How is your home life? How are things with your wife? Do you enjoy your kids? Getting along with Dad and Mom? Is your family a peaceful haven, or a battlefield? The fifth commandment says “Honor your father and your mother.”
The family is the basic social and spiritual unit of mankind. God has created us to live together in families. We have our identity in our family. You are someone’s father or mother, son or daughter, brother or sister. We are accountable to God for our family responsibilities. In the family we learn respect for God-constituted authority. Under submission to parental authority, we are disciplined and trained. It is there that we cultivate social skills and develop habits which form our character. In the family we learn our core values and beliefs. We are given a religious heritage from our parents as well. We are raised to respect ‘the God of our fathers’.
God blesses the family which operates according to His precepts. He defines our roles within the family and insures our prosperity as we comply with His purposes. God delights to see us living in ordered, loving homes. He is pleased to teach us how to love our spouses; how to raise our children; how to honor our parents. God has designed the family for our good and His glory.
Is not the judgment of God evident today for our neglect of God’s authority in family life? Is not much of the disorder in our society due to our disobedience to the fifth commandment? We see wives being violated, husbands betrayed, children abandoned, and parental rule ignored and even attacked. “He who troubles his own house will inherit wind” (Prov 11:29a).
Can we trust our family to the “expertise” of anyone other than God? Will we really prosper by sacrificing our family on the altar of our career? status? convenience? pleasure? Why would we destroy our own loved ones for such vanity?
Christ can teach us how to love our loved ones with the love that is of God. He can teach us His righteous, gracious, forgiving, self-sacrificing love and instruct us how to live for His glory in our homes. The Word of God directs our marriages, our parenting, our respect for parents. All our domestic concerns are addressed in the Bible.
We are Grace Covenant Baptist Church, 35 Court Street, Flemington. Pastor Alan Dunn (996-7654). We are thankful to our Lord Jesus for continuing to teach us how to live out the gospel in our homes. Will you come and learn from Him with us?
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