Our Homes Under Attack

A question asked by many people in 2004 is a complex and deeply
felt one: Is it possible to have a Christ-centered home in today's world of trouble
and sin?
 

If you’re a Christian, you’re concerned about this problem. Kenneth
Woodward and Phyllis Malamud revealed in a study, published in Newsweek,
the results of an intensive analysis of our domestic scene. They found the issues
with which parents must cope:

Finances: The cost of bearing, clothing, feeding, entertaining, and educating
children is the greatest in our history.

Working mothers: For the first time, a majority of American mothers hold jobs
outside the home, many out of necessity rather than desire.

Public opinion: Respect for parenthood as a vocation is rapidly declining in our
land. Questions like "is having kids really worth the sacrifices?" and "if you had to
do it over, would you have children?" are frequently being asked.

Divorce: The parents of more than 1.4 million were divorced last year.  That's
twice the number of a decade ago. A curious fact is that an increasing number
of fathers are gaining custody of children after divorce proceedings are final.

Drugs and alcohol: They are on the rise and especially among the youngsters.

Death: The second leading cause of death between ages 14-28 is now suicide.

Crime: Juvenile delinquency is rapidly rising to epidemic proportions.  One child
in nine can expect to appear in juvenile court before he turns 18.

Runaways and abuse: These have been in the news recently and gaining national
attention. It's a major set of problems relatively new to most of us, thankfully.

Illegitimacy: "Children Having Children"....a major headline in Time magazine.

No time: Many families don’t even eat dinner together regularly.  Television, peer
groups, out-side-the-home activities and school involvement occupy the child's time
far more than do their parents!

What is the answer to this long list of problems? God!!
It might be of some comfort to realize that the world has always been a difficult
place in which Christians must live. It has always been opposed to God's values and
God's will.

Satan longs for the soul of any age person who will reject good, right, and truth
and turn to his way of thinking. Christians must daily remind themselves of the clear,
simple words of Je-sus, from Matthew 7:13-14: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the
gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who
enter by it." {14} "For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and
few are those who find it."

We might also be encouraged to remember a story recorded in 2 Chronicles 20,
which shows a situation similar to the one we face today.  Jehoshaphat had some men
before him reporting the approach of a vast army, one the size of which his army could
not defeat.

He inquired of the Lord his future and God's answer is recorded for us in 2 Chronicles
20:15-17: "Listen, all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat:
thus says the LORD to you, 'Do not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude,
for the battle is not yours but God's. {16} 'Tomorrow go down against them. Behold,
they will come up by the ascent of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the valley in
front of the wilderness of Jeruel. {17} 'You need not fight in this battle; station
yourselves, stand and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and
Jerusalem.' Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out to face them, for the LORD
is with you.""

That message is an eternal one! It remains for Christians today who feel the odds against
them in this sin-filled world.

Man's domestic problems begin when he departs from God's counsel regarding the
home. This study is vital because our understanding of Christ's relationship to the church
is dependent upon His conception of the home.

A reminder about Satan
The first attack Satan made was against the home: he invaded Eden and led the first
husband and wife into disobedience and judgment.

He is called the "deceiver" and wants us to center our mind upon him, to make us
ignorant of God’s will in our life. He uses lies...Jesus tells us that "Satan is the Father of
all liars...that he cannot tell the truth because it just isn’t in him"....our defense is God’s
Word!

He’s also called "the destroyer" and uses suffering in this world to make us impatient
with God’s will...we need to remember the unmerited, unending grace that God bestows
upon each of us when we choose Jesus and make Him Savior and Lord of our lives!

If he can’t get us through these means, Satan works on our pride and hopes to make
us independent of God’s will.

Or he uses accusation as "the accuser" to work on the heart and the conscience to
bring an indictment by God’s will.

1. Satan uses religious leaders today to forbid marriage (1 Tim. 4:1-3).
Singleness is a Christian’s option but for most people, marriage is the will of God.
Satan’s approach is to convince the person that marriage is sinful. Any teaching
that claims greater spiritual virtues and blessings for the celibate than for the married
is of the devil and not from God.

