God's Pattern for Wives, Part 2

You have to take these principles and apply them in your own situation prayerfully and carefully. As a woman, your priority is to God, and that means you obey Him. Then your priority is to your husband, and that means you love Him and you submit to Him.

Your priority is then to your children. If we're going to have an impact in the world, that's the way we need to live. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. One of the homemakers quoted in 1963's bestseller The Feminine Mystique complained that little in her daily routine was necessary or important. Sad to think that many women today probably still feel the same way, that their contributions to the home have no value.

So how can women find joy and fulfillment in the home, and is that even possible? Find out today as John MacArthur looks at the crucial role wives play in the fulfilled family. That's the title of John's study, The Fulfilled Family.

And with the lesson now, here's John. You might want to open your Bible to Ephesians chapter 5, and we'll touch base again with our text. Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 to 24. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. God here very clearly calls the wife to submit to her husband.

That is God's design for her blessing, for His blessing, the blessing of their children, the blessing of the church. It is imperative that women understand this crucial responsibility, but most women today do not. What is the modern superwoman supposed to be?

Maybe something like this. She works, builds her own career, demands equal pay, refuses to submit to her husband, demanding equality with him in everything, has an affair or two, and a divorce or two. She exercises her independence, relies on her own resources, doesn't want her husband or children to threaten her personal goals, has her own bank account. She hires a maid or a cleaning service, eats out at least 50 percent of the time with her family or without them, makes cold cereal and coffee, the standard breakfast for her family, quick frozen meals, usual dinner fare, or she calls Domino's Pizza, expects her husband to do his share of the housework. She is tanned, coiffured, aerobicized into bodybuilding shape, shops to keep up with the fashion trends, makes sure she can compete in the attention-getting contest, puts the kids in the daycare center, makes sure each has a TV in his room or a radio or a CD player so they can be entertained. She is opinionated, demanding, wants to be heard, eager to fulfill all of her personal goals.

She can't stay married or, for that matter, happy, and her kids get into trouble and sometimes drugs. She's far from the woman God has called the excellent woman. Let me remind you of the excellent woman according to God.

Look at verse 10, Proverbs 31. An excellent woman who can find her worth is far above jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. She looks for wool and flax and works with her hands in delight. She's like merchant ships. She brings her food from afar. She also rises while it is night and gives food to her household and portions to her maidens. She considers a field and buys it from her earnings. She plants a vineyard and girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong.

She senses that her gain is good. Her lamp doesn't go out at night. She stretches out her hands to the distaff, and her hands grasp the spindle, meaning she's weaving. She extends her hand to the poor and stretches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of the snow for her household. For all her household are clothed with scarlet. She makes coverings for herself. Her clothing is fine linen and purple.

Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies belts to the tradesmen. Strength and dignity are her clothing.

She smiles at the future. She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and doesn't eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and bless her, her husband also, and he praises her saying, many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the product of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates. This woman is for her husband a gift from God.

To find this woman is to find a priceless treasure. Back in chapter 19, verse 14, Proverbs says a prudent wife or a wise wife is from the Lord. You can get your house and your wealth as an inheritance from your father, but your wife is from the Lord. Matthew Henry, the old commentator, said, this is the mirror for all Christian women.

Magnificent portrait. And it focuses on the very things that in the New Testament portray the model woman. With that in mind, let's go back to Ephesians chapter 5. Now we have already discussed the matter of submission in verse 22, wives be subject to your own husbands.

We've already discussed that. Wife is to submit. That was our theme last time. So we looked at the matter of submission. Let's turn to the manner of submission. Not only is the woman to submit, but there is a way in which she is to submit. There's a manner. As to the Lord. As to the Lord.

Respond to your husband submissively, listen to this, as if you were responding to Jesus Christ. Now, how does that submission work out? What is the character or the nature of that submission?

What does it look like? The best answer to that is to turn in your Bible to Titus and look with me at chapter 2. And we're going to spend some time here and also in Paul's writing to Timothy. This is very, very significant teaching. But I want you to notice in chapter 2 of Titus, verses 3 through 5, and I'm going to read it and then we're going to make some comment on this in some other passages.

Very, very important. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be dishonored. Now, here we come to some very specific instruction. It is given, first of all, in verse 3, to the older women. And the older women are given the responsibility, of course, to live godly lives, to be reverent in their behavior, not to gossip, not to be engaged in drinking wine, not to be a slave to it.

