vBOBO,dHHHHHH#H# :-Z$$2NexxHHJ WHHJ'pQ g odXXd%%ls/fwm_t##HHwf`@ \){DSET%..$2WT \zBC!*k 3";DMN Uꢖ ^ g o xr" ܢaʣHNΙFslƤ 4l !$h",#2N$  5 L M   S ٹ   (] . 2F 2G 2H 2I 2J 2K 2L 2M 2N 2O 2P 2Q 2R 2S 2T 2U 2V 2W < M    H"0> L Zhv $(ʮ,殖048<V@dD樖HLPTX,\:`HdVhdlrnptx|Ʃԩ⩖ (6DR`n|ªЪު쪖$2@N\jx̫ګ 論  .$<(J,X/QNHonor Your Wife #1 Walkersville Christian Fellowship 10/24/99 - Gary L. Cox ..to see you all this morning. I have to confess that I am at risk this morning due to excitement and enthusiasm, which I guess that means that you are at risk too. Let us pray. Lord we come before You this morning in the name of Jesus. Lord we just pause and with the smallness of what we can see, we are struck with awe and wonder at what a mighty God You are, what a wonderful God, God of wisdom and truth and power and love. We thank You that You have reached to us. You have reached down, Lord, You have condescended to our lowest state and You have reached into our hearts and sought to set for Yourself a people called after Your name. And we thank You for Your Word and we ask this morning that You would minister to us by it and that we would taste of the sweetness, that we would be drawn in Lord and that our desire would be stirred up so that we might pant hard and follow after You, for You alone are worthy of our admiration and our aspiration. We ask that You would meet us this morning, that it would be to Your honor and glory. We pray in Christs name, amen. As we are currently studying the assembly and we are in the section of 1 Corinthians 14 that discusses order in the assembly, I find myself at a crossroads and it is a little difficult to contain my enthusiasm because I have such a joy in anticipating some of the issues that the Lord sets before us that the society we live in has spawned and spurned and thrown off and yet for us they remain our heritage and a sweetness to us, things that perhaps on the face would be considered controversial or even divisive potentially and yet God is a mighty God. I remember when I was growing up, I was raised as most of you know in a Catholic church and there were some rules that went along with going to church in the Catholic church. And when I was growing up, one of those rules were that boys, that men, never ever had a cap on their head in church. They never ever darkened the door of a church with a cap on and it was just the opposite for the girls. Girls always had to have some kind of a cap or a head covering on their head to enter in the sanctuary. As a child, as that practice lived itself out before me, I noticed what appeared to me as I reflect back, I did not perhaps do a lot of thinking deeply then about it, but I noticed it was just an accepted aspect of our lives and everyone embraced their roles and responsibilities. There was acceptance of it and the church was often, one of the complaints actually that I remember my mother having is that the church often was a place of someone showing off a little bit too gaudy of a headdress in the church assembly. But it was still a time where that was readily embraced in a sense pervasively or across the whole culture. And then somewhere in the 60s, the Vatican II council came through with quite a few of the changes that they had to update the church. And one of the changes that they came in with was throwing out the rule of wearing head coverings for the women in the church building, in the sanctuary. So then with few waning years, that cultural expression of itself in America quickly departed, at least as I saw it and it is a rare thing to see most modern American women wearing any kind of head covering. I probably am starting my discussion at a point that everybody is going, Head coverings? He is going to talk about head coverings? Yes I am eventually. We are going to talk about it. We are going to start at the foundation. What I would like to do is let us start in 1 Corinthians 14 for a second and I just want to read a few verses that relate to a backdrop here. If you begin at verse 33 at 1 Corinthians 14, it says this, For God is not the author of confusion but of peace as in all the churches of the saints. Let your women keep silence in the churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. What came the Word of God out from you? Or came it unto you only? If any man thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. If any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Wherefore brethren covet to prophesy and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order. I apologize to you visitors who are visiting and kind of arriving in the middle of a really long session we have been having and you have no context to place these comments in entirely. But hopefully you will not be lost in the discourse. Wednesday night we had a mens meeting and there were 22 of us men there. And it for me was one of the highlights of my ministry. And the thing that struck the deepest cord for me, the thing that gave me this sense of greatest value and purpose was at hearing the hearts of some of the men begin to sort of echo back the sentiment that they felt that the Lord had spoken to them and that was this issue of headship. A couple men said to men, I have never been addressed before in a church assembly as a head of the household. I have never been given a place of rank based upon the fact that I am a head of the household. That was something that meant a lot to several of the men. It meant a lot to me too. What we are going to undertake in the next few Sundays, God permitting, is we are going to try to take some insight into the nature of the church and the order of things as they are before God and why we might order ourselves in certain ways because of the wonderful nature of who God is and what He is doing and how we preserve that which is His interest. Speaking about this issue is difficult from the standpoint of the culture that we live in. I do not need to say much about the culture we live in. You all know it, you all know it well. The gravest threats to you and I, the threats to common sense really, but the greatest threats to our society are continuing to flow out of the steep and significant misunderstanding of the purpose and pleasure and the pursuit of God. And we are seeking after things that meet our own agenda, that satisfy our own external understanding but we are arriving no where as a culture. Christians have long been unable to stem the tide. And often what Christians have done is they have instead of digging deep and asking God to reveal His truth, they have compromised what sounds like an unreasonable explanation of Scripture, they have compromised that to appease unbelief, to appease unbelievers. And the consternation that is registered by unbelief at some of these ideas of Scripture is so incredible that just the consternation itself is often used as the form of truth that presents the issue in its so called appropriate fashion. And what do we do? We back peddle. We excuse ourselves from the fray and we change the Word of God to meet more satisfactorily with the flavor of those who deny God, who do not believe in God, who have no interest in pursuing after God. And then there is the other case which is growing to be much much more so in American culture and that is Gods people themselves are becoming fat and satisfied with a worldly mindset about things that are from God and they are happy in the liberated unbelief that the world has and they are importing that back into the context of the church and basically claiming that it is appropriate, that this is a different day that we live in and we have a different cultural context. And so these things that once were clear are no longer so clear or so appropriate to us. One of the most important things we need to recognize in the New Testament and if you did a careful study of the New Testament, you would begin to understand that there are very exceedingly few forms mentioned in the New Testament, very few forms indeed, and most of the context of teaching and experience in the New Testament as it relates to church and the family practice etc., most has to do with wrestling with the spiritual issue of what it means to put off the old man and to put on Jesus Christ. Most of the context of the Gospel centers around that fundamental issue of walking by faith. And very very seldom do you find significant campings out on form over substance in terms of what is going on. But it is important for you and I to understand that substance, substance of truth, when it is walked in, expresses itself in form. It is unavoidable. Substance of truth expresses itself in form. And the nature of the Gospel is such that you get the substance of truth out and then the form flows naturally from that. The form flows naturally from that. In the context of our discussion here, we are going to spend the time that God permits to discuss some of these issues relating to women and their role in the church and issues such as the head covering which if you isolate it out too starkly is an easily misunderstood issue. But we are going to address these issues and what I would like to do for a foundation, I would like to start out and I would like to say that perhaps you are familiar with the passage that I just read to you this morning, there have been those who have said several of the following things: some have said, perhaps these are more liberal unbelieving theologians, but some have said, Paul hated women and this is just his anti-feminine view filtering itself and marring what is otherwise a very divine presentation of the Gospel by the apostle Paul, but here he has flawed. Others