LIFE’S QUESTIONS: A FAMILY WORTH FIGHTING FOR

Pastor Jonathan Falwell 

Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV) Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Question: How do I have a healthy, Godly family when everything in the world is fighting against it?

Big Idea: Love God first, Love each other next. And if God gives children, lead them to do the same.

1. The Starting Line 

Ephesians 5:22-25 (CSB) Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, 23because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. 25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

• What is the starting line? Getting things in the right perspective before it even begins!
• Building the right kind of relationship is not based on Hollywood’s view of love and marriage, it is based on Christ and the church!
• But it is impossible to start right unless both husband and wife are committed to doing their part. One can’t work without the other.
• Douglas Moo said, “Perhaps this pattern reflects the particular susceptibilities of each partner in the relationship: wives may be tempted to chafe under the “headship” of their husbands; and husbands are prone to abuse their leadership role.”[i]
• Warren Wiersbe said, “Headship is not dictatorship. Each for the other, both for the Lord.”[ii]

2. The Goal 

Eph. 5:26-33 (CSB) to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. 27He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. 28In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30since we are members of his body. 31For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. 32This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.

• The goal in every marriage is to build a partnership that mimics a “healthy” church.
• A healthy church does not exist where everyone is out only for their own interests.
• Charles Spurgeon – “Happy is the man who is happy in his wife. Let him love her as he loves himself, and a little better, for she is his better half…When husbands and wives are well yoked, how light their load becomes!”[iii]
• Francis Foulkes said, “Christ ‘enables the church to grow; he knits her into a unity; he nourishes her by caring for each member; he gives her strength to build herself up in love.”[iv] 

3. The Reward

Eph. 6:1-4 (CSB) Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right. 2Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, 3so that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land. 4Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

• The reward is legacy. A legacy of example which leads to replication.
• Our greatest legacy cannot be described in a will or trust, it is can only be described in an imprint on those who come behind us.
• Timothy George said, “The result of the transforming, sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives is just this: that we are enabled to love one another with the same kind of love that God loves us.”[v]

[i] Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008), 303.

[ii] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 50.

[iii] Charles Spurgeon, Through the Eyes of C.H. Spurgeon: Quotes from a Reformed Baptist Preacher, John Ploughman’s Pictures (Brenham, TX: Lucid Books, 2012), 91-92.

[iv] Francis Foulkes, Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 10, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 161.

[v] Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 401.