Homemaker or Homebreaker? - Part A

Two thousand years ago in Rome and in Greece, Greco-Roman culture, there were two extremes in the family. On one hand, you had male chauvinism. On the other hand, you had pagan feminism.

Both were strong forces that that culture was aware of. On the other hand, you thought a trip they're planning to Israel. Well, if you've ever dreamed about visiting Israel, let's make that happen. Lenny and I are leading a tour group to Israel next summer in 2024. We'll start up north visiting Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River. We'll spend several days in Jerusalem, see the Temple Mount, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Upper Room, and more. Now, visiting the places where the Scriptures unfolded, where Jesus lived out His earthly ministry, it never gets old. That's why I keep going back.

Join Skip and I and our friend Jeremy Camp next summer in Israel. Thanks for joining me on being a homemaker for obvious reasons. But I will say that I had a great mom who was a good example. And she was a registered nurse, but she spent our formative years raising the children, being all about the home.

And then later on, when we were in school and could get about a little bit by ourselves, she took a part-time job to make a little extra income just for her family. And then I had a wife who was totally devoted to me and to our son, so I have some pretty good role models as well as the Word of God to stand on this morning. There was a man who was 80 years of age, and he went to his doctor for a checkup. The doctor was amazed at how good of health this 80-year-old man was in. And so the doctor in the middle of the examination said, tell me your secret. You have the body of a 60-year-old, and you're 80 years old.

What's your secret? The old man said, well, Doc, when I was young, first married to my wife, we made an agreement that if she was about to lose her temper, that she would go to the kitchen and I would just hang out on the back porch until that episode was over. And if it looked like I was going to lose my temper, that I would immediately retreat to the back porch, and she knew that was her signal to just stay in the kitchen. So the doctor said, okay, I don't get it.

What does that have to do with how physically fit you are? And the old man said, well, Doc, you might say I've lived an outdoor life. The secret to a good marriage isn't going outside to the back porch, but going all in and working through the minutia, the details, the roles, and the responsibilities of a relationship. It's getting your heart in the home. You know the old saying, home is where your heart is. That's a saying that simply means that because of our memories, affections, we have longings toward the home, if you had a good home growing up, or the idea to replicate that home life that brought you such a sense of security.

But that's not always the case. There are forces in our world that are out to actually destroy the home and your longing toward it. We want to talk about some of that today. Where is your heart as a husband? Where is your heart as a wife? Because if your heart is in the home, it doesn't matter what you have, it matters whom you have.

It's all about the relationships, not about the stuff. Benjamin Franklin had a cute little saying. He said, a little house, well-filled, a little garden, well-tilled, and a little wife, well-willed are great riches.

Great riches indeed. Today I talk to you about the role of a homemaker, what Proverbs 31 calls an excellent wife. What the New King James calls a virtuous wife. The NIV puts it, a wife of noble character. You heard what was in the video just a moment ago, the proverb that was quoted, Proverbs 14, a wise woman builds her home.

A foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. What I want to look at with you today from Titus and from Proverbs 31 are three things about the home and the homemaker. The opposition, the instruction, and the illustration. There has been and is forces of opposition against the whole idea of the home and being a homemaker. It's not seen as a glorious occupation anymore. Number two, the New Testament instruction. What does the Bible have to actually say about that? And number three, is there an illustration we can look at that sort of sums it all up?

That will occupy our time together. Now in Titus, let me just give you the background. Titus was a young, Gentile, non-Jewish convert, presumably who came to Christ because of Paul the Apostle and his influence. And he became a worker with Paul. Paul sends him to get in order the churches on an island called Crete.

Some of us were at the island of Crete a few months ago. And it was great to read the epistle to Titus on that island. Paul then sends a letter to Titus, living on Crete, and gives him sort of the social, spiritual order of the Christian family and Christian leaders. So he talks about the roles and responsibilities of spiritual leadership, then the roles and responsibilities of older men, older women, younger men, younger women.

The family, which was totally unknown in that pagan culture. And so we turn to Titus, chapter two, beginning in verse one. But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine, that the older men may be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience. The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine. Teachers of good things, that they, the older women, admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

I want to begin with the idea of opposition, because Paul was writing these words in a very pagan culture, and the new converts did not have any ideal or model to follow except these words. Here's what's interesting in the ancient world 2,000 years ago in Rome and in Greece, Greco-Roman culture. There were two extremes in the family. On one hand, you had male chauvinism.

On the other hand, you had pagan feminism. Both were strong forces that that culture was aware of. Okay, by and large, men 2,000 years ago were autocratic. Roman men could be tyrants, because there was actually a law that was written for the Roman man called the patria potestas, or the absolute rule of the husband slash father in an ancient Roman family.

He was in charge of the lives and the affairs completely of his family. Roman law enabled that man, if he wanted to, to sell his family off as slaves, or to enact capital punishment on his wife and his own children. A wife was tantamount to a slave back then. In fact, Roman men had categories, social categories, and one of them was called imbecilitas, or imbecile.

