Myths of Marriage #5

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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But I am saying that the home should be, responsibility -wise, 100 % the domain of the woman.

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Now, you might hear this and think, that sounds very archaic.

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It sounds really archaic. But think about that for a moment. How archaic is that idea? Maybe like 100 years ago it was starting to be questioned.

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So before that you've got millennia of it not being questioned. Of everybody just agreeing that this is the case.

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And even in our own time, look across the world at all the different cultures that exist. And how many people in the world really disagree with what

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I'm saying? It's only a small minority. So I might look like I have a minority view in this valley where we live.

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But really it's an objection to this that would be the minority view across time and across space.

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Now this is all built on the foundation of the idea that men are different than women.

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It's a very simple thing. Men are different from women. First of all, they have different bodies. They have different heights, different weights, different strengths.

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There's a lot of ways that technologies mitigate these differences so they're not as pronounced. But there are some ways where technology can't remove all the differences.

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For example, when it comes to reproductive roles, man's not going to give birth, man's not going to nurse a child.

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There's a lot of ways technologies have tried to minimize those differences. For example, formula. Formula is a great invention that you can use for kids if a woman's not able to nurse her child.

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And this used to be a very popular way of trying to make the sexes more equal. But it's actually become passe as more people have realized, oh, this is maybe the best way to go by default.

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So there's differences between the bodies of men and women. That's not the only thing that's true.

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But also that there's a difference between their souls. Genesis 127 says,

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So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. So man is made in the image of God, male and female.

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Man is not just body, he's also a soul. There are inherent soul differences between man and woman.

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Now, I'm not going to psychologize and go into all those differences, but people generally recognize even apart from those bodily differences, there are differences in the way men and women act.

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Those are just really inherently true. And once again, it's only a very small minority of people who would disagree with that.

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And if this is true, if this is true that there's a difference between men and women, it has to have far -reaching implications for how we live.

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A lot of people will concede, yes, there are obviously differences between men and women, but then they don't say, they aren't willing to say, that there's implications for the way we live in society together.

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Or at the same, they might be different in every way that they are, but not in any of their roles or functions.

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Well, if there are differences in what they are, if God created man male and female, these are actually distinct things, different things, male and female, then we should not be surprised that there would be a difference in the family and the roles, but we should even expect it, it should be expected that there would be some kind of difference.

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So let me go through a few reasons why I believe that the home should be the woman's domain.

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And notice the way I'm saying that, that's a defined way of saying it. The woman's domain is her responsibility, this is a good thing.

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This is not, you know, that she's bound to this as a slave, but rather this is her domain, she's a master of the home.

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So first, so first consider that what

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Proverbs 31 says about the good wife, the good woman. It says in verse 15, she rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maiden.

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In verse 21 it says, she is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.

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It says in verse 27, she looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.

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Now repeatedly throughout Proverbs 31, a classic passage talking about what an ideal wife or woman looks like.

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And it repeatedly, she is concerned about her home, she is taking care of her home, the house is her domain.

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Now consider also the words of Titus, well the words of the book of Titus, Titus did not write the book of Titus.

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Titus 2 verse 3 says, older women likewise are to be irreverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.

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They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

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So it talks about them being working at home. Once again, you see that the home is the domain of the woman.

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And not only this, but I'll throw in a side note here. It also talks about older women training younger women to think this way.

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If you look at the world and you see that a lot of people don't think this way, why do you think that might be?

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Could it possibly be the fact that we've really segregated ages so people only spend time with their peers, and there's not a lot of cross -generational interaction?

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Could that not be the case? I really think it is. So first of all, the

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Bible just says this directly. Secondly, let's look also at the man.

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What is the man supposed to do? Going back to Genesis 1, the

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Bible says of the man in chapter 2, verse 15, it says, "...the

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Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." So man is supposed to work over the garden and keep the garden.

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He's supposed to go subdue the earth as God had commanded. He's supposed to build and to plant, etc.

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Now, how is he supposed to be able to go do all those things if he is distracted by the things of the home?

