The Biblical Family Part 2

Intro

You may be aware of the firestorm that has spread across social media this week involving Jessie Ridgeway and his wife and the intentional murder of their unborn child. Now I know nothing about these folks, I have never even heard of them before this week but apparently they are well known Youtubers and they had, not that long ago, announced to their followers their great excitement at concieving a child. They made statements at their surprise at seeing the untrasound and seeing the heartbeat and not realizing how child like their child would look there in the womb, noting that it was not just a clump of cells.

You can see just how effective the pro-abort propaganda has been even there as there really is no excuse for anyone in our day not to know that from the earliest moments of life the child in the womb is so very much more than a mere clump of cells.

That aside, they had come to this realization and joyfully celebrated their coming child before millions of followers. Then, over the past couple of week they underwnet genetic testing and found that their child was likely to be born with downssyndrome as a result of Trisomy 21  a genetic condition where there is a duplicate copy of the 21st chromosome during early development. As a result of this test and the 95% chance that their child would have downsyndrome, these parents made the intentional and premeditated choice to murder their unborn child. They then went on their channel before their fans and the social media community to announce this. The backlash was swift and immmediate, as it should have been, and the convoluted reasonings and statmeents of these murderous parents were quickly highlighted. Ridgeway had talked about mouring the loss of their child and spoke of his dismay at the backlash they were recieving all the while seemign to be obivilous that their loss was self inflicted, they had indeed murdered their child.

We can only hope that the visibility and sheer insanity of this whole situation serves to pull back the curtains on the whole wicked abortion indistry, an industry that can gleefully celebrate the sacrafice of a wonderful child on the alter of a perfectly manicured social media image and a desire for ease and comfort. These parents ceertainly did not want the dfficultieres that might be associated with raising a special needs child and likely understood the effect it might have on their ability to continue their currated social media image and so they chose to have their child murdered instead. There is certainly desception here as you can see in the incoherant statements by these parents turned murderers that they truly have bought into the lies of the abortion industry and somehoe managed to see their child as both a precous child worth celebrating and then as a liability that needed to have its precious life ended.

This highlights all the more the need for legislation in our land that clearly and unequivocally states that anyone who willfully and with malace and forethought takes the life of a child in thw womb must be subject to the laws of the land concerning murder. This is the only clarity that will be able to cut through the lies and diecets of the pro-abort lobby. Hopefully, even as it wakens more people to the evil of abortion, it will also make the prolife lobby which is resistant to equal protection laws because of their view that a mother is a dual victum in abortion see that the only way to wake women up to the evil of what they are perpertuating is to call it what it is, to speak with clarity, and to hold everyone involved in abortion accountable for the wicked act.

Now our message this morning is not about abortion and abolition but this situation highlights also the need for a clear understanding of the role and purpose of the biblical family and why God has chosen create this institution of a father and mother together raising godly children to God’s glory.

And so today we are going to continue on with part two, our final message here on the biblical family. We have covered alot of ground over these last weeks as we spent a substantial time looking at Biblical Womanhood, then Biblical Manhod and then part one of the Biblical family where we focused on the family and its conection to and role in the cultural mandate and then saw spefically some of the roles and responsibilties of the father in the biblical famuily.

We wont back up and do a ton of review here but I do want to remind us how important it is to see the connection between the family and the cultural mandate and especially to see that because there is a connection between the cultural mandate that we find in Genesis 1 and the Great Comission as we saw when we covered that cultural mandate, that the great comission is really just a repackaging or a reissuing of the dominion mandate and a filling of that mandate with gospel power making it something that is actually posible here in this sin filled world. That Christ as the second Adam has now been given authority and is working through his offspring, the church, to build and spread his rule, authority, and specifically His worship over the face of the earth. It is fascinating to see the ties in imagery between the tabernacle and the temple and the garden of Eden, Eden was a place where God would be pleased to walk with His people, where He came to commune with them, the Temple then typifies this in the Old Testament and the Chruch, the redeemed people of God become this living temple in the New Testament through the work of God in our redemption. So then just as the family was to be the primary building block of that godly culture that Adam was to build out from Eden so also I would maintain that the family is the building block for the outworking of that now which is the church.

So now lets continue our consideration of the Biblical Family with a look at the role and responsibilities of mothers and children within this family unit. But before we get into it lets take a moment to pray.