2. Satan seeks to reverse the headship in the home (1 Tim. 2:11-13; Eph. 5:22-23).
He wants man to be concerned with dictatorship and forget the model of Christ as
the head of the church; the husband ought to be the head of the wife in a living, loving
relationship.

We need to remember
A truly Christian home is still a place where sinners live; but it’s also a place where
the members of that home admit the fact and understand the problem, know what to
do about it, and as a result grow by grace.

It’s important that this environment be in place so all members of the family will
have a loving, grace-filled, safe, and warm place in which to grow. It's vital that we
treat each other in the same way Jesus treated His 12 apostles.

As they stumbled and fell, made mistakes, and sinned, He was patient with them
because of one simple point: He knew they were not yet what they would become.
We need to "be patient, God's not finished with me yet!"

Let's look in detail for a moment at three significant items that make all the difference
in the world; (as they are discussed, think of the atmosphere or environment which
these will create in the home):

1. Christians admit their sins.
Because they know the Bible says that no Christian is ever perfect in this life, they
are free to admit their sins.

1 John 1:8-10: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is
not in us, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and
purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out
to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives."

Christians are able to acknowledge the fact and, in time, learn to anticipate and
prepare for sin. Christians, of all persons, should never rely upon rationalizations,
excuses or blameshift-ing to try to euphemize their sins.

Because they can admit their sins, there can also be a certain amount of openness,
honesty, and relaxation about the relationships that Christians sustain to one another,
especially at home.

Christians can pour their time and energies into the endeavor to replace sinful
patterns with Biblical patterns of life....rather than wasting time minimizing or
denying the fact of sin, Christians can concentrate on dealing with sin.

2. Christians know what to do about their sins.
Because they have the Bible as the standard of faith and practice, Christians not
only know why problems occur in the home, but they know what to do about them!

Is any sin too big for God? Can any sin be overcome in a loving, forgiving
environment? We need to realize that each person in the Bible who stands before
us a "great men and women of faith" are average people with sin in their life, which
God helped remove.

3. Christians progress out of their sins.
Where there is spiritual life, there also will be spiritual growth. No Christian may
remain the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

A fundamental presupposition of the Christian faith is that there will be growth
out of sin into righteousness. Where there is Bible study, prayer and the
fellowship of the saints, the Spirit of God will be at work to produce His fruit.

The Christian home, then, is a place where sinful persons face the problems of
a sinful world.

Yet, they face them together with God and His resources, which are all
centered in Christ. Sinners live in the Christian home, but the sinless Savior
lives there too!

God ordained the home, and this places a halo of sacredness and holiness
around every rela-tionship. Before there was ever a human government,
school, church or business organization, there was the home. It is the
foundation unit in orderly society.

In fact, God's first religion, the Patriarchial system, was built squarely upon
the home. Religious ceremony and acts of worship were tied directly to the
home itself.

With the Mosaical dispensation God broadened his base to include the
entire nation of Israel. Even then families and tribes were intimately
involved. Finally, the Godhead itself became in-volved as Paul records for
us in (Gal 4:4-5) "But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His
Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, {5} in order that He might
redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption
as sons."

The Essentials
1. Parents need to be permeated by a love for God.
Deuteronomy 6:1-5: ""Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the
judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that
you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, {2} so
that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to
keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you, all the
days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. {3} "O Israel, you
should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you
may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised
you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. {4} "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is
our God, the LORD is one! {5} "And you shall love the LORD your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

Parents were to pass down to their children and grandchildren an awesome
and healthy fear of God, an attentive ear to His voice, and a life of
obedience. You just cannot fake this kind of love for God...and parents
who model this love will forever impact their children for God!

2. There must be a conscious, consistent transfer of God’s truth to the
young.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7: ""And these words, which I am commanding you today,
shall be on your heart; {7} and you shall teach them diligently to your sons 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."

These truths must first capture the heart of the parent and then a transfer can
take place. The Hebrew word for ‘diligently’ here means ‘to sharpen.’ It’s an
aggressive investment of time and effort.

