My pulpit message notes: FAMILY: Re-centre your duties

Family - Re-centre your duties

My Pulpit Message Notes are transcribed from the sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 13th November, 2022. Preacher: Dr. Fred Ojiambo. Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33. Topic: Family - Re-centre your duties

Never before in history has the family come under such tremendous onslaught. We at NBC hold out and declare that the growth and sustenance of the strong families is our major plunk in our vision and mission. That is… because we draw from the Scriptures the truth that in all human relationships and interactions, the one which best shows our true state of faith and obedience to God and one which exposes our true Christian character is the family. That is perplexing, but it is true.

It is easy for you and I to exhibit a vibrant spirit filled life for one, or two hours on a Sunday morning, but it takes the work of the Holy Spirit in us to exhibit godliness not only on a Sunday, but also in everyday relationship. The closest and most intimate of such relationships is the family. There, within the family, our capacity to act out a profession of faith quickly diminishes because the environment of the family makes it impossible to be anything other than our true selves. And often our true selves are not what we profess them to be. Not what we project ourselves to be.

If the passage in Ephesians 5:21-33 has anything to say at all, it is that the followers of Jesus must give up their former ways of life, “Out of reverence for Christ” and “unto the LORD”, and practice purity in daily living and integrity in their relationships. For the family is always and inevitably a commentary of the relationship that you and I have with the Lord Jesus.

Last week we were reminded that the family was not a cultural invention. It was and is God’s idea. While it is true that Eve was God’s answer to Adam’s loneliness or aloneness “no suitable helper was found” Genesis 2:20b. The greater truth is that God created family for His own glory. He created the church as the apostle Paul says in verse 26 “to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

This means that we may be compassionate and charitable to the whole society, to the world even, but unless that affects our families, that is all useless.

Indeed there are cases without number that some of the most altruistic people are at the same time diabolical towards their families.

The family is a theatre where deep intimacy and affection may exist, but also where horrendous selfishness may co-exist. A family where unsurpassed care and concern may be exhibited but also often cruelty and violence. Where there may be admirable kindness, but also terrible self-centredness. And all these may be because of close proximity. We are close to each other. And because we are close to each other we rub each other the wrong way.

For that reason God counsels us in Ephesians 5:14-17,

“15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

This is what I would like to take about. The Lord’s will about family. We are engaged in speaking to all of us about re-centering our priorities about family, but we need to know what that means, what that family needs.

Last week we were told about re-centering our definition, not just of words, but of concepts and reality and today we speak about re-centering our duties.

What’s God’s will for the family?

The apostle Paul in this passage is talking to us about that. In doing so he challenges what conventional thinking is about. Conventional thinking questions and challenges Biblical wisdom.

Now, for instance, conventional thinking presses the idea of equality to its nth degree. The pressure of equality on a variety of grounds and levels including gender, filial. All this has caused havoc in the functioning of family. It is no longer possible to know how, when and by whom decisions are to be made in the family on any issue relating to the family.

This fluid situation leads to a vacuum of authority which in turn results in inertia and complete chaos within the family. We even find a gridlock in matters where we ought to get relatively easy through and straightforward to reach consensus.

For instance, now more than any other time, is difficult for newly married couples to decide whether, when they should have children and if so how many. Whose decision is it? The woman’s sole right? Older couples struggle with questions of schools to which their children may be taken.

Other much more established couples struggle with questions of how to old separate, or joint bank accounts. They wonder about whether and in what they should invest their surplus income. The result is that married couples live in secrecy and exclude their spouses from their matters which would nonetheless affect the family so that you find within the family one spouse borrowing and the other has no idea what’s happening. Mortgaging the family home etc.

This is because conventional wisdom has brought it to bear upon them the idea that there are no roles, no duties, no differences. Because conventional wisdom can be found as the idea so that the unquestioned is the allure of conventional wisdom that we let it displace what we otherwise know as Scripture.

So Scripture reminds us in the passage that we are looking at today. It not only reminds us, it commands us to know that relationships, and particularly family relationships, is on a two prong basis. The family is upheld by two main ideas; an idea of submission, an idea of love.

When the apostle Paul first speaks to us in verse 21, he says,

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” then he goes on to talks about, “ Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”

Quite often people have noticed that submission is spoken only in connection to the wives. That of course is a mis-reading or an insufficient reading of the Scriptures, because submission is not only for the wife. In fact you note that in this particular passage, submission only covers three or four verse, while when it comes to love, it is provided for in connection with the man/husband there are seven verses.

So even if we were to take it mathematically, the fact that the apostle Paul thought it necessary to talk about submission in only four verses and we are torn to talk about love in eight verses, there must be some reason why he would do that.

So it’s quite clear though, that submission is not just for the woman nor is love only for the man, but there are reasons why the apostle Paul writes the way he does to us.

Scripture prescribes that wives are to submit to their own husbands as to the Lord and the reason is that the husband is the head to the wife as Christ is the head to the body of which He is the Saviour. (verse 23)

“ Now as the church submits to Christ” writes the apostle Paul, “so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” V24.

Many would question that and wonder whether it has not been borrowed by a publication by a male chauvinist activist and converts, but it is God’s Word. but is is batterous you will see from 1 Corinthians 1 1:3 “3 But I want you to realise that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”

It is not a court regulating gender equality, no. What God is seeking to do is to set out in a family, a chain link as it were. A chain functions as a chain, only when the individual links are put together. Each of those links has an individual identity, but cannot function as well as when they are all put together. God is trying to explain to us that the whole idea of why He has this hierarchy of authority . It is not a qualitative statement. It should not because the man is more important than the woman and the woman more important than the man, is because for the functioning of that family, the chain must be able to work and the chain works best when the links are together.