Pray

Mothers

As we did with fathers last week we need to understand that what we are going to say about a biblical mother and her role and responsibility in the family uint must be considered in the light of the background that we have allready laid when we looked at what the bible had to say about the biblical woman. There we found that the woman was made to be the helper for the man in the pursuit of the cultural mandate and that her design is unavoidably linked to procreation and the raising of children. As such when we come to the biblical home we find that the bible has some important things to say about the womans role in her home and in the life of her children.

We will consider this under two general headings: nurturing, care, and comfort, and then instruction and character formation.

The first heading is the most obvious and is held up by scriptute but also by science. We noted in our messages on biblical womanhood how the femal body and mind are designed around the care and nurture of children.

We read in Isaiah 66:13

Isaiah 66:13 ESV

As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

Here we find God seeking to show his people how he will bring comfort to them and what does he use to picture this, the comfor that their mothers provided for them This is not to say that there arent times that a father will need to comfort his children but we see that it the comforting role of the mother is so well understood that this is the example to which the Lord points when he desires to promise comfor to his people.

We find also in Isaiah 49:15

Isaiah 49:15 ESV

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Being in judgemtn the people are worrie that God has forgotten about his love for them. Again, God turns to the nurturing love of a mother for her child and in particular a mothers care for her nursing infant as a picture of His love and care for His people. Again, sciece shows us what happens in a mothers and a childs body and brain when that child is first laid on its mothers breast and is first nursed when it is born.

When that child is first laid on its mother there are large ammunts of oxytosin that are released in the mothers brain. This is often called the bonding hormone. Brain imaging studies of mothers immediatly following birth show increased activity in regions associated with nurturing behavior, empathy, reward, and emotional bonding. There are also effects in the child. When the child is laid on its mothers breasts the mothers temparture begins to help regulaet that of the child and also begins to help with the child pulse and breathing rates. There is also the triggering of the production of milk and as we noted several seroms ago, science is beginnign to find just how many ways the mother and child are connectds as she recieves signals from the child during breast feeding that trigger her to produce ceretain compositions of milk as her child ages or even as it becomes sick. Babies begin to immediatlly learn the scent and voice of their mother and mothers likewise are able to recognize the unique scent and sounds of their child.

Mother’s are to tenderly care for their children. To nurthure them. She is designed for this. A mother is often the first to sooth a hurt body or spirit, a mother is often quikest to take up a cryign child in her arms. This is what she is made to do and she ought to embrace this. Care for, nurthure, and love your children!

Now, our world does not like this, infact it seems as though the world does everything that it can do to negate or corrupt this instinct to care. One of the biggest ways that the world has corrupted this care amongst women is through what has lately been termed toxic empathy. We will see this even in scripture in a moment when we look at the examples of mothers that are to be found there but one of the grave erros that, in particular, women can be prone to due to their desire to care for and nurture is the coddling of and even affirmation of sinful passions and pursuites. This is no where more evident than in the LGBT movement where many a woman’s caring and empathetic nature has been twisted to approve of and affirm all sorts of sexual perversions because to not do so would not be loving or caring or understanding. It is alarming that a woman could at the same time be so callous for example, as to murder the child in her womb and yet express a deep desire to love and affirm the sin in the life of an LGBT neighbor, this is an inversion and a corruption of the nature of a woman to the highest degree and yet this is the very thing that is rampant in our soceity!

The most counterculture thing that a woman can do then is to embrace the call to lovingly raise and care for her children and if and when she has none or no more of her own to aid other women in their own efforts to raise and care for theirs!

We also see that this care of the children extends to and emcompases the care of the home as well. Now we touched on this when we looked at biblical womanhood and in particular when we looked through Proverbs 31 and the woman we find described there. A womans role is to nurture and care for her home as well as her children and we can see that these two things reall ygo hand in hand. It will be nearly impossible to care for an raise children in a home that is not itself cared for and nurthured.

Proverbs 14 verse 1 gives us a stark reminder on this reguard:

Proverbs 14:1

English Standard Version Chapter 14

The wisest of women builds her house,

but folly with her own hands tears it down.

