The Mind of Christ in the Family

We address the question of how we're born in sin and how the world and the flesh and the devil work against us in order to teach us what is true, what is good, what is beautiful apart from the truth that is in Jesus. And one of the things that I alluded to was this question, this issue of marriage and family, and so I want to address that. So now I really want us to get I want us to sort of drill down on a practical level and look at an issue and a question that is of great concern, a question that is really right in our wielhouse. This is going on in our midst today, where there is a war between what the Bible says about Biblical manhood, womanhood, marriage and family, and what our culture says, what the Prince of the Power of the Air says, what the world says about biblical manhood or about manhood, womanhood, marriage and family. So let's look at this and turn and see how we sort of apply what we've learned. Listen to this from Andreas Costenberger in his book God, Marriage and Family. He writes, measured against the Biblical teaching on marriage and the family, it seems undeniable that Western culture is decaying. In fact, the past few decades have witnessed nothing less than a major paradigm shift with regard to marriage and the family. The West Judaeo Christian heritage foundation have largely been supplanted by a liberation ideology that elevates human freedom and self determination as the supreme principle for human relationships. Let me say that again. It elevates human freedom and self determination as the supreme principle for human relationships. In their confusion, many hail the decline of the biblical traditional model of marriage and the family and its replacement by new competing moralities as major progress. See the decline of the family as major progress. There's been a lot of talk lately about doge Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency, and one of the things that came up early on was the USAID US Agency for International Development, which had just becomes sort of a slush fund for radical leftist ideologues to hawk their wares internationally and fill their pockets along the way. When that came up, it immediately set off alarm bells in my mind. As we were living in Lusaka, I would travel four times a year to do a preaching tour, and whenever I would fly back, not always, but often when I would be flying back, there would be international aid workers on the flight back into Lusaka, oftentimes people from us AID, and usually the people from USAID were working in the area of reproductive health. What that meant in the African context was doing everything in their power to reduce the number of births among African women, cause they saw that as progress progress. Much of the developed world has seen that as progress, and as a result of us seeing that as progress, all of the Western world, with very few exceptions, I think, maybe only the exception of Israel. And would you consider that the the Western world Ideologically you would, but it's geographically not. But with the exception of Israel, I don't think there's another developed nation outside of the Islamic world whose birth rate is above replacement rate. Replacement rate is two point one children per woman. If you're below two point one children per woman, you're not at a rate where you're going to replace yourself culturally, and most most of the developed world is somewhere between one point seven and one point three. One point four is demographic crisis. At one point four, you're probably at a point of no return, and your culture is going to be gone. It's going to disappear. Low's birth rate in the world South Korea zero point seven one third of replacement rate, one third of replacement rate. South Korea, as we know it is going to disappear, not because the North Koreans are going to come across the thirty ninth parallel and white soul, but because South Korea is going to destroy itself because it hates children. China is staring down the barrel of imminent cultural collapse and economic collapse, because even though there are one point three to one point four billion Chinese, because of their policies over the last several generations, they are in a massive decline demographically and there's nothing that can be done to slow it down. All over the developed world. Because this last statement is true, Listen to this last statement again. This ideology elevates human freedom and self determination as the supreme principle for human relations, and he says, in their confusion, many hail the deca line of the biblical traditional model of marriage in the family and this replacement by new competing moralities as progress. Listen to this from Ari Houckuman, who's the head of the UN's Agency on Population. He denounced the idea that high rates are divorce and out of woodlock births represent social crisis, claiming that they instead represented a triumph of human rights against patriarchy. You're heard that word, haven't you? Patriarchy? It's not patriarchy anymore now, it's the patriarchy. In other words, better to have marriages break up and women raising children by themselves than to have patriarchal male headed households. Listen to this from Linda Gordon. Many people mistaken least how many raise your hand if you've heard this before. People who say feminism and the feminist movement was just women rising up because men were not taking their rightful roles. Anybody ever heard that before? Anybody heard that. That's such nonsense. It's the opposite of what's true. Listen to this. Linda Gordon one the leading voices and what is the modern feminist movement today. She writes, the nuclear family must be destroyed and people must find better ways of living together. Whether it's ultimate whatever, it's ultimate meaning. The breakup of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. To hear that no woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. Oh, that's the very definition of motherhood. In fact, it's the very definition of parenthood. Women are not the only ones who no longer get to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it when they become responsible for children. Amen. But this is feminism, she continues. Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor or any external roles at all. Does that sound like someone who says men are just not stepping up and doing what they're supposed to do. Listen to this, the Declaration of Femmanism nineteen seventy one. How many knew there was a declaration of feminism. There is declaration of feminism in nineteen seventy one. Listen to this. Marriage has existed for the benefit of men and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women. We must destroy it. The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore, it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not live individually with men. If you wondered why the feminist movement and the Alphabet Mafia seemed to be on the same page on so many things, it's because, at the end of the day, the abolition of marriage is the goal. Dy free Dan again her name is synonymous with feminism. She called the family a comfortable concentration camp. Her goal at that time was not to eliminate marriage necessarily. She merely wanted women to insist on more from life, for them to reach outside of marriage for fulfillment. By the way, I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment. I disagree with what she means by it. I don't believe for a moment that a woman should find her fulfillment solely in her marriage. Woman is to find her fulfillment in Christ. A woman trying to find her fulfillment in marriage is guilty of idolatry. But that's not what fre Dan means once she refers to it as a comfortable concentration camp. Well, listen to this from Stephen Baskerville. The sexualization of politics and the politicization of sex is the most important and least scrutinized political development since the nineteen sixties. In forty years, the political left transformed itself from a socialistic campaign against property and enterprise into a sexual attack on the family, marriage and masculinity, a war against men. We don't even talk about masculinity anymore. We talk about toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity, and it's incredibly dangerous because we are slowly eradicating masculinity in our cultures, and that's gonna come back to bite us. You know, the military has a saying, hard men make good times, good times make soft men, and soft men make bad times hard times. Going to war against toxic masculinity means we are developing a generation of soft men, and soft men bring hard times. What happens when your nation is invaded by an alien force, You'll be looking for toxic masculinity and it won't exist anymore. What happens when a woman is being attacked in the streets. You look for toxic masculinity, You look for a hard man, But we're destroying them right before our eyes, cutting off our nose. Despite our face. God made men a certain way, and we need them the way God made them. We've seen that throughout history, and this war against masculinity is not helping anyone. Here's what it's doing. Here's what's doing on a micro scale. Right, maybe we're not being invaded right now and need men to step up in that way, but here's what it's doing on a microscale. We're convincing women that masculinity is toxic. We're convincing men that masculinity is toxic, and so we're softening men, we're emasculating men. But young women and young men are still getting married. And guess what happens when women get married to soft men. They don't like it. They weren't created to like it. They want their husbands to stand up and be men, but their husbands are not standing up and being men. Young men get sick of masculinity being feminized in the culture, and they look out and they want an answer, and you end up with Andrew Tait, one of the most vile individuals you can imagine. He is everything everything that those who paint a caricature of manhood worn't against. A man hates women, abuses women, uses women, violates women, but young men are flocking to him because they're looking for masculinity anywhere? Are you smelling what I'm stepping here? This is where it gets real. And then the LGBT or the two S l g pt Q I A plus. You gotta have the plus though. The plus is like Act seventeen to an unknown God, right in case we miss somebody. Right. And of course there's the silent P, the pedophilia, and you better believe it's part of the alphabet. They just don't say it out loud, expressing himself with great vigor, perhaps an extremist tone for a gay activist. Act UP leader leader Stephen Warren And toned an ominous sounding alarm for religious Jews and Christians in September of nineteen eighty seven in an article a Warning to Homophobes, and here's what he said. Here's the points that he outlined. Number One, henceforth, homosexuality will be spoken of in your churches and synagogues as an honorable estate. Two, you can either let us marry people of the same sex or better yet, abolish marriage altogether. Three