say, It is not so much that he is flawed but back then, I love that tone because that is always the tone used, Back then that was the nature of the culture, of course but today it is different. It does not have the application because we have a different culture today. So there is this sense of wanting to honor the words so that we do not mock Scripture but we separate ourselves from obligation to the words by giving a context to it that is exceptional outside of who we are and our responsibility. And then there are others who try to explain it away with one other form of theological footwork or another. And in every case I would like to submit to you this morning, in every case, the problem with the modern discussion of Pauls teaching on women and Peters as well, the problem with the modern discussion is this, no one has remembered or realized that the whole foundation has been eroded and that you cannot come at this issue just looking at the surface outward expressions that are a part once the foundation is there. And I am absolutely, thoroughly convinced that if you can replace the foundation, you do not have to worry about the form, it will take care of itself. The form will fall back into place because the foundation was so precious, the foundation is so precious and we have nearly, entirely lost it in our day. So I will tell you this morning though that I am excited, I am full of joy, I have waited for this hour for 27 some years. Not necessarily with continuous anticipation, but it has never left me on the same hand. Maybe just because not everybody knows me that well, if I could just share a little brief picture of who I am, before I was saved I had one year in the public school, my senior year in high school. And in my senior year in high school I got introduced to what the public school will call social studies. And the social studies unit as I look back now, it had two key groups of people in the public schools that were designed to change the times and the seasons for our culture. And those two classes were the social studies class and the English class. I went to a school in Baltimore county and in that school the social studies class was primarily a venue for piping in a liberal mindset which was destructive of the family. There was one time during the course of the school year that there was a special convocation called by the principal for the whole school. And if this had been a Christian school, we would have called it a spiritual life day because it was setting aside special consideration and special interest in the necessity of redeeming our culture and getting it fixed. And this special convocation was called, all the classes were canceled and we got together and can you guess who was in charge of the convocation? I was an unbeliever but this really caught my eye. The social studies teachers single-handedly were in charge of the entire student body and they were the ones spending time speaking to us and there was my English teacher in the background as well. And in this particular context what they basically did is they preached some sermons to us, liberal sermons to be sure, sermons concerning the mindset of the world in the modern age. What I remember most distinctly though in context to our discussion this morning is that there was this great cry going up in the classroom of the great injustice being done toward women and the great need for women to be liberated. It was a cry of injustice in the likes of which I had not heard since the civil rights movement in the 60s. All I can tell you as far as report is as soon as I heard the complaints, as soon as I heard the dogma coming out, myself who tended to have a teachable spirit in most matters, I immediately said, Fine if that is the problem, no problem. I was ready to carry signs for womens liberation. It did not take long to convert me. I was just pressed a little bit on my feelings, feel sorry for the poor ladies. They need help? I will help them. And my empathy was ready to relieve the oppressed. And that began to be an alert. I began to notice, Oh there is a problem with women being oppressed. And I was trying to fish through it. Course I had never seen any yet but it was a philosophical transfer that was taking place. And it was in that context that I went through a first year, almost two years of college and so I have got about three years into this poison and then one day I get saved by the grace of God, June 11th to be exact. June 11th I get born again and on the very next day after June 11th which was a Monday, I decide to have my quiet time for the first time and I got a Bible for the first time in my life the day before and I am looking at this Bible and there is no table of contents, there are no instructions on how to read. It was just a book. I said, I do not have the slightest idea how to begin. So I knelt down beside my bed and I said, O God I have no idea what I need for spiritual food. And I started fanning the pages asking Him to show me a passage. And I pointed to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. That was the first Bible devotion that I had in my Christian life. Immediately a trauma was raised, we are going to be going there in the course of time, but immediately a trauma was raised because 1 Corinthians 11 talks about headship and head coverings. And I read those few verses on headship and head coverings and this was my first thought, now I am a brand new believer, only 24 hours or less old in the Lord and I am reading this passage, I am experiencing the Bible for the first time and it happened that sovereignly the Lord had Sally coming to give me a ride to the junk yard that day. So she arrived at the house to pick me up and I am in turmoil over this passage. And all I am thinking about are these oppressed women and this passage is really not going to go to well with these oppressed people. So I did like any gallant man does, I passed the buck to my, well she was not my wife yet, but I passed the buck to Sally and I said, I have a question, what do you think of this passage? And actually I did not quite start that way, I first said to her, How do you know which parts of the Bible are Scripture and which parts are mens thoughts? Because I would just like to get rid of all of the mens thoughts and I would just like to have the Scripture. Course she had no idea where I was coming from. And she said, Everything. The whole entire thing, it is all Scripture. I remember what one Baptist preacher once used to say all the time, he said, I believe everything from cover to cover and I even believe the cover where it says, Genuine Leather. But anyway she gave me this sense of you do not discriminate. It is not part here and part there and let us not just pick and choose. And so then I say, Well if that is the case, what do you think about this? And then I read the passage to her, that horrible offending passage. Many of you have heard my telling of this, but her response to me was one of the most important things for me as I look back. The more I look back the more I realize that was one of the most important divine appointments the Lord ever had for me because my wife responded as a woman, hearing the Word of God addressing womens issues. And her response was incredible. I do not remember it word for word but I do remember the essence of the impact that it made and essentially what she said was something to the vein of, I want you to know that I am very grateful to know that God has cared for me and loved me enough to give me a work to do for Him and I receive it with joy and it is a great pleasure and I do not deserve it. And within a few brief minutes, I went from feeling really sorry for the oppressed women in the world to wishing I was one because she had embraced her call with such a powerful sense of joyful submission to God and I need not explain to you for you might not understand but it was just a few minutes later than that, it was as if the Lord Himself spoke to me and said, That is your wife, and it was just an assignment and I am grateful. I have lived with my wife now for these 27 years almost, and I have lived with a woman who has embraced that call without sorrow or sadness to herself but just as a passion receiving the gift of God. And I have seen that. And I have had much joy over the years, there have been lots of little things that have come out of the freedom that I have had. But in 27 some years, I have yet to preach this series. I have yet to get to this issue. The reason is not that I have a rebellious wife that I am concerned about. The reason is it takes a while to get past cultural confusion to get to the heart and the sweetness of the matter. And you know what? This thing is so sweet, this thing is so precious, it is so dear that it is worth waiting to get to the bottom of it. It is worth receiving in the depths of our hearts what God has. Now, what we need to understand here though is this issue. I am going to introduce a term and speak about it frequently because it is necessary for us to understand how God is working today. And there have been in some respects very little thinking that has gone on in America Christianity about certain issues. But if you just do a little bit of thinking, we could a whole lot of correction in a very short amount of time. But one of the issues that we need to recognize is this, God is dealing in this world through a system of legal authority that He instituted and that legal authority happens to be issues that He relates to as headship issues. We are going to go back there in 1 Corinthians 11 but 1 Corinthians 