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There's only a limited way that a man could do that. Just to reinforce that, consider what Proverbs 22, 29 says.

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Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before obscure men.

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A man skillful in his work will stand before kings, not obscure men. That kind of greatness is something that the

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Bible says is accomplishable, is achievable. Now, I don't believe it's really accomplishable if you aren't setting your mind to it and really dedicating yourself to such excellence.

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And no one can dedicate themselves to such excellence if they're distracted by other things. Speaking of ministry,

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Paul later tells Timothy that a soldier does not engage in secular affairs.

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He keeps his mind focused. The same is true of pastors, right? Ideally, a pastor is full -time.

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I'm a pastor. I'm a bivocational pastor. And I know it's the case that I'm not able to do a very excellent job because I haven't been able to focus on that.

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There's reasons why I've chosen this particular route. But that level of excellence is only possible when your mind is absolutely focused on it.

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And if you have a home that's running, and the man is responsible for a significant portion of it, and the woman is responsible for a significant portion of it, is such excellence really possible?

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Is what the Bible describes as the man in his role really possible? Once again,

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I would say that it's not. An unclear division in responsibility also leads to a lot of bitterness.

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If you have multiple people responsible for something and something doesn't go right, it's very easy to point fingers to get bitter.

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And this is what happens in the home very often. Sarah and I were actually recently counseling a couple who was going through this exact thing.

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Not clear divisions of responsibility in the home, and so it's very easy to get upset at each other when things aren't going right.

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And consider, for example, a team sport where you have different roles.

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Like, for example, baseball. I'd use volleyball. That'd be a real good one because in beach volleyball you have two people, but I'm not actually sure how different the roles of the center and the spiker are.

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But for baseball, would you rather have a player who's really good at pitching or a player who's really good at first base, or would you rather have two players that are above average in both of those things?

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You could have players that are really, really far above average in both of those things, but a far better team would be someone who's terrible at first base but great at pitching, and terrible at pitching but good at first base, and focusing on those things, and maybe not even having those different skills but having so focused on these things that they're pursuing them with excellence.

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That's right. You know that this person is an excellent first base man. This person is an excellent pitcher.

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You don't find people switching between these roles back and forth with any degree of real excellence.

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So continuing on to what else the Bible says about this is that that role of assisting a man so that he can pursue such things is what, once again, what the

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Bible says of the woman. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 8, it says,

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For man was not made from a woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

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So you see there's an asymmetry there. It's not that they were created for each other.

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Now, there is certainly a sense that that's true. They were created for each other. They were created for mutual help. But there's also an asymmetry there, that there's a particular way that the woman was created for the man and the man was not created for the woman.

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And so, as you see, Scripture repeatedly speaks about this. There's a way that the woman is supposed to be assisting the man that he might pursue such things.

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And this also makes a lot of sense of the other things that Scripture says perhaps a little more clearly that Christians more readily accept.

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A lot of Christians come to the biblical ethic of marriage and they see that, okay, the

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Bible says the woman is supposed to submit to a man, and it's very clear about that, so they accept it. But then they don't necessarily accept these other things.

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And what you end up with is this dutiful submission without the notion of purpose, that actually that submission is found in the idea that you have this support role, that you have this particular domain and this particular responsibility.

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And without a notion of purpose or goal, that submission just feels arbitrary.

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And it's something that can become, once again, very embittering. And a lot of people are embittered, and then they end up feeling like this

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Christian ethic is oppressive. However, if it comes with a particular goal, then it's actually enabling to pursue such a goal.

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And, for example, if a husband is helping the wife around the home, rather than being upset that he's not doing the job well or being upset that he hasn't done a good enough job, rather, all those things can be appreciated fully as something that's truly him helping out.

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So, yeah, let me handle several objections people have. I'm not going to handle all of them, right?

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I'm sure there's just tons that people can come up with that I won't be able to think of.

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But first of all, that – well, are you saying that men should just sit at home and be slobs and never help out around the house?

