204 - And On The Home Front

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.

Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Okay, tell me your reaction when I say this word, submit. Unsubmit. I'm not doing that. You're such a rebel. Well, today in Colossians, Paul is going to use this word in the context of marriage, and it's a great thing, and we'll see that today on More Than Ink.

Yes, that's right. This is More Than Ink. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad that you're with us today, and we hope you've been with us as we've been going through this little book of Colossians, because although it's little, it's big in so many of its ideas. It's condensed and says some of the most profound and eloquent statements about who Christ is in the entire New Testament. And actually, Paul's letters kind of follow that pattern, that very often at the beginning, he's consumed with the doctrine, with the theology, and then as the letter wears on, he gets more and more practical. Yeah, and it's so well known about Paul. You can do that, for instance, in Ephesians. Ephesians has six chapters. The first three are about theology and who Jesus is, and the last three, four through six, is about how you live your life. And here's what that means.

In light of that, yeah. And so Colossians is in a similar thing. We're in the second half of Colossians, and so we're in this very practical section. And last time, as we talked about practical things, how you live life in light of who Christ is, he used this wonderful image of putting on, like putting on a coat. So since Christ is like this, and since you are with him in this way, well then put on these behaviors. And he talked about a lot of those in the previous section.

He did. And he goes into those things saying, put on then, ask God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. So here's what those people who are God's own holy and beloved ones. He talks about forgiving as the Lord has forgiven you. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Thankfulness, teaching and admonishing and singing with thankfulness. And he winds up right before the verse we're going to start with today in 3.17 saying, As whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. So that's still hanging in the air when he then turns his attention to these specific family relationships.

Whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Well if you're doing something in someone's name, you're acting as if you were them. That's exactly right. And in their character as well. According to what they would do.

Right, in terms of what they want. So he looked in a general sense last time on how we deal in our relationships with other people. And it's always incumbent for you to mention that when God made us, he made us as relational creatures. I mean this is just super key. And so you would expect then that in these relationships we have that if you're made in God's image and you're going to relate to other people, doing it in the name of Christ means doing it in the way he would.

And it fulfills your design in fact. And so we talked about all these other relationships. Today we're going to focus more on the family, which is your very primary relationships with your family. Your kids, with your spouse, all those. And he's going to really focus on this. And this is what we're going to zero in on today because it may be the realm of some of your toughest relationships.

Certainly your most long term relationships. And so this is where we go today for just practical, practical advice and counsel because of who Christ is and that we've given our lives to him about how things run inside the family. Well okay and as we begin to read this I want you to notice that in each relationship he attaches to it. This connection with how it is related to the Lord. Right so it's fitting in the Lord. It's pleasing to the Lord. It's in the fear of the Lord.

It's knowing you have a master in heaven. So each of these relationships is attached to our view of God, the function of God and how we relate to one another. And I'll add too, a lot of people look at the Bible as a handbook for how to live life well. And that's not really true and that's not really what we're talking about here. Well it is true but it's not complete.

It's not complete, yeah. And because it turns out that within the family, and we'll stop pontificating before we read. But within the family God has reflected something really key in terms of our relationship with him. And it's meant to change us and to inform our understanding of our ultimate relationship which is with God himself. So this is not just a place to do better. This is a place to actually understand who God is and for him to change you in the process.

And to live out right relationship with him. Yes, yes. So there's more going on than meets the eye here when we talk about family.

Let's just look at it. We're in chapter 3 and we're starting into verse 18. Verse 18 and we're just going to read a couple of verses to start with. So verse 18, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Okay, that's the family passage.

Right within the nuclear family here. Yeah, and you know we might mention at the outset here, we've talked when we were looking through the Gospels about the value of looking at some of the other Gospels who fill in more details. In this case there's another great parallel writing from Paul in Ephesians in chapter 5 of Ephesians where it's basically this but it's much more expanded. He says more things but the structure is identical. The structure is the same but he has expanded it to say very specifically it is a model for the relationship the believer has with God himself through Christ.