11, the little section I am talking about begins like this: I would have you to know brethren that the head of every man is Christ and that the head of every woman is the man. Then he goes on and he expounds significant substance of faith and practice stemming from that principle of headship. There are only a few but there are several passages in the New Testament that deal with womens issues in the church as it relates to the husband and wife relationship and the operation of the church, and in those context every single one of them, they all get back to this particular issue, the substance of this point of reference. And here in this passage that we just read, it says that, I will just read part of verse 35, If they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home for it is a shame for women to speak in church. And there is this picture here of that headship structure that God has for His people. And there is to be a superior preference to an order of authority when we gather together. When we gather here together as families, we are to have a respect and a reverence for the authority that exists upon and in every single home that is represented here. We must come together with a substantial reverence and awe, preserving the integrity of that authority and that headship that has been established and ordained by God. And that is the nature of our assembly. We hold back on certain kinds of things because there is a priority of purpose. I have to apologize. I am going to be growing through this and it is more important to have the strong sense of the Spirits nurturing wisdom to us than for me to have a real plain logical conclusion at this point. We will get back to this and recap as the Lord shows us. But right now, let us revel a little bit, let us just revel in the beauty of the Word and the glory of Gods ways and let us drink in some of the depths that are going on. Now, there is a problem that we have and I want you to turn to 1 Peter in order to get this problem focused on. But there is a problem that we have with the nature of how God has set up the church and spiritual issues as it relates to people who are individuals and the present order of things that are temporarily on the earth. Now you need to recognize something here and that is this: the earth represents the realm of the temporary, the realm of the temporal, time and space coming to an end, brevity. And because of that nature of what is going on in this temporal time frame, God has subjected the world to certain kinds of things, to certain kinds of limitations. And all of His subjections, all of His limitations have been to preserve life, to preserve the glory promised. So everything that we find when God says, Woah, I want you to restrict yourself here, be careful. Everything in every area where God has brought forth some kind of limitation and closure, in those areas, we find preserved a greater spiritual interest for the future and the thing that are here today are not going to be true tomorrow. We need to understand this division and I am going to focus on this at least the first layer here this morning, this division between the temporal and the eternal. Although we are not going to go there, I will just quip something from Galatians while we are looking up 1 Peter chapter 3. In Galatians it says that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, there is neither male nor female. What Paul did was he rattled out temporal contextual differences that exist on the earth. And he said there is a time coming that these kinds of distinctions between us are going to vanish and in the kingdom of God, in Heaven, there are neither male nor female. Now you need to capture that. You need to capture that wholly or you will miss the whole teaching that the Lord has for us. When we get to Heaven, there will not be the distinctiveness of maleness and femaleness that we recognize today. And I am talking here from a theological platform where we are dealing with structure and the structure of male and female that exists on the earth will be vanished and will be gone in Heaven. It will not exist. So today in this temporal realm there is a difference. And we need to understand what this difference is and I want to tell you something, if you cannot embrace the difference here, you are going to miss out on what God has for us because of the difference. Because why? These differences have been established and ordered to preserve the greater purpose of God and that is what is at issue, that is what is at risk. The greater purpose of God is what is at risk when we run past the differences and the distinctions that God has temporarily inflicted on the earth for His greater purposes and we can trust that this is as all of Gods gift are good. And I think here is the jewel of the whole thing: once you and I begin to see the goodness of it, it is going to fill us deep in our souls, we are going to cherish and revel in the wonder of this joyful gift and presence that God has given to us when we see it from the right vantage point, when we see it from Gods point of view. I want us to read a few verses here in 1 Peter. Likewise you wives be in subjection to your own husbands that if any obey not the Word they also may without the Word be won by the conversation of the wives. For those of you who are of children and are not real familiar with old King James English, that sounds like a contradiction, That they also without Word they be won by the conversation. How do you have a conversation without words? And there is your understanding of the King James word for conversation. Conversation without words is what? It is your manner of life. It is the very testimony, it is the very manner in which you live out your daily life and you order your steps and here is the great key: I am called to order my steps according to the divine call, according to the divine gift and promise and I am going to set my life in such an order that when somebody looks at me, there are going to have as it were a conversation with my objectives, with my ideals, with my hopes and dreams. They are going to see what I am hoping for. It is going to be visible in my manner of life. So here conversation means, manner of life, not words and here is what he says in the next verse, And while they behold, that is your eyes, eyes hear conversation. Get this? These eyes are going to hear the conversation. When they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Now look at the next verse, Whose adorning, key word here, Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel but, verse 4, Let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit which is in the sight of God a great price. Then he goes on and he illustrates from godly women of old. I am going to stop here though because there is a key word here and that key word happens to do with the issue of great price. And in the Greek there, that word means, extremely expensive, very precious in terms of value, extremely expensive, very costly, very precious in terms of value. I want us to stop at this moment and take note of an issue that exists right before our presence, right before our eyes this morning. Where is the place of value? Where do we as people find our place of value? You can only find your place of value in one of two realms. You can find your place of value in the temporal realm, in that which is temporary or you can find your place of value in the Heavenly realm or that which is the eternal realm, the place where God lives. We can say without a great deal of debate that in Heaven, all things find perfect value and perfect preciousness from the standard of the Lords own opinion, the standard of the Lords own heart. And so when we are looking at this particular issue here of something being very precious, very priceless in the eyes of God, when we are looking at that, we are recognizing that there is a transcendency between two realms and that is this: the temporal realm needs to have a reflection of the eternal realm and that which is valuable before the presence of God. And it is necessary for us to recognize that we are called to focus on the value structure in Heaven instead of the value structure on the earth. In the passage it makes it real simple, it has some real simple terms that are used, it talks about adorning and it says you can adorn yourself with outward adorning. Now when a women adorns herself with outward adorning, she is looking for a value of herself in the context of the area that is temporary or temporal. So she is choosing to find the value, the worth of herself in this temporal zone. And in that area then she will tend to do those things that raises her value and the outward adornment and the beauty of a woman is the key to that sense of value in the world. And you know that that is totally true. What advertisement company does not notice and does not prefer, How can we get the youngest, the prettiest face, to give that sense of achievement, of arrival, of value? It is the way, the nature of the temporal realm. Now there is a contest here isnt there? There is a contest here. I want you to notice that the first level of the contest is not between men and women. That is where we always get messed up. We so quickly get into the trenches battling between men and women that we forget where the first line of distinction is. The first question that is challenging each and every one of us is the question of value. The contest is between the value of that which is earthly and the value of that which is Heavenly, that which has great price in the eyes of the Lord. And here is what I