Articles
A Godly Home
A lady once said, "Preaching on the home effects more people more of the time than any other issue you can preach on, because people are baptized once, but they live in their homes every day."
Of the three institutions that God has ordained (Civil Government, The Church, and the Home) the Home is the oldest and the real foundation of the other two. It has been rightly said that "the home is the cradle of civilization".
The word Home is defined in three distinct views: 1) "one's own dwelling place; the house in which one lives..."; 2) "a place of refuge and rest"; 3) "the social unit formed by a family living together." Definition number three will be our focus in this study.
The first Home consisted of a husband (Adam) and a wife (Eve). We learn this from the first book of the Bible, Genesis. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed" (Genesis 2:21-25).
After Adam and Eve sinned against God (Genesis 3:1ff), they were blessed with children and the first Home then consisted of a father (Adam) and a mother (Eve) and children (Cain and Abel). "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel" (Genesis 4:1-2).
Jesus said that from the beginning of creation God intended for a man to marry a woman, thus establishing their own home (Matthew 19:4-6). However, man has continually abused and misused the Home. Rather than having a Home the way God would have it organized, that is, a man and a woman married and having children, we see in the world women living with women and men living with men and many times children are involved in these ungodly arrangements. We also see divorce tearing homes apart with single parents raising the children. Please, listen to what Jesus said, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6).
"Wait just one-minute preacher. What's wrong with two women or two men living together as married and raising children?" The Holy Scriptures record that God calls this arrangement sinful. "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly" (Romans 1:24-27). However, the blood of Jesus can wash away all of our sins (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