3. There needs to be a tender, humble heart of gratitude for God’s provisions.
Deuteronomy 6:10-14: ""Then it shall come about when the LORD your God
brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, {11} and
houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you
did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you shall eat
and be satisfied, {12} then watch yourself, lest you for-get the LORD who
brought you from the land ofEgypt, out of the house of slavery. {13} "You shall
fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him, and swear by His
name. {14} "You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples
who surround you,"

The children of Israel would go from wilderness paupers to wealthy princes.
Canaan would be the promised land in every way! God says: "Watch out and
don’t forget the true source of your blessings!"

4. There must be frequent stated reminders of God’s faithfulness and grace.
Deuteronomy 6:20-25: ""When your son asks you in time to come, saying,
'What do the tes-timonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which
the LORD our God commanded you?' {21} then you shall say to your son, 'We
were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt; and the LORD brought us from Egypt with
a mighty hand. {22} 'Moreover, the LORD showed great and distressing
signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his
household; {23} and He brought us out from there in order to bring us in,
to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.' {24} "So the LORD
commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God for
our good always and for our survival, as it is today. {25} "And it will be
righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the
LORD our God, just as He commanded us."

When a Christian has an authentic, living life of faith, people around us will be
full of questions...and that should also be the case with our children.

Does your family have a central value system?
Long before our society began to build marriages on the insecure foundation of
romance, there were stable marital relationships.

When the Book of Genesis describes marriage as leaving father and mother,
cleaving to one's spouse, and two people becoming "one flesh," it points to an
irrevocable act. In a biblically based marriage, each person says, "I am with you,
no matter what may happen."

Such a marriage proceeds not only from the heart but also from the mind.
These promises cannot be made lightly or kept carelessly. This marriage is based
both on love and fidelity. And faithfulness depends upon having a central value
system.

The book of Proverbs has 209 of its 915 verses-- almost one-fourth
--dedicated to instruction about rearing children, for instance.

Strong buildings rest on solid foundations. Healthy families respond when
they have a central value system that responds to a higher authority—and
that authority needs to be God.

If a family is deeply committed to Jesus Christ, they enjoy enormous
advantages over the family with no spiritual dimension.

All our thoughts and actions must be done with the area of spiritual
development at the fore-front. Prayer, Bible study, and family worship
should be a regular part of the home life. If it is, it provides for growth...but
also offers a forum for the discussion and settling of home situations.

The home provides the best place for building faith.
Some of our children have come into the church through the second, third,
fourth, and fifth generation!

Since attitudes are caught as well as taught, it is well to remember that the home,
more than any other, influences the attitudes toward God, Christ, the Bible, Church,
and things spiritual.

The home provides the best place for expressing Christianity.
It is one thing to learn memory verses as "be ye kind one to another" but it is quite
another to live these out in life. In the home comes the opportunity of living
Christianity.

Here the behavior patterns are set and are conditioning factors of the home's
influence on the child.

The home provides the best place for religious guidance.
The home deals with:
· life in its origin
· life in its unfolding
· life in its expression of personality
· life in all its aspects.

The Christian home should include development in faith in God, trust in
Christ, mutual love, good will, Christian behavior, stability ... and one that
always puts the church first!

It is an obvious fact, too, that countless people owe their personal
success or failure to their families. If Christianity is not made real through the
family, therefore, it will be difficult to make it real anywhere.

Living Christianity, and developing spirituality is not a mere accident -- but
rather it comes by a conscious and sincere effort on the part of the family
members. The atmosphere of the home must reflect the spirit of Christ.

We are living in a busy age which is becoming more and more competitive
as far as our time is concerned. Parents still have the God-given charge
to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  This will
not happen accidentally. It cannot be done through short cuts with synthetics
or substitutes.

The Kind of Fathers Not Needed
- The materialistic Lot
We do not need fathers today who will pitch their tents toward Sodom as
Lot did in ancient times. When the time came for a separation between
Abraham and his youthful nephew, the younger man made a choice that
clearly indicated materialism was the dominant factor.
(Genesis 13:9, 10-13).