want to say to us this morning: I believe God can help us to have our eyes open to this great price, to this great value. And all I want you to know is this, I do not have this to do for you but if I did, if I had a three-carat diamond that was surrounded by two three-carat rubies and one three-carat emerald, if I had that and then I wanted to show how much I prized you and I gave that to you, you would feel treasured wouldnt you? Because I gave you something of great price. I entrusted you with something that was very high in value. And when I entrusted that to you into your care, into your hand, you know what you would feel? You would feel important in my eyes, you would feel valuable in my eyes and that would cause you to know that I loved you and respected you and you would feel secure in my presence. I am kind of getting carried away here but I am trying to make an illustration, not of me giving away jewelry that I do not have the capacity to give away, but of the picture of value. What we need to understand is it is Gods perspective. He has gone into His safe and He has opened up the secret chambers and He has reached in deep and He has tried to find something very precious and very valuable and in that process of seeking and finding that which is very precious and very valuable, He has come up with that which is of exceptional value and He has said that this meek and quiet spirit is great value when it is graced upon someone who is known as a woman living in the temporal realm. I want to say something, I just want to say something, if you had that ring, when you were in the presence of others, would you like to show them? What young lady just engaged, having the treasure, token, of her husband-to-bes affection and value on her finger, what young woman fails to show another her ring? And is she showing the ring because it is such a beautiful ring? No, it is a token. She has been claimed as valuable, as precious. Someone has given her a token of that value and she is anxious, she is anxious to take that token and let others see just how precious it is. That is what the Lord did to me that first day after I was saved and I read that horrible verse and my wife took it out as a jewel and showed it to me with awe and respect and honor, This is precious, this is so wonderful. This is what God has for me. I am so proud, I am so blessed. What a privilege. We have to learn that Satan is going to constantly diminish the value of Heavenly things by using temporary temporal things to diminish them. He is going to get us to take a shortcut and reach around and get some form of personal satisfaction that gratifies us for a miniscule moment and cause us to miss out on the great treasure. You know what I think about the church today? This is just my opinion so you do not have to write this down, but I think that many many Christians are struggling not because they are wanting to be rebellious in their head or their heart against things, but we have been so stripped of the treasure, of the value of things as God has ordained them that we take the treasure until we are ashamed. We do not want anybody to see it because it has been dubbed negatively. If you have been in a classroom situation where some kid comes with something that is really precious and priceless from home from their dad or mom and some bully who is unloved comes in in his jealousy spits on it and says, That is crud, that is worth nothing. He demeans it and then his presence is so strong, all the sudden many many of the peers begin mocking that which is precious because they do not want to be mocked or whatever the whole temptation. But it is such a classic picture of the way we struggle. And you know what we do? We lose our way because we fail to see the treasure. We fail to see the treasure. You know what? I want to share with you. This is not a difficult thing. It is not hard for us to obey God in what appears to be hard areas if we see the treasure. It is not hard at all. And I want to illustrate that from that one parable of Matthew 13 when the Lord said that the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man who goes out in the field and finds what? A treasure and he buries the treasure and goes and sells everything that he has. That man that sold everything he had, he was living the model Christian life because the model Christian life is, Sell everything you have, follow Me, having absolutely nothing invested in this world, be completely, totally, uprooted, disconnected, disenfranchised from this worlds system. That is it. That is the call of Christ for every one of us. But when you see it through the eye of the One who sees the treasure, it is no big thing. It is like, No problem. I have got a few cheap old rusty buckets. I can cash them in and buy that field and that thing is far worth more than anything I have. See that picture. When I see the treasure, my motivation kicks in. I want to share something about this: every one of us have that motivation, every one. The question is not whether you have the motivation, the question is whether you see the treasure. And if you are kicking against the goad, it is not because you do not have the motivation, it is because you lack seeing the treasure. But you know what? Satan is a big shamer. He goes around with lots of shame. And it is shameful today to embrace these treasures because our culture has made it a shame. When you get your name in the newspaper, the Southern Baptist Convention made a little statement. In my mind it was kind of a watered down version of any kind of guts but it was different from society. And you know what? The press gobbled them up, gobbled them up because they wanted to bring shame and pressure and push away, get you to not see the treasure. The same way with the pearl of great price. The guy finds one pearl and sells everything he has for that one pearl. What I want to share then in this picture of this which is in the sight of God a great price, I want us to understand that God is at work doing primarily one thing. God is at work doing primarily one thing and primarily what is God doing? God is bringing to Himself a people called after His name (tape turned here) ... this is the covenant that I will make with them, saith the Lord, I will be their God, they shall be My people. There is that intimacy, there is that acquaintance. God is everything to me and the whole work of salvation is that He takes people living in this temporal spectrum and He is bringing us to Himself to share in the eternal gifts with God forever. And He is calling us out, He is calling His people to Himself. That is really all that God is doing. That is really all that God is doing. I want to ask a couple questions. Where is God doing it? Where is God calling out a people for Himself? God is calling out a people to Himself on earth. He is calling out a people to Himself in a place of temporary existence. He is calling out a people to Himself in a place that by nature cannot see God, that by nature cannot see the promises in the Kingdom. By nature we are bound by our eyesight and our strength and our appetites always call us to that which is visible, always call us to that which is temporal. And this is God calling us out from among them, Come out from among them, saith the Lord, and I will be unto you a Father and you will by My sons and daughters. God is calling us to Himself but He is calling us out. You know what the Greek word is for church. Well there are actually two Greek words. One is the word for assembly, but the other one is the Greek word ecclesia. Have you ever heard that before? Greek word for the church is ecclesia. That word means to call out. And in the New Testament when God speaks about His people, He is speaking to people that He is calling out. He is calling us out of the world. But in order for you and I to come out of the world, we have to have an eye for the priceless treasure. We have to have a vision for that. So, here is what I want to say, there is obviously a practical part. Salvation involves the initial transfer over out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. That is the initial transfer, salvation. But while we are remaining here on the earth once we are saved, while we are remaining here, there is a continuing process where God is refining us and strengthening our capacity to see the larger treasure and to recognize that there are more areas than one where I need to come out from among them. Here is another area, let us just come out from the world, just come on, let us just go. But brothers and sisters, what I want to share this morning is it is necessary for us to hear the call and it is necessary for us to have refined in our hearts the pricelessness of the treasure. The treasure is so priceless and Satan is constantly shouting on the treasure how ugly it is. I like playing chess but I do not like it when my children beat me. And when they were three and four I could always beat them. My father taught me how to play chess but I thought it was not really wise to teach my children how to play because then they might learn sooner. So I let them kind of figure it out on their own and then while I am playing if they made a false move I would correct them and I said, No the rules are this. I kind of became the rule just so I could win more chess games. I was surprised though. They kept playing and they finally figured out my rules and they kept playing each other and recent years it has not been so fun to play them because it is not nice when somebody like Peter beats you. How embarrassing. I was in a game with, I think