, and one of the main reasons they're notable is because of their role in that fight of trying to gain back a biblical understanding of leadership in the church.

Al Moeller is one of those. Grudem and Piper wrote a book to try to basically form a consensus and a coalition, and they called their idea complementarianism because the word patriarchy was toxic and the word feminism is sinful, and so what was going on is that complementarianism, basically, it functioned as a halfway house to placate some of the softer feminists, but also to get some of the hardline patriarchy people on board, and complementarianism is difficult to argue against because it is largely true, but what complementarianism does is it in many ways denies not explicitly, but functionally denies verses 13 and 14 of 1 Timothy chapter 2 that explains why Paul's saying that.

It was Adam who was first formed and then Eve, and it was Eve who was deceived, and so what complementarianism did was it said, yes, men and women have different roles in the home and in the church, and that's it.

It's a narrow focus, and what it does is denies what ontologically God said about men and women and how we are supposed to interact with each other, and so unsurprisingly, even though I do think that it was a good faith effort by those men, and I do think that it did accomplish a lot of good in its time, as it's been re-examined in the madness that we've had in the last especially 15 years, it's become a term that we argue about in the church, and you'll hear a lot when we talk about men.

It's a stereotypical thing that on Father's Day, you come in and the men are going to get screamed at, right? Everything in the house is your fault because you're in charge. How do you lead? With servant leadership.

What does servant leadership mean? Your wife's got to be happy, okay, and then men understandably just leave church, and that's what's happened, right? They just leave. That is no good. I don't understand that.

That makes no sense. That's not how my boss acts. My boss is not a servant leader. He tells me what to do, and then if I don't do it, he fires me, and he's in charge, right? And for women, they would come in, and on Mother's Day, you know the caricature.

It's you are a rose, a flower, delicate, beautiful, gentle. What sacrifice you have made to nurture those children, often with no help whatsoever, and this is the situation that the church has hardly found themselves in, so that's kind of the overview, and I want to get narrowed in on you guys because what often happens is we get into this topic, and we just start talking like I just did, like 10 ,000 foot view, feminism's horrible, the men are gone, what are we going to do now, and then what is a temptation because I am a feminist also, right?

It's hard to live in this culture and not be. What happens is it is hard for me to feel like I am actually teaching women. It's hard. It's easy for me to take out the knife and cut men and expect you to do something, and then with women, it's gentle, right?

It's so gentle, and we are not served well by that. So we're going to talk about this. Usually in Scripture, you'll notice when these passages come up, and whether it's in 1 Timothy or if it's in Titus or if it's in Ephesians or if it's in 1 Peter, you'll notice that Paul or Peter often address the women first.

Husbands and the Authority of the Home

I am going to go backwards, and that is because I have addressed women often, and there's going to be a lot of addressing of women in the husband section, and I want to make sure that I do it. I'm going to spend much more time on husbands, because frankly, I'm a first fireball today.

I've actually tried to restrain myself. Frankly, 85 of the time when I have in mind when I'm preaching or teaching, I'm teaching you men. 85 of the time. I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about what you need.

I'm thinking about how to motivate you, because I know if I got you, I've got them, right? That doesn't mean that it's not helpful to women, and it doesn't mean that I never preach to women, but I most of the time preach to men, and so I'm going to start with the men, and I'm going to go to a passage that, if possible, is even more on fire than that section in 1 Timothy, and it's my favorite section because I think it gives the most in-depth teaching on how hierarchy works between husbands and wives, and that is in 1 Peter 3.

Now, you have to remember context. In 1 Peter 3, what he is doing, what Peter is doing, is he is running through slaves and masters. He's running through being reviled. He's running through interactions with the government.

It's all about hierarchy, and then he pinnacles talking about husbands and wives because what he's saying is Jesus is the ultimate hierarchy who went through water to save like Noah did on the ark, and he does not return reviling for reviling, and he is the ultimate example of everything that Peter is talking about, which once again is hierarchy, okay?

So 1 Peter 3, I'd like you to have it open. He says in verse 1, in the same way, you wives be subject to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives.

This is a hugely important verse. Do you see why? I don't know if you see it. One of the lies that feminism points to inside the church is that the hierarchy is a product of the fall, right? The hierarchy is the product of the fall.

That is a lie from Satan. Hierarchy is baked into the very fabric of creation. Eve would have been the help me, encourager, and underneath Adam, his inferior in hierarchy, if they had never sinned at all.

