Retracing Our Footsteps, Part 1

People think that a woman being the keeper of her home is an old-fashioned concept, but it was uncommon even in Bible times.

Paul then to this culture is effectively commending the roles of mother and wife and homemaker. The people will say, well, you know, he's just trying to make women fit into the culture. They haven't studied their history. It wasn't their culture any more than it's ours.

He's commending them to do something that would be radically different than their culture. When Paul wrote to Christians on the island of Crete, the idea of a wife and mother being home and raising her children went against the norms of that culture. What's your view on the role of women in the home?

Do you think mothers should stay home with their kids or should they pursue a career? These questions are being hotly debated in the church today, just as they were in Paul's day. Today, we're in Titus chapter 2, verse 5, and Stephen has a message that he's calling Retracing Our Footsteps Home.

Open your Bible as Stephen takes us to God's Word next. I am about to deliver a message on one of the most politically incorrect passages you'll find in all of the New Testament. It's a passage that, for the most part, the church has avoided in our generation and by many leaders as well. In fact, several phrases are going to appear in our text for our study today that are literally loaded with emotional fireworks.

They're going to create an immediate response, a predisposed inward response from the notions that you may have heard or widespread opinions you may have been influenced by and maybe in your own heart and life, it may be the way you feel. The majority of Christians in our world today have chosen to ignore the implications of this text or have chosen to explain them away or simply assign them to some time long, long ago before society ever grew up. These are loaded phrases. They're going to appear in Titus chapter 2 when you preach expositionally and you go through books of the Bible verse by verse, you eventually get to some of those verses that are no longer preached today. This is one of them. Paul is going to deliver to Titus some instruction to deliver through the older women to the young married women that they are to be, and I'll give you the phrases now, they are to be workers at home and submissive to their own husbands.

How does that grab you? Why don't we just go ahead and dismiss, okay? I mean, this raises eyebrows certainly outside the church, but it raises eyebrows inside the church now today. The ideas presented by the Apostle Paul on submission and homemaking are viewed by the American culture certainly as relics from this past dinosaur age before we ever grew up when men used to drag their wives around by the hair and they ate everything raw.

That's just what this belongs with. Surely Paul doesn't mean what we think he said, and he certainly doesn't mean that for us 2,000 years later. Well, the truth is, a thinking we could categorically refer to as feminist thinking outside the church, and now, by the way, securely rooted inside the evangelical church, certainly understands at face value what Paul means, which is why there's so much ink spilled on this text. It's one of the reasons the Bible is so troubling to them when you come to passages like these.

We have all kinds of people doing all sorts of interpretive gymnastics to make Paul say something other than what he said. One, in fact, one of the predominant feminist organizations called NOW, the National Organization for Women, has for decades, in fact, since 1966, been effectively calling for an abandonment of exactly what we're about to study. They want the end of marriage, which they view as slavery. They use terms like that. They want the end of motherhood.

They have demanded that the corporation, the corporate world, and the state, and the educational system take on more and more of the responsibility of raising children. They're lobbying that marriage as an institution effectively end. There's one member of the European Union that introduced legislation a couple of years ago, it didn't pass, but that marriage could be a seven-year contract.

At the end of seven years, without any legal implications, you could break it up, or you could re-up for another seven. That's the generation we live in, largely because they equate any kind of marital submission to slavery. One member of the National Organization for Women said that, quote, the National Organization for Women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage. Now, men don't really help too much in this.

I mean, there are plenty of men who make this kind of conclusion easy, especially to a woman who doesn't know the Lord, and I'll explain where the battle began in a few minutes. Some of you are old enough to remember the slogan that ran around the U.S. for quite a while that said simply, quote, motherhood dash just say no. In fact, one of the greatest successes that we have now inherited from the feminist movement, the legacy of the American feminist movement, is the legal right granted to women to end the life of her pre-born baby, regardless of the fact that even now, secular science, medical science has conclusively proven that life begins for that baby long before birth. Add to that the throwing off of restraints, which has been part of the feminist agenda. That lack of restraint has not made men out of boys, by the way.