you will be expected to offer ceremonies that bless our sexual arrangements. You will also instructure people in homosexual as well as heterosexual behavior, and you will go out of your way to make certain that homosexual youths are allowed to date, attend religious functions together, openly, display affection, and enjoy each other sexually without embarrassment or guilt. Four. If any of the old other people in your midst object, you will deal with them sternly, making certain they renounce their ugly and ignorant homophobia or suffer public humiliation. Five. You will also make certain that laws are passed forbidding discrimination against homosexuals and heavy punishments assessed. Did I say this was nineteen eighty seven. Six Finally, we will, in all likelihood want to expunge a number of passages from your scriptures and rewrite others, eliminating preferential treatment of marriage by using words that will allow for homosexual interpretations of passages describing biblical lovers such as Ruth and Boaz and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. We need to use different words. By the way, I'll just pause here. If you want to get on the wrong side of me, call my wife, my partner. That's part of this strategy. We are not a law firm. We are a covenant marriage. She is my wife, not my partner. The word partner is designed to undermine biblical marriage and open the door for all manners of illicit sexual practices and arrangements. Words matter. He ends with a warning, if all these things do not come to pass quickly, we will subject orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory. We have captured the liberal establishment and the press, have they. We've already beaten you on a number of battlefields. You have neither the faith nor the strength to fight us, so you might as well surrender now. Again, that was in nineteen eighty seven, and the overwhelming majority of what he warned has already come to pass in this war on marriage and biblical sexuality. So that's where we are. Remember we talked about the world, the flesh, and the devil. Then the old self and how our thinking is corrupted, and how we need to identify the thinking of the old self and be renewed in the spirit of our minds. We can't do that unless we identify that old thinking, and that's what we're doing here. But here's a question. How do we get there? Well? I'm glad you asked open your bibles to Genesis chapter two. Genesis chapter two. So the question is, how do we address something like this when the culture is walking in lockstep as it relates to manhood, womanhood, marriage, family, sexuality. I mean, the culture is walking in lockstep. Not only is the culture walking in lockstep, but we've established laws. Right and beyond just establishing laws, there are cultural norms where people are routinely shamed and dismissed if they find themselves on the wrong side of these ideas and concepts. If a man stands in front of you dressed like a woman, having mutilated his flesh, and says to you that his pronouns are she her, the culture says that you are obliged to join him in his delusion, and if you don't, you are the immoral one. Well, let's see where this comes from, and then how we respond to it, how we change the way that we think. First of all, Genesis two, beginning verse eighteen, Then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone. By the way, this not good, it's not moral. There's no sin in the world, so he's not making a moral statement here. If you pay attention and you look at what happens in Genesis one. You see a pattern. Let there be, then there was, it was good. Let there be, Then there was. It was good. Let there be, then there was. It was good. Let there be, then there was. It was good all the way down to let there be. Then there was. It was very good. So here in chapter two, for the first time, we see something is not good. So the astute reader perks up and pays attention. Here again, sin has not entered the world. That happens in chapter three. What is it that's not good? I'll explain in a bit. The Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The naming of the animals. It's interesting, there's several issues here. One is an apologetic issue that always comes up. We'll talk about naming the animals, and people come up and they so I'm one of those people. I'm one of those people who believes that God created the world in six literal twenty four hour days. I'm one of those people, right, and I make no bones about that. And because I'm one of those people, I also sort of get the side eye, right, I get the side eye from the culture because it's like, oh, we thought you were educated and intelligent, but you're one of those people. You believe God made the whole world in a week. Nope, six days, took the last day off, not a whole week, six literal twenty four hour days. And it's worse than that. I believe that it only happened about six to ten thousand years ago. That's it. That's all six to ten thousand years ago. And I get it. And people let it really give me the side eye then, right, because they're like, oh, you one of those people. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm one of those people, right, just completely dismissed from the discussion. Right. But here's the deal. I know that that guy over there says the world is eight billion years old, and this guy over here says the world is only three billion years old, And you think both of them are intelligent, and there's five billion years between them. But between me and the three billion year guy, there's less than three billion years. How come five billion years? You can still be intelligent less than three billion years. You're an idiot. And they always go to this issue and they're like, you know, but here you got Adam, and Adam is gonna name all the animals, have major surgery, and plan a wedding all in a twenty four hour day. First of all, Adam did not name every genus and species. He named categories of animals, which is clear from the text. Secondly, the world would only have contained a representative samplings of the animals that we have currently. It wouldn't have had every kind of dog. Amen would not have had the wolf and the coyote, and the German shepherd and the poodle poodles came after the fall right along with any dog smaller than this. There would have just been two dogs who contained all the genetic material from which you could derive all the other dogs. And that's all you need genetically. Same with cats. You don't have to have the lion and the tiger and the you know, you don't have to have all the different cats all the way down to the house cat. Again, house cats evidence of the fall. You would just need two cats with all the genetic material necessary to derive all the different types of cats, just like you only needed two people, two middle brown people. It couldn't have been black, and they couldn't have been white, because if they were on either of the extremes, you could not have gotten all of the different variations. So two middle brown people from whom you could derive all the different ethnicities of people on the earth. So no Adam did not have to name millions and millions and millions of animals. By the way, that also explains why Noah's ark could be the size that it was. Then there's a theological issue with name any animals. Adam would have had no concept of alone. How would he know what alone was. He's walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day. He has no concept of alone. He has no concept of need. As far as he knows, all of his needs are met. God therefore demonstrates that marriage is his idea. The text continues, the man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the heavens, to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. He names all these other animals that are made male and female, all these other animals that have a complimentary part, and yet none of them are his complimentary part. All of a sudden, he understands alone through naming the animals. All of a sudden, he understands need through naming the animals. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up his place with flesh deep sleep. Why was the deep sleep necessary for a couple of reasons. Number one, it might have hurt Amen. But number two, he's a man. If this hadn't happened while he was asleep, you know, there would have been a day when he looked at Eve and he said, listen, I remember the day when God and I made you. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made he fashed into a woman. I love that in the Hebrew this comes across so beautifully that the way he made Adam and the way he made Eve is different. It's almost though in the text he just grabbed up some dirt. He was like Adam with Eve. He took his time man. All right, okay, So rear of the Lord. God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said literal translation, there this is at last, at last, after all of this, finally, bone of my bones, flush of my flesh. She should be called woman or ishah, because she was taken out a man or ish Please don't miss what happened here. God establishes marriage and the family. God designed marriage. God made marriage possible. God gave us the parameters for marriage. He didn't make many women from that rib, he made one. God organized the family. Listen to this from Pollard and Brown. I think Scott Brown has been here for with you guys in their book Theology of the Family. We need to recover the belief that God's purpose for and instruction of the family is a vital aspect of life in this world. We need to affirm in our generation that God created the family as an important element of the outworking of his eternal purposes. First, God created the family to give structure and order of the human beings that He made in his image. Second, the family provides the essential labor of teaching and preparation of children. For churches, communities, cultures, and nation. Third, God created the family in order to pass the Gospel from one generation to the next. And finally, God designed the family to be a living demonstration of various aspects of the glory of the Gospel and of the embodiment of biblical truth. This is why God has ordained that the family is the fountain head of culture. It is the first place on earth that culture is made, and it is foundational of all other cultures. It is no wonder that Satan would attack right there. God also gives marriage its purposes three main purposes that we see here arising from this text. Number one pro creation, Number two illustration, and number three sanctification. These are the three main purposes for marriage. First, procreation. Adam was not going to procreate without Eve. Amen. God's first commandment to man is be fruitful and multiplied in Genesis one twenty eight. This involves both bearing children and training children. This also spreads the Imago da e, the image of God throughout the earth. It's incredibly important and it is the primary purpose. I tell young couples all the time. If you're not ready to have kids, you're not ready to get