That's the truth, and the reason we know that is because of what Peter does here. He takes this outside of special revelation and grounds it in general revelation, natural law, and what he's saying is that wives, you're to be subject to your husband even if he's awful, right?

Even if he hates Jesus. You subject yourself to your husband if he is a Christ hater. Why? So that you might win him without a word. How many Christians in this situation do you think really follow this verse?

Because wives, because of the fall and because of the strife, remember what the actual product of the curse was. It's that the wife's desire would be for the man, and what that meant is that her desire would be to master him.

The same word is used in chapter 4 of Genesis when it's talking about sin, whose desire for Cain is to be over him, to rule him, to dominate him. So the wife's desire after the fall is to own her husband, to dominate him, and we see that everywhere.

The very concept of feminism is the carrying out of the curse, and so what happens is when wives are in a situation, and it's usually going to be from an extreme lack of wisdom that you've married this man in the first place, right?

Christian sisters, you've married this man who hates God, and he is telling you to do stuff, and your every instinct is going to be to teach him. Is it not? Your every instinct is going to be to teach him, and your every instinct is in rebellion to what God says, because you're going to win him without a word by your conduct, by what you do.

And as you read on, both in 1 Timothy and in 1 Peter chapter 3, you're going to see that women and their righteousness is defined by what they do, not what they think, not what they say. It's actually defined by what they don't say, right?

It's defined by what they do. They do good deeds. They listen to their husband. They treat him with respect. Now, we're used to hearing that kind of stuff, and we don't get practical. We understand that Paul is hated by feminists, right?

They try to throw Timothy out. They try to throw these passages out. Peter is much worse, though. He's much more pointed. It's much more difficult. He has Sarah calling Abraham, Lord, and saying that that's a thing that is honorable.

It's saying that she did that, and you should not be afraid, right? If you are under the protection of your husband, you shouldn't be afraid. And what we get from all of this is this, right? Men, you have a job, and you've heard it a million times, right?

Hopefully, we're going to hear what you're actually supposed to do, though. Men, you are responsible for the success and failure of your family. You've heard that a thousand times, right? You are responsible for the success or failure of your family.

Now, what has not been taught often is that you have the widest area of authority of any of the hierarchical structures. Let me demonstrate. The government has authority to tax you, to kill you if you break their laws, to punish you if you break their laws, and really not a whole lot of other prescribed authority.

They are not to know every thought that you're having. They are not thought police. They can't be thought police. They're too inefficient. They have control over swaths of people, right, with a very broad brush.

Elders in the church have authority over you to be sure, but that authority is very constrained to the preaching of the Word and the administering of the sacraments. We have the authority of counsel. You don't have to do what we say, but you would be wise to do what we say if you have good elders.

And good elders are also going to be careful about their jurisdiction and got to be careful before they barge in into areas where they don't have authority. But husbands have authority in what the Bible says is all things.

Now, does that literally mean absolutely everything? No, it doesn't. The Bible doesn't use the word all that way. When it says all, it says, you know what I'm talking about. It's like, it's like lots and lots of stuff.

Generally speaking, husbands have authority in the home. Okay, so what does that mean in reality? What does that mean in reality? Well, I'm going to give you some negative examples, and then I'm going to give you some positive examples.

Husbands have authority in all things, so what does that actually mean? Here's the thing. If you do not establish a mission or a purpose for the family, the family will have no purpose, and your wife will be tempted in her sinful estate to make a mission for the family, and that mission is going to crash and burn like a meteor going into the earth, and it's going to be a dumpster fire, and it's going to infest and destroy everything that it touches.

Your extended family, your friends, the wife who has set the mission of the home has destroyed all of the connections inside and outside of the family, and we see it over and over again. TV shows are made about it.

We're watching a stupid TV show right now that's got like the vice president married to like the ambassador wife, and they're just constantly striving with each other because she thinks she's smarter than him, and she just can't shut her pie hole, and the whole show is based on this tension, right, and it's just destroying everything around them.

If you abdicate your authority, men, which means if you just give up, happy wife, happy life, if that's your mantra, your family will be destroyed, and we're seeing it happen even as we speak, right? We see childless families.

We see the end of the line. We see divorce that is just absolutely rampant, right? Something that was unheard of. I saw a number yesterday that the divorce rate in America in 1925 was 0 .25 percent. 50 percent now.

