FBC Morning Light – July 18, 2022

Well, a good Monday morning to you. I hope your week is going to get off to a good start today. Did you have a good weekend? Did you get together with God's people yesterday and share together in the Word of God, learn something, grow in grace and knowledge of Christ yesterday?

I hope you did. I hope you found your day, your Lord's day, profitable to your soul. Well today, I want to begin by asking this question. Who determines how you function as a family? What determines how you function as a family?

In recent years, there have been some television sitcoms that revolved around the family. Modern Family, for example, is one. I've seen Family Guy is another one I've heard about, and there have been others.

I honestly haven't watched any of them, so I can't speak intelligently about them. I just know that they existed. The challenge is, if Christians watch such stuff, they will be affected in their thinking about how family life functions.

Admittedly, if you are well-informed scripturally, you could watch a show like that and you could pick it apart and see where it falls and fails in terms of its relationship to what God has to say about the family.

Christ-Centered Family Life

But I'm talking about Christian families, and primarily your primary source of direction and how your family is to function as individuals within that family. I would suggest, on the basis of Colossians 3 and verses 18 and following, that in our Christian homes, in our domestic relationships within our families, those relationships need to be informed by Christ, by our faith in Christ.

So, for example, verse 18 says, "...Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as is fitting or appropriate in the Lord.". Then he moves to husbands. "...Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.".

In the parallel passage in the book of Ephesians, Paul says, "...Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.". The next verse says, "...Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.".

And then, "...Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.". Now a couple of things I want to point out here. One of them is the difference between the exhortation to wives and that to children.

He tells wives to submit to the authority, the leadership responsibility of the husband, but he tells children to obey their parents. And there is a difference in emphasis there. Submission isn't about obeying every little whim or whatever.

It's not putting you as a wife in a subservient relationship to the husband, as if every dictate that he declares you have to cater to and you have to bow down to, you have to obey as a child would obey a parent.

The emphasis of submission is not so much that, as it is to recognizing the leadership responsibility that husbands have, and accepting that relationship, accepting that responsibility as they exercise it.

So, the husband then is the leader of the home, and the wife follows that leadership. That's the emphasis of that idea of submission. And then, a second thing I want to point out is the dual exhortation to the men of the home.

So, husbands, you're commanded to love your wife. That tells you that this isn't an emotional thing. This is a matter of the will. Again, in the Ephesians passage, Ephesians 5, Paul says, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

How did Christ show his love for the church? By giving himself for it. By his acts of sacrificial work to provide for and meet their needs. This is the obedience aspect of loving your wife. You love your wife by sacrificing yourself for her.

What you want, what you prefer, what you like, that's all secondary. What's primary is, what does my wife need? I will sacrifice what I want for the sake of what my wife needs. And then, there's a second exhortation to the men, and that is, Fathers, he says, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

I see here, in that dual exhortation to the men, the implied leadership responsibility. I would say, primary role of responsibility in the home. The rising and the falling of the home rests with us as dads.

Are we loving our wives as we ought to love our wives? Are we rearing our children as we ought to rear our children? Are we bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Or are we provoking our children to anger?

Are we exasperating them, is the idea of that word, with our iron fist, and our keeping under the thumb, and our kind of caustic tones, and all the rest of that kind of thing. Are we provoking or exasperating our children?

So, men, let's take our responsibilities seriously, and notice how all of these areas of responsibility, wives, children, husbands, fathers, they're all informed by our Christian faith. Let's be sure that we're living out our responsibilities in the home, according to the directives of God's word, not from the culture.

Prayer for Christian Homes

So, our Father, I pray that you would help us to be the husbands and fathers that we ought to be, that we need to be. I pray that you would help us, the wives, to be the wives that you would call them to be.

And I pray that children would honor and respect and obey their parents, as is fitting unto you. So, help us, Father, in our families to be Christian families, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your Monday.

Hope your week gets off to a great start. God bless.