Warmest greetings to you friend; I’m Mack Lyon. The program is In Search of the Lord's Way. We’re studying about a happy Christian family all this month. Oh say! We’re glad you have joined us.
Welcome to our Bible study program In Search of the Lord's Way. We pray we’ll both be blessed by our study today of the Christian family. Today’s message is about the role of “Male Leadership in a Christian Family.” We are currently witnessing a very militant effort by some people and some organizations in our society who are changing or trying to change the male figure’s role in what is called “the traditional family,”-- what I prefer to call the biblical family.
Consequently, we are told the divorce rate has soared, and is destroying our families one-half as fast as we’re creating them. And along with that comes the problem of absentee fathers, single-parent families, and neglected and undisciplined children; and an increase in illegitimacy, and poverty, and welfare, and child-abuse, and child-crime, and oh, just lots of other related problems. So, our study today is relevant-- and it is fraught with controversy.
If you think you might want a free copy of the booklet containing the four messages this month, you might want to request it now. That will give you some idea of how many we need to publish of this issue. Please address your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083 or by e-mail searchtv@searchtv.org. If you prefer to call, you may use our toll-free telephone number; it is 1-800-321-8633. And, if you prefer you may have all the messages this month on CD or audio cassette tape. They are free, too. Just request the messages for January or about “the family” and we’ll get them out to you at the end of the month. There will be thousands of them, but we’ll have perhaps as many as oh fifty volunteers from Edmond Church come in and prepare them for mailing. They are free. Everything’s free on this program. Ken Helterbrand’s going to lead us now as we sing; and then I’ll be back.
Our reading today is from the book of Ephesians, chapter 5. We will begin at verse 22. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.” We read through verse 29. Now let’s go to God in prayer. Holy God, our Father who is in heaven, we thank You, Father, that we can be Your offspring by regeneration, and that we can enjoy the fellowship with You and that we can enjoy the blessings that You have to offer us in all of Your planning for us and the provisions You make for us in the family. We pray Your blessings on our study today so that we may gleam something that will help us to improve on the quality of life that we have in our family relationships. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen!
The first book of the Bible is called Genesis, which means beginnings. In it we read of the beginning of time, the beginning or origin of the material universe, and the beginning of life-- all kinds of life, including human life. It is in Genesis that we read about the first worship and the first sin. In Genesis we have the first promise of a Savior. Genesis also reveals the origin of the “family.” Yes, my friend, “family” dates all the way back to the beginning of things. No, it isn’t the invention of a prehistoric generation of cave men for the purpose of brutal treatment of women, or a tradition of some ancient ruthless chauvinistic king somewhere back in the annals of time, or a ritual of a male-dominated medieval church; but it originated in the mind of a loving and caring God, the Creator in the very beginning. It’s been good for all of us, male and female alike. It is universal. I mean, in every nation in all of history, people have married and lived together in families. It has survived these thousands of years and continues to be the cornerstone of any society.
The first family had two sons, Cain and Abel. Through jealousy Cain killed his brother-- premeditated murder it was. Then a bit later, Adam and Eve were blessed with another son. They named him Seth. From these two sons of Adam seem to have developed two distinct family groups. Cain had a son, Lamech, who like his father also was a murderer, and that extended family seems to have been an ungodly, very unspiritual family. But Genesis 4:26 says, “And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enoch (or Enos or Enosh as the versions have it differently). Then men began to call on the name of the Lord.” It was they, after the birth of Enoch, who began to call upon the name of the Lord. And it’s worthy of notice that Enoch, the only person of whom the Scripture says, “He walked with God; and he was not, for God took him”-- meaning he who so walked with God that he never died; God just took him (Genesis 5:24). He was a direct descendant of Seth. Clearly then, the family’s relationship with God is dependent upon the father’s leadership.
Later it is said in chapter six and verse 11: “Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and the daughters were born to them, that the sons of God [probably a reference to the godly male children of Seth’s family] saw the daughters of men, [probably meaning the ungodly female offspring of Cain’s family] that they were beautiful; and they took them wives of all which they chose,” meaning, they married those women for their physical attraction or their “sex appeal,” not for their spiritual beauty or their character. Well, the story goes on in verse four to say that “There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, they bore children to them. Those were mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”
Now, these giants, these men of renown, were wicked men who became their “great men,” their celebrities, their heroes. Did you ever hear of anything like that before in all your life? I have. Consequently the society was on its way to moral and spiritual degeneration, which led to the flood and the destruction of all flesh. Now that’s an old, old story. It dates a way back to the early days of Genesis, but in it is seen the necessity of the male leadership in maintaining a godly family, and prevented the collapse of any society.
Abraham is the father of the Hebrew nation. God called him away from his kinsmen, away from his homeland to make him so. He’s portrayed in all the Bible as the person of great faith. The Scripture says that he was chosen to be the father of the nation of people through whom God would send His Son into the world. In Genesis 18:19 God said, “For I have known him, in order that he might command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and to do justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”
The Scripture text says that, “And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.” That’s the New King James Version. The old King James Version says, “And, ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The American Standard Version says, “And you fathers provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.” The New American Standard says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.” By comparing all of these versions, it is easily seen then that in the exercise of his parental responsibilities, the father of the family is required of God (1) not to provoke or to anger his children; but to teach them, and admonish them; and to discipline, and nurture them, or correct them; bring them up, and encourage them in the way of the Lord. Don’t provoke your children to anger. But, bring them up. Nurture them in the training and the admonition of the Lord-- in the nurture and admonition of the Lord-- in the chastening and the admonition of the Lord. Now, well, that is the way the Lord instructs the fathers.
