How Man Ruined God’s Plan for the Family

I. God’s Institutions.

Everything God designs or creates is perfect. If what God creates becomes distorted, polluted, or defiled, it is man that does the distorting, polluting, and defiling.

Adam is an example. Adam was created perfectly in the image of God, but he ruined what God had perfectly created. In the Bible, you will find at least three institutions created by God, and like all things created by God, those institutions were created perfectly but ruined by man.

A. The Three Institutions.

The first institution found in the Bible is found in the Book of Genesis, and it is the institution of marriage/family.

Genesis 2:22–24 “Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

The family unit is the first institution established by God, and it being established first is no coincidence. The family unit is the foundational institution that stabilizes society and propagates the gospel.

The family is so important. Its importance is clearly seen as it is targeted often by Satan.

The second institution found in the Bible as we progress through Scripture is government.

1 Samuel 8:7–9 “And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—

with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also. Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.””

Government was established by God because mankind rejected God. As an institution, government is built upon the corruption of man. This is very important, and we will talk about this one of these days. Government as a purpose, but it was established because man did not want to be ruled by God, so God gives man the government that man deserves and desires.

The third institution is the church.

Matthew 16:18 “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

The church is a called out group of believers that is to act as the body of Christ on earth serving Jesus Christ and evangelizing the world. The church is to be pure, but it has been defiled by sin.

B. Defilement.

When I say man has defiled the institutions of God, what do I mean?

To defile in the Bible is an action by mankind to make something unclean, impure, or morally corrupt. God is incapable of defilement, but man is uber capable of defilement. Defilement is an action of man, and it can be caused by Satan, but it does not have to be.

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—”

Man does not need to be tempted by Satan to defile what God has created. Mankind can defile God’s created institutions on its own without Satan.

We are going to look at God’s plan for the family and how mankind has defiled God’s plans.

II. God’s Plan for the Family.

The parameters of the family unit are clearly defined throughout the Bible, and what I think or what you think about the family unit is irrelevant for God has said what the family should be.

The foundational unit of the family is marriage.

Genesis 2:23–24 “And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Let’s make some points about marriage.

A. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman.

That is just as simple as I can make it because that is how simple God has made it. Let me ask you a question.

Has mankind defiled marriage?

Marriage is not to be between two men or between two women or between a man who used to be a woman and a woman who used to be a man. Marriage is to be between one woman and one man.

Listen to me young folks. In God’s eyes, there is no such thing as same-sex marriage. WHY? Because marriage is to be between one man and one woman and because homosexuality is an abomination before God.

Romans 1:26–27 “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.”

It does not matter what the US Supreme Court says or what society says. What God says overrides even the US Supreme Court, and God has said that homosexuality is a sin, and God has said that marriage is to be between one man and one woman.

B. Living together outside of marriage is not an option in God’s eyes.

Living together outside of marriage is not what God wants either. Listen young ladies. If a young man loves you enough to move in with you, he ought to respect you enough to marry you, and if he does not, he is probably not the one for you.

Let me share some Scriptures.

Hebrews 13:4 “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”

1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.”

1 Thessalonians 4:3–4 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor,”

Sex is reserved for marriage. Sex in any form outside the bonds of matrimony is what the Bible refers to as sexual immorality, but even in churches today, couples feel emboldened to live together outside of marriage because the church does not have the backbone to address it as the sin it is.

Living together outside of marriage is not an option at all if you are saved. If you are saved, you have an obligation to maintain the purity of the body of Christ, and you do that through marriage and not sexual immorality.

Man may think it is okay as society has over-sexualized everything, but God will never say it is okay.

C. Christians should marry Christians.

2 Corinthians 6:14 “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?”

OH BOY!!!!

You owe it to yourself and the stability of your future family to marry a godly member of the opposite sex. As a matter of fact, before dating anyone, scriptural and spiritual matters should be discussed to prevent being unequally yoked together. By the way, that verse applies to business relationships too.

I believe the reason so many marriages end in divorce is because in many cases the marriage is a byproduct of being unequally yoked together. Too many marriages are guided by hormones instead of by God’s Word and through prayer.

D. The husband and wife are to cherish one another above all else except God.

In all marriages, God should be number one in the relationship if the marriage has any chance of surviving over the course of time.

After God, the husband and the wife should be each other’s top priority. Many marriages fail because that is not the case. Many marriages fail because of interference from in-laws and parents.

When a couple marries, they are to leave their parents behind and be joined together as one. They are to cleave together.