These relationships are meant to model something. Yeah, so just by way of advice, take a chance to take a moment to go over and look at Ephesians 5 and compare this. Well, especially verse 20 and 21 because it kind of sounds like Colossians when he says always giving thanks for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. Verse 21 of Ephesians 5, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Paul says that to the Ephesians and then he goes right on to wives be subject. So that's hanging in the air here when he turns to wives here in Colossians.

He just hasn't said it here. Yeah, right, right. Wives submit to your husbands. Okay, well. That's very counter-cultural these days.

In my generation that was a bristly word. Oh yeah, oh yeah. It took me years to come to understand through the study of the word and through, well, through marriage to you, but also through good teaching that this is not a statement of value and worth of women.

No, no, no. This is a statement simply of role and function. Yeah, this is the order of how marriage is supposed to work and it's not making any relative statements of superiority of one person over the other.

It has nothing to do. It's not a general issue of giftedness or superiority or anything really. And what I'll emphasize is that God sees marriage as a unit. Many times today in the modern world we see it as a collection of individuals who are struggling to figure out how to live together. But God sees marriage as a unit. In fact, he says that men and women become one flesh. Right.

There's this unity thing going on. So he's saying that inside this unit, this unit works based on God's design if you do it this way. Right. And when we say this way, I'm talking about the fact that God has made men and women deliberately different. I mean, you have to be silly to ignore those differences.

But those differences are also aligned with the differing roles that he's given us. Right, which have nothing to do with value. Nothing to do with value. Nothing to do with being made in the image and likeness of God. Right.

Everything to do with simply an ordered way of working well. Right. So he's saying basically that if you do things according to the way I've designed it. Right. It'll be well with you.

And it also will be well with you because you're made for this particular role. So, and we could go into a lot of what that means, but just if you don't believe what I'm saying, Galatians 3 says a wonderful thing about the fact that there really is no distinction in terms of value or worth. And he says in 328 of Galatians, there's neither Jew nor Greek, you know, neither one has an edge.

An edge over the other. There's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. And there is not male and female. In Christ.

In Christ, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So he's not saying that women are lesser in any way. No. But he's saying that in the role of the unit of marriage, the teamwork of marriage, wives you need to submit to your husbands. So as is fitting in the Lord.

This is, this works well. So to be subject does not in the New Testament immediately carry the thought of obedience. Right. Later in the passage when he talks to children, he's going to use a different word when he tells children to obey and bond slaves to obey. Right. But to wives, he says, be subject. Right?

Surrender your will to the one who is your head. And that's an important distinction. Right. And this idea of a headship is so important, God's built it into actually the way our bodies work. Right?

We have one head and the body follows. Right. Right.

This also doesn't imply, speaking from personal experience, this doesn't imply that necessarily the husband is smarter. No. In terms of these decisions. Right. And so, but it does say that if you want the marriage to work according to design, that when there is a disagreement, she needs to submit. Now that's my captain obvious moment here is that, you know, when two people, when a husband and wife agree, there's no need to submit because you're lined up. Right.

You've got the same idea in mind. It's when you come to a point of disagreement. Right. That in the end, you know, the end of that process is the wife needs to submit her will to the husband. So that's when both subjection and obedience are born out as something that is a surrendering of our will. Yeah, surrender of will. Because Hebrews tells us that Jesus learned obedience, right?

That in the garden, when he surrendered his will, Father, not my will, but yours, that was the working out of obedience in Christ. Exactly. Exactly.

And so to be, to walk like him, we also need to lay down our own will for the will of the Father. Yeah. And so women, I will say to you that all submission in marriage is ultimately a submission to the Lord.

Yeah. And, you know, and I'll, I'll posit this too, because this took a while in our 48 years of marriage to learn, but there are, this can be an extraordinary service for the husband on behalf of the wife. And especially when you come down to, you know, when there's gigantic life-changing decisions that are on the table, like do we move? Do we take another job? You know, do we have another job?