A woman who care for and works hard in her home will build it up, remeber that one of the primary villans of the book of proverbs is the sloth and we noted that the sloth has no place in the home of the proverbs 31 woman. Here we see that if a woman does give into sloth and folly that she will find that her own hands tear down her home. The biblical woman through her nurture and care and through the hard work involved in that nurthure and care will build up her home and this home and family will be able to serve, as we have noted, as a strong building block to be used in the cultural mandate.

Instruction and Character Formation

Secondly then we find that mothers are responsible for instruction and also for a great deal of the character formation of their children.

Now we noted last week that there is a responsibility, especially as the spiritual head of a household for a man to instruct his children and particularly to instruct them in the ways fo the lord. But we also noted that while Proverbs 1:8 starts out with the call to hear the fathers instruction it ends with:

“Forsake not your mother’s teaching.”

The fact of the matter is that because a mother is the primary caregiver and nurturer of the child the mother will also spend much time with the child, particularly when they are young and in their most formative years and so a mother must embrace the call to be diligient in the instruction of her children. This doesnt just mean homeschool though I am alays happy to make the case for homeschooling and how important it is expecially in the world we live in. However, this instruction is not a formal education but is rather the insruction in all of the matters of being a member of a household and also of being a faithful follower of God. It is said that a childs world view is nearly completly formed by the time they are between 8 and 10 years old, this means that in these early years when a child spend so much time in the nurture and care of their mother they will form neaerly all of their deepets and guiding beliefs and impulses. It is a mothers charge then to instruct her children continualy in matter of the faith and also in the matters of diligence in the home, chikldren who are not taught these things will prove to be a great frustration to their parents and a detriment to their sciety. Just as good biblical families can churn out solid building blocks of godly culture so bad families can churn out destructive members of culture.

We see women in scripture comended for the instruction they gave their children.

We see Solomon comending his own mother in Proverbs 31:1

Proverbs 31:1 ESV

The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him:

And he then goes on to tell of the many things that his mother had instructed him in and if you notice many of the things that she has taught him are the more caring and nurturing elements of character that are important for a king in the care of his subjects:

Proverbs 31:6–9 ESV

Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

We also read in the New Testament the wonderful testomony about Timothy’s mother and grandmother:

2 Timothy 1:5 ESV

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.

and then chapter 3 verses 14-15 2 Timothy 3:14-15

2 Timothy 3:14–15 ESV

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

It is obvious that Timothy the beloved spiritual son of the Apostle Paul had learned well the lessons of fiathfulnes and godliness from his mother and his grandmother! From childhood he had been well familliar with the scriptures!

Mothers, you bear a tremendous responsibility to exemplify and modle godliness before your children and to instruct them in it. It is my prayer that those mothers and mothers to be who are hearig this will be responsible for raising up a generation of young people like Timothy who are firmly established in the faith and ready to build on the gospel foundations laid by the generations who have come before them. Mothers have an esential role to play in this!

Here I would say, specifically to mothers, it is so easy to get sidetracked in the world. In our social media age with its influencers, some on whom as we saw at the start are willing to curate the perfect family even through murder, in this social media age you will feel the pull to provide and to do allsorts of things for and with your children. There are not enough hours in the day to do everyrthing that one expert or influencer or another tells you must be done. You will run yourself raged chasing a mirrage raised by these people and yet in all this the easiest thing to neglect is that which is most central, training and instructing your children in character and godliness. How often do you pray with your children, sing spiritually rich songs, talk to them about spiritual matters. How often do you instruct and encourage them in work and diligence forming in them solid character that can be filled by the spirit with faith and used to form them into men and women who can move mountains!

Dont be distracted and swayed by all the things that the world and its influencers say must be done, turn to God’s word, keep things simple and pursue a life centered on character formation in godliness. Fathers and husbands, encourage your wives in this, be willing to speak even a hard word, especially when you see the world seekign to creep in and corrupt the precious time that you have been given with your children!

Examples

There is more that could be said about motherhood and the mothers role and work in the home but I would like to take a moment to look at some examples of mothers in scripture before we move on to say a word to children and then wrap up our time studing the biblical family.

There certainly sem to be more example of motherhood that can be highlighted in a positive light in scripture than of fatherhood. However I want us to see on cautionary tale first.

Our first example comes from the book of Judges, there we read about the mother of a man named Micah:

Judges 17:1–3 ESV

There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the Lord.” And he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother. And his mother said, “I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image. Now therefore I will restore it to you.”