But here's the primary thing that you want to focus on for our study, teaching what is good, because that is the transitional statement that takes you into verses 4 and 5. The older women are to conduct themselves in a godly way. After their years of family rearing are over, they then take the role of becoming teachers, mentors. The spiritual quality they maintain in their lives allows them to be the essential influence on the next generation of women. In other words, it takes a generation of godly older women to instruct a new generation of young women. They are literally to be teachers of what is good.

That's a marvelous word, really, kalo didaskalos, one word. They are teachers of good, or that which is noble, excellent, and lofty. By their lives, by the way they conduct themselves, they are to pass virtue to the next generation of women. The first few words of verse 4 show the important relationship, that they may encourage, that they may encourage the young women, that they may encourage, that they may, to put it in other terms, admonish, instruct.

It's a rich word. In fact, the word encourage here is a somewhat unique word, sofranidzo, and it literally means to train in self-control, to train in self-control. Some have said that it means to steady someone by guidance, to help them to firm up their life. This means to teach someone self-control, self-discipline, sensibility, prudence, all of that. So older women have a great responsibility to teach people, namely young women, to be sober-minded, to be balanced, to be steadied by their guidance, to become sensible, to become prudent, to become self-disciplined. All of those English words could translate different forms of that Greek word.

One form of the root of this word is used in 1 Timothy 2, verses 9 and 15, and translated discreetly and with self-restraint. You're teaching them discretion. You're teaching them modesty, self-restraint. I suppose that takes us right back to where we started, to train someone in self-control.

That's the thought. So that young women are sensible, disciplined, wise, discreet, and restrained, self-control. Now when it says young women, we have to ask the question, what age does this refer to?

Well, the simple answer is those who are with families, those still able to bear children and still in the process of raising children, those who are mothers, whose children are still under their care. To further expand this idea of the young women and who they are, turn over to 1 Timothy chapter 5, and we're trying to be as comprehensive as we can be in this study because of its importance. But in 1 Timothy chapter 5, and verses 9 through 15 is a very, very important section of Scripture. And let me tell you, it has great application to the point we're making. Verse 9 of 1 Timothy 5, let a widow be put on the list only if she is not less than 60 years old.

Now, let me stop you right there. We know from the early church that they had elders and deacons and deaconesses. They're all mentioned in 1 Timothy chapter 3. But apparently here, they also had another group of servants in the church, special servants who were godly widows. And apparently they were given some official status, and they were put on a list, as verse 9 says, as official servants in the church. They were older women, at least 60 years of age. And they would have a primary responsibility of serving the younger women, of mentoring the younger women. And as there are qualifications for elders and qualifications for deacons and qualifications for deaconesses, so there are qualifications for these older women who are to be put on the official servant list for the mentoring of young women. The fact that there are qualifications given here supports the idea that they were serving in some kind of an official capacity. Apparently the early church kept lists of such women. Their areas of service likely included visiting the church's younger women to provide teaching and counseling, as well as perhaps visiting the sick and the afflicted, and providing hospitality to travelers such as itinerant preachers and evangelists. They probably had a ministry to children as well, grandmothering on an extensive basis. Spiritual enrichment had to pass from one generation to the next, and this is the perfect group of folks to do that. By the way, in ancient times, and I think still today it's a reasonable figure, the age of 60 marked sort of a period of time when one was considered to retire from activity and engage in philosophical contemplation. Why? Because for the most part, child raising was done.

It was done. That's easy to understand. Basically, women can bear children into their 40s, and then they go through a menopausal period after which they cannot bear children any longer. If women are still able to have children in their early 40s, they have, by the time they reach 60, raised those children, or around the age of 60. If you are having children in your 40s, you're going to have them until you're 60.

But after that period of time, women no longer bear children, and so the parenting process has ended after they get beyond 60, and that's when they're now ready, having done their work as a mother, having raised their children, they're now ready to pass on to the next generation the proper instruction. Now, the only women who could go on to that list are here defined for us. They had to have been, in verse 9, the wife of one man. Literally, that means a one man woman. That is, they were faithful to their husband. They were pure and chaste.