I mean, these are just gigantic kind of things. And you both, you both lay down on the table your thoughts and your ideas on it and what you want and what you don't want. You both have wills that are being stated in each other's presence. But in the end, when there's a kind of an impasse and that can't, you can't get to the one place together, then what he's saying is that when you're in disagreement, you need to defer to the husband. Okay.

And that, that's just the way to settle things so that the unit works. But I got to tell you, in some, some family choices that are extraordinarily impactful, let's put it that way, like if you choose poorly. And difficult.

And difficult, yeah, this can be a bad deal. So we've come in our lives to points where, you know, we will have had this discussion, we've laid our thoughts out on the table, we've done all this kind of stuff. And then in a sense, figuratively, you push back from the table and you say, well, I'm glad that it's your choice. I'm glad you have to decide this and not me. Yes.

Because these things have gigantic import and that you're going big places. So this can be in, in a relationship where the husband loves the wife, which he mentions in 19, it can be an extraordinary service in the marriage for the husband to say, I'll take this on my shoulders. I'll take this responsibility myself. I'll make this final judgment and here we go. So even in that particular case, he's not being willful necessarily. He's serving in terms of making the really tough, gritty decisions that really nobody wants to make. So that's what we come down to when we talk about these things. It can be a wonderful thing. Okay.

I would add here just one little thought, women especially for you, and that is that being in subjection or submitting to your husband does not mean you don't tell him what you think. No, no, no, no. Because there's an excellent example of this in 1 Samuel 25 with Abigail. Abigail. And so I would encourage you, especially women, but husbands too, go and read this account of David and Abigail where she was married to a fool.

Idiot, he was an idiot. But she essentially took her life in her hands to confront David, to stop him from sinning. Now David was, David was not her husband at this time. David was not her husband at the time. She was married to another guy. But after her husband died, he went back and married her because of her forceful view, her right view of what God was doing and she called him out on his error. Yeah. It's fascinating. It's fascinating that she did everything to protect her husband who was a jerk.

Who was a dope. Yeah. And the fact that she was like that really impressed David so that when her husband died, he says, I want you as a wife.

You're great stuff. Okay, so we need to press on to husbands loving their wives. Yeah. Well, so that's what he says in 19. I mean, what wife wouldn't want this? Husbands, love your wives and don't be harsh with them. So, you know, in premarital counseling, I brought these verses up and, you know, the bride to be kind of bristles when we read verse 18 about submitting. And I said, yeah, but look, 19, the husbands are instructed to love their wives.

What wife would not want to submit to a husband who's making his decisions based on your wellbeing? Because this love that Paul is commanding here, this word is agapa, which means that's the kind of love God loves with. It is a direction of the will for the good of the beloved.

Yeah. This is not romantic love. No, this is not, you know, hearts circling in the air and birds chirping. This is doing the hard thing for the wellbeing of the one you love. This is a willful determination for the best of another person. So if your husband is committed to that and he says, honey, I'll take this responsibility on my shoulders, I'll make this decision for us. And you go, thanks, let's do it. Because ultimately it will be better for you and for us. So that's what Paul is directing husbands to.

Now, what woman would not yield to a man who loves her like that? Right, right. And, you know, and it's not a battle of the wills really at this point. No.

It's really, it's really a, I won't say a test, but it's a challenge to your own love for your husband. Are you willing to trust his decisions? Are you willing to go with what he says?

Okay. And the husbands are being held up as walking as Christ walked, right? If we go back to, hearken back to Ephesians 5, where Paul says husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church, uh-oh, and gave himself up for her. Gave himself up for her, right. A woman who's seeing her husband love her this way, when he can say no to his own self-interest and yes to what is best for her.

Yeah, yeah. So this love, this agape, has a strong component of sacrifice in it. So in a real sense, too, this isn't giving husbands the free rein to just do whatever they want, what their will is. They serve the entire family in doing this. So in a way, they are sacrificing their selfish instincts in order for the best for the family. That's the sacrifice that's at play here. So that's actually a great way for marriages to work, and it's the way God wants husbands and wives to relate.

