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The home is the most important institution in the world. It is more important than government and the nation for a nation is but the sum of its families. No nation can be strong whose families are disintegrating. There is a sense in which the home is more important than the local congregation of the church. If the home fails there will be no one to fill the assemblies. The children will be lost to the world. Give us a generation of home failure and the church will vanish.
Mankind needs more than instruction in what to do. They need an example to follow. Knowing this, God has provided a model for the ideal home. That model is the first family in Eden. There we see God's blueprint for all homes in succeeding ages.
There was a man and a woman (Gen. 1:28). Heterosexual marriages is the basis for a proper home. God has always declared homosexual relationships to be sinful abominations (Lev. 18:22; Rom. 1:27, 32).
Only one mate was provided. God gave Adam, Eve, and Eve, Adam. He could not trade her in for a new one after a while. Disagreements had to be worked out. The only option was to live alone. Polygamy or polyandry were not even contemplated. Jesus reaffirmed that ancient code in (Matt. 19:5). "For this cause shall a mancleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This provides a strong reason for young people to wait a few years beyond high school for marriage. Teenagers are not usually sufficiently mature to make a life-long decision. Eight of ten teenage marriages fail where only 20% of those contracted at 24 will not survive.
Each married couple were to form a separate home unit apart from their parents. God taught Adam this premise: "A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife" (Gen. 2:24). No person is ready for marriage until they are prepared to "leave and cleave." Too many young people rush into marriage unprepared financially and emotionally to establish their own home. They tend to think that mom and dad will take care of that. Tragedy often follows in the wake of such a decision.. It is difficult enough to break the parental ties even in your own separate home--- and all the more complicated when under the same roof.
The man and his wife were literally "one flesh" for she was made of his rib (Gen. 2:21-23). Jesus taught that in marriage each couple is to become one flesh. Of course he speaks in a spiritual sense. Through their love they grow to be one in life. Paul writes "Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself for no man ever hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it" (Eph. 5:28-29).
In the adjustments of marriage each partner learns to give up things that provoke his mate and accept things that please the other. After a while there is a beautiful oneness visible to all. Without true love this is impossible.
Adam and Eve's home had God at its heart and center. God had made home (Gen. 1:27). He had blest their home (Gen. 1:28). God spoke his will to them (ibid.). All their needs were provided by their heavenly Father (Gen. 2:8-9). Only those homes built around God will stand the stress of this modern world. "Except Jehovah build the house they labor in vain that build it" (Ps. 127:1). Many families remind themselves and their guests of this with the wall plaque, "God is an unseen guest at every meal.
In that Edenic home there was work and responsibility. Adam was to dress and keep the garden (Gen. 2:15). Later, following the fall, he was reminded that in toil he would eat of the fruit of the ground all his days (Gen. 3:17). So today a happy home will provide work and responsibilities for all. The man must provide for his family (I Tim. 5:8). Women must keep the home (Tit. 2:4-5). Our children desperately need to be trained for life's work while at home. Nothing is more pitiful than a child raised with no responsibilities or duties to prepare him/her for adulthood. The ancient Hebrews had a proverb which said, "He that does not teach his son a trade, trains him to be a thief."
Children blest the home of the first couple. This God commanded (Gen. 1:28). Their children were born "with the help of Jehovah" (Gen. 4:1). The psalmist puts it beautifully, "Lo, children are a heritage of Jehovah; and the fruit of the womb is his reward" (Ps. 127:3). All couples should plan to bring children into their home Children bring joys unspeakable, but even more, Christian children bless the world and carry the faith to the next generation.
The man was the head of that first family (Gen. 3:16). Under Christ that same home structure is expected. "The husband is the head of the wife" (Eph. 5:23). Surely this is America's greatest need today. The woman's liberation movement will wreck and destroy the home and family where it is allowed to succeed. They have declared war on the father-led home; the "patriarchy, they call it.
There were rules and standards in that original home. God forbade certain things (Gen. 2:16). Our children need to be taught to "hear the instruction of (their) father and forsake not the law of their mother" (Prov. 1:8). Even wives are to obey their husbands as Sarah (I Pet. 3:1-6). All of the family must obey the laws of the land (I Pet. 2:13). And keep the commandments of God (Eccle. 12:13). No home can long survive without respect for authority and obedience to law.
May all of us pray daily for God's blessings on our homes and may we diligently work to have a Christian home that will glorify God and bless the world.
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