Someone who was weak-minded and weak-bodied. And he placed, the Roman man placed his wife in that category. So you can see what she was up against. In the Greco-Roman culture, women were not included in the census figures when the census was taken. In fact, Roman women many times didn't even bear their own names, but rather assumed the name of her father in a feminine form. For example, if her father happened to be named Julius, like in Julius Caesar, she was simply given the name Julia. And if that family happened to have another daughter, she was named Secunda, or the second, just given a number.

If they had another daughter, she was named Tertia, or the third. So women were low-esteemed in that time. Now at the same time all of that was happening, that created a real angst in the hearts of many women, so that a feminist movement actually grew up in ancient Rome, as a backlash to that. One of the authors, named Juvenal, a Roman, wrote that women were joining men in hunting expeditions, quote, with spear in hand, breast exposed, and took to pig stickling, or boar hunting. And that women saw marriage and raising children as a restriction of their rights. That they resented bearing children for fear would spoil the looks of their bodies. They were asserting their independence, leaving their husbands, leaving their homes.

They demanded jobs traditionally held by men, wore men's clothing and hairstyles, and discarded all signs of femininity. I'm bringing that up so that you know that when Paul wrote these words, he was dealing with a culture that would not accept that model of a Christian family. And it's important you understand that because a lot of people say, well, Paul wrote so long ago in a culture that was really different than our culture.

Not really. Our culture today, so advanced, was very similar in many ways to the ancient culture. Now let's fast forward to today. And if you don't mind, I'd like to start with my own experience and when I was born. I'm a baby boomer. That means when I grew up, I watched shows like Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons, Gilligan's Island, and My Mother the Car. So it's a very, very different era than it is today. However, what we are today is largely because of what we were back when I was born. I was born in the post-war baby boom generation, living out the American dream, two cars in every garage and a washing machine in every home.

That's what people live for. Husbands who had come from World War II, my dad being one of them, went back to work largely because of the GI Bill, which made jobs available for men who would come back from battle. And husbands were spending more and more time away from their families to achieve that American dream because after the 50s, during that time and afterwards, we became very enamored with more stuff, more money, more gadgets, a bent toward materialism, making husbands, fathers, my own included, spending a lot more time away from the family, getting those things that the family wanted. Now while all that was happening, there was a growing sense of feminism in the United States of America.

Because after all, in the early part of our culture, women were not allowed to vote. They didn't have access to good education. They didn't have access to good occupations. The one exception being World War II, when many women went back to the factory jobs that their husband vacated because they went off to war. But as soon as the war was over and the husbands came home, did you know that the government almost virtually shut all of that down in an instant? They were suddenly laid off, having to go back to work as a homemaker while their husbands took that job again. All of those forces did something to the fabric of the American family.

It strained it. And as a consequence, the divorce rate went sky high. Did you know, get this, between 1965 and 1975, the divorce rate in America doubled. In just 10 years, the divorce rate doubled.

Then we had the fallout of that. Single parent homes, single mothers working hard just to pay off the apartment payment and to buy food for the family. So look at where we are today. According to Time magazine, 68% of women with children under 18 are in the workforce. That's in contrast to 1960, it was 28%.

28% then, 68% now. According to Megatrends for Women, the traditional family with the husband as the breadwinner, the homemaker wife and children now accounts for only 10% of American families. Back in the 1960s, a radical feminist by the name of Kate Millet, you may recognize her name, wrote a book called Sexual Politics in which she wrote, and I quote, The family unit must go. The family unit must go.

Why? She says, because it is the family that has oppressed and enslaved women. Close quote. So what was happening in Paul's day and what is happening in our day, though 2,000 years removed, really dynamically, culturally isn't all that different. What that means to us is we as Christians have a great opportunity to let the ideal of the family as written in the Bible shine. We can put this family to work in our own lives and shine that example in our culture. So that's the opposition.

Let's go to the instruction. And I draw your attention more closely beginning in verse 3, he says, The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, holy, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Notice he speaks to mature women, mothers, grandmothers, that they become the ones that mentor, model, teach godliness, not unforgiveness, not avarice, not lewdness, godliness. And first on the list that older women are to say to the younger women is, Hey, hey, love your husbands and your children. Love your husbands and your children.

I noticed something that I never noticed before looking at the text. Paul places loving the husband first I think is a gentle reminder of priorities. Because here's what happens so often when young women become mothers, suddenly they have children now, they forget they're also a wife. And they should love their children, certainly.

They're going to be all about that. But don't forget that your first relationship before you had children was the husband. Love your husbands, love your children. I remember Josh McDowell said to young women, The best gift you can ever give to your children is to love their father.

The best gift you can ever give to your children is to love their father. Now he uses the word love. Now you've heard me toss Greek around enough to know probably what you think that word is in Greek. When it says love, what word do you think it is? Agape. See, I tricked you. It's really not agape.

And I did that on purpose. Because the word that Paul uses for love your husband isn't that word that he says God loves us with, or we're to love brothers and sisters with, but it's the word phileo, which is a word that involves the emotional dimension, a friendship love, the delight in being together. The love of a wife can cause a husband to blossom. The bitterness of a wife can cause a husband to wither. Howard Hendrick said, If your Christianity doesn't work at home, it doesn't work.