Men have been all too willing to acclimate to the female culture of autonomy and independence and sexual freedom. I mean, why get married and have children anyway when you can have the physical pleasures of marriage and a covenant of fidelity? You can have the added income of two breadwinners and continue sort of the party lifestyle. Why settle down and live off one income and raise a family and a home? And if the children ever do hit the radar, you can either abort them or go ahead and have them, but then hand them off or over to someone else to raise so that you are minimally affected. Like one actress who said a few years ago, you know, I was never handicapped by children. Thus, our culture goes along believing that it has found what it really wants.

Sexual freedom, individuality, autonomy, self-serving, all in the name of coming of age, all in the name of sophistication and maturity. You remember that story that maybe you read when you were in elementary school by Hans Christian Anderson where the emperor was told by two weavers that they had the ability to make him an amazing suit of clothing? It would be so magnificent, however, and so beautiful that only the sophisticated would be able to see it.

Only those truly mature in their hearts. And, of course, the emperor thought, well, I'll obviously be able to see it. So he paid them quite a feta to do it. And so they began to weave away, spin away on imaginary shuttles and work with imaginary needles and imaginary thread. And the king would send leader after leader to report back to him on their progress. And, of course, they wanted to be sophisticated and they would be able to see this. And so they'd come back to the king and they'd say, oh, it's magnificent.

Can't believe how beautiful these clothes are going to look on you. Finally, the big day arrives when the emperor paraded through the streets in his suit of clothing. And no one wanted to be viewed as less than sophisticated. And so everybody oohed and ahhed.

Isn't that magnificent? Until he passed an innocent little boy who pointed at the emperor and said, you remember, the emperor what? Has no clothes.

They hit the brakes and the parade and the procession. Who will tell the truth about abortion and risk being cast outside the world of political and moral sophistication by saying they are actually taking the lives of real human living babies? I mean, who will say and be cast aside as some relic that to be rid of motherhood is to abandon the foundation of family and lose the greatest potential role of influence known on planet Earth? Who will say and be viewed as some Victorian that a woman who throws away the constraint of the covenant of marriage is not going to be cherished by a world of men.

She is going to be exploited by a world of men. I thought I might say something about it. Cohabitation, abortion, freedom from the rigors of motherhood, the constraints of a covenant of purity and fidelity. I mean, look at our new clothes. Our society has been buying these suits of clothes in earnest for the past several decades and everybody's been saying, you know, but but we like them. I mean, it makes us feel so light. It makes us feel so unencumbered. We can even feel a breeze.

Well, of course you can. You're clothed in nothing more than your imagination. The truth is all the opinions and the messages and the propaganda of our politically correct world are not making people more contented, more satisfied, healthier, happy, fulfilled. The clothing of our world is at best threadbare. In fact, if the eyes of humanity could be opened all at once, like Adam and Eve, they would discover all of a sudden that they are naked. Even though everyone has said, aren't your clothes magnificent?

Aren't you something? The dawning of revelation brings the truth. We're naked in spite of the advertisement and the propaganda and the endorsement and the applause. Our world outside of God's order and outside of God's design is still trying to cover up. What it intuitively knows is it's shame. And so where do you start to tell the world the truth?

You start with us. Paul told Titus to go and organize the churches on the island of Crete. He didn't tell him to go order and organize the island of Crete, but to go organize the churches.

He knew that an organized, active, committed to the gospel church would have people within it so committed that they would go out and infiltrate their culture like salt and tell their world the truth. They would go out and they would impact their culture as they go around turning on the light. And Paul is about to tell Titus to teach them to turn on the light as it relates to marriage and motherhood. Doesn't that just sound old-fashioned now?

Because it is. Now the world is going to be quick to jump in, and a lot of evangelicals as well, to say that those are cultural ideas or at least certain parcels of them. Those are expressions that belong to the first century.

So we just sort of culturally assign them back 2,000 years ago. So before we jump into the fireworks display, let me have you look back at verse 1 of chapter 2 in this letter to Titus. And I want you to notice how he sets the stage for everything he's going to teach related to older men, older women, younger women, and younger men. He says in verse 1, but you, Titus, in other words, all these false teachers are teaching this, but you, but as for you, Titus, here's what I want you to teach.