Micah’s mom is perhapse an example of toxic empathy at the very least she is an example of a mother who allowed her impulse for nurthure and care to be corrupted and override the biblical commands to discipline and to hold a child accountable.

We find that her son has stolen a great sum of money from her and when he admits that it was him, with no repentence or remorse I might add, probably to avoid being cursed though we dont know what the curse she had spoken was, and we find that she does not chastise him or bring him before the priests for judgemntn as she ought to have done but rather she says a blessing over him and even uses the silver to make an idol!

You can take some time to read the rest of the story later if you are not familliar with all of the evil that comes from this one moment and that ultimatlly comes because this mother failed to seek discipline for a son who had comitted an evil act against her. While Micah is a grown man it is not hard to imagine all of the other things that his mother may have let him off the hook for over the course of his life leading to this event and while not every disobedient act of a child is going to be equal to stealing a large summ of money this story is a cautionary tale shwoing the evil that can come from a child who is not disciplined.

Mother’s due to their natural bent toward nurture and comfort can often struggle to enforce discipline and are prone to give second chances where the correct coruse of action is swift and immediate corrective discipline. Mother’s who struggle with this ought to take heed from the warnings of stories like Micah because this man was not made like this in a day but rather over years of neglect of discipline by his own mother.

Now I did say though there are good mothers in scripture. As we mentioned Solomon seems to have had a wise mother in Bathsheba though she was guilty of great sin with David. We also read of Moses’ mother who risked everything to care for and hide her child and then trusted him to the Lord and sent his siter to watch what would hapen to him in the nile and nursed him after he was found by Pharaos daughter. We read earlier of the exalle of Lois and Eunice the grandmother and mother of Timothy and the godly example they had been and we could also think of Mary for the same reason we thoguht of Joseph last week in that she was chosen by God to be the mother of our Lord.

However I would like us to consider Hannah. Hannah is the mother of Samuel and when we meet her in scripture in 1 Samuel chapter 1 she is a woman in great distress because she has no child. However, she is granted her prayer and concieves and has the child Samuel.

Now what I love about the story of Hannah is that she clearly shows that she understand, more so than most because of her own vow the the Lord, that the child that God has given to her care is not her child but rather is God’s child who has been entrusted to her. And so we find from verse 21 to the end of chapter that she cares for the child untill he is weaned, likely somewhere between 3 and 5 and then takes him to the tabernacle and presents him to Eli the high priest where he stays and lerns the servie of the Lord. I love that we see that even after she has presented Samuel to Eli and he, even at this young age has begun to serve at the tabernacle, that she sontinues to nurture and care for him by making him a little robe and taking it to him every year:

1 Samuel 2:18–21 ESV

Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, “May the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord.” So then they would return to their home. Indeed the Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord.

Now, not every mother is going to be called to give up their child into the Lord’s service at the tender age of 3 however, and we find that even Hannah has other children, none of whom seem to have been sent into ministry at the tabernacle. However, Hannah is a great reminder that all of our children are not ours but rather have been given to us by the Lord, and I think this is probably an especially important truth for mothers to internalize. Many mothers go through a struggle of wanting to hold on to their children, to keep them small and young and innocent for as long as possible, to keep them in that state where they cling to their mothers nurtire and care and yet our charge as paretns, your charge as a mother is to raise your child up nurthure them yes, care for them yes, but alays with the aim of careing for them and instructing them that they might grow up in the lord! In this Hanah is a great example of a mother who did not cling to her child bu freely gave him over to the service of the Lord.

Children

Now though we must turn to childen and we dont have a ton of time but there are only two central words for childen that we need to cover. Obedience and Honor.

The first and central duty of a child is obedience and tied with obediece and it is actually closely related to honor.

We read in Ephesians 6:1-3

Ephesians 6:1–3 ESV

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

Children your first duty is to be obedient to your parents. Now notice that is says there, “in the Lord.” This means that if your parent tells you to sin, just as with the wife who is called to submit to her husband, that submission and your obedience are in the Lord meaning you submit to that which pleases God. Now just as with submission there is also the realization that there can only be one head, remember Voddie taliing about husbands and wives said that a two headed family was a monster. Well in the same way a child who disobeys his or her parent becomes a monster too, even in areas where you might be trying to pursue an option that is not itself sinful, yet it is sinful and monsterous because you are being disobediten. If you are asked to spend time cleaning the livign room and you want to clean your own room (Something that happesn from time to time in our house) netither is sin, both are infact good, and yet you could go clean your room and still be in sinbecause you are disobeying your parents in that action.