it was Peter not too long ago, and he was getting ready to cream me. I could not believe it because I could always beat my dad. If I could beat my dad I should be able to beat my kids shouldnt I? But I was getting creamed by Peter. The only thing I realized was he did not know just how bad he was beating me. It was really in the game and I was about two steps from death. So I started playing this feigned stupidity. He had started to make one move which if he had made the move it would have put me into check. I said, Ah, oh man, whew, and I said it before he took his hand off the piece because the rule is if you take your hand off you cannot move it back. So while he still had his hand on the piece, I started, Oh man I am so glad you were moving that piece, take your hands off, hurry. He got all suspicious. I just kept beating this thing, That is a great move, great move, and I got so excited that finally he backed away and did something else and I got out and I beat him. But while I was doing that deception, I began to think about, Um, sounds like someone we are not unfamiliar with in our lives and that someone being the Devil. That which is highly treasured in Gods eyes is despised by Satan and Satan takes the greatest treasures and he camps the tallest camp and he has a big sign outside and it says, Dung, dunghill. Please hold noses, stay away for three miles. And Satan has a technique of scaring us away from the very treasures, from the very treasures of life that He has for us because he calls out those tactics, devaluing that which is actually of great price in Gods eyes. You know, the reverse happens. Remember Paul, what he said in Philippians, The things I used to count as dear to myself, he said, it is like dung, like dung. They just have no value. And you and I know what dung is. Dung is not something you really want to hoard and stick it under your bed. It is not really the greatest treasure on earth. As we are thinking about this particular point of understanding from 1 Peter, I just want to encourage you. Do you know that there is another passage that is similar to this? Proverbs 31, The virtuous woman, who can find? Her price is far above rubies. Great value, great treasure. The price is far above rubies. I want to explain something here as it relates to Heaven and to the earth. Heaven is the place of completeness and earth is the place of temporariness. And so on earth there are temporary assignments so that Gods work toward the complete objective can be accomplished. Can you receive that this morning? That on earth today there are temporary assignments given to everyone, all of which will be lifted and finished when the permanent, when the complete is finished in Heaven. We are called to temporary assignments. So we have to ask some questions. Who has given us those assignments? Who has given us those temporary assignments? Is it man in his own intellectual wisdom? Or is it God? Here is the great achilles tendon of speaking about womens issues today in our culture and the great achilles tendon is this: no one remembers the source. No one remembers the source. If you listen carefully to the world, you will hear that it is men smoking stodgy old cigars back in some smoke filled room who have banded together to keep the women oppressed, to keep them from finding fulfillment in life. It is we who created this terrible inequitable. And there lies the back off technique. That what backed me off when I was a high school senior. I do not want to be a part of that, no not me. I do not want to get into this back room and deprive anybody of rights. But God was not in the back room, He was in Heaven. He was in the main room. He was in the room of rooms and He decreed and He said and He set forth and He has a temporal plan which has a permanent reaping, a permanent reaping. And that temporal plan must be carried out in obedience to God. And the first great secret for us in the womens issue is to realize that our treasure is here. When I see that God has called me, I have been called, I have been chosen, He has set me apart, I forget what passage it is but there is a passage in one of the prophets that the prophet speaks of himself and he talks about being called, separated from his mothers womb. Paul talks about that too, separated from his mothers womb for the work. I remember when Peter was born I was reading that passage and it just reminded me of my dear wife because that was her sense of call, to bring the little ones to God, to abandon herself to the call. She had nothing in it for herself. And that was the call and it was such a treasure. But when we see ourselves in terms of the call and we embrace it and we receive it, then we actually move ourselves to the place where God is, where God is at work and where God is going to do that work with a genuine, eternal reaping, a genuine spiritual harvest. It is going to happen. It is absolutely going to happen. So here I am, I am on the earth and I can only look at myself on the earth in two dimensions. I can look at myself according to my peers and my fellow man and I can look across and I can see myself among them and I can measure myself by that and if I do that I am not wise, 2 Corinthians chapter 10. You do not compare yourselves among yourselves, that is not wise. I am not my own. I am bought with a price. I have blood money on my head. I am to live to the glory of God in all that do, whether eating or drinking, do all to the glory of God. I have got a different mandate, I have got a different challenge, a different call. I am here to glorify God and if I am here to glorify God I am here to glorify God as He sees fit and I have confidence, I have confidence that He loves me and that He will bring Himself to me and I will know that perfect love completely and permanently when I get to where the Lord is. God is not a God who answers why questions very often. I ask you to go through your Scriptures and see how many times people ask God why? to get an answer. Course the biggest occasion of not answering a why question is Job, isnt it? He spends some forty some chapters asking why? and in the end God comes on the scene and what does God say? Who is this, who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without wisdom? Hearken unto Me and I will ask you, where were you when I formed the foundations of the earth? Consider if thou hast knowledge. Then He goes on and He goes on and He goes on. God is not a God who spends much time answering our why questions. Why questions are usually most frequently questions of rebellion. They are questions of dissatisfaction, they are questions that say, Until I understand I refuse to obey, until I see that it is a just God, I refuse to obey. And when I see it is just, well then I will cooperate. Course then we make ourselves God do we not? Because God has to bow down to us and do everything according to our understanding, as soon as we give an approval then bingo God has permission to go on and do what God normally does. So except for us, God is in control. But in Malachi chapter 2, the Lord addresses marriage does He not? You have to understand the book of Malachi. The book of Malachi is an interesting book because it is the last book of the Old Testament and it is the beginning of the judgment against the Jews once again. The patterns that you see in Malachi are the patterns that develop all through the years of that dark spell before Christ comes. And when Christ comes on the scene, the failures and the sins of the Jews addressed by the prophet Malachi, they are in full ripe harvest and bloom. And he just goes through a number of issues that are wrong with the children of God. And one of the issues was divorce, breaking covenant with the wife of our youth. And in that discussion in Malachi 2 he asks an interesting question about the oneness, Why did God make them one? But why one? And he answered the question. I first did the study in the NIV which I am more familiar with, some of the King James language is a little more archaic but in conduit it is just as valid or more, but why one? And it says, Because He was seeking a godly offspring, the King James says, a godly seed. Godly offspring. And I thought, Why did God make husband and wife one? And I want us to understand something here, fundamentally from the temporal place, God has created the institution of marriage, He has created it in a covenant fashion, a blood covenant fashion. And this blood covenant of marriage has an eternal design and God has something He wants to reap. God is like an investor and we are like the bank. He has invested in us and He has made us male and female. And He has told us to bring our little ones to Him. It is the covenant duty of every parent to bring their children to God. I do not know if you have ever thought of this abstractly but every person that has ever entered the world has had a parent. And with the exceptions where through an act of God the parents are destroyed before the child is able to be nurtured by those parents, except for those occasions parents are raising their own offspring and they can, they could, they should. And the number one responsibility as parents is to raise children up to be servants of God. And if parents had obeyed that call from the foundations of the world, we would not have the need that we have. So I want to say something on the big picture. This is not a small matter. God instituted marriage to bring spiritual children into Heaven. That is Gods purpose of institution. Men are being lost in incredible hoards, in incredible hoards because parents are not doing their