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Christian Family Principles
Written by Dr. Lester Hutson

Copyright - Lester Hutson - 1981
This material is copyrighted and may not be copied or reproduced without the express written permission of Dr. Lester Hutson.

Man or Mouse?

Chapter Ten

INTRODUCTION: Text * I Samuel 25:1-11, 14-17, 25, 36-39

It is one thing to be a man. It is quite another thing to shoulder the responsibilities of manhood. In the real sense of the word, there is more to being a man than being an adult male, Homosapiens, or human being. Plenty of men "cop-out" or "duck-out" on responsibility. They disgrace manhood as citizens, humiliate manhood as employees, and "cop-out" of their manly responsibilities at church. Nowhere do more men disgrace manhood than in the home. Too many of them are egotistical, self-centered and selfish, and they cheat the wife, rob the children and are a disgrace to the home and the name "man". In spite fo their big muscles, good looks, charming ways, glib toungue and money, they are as destitute of character as an alley cat or mangry mouse. They are greedy, undependable, incosiderate, inconsistent, immoral, sensuous, given to the satisfying of their own lusts and overbearing and bullish to those who cannot stand up to them. Of course, they don't have the guts or courage to stand up to people their own size; instead, they run over and abuse their wife and children.

In the light of what will be presented to you in the next few minutes, measure yourself. Are you shouldering your God-given responsibilities, and thus a man? Or are you neglecting them, and thus a mouse? Your home may be in trouble, and you're the reason why. If you find yourself a mouse in your home, don't blame your wife or your children for your problems.

Read about a big toughie, overbearing husband who was nothing more than a no-good, spoiled brat in I Samuel verses 1-11, 14-17, 25, and 36-39.

I. GOD HAS CHOSEN TO MAKE THE MAN THE SUPREME EARTHLY AUTHORITY IN THE HOME.

A. There is no question that God should be the absolute authority in every home, and every family member should be in subjection to His Word.

Also, the home is to be subject to the government and the church. But in this lesson we are considering family members, including the husband, the wife and the children. Among these, God has made the husband the authority over the others. God's chain of command is husband over wife over children.

1. In the home, God commands the wife, "submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord," in Ephesians 5:22, and the children, "Obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right," in Ephesians 6:1. So, all the children are to obey both father and mother, and mother is to submit to father; thus, every family member is to be under the authority of the father or husband of the home.

2. What that means, husbands, is that God has placed the reins in your hands. Like it or not, the responsibility of right leadership in the home is yours. The Bible calls you "the head of the wife" in Ephesians 5:23. Again, Paul was moved of God to write in I Corinthians 11:3, "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man..." God told the woman in Genesis 3:16, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." So, in the home, you are in the driver's seat and God put you there.

B. When you rise up and shoulder that God-given responsibility, you become an umbrella of shelter and protection for your wife and children:

1. In the first place, you become a spiritual shelter:

a. Satan, through the world and the flesh, continually seeks to devour your family, according to I Peter 5:8. He uses television, school teachers, friends, magazines, billboards and countless other ordinary ways to corrupt the minds of your family. It was to this that Paul referred in II Corinthians 11:3, when he said, "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

b. With his ideas on getting even with your enemies, humanism, evolution, equal authority in the home, equal partner business arrangements, his false cults and religions and a thousand more ideas, Satan has and is corrupting the minds of the families of this world. In fact, II Corinthians 4:4 says he "hath blinded the minds" of many of this world's people.

c. Husband, you have a God-given responsibility as head authority in your home to protect your family from the spiritual destruction Satan would do to it. You shouldn't let your wife and children be subjected to everything Satan wishes to funnel to their minds through the television. You ought to turn it off, and lay down some guidelines about what can and can't be watched. You ought to screen what your child is taught in school, and you should protect and cut out those things that destroy the truth in their minds. Go to the schools and tell them your child is not going to read filth, nor participate in sinful activities. Screen your friends. Don't rub shoulders with cursers, social drinkers and people whose morals are low. Don't let your family hear false religious doctrines, nor attend false churches. Shelter them from wickedness and fortify them with good.

d. Husband, you can shelter your family from many of the very things which Satan will use to destroy them spiritually, and only God knows how much they need that shelter in view of the current barrage of ungodliness that is upon us.