The qualifications there are very, very clear. It doesn't necessarily refer to a woman who only had one husband, because in this very passage, women who were widowed when they were young were told to remarry, and it was not uncommon for men to die frequently in that time of history, and a woman might have a number of situations where her husband died and she would be free to remarry. So it's not talking about just having one marriage partner but being devoted to the one who was your partner, a one man woman.

First Timothy 5.14 says it's best if younger widows marry, and First Corinthians 7.39 says a widow may marry whom she will only in the Lord. So it's not talking about someone who only had one husband, but rather one who demonstrated complete fidelity to her husband and her marriage relationship had no blemish. She is known as a virtuous and chaste wife. Then in verse 10, she has to have had a reputation for good works, and it defines them. She has to have brought up children, shown hospitality to strangers, washed the saints' feet, assisted those in distress, and devoted herself to every good work.

This is to be a woman of great virtue who is put on the official list, who has made a teacher in the church, and there are five specifics there that are very much like what we read in Proverbs 31. First, if she has brought up children. She is to have been a godly mother. How can she instruct a generation of mothers if she has not been one? Being a mother is one of the greatest privileges of course a woman can have because her influence greatly affects her children's character.

That does not mean that a woman without children is less valuable to God. His plan and design for her is equally important, and in fact, in First Corinthians 7, a single person is exalted because he or she can be solely devoted to the Lord. But bringing up children is the norm for most women, and the mother who lives in faith and love and holiness with sobriety, as 1 Timothy 2.15 says, is a model that other women should follow, and she raises a generation of children with those same virtues. Secondly, she is to be hospitable. She is to have lodged strangers, housed missionaries and travelers, itinerant evangelists, preachers and other Christians who are moving from place to place. She is to have an open life, an open home, an open heart.

She is to be known also, verse 10 says, for having washed the saints' feet. She is to be humble. She is a virtuous woman. She has raised children. She has demonstrated hospitality, and she is humble.

All the roads were either dusty or muddy, depending on whether it was dry or wet. People had to have their feet washed and she would stoop and do the lowliest service of all, washing people's feet. She is to have been unselfish, demonstrated by the fact she assisted those in distress. That means she is relieved the afflicted, as one translation says. She speaks of being one who is committed to spending her time on others and not herself, and devoted to every good work. She is to be kind, kind, like Dorcas. We read about her in Acts 9, taking clothes for people who had none. Now the woman who lives these virtues becomes the teacher of good things. This is the kind of woman who can teach the young women. Now look further down in this text to verse 11.

We're still in 1 Timothy 5. But refuse to put younger widows on the list. This is not a list for young women. Don't put them on the list.

Why? For when they feel sensual desires in disregard of Christ, they want to get married, thus incurring condemnation because they have set aside their previous pledge. In other words, a widow loses her husband.

Here's a typical scenario and she feels terrible and of course it's a tremendous loss. And in the moment of the loss and in the sadness of it all and feeling like there'll never be another man like the one she had as a husband, she says, I'm going to devote the rest of my life to Christ. I'm never going to marry.

No one can ever match my husband. I'm going to give the rest of my life to Christ. And she comes and says, please put me on the list. I'll be a part of those who serve the church the rest of my life. I don't want to be married.

And Paul says, don't put them on the list. For when they feel sensual desires, which are normal for a young woman in disregard of Christ, they want to get married. In other words, they will turn against their vow.

They will have a strong desire and they're going to feel the impulses of normal sexual desire. By the way, it refers to a woman's desire for a man and all that that entails. It's the only verse in the New Testament where this word is found.

It's found outside of Scripture in an illustration that I found of an ox trying to escape from a yoke. She'll feel like she's put a burden on herself she can't get out of and she will chafe at that, a widow trying to break out of her rash vow. And then she'll not only resent her vow, but her frustration may lead her to be angry with the Lord. And that is...that is tragic. So you must not put her on the list because of that.

Secondly, don't put her on the list because of verse 13. At the same time, they also learn to be idle as they go around from house to house. Apparently, that tells us what those widows did.

They went around from house to house mentoring, teaching, grandmothering, instructing. But when a younger widow did that, that turned into idleness, just wandering around. You may have been motivated initially by the desire to instruct and counsel, but the young woman going around without the maturity and the wisdom of the older women was just collecting a lot of really hot news, fuel for gossip, a lot of personal information about people's lives and homes that didn't need to be spread. But without the wisdom to know that, she becomes a problem. And originally a strong commitment to the Lord becomes at best a social occasion, if not a gossip opportunity. They go around from house to house and are not merely idle, he says in verse 13, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention.

