18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.
20 Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.
21 Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
22 Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God;
23 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
24 Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
25 But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons.
Let’s just bow in prayer.
Dear Holy Father, as we come before you this morning, Lord, I pray that you would just speak to us through your word and help us to understand what it means to serve you in all aspects of life. Realize the great battle that we are in, where there is a world system driven by Satan that desires for us not to serve you and not to do your will. Lord, speak to us through your word, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As I was preparing the message this morning, I’m looking at the text and I’m reading along and I’m going, why would Paul put in here, after he’s been talking about what it is to be a Christian, the fact that there is false teachers that are coming into the church. He talked the beginning, our position in Christ, and he explained that even at the time that he was alive and writing this letter, there were already those that were coming in trying to bring false doctrine and heresy to undermine the faith of the saints.
And then he talked about how we should live as Christians, what our attitude should be, what we should reflect, the very character of the one who redeemed us, Jesus Christ. And then he comes and talks about relationships. And why would he put this here? I want you to understand, Paul knows where you live daily is right in the text we read this morning.
It’s in your family, it’s at your job, it’s in the world where we have to function, where we go about our daily tasks. And this morning I want us to take a look and see the significance and the importance of walking with Jesus and understand the battle that you’re facing in these areas. Not enough is being preached about, I think, the spiritual battle that we’re in and why you’re seeing, even in Christian homes, divorce, you’re seeing children out of control, you’re seeing a lack of respect, husbands for wives and wives for husbands.
How can that be? And then you go to the workplace, and I remember a man telling me one day, he said, I don’t like to deal with Christians, because they always disappoint me. And they always say these marvelous things and then do the exact opposite. That shouldn’t be the case.
And that’s why Paul is writing this. And this morning I want us to just give you a glimpse into the depth of the battle that you’re in. Why the church is, to a large extent, ineffectual once the people walk out the doors.
Why do so many people name the name of Christ, come to church, give their offering, serve on committees, do work around the building, but when it comes to walking out the doors, it’s like they’re a different person. And I want you to understand that you have been conditioned by a world to act like that. At the height of COVID, I don’t know if you saw something that I saw.
There was one group of people that was not to gather. They were not to do what they normally did when they gathered. And that was Christians.
They weren’t to go to church. And if they went to church, they were to wear masks. They were to sit six feet apart.
They weren’t to sing hymns. They weren’t to gather together and touch one another and hold one another when someone had a need. And yet you look at the history throughout the world, and you’ll see that whenever crisis came, Christians were the ones that were leading the charge to call on the name of the Lord.
To pray that God would help us. Churches would be filled with people, some that had never darkened the doors for years, but came in because of the problems and issues in their life that they wanted to bring to Jesus. But that changed.
Did you know that many people haven’t even gone back to church since 2020 and 2021? Amazing. Rather than going to church and fellowshipping with God’s people, even though the author of Hebrews tells us that we’re not to forsake the assembling together, especially as the day draws near. And guess what the day is that’s drawing near? That is the return of the Lord and all that’s going to transpire before He returns.
Because it talks about this great spiritual battle that will begin to happen before Jesus comes. First for His church and the rapture, and then at the end of the seven year tribulation to judge the world. Jesus Himself said that in the last days it would grow worse and worse.
There’d be a lack of faith even amongst the people that said that they were naming His name. Why would this be? Well, this morning I just want to share some things with you. I want us to talk about some things.
What are the things that are motivating our culture? And what has come in, crept into the church? We’ve talked about other things. But I really want to address it and then in light of these two areas, the family and workplace. At work, it’s interesting.
I talk to people. And one of the common things I hear is, man, it’s not like it used to be, especially if you’ve got hair like mine. And they’re remembering back when they maybe first went into the workplace as a young person.
They said, it’s like people don’t care. They don’t want to work. The first question in an interview is, what are your benefits? What’s in it for me? Where it used to be, I can do the job, I can help you.