job. That is a model, that is a picture. That tells you that we have lost a treasure, we have lost the sense of gifting and of focus. In the very beginning, did we have human government? No. Did we have organized religion? No. What did we have? We had a priesthood of the father, the patriarchal priesthood in every home. That is what you had. Look it up in the Old Testament, patriarchal priesthood, families serving God, raising godly offspring. That is the order. That is the design. That is the creations purpose. So here you and I are today in modern America and it is time for us to wake up and rethink some things and take a look at what God is about. But God is calling a people to Himself and the institution of the family is the uppermost priority and it is the uppermost place of authority. The head of a household is premier in authority over that household. And the head of the household is premier in spiritual nurture and oversight. And by Gods order, by Gods design, the setup of that household, husband and wife, male and female, that setup is there in completion of the greater design and purpose that God had for humankind. It is necessary for us to honor the marriage principle as ordained by God so that we might reap of spiritual harvest in the lives of our own children. It is absolutely necessary to do this. We cannot, we cannot reap a spiritual harvest and institute your own cocky understanding of what marriage should be. We have to be submissive and receive the treasure where it is. It is interesting to me that the issues that Paul talks about in the various passages as he addresses these issues, the singlemost significant issue that he addresses is the maintenance of the headship issue, the maintenance of the headship issue. The headship of the husband over the wife in the church, in the family, in society, that is the preeminent concern that Paul maintains. I want to say on the outset, here is an interesting point of reference, in order for a treasure to be mined and harvested and brought to bear in someones safekeeping, in order for that to occur, we have to recognize where that treasure is and we have to prefer it above every other thing. We have to prefer it above every other thing. And here is what we have today in the church: we have so many churches that are established for their own existence, they are temporal churches, they are temporary churches, they are there as social clubs as it were and they are there to meet emotional needs of people coming through, but they prefer themselves and whenever there is conflict, that which prefers overrules. What we find is the family has been hostage to the churchs own lack of vision. How many times does the church establish and ordain ruling issues without any consideration to the headship of the home? How many times is this relationship in the home bypassed for the sake of the church? A couple illustrations, two common ones today: women running the church, being involved in all kinds of ministry and leadership in the church, that is one example. I forgot my other example. It was about men. I will remember it in a minute. The whole issue though is we prefer our own opinions and we prefer the approval of men. We are anxious, we are excited, we are encouraged, but somehow we can have what God wants for us but we can kind of do it a little different way because we know better now. And we just have this sense of knowing and preference of our own understanding and we devalue what God has as a value. And it is time, it is time that we learn to discover the treasure and dig deep and find them. I want to say a few things about this great price, this great value of the woman. The first thing that I want to tell you is this: it is not so tangible that you can draw it out in a factual kind of fashion. In other words, we men, we tend to be fact oriented; if I am going to mind something I am going to have a mining plan, I am going to have a logic plan, we are going to go from point A to point Z and when I get to point Z I am going to have the gem. And we press and pursue according to our own logic. But there is something different in this process that God has for us and that is this: God has set as it were a lack of cognitive understanding that is readily available so that in order for us to mine and reap we have to pay attention, we have to do some things, we have to dig a little deeper. Peter here, if you look back at the Peter passage, we are not going through it in an organized fashion at this point, but I would like to skip down to verse 7, Likewise ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as the weaker vessel. It is interesting, interesting sequence of words. Likewise ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel. And that is an interesting picture because notice the word honor is there. What do you honor? You honor things of high value. You honor things that are esteemed. And God is calling us men to learn how to honor things that are esteemed in His eyes. There is something of a very great price in the eyes of God in the meek and quiet spirit of our wives. And God wants us to honor our wives in like fashion. It is interesting the headship passage is pretty clear in terms of the structure. Men are under the headship of Christ. There is this direct obligation, this direct obedience, this direct subjection to Christ Himself. That is our duty, that is our obligation. And when God calls to us, we have a necessity to embrace that call to us with a quick step type of obedience. And God said dwell with your wife according to understanding. That is an interesting statement isnt it? It does not have any form. It is not just a little form that you can say, Yeah, understanding, let me find my understanding. Oh yeah here it is, I have got my understanding now let us go. Understanding is by implication a process, a process of uncovering, searching, discovery, resolving and seeking. Many many men feel like their wives are not worthy of honor. And you know what those men have a problem with? They have a problem with understanding. That is what they have a problem with. When you understand someones price, you honor it. It is just natural. It is a natural instinct of the created spirit to honor that which has value. Satans lie has been to destroy what has value, to call down away from the value. So you and I have to embrace study and searching of the Scripture to dig out and find the understanding so that we have Gods view, so we can see from Gods way. In that context then, there is also a picture here at the end of the verse, as unto the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life, as being heirs together of the grace of life. There are distinctive, the weaker vessel, and heirs together. There is by that a factual statement to us men that there is a kind of weakness in our wives that is not present in us men. You could say because of that fact that there is a kind of weakness present in our wives that is not present in us men by the Creators design. You could say from that that there are certain exchanges in the marital relationship that are such that the wife will not be held accountable for it and the husband will be held accountable for it. There is a greater accountability to the man than there is to the wife. I have often said all you need for a godly Christian marriage is a man who will be like Christ and love his wife like Christ loved the church. And all you need is one dirty wife who needs washing. Is that not the model? Who are we without Christ? Filthy, unapproachable, needing redemption, no power over ourselves, but God who loved us, He brought forth redemption, the blood of Christ covered our sins in that laying down of His life. And that is the call for us men. We do not need perfect wives in order to be perfect husbands. It is probably harder to be a perfect wife if you do not have a perfect husband because there is a need the wife has in terms of that distribution. No there is not an excuse. You might say I have given the women a lot of advantage and a lot of excuse this morning saying they have a preference. No I am not. I am saying there is a weakness that they have that we do not have. And if God says there is a weakness, He does not hold us accountable of something that He has placed in there as a weakness. And with that weakness there are two things: the weakness beckons us on, men have you ever felt entangled with your wife? In that tension, there is where that weakness is showing up. And there is where the call is to you to walk in knowledge, walk in understanding so that you can find a place of honor and give honor, give honor to your wife as a weaker vessel, as a weaker vessel and as joint heirs of the kingdom of God. Here is something that is quite interesting and this is important for men to understand: it is this issue that men having not understood in generations gone by, have earned for themselves some of the credit for this despising of these treasures that the world now so completely and so thoroughly despises. But it is mens failure to walk according to this picture. But here in the Scripture we find that men are to dwell with their wives as the weaker vessel and as heirs together of the grace of life, heirs together of the grace of life. Here is what is taking place: when you and I get to Heaven, when husbands and wives get to Heaven, there will no longer be this difference, this delineation of authority, of power. It will no longer be there. And now we will simply be heirs, equal heirs, heirs as children, heirs of Jesus Christ. And so motivationally men that is to keep us in check. Our