We also see disobedience tied to honoring father and mother here in this text. You show honor by obeying. Now Jake did a whole seromon on the 5th commandment so we will not go into that all here and I would commend that message to you. However, the root of all of this is being a child with an obedient heart and, as I try and tell my childen when we are talking about obedience, it is important that you understand that you must learn proper obedience because this is how you ultimatlly learn obedience to God! Learning to obey your father and mother sets you up for being an obedient child of God!

It is also important to note that disobedience to parents is often listed in the sin lists of passages such as Romans 1 30 and 2 Timothy 3:2 and serve to show when a people are in judgemnt. This is likely because not only have the children been disobedice but they have learned disobedience. Remember when we talked about fathers we noted that a father, indeed a parent, who loves his child disciplines his child. Children, while you may not enjoy it you can trut that the loving discipline you recieve fro your parents shows that they do lova and care for you.

Sinful socieitie sunder God’s judgement have children who are dispnbedient to parents because they have parents who are lovers of self rather than lovers of God and who do not seek to discipline their children in a godly maner and thus raise childen who are steeped in disobedience. This type of thing has no place in a godly household! Families that are going to be stong building blocks for godly culture must have obedient children and so children here, your job is to learn to be obedient and to learn to be joyfully obedient to your parents. This is the duty given to you by God!

Closong

Now as we wrap up this morning there are a few things that I wanted to work in here before we move on.

The first is an aknowledgemnt that not everyone is going to have a perfect experience in thse things and also that not everyone is going to have a family of their own. We have mentioned before the importance of understanding these things as the normative pattern. I would also add that what we have learned about the family as a household can also, with wisdom be apllied to the household of God. This means that men and women can apply their masculine and femanine traits, not only within physial households with physical children but are also called to exercise these things in the household of God and with the spiritual offspring we find there. New born babes in Christ need to be nurtured and discipled. The household of God needs shephered and provided for and while we know that Christ as the head does these things he does them through the members of His body and so we know that what we have learned in these messages has appliation within the church.

Another thing that I wanted to note before we move on is just a word of caution for how we talk about things in he world. As we have seen God created the family with a very specific purpose and the family is under great attack in the world today. One of the ways this attack has been carried out is through using tne language of the family to speak of things that are not families. This i evident ofcourse in things like the LGBT movment however there are also other seemingly innoquous areas that I might caution against. For example, it is quite common for people to talk about their fur baies these days of being a pet parent. I know folks who said they hve chosen to have fur babies rather than have children. Its ok to be a pet person to love animals and to even enjyoy and nurture and care for a pet. However, especialy because of the way our world is tring to subvert even the language of the family I think that it would be wise that we as those who know what a family really is and what it true purpose is use the vocabulary of the family to refer only to that which is truly family. I say that as a gentile word of caution as I know there are those here who have and love pets.

We also see efforts at counterfitting the family and a counterfit that seems to be growing in popularity is the movement, especially among women to have dolls that are treated like real babies. Dya sent Jake and I a post on this a little while ago. My take away from this was that there are so many people who have tried to cast of God’s design and yet are inavoidablydrawn back into it and wind up seeking a counterfit reality to fill that void. The caution here is not to not have dolls but rather to realize the tendency for the human hear to substitute a counterfit for that for which God has made it to long. Look at Hanah, she prayed and prayed fervantly and trusted in the Lord to meet the longings of hear heart. We must be people who do that and not people who fall prey to the counterfits offered by the world.

Lastly, I would simply like toclose with an excellent eminder from a commentary that I read on Ephesisn 5 and 6 in relation to family members seekign to live and finction rightly within biblical families:

Alive in Christ: Ephesians Simply Explained Not Everyone at Home Has the Same Rôle

The way for a Christian home to operate is not for me to ask what God expects of him, or of her, or of them, but to be clear what he expects of me. Homes are ruined when everybody criticizes everybody else’s performance. The way forward is for each person to weigh up before God what are his or her own responsibilities, and to take them seriously. Homes are changed for ever when each person asks the others to help him do what God expects of him personally.