What happened? Where did the transformation come? In the home. Where parents don’t see the importance of instructing their children in moral and spiritual things, but will dump thousands of dollars into making them the best athlete they can be. I want to tell you, it’s interesting.
It began with the dismissal of absolutes. And why do I say that? Because when you begin to dismiss the fact that there is an absolute right and an absolute wrong, you are effectively saying God doesn’t exist. I don’t know, some of you are so young, you don’t remember when the God is dead movement came about in the 60’s and 70’s.
Because you weren’t even born then. But they said God’s dead. His rules don’t exist.
His law doesn’t exist. And it’s doing whatever you want to do. And out of that came the drug culture, the hippie movement.
And I remember reading a little snippet that a classmate from a school of mine had put on a webpage. And this girl had won girl of the year. The most likely to succeed.
The one who followed all the rules. And she said in this little snippet, you’re never going to guess what happened to me. I went to San Francisco.
I became a hippie. I did drugs. And now I’m into eastern mysticism and yoga.
I’m a follower. And she listed her guru. What happened? It was an abandonment of God.
This didn’t come just overnight. But it’s come in gradual steps. And there’s a whole series.
And I want to give you a few words that will reflect on what you’re seeing in our culture today. And why the family is under such stress and attack in America. Why the workplace is under attack.
Why the whole culture is under attack. Satan realizes that God has established certain structures to be used by him to advance worship of him. Knowledge of him.
And through the structures, he reveals himself. The first relationship that he gave in the Bible is found in Genesis 3. And the first structure that God established was the home. In Genesis 3, you see that there are Adam and Eve.
And you see that Adam has certain responsibilities. Eve has certain responsibilities. But they’re husband and wife.
And out of that relationship is to come children. And God’s intention was that Adam would be the spiritual head of that relationship, of that home. He would be the protector of his wife.
But he would be the servant leader, loving her. And that she in turn would honor him because of what he was doing for her. And expressing to her.
Out of that relationship would come children. And Adam would be able to teach those children who God was. Because God was walking with Adam.
But sinned him. And when Adam sinned. I want you to, if you went to chapter 3 of Genesis, you would see the account.
And you would read that Eve was deceived. Because she was by herself when Satan appeared. Through an animal, a snake.
And tempted her. But he deceived her. Because one who was to watch out for her spiritual well-being.
And to be there to intercept that destructive attitude was Adam. And he wasn’t there. But when Adam came, he willfully chose to rebel against God.
He wasn’t deceived. He knew exactly what he was doing. And because of that, sin entered the world.
And things will never be completely the same until Jesus comes. And first establishes his kingdom on earth. But even then, there will still be a remnant of sin.
But when he comes and judges the quick and the dead. And creates a new heavens and a new earth. Sin will be gone forever.
But you and I live with the consequences of sin. And Satan, who Jesus himself called the father of all lies. And a murderer from the beginning.
Because he brought death into this world. And presented it to Adam as life. He deceived and lied.
Saying Adam could be God just as Satan had determined in his mind he could be God. And rebellion and sin were found in Satan. And he brought that to Adam.
And shared it with him. Well, Satan still desires to destroy the family. He still desires to destroy the relationships.
He still desires to bring death to all of God’s creation. How does he do it? First of all, he does it, as I mentioned, with the dismissal of absolutes. And how do you do that? Well, there’s a couple of things that have happened.
And it began a long time ago. It began way back at the Garden of Eden. It manifested itself even further at the Tower of Babel.
Where Nimrod had determined that he would bring all of mankind into following him. And they would worship the demonic gods that he worshipped. And that God didn’t matter.
But the term that would be used is a term called rationalism. And the term rationalism is that my think and my thoughts are more significant than anybody else’s. My thoughts are what drives my life.
I don’t believe in God’s thoughts. I’m dismissing them. And that’s in essence what Adam did.