2. As a right kind of husband, you also become a moral shelter for your family.

a. By taking the initiative to instill right thinking and attitudes in your children and wife, you actually develop a shelter within them against their own fleshly passions and lusts.

b. Ephesians 2:3 speaks of "the desires of the flesh and of the mind." Just as there are appetites for food and water, there is an appetite for sex. Dad, if you don't take the initiative to teach your family how to control that appetite, chances are they will abuse it with fornication, adultery, sodomy, incest, rape, homosexuality, lesbianism, promiscuity and other im- moral sex activities. I Timothy 3:4-5, 12 will show you that God loves a good, moral household, and He gave the husband the task of making it so. You may not have realized it when you became a husband and a father, but Mister, at that point God laid some heavy responsibility on you. You have the respon- sibility of protecting your family from their own passions, and only an education on how to conduct their bodies will do that.

c. As a good husband, you also shelter your family from immo- rality from without. Wolfish men are not inclined to attempt affairs with a wife who is obviously loyal to her husband. The father who takes a genuine interest in who his daughter dates, and where she goes, and how she dresses and conducts herself is not too likely to see that daughter robbed of her morals by some boy. If that daughter will submit herself to her father, that father stands a very good shelter and a formidable foe to evil intenders. (Girls, often your father can discern an evil spirit in your boyfriend. If you'll submit to Dad's authority, he can shelter you.) Not only that, a good Dad can see trends developing is sons, and by restraints and advice can shelter and protect you sons from many of the dangers and pitfalls of life.

d. Every one of you fathers should be a shelter from immorality for your family. God gave you that responsibility.

3. And husband, if you shoulder the responsibility God has for you, you will also be an economic shelter for your family.

a. God said in I Timothy 5:8, "But if any man provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

b. Now, it is surely not too difficult to see that God expects you to feed your family. You don't have the right to lay around, goof off and do nothing. God expects you to get a job and work to support your wife and children. You don't have to provide them with all their wants, but you do have the responsibility of providing their needs. (THE PRACTICING OF THIS BIBLICAL PRINCIPLE ALONE WOULD ALMOST TOTALLY RID US OF OUR WELFARE ROLLS IN THIS COUNTRY.)

c. It is a disgrace before heaven when women and children have to get out and make a living when the husband is able and jobs are available. II Corinthians 12:14 says, "The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children."

4. Surely, these are not the only ways in which God has made the husband a shelter for the family, but they are three of the most important ways, and they do show how the husband is indeed a shelter for the home.

II. IT'S A GOD-DISHONORING SHAME TODAY THAT MANY HUSBANDS ARE NOT PROVIDING THE SHELTER AND LEADERSHIP THAT IS NEEDED IN THEIR HOMES.

A. Some are too preoccupied with other things to care or have time, so they neglect their family responsibilities.

1. Oh, they want fine, first-class children and a good, faithful wife in a model home, but they are not willing to pay the price to have it. They want to have their cookies and eat them too: spiritual children, without taking time to teach spiritual principles; a warm, loving wife, without showing warmth and love; a family built around Dad, though Dad is not there in heart, and rarely in body; and a family of finest moral integrity without any character building programs in the home.

2. Mister, it will not work. If you want a good, wonderful family of love, warmth and spiritual strength, you cannot neglect it to death in favor of something else, be it a sport, your job, a hobby or you name it. Many a husband is losing his family today, and the prime reason is that he sold the family out to a job or some other preoccupation. Lot, of Genesis 19, was just such a person. Because of your neglect of the family, some of you men are slowly but surely losing your wife. God's Word says you two are to be one in Genesis 2:24, not your interests off somewhere else while hers are in the home. I tell you that you'd better come back home. Put your heart back into the home. Court your wife again, because if you don't, she's going to be gone soon. And what you are doing is losing your children, too. Neglect is costing you your home.

B. Some men would rather not face up to the responsibilities of a man. They are too mousy, too weak, so they go ahead and let the wife do it.

1. They can't make the decisions of leadership in the home. They will not say with Joshua of old, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," in Joshua 24:15. No, they leave the decisions of where to go to church, how to discipline the children, what house to buy, where to eat and everything else up to the wife to decide. They cover their lack of courage to take the responsibilities of the home by saying to the wife, "Whatever you want, dear; it's up to you." And in so doing, make it appear they are just trying to please the wife.