married. Amen. Somebody. Young couples nowadays, yeah it It used to be that they were just yachts, right, not like those boats over there, yachts y ot. They get married and they say, we'll have kids in a year or two. Used to be right, we'll have kids in a year or two. Why why you're waiting a year or two? Why are you getting married if you're not ready to have kids? Oh no, no, no, no, no, we just wanna spend some time getting to know each other first. Really, you really wanna get to know somebody? Have a baby with 'em. Amen, you think you know 'em. Let a baby start hollering at two o'clock in the morning. You find out who they really are. Now they're not just yachts. But there may be is. Maybe we'll have kids, maybe we won't. You can't find that in the Biblical model of marriage and family, not only appropriation but illustration a physical model of a spiritual relationship. We see this in Ephesians chapter five. Wives submit to their husbands as in the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of his church. Husbands, love your wife as Christ love the church. There's this beautiful picture he ends that with this mysterious profound but I'm saying that it relates to Christ and the Church a physical model of a spiritual relationship. It is also a triune representation of the Triune God. Here's the amazing thing. It's not good for the man to be alone. It's not sinful or morally bad, but it's not good for the man to be alone. So the Triune God, God, the Father's Son, the Holy Spirit, who has existed throughout all eternity as one God in three persons, perfectly united in the God Head Son eternally, wegott another Father, the Spirit eternally. Proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Triune God makes man in his image. Well, that's not good. So what happens. What happens is proceeding from the side of the woman, for the man is the woman, and then proceeding from the union of the man and the woman the children, a tryune representation of the Triune God. Now, whenever I say that, people always say, well, wait a minute, if I'm single, does that mean that I'm not part of the trying representation. No, you came from two people. Amen, you close the circle. You don't have to start another one in order to figure you close the circle. Now you do need to start another one, but understand that you're already part of that trying representation of this triune God. Sanctification, procreation, illustration, sanctification, first, active sanctification, avoiding sexual immorality, enjoying God, honoring sexual relationships. We see that in First Corinthians chapter seven. It's so ironic at the world that we live in today believes that sex is only great and wonderful if it's outside of marriage and with the variety of people. And we look down on people who were married to the same person for an extended period of time. You know, the Journal of the American Medical Association recently once again studied the sexual habits of people, and guess who the most satisfied people were sexually married women in their forties and fifties. That's right, Not twenty year olds who were having sex with any and everybody indiscriminately. That's not satisfying. We lie to ourselves. You weren't created for that. God's ways are always best. Also, this washing of water with the word that we see in Ephesians five, just speaking the truth and love that we see in Ephesians five. Active sanctification, and then there's passive sanctification. Learning to live with another imperfect sinner. Amen. People ask me where I grew up, and I said, I grew up some in Los Angeles, but mostly when I got married. Nothing will sanctify you like marriage and parenting. Nothing in this world. You want to learn how to pray, Get married and have some kids, you'll learn how to pray, like for real. Let your kids grow up and start leaving the house. You will learn how to pray. It is sanctifying. God establishes sexual human sexuality right here in Genesis. Remember the truth is in Jesus, not in the culture. First, God designed men and women, two sexiest, two genders. It's amazing to me that in a time when many pastors have been afraid to say that you got a president, we got a president who had a right. Here. I'll write it. I'll make a proclamation. There's only two sexes. There's only two genders, to which I say, Amen, Halleliah, praise the Lord, because there are That's it. He created the male and the female in his image. We are image bearers as males and females. And he didn't make any mistakes. God designed the union between men and women, and you do not have to be a biologist to figure that one out. The sexual union between men and women is obvious, especially because He designed the fruit of that union so that we had confirmation. So not only the what, but the why. He designed the parameters surrounding that union. Marriage. Marriage. Again, it amazes me that people rage against the patriarchy and rage against marriage as though marriage exists because it came to the mind of men that this was the best way to oppress women. Help you if you believe that. If you believe that somehow, you know, around the campfire one day, men are looking at each other and they're going, look, we're oppressing these women pretty good, right, But I know a way that we can really oppress them. We're listening. How about each of us choose just one, and then when she has children, we stay with her and obligate ourselves to provide for her while we raise those children together. That'll show them it's absolutely ridiculous. Marriage was not created and