He had declared himself to be God. Because he said, I don’t have to listen to God when He tells me, Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I don’t know about you, but are there things in your life that you’ve gained knowledge of that are evil and wicked and you wish you’d never seen, never heard, never knew about? That’s what God wanted for us.
But Adam chose what he felt was the best way for him. And he rationally justified in his mind, I can do this. Because God’s trying to hold something back from me.
Out of this concept of rationalism comes a term that our country is living by, which is relativism. And relativism is whatever is expedient will work for my benefit. So consequently, when rationalism and relativism come into relationships, I am no longer there to first adhere to what God has established as right and wrong.
And what will bring beauty to that relationship. But I begin to approach it from what I perceive I need to do. And then I rationalize it so that it becomes okay in my mind.
Because it’s better for me to do this. Our culture has become rationalistic and has become relative in our concepts. And so consequently you can have people justify, I can justify whatever I want to do in my mind.
And then out of that you begin to dismiss the whole concept of good and evil. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing in our culture. I’ve determined in my mind, for example, let’s take the case of abortion.
I’ve determined in my mind that it would be better for me not to have a baby at this particular time. And even though I have chose to engage in actions that would result in the conception of a new life. I have chosen that I don’t want to do that.
Because I will determine my own future. And then I will determine through the relativism of the hour that the best thing to do would be to get rid of the baby. And then I no longer even see it as murder.
I dismiss the good and the evil. And I say it doesn’t exist. And a baby becomes just a lump of cells.
Yet God tells us in His Word that He knows us from the moment of conception that we are unique and wonderfully made. He knows everything about us. Everything about you is there the moment you are conceived.
The result is that leads to a whole concept of opening up the door to worship. Everything is God. And there is pantheism that enters in.
A total dismissal of the concept of a creator and we’ve replaced it with evolution. And I want you to understand Hinduism is based on evolution. False religious systems are based on evolution.
Mormonism is based on evolution. All the false religious systems in the world have these elements in conjunction with one another because they all deny the authority and the absolutes of our Creator God. And what flows out of this evolution is secular humanism.
And the foundation of this is that there is no God. Now Satan has used this to come against and to attack and dismiss the family structure. He’s done it to dismiss the difference between men and women.
He’s done it to undermine and destroy the family. He’s done it to cause role reversal where now you often have mom in the workplace and dad at home. And the kids running wild.
He’s dismissed proper authority as being of no value. He’s stated that as God has said in His word, and we’ve looked at it before in Deuteronomy, God gave the family for proper instruction of the children by the parents, beginning with their perception and relationship with God. He dismisses the whole concept of that form of teaching.
And so you come to a teaching structure where there are no absolutes, there is no foundation, but it’s pretty much whatever you want to do. A few years ago there was a man who had been trained as a mathematic teacher, and I knew him and had been out of the field of teaching for a number of years, but he was losing his particular job with the school district, and they said, we’re getting rid of that position, but we’ll offer you a position in the classroom to teach mathematics again. He hadn’t taught math in probably ten years, but he thought, well, that’s what I’m trained in, I’ll go back.
He went into the classroom. I was talking to him, how’s it going? He says, this isn’t teaching. Teaching is for me to take what I have learned and the foundational principles of mathematics and instruct the children so that they gain an understanding of those principles and they’re able to do them.
And you learn it by rote and by practice and by being able to learn the specific foundational truths. But this is what they got me doing in the classroom. He said, my way of being an instructor is to evaluate the needs of the children.
Some kids are brilliant, some kids are not. Some kids struggle with the basic principles, other kids grasp them right away. So he said, when I would teach, I would take those kids that grasped the principles and I would give them more to do.
I’d give them things that would challenge them to go and to learn more and I’d help them to learn it. For those kids that were struggling with the basic principles of mathematics, the foundational truth, I would spend extra time on that with them so they could get this foundation so they’d have something to build on. But now they’ve got me in the classroom putting all the kids in groups.