So that just makes a ton of sense. He also says, though, for husbands, don't be harsh with them. Don't be harsh. And you can be harsh in the manner in which you make decisions. Oh, now you need just to be quiet because I'm supposed to make the decisions, according to God, and being harsh. No, you need to communicate in the process, and we've done this a lot, that I've heard what you said. I know what I'm saying. There's all this on the table.

Okay, I'm going to pray, and I'm going to ask God which direction we should go. You don't need to be harsh and put people down because this, again, is not a statement of your superiority, husbands. This is a statement of your service as a leader for the best of everybody. Right. And you can make a hard decision with gentleness and communicate your intentions and your purpose with gentleness, which is the opposite of harshness. Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right. But a lot of men, they'll take this as a license to just be dictators, and he's trying to say, no, that's not what this is.

Which is interesting. Paul's instruction here to husbands is not ride hard over your wives, force them to submit. That's the instruction to wives. Subject yourselves, yield yourselves in the way Christ yielded himself to the will of the Father. Yeah, and before we go on to children, I'll just underscore again here, because this is a great life lesson to me, is that I can, as a decider for the benefit of the family, I can be wrong.

I can do things thoughtlessly, in fact. And in that process, and when the consequences come, they hurt me tremendously, and it changes me as a result. And so, men, what happens when you're in this role, when you're serving your family as this head, when things go wrong, it comes back on you. And that coming back on you has a powerful effect on changing the character of a man.

It's really powerful. And I've seen cases where marriages have gone where the wife just gets frustrated with the man, and she starts making all the decisions. He gets resentful of her making decisions all the time, and it just goes wrong. I call it the couch potato and battle ax kind of thing, is that the roles reverse and things don't work well anymore.

And they're both resentful of each other because of that. So it's probably important at this point to bring in this parallel passage from Peter, 1 Peter 3, where he says, in the same way as Christ did, you wives, submit to your own husbands, so that even if they are disobedient to the word, they may be one without a word by the behavior of their wives. So this has been really hard for me over the years, to yield my right to speak.

After I've said my piece, after I've spoken what I had to say, then to let it go. And to be fair, if you're really interested in doing some Bible study, Peter's passage is hinting strongly at the two occasions in Genesis where Sarah obeys her husband Abraham, who says, just tell these guys you're my sister. He doesn't just hint, he calls it out.

He calls it out. And she goes along with the idea, even though it imperils her. Because she was entrusting herself to God, which is the same thing Jesus did. Peter says he entrusted himself to a faithful father. Well, let's move on to children, because this is fascinating. Children. Children obey your parents and everything. This pleases the Lord. Oh, this pleases the Lord when you obey. Now, this is obedience, which really only becomes into play when you don't want to.

Yeah, exactly. If you see eye to eye on things, you don't have to obey, you're going to do them anyway, because you want to. This is when your parents say, this is important for you to do, and you say, I don't think so. And this is really quite operative when you get into adolescent years as a child.

You get up there and you start thinking, oh, I'm feeling pretty adult-like. I think I've got better ideas for how I live my life than my parents do. So when they say, you should do this or you shouldn't do that, I think I'm coming to the point where I know better than them.

And this is not a great idea. Well, and we're talking about dependent children who are still in the home. In the home, yeah. So that's where the battle comes, isn't it? There's one battle with the two- and three-year-olds, but there's entirely another battle at 15, 16, 17, 18, just as they're getting ready to leave the house and emerging as adults.

Yeah. But speaking on first-hand experience, there comes a point in my life I remember where I'm thinking, I think my parents don't really understand how life works. I think they're kind of clueless. I think I know better than them. And yet what I'm saying is that in my immaturity, my immaturity is smarter than their years of experience.

And that's just so disrespectful. But it's a universal disorder with adolescents, for sure. And the point that God's trying to make is, look, your parents love you. And when they're engaging on your behalf, when they say do this or don't do that, they're doing it because they want you to turn into a fine adult. They want to do something that will benefit you, that you will look back and say, I'm glad my parents were firm with me on this because it's made me the person I am today.