A thorough study of Genesis 19 shows us that some of Lot's children
apparently chose to stay in Sodom. Lot's wife perished due to the
influences there upon her and Lot's three daughters who did leave with
him committed the hedious crimes of strong drink and incest. What was it
like for Lot? (2 Peter 2:7-8).

God needs fathers who will consider the spiritual consequences of their
children when weigh-ing job opportunities and promotions! A job
advancement in a city where the church is weak should be looked at
closely.

- The permissive Eli.
Eli was a good man himself and did a superb work in the training of young
Samuel. But he was permissive in regard to his own children. 1 Samuel
2:12 "Eli's sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the LORD."

They committed terrible sins in regard to the Lord: 1 Samuel 2:17, 22.
Scripture gives the strong impression that Eli only midly rebuked his
sons with rather weak words: 1 Samuel 2:23-25. WHY? Scripture is just as
clear! 1 Samuel 3:13: "For I told you that I would judge his family
forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves
contemptible, and he failed to restrain them."

Eli had three forms of authority over these sons: (1) He was their father;
(2) He was their priest; (3) He was their judge. Domestic, religious, and
civil authority converged in his hands and yet he used none of the three
powers to curb his wicked sons.

We Need Fathers Like Enoch.
We need fathers who will emulate Enoch, the seventh from Adam. The Bible
has painted his portrait by using only a few brief verses...but they are
verses which speak of his godly life. (Genesis 5:21-24; Hebrews 11:5;
Jude 1:14-15).

These verses show a father who walked with God, a man who was translated
and allowed to escape death, a man of faith, one who pleased God, and as
a courageous prophet who was not afraid to set forth God's prophetic will
toward ungodly speech and conduct.


We Need Fathers Like Noah.
Our world stands in desperate need of fathers who will emulate noble
Noah. He is listed among that great "Hall of Faith." (Hebrews 11:7).

Noah lived in an atmosphere so bad and ungodly that God's reveals to us
that the entire world was evil! Yet he was able to instill in his family
an intense love and devotion to him and to his God. How? 2 Peter 2:5
calls Noah "a preacher of righteousness." Genesis 6:8-9 tells us that "he
walked with God."

PORTRAITS OF BIBLE WIVES
We do not need wives like the one Lot possessed
In fact, the Lord did not want us to forget this woman! He said tersely:
Luke 17:32: "Remember Lot's wife!" Genesis 19:16 describes their
reluctance in leaving the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah...the clear
implication of the chapter is that some of their children pre-ferred to
stay! Genesis 19:26: "But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar
of salt."

We don’t need wives like those of Solomon and Job
Nehemiah, who lived several centuries later than Solomon, records God's
verdict of Solomon and his wives: Nehemiah 13:26: "Was it not because of
marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many
nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made
him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women."

Job's wife has gone down in history for only one thing: she encouraged
her husband to curse God. Job 2:9-10: "His wife said to him, "Are you
still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" {10} He replied,
"You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and
not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said."

THE KIND OF WIVES WE NEED IN OUR WORLD TODAY
We need wives of purity like Rebekah
This woman would eventually be married to Isaac, and the Bible makes a
great claim about her purity (Genesis 24:16) "And the girl was very
beautiful, a virgin, and no man had had relations with her..." Virginity
should be a most desirable ingredient that every Christian girl takes
with her to the marriage altar.

We need wives such as Ruth
Ruth's romance of purity and marriage with honor to the wealthy Boaz of
Bethleham are well-known stories to all Old Testament students. She was
industrious and went to the fields to gather grain (Ruth 2:1-3). She
earned a reputation among the Hebrew people for being a vir-tuous or
worthy woman (3:11). From this woman came both David (Ruth 4:21-22) and
Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:5-6).