And I don’t pick according to, it’s random. And I want to tell you, it doesn’t take long for the kids to figure out who the smart kid is in their group and who the ones that are struggling are. And pretty soon, the kids have got the smart kid doing all the work.
And the ones struggling, they’re not learning a thing. And then pretty soon, the smart kid goes, I’m tired of doing all the work. So he quits.
And now you’ve got nobody. But I’m not to sit up in front and instruct them like when I took algebra. My algebra teacher would go up and he’d stand on the chalkboard.
We didn’t have what you got today, but we had chalkboards. And he stood at the chalkboard, he’d write out a problem, then he’d explain the principle of how that problem functioned. And he’d begin with the simple and then go to the more complex.
And if we got lost along the way, we’d go back to where we got lost. But today, in the classrooms, in much modern education, because it’s progressive based upon relativism, rationalism, humanism, and evolution, you don’t teach that way anymore. If a student says one plus one is two, well, that’s good.
But if another student says one plus one is three, you say, OK, that could probably be true. Let’s examine and see if it is or not. Maybe it is on Thursdays.
I don’t know. And because that you see a culture where men don’t know what men are and women don’t know what men. And now you’ve got a Supreme Court justice who, when she sat before the Senate to be confirmed for the Supreme Court, one of the senators asked her, give me a definition of a woman.
Know what the Supreme Court justice said? And she’s she got appointed. She’s there. Well, I can’t do that because I didn’t.
I’m not a biology professor and I never really had biology that much in school. I was more geared towards the science, the social sciences, and then I got my degree in law. So I really can’t give you a definition of a woman.
Why? Because her whole life basis is on rationalism, relativism, lack of absolutes and a denial of God. Now, why am I talking about this when it comes to this particular portion of Scripture? I want you to understand, Paul is saying, you as Christians, your foundation is the same in the home, in the workplace, in the neighborhood. When you’re all by yourself and it’s just you and God, your belief system is the same.
Your function is the same. The way that you act should be the same. Why? Because it’s based on the absolute character of God’s truth.
And we need to understand that.
And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
Why? Because it’s based on the absolute character of God’s truth, and we need to understand that. What results from relativism, rationalism, humanism, socialism, is it destruction or death of family, the institutions, structure, and values. And I want you to see that.
And the problem is, it’s coming to the church, the family. Do we really identify with what God’s structure is for the family? Then I want to talk to you. We’ll be talking Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and down the road.
But do you really understand what it means to be a servant leader? Do you really understand what it means to love your wife as Christ loved the church? Do you really understand what the Apostle Paul says, that a man who doesn’t provide for his family is worse than an infidel or an unbeliever? And there are situations that are beyond our control. Like right now, I was talking to a lady, interviewing her for a job, and her husband was in a bad accident, and he cannot work because of the accident. I’m not talking about the rare exception.
I’m talking about the principle. Most young men today do not want to be a servant leader. Most young men today, unless God has gotten a hold of their heart and revealed to them this truth, are self-centered and don’t see the significance and importance of taking leadership in the home.
The Apostle Jeremiah, and that’s an interesting study. We’ve been going through the Kings right now. We’re in Josiah.
Jeremiah lived at the same time as Josiah. Josiah brought revival to the nation of Israel, wiped out all the false gods, all the places of false worship, did all of that. Brought the Passover.
It said there was never a Passover in the history of Israel like the Passover Josiah brought. And that’s where they remembered how God had delivered them out of the slavery of Egypt, really out of a world system that was causing them to be kept apart from their God and brought them into the promised land where they could be governed and have fellowship with their God. And Josiah brought that Passover, and it was an amazing Passover.
But as soon as Josiah died, the nation went back to the false gods very shortly. Because Jeremiah, who outlived Josiah, ended up being persecuted by Israel because of the things he said. And what did he say? He said, it’s a crime.
This is what he said as he looked at the culture. The men no longer rule. The women are taking charge, and the children are ruling.