Don't export it. It all begins in the crucible of the home. Older women, the message you have for younger women is they are to love, delight to be together with, have emotional dimension and friendship with their husbands first and their children second. And then in verse five, to be discreet simply means to be wise, wise up, use common sense.

The word chase, the next word means holy, pure, be pure in thought, pure in action. In other words, he's describing a woman who's in control of her role. She's in control of her role. One of the biggest problems I've discovered in marriages is something called role reminding. You know, I'm talking about role reminding. Let me remind you of your role. That's role reminding. Instead of me owning my role, let me tell you about your role. Yeah, I know it says that I should do this, but it says you should do that. I want to remind you of that. That's role reminding. Yeah, I know I'm supposed to do this, but you're supposed to do that. Isn't it interesting that we have memorized the other person's role? Sometimes neglecting our role. Now, we've talked about husbands, and believe me, we'll talk more about them, especially next time.

But notice what it says here. Discreet, chaste, homemakers, I'm going to leave that for just a moment. Good, obedient, or submissive, we discussed that, to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. People are looking at you and watching how you relate to each other.

And for many unbelievers, the only insight they get into what it's like to be a Christian is watching your marriage relationship. You know, when I first moved to Albuquerque, I sort of thought that the state flower was the orange cone, the traffic cone. You laugh because you know exactly where I'm coming from. I saw it everywhere.

I thought, boy, they really like those orange things here a lot. And this summer, I've noticed that there's a lot of road work, and there's some freeways where you have four lanes, and then they narrow into three lanes, and then into two lanes, into one lane. You know what I'm talking about, you know how frustrating that is? And here's the problem I discovered, is that other drivers think their car should be in front of my car as it narrows down. And so we're both going toward the narrow, the one lane, and one of us is going to have to get back in line behind the other one, so we don't crash. Now that's how a marriage relationship is. Yes, the husband should prefer his wife. Yes, the wife should prefer her husband.

But at some point, so you don't crash, somebody has to get behind the other one. And the role of the husband in a marriage is a leadership role, a headship role, the role of a wife in a marriage is a submissive role. That doesn't mean your husband is always right. You're thinking, boy, don't I know that.

I know that to be true. But it means he's always responsible. And you're going to come to an impasse where the cars are coming together, cars are coming together, there's going to be a crash, and you're going to have to say, I'm going to get behind him. I'm going to support him.

I'm going to love him. I think he's making the wrong call on this, but that's his responsibility, not mine. And you might think, well, I'm kind of into the dual headship thing. There can be two heads. There can be two heads. That's called a monster.

A monster has two heads. If you don't want your marriage looking like a horror film, forget the dual headship thing. God the Father is the head of Christ who submits to the Father. The husband submits to Christ. The wife submits to the husband.

That's the order, and that will make things flow smoothly, discreet, chaste. Look at the next word, homemakers. Please don't read something into that that's not there.

Oh, boy, here it comes. Barefoot and pregnant my whole life, stay at home. It does not mean that the home is to be your 24-7 dwelling, that you're there all the time. It doesn't mean that the home is to be your prison. It simply means, ladies, the home is to be your priority.

Your priority. The word homemaker is oikourgos in the Greek from two words, oikos, which means house, ergon, which means work. It simply means one who's devoted to that. Ones who's devoted to that.

It doesn't speak of labor in general, but a job in particular or the focus of an occupation. In other words, it is God's design that the focus of the wife's life beyond the home. She pours her life into that family. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Keep Calm and Marry On. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at ConnectWithSkip.com.

Right now, we want to share about a resource that will help you connect with the Psalms and trust God through all of life's circumstances. Someone once estimated the cost of the services that mothers perform. The amount was huge. We know moms don't do it for money. They do it out of love.

While we can't repay our mothers, we can honor them. Here's a great suggestion. It's a special bundle of resources we're calling the Heart Songs package. It features heart songs. There's a psalm for that, a powerful five-part series led by Lenya and Janae Heitzig, designed to teach you to depend on God's love, power, and comfort in every season of life. You'll explore what the Psalms say about love, jealousy, fear, security, and longing.

Maybe you can think of a time when you really, really wanted something. This psalm is kind of about that. It's this longing, this desire, this hunger that the psalmist is expressing.

And his longing is for home. In addition to this encouraging series, you'll also receive the Sheology Quiet Time Journal, perfect for daily Bible reading, to make notes as you follow the Heart Songs series or for your personal prayer time. Plus, you'll get a bag of Skip's library roast coffee, the coffee Pastor Skip chooses when he studies in his personal library. The Heart Songs package is our thanks for your gift to support the broadcast ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig.

So request your Heart Songs package today when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of today's message with Skip. These are words from a woman through a man on the pages of Scripture. Why are they included in the book of Proverbs?

For two reasons. To show a woman what she's to be like and to show a man what he's to look for. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.