wives have it coming to them also. We are not so special. We are not so different. And here is probably the little weak link in this discussion point, the weak link is this: men who have authority tend to think of themselves as better because they have authority. That is a weakness of authority. People who are in authority tend to feel like they are better, they are superior and they have a greater value. And it is just the opposite in the kingdom. God looks at the nature of the woman and He says, There is a great price in that character and that call that I have given this woman and I want men to honor it, I want men to learn how to honor that value and I want men to recognize that that woman has the same inheritance that he has and he better serve her with that understanding in mind because I am a God who will judge righteously altogether. That modifies, that moderates the natural tension that we have on earth because we are working at a spiritual agenda. With this in mind then, the question that we have to ask is, How do we set ourselves forth upon this course learning how to walk things out accordingly? And I think the answer is pretty simple and we are going to get some time in the future here Lord willing to look at some more detailed, specific passages. But the course is this and that is submission, submission to the call of God, recognizing the deep value, the greatness of the treasure and giving ourselves wholeheartedly over to that purpose and to that call and recognize that the greatest issue on the line is my final reaping, is my final inheritance. When I stand before the King, that is the great issue at risk. So then I learn today to begin to conform myself into that process, into that usable place and I submit myself wholly to it. The call of both the men and the women is the same, we are to serve God and not ourselves. But we are called in different roles and therefore in that context we have to learn not to compare ourselves with ourselves and not to wish that we had the same roles. I had a little illustration that I wanted to use at the closing here. I am not real good with illustrations that I make up but if you could imagine for a moment that you are on an assignment and you are two brothers. And just for the sake of the discussion why dont we call the brothers twin brothers? So they are just about equal in every way you can imagine from the human spectrum. But as the father calls these two sons toward a particular task, he says of son A, Son A, I want you to be the lead man. I am going to give you the primary directions and you are the one that is over your brother. And Son B, your brother is over you but you have a job then of overseeing all that work that he is doing through the areas that he assigns you. And when you both get back, you both are going to be given crown prince cities equal to each other, no difference between you. So they set off on this course but the reason I painted the picture that way is this understanding, there is this similarity, this likeness, this similitude, they are equal sons and they have an equal inheritance. There is no difference before Gods heart and eyes in them. But he has a job to do. He has an assignment to send them on. And in order to work the assignment to get the job done, he creates an order structure and he has one in a position of authority over another and he tells them, Walk in this way, accomplish the objectives and you will get your reward. And in that consideration, the brothers are expected to go off and serve because they both have the same hope, the same anticipation and the same reward. And this endeavor that they are in is just a temporary one time ordeal. They arrange themselves temporarily to get the objective of the father accomplished. And that is really the nature of our lives on this earth. We are equal. There is no difference between us but we are on assignment from the Father. And He said to the husband, I want you to be this, and He said to the wife, I want you to be this, and I want you to work together in this fashion and I want you to reach that objective. I want you to bring those little children, I want you to bring them to me as my own, have a heritage right in your own family. That is what I want. I want that heritage reaped out of your life. So together the husband and wife set aside their own ambitions, set aside their own pursuits, set aside their own interests and they say, Yes Lord, this is what You have called me to, I am going to bring these little ones to You, that is my goal. And we are going to do it according to the manner in which You established. And we embrace it together, co-equal heirs, happy to serve. Not jostling because we wish we could be the other persons role, but rejoicing that we have a clear call and a clear means of obedience. And I am going to set myself to it because that is Gods call. I get my vision right and I get to see a little more clearly. And I think this is the whole issue of the nature of the church. And I want to say as kind of an oversight the number one issue that is violated in the church is the headship issue. That is the number one issue that is violated. Why is it so? Because that is the chief place of victory. You violate the headship issue, you get authority out of line and you already are defeated. You are already off on a tangent. But this issue gets resolved, you have everything else to go for underneath, it is a blow. You think Satan is going to worry himself with peripheral meaningless things? No, he is going to go after this one juggler, Let us get the order of the home twisted, let us get it out of place, let us get it in contest, let us get the husbands lording it over their wives as some egalitarian king, mindlessly serving their own interests. Let us get the wives in rebellion, refusing the unreasonable requests of the husband, showing up of greater strength. That is all Satan has to do, he just bumps that up. Think about the great stress we have in the church, safely getting our children into walking in faith, a living, glowing, victorious faith. Think of what great trouble we have. That world out there is such a tremendous pull and tension on our family today at this time and that is largely because of the upheaval of authority. Now, I want to give you an homework assignment because I have to stop talking. I would like you to be challenged, maybe you dads might do this, I would like you to read through the book of Numbers and I would like you to just observe the record of the children of Israel and this issue of subordination to authority. It is the most incredible story I have ever read, absolutely incredible story because the one thing that was contested again and again and again was the authority of Moses. That is the one thing that was contested continuously, almost to the end of his life. Some of the examples of that, his own sister Miriam, grumbled with Aaron, complained against a personal weakness, He married that woman. So many examples, hardship, the children of Israel come to a place where they do not have any water and they start grumbling against Moses, Why did you bring us out here in the wilderness? Did you notice that question, Why did you bring us out here in the wilderness? Moses had no power to bring them out in the wilderness. It was God who took them out by a mighty hand and He brought them out of the greatest nation on the face of the earth and He enriched them by this people. They took their goods with them. They crossed the Red Sea and an incredible miraculous display of protection and power and the whole Egyptian army is destroyed not fighting one man. And the children of Israel say to Moses, Why did you bring us out here in the wilderness to die? It is all your fault. And the whole key with reaping the spiritual treasures of God has to do with this fundamental issue: who is head? Who is head? And when the children of Israel looked at Moses, what did they do? They grumbled. You know what Moses said to them time and again? You are not rebelling against me, you are rebelling against God. It is God who brought you here, it is God who brought you out. But the issue of who was head is the key. The head of Christ is God the Father. Yes, is it not so? We will see that. And the head of the man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man. And where do you think the children come in? Underneath, below. And our headship in the exact experience, the temporal experience, our headship is only partially visible but the wholeness of our headship reaches all the way back up to the very throne of God. And what is taking place is this one critical issue. When I step into the arena of spiritual things and in 1 Corinthians 14 we are talking about the assembly, stepping into the arena where the believers in the church gather together to minister by the Spirit of God with the gifts of God, serving one another, I step into that spiritual arena and I had better had one objective in my heart if I am going to glorify God and that is to honor Him in all things and to preserve His rule, His structure of rule in this very assembly. And there is no excuse and there is no place ever for us to gather together under the so called name of Jesus Christ and step out from the order, the temporal order that God has placed us under on the earth as men and women in homes, in marriage with a spiritual fruit in focus. There is no excuse and there is no place for it ever. I must honor God in all things. And what you and I do not understand is this: we are so accustomed to our own preferences, we are so accustomed to our own preferences