And ultimately it will make your life work better. Exactly. Because they want you to be a functional adult.

Exactly. So children, if you're listening right now, if you're an adolescent, you need to do what they say. And not just because God says so, not because he's going to throw lightning bolts at you if you don't, but because there is a process in making you the person God wants you to be, that your parents are going to be the most powerful conduit of change.

Okay. And Hebrews 12 talks about the discipline of our earthly parents disciplining us what they saw best as to do. But God disciplines us for the purpose of sharing his holiness.

God is at work creating the image of Christ in us and he disciplines us and he is the perfect father. Yeah, right. And when it comes to discipline, he reminds us and says, hey, is it loving for a parent not to discipline their children? Right. The parent disciplines the children that they love because they know they're becoming brats. Okay. But there's a word to fathers here. We're going to run out of time before we read it. Oh, that's true.

So 21. So fathers do not provoke your children unless they become discouraged. There's a lot in this because a lot of parents speaking in general feel like if we're in charge, we're in charge and it doesn't matter the effect on our kids, even if it discourages them.

Okay. Well, and we try to control our children because it reflects badly on us if we don't. That's not what this is about.

That's not what this is about. But, you know, if you're a parent, if you're a father or a mother, you know what he's talking about. You know how to deal with your children in a way to provoke them. You know how to push their buttons and make them mad. You know how to discourage them. And many times you use those tools when you're angry with the behavior of your kids.

Boy, I sure did. And that's always a wrong thing to do. So he's saying you need to hold back. Don't provoke your children. You can provoke them to sin by how you deal with them. But he's saying we don't want them to become discouraged. That is, we don't want them to lose heart. We don't want them to even not attempt to obey because they're so discouraged. I can't make my parents happy no matter what I do.

Right. So it kind of points at issues that parents do many times where their demands are way too exacting perhaps. There's not enough flexibility there or they're constantly doing fault finding with their kids, pointing out all the things they do wrong. You can never do anything right is what the kid feels like.

It can be extraordinarily discouraging. Or they're simply trying to make the child be something that God has not instilled in that child. God has not designed that child to do or be. There's that proverb that says train up a child in the way he should go.

And when he's old he won't depart from it. Well that implies you need to learn who your child is. What character qualities is God instilled in that child? What loves?

What things that need to be corrected? Certainly. But observe your child so that your parenting does not provoke them.

Because God does not provoke us. Yeah. And you're not in the job of making your kids in your own image either.

No. So I mean there's lots of ways we can look at this first and go I get this. I totally get this. But look here's the deal. Not only are we to be in submission to one another like he said at the end of that Ephesians passage. And wives submit to your husbands. But in a real sense if the children are submitted to their parents there is great good going on. Because there's love and there's an intent for well being at play. And so we need to just trust even if we can't untangle that. Even if we can't see how that's going to work.

You need to just let the program ride for a bit. And you'll see that your parents are in the business of making you decent human beings. Even if you can't see it. And even if you disagree with it at the time.

Yeah. They're out for your well being. For your good. They want you to grow up to be a person who can act for the best interest of an other. Not only always after your own.

Yeah and I think that's a big deal. I think that's probably the distinguishing characteristic of a child that grows up into young adulthood. And you look at them and say this child is not consumed with themselves. How did that happen? Because when they were born they were consumed with themselves. How did that happen? This is the environment that that happens in.

This is how it happens. To be thoughtful to other people. To be adults. To be adults that are people who are responsible and who are not consumed with themselves.

I mean it all comes from this atmosphere. So God has created the family in such a way that God can you know soften our rough edges. Take us away from our births consumption with ourselves. And turn us into adults that are more like God himself in terms of being sacrificially loving. Thoughtful for other people. So come on kids.

Obey your parents in everything. This pleases the Lord. And the Lord wants the best for you. Well we are out of time. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're going to continue the discussion next time on slavery. We'll see that next on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website.

MoreThanInk.org And while you're there take a moment to drop us a note. Remember the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself. And you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. I'm not doing that. You're such a rebel. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.