2. Mister, it is not your wife's place to take the initiative in these things, and you ought to be ashamed to so piously dump your responsibilities in her lap. You ought to confer with her, and lovingly consider her wishes, but the basic and final decision- making responsibilities are yours. God put them there when He made you the "head of the wife," in Ephesians 5:23.

3. Some women wear the pants in the family by default of the husband, and some children wear the pants by default of both father and mother. They have to help make the living, take any spiritual initiative that is taken, maintain the property, see to the household needs, train the children and plenty more because ole hubby is too mousy and spineless to get up and act like a man. Fellow don't think you are being considerate of your wife by putting all the decisions and responsibilities off on her. She doesn't want them, and deep down inside, she'll scorn and resent you for being so weak and irresponsible that you make her take the responsibility that is really yours. Fellow, you don't know much about women, if you are unaware of the fact that they want someone they can admire and know is strong and not afraid to face whatever issues and responsibilities that come.

C. There are also those husbands who do not have the God-given reins of leadership in their homes because some bossy wife has taken them away, and the husband doesn't have the nerve or courage to stand up to her.

1. There are still some bossy old Jezebels in this world who don't give a hoot about God's order of command in the home and who will use temper fits, pouting, nagging, griping, threatening, sex or cantankerous ways to subdue their husbands.

2. And, to the disgrace of the human race and the ruin of many a marriage, there are still some "henpecked" husbands who'll tolerate it.

III. THERE IS A LACK OF HUSBAND AUTHORITY IN TODAY'S HOMES, BUT THERE IS ALSO AN ABUSE OF THAT AUTHORITY IN MANY CASES.

A. Lots of men have let authority go to their heads.

1. Nabal of I Samuel 25 was just such a person.

a. His name means "fool or senseless." David said, "As his name is, so is he," in I Samuel 25:25.

b. I Samuel 25:3 says this husband was "churlish (bad tempered, uncivil, sullenly rude) and evil in his doings."

c. He was a partying drinker, verse 36, which tells you he had no regard for God's principles of right, and he was selfish, as verse 10 shows. And that selfish streak in him also made him selfish in his approach to his good and beautiful wife. All she was to him was someone to serve him and satisfy his sex passions. The evidence of the text is that he didn't really care for her; he cared for himself. From her, all he did was get; he never gave genuine love to her in return. God called it "wickedness" in him in verse 30.

2. Nabal is the epitome of many a modern husband.

a. They are so selfish it stinks, and it shows in their buying habits, their sex habits, where they go, what they eat and plenty of other ways.

b. Like Nabal, they love to party and drink, and they have no regard for what God has said in His Word about how a man ought to treat his wife. To them, a wife is just a bed partner and someone to cook, clean house and wash clothes.

c. Like Nabal, they are churlish with their wives in particular, and that means rude, uncivil and bad tempered. They cut and sass and belittle and abuse the wife, and they expect the wife ought to be happily in subjection to that. You talk about Nabal being a fool, the man who thinks a wife is going to be happy in a home where she is treated like a dog is a fool indeed.

B. I know lots of husbands who have bad marriages and this is why.

1. If you are treating your wife like Nabal, don't be surprised if one of these days she gets a belly-full of it and walks out on you.

2. If you are like Nabal and have a bad marriage and poor home, don't blame your wife. Mister, you're the man; you're the cause.

3. You can neglect your authority or you can abuse it, and in either case, you're a mouse and not a man.

C. I can guarantee that if you take up your responsibilities as husband of your home and start loving your wife as God says you should, your marriage and home life will drastically improve.

1. Ephesians 5:25 says, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it."

2. Love does not abuse authority, nor does it neglect it. Love does what is right and good according to I Corinthians 13:4-8, and love covers "a multitude of sins," in I Peter 4:8.

3. Genuine, heartfelt love in your family will draw it together like magic. It will heal old wounds and hurts, and make fighting and revenge seem senseless.

4. I challenge you, Mister. Try it. Be a man. Shoulder your God- given responsibilities. Take the leadership of your home and do right. Love your wife and children, and demonstrate it like any decent man should. It may very well be the salvation of your marriage and family.

 

"It Does Make a Difference What You Believe"