So what's happened? I mean, there's a lot of factors to be sure, but what we have happened is we have developed a system not only in the government but also in the church to our tremendous shame, but then it bleeds down into the family, and the system that we have operated is happy wife, happy life.

Husbands are responsible for everything but have no power to change anything because if you try to change something, you're going to get divorced, and then all your money's going to be gone, and you'll get to see your kids twice a month.

We know this, right? That's the way it is, and so people act on incentive structures, and we see what young men have done is stop getting married. So understand and consider this, men. If you abdicate your authority, there is going to be tyranny and disorder, and you are going to be underneath the tyrant until you get mad enough and emasculated enough to do something crazy, and you probably will if you have enough testosterone left, and there's a war on that too.

We know the average male today has the testosterone of a woman in 1980. There's a war on testosterone. We are docile, dumb, weak, and it doesn't have to be that way. So if you go along to get along, understand that you're going to be destroyed, and the generations to follow are going to have a tough road.

These things are still in play from the Old Testament where generational righteousness is a thing. Generational righteousness passes on and on and on normatively, but generational iniquity also passes on, and it's like a force behind you.

I know you guys who are in public education have seen this. It's like there's a force behind people that's just pushing them towards their destiny, and oftentimes when you have broken homes, the destiny is just more broken homes, even at a bigger scale, but if the pathway is righteousness, it almost seems like when you're educating kids who come from righteous homes, it doesn't even matter what you do as a teacher a lot of times.

It feels like there's just this push behind them, like they know where they're going. They know what they're doing. Your decisions have huge generational impacts. So men, here's what we need to do, okay?

I'm going to explain this one more a little bit later, but the first thing that you have to set in your mind, marching order for today. If you have not done this, you must do it. You need to set a mission and a purpose for your family.

It needs to be simple. It needs to be measurable. It needs to be honed in on just a few things. You're not going to be able to do everything as a family. You're not going to be able to be everything. Pick the thing that the Lord has laid on your heart.

Pray to God to tell you what your mission and purpose is going to be for your family. It's never too late. Whether you're an empty nester, a 25-year-old, or someone who has multiple kids, young kids in the family right now, it's not too late.

The proverb that I've used before, it's not a biblical proverb, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now, okay? That is a very true thing. If you've done nothing, don't wring your hands, but do repent on hands and knees and start leading your family.

So what you do is you set a mission and a purpose for your family, and you communicate it, and you enforce it, and you repeat it, and you evaluate it. So personally, in my family, we've had this going for many years now, and we have a value in our family, and our value is honesty.

We value honesty more than any other single thing. You can get off of some punishment with honesty, because we want to promote, reinforce, incentivize honesty. And then our mission is that we want to be a family of just devastatingly good readers.

That's a mission for our family. Now, what does that have to do with godliness, Josh? Well, God wrote us a book, for starters, and that's how we know what he wants us to do. The other thing is that people who can think and people who understand the thoughts of the world and people who understand why we are here are readers, over and over again.

That doesn't have to be your family's goal. That's our goal. And so when you walk in our door, if you've been there before, many of you have, what you're going to see is a 12-foot tall by 22-foot wide shelf that's full of books, and you're going to see hangings on the wall that have book quotes on them, and you're going to see that, well, you probably haven't seen it, but my brother and I do a podcast just talking about books, and we talk about books in the house, and Kelsey's in a book club, and it's all around us.

So do our kids like to read? Yeah, they do, because here's the thing, right? This is what our culture doesn't get. Kelsey can't do that on her own. In fact, she can't do it at all. I see it time and time again.

Lots of educated moms want their kids to read, and what happens is when you push too hard, especially on a young boy, as a single mom, without the backing, the boy is going to rebel, and he will hate reading, because he knows in his gut that it's not right for him to be under that heavy burden.

But when a dad is pushing it, it will succeed. It's nature. It's built that way. So a little bit more on that later. Here's a big one, and I want to stay here just a little bit. Do not give your authority away.

Leading Without Abdicating Authority

Now, I've already explained. Don't give your authority to wives. You make the decision. Own it. Sure, you can listen to her, and you consider what the consequences of your actions are, but we are told not to fear, and you should never fear the consequences of your wife's feelings or emotions based on your decision.

You are in charge, and you are accountable to God for what you do. You should fear him. You should fear him. You should not fear her, because if you're being a tyrant, the reason that you're wrong is you're sinning against him, and you need to repent to him.

