God's Building Code
Introduction
Build a home? In our day love is the foundation - but its definition is based on a mass media morality and a throw away mentality. Love used to be defined, based on honor, care and commitment.
There is, perhaps no better illustration of this commitment to principle and honor than is seen in a letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou of the Union Army. He penned it to his wife, Sarah, a week before the battle of Bull Run, July 14, 1861. They had been married only six years. These powerful words still touch the soul:
My Very Dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few more days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.
I have no misgivings about or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing, perfectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this Government and to pay that debt.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless: it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break, and yet my love for country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on, with all these chains to the battlefield. The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God, and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood around us.
If I do not (return), my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.
Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have often-times been.
O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the gladdest day and in the darkest night, amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours--always, always: and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall by my breath, or the cool air cools your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.
Sarah, do not mourn me dead: think I am gone, and wait for me, for we shall meet again, Sullivan Major Ballou was killed one week later at the first battle of Bull Run. I wonder, don’t you, if he did indeed utter Sarah’s name as he lay dying on the battlefield. She undoubtedly suffered the greater pain in the aftermath of that terrible war.
Is this the level of dedication and sacrifice to which the Apostle Paul calls us in 2 Timothy 2? I believe it is, yet the concept seems almost unreasonable in this day of individual rights and self-fulfillment.
Even before that we read Genesis 2:18-25. In order to build a house, numerous preparations have to be made. A person has to select a house plan, arrange for payments, purchase a plot of ground, secure a contractor, and then get a building permit fromthe city. Yes, cities have building codes with which one must comply. These building codes have regulations regarding location of the house, foundations, termite control, plumbing standards, wiring specifications, and numerous other matters. A person cannot build a house just any way he desires. He has to build according to standards.
In order to build a home, one needs to follow God’s building codes. Our world has chosen another way. The traditional nuclear unit of Mother, Father, and their children is becoming not only rare, but also unpopular in the media and in much of current thought.
For example, let me share with you a recent survey of the number one shaper of American values. What do you think it is? . . . Television. “Of the 68 series that the tube brings home each week, a grand total of three focus on the traditional nuclear unit of Mom, Pop and their blood-related progeny.”
Population analysts report that while few contemporary families fit the traditional nuclear stereotype, even fewer conform to the patchwork, extended-family groupings that TV is so busily spawning.
What’s disturbing about prime time is that Mom and Dad are being shoved out of the picture-in spirit if not in body-as their function as authority figures becomes usurped by the ever-expanding influx of parental surrogates.”
In order to build a home, one needs to follow God’s building codes, which are found in the Bible. When God established the first home in the Garden of Eden, He gave some building codes.
Look again with me to Genesis 2:18-25. As we celebrate Christian Home Week, let us examine carefully God’s instructions about building a home. To be sure, building a home matters more than building a house.
I. We Must Build A Home On A Solid Foundation
Suppose you were going to build a house. You want to put the house on the best soil possible. You ought to want to build a home on the best foundation.
A. Some Attempt To Build A Home On A Faulty Foundation
In the first place, it is no great mystery why marriages are failing in society. We act as though we haven’t decided yet whether it’s something in the water, some pollutant in the air that we are breathing, or some malicious force that we don’t know about. I’ll tell you exactly why marriages are failing. First, a lot of these people get married who shouldn’t marry each other. They don’t know each other and when they get to know each other, they have too little in common to build a permanent and life-kind of relationship. We have sold the idea that to be attracted to one another really is enough reason for getting married. What we have basically done, we have built the basis of marriage at that level that we have in common with the rest of the animals.
A second reason is that most people who do get married don’t have the foggiest notion what the marriage relationship is all about--the nature of the marriage relationship-what you’re to bring to it, what you are basically promising. Many people do not realize that the wedding ceremony does not put you on some sort of divine escalator that delivers you at a mature relationship automatically or that there is some secret ingredient in the rice that sort of soaks into your relationship and makes you have a good marriage. They do not realize that a marriage like any other relationship needs to be nurtured, needs to be fed, needs to be strengthened, needs to be worked on.
B. The Bible Has The Only Proper Foundation For Building A Home
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). To build a home two people need to give priority to their partner. The Bible says “to leave” and “to cleave.” These words describe commitment as the biblical basis for marriage.
The words were written to exhibit marriage as the deepest corporeal and spiritual unity of man and woman, and to hold up monogamy before the eyes of the people of Israel as the form of marriage ordained by God. By the leaving of father and mother, which applies to the woman as well as to the man, the conjugal union is shown to be a spiritual oneness, a vital communion of heart as well as of body, in which it finds its consummation.
This union is of a totally different nature from that of parents and children. Marriage itself, notwithstanding the fact that it demands the leaving of father and mother, is a holy appointment of God.
Is this the foundation of your relationship? Is there a spiritual oneness based on a godly commitment. If so, then your family, your marriage can face the storms of life. Storms came in the home of Adam and Eve. they lost their living quarters, they saw one of their sons kill the other. All kinds of adversity come to homes today. Only when residents seek God’s shelter can they find strength for the storms.