and we do not like something, then we just say it, Forget it, I do not agree with it. You do not even know what you are talking about. I want to say something to you parents. Are you having trouble with your children respecting your authority, responding to your wishes, obeying you with a will, having a vision for obedience because they see God behind you as the reason for obedience? Do you have any problems with that in your home? Well I will tell you, if you as a couple are not demonstrating visibly, if your conversation does not reflect the proper structure of authority between you and your spouse, you are giving your children the model of rebellion. You are giving your children the model of rebellion. Do you obey God when you agree with His opinion? Or do you obey God because He is God? How precious it is, I have come across saints over the years and how precious it is to come across a new believer and you see them doing something and you say, What are you doing? And they look you in the eyes with this innocence and they say, Well I was reading in my Scripture and the Word of God said I should do this. And I said, Then I will do it. God wants me to do it. And sometimes it is something that they are doing without full understanding. But how precious and how sweet is that spirit of submission when they say, The Lord has called me to this and I am going to do it for the Lords sake. The tenderness of souls springs from a readiness of obedience. You know something about the Gospel? The Gospel is obedience. When you receive Christ as your Savior, it is not some human choice you are taking, you are submitting yourself and surrendering yourself to the order of redemption commanded by God. God has commanded all men everywhere to repent. Have you obeyed God? How many children are missing salvation because they have never yet encountered the reality of what it means to obey. God has given me this parent and I am called to obey and I am going to obey with a vision, with desire. That child will hear the words say, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and that child is going to say, Lord I come. There is going to be instant obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. It is going to happen. The Gospel is submission to the authority of God. And we who are Gods people, if we cannot establish that authority and live it out in our own home.(tape changed here)...often the Bible says, Trust and obey. I have a little testimony. I shared with one of the dads on Wednesday how many times I today can look back and I find little places where God in His mercy granted me obedience. It does not really matter why, I look back and I do not really think it was really perceptive obedience but I just by the grace of God obeyed and now I am looking back and I am reaping things I could never recover. I could never recover the things I am reaping today out of obedience that I had when I was younger. And I am trembling, I did not recognize the value back then. What if I had not? Because these things are very dear to me now. Then there is the other side of the coin that is also true and that is how many places that I did not obey because I did not understand or did not make sense and today I look back and I say, I am not reaping and I could be reaping today in some areas but I am not because of failing to obey. I want to guarantee you one thing, you can reap by obedience things that you have never sown but God has sown for you. But if you have to reap only based on your own sowing and your own understanding, you will reap very little because you will waste a great deal of time measuring and arguing. And how sad it is, how sad it is that there are people that live their entire life in shallowness never perceiving at all the depths of the riches of Christ in His call to us. I fear that today, the country that we live in is filled with shallowness. The way I see it, it is like this: if the generation before us had all of these vestiges of nobility and our generation got rid of them all, we are so smart, we know so much, and now God is opening our eyes and we are beginning to see the treasure. In His mercy, God is letting us redeem and bring back restoration and obedience to some of those things. But men, this is a call to you and I, we are called to dwell with our wives according to knowledge. That means we have some homework to do. We have got to get down and get to the base of your sins, to resolve issues so that we can lead in holiness and gain that treasure out that our wife has for us and for our families. This is just the introduction. I would like to close in prayer. David, did you have a comment? (I just had a comment, Dad was talking about, I think it is interesting to see how much our society and our culture has despised motherhood and childbearing and raising a family and looked down on as something that is a waste of a womans life, a career is much more important; to go and pursue being a doctor or a politician or having a career of some sort. My dads one sister is a brain surgeon. His other sister is a full time nurse and the other sister has spent her whole life pursuing vanity and prestige in Hollywood in the entertainment community. But just to see how our society has put that down. But recently a couple weeks ago I read some interesting figures in the Washington Times, this was data that was released by the U.S. Census Bureau and it said that the average number of children being born per white woman in this country today is 1.8 children per woman, which means that the white population in this country is actually shrinking. It is shrinking because of the high number of white women that have gone in the work force or have looked down on childbearing. The U.S. Census bureau says that in 50 years that whites will be a minority. I just thought that was interesting. But why is that? It is because a lot of it goes back to the fathers not being properly the authority in the family but it is a result of the pursuit of pleasure in this world and looking on being a mother and a wife as something that is less than important, it is more important to pursue a career. And the way I was seeing that recently was that it is so important, if you think about it, if all the women in the world just at one time decided not to have any children, it was too much of a burden or pain, then the human race would cease to exist in 75 years. It would just disappear. How important, just how important motherhood is! It is the most important occupation anybody can ever have. It is more important than being an astronaut or a scientist or a doctor or the president of the United States. I really thought that was interesting, I just wanted to add that comment.) Thanks David. David reminds me a lot of my father. I have heard that lecture from my dad so many times around the kitchen table. Actually the siting of the figures and the birth rates, and it is interesting how the heritage can be passed on without, I do not think I have ever given that lecture at our house persay. Thank you. I want to pray and turn a corner here, but if you did not catch anything else that I said, the thing that really stands out is the importance of honoring the position that God has put you in, respect for your calling and obedience to your calling. That is the key. And you will find as we go through these women passages that that is the first and foremost issue, are we going to retain the structure that God ordained for health and for life and for blessing? Are we going to retain that or not? And you get that out of kilter and you are going to have a whole different ball game. You keep that in kilter and other of these things that need to be addressed, fall gently and graciously into perspective and they take on fresh simple meaning and a graciousness, a practice that is life giving and enjoyable. As I started I mentioned the hat thing of my youth. And all I can say is this: hats were one of the old vestiges of old principles and practices of our people cultured by the Gospel and they are lost. But the understanding of the preciousness of Gods order and His purpose, that was lost long before the hats fell off and you cannot restore the situation by putting the hats back on. You have got to get the foundation laid and the Lord will restore hats in His due time, in the appropriate manner. We will talk about that more later but that is just the point of balance and reference. There is a restoration to be done here, a foundation needs to be relaid. I am excited. I want to understand how to live with my wife. And this is exciting. It is a real joy. Let us pray. Lord we pause and give You glory and we proclaim Your greatness and Your goodness and we yield to You LorQd because in Your love and Your kindness and in Your distinct divine purpose You have made us who You chose us to be and You have gifted us and called us to obedience of that call so we might be a people, we might serve You with gladness. Lord I pray that You will help us get this first foundation, this first fundamental laid down with great care and with great force so that we might have the capacity to understand and discern the little details of practice and form that stem from this great principle with a joyful obedience and desire to please You. And Lord, that together we here this morning especially we who are parents, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, Lord that we might give ourselves to this call of calls, this eternal venture, raising up a godly offspring in Christ Jesus. We pray in His name, amen. 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