And this is a curse on any nation when it happens. Why? Because it’s flipping the whole order that God had established on its head. And Satan loves that because it destroys a culture.
He brings death. If you look at our culture today, who rules? Kids have an extraordinary amount of influence in the home and in the culture. Men and women don’t want to take this seriously.
Although it’s really a blessing because there have been some of the younger people, they’re starting to get more serious. They’re seeing the disaster in our culture. And he says here that we are to be models in the home and in the workplace.
And we’re to seek to serve God, not men, in both places. As I was going through this list, and how Satan attacks all of these things, the family, the institutions, the workplace, the structure, the values of a culture, and undermines them by doing these things. The final result when Satan is gaining the victory is a term that’s referred to as existentialism.
Existentialism is a big word that basically means that man has come to the conclusion that I exist, but I have no meaning. I exist, but I have no meaning. That’s where a lot of people are today.
Go through the motions. What is my meaning for life? Well, I guess my meaning is amusement, to entertain myself so I don’t have to think. You know how many people just live a life of amusement? One sporting event after another sporting event, one party after another party, one time down to the keg after the bar after another time.
So I don’t have to think. Because when I think, then I try to determine why am I actually here? What does my life mean? And the thing is, the Bible reveals to us what our life should mean. I’ve shared with you before, every one of you was created in the image of God.
And you were created in the image of God, that you could have fellowship with God, and that you would bring glory to your Creator. And that you should be used by God to reveal who God is through your life. But if you deny the giver of absolutes in truth, and deny the truth, you have basically started down this spiral that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 1, that ultimately leads and culminates in all of these bizarre behaviors that we call and justify as normal.
So you have a Supreme Court Justice who says, I don’t know what a woman is. You’ve got people of the same sex that say, well we have the right to get married. No you don’t.
Because God said marriage was for one man, for one woman, for life. And He created us different and different in such a way, that out of that union, it talks about whenever I do marriage counseling or we have a wedding ceremony, I’ll talk about the fact that Jesus says and quotes the Old Testament, where it says that man and woman, a man should leave his mother, his family, and should be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. There’s a oneness there that is beyond a physical union.
You ever notice your wife thinks different than you or your husband thinks different than you when it comes to issues? That’s because God impregnated in our minds ways to process things a little bit different because we’re to complement one another. We’re to be there for one another. You know the times I get in trouble, I don’t go to my wife and listen to her counsel because she’s seeing things from a different perspective than I am.
And I’m thinking, well I’ve got it all under control. But God gave me her to complement me. And He gave me to complement her.
But the world says, no, you don’t need that. We’ll do whatever we want to do. We’ll rationalize it away.
It’s all relative in your eyes. And it goes on. And so it takes away the whole meaning of life.
I want to see the results of existentialism. How many of you have heard of 30 and 40 year olds living in the basement of their parents and never coming out, never getting a job? I saw a couple hands go up. You know what’s causing that? This whole value system of destroying absolutes and God.
And you know something, it’s often times more young men that do that than young women. It’s sad. They have no meaning, no purpose.
So they sit in the basement and play video games all day. And try to make a living playing video games. I guess you can make a pretty good living if you’re good at it.
But it’s kind of a worthless life because you’re sure not interacting in God’s way properly with people. Authoritarianism, replacing proper understanding of servant leadership and love. I want to tell you where our world’s headed to.
Now, whether you like our current political system in the US or not, one of the things you have going on right now in our country is that our current political leadership is standing up against the authoritarian world culture that all of these things that I’m talking about have been leading. And that’s why you’re seeing such a struggle going on right now when under other regimes you heard nothing at all. But I want to tell you, man cannot live in a vacuum.
God gave us a foundation and He was to be our King, our Leader, our Creator. As I shared with you before, I’m horrible at putting things together because I never read the instructions. I always think I know better.
Ever since I had model cars and I try to put them together and I get halfway done and realize I should have put something in about 8 steps before and now it’s too late because all the glue is set up. But do we do that with our lives? Because God gave us the instruction book, the Bible. It’s an amazing book.