I want you to speak the things which are fitting for what? Sound doctrine. Would you notice Paul does not say, Titus, go and teach the things which are fitting for the culture of Crete. He doesn't say, Titus, I want you to go and teach the things which are fitting for the first century. It fits them. They haven't grown up yet.

No. He says, teach those things because they happen to fit alongside of with sound doctrine, and you don't tinker with doctrine. These are timeless truths. So these truths are not only fitting for the first century, they are fitting for the 21st century. Now, as Paul continues with the curriculum for young mothers and wives, which is the context here in verses 4 and 5, he's going to effectively deliver through Titus three more distinctive characteristics that they are to model their lives after.

And I think this is where it gets especially interesting in our culture. Let's back up to verse 3 and get a running start before we jump into the fireworks. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching, would you note this, by the way, what is good? You want to circle the word good? Culture is saying that this isn't going to be good. This is not going to be good. Paul says this is good.

This is good. What's good, Paul? Teach them, younger wives and mothers, encourage them to what? Verse 4, love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, teach them to be workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. So for the sake of an ally, let me order it this way. Paul is giving instruction to younger wives and mothers regarding their priority, their mentality, and their humility.

Now, I want you to notice, first of all, her priority. Paul writes, teach them to be workers at home. What does that mean? Workers at home is a compound original word combining the word for house, oikos, and ergon, work, task. We get our word ergonomics from that Greek word. Home tasker, homemaker, home worker. The wife and mother then is to expend her energy primarily at home. One author wrote it this way, to maintain a nest and a haven for her children and her husband.

Obviously, now, in this context, he is writing to younger mothers who would then have younger children. Some translations render this phrase keepers at home. And some would say, well, if she's to be the keeper at home, then that means she must be kept at home. Whatever you do, don't let her out.

So you kind of get this mental image. She's chained to the kitchen sink and she has six, seven, eight, you know, crying children at her feet. Now, Paul didn't mean that the only place a wife and mother can work is in the home, within those four walls and that roof. In fact, if you just go back and think about what he would have been saying to them, that wife would have worked in the garden and in the barn and in the field and with other women in other fields, at times, to help in the community and other community events and then in the church for a variety of needs. In fact, go study the Proverbs 31 woman and you discover that she is interviewing and hiring her own household staff.

My wife has often joked with me, honey, I'd be a much more virtuous woman if you'd let me have a household staff. I mean, she's out there bartering in the market with tradesmen. She's negotiating real estate deals. She's expanding the land and the rotation of crops. She's even going out of her way to go out and find the poor who need assistance. She isn't chained to the kitchen sink. The family isn't her only focus.

And I'm concerned that we have the other extreme, that the family's become an idol. That isn't her only focus, but it is her primary focus. See, Paul isn't so much defining the only place a wife and mother can work. What he's defining is that the home is the number one place.

It is the number one priority for her energy and for her effort, for her work. And Paul then, to this culture, is effectively commending the roles of mother and wife and homemaker, which was the opposite of what the Cretan culture was all about back then. The people would say, well, you know, he's just trying to make women fit into the culture. They haven't studied their history. It wasn't their culture any more than it's ours. He's commending them to do something that would be radically different than their culture. And he started it out by saying, look, this fits sound doctrine.

So you haven't heard it before. And it happens to be good, even though it's the toughest thing on the planet. The home is the place where the mother virtually impacts every member of society, where they learn to respect authority and they learn virtues and they learn relational skills and they learn compassion and honesty and a work ethic and above all the application of biblical truth to life.

They're pointed to God. No matter what the emperor says, no matter what the subjects around you are saying, this is good. No wonder, though, there's so much pressure for young wives and mothers. No wonder the pressure is so great inside and outside to adopt the ungodly precepts of radical feminism, which believe that wives and mothers who are at home are second class. I mean, you just missed the bus. You are really out of date and out of touch.