Parents and in-laws need to step back and let the marriage grow, and children, when you get married, leaving your parents behind means that you should not depend upon them for financial support.

The parents or the in-laws should not have to financially support a married couple., and honestly, that responsibility lies with the husband. It is the husband’s responsibility to provide for the family.

Genesis 3:17–19 “Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:

“Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field.

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.””

And that leads us to the defined roles within the marriage.

E. The Marital Roles.

Uh-oh!! Here we go!!!

God defined the roles within the family. Man has defiled those roles so much today that the roles designed by God are almost non-existent.

Ephesians 5:22–25 “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,”

Ephesians 6:1–4 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

1. The roles of the husband.

a. The husband is to be the spiritual leader of the home loving his wife as Christ loved the church.

When a man marries a woman, he is supposed to love her unconditionally on her best days and on her worst days. He is supposed to love her when she looks like Raquel Welch, and he is supposed to lover her when she looks like the green lady that flies around on a broom in the Wizard of Oz.

Does Christ love us on our best days and our worst days? Absolutely!!! Well, men, that is how we are to love our wives.

Christ loved the church so much that He gave Himself for it. Husbands, we are to give ourselves up the same way, but many of us sacrifice our wives for our recreation and career.

b. The husband is to discipline his children.

Ephesians 6:4 “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

Discipline is seriously lacking in the home. Discipline does not mean abusing a child, but it does mean two things.

Discipline means to correct unruly behavior. A child needs to learn from his or her father what is acceptable behavior and what is not acceptable behavior, and it is not society that determines what is appropriate.

By the way, dads, it does not hurt for you to teach your child to say ma’am and sir to all adults. Respect is never wrong.

Fathers do not need to make excuses for their children. Tell your children what is expected and hold them to those expectations. If you tell them that they will lose screen time if they do not do their homework, honor what you said. The worst thing you can do for a child is back up from what you said.

Discipline also means to train your child spiritually.

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

It is your responsibility, fathers, to be the scriptural and spiritual authority in your home, and it is you responsibility to use that authority to teach and train your children.

The wife cannot fulfill the role of the husband in this. Our society is the way it is because children have not been trained in the ways of God.

2. The roles of the wife.

a. The wife is to submit to the husband’s God-given authority.

Wives, you are to willingly submit yourself to your husband and his authority in the home.

Submission does not mean inferiority. Jesus Christ submitted to the will of the Father. Was Jesus Christ less than God? Wives are not less than their husbands, but wives are to submit to their husbands as Christ submitted to the Father.

Now, I will say this.

Many wives cannot submit to their husbands’ authority because the husband does not exercise the authority God has given him.

b. A wife is to love her children, but her husband should be her top priority outside of God.

Titus 2:3–5 “the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, 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.”

Mothers play an important role in developing daughters who follow God’s role for the family and in developing sons who love their wives as Christ loved the church.

There is a lot more we could say about this passage in Titus even to the point of saying that is God’s desire that the wife’s responsibilities to the home are more important than her career responsibilities, but greed, covetousness, and debt has caused most mothers to work outside the home focusing on their careers.

Both a Christian wife and a Christian husband are to model Christianity for their children to see.

Briefly let me say something about children in the home.

In the home, a child has not authority. The father does, the mother does, but the child does not.

Ephesians 6:1–3 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.””

A child’s responsibility in the home is to obey their parents, which is why it is important for parents to teach their children to behave according to God’s Word.

Children, your parents have the right and the responsibility to tell you no. Your parents have the responsibility to guide you as to who you date. Your father has the responsibility to tell you that you are going to church.

Joshua 24:15 “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.””

When parents make allowances for children to miss church, you better believe when that child matures that they will not prioritize church attendance.

Too many Christian homes cater to the demands of the child in the home. Dear friend, that is defilement of what God established. How many of you live in home where what the child eats is prepared first? How many of you prepare something special for your child instead of teaching that child to eat what is prepared?

What do you think that teaches a child? It teaches a child that they are entitled to whatever that child wants.

The family unit is supposed to be the strongest unit on the face of the earth. It is supposed to be built upon the principles of God.

Dear friend, marriage and parenting are not easy. Believe this or not, but that little sweetie you are dating will turn into something different when you marry him or her. Marriage and parenting come with incredible responsibilities. Responsibilities that you should consider before you marry and before you have children.

It is not your parents’ responsibility to raise your children for you. They cannot be what you are supposed to be.

Are you ready to give you family to God? Are you ready to give your marriage to God? This very church is dependent upon strong Christian homes. Will you make your home a strong Christian home today?