These difficulties can develop slowly as termites quietly disrupt a building. There must be a commitment to see it through. Love is beautiful . . . a must, but a godly commitment is the foundation.
II. We Must Build A Home With Correct Materials
Having understood the need for a proper foundation, let’s see the need to bring proper attitudes to the building of a godly home. City building codes have various requirements about the kind of material to go in a house. But what kind of materials go into building a home? I believer it is vitally important that we understand the need for appropriate attitudes that lead to Christian behavior.
To our society it’s important because the family precedes all other institutions of society in time, including the church. Before there was a church, a holy man or a holy book, there was marriage. The family outranks all other institutions in society in importance without any little exceptions. I think that the family’s effectiveness, how well the family does its job ultimately, will be the key to the ability of the other institutions of society to function, including the church, because this basic unit of society which God has created is the place where the people are developed that will either assure a continuation of society or the destruction of society.
Turn with me to Ephesians 5:21-33 as we see the correct materials (attitudes) we need in the building of our homes. In this classic passage (5:22-6:9) Paul clearly delineates the standard.
Beginning with the principle of mutual submission based on reverence for Christ (vs. 21), the apostle proceeds to mention the reciprocal duties of the various members of the household--wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters.
A. The Spirit A Wife Is To Have In The Building Of The Home
In our focal passage, he first deals with the spirit a wife is to have in the building of a home (vs. 22- 24). The only wifely duty Paul insists on is that of submission: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands” (v. 22). Clearly, Paul does not mean that the husband is to be a domestic despot, ruling his family with a rod of iron.
Many people today object, saying that such a view of marriage is not appropriate for twenty-first century society. Careful consideration of the present passage, however, should remove all uneasiness about this duty of the wife to her husband.
The context clearly shows that the wife’s submission is prompted by and warranted by the husband’s unselfish love. No wife need have any misgivings about subordinating herself to a husband who loves her with the kind of love that Paul urges upon husbands in the verses that follow.
Moreover, the submission is to be voluntary, for the form of the Greek command; it is rather an earnest appeal. The Greek word uses the middle voice, which is best translated “submitting yourselves.” The wife’s submission, then, is not something forced on her by a demanding husband. It is the deference that a loving wife, conscious that the home (just as any other institution) must have a head, gladly shows to a worthy and devoted husband.
Again, the submission of the wife is presented as a part of her Christian duty, a self-subjection to be rendered “as unto the Lord”. The meaning is not that she is to yield to her husband the same submission she gives to Christ. The thought is that the deference given to her husband is a duty she owes to the Lord. Just as believers form one body of which Christ is head, so the married couple constitute a unity of which the husband is to be head.
To ignore this divine arrangement is to sow seeds of domestic discord and tragedy.
B. The Spirit Of Loving Leadership The Husband Is To Bring In Building The Home
He next deals with the spirit of loving leadership the husband is to bring in the building of a home (vs. 25-33). The supreme duty enjoined on the husband is that he love his wife (vs. 25). The word employed does not denote mere affection or romantic attachment. It speaks of a higher form of love, a deliberate attitude of mind that concerns itself with the well-being of the one loved. Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is its dominant trait. It is, in short, a love that should make it a delight for the wife to subject herself to such a husband. How the husband is to love his wife is set forth in three significant statements.
1. As Christ Loved The Church
As Christ Loved the Church (vs. 25-27). The measure of Christ’s love is stated in the declaration that He “gave Himself for” the church (vs. 25). The husband is to love his wife in the same unstinted fashion, even to the point of sacrificing himself for her wellbeing.
2. As the Husband Loves His Own Body
As His Own Body (vs. 28-30). Verse 28 reiterates what verses 25-27 have already said, namely, that Christ’s love for His church is both model and incentive for the husband in his love for his wife. “As their own bodies” (vs. 28) gives an added reason for husbandly love. Even as Christ loves the church, His body, in like manner ought husbands to love their wives, as being their own bodies.
3. With a Love Transcending all other Human Relationships
Note verses 31-33. The love a man has for his wife must transcend even that which he has for parents, leading him to leave the latter and “be joined unto his wife” (vs. 31). So intimate is this union that the man and woman thus joined together become “one flesh” (vs. 31), which is simply a way of saying that they become “one.” In a day when divorce is scandalously easy, this concept of marriage needs often to be held before the public.
The mention of the closeness of the union of husband and wife again brings to Paul’s mind the thought of the intimate spiritual union of Christ and His people: “This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church” (vs. 32, ASV).
To build God’s kind of home, we need to bring the proper attitudes. Let me tell you something, my sense of fulfillment and sense of happiness is very much tied up in what happens to my children and what occurs in my relationship to my wife.
I would say that what happens to you in your singleness or you in your married life and to your children is probably the most important thing that will ever happen to you because it will either cripple or enhance every other endeavor of your life. And if it cripples you, it will take away from you a little bit in every thing in which you participate and if it enhances, it will bring a larger dimension to everything you do. A lot is at stake for you and for Christ’s Church in how you think about the family. You and I fill our minds with all sorts of trivia about organizations that have only been in existence a few years and may be extinct a few years from now and think so little about this thing that God has created which will be here forever.
Let’s build God’s kind of homes.