This morning’s sermon is the second part of a two-part series. Last week we
looked at training your sons to become husbands. If you weren’t here you
would do well to get a copy. This week we’ll look at the companion topic of
training your daughters to become wives. As a rule, girls will grow up to be
wives. As I said last week, sometimes God breaks this rule, but it remains
the rule. My concern today is seeing that your daughters are prepared not
just to be wives and mothers but to be Godly wives and mothers who fulfill
their callings faithfully. These two sermons are simply starting points.
There is much more to be considered, but I hope that they provide something
for you to ponder and apply in your own families.
Our text has a list of things to consider when it comes to the calling of a
Christian wife and mother. I am only going to look at one: ‘homemaker’. What
is this? Let’s first be clear what it isn’t. It isn’t a euphemism for
household slave. This isn’t the person whose sole purpose in life is to
cook, clean and pick up after everyone else in the family. But neither is it
her calling to be the family efficiency expert, whose goal is making sure
that everything in the house is running at peak effectiveness. And while
this isn’t so prominent today as it once was, it isn’t the goal of the
homemaker to maintain house and family so that they become the envy of
others.
So, what is this calling ‘homemaker’? How shall we understand this part of
our text? We find the answer to that, as with everything else, in the Bible.
Let’s start by understanding some things the Bible says about the family.
Consider this from Ephesians: ‘For this reason I bow my knees before the
Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named…’ [Ephesians
3:14-15] Every family is named after the Father and thus is to be a
reflection of God’s family. His is the original and the rest are to be
copies. Then, there’s this also from Ephesians. ‘So then you are no longer
strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and
members of the household of God…’ [Ephesians 2:19] The saints, together, are
God’s household, God’s family. And looking at God’s family will provide a
model for us to follow in our separate families.
Where do we see this family of God best? In the Garden of Eden before sin
entered the world. There we see the family of God in its pristine glory. We
see Adam and Eve being the children of God, His original family. If you were
there, what would you see? You would see Adam and Eve at work, but it would
be very different from what we see now. What is work without the sweat of
your brow, without any frustration or time pressures or even the burden of
needing to earn enough to pay the bills? It’s called creativity. In this our
first parents were imitating their Creator who made them in His image. The
original family of God was a place of creativity. It was also a place of
beauty. There was no building for shelter for Adam and Eve. What would you
need that for there? Their ‘house’ was the Garden. Listen to how God
describes it. ‘And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every
tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.’ [Genesis 2:9]
‘…pleasant to the sight…’ The Garden was a beautiful home for Adam and Eve.
Another characteristic of that first home was a sense of orderliness.
Orderliness is more than just the opposite of clutter. Orderliness includes
a sense of rhythm to life, not chaos or confusion or rushing about. This
rhythm comes out of a clear understanding of who is responsible for what and
a fluid meshing of these responsibilities. The respective responsibilities
placed on Adam and Eve were clear. There were no surprises, no conflicts
when it came to fulfilling those responsibilities. I won’t go into in detail
now, but this was built into creation as witnessed by the role for the sun,
moon and stars ‘for signs and seasons, and for days and years’. The heavenly
bodies established a rhythm to life which is based on God's sense of time.
That’s included in what I am calling orderliness. If you think about it,
cluttered houses and cluttered lives reflect a lack of rhythm, of pace which
is tied into 'orderliness'. Then, finally, in this home, relationships
flourished. Adam was obviously in love with his wife. Just read his joyous
song at her creation. They were one flesh, that is, one in thinking and
purpose, reflected in the intimacy of body and soul. And Moses tells us that
they were both naked and not ashamed. They had nothing to hide; no secrets.
Here was a place were relationships flourished.
Now, that is God’s family back in the Garden. And it will be God’s family
again when heaven and earth are once again united. After all, that is what
Jesus came to do. His work was not that God would start all over again from
scratch. Jesus came to redeem this creation. He came to fix what was broken
by sin. And when He returns, the final touches of His repair will be
completed. Then, we will once again live as a family in a place of
creativity, beauty, orderliness, and flourishing relationships. There is
more, of course, but this will do for now.
Now, all of that will explain what it means to be a ‘homemaker’. God’s
calling to every homemaker is to make her home an outpost of this larger
reality. Each family is to be a return to the Garden, or to put it another
way, a taste of heaven where God’s family will live forever. Paradise
Restored. That is what a Christian family is to be, a taste of heaven after
everything is completely fixed. And so, in each family there are to be the
qualities of creativity, beauty, orderliness, and flourishing relationships.