THE KIND OF MOTHERS WE NEED IN THIS WORLD
We need mothers like the mother of Moses - Jochebed
Moses was born in the critical period of Hebrew history. Pharoah was
treacherous and his de-cree to kill all Hebrew baby boys at birth was an
example of his efforts to control the power of his kingdom. (Exodus
2:1-10).

Additional insight into the character of these two individuals is offered
in Hebrews 11:23: "By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after
he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not
afraid of the king's edict." We need more men like Moses .... but it will
take women of faith to produce and rear them. May the tribe of Jochebed
increase!

We need mothers like Hannah, the mother of Samuel
Our first glimpse of her is as a barren wife. She had an intense desire
to bear a son, and her prayer and vow are familiar to Old Testament
students. (1 Samuel 1:11, 20). Hannah had several qualities needed of a
good wife:
- she wanted to be a mother (how tragic when a child is born to a
reluctant mother)
- she was a woman of prayer
-she loaned her son to the Lord

I'd like us to begin closing with a comment from I. A. Douthitt:
"It took a Jezebel to give the world a human devil, a Jochebed to give us
Moses, a Hannah to give us Samuel, an Elizabeth to give us John the
Baptist, and God selected Mary to be the mother of Christ. This old
world was lost through a woman and there is not a greater power on the
earth to save the world than a real, true, Christian mother. May the
good Lord give us many of them!"

An important point for husbands and wives
"Children were never meant to be the hub of the family. Their place is
on the periphery, shel-tered and loved, but respected as children and
expected to behave that way. The center of a family is the relationship
between the husband and the wife. All else revolves around that. In this
way, when children leave the family, they can do so with the least
disturbance to the fam-ily unit. If they are in the center of the cell, they
cannot emerge without a serious rupture of the whole. Our function as
parents is gradually to make ourselves unncecessary, to equip and to permit
the child to obit the family in ever-widening circles, until he establishes
himself in society as a fellow adult."

It might be helpful to ask and answer a question: "why have children?"
Certainly, it's not to satisfy our own selfish ambitions. It should be for one
primary purpose: because God has planted in us the intense need to love
and care for someone else.

Wanting a child is as natural as wanting a mate and is a normal manifestation
of our growth as persons. For the couple ready for this experience, it is the
most satisfying of all experi-ences. But there is more to having a child than
just wanting one.

"The fullest human life is one that takes a chance on being committed to
another human being. What it means to be a family is most beautifully
expressed when two people accept all the risks of having children,
knowing that they will always "be on call." To bring a child into the world
is to say, "I will care for you, whether you win the Heisman Trophy or
whether you live always with a mental or physical handicap. I will love you,
regardless of whether you are an honor student or are unable to compete
with others scholastically. I will love you as part of myself. If necessary, I
will sacrifice my own ambitions for your sake."

Children provide us with a constant opportunity for personal growth
toward self-fulfillment. They furnish a unique and inescapable demand for
giving of ourselves! Children are assigned by God, His property, delivered
to us as a loving reward for us to carry out the process He began over nine
months ago! Just as there is a little bit of heaven in a true Christian home,
there is certainly a little bit of God in the soul of a child.......

A final point: the responsibility to care for our parents: The Pharisees in
Christ’s era on earth possessed a very strong abhorrence toward the idea
of parental support. With satanic ingenuity they had worked out a neat little
system which enabled them to dodge this God-imposed obligation.

Jesus exposed their wicked formula in Mark 7:9-13:
"He was also saying to them, "You nicely set aside the commandment of God
in order to keep your tradition. {10} "For Moses said, ‘HONOR YOUR
FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER’; and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF
FATHER OR MOTHER, LET HIM BE PUT TO DEATH’; {11} but you say,
‘If a man says to his father or his mother, anything of mine you might have been
helped by is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ {12} you no longer permit
him to do anything for his father or his mother; {13} thus invalidating the word
of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things
such as that.""

By pronouncing something as "Corban [devoted to God]" they could use it
during their lifetime and not use it for parental care during their lifetime!
1 Timothy 5:4, 8: "...but if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them
first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family, and to make some return
to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.....But if anyone does not
provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the
faith, and is worse than an unbeliever."