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No, yeah, men should be helping out around the home. If their wife needs help, they should be helping out. Even if their wife doesn't need help, they should be helping out, right?

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I'm not saying that a man should not be doing any work around the home. Rather, in terms of responsibility and a way of understanding the delegation of those responsibilities of housework in this domain.

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In fact, 1 Peter 3, 7 says, when a man is not loving his wife, caring for his wife, that his prayers are hindered before God.

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I would say that a man who's being lazy like that and isn't fulfilling his role in the marriage, his prayers are hindered before God.

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God doesn't even listen in such a long. Next, people might say, well, how is this fair if both a man and wife are pursuing careers that she's saddled with?

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All this extra work. Well, it's probably obvious in what I'm saying, but this doesn't work when women are generally pursuing careers beyond marriage and kids.

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Of course, before such things, obviously, work is good, etc. But once you have a family, a home you're building, there's someone who really needs to be responsible for that home.

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Next, people might say, well, a woman has skills that she can do such things.

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That's absolutely true. Don't deny it. I'm a software engineer. I've worked with a lot of women who are way, way smarter than me, way better at software engineering than I am.

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I'm not denying that women have that capacity. However, I do believe that, be it so, women have a great capacity to care for the home.

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This is obviously true when it comes to the role of a mother with children.

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A man can't give birth. A man can't nurse a child. These are things that only women can do.

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I'm not talking about a woman having a lack of gifting. I'm talking about her having a special gifting. One more thing with that.

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A lot of people look at Proverbs 31, that passage I first brought up, and they say, oh, look, this woman is a businesswoman.

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She considers the field and buys it. I think that's a really biased way of reading that passage.

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That is taking care of the home. When we bought our house back in 2018, my wife did all the paperwork.

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She did all the research, talking to the realtor, et cetera. These are things that, yeah, it's managing the home.

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It's very high stakes business involved, but it's still taking care of the home.

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The last thing people might say is that this is undignified to have a woman just in the home.

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Given that my views are often seen as very offensive, what is really more offensive?

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Me saying that homes function best when a mother is running them?

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Or the idea that this particular set of work that many women have chosen is undignified?

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It would be far more dignified if you did what these other women over here did. One really has a bad view of many women, and the other does not.

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What I'm describing is actually upholding their dignity. I think also, just going back to what

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I had said previously, that we live in a special time and a special place where what

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I'm describing is a very minority view. If you're having trouble accepting this or swallowing it, consider just how bad the cards may have been stacked against you.

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That should be something encouraging, not discouraging, because there's something that you can do about it. But if you have been raised in a way to not think that such things are dignified, if you've been raised in a way to not be prepared for the work of taking care of a home as a woman, if you've been raised in a way so that none of these things were priorities or values, you might not think that any of this is right.

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As you try going this route, believing what the Bible says but not necessarily embracing it to the full, it might be very difficult for you.

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But if you recognize that the way many of us have been raised in our culture, and especially also for a lot of you who have immigrated here, with parents that were just focused on your schooling and that kind of thing, that you may have a lot to overcome, but that is an overcomable obstacle.

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It's not something that doesn't exist, a phantom that can't be fought with. Rather, it is a real obstacle that can be overcome.

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And with all this, once again, a point that is worth coming back to time and time again, marriage is an emulation of that relationship between Christ and the

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Church. Ephesians 5, 22 says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the

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Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its

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Savior. Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

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Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water of the

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Word. So that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

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So you see, it's not just the case that men and women are different on that foundation. There are differences in the way they interact, the way they take care of the home.

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But it's also the case that there's a difference between Christ and the Church, and that this is supposed to be emulated in our marriages.

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If Christ is loving, sacrificially giving, the husband should be loving, sacrificially giving.

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If the Church is playing the supporting role, pointing to Christ, advancing his kingdom, then the woman should likewise be taking care of the home for the sake of the man, helping him, playing that supporting role.

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Alright, let me go ahead and say a few things before we pray. First of all, there's a sign for us over there.