These qualities will show themselves in the life of the family in different
ways. Dinner is a creative delight enjoyed by all. The house is decorated so
that it is ‘pleasant to the sight’. The lives of the members of the family
fit together in a harmonious rhythm. And relationships flourish. Bonds of
love that will last an eternity are created and enjoyed in the family.
It would be great to stop here and send you home to enjoy what I’ve just
described. But I can’t do that. If this is to be helpful, I need to mention
one other thing. I need to mention sin. Sin spoils everything – at least for
now. And so, sometimes dinner comes out of a box. The house is anything but
pleasant to the sight. Instead of a peaceful rhythm to life, schedules
conflict and everything feels as if it's in disarray. And there are those
times when relationships are not even close to flourishing. Sin spoils
everything.
And yet, Jesus has come, hasn’t He? He has brought the Gospel to bear. He is
in the process of fixing everything. And so there is hope. Your homes are to
be outposts of heaven. But not merely because you have been commanded to do
this. Rather, it is because you have been changed. You are alive to God now,
and the Spirit has been sent by Jesus to change the world through you. So,
the calling of every Christian homemaker is to establish a little bit of
heaven in this fallen world. It won’t be easy. We need to work hard to
regain something of what Adam and Eve lost. But we should be optimistic. By
the Spirit of Jesus, redemption will make progress.
Let me ask a question here to drive home what I am saying. And the question
is simple. What’s at stake in all of this? My answer is also simple. Your
grandchildren are at stake. Remember that life is not static. Everything is
moving in one direction or the other. If a family is not in the process of
becoming a little bit of heaven then it is in the process of becoming a
little bit of hell. Think about some of the unbelievers that you know. If
you were to go back into their past just a couple of generations you would
probably find that many of them had good church-going grandparents and great
grandparents, some of whom were Christians. But look at what happened just a
few generations later. Your grandchildren are at stake in all of this talk
about being a homemaker. Just think down the pike a couple of generations.
More importantly, our witness to the Gospel is at stake. Think about it.
When someone tries to get you to buy something your question is some
variation of, ‘Are his claims true? Will this really work all that well for
me?’ So, if Consumer Reports tells you that the car he was trying to sell
you is a lemon, you refuse to believe that salesman and go elsewhere. People
hear about the glories of the Gospel, how being a Christian is so great.
Their very reasonable question is, ‘Are his claims true? Will it really work
all that well for me?’ If they look at Christian families and don’t see any
real difference, if Christian families look like their own, then why should
they believe the claims? People need to see the Gospel and one key place is
our families. If our families really are a taste of heaven then they will
validate the Gospel before the watching world. But if our families fail at
this, why should they listen to our claims?
Now, to the key issue of this sermon: are your daughters being trained to
become wives and mothers like this? Are they being trained to become Godly
homemakers? Will they be able to make their homes taste of heaven? If that
is going to happen they will need two things. First, they will need
instruction. None of the qualities that I mentioned can be known
intuitively. They need to be taught. The other thing that they will need are
models. They need to be able to watch their mothers in action, making the
home taste like heaven. Here, let me offer some very practical advice to you
mothers of daughters. In our text Paul instructs the older women to teach
the younger women about these things. If you are feeling a bit overwhelmed
by all of this maybe there is another woman in the church who can help you.
Maybe getting to the WIC group needs to become a greater priority for you
and your teenaged daughters than it has been.
I will close with two final thoughts. The first is simply to remind you
husbands that you are responsible for everything that happens in your
families. If your wife is struggling with the things I have been speaking
about you need to see to it that she gets some help. Remember what’s at
stake. And remember that God holds you accountable. The second thought is
this. Hearing God’s expectations clearly will always result in feeling
overwhelmed. Always. You need to choose how you will respond to that feeling
of being overwhelmed. You can decide that you are supposed to deal with this
overwhelming situation on your own and either wear yourself out trying to
get it right or, conversely, quit now without even trying, assured that you’
d fail anyway. Or you can choose to respond as a Christian. You can receive
this teaching and the feeling of being overwhelmed that it brings, as a
reminder that you need the grace of the Gospel if you are going to live
faithfully. Come to the Father through the Son. Admit your weakness and,
yes, your sin in this matter. Ask for the grace that you most certainly need
if you are going to make any progress in this. Ask and then be surprised at
what Christ will bring about.