Well, there’s no substitute for teaching the word of God to the children. And there is no substitute for father as the leader in that project-- not mother’s boyfriend-- not mother’s live-in. Yes, of course the church leadership is told to “feed the church of God, which He has purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28), and that feeding is not a “fellowship meal” in the basement after Sunday night worship. The divine charge is to feed or to teach all the church God’s word, but they, the leadership, cannot take Dad’s place with the children. They only supplement the efforts of the fathers in the congregation; and father, you cannot delegate or leave the Bible teaching of your children to a Sunday morning teacher or a paid youth minister. Yes, you should see that your children are in Bible class and worship and involved in the youth and the teaching and training program at church, but that’s no substitute for Dad’s leadership in Bible reading and Bible study.
Well, as they approached the Promised Land, Moses, knowing that he could not enter with the children of Israel, restated the law for them in the book of Deuteronomy. That is what Deuteronomy says, and that’s what it is. And to the fathers in Israel, he had a strong message. He said, “These words which I command you shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates.” That is Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6 through 9.
The fathers of the Israelite families were charged to store up the word of God in their hearts. They were to be diligent and unflagging in the teaching of the word of God to their children, and when they were with them in their houses, and when they walked with them, and when they went to bed at night and when they got up in the morning. It was essential to the preservation of Israel in the land of promise, the land that God had promised them. And it’s written as an example for us now (1 Corinthians 10:6) that they failed at that and they failed miserably. It is written in Judges chapter 2, verse 10 that “When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel.” When I began to preach almost seventy years ago the old preachers were telling us it takes only one generation for the church to go into apostasy. Now we know it, don’t we? And we’re being reminded of it every day. Furthermore, that is what happened to Israel.
Fathers, you may be your children’s best friend. You may fish or hunt or play ball or spend valuable time with them in other ways. You may attend all their school activities. You may be supportive in every way, but neglect the teaching and the training of your children in the way of the Lord, and fail them in the greatest way of all. How can father be convincing to his children that he’s putting the kingdom of heaven and God’s righteousness first in their lives, when he never sits down to read and study the Bible with them-- and they have never once heard him pray? How many youth in the youth group in the church you attend have never heard their fathers pray? I wouldn’t know about that; I’m just asking the question.
Then there was the mention about training and admonishing and teaching and nurturing and correcting our children. Oh, how children and youth need some correction along the way and-- sometimes yes, they even need to be disciplined. One morning at our staff-devotional (we have one here every day) one of our staff members mentioned that “tomorrow’s my daughter’s birthday; she’ll be thirteen.” The immediate response was: “Tomorrow you’ll be parent of a teenager!” Another staff-member said his fifteen-year old will be having her sixteenth birthday-- and I believe he said the same day-- tomorrow. Well, you know what that means don’t you? She is going to want to drive, the automobile! But that’s alright. Of course it is. It means, though, that she must study and know the driving rules and the laws, doesn’t it? She must be trustworthy and disciplined enough to drive a vehicle. Well, we love our children; therefore, we have no trouble at all teaching them and disciplining them in other things-- in these and other things. We teach the little ones not to touch the hot fire-place or the hot light bulbs. In the same way, we need to teach them and admonish them and train them about threats to their spiritual and their moral welfare. Before I go any further-- I have no doubts about the two staff members I mentioned and their children. I’m not talking about them today, and especially to them. One of them is behind that camera over there and the other is in there in the engineering room in this operation; well, either of them or both of them could put me off the air I suppose by the push of a button. Anyway, fathers, please don’t send your children out into this violent society in which we are living today without preparing them for the battle that certainly awaits them. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we know of Your tender care to us as our spiritual father, and the Father of our spirits. And we pray that we can have the same interest with our children and that somewhere some father has been blessed by this message today. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
Well, there has been a change in the male role in the family, hasn’t there? There is no doubt about it. Part of it’s been the diligent work of the militant extremists, but part of it has been that the male have abdicated the role of spiritual leadership in the family. They have been too busy making money-- making a living-- driving for success. No time for all that stuff about the children. Not interested in all of that! And like the people of Noah’s day before the flood, the society has so decayed, disaster knocks at the door. Another universal flood? No, God promised that that would never happen, but there is a day of judgment.
Your children deserve a Christian father and your wife deserves a Christian husband. You deserve a Christian wife and Christian sons and daughters. So, you must lead the way. Start today. I’m sure you believe in Jesus Christ, or you wouldn’t have stayed with me this long. But the Bible says, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26). You may be asking: “Well, what more must I do? Well, I’ve been taught for years that there isn’t anything a person can do to be saved,” someone says. Well, I’ll cite you James 2:26 again: “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.” Then, I’ll tell you what was told the three thousand people who heard the apostle Peter preach and were cut to the heart by his message. Peter, inspired of God said, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” You can read all about that in your Bible, friend, in Acts chapter 2, verse 38. Read the whole chapter though. I hope you will obey the Lord today. If you are like the lady in California a few weeks ago, we would like to be the help to you that we were to her. She wanted to become a Christian, but she didn’t know where to find someone to baptize her. She asked for our help; and we suggested a church in her city; and she went there and took a friend; and they were both baptized into Christ. Let us know if we can help you that way-- or in any way.
If you would like a free booklet like this containing the scripts of all the programs for this month on the theme, The Christian Family, please mail your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. Our e-mail address is searchtv@searchtv.org. And our toll-free telephone number is 1-800-321-8633. Visit our website too: it is at www.searchtv.org. Thanks for being with us today. God bless you and keep you richly. We love you.
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