David said, against you and you alone have I sinned. Now, did David sin against other people? Of course he did, but it was way less important than who he really sinned against, and David knew that. But there's others.

We talked about wives. Don't give your authority to wives. Many fathers give their authority away to children by just making them go away. Do whatever makes them happy. Do whatever makes them shut up.

Do whatever makes them get away from you. Don't give your authority away to your children. Do not give your authority away to pastors. Men, you're in charge of your home, not me. If you sidestep yourself and go to me, that puts all of us in a really bad situation, and some of you guys have seen it from other churches.

When elders take on too much authority, it blows everything up sky-high, because we start to get drunk on the power, and we start to try to order and control things that not only do we have no business to control, but it's just like when the government takes over for the husband.

It blows up the family, and that, by the way, is the next one. Don't give your power over to the government. Don't give your authority to the government. That is what has happened to black America. Fathers gave their authority to the government, and the government is a worse father than a woman is.

They're the worst, because they don't hear the crying, and they don't care. They just send a check, and the check is addictive, so don't give it away. Here's how you do this. You have to never give your wife free access to the pastor.

Please don't do it. I've repented. I have repented of overstepping my bounds. Look, it was with good intentions, but in God's law, it doesn't matter what your intentions are. It is wrong for a pastor to step in between the husband and the wife.

We should not do it. We are talking all the time about training ourselves to not do it, to say, hey, go talk to your husband and do what he says. That's what you need to do. 99 .9 of the time, what should you do?

Do what your husband says. If he's telling you to sin, don't do it, okay? That's it. That's the equivocation tonight, but sin is not what makes your feelings hurt. Sin is according to God's law. Discipline, disciple, nourish, teach, and defend in your home, starting with your wife.

Teach your wife. Nourish her. Defend her. Pour into her. Solomon writes that his pleasure comes from the breasts of the wife of his youth, and we are afraid of that verse even more than we're afraid, I think, of the feminist verses.

Here's the thing, right? You drink the cleanest water from your own well, and when you drink your own clean water and it's the most sparkling, beautiful water that you can imagine, all the other wells mean nothing to you, and it keeps you from a whirlwind of sin, and it also helps you to maintain your authority in the household.

Elders are not the husband of every wife, but listen, we have a big problem with this. Elders become feminist white knights when they start intervening in this spot, and what will happen is you'll go to marriage counseling, and you're going to sit in front of an elder, and you've been trained that some of you guys haven't, thankfully, but many of you guys have heard the stories or been in the situation where you're going to sit in front of this pastor, and what's he inevitably going to do?

He's going to threaten church discipline on the husband, and he's going to, oh, I'm so sorry, dear, that he's that way, and the reason why he's doing it is because he has been training for months and years to become the husband to every wife in the church by letting them sidestep him, their husband, thinking they're getting power while actually they're just subjugating themselves to a different man, and that's also what's going on in corporate America.

You don't care what your husband says, but you definitely care what your shift manager says who's walking around in the cubicles while you fashion yourself to be a girl boss, but you're really under the thumb of a faceless corporate entity who doesn't care anything about you, and you're neglecting the husband at home.

Crazy what we've done, and the thread just goes so deep. So, husbands, what happens when things go way wrong? I don't know what to do. She won't listen. I really just don't even know what to do, okay?

Here it is. It is good and right to appeal to higher authority yourself for counsel, for wisdom, for teaching, but it doesn't transfer the responsibility. You sift out what that higher authority says.

It can also be a wise friend. It doesn't have to be a pastor. It can be an older man that you respect. Go to him. Ask. Take his counsel. That is a good thing. Being in charge doesn't mean that you don't have any counselors.

That's stupid. Amass for yourself counselors. Test people in their counsel and see that it works. Okay, nitty-gritty. Men, you're going to have to think of yourself differently than you have. You are a loving father, a loving husband, but there's another role, and the scripture, when it talks about submission, it uses this word over and over and over again.

That word is hupotasso. That is a military word that is describing how a commanding officer has a relationship with his inferior officer. Think about what that means. Paul knowingly and Peter is talking about how wives are supposed to submit to husbands, and we talk about that a lot, but I want to talk about the other side of it.

Men, do you see yourself as a commanding officer in your home? Do you think that the general is hand-wringing about how the lieutenant's going to feel about the next order that he gives? No, but you do, right?

Do you think that he's going, oh man, it's probably just going to be real uncomfortable when I go in the tent again because he's going to be real mad at me that I gave this order. No, he's not worried about that.