So don't put them on the list. Here's what I want them to do. Verse 14, therefore I want younger widows to what? Get married, bear children, keep house. That's it.

That's what it says. I just want them to fulfill their God-given responsibility. Get married, bear children, keep house. Can you imagine standing up in any university and announcing that as the pattern for women? Get married, bear children, keep house. You're going to be a dead duck. But it's true.

I wish I had that platform, but no one will give it to me. Younger women need to remarry so that they don't struggle with strong desires. They need to remarry so that they don't just have idle time. They need to bear children. That's God's purpose for most women.

Losing a husband doesn't change that. And then he says keep house, or literally rule the house, manage the home. That is always the woman's sphere if she is married. The husband provides the resources, brings them home, and the wife manages them and dispenses them and applies them on behalf of her dear family. She is also to maintain her godliness so that the enemy is never given an occasion for reproach, or some have already turned aside to follow Satan. She is to maintain a godly testimony. And younger widows who remarry rear godly children and properly manage the household give no cause for criticism against the church, but women who violate that do. Some of these women wandering around loose without the protection of a husband, without the leadership of a husband, had listened to false teachers, acted according to their lust, spread lies, behaved as busybodies, and turned from following Christ.

This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today John continued his series titled The Fulfilled Family. Well, there's a lot more ground to cover in our study of the fulfilled family, and particularly on the subject of parenting. And of course, John, there has never been a time when parenting has not been challenging, and that's because sin is hard-wired into not only the kids, but also the parents as well.

And that's true even in Christian families. But these days there are additional challenges that are truly sinister, and they're coming from outside of families. And it makes you wonder, has it ever been harder to be a parent?

Yeah, it may not have ever been harder. It has its challenges always. And if there's conflict in the family or even divorce in the family, that makes it even more difficult.

But what's happened in the society is the society has basically turned on the truth. There's a book out that was written by really a social economist who points out in this – it's a brand-new book, I can't remember the name of it, but she's an economist – and she says the economic disaster of one-parent families is incalculable. And she's just talking about the economics. But when you find a single – and now 50 percent of all children born in America have a single-parent relationship. The result of that is disastrous politically. And that creates conflict on so many fronts. And then the book goes on to talk about the fact that two parents are exponentially far better than just one. Well, we know that's all biblical. But the interesting thing the author said was, I keep getting kickback from everyone.

This is all research, all scientific research. People do not want to hear this. They do not want this information. They want to squash this information anywhere they can. And the issue is this. It confines personal freedoms.

If you have to be married, if you have to have a husband and a wife, that confines personal freedom. Well, guess what? That's correct. So every week of my life I hear about new assaults on that. And of course we're talking now about the assault on children because that's where the assault is most deadly. And we're telling you this is a brand new book that I've written called The War on Children. This is just as pertinent as it can possibly be in this current climate. It is a real war.

And it is cranked up to a level that I've never seen in my lifetime. Everywhere you turn to gender, sexual perversion, the assault on biblical morality, the destruction of marriage, really the total destruction of male leadership, the elevation of feminism, all these things have a dramatic effect on children. Well, the book deals with the issues and it also shows you the path to resist. The title of the book is The War on Children, 820 pages, reasonably priced, and you can order one from Grace to you.

That's right. Thank you, John. Friend, whether you're a parent, a grandparent, pastor, teacher or mentor, this book will help you to protect the children in your life from the world's unprecedented assault against them. To order The War on Children, contact us today. You can place your order online at gty.org or you can call us at 855-GRACE. The War on Children is reasonably priced in hardcover and shipping is free.

Again, to order John's brand new book called The War on Children, call 855-GRACE or shop online at gty.org. Also, keep in mind that broadcasts like today's can reach communities across the United States and throughout the English and Spanish speaking world, because people like you are standing with us. We're grateful that even in these uncertain times, we're able to connect men and women with timeless biblical truth.

And that is happening because friends like you are supporting this work as you are led and able. Thank you for praying with us. That is the most important thing you can do for us. And to stand with Grace to you financially, just go to our website gty.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. Or you can mail your tax-deductible gift to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week here with us. Be back tomorrow as John continues his classic study, The Fulfilled Family, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.