It reveals Jesus, it reveals God’s intention, it reveals why we’re here, how we got here, what our purpose is, what happens when we fail. There’s a means by which we can be redeemed or brought back. There’s not only redemption that occurs, but God gives us a better life after redemption occurs than we had before we knew Him.
And it’s all here in the instruction manual. Some of the most vocal people against God have never even opened the Bible and never will. It’s interesting.
In closing, I just want to go down a couple things. The Bible tells us that when the world rejects God, it will open itself up to follow an absolute authoritarian leader. And that day is coming.
We pray that the Lord will be merciful and it won’t come, but it is coming. And it’s being set up by all of these things that are being laid out. And I could have a whole list of men that have been used by Satan to bring this into our culture and into the world, starting with progressive education, psychology, sociology, theology, the rationalistic philosophers of Germany.
All of these are laying a foundation to turn to Satan and not to God. But as you look at this, all of this progressive education, submission to anything but God, it results in, first of all, three things that happen. It results in everything saying, all is one or all is God, versus monoism, that all is one, everything is one, and then pantheism, all is God, and finally humanism, we are God.
But it all results into paganism. And if you want to really understand what’s going on in the world today, what’s happening in the Middle East, it’s blatant paganism where you have groups of people who have no regard for life and no regard for God. Or they say they worship a God, but their God is a God of death.
And as they have no regard for life and no regard for God, it results in what you see happening. I can go in and do whatever I want to whoever I want, whenever I want. God established the home and business relationships for us to be respected and not have these types of attitudes in our lives.
The decline of a culture along these lines ends up leading to moral and cultural deviant behavior, leads to a denial of who God, Jesus, absolutes are. And it’s interesting, our world can be anything but a Christian, a Bible-believing Christian, one who really believes the Bible. And it results in a pragmatism in a society where the ends justify the means and I can do whatever I want as long as I get what I say I’m going to accomplish.
That is not what is laid out in the scripture we read this morning. In the home, God established order, God established relationship, God established a loving, caring relationship where two would be one and out of that unity would come others who you would be able to instruct and teach. In the workplace, we would always be there to have a servant’s heart.
Examples are given throughout scripture, Joseph being a prime example. Joseph who had all these horrible things happen to him in his life and yet always had a servant’s heart because he always loved God. Sold into slavery, he becomes the best slave there was.
Put in prison, he becomes the best prisoner there was. Because he wasn’t serving men and he wasn’t overcome by his circumstance, but instead he looked to his God and wherever he was, he wanted God to shine through him. Likewise, that is to be us in the home.
Does your family show forth the love of Christ in the way that mom and dad treat one another? Children, do you honor your parents because they’re your parents? God has placed them in the authority role over you. He has given them to be your instructors, to be the ones that have set the tone and the example. And if you live in a Christian home, you are so blessed because God has given you a mother and father who want to pass on to you the values they possess in their lives.
And the things that they did that resulted in spiritual scars, they don’t want you to experience them. And that’s why they sometimes say no. And why they set boundaries.
And you go into the workplace, and I’ve been in workplaces where no authority exists and it’s not a good place to work. But no matter what the workplace, your attitude should be different than those that aren’t believers. And people should see it.
Because as Paul says in the first verse we read, And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. There are absolutes in our life, and the one who sets the absolutes is the one who gave us life itself. And he desires to not just set boundaries to our life, but to set them above.
And that’s how we are to live. With God’s truth, surrounded by His love. Let’s just close in prayer.
Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand the principles that we’ve been looking at this morning, and how Satan desires to attack and destroy Christians’ lives, destroy the church, destroy culture, destroy our world. But how that you have called us to stand for truth, and you are the truth. And you’ve given to us the means by which we can live our lives, and know how we are to live them.
Lord, thank you for all that you’ve done and are doing in our lives, just we ask in Jesus’ name.