designed to oppress women. It was created and designed to protect women and children. The most vulnerable people in this world are women and children. Outside of the protection of the God ordained family and men who were called to be their priest, prophet, provider, and protector. So again we're worrying against the best thing that could possibly happen for women in the name of liberating women. It's sheer folly. God also established male headship, also known as patriarchy. Patriarchy is biblical. It's good and it's right. And I'll stand ten toes down all day, every day, and twice on Sunday and defend that biblical patriarchy is good and it is right if you don't listen. First of all, it's scriptural, and that's enough. But beyond that, look at the world that we live in today, and riddle me this batman, where are women the freest, most prosperous, and most protected in the world now? And historically? It is in those places where biblical patriarch has been the norm. And if I'm not telling the truth, then you tell me where you would rather be a woman. Somewhere outside of the places where the Gospel has prospered, Somewhere outside of the places where the Reformation has borne fruit, Somewhere outside of the places where the Bible, which gave more liberty and protection to women than anything in the history of the world has flourished. Where do you want to be in the Islamic world? How about the Hindu Buddhist world? Where do you want to go? Where is this wonderful place where the evil of patriarchy has been eradicated to the benefit of women. It doesn't exist. God knew what he was doing, and God established male headship. God established patriarchy. There are those individuals even within the Church. They're called evangelical feminists, and the evangelical feminists argue that no, no, no, no no, this whole male headship thing, this whole patriarchy thing, this is something that is the result of the fall. When the curse comes to eve right, your desire will be for your husband. Your desire will be for his place, literally for his position, but he will rule over you. That's the curse. But when Jesus comes, he reverses the curse. Several problems with that. Jesus comes, he reverses the curse. If that were the case, then you could go into a maternity ward, to a labor and delivery ward, and you could tell who the Christians were, because remember, part of the curse is pain and child buried, so if coming to Christ lifts that, then I can walk through the labor and delivery ward and there'll be women over here who are writhing in pain, and Christian women over here saying what's wrong with them? So no, here's the other problem with that. Male headship isn't established when this curse comes down on Eve. It's established at creation. The woman was made after the man male headship. The woman was made for the man. I will make you a helper suitable for you, male headship. The woman was made from the man male headship. The woman was brought to the man male headship. The woman was named by the man twice male headship. Not only that. In the New Testament. In Romans chapter five, Paul doesn't say through one couple, Sin entered the world even though Eve ate first. He says through one man. Why why would you say through one man and not through one woman if she ate first, or not through one couple, if they're eating together brought No, you say through one man. Sin entered into the world because of patriarchy male headship before the fall, not as a result of the fall. Listen to this from John Calvin. Moses now relates that marriage was divinely instituted, which is especially useful to be known for since Adam did not take a wife to himself at his own will, but received her as offered and appropriated to him by God. The sanctity of marriage, hence moore or clearly appears because we recognize God as its author. The more Satan has endeavored to dishonor marriage, the more should we vindicated from all reproach and abuse that it may receive its due reverence. Amen, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. The culture is at war with marriage or Remember, you and I have been shaped by this culture. So just because we're Christians, that doesn't mean that we think rightly about marriage. Some of you are highly offended by some of the stuff that I said today because you've been well trained by the culture. I have no apology for you. I don't write the mail, I just deliver it. You need to understand that this is the old man that we need to put off. If you don't esteem marriage highly, ask yourself why not? Did that come from the truth that's in Jesus. If you don't esteem the role of a wife and a mother highly, ask yourself why not? Because you don't believe that's the truth that's in Jesus. If you don't men, if you don't esteem your role as a patriarch highly, ask yourself, why not is it because that's not the truth that's in Jesus. If you don't want children, if you don't welcome them, if you don't delight in them, ask yourself, why not is that not the truth that's in Jesus. If you are not willing to stand up to this culture and say God made them male and female, period, full stop, ask yourself why not. If you don't believe that marriage is between one man and one woman in a covenant relationship, and that it's open to all other kinds of definitions, then ask yourself why where is that coming from? Is it coming from the truth that is in Jesus? Or is that the old man that you need to put off. This is where this question of the mind of Christ meets the reality of life in this world in which we live.