You're out of step. Add to that the enormity and the pressure of the culture. Add to that the pressure of perhaps even a husband who wants that added stream of revenue no matter what. Add to that their own fallen nature and desires and a list of wants that go on and on and on and the reserve that holds them back from the rigors of that kind of commitment. I mean, the pressure is on to leave the home, not just women, but men. That's why when Elijah's ministry was summarized and a ministry that will happen at the end of human history as we know it, he says it's going to turn the hearts of the fathers back home. The pressure is on to leave the home.

And the woman who is the anchor, the foundation of that haven is specially pressured to leave it. In my research, I read one article entitled The New Breadwinners, which gave the statistics of the incredible rise of mothers of young children now working full time jobs outside their home. You can imagine this statistic. In 1967, the percentage of young mothers with young children working full time outside the home was 10 percent. Nine were home.

One was working outside the home. Today, that number is approaching 40 percent. And the rise of daycare then over the past 30 years especially has matched the alteration of the home in our world as we once knew it. Today, there are 12 million infants and toddlers cared for at daycare centers at the rate of nearly 40 hours a week.

Now, obviously, we live in an imperfect world, don't we? There are reasons mothers may have to work for season, maybe several years and maybe economic reasons. I fear most of it is simply to keep up with the Joneses to match the living standard of our culture. But there may be a single mom raising her children who must work outside the home. Divorced women who are providing for a family, women whose husbands have died or are disabled and unable to work, who may be imprisoned or who left the family and is unwilling to pay any kind of support for the children. It could be wives who are without children or whose children have grown with fewer obligations to keeping the home, more time available.

She and her husband may agree as they study and pray and talk it through that she may choose a job outside to work in some ministry perhaps or the church or an organization or a school or a hospital or maybe pick up the career. She set aside in order to focus as a priority, especially while they were young. But let's not put on our blinders and buy into this cultural full court press for couples to simply raise their standard of living at the expense of God-given priority, which I fear is the majority of cases.

Their God-given responsibility. I mean responsibility, by the way, which is really short-lived. I mean parenting, little ones especially, won't last long. It seems like it will last forever. But before you know it, it's over.

It's over. My wife was cleaning an area of the house yesterday and she showed me what she found, this plastic guitar, about that long, orange, little plastic strings, a little blue on it too. I got it wrong. I thought we got it when one of our daughters was a preschooler. But no, it goes all the way back to the twins.

All four of them worked that thing over, strummed it, played it, hit each other over the head with it, whatever. She said, honey, we got to put this up somewhere. I said absolutely. I mean what a treasure to see that and to remember. And it's over.

Like that. I thought it was interesting to read the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Not necessarily the most biblical organization on the planet, but they've been conducting a $100 million investigation. They've tracked 1,100 children from birth through preschool. $100 million to track and identify behavioral issues and maturity developmental issues and all of that. For those children that have been in daycare at the level of 30 to 40 hours a week, they found that over 30 hours brings on significant issues. But here's a secular organization writing, and I quote, we have found that the total number of hours a child is without a parent, primarily their mother from birth through preschool, the number of hours away or without a parent matters. $100 million to find out it matters.

I would have been willing to tell them that for only $1 million if they'd asked me. Paul is teaching what even a secular society can pick up on. The home is being abandoned. Paul tells these believers in the first century and the 21st century the opposite. In fact, he says what we need to do is we need to focus a spotlight and stop a little bit to applaud and praise these subjects called motherhood and marriage. What we have to do is retrace our steps back home. The Apostle Paul taught that it was a commendable and noble pursuit to be home, caring for, teaching, and raising the children God's blessed you with.

God wants women to see motherhood as a noble pursuit, not a compromise. There's more to this message, but we're close to the end of our time, so we'll pause here for today. We'll bring you the second half of this message on our next broadcast. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. You can learn more about us and interact with us at wisdomonline.org. Today's message was called Retracing Our Footsteps Home. Stephen has a book that dives deeper into the marriage relationship as described and defined in God's Word.

The book is called For Better or For Worse. You can call us for information about that resource. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. It's also available in our online store at wisdomonline.org. Have a great weekend and then be sure and join us on Monday, right here on Wisdom for the Heart. .