He wouldn't be in that position if he was, but over and over again, we listen to that. We go, yeah, women do need to submit to us, but we don't act like commanding officers because what we don't know how to do is say, no, no, you can't do that.

No, I don't think you should. No, don't go. All right, and what happens is when you get in a situation, think of it this way. Husbands, when you are not leading your wife, and by leading, I mean exercising your authority.

When you're not exercising the authority, you're giving her no opportunity to do what she's supposed to do to glorify Christ. You're stealing the sanctification from her. She needs to grow in godliness by submitting.

She can't be sanctified and mature if she is not able to do the thing that she's most supposed to do, right? We saw it in Timothy. How do women get saved? By becoming theological podcast hosts? By becoming CEO of Hewlett-Packard?

No. He says they are going to be saved through the bearing of children. I think they need you for that, husbands, right? They need you. We are in this together. So you have to understand this as a person who is being submitted to.

The Family Mission and the Commanding Officer

You want to win. That's what makes a good commanding officer, and you need to start, husbands, you need to start thinking of yourselves this way. The success of your family is winning. It's seeing the mission, laying it out, and accomplishing the mission.

But we don't run our houses that way, do we? We're listless. We have no mission. We're just getting through the grind every day, and we wonder why our families are absolutely falling apart. Because there's no purpose, and any organization, big or small, falls apart when there's no pointed direction that we're trying to go.

That's why people get divorced after their kids grow up. Because it was a bad one, but at the very least, the de facto mission of the family when they had kids was make sure these kids don't die. And then the kids leave, and there's nothing left.

No mission. Divorce. Gone. People who are deacons and elders in churches, gone. 25 years of marriage, gone. Because there was no mission. There was never a mission. Do you know what I have observed time and time again?

People love winning. They love it. They love winning, and they love being right. It's like the two things, right? We love winning. We love being right. What's the most fun board game? None of them, but the only time I ever have fun is when I'm winning, okay?

If I'm losing, it's miserable. The best sport is the one that I'm good at, and I want to play somebody who's just a little bit worse to be, so it feels like a challenge, and I still win every time, right?

That's where we're at. Commanding officer wants to win. What makes a good general? One who wins. We remember the ones who win. We remember the fondest, the ones who win a lot. He directs his subordinates in service of the mission and for their success as a unit, and you can feel, if you really listen to that, the hackles will go up, women, but even more than that, women, the hackles are going to go up in husbands, because here's the thing.

Your primary goal is not to make your wife happy. Your primary goal is to win. Accomplish the mission. The primary goal of the church is not to feel comfortable and be happy. The primary goal of the church is to make disciples.

Jesus is the one who gave that order. He is the husband of the church. He is the head of the church, and he said, this is what you have to do, and if you want to be a good church, what do you do? Win.

You have to win. If the church is not making disciples, what is the point? Let's just start bringing in tea and crumpets and throw the little girl party we're already having and just pack it up. There's no point.

The purpose of the church and the gospel is inherently masculine. Do you understand? It's a mission. It's a war. It's a job, and your commanding officer has to direct the pieces in order to make the mission happen.

There's no excuse for failure of the commanding officer because he has the responsibility, but remember, in the military, that guy also has the authority. Everybody has to do what he says, right? He takes all of the blame for the failure because he had all the power to make everything go the way that he directed it to go.

Is the house any less? Should it be? Where do we find it in scripture? There is a limiting clause, right? Absolutely. Here we go. A little relief. The apostle gives it to us. You are to love your wife as Christ loved the church.

Does that mean servant leadership? Yeah, if servant leadership means that you're willing to die for her, okay? And that's true. Jesus gave his life for the church, but he also expects the church to obey his commands, right?

Kelsey knows this. I would absolutely 100 die for her, for sure, gladly, but I expect her to do what I say, and it's really that simple. I expect her to do what I say. If she doesn't do what I say, then we have a big problem going on.

Now, it should scare us men. There is a fear that we should have, and that is this. You are held accountable to God for how you treat your wife. He's going to ask you about it. Did you know? He's going to lay it all out and judge it and ask you about it.

You're not to command her to sin. You're not to make specious commands for your own self-aggrandizement. You are not to be drunk with the power that you have for your own selfish ends. You are to love her and accomplish the mission of the family, and you can't accomplish the mission by being a drunkard and a loser and somebody who's just yelling across the house to meet your needs and your comforts.