It so happens, when you have a chain, there must be one in front and the other behind it. The hierarchy of authority as they are set out, it does not convert the wife into a mindless, silent and invisible slave. Far from it. It says, it confers upon the husband the privilege / duty and responsibly of providing guidance for the greater good of the family as a home. He is in the nature of a chairman of a board where all the chairman does is simply help the rest of the board to make decisions and to make them efficiently and effectually.

They do this by massaging the decision making capability of a board. The chairman is not better than any other people. In fact you might find that the chairman is less more indulged than the individual board members. But still you do need a chair so that the board can function efficiently and effectively.

It is in that sense that God does make the husband the head of the wife. It is in that sense also that the wife submits to a husband’s authority and the wife respects the husband.

The other side of leadership is that the head acts in acknowledgement of delegated, not absolute authority. Men, as we lead in our homes, we should know that we do not exercise authority that is ours. We exercise authority that has been delegated to us by God. We exercise trust authority. We do not exercise authority which we think is ours.

There is an expression, particularly in law which is a latin phrase, ‘ipse dixit’. This translates to, ‘he said it himself ’. Ipse dixit means a person’s own assertion without relying on any other authority, or proof. It usually implies an assertion of authority as in a statement, it is legal on the speaker’s authority and nothing else. In other words, it is right because I say so. There is no other proof about it.

God is not giving men authority to act ipse dixit, is if all the authority is in them. The structure that God has put together in the family is to ensure that there is a quick, efficient, conclusive decision making. This is because there is no vacuum of leadership, or decision making. Whenever there is a vacuum of leadership, whether in the political level, or business, or in the home, there will be turmoil.

But God does that also because He makes all parties to share in ensuring that decision is made. All parties are equal in the making of that decision. Both husband and wife, know that they exercise that leadership.

This isn’t another lecture, but it is good to get the bedrock of what the apostle Paul was trying to convey to the Ephesians and by extension to you and I. Leadership often happens when there is a confusion in the roles and responsibilities or a usurpation of power.

Th Bible is prescribing for you and I mutual respect to one another in recognition that it is a trust conferred by God.

Submission and in this case is not just cringing acquiescence to what is being put to you. It is a recognition of the love that elicits that submission. In other words, we submit because of Jesus Christ. Christ is the epitome of all submission. He died on the cross for you and I in circumstances that He should have been able to say, but God why should I be dying on the cross for this lot? But He submits to God’s ruling because that’s what God wanted Him to do.

It is the kind of submission that is sacrificial. He sacrificed Himself. Sacrificial leadership. The focus is not on the leader, but on the led. Not on one’s position, but on welfare of those you are leading. That is what forms the principal motivation, and that is both private and public.

If it is for that reason that he says, ‘Women submit to your husbands’. It doesn’t mean that they are to be mindless, silent slaves. Nor does it mean that the man should be an autocrat, no.

But it does mean that those in leadership, will love those that they lead to such an extent that they love their own bodies. That is what the Scripture tells us. That if you truly love your body and we do because we spend so much time trying to beautify ourselves, trying to make sure that we are looking very well, if that is the kind of love and affection and commitment that you have to your body, it is the same extent that you commit to your spouse. So two pronged basis; love and submission.

What is the goal of all this? Why is God delineating the rules, duties and responsibilities of spouses?

I would like to suggest that God does that simply because of protection. You submit for protection purposes. You love for protection. Submission is not cringing, or squirming acquiescence by an inferior or enforced negative measure. Submission is a responsibility of every Christian for their own protection.

1 Peter 5:5 says,

“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

“God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”

Submission does not smother creativity, or independent thought, or initiative, or ability. Proverbs 31:10-31, we read about this woman, and it gives you an idea of what a woman can do and can be and is. A woman who is creative, a thinker, intelligent, innovative, has strength and dignity and love under-guards all that.

The apostle Peter speaks to us, “Above all love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality without grumbling. “10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.(I Peter 4:10).

The focus is to ourselves, to think about what we do need for purposes of ensuring we do that which the apostle Paul does here so that we remind ourselves that love is not overbearing, that love is accommodating. It gives, it does not take. It is generous, not selfish. Not self-centred, but charitable.

I’ve been in the legal practice for about half a century now and I have had a rear sideview of miseries that one sees in families. My heart bleeds when I see the kind of squabbles that one sees in inheritance cases. The selfishness of parents who will hold on to what they have to the end of the grave and let their children and their wives suffer the trouble of unravelling all that nonsense.

I have seen the kind of undeniscine cruelty and violence just because somebody didn’t do what they need to do. I have seen the conspiracies within families, the fear and suspicion, the lack of transparency. There is an instant where a man died,and they couldn’t open his briefcase because he had a combination lock and the wife didn’t know what the combination was and they had been married for 50 years. You ask yourself why? What’s the secrecy? How often we do these things without even thinking about it.

I’m talking to myself how often I hurt my wife. How often, simply because of the feeling of hierarchy or others? I’d like to say to you as an invitation, but also as a prayer because it is also a command in Hebrews 4:16 “16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

None of us is without sin. All of us are in need of God’s mercy. All it takes however is a step of faith. I think of the prophet Isaiah seeing God,… he’s been in ministry, but suddenly he sees God in Isaiah 6, God in all His splendour, and say ““Woe to me!” …I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

That is the clarion call for a reset for you and I to refresh, to begin to look again at our families, to look at God’s prescription to what He is saying to us. Could it be that you, as I, have ignored these simple truths in Scripture and have let conventional wisdom dictate how you and I relate within the family? Could it be that there is conflict in the home simply because selfishness has crept into the hearts of the members? Might you, or I lost focus and we see only the wrongs of our partners and not the fact that Christ shed His blood for them?

God calls us to His throne of grace to seek mercy so that He can give us another chance.