Good morning and welcome in everyone. Today, we are going to take a look at a passage of scripture from the book of Matthew.
Matthew 22:35-38 ³⁵ Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, ³⁶ Master, which is the great commandment in the law? ³⁷ Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment.
Man has a great responsibility in his home. He must instruct his family in the Word of God, but in order to do that, God must be his first and greatest love. A love beyond all others. Many times in our modern day world, when a man rebukes or corrects his own family and household, the family will quickly claim that he doesn’t love them, but this is the furthest thing from the truth. Rebuking and correcting others in the Christian Life shows that you care about the eternal salvation of their souls. One of the greatest and most loving things you can do for another person is to warn them that they are on the road that leads to hell. For example, if you were driving down a highway somewhere and noticed that the bridge was out, wouldn’t you stop and make the attempt to divert cars before they ran off the cliff? Likewise, wouldn’t you try to save others and point them to the narrow path of Christ? What if they said you were out of your mind? How strongly would you scold them? This is true love for a neighbor because you don’t want to see them get killed. God doesn’t want anybody to perish but come to a place of repentance. Obviously some will rebelliously disobey and drive off the cliff anyway, but at least when your head hits the pillow each night, you can know that you warned them.
Remember that loving your neighbor is not enough in itself to obtain eternal life. People preach love in many types of false religions, but apart from the forgiveness found in Christ Jesus, they will not be able to inherit eternal life. Jesus taught that in order to enter into heaven, we must do the will of His heavenly Father. Our love for others must work from the top down. The commandments are in an order for a reason. The first commandment is to love God. We must love Him completely, unequivocally and without distraction. He must be our first and greatest love of our life. When you love Him in such a manner, it can result in persecution from your own relatives, because He becomes a greater love in your life than they are.
True love for God will humbly submit to His will, and become obedient to His purpose in every area of your life. Obeying the perfect will of God must be greater than doing the will of a wife, your family, or your neighbor. If your neighbor was to ask you to rob a bank with him, are you really going to tell me that if you didn’t go with him that you wouldn’t be loving your neighbor? That is complete foolishness. It shows you love them more than God. This is the way that many professing Christians are today. They want to love, love, love each other, but they don’t care about loving obedience to the will of God. They don’t care about conforming themselves to God’s purpose. God must be first in the heart of a genuine Christian, and what God says goes, above all others.
When Peter and other disciples made the decision to follow Christ, it showed that they loved God more than others. They became friends of Christ rather than friends of the world, which resulted in persecution from people that they knew in their past. The Christian life is about picking whose side you are going to be on. Service to God is greater than serving your buddies. This is such an important decision, that if you choose to love anyone more than God, you make yourself unworthy of His kingdom. This is because you become a friend of the world rather than the one who sent His precious Son to save us.
In numerous households some wives want to be in control of their husbands, even wanting to be worshiped, but this is a complete rejection of the first commandment. Some of them want to be coddled and pampered to the point that they become so spoiled, they refuse to accept rebukes and direction from their own husbands. They become a lover of themselves rather than a lover of God. In that frame of mind, you can’t tell them the error of the way because they are in love with themselves. That is a path that without repentance leads to eternal damnation. It’s a product of somebody who has been loved a little bit too much. Maybe they grew up without a dad, or they never had a dad correct them when they needed it. Many wives want to be worshiped, (although they refuse to call it that.) This is a desire that consumes the devils, who are infatuated with themselves. They seek only to be showered with affection, but without any correction at all. They want to be in control, but so did the devil, who was kicked out of heaven. Why do you think there are so many divorces nowadays? Many of them result because women cannot handle male leadership, referring to it as abusive, macho, and arrogant. The truth is, that the shoe is on the wrong foot. If they only took a look in the mirror, maybe they would come to the realization where the real pride comes from. It’s revealed in their complete rejection to love and obey the will of God. Men are ordained by God and Jesus Christ as an authority over women, and only women who are sincere Christians will accept this information. The rest of them will rebel, thinking the entire time that they are going to be in heaven, but without repentance they aren’t going to make it. There is a road that seems right, but in the end, it leads right off the cliff into the fires of damnation. The road to heaven is extremely narrow. Many people won’t get in because they never really loved God enough to do His will.
Inside the life of my own family, my wife has always been known as my “number two.” She will never be the number one love in my life, no matter how much she may want to be. Some women just cannot handle that situation. They want to be enamored and adored, with nothing else coming in-between her and her husband. But for Christian men, God must be the greatest love of our lives. Only then can you please him by rising up against disobedience in your own home. Only then can you serve him by standing up and leading your households with the sword of God’s Word.
Unbelievers who have not yet accepted the gospel of grace and forgiveness in Christ are in a completely different area than those who profess to be believers. Those who profess Christianity as their religion are called to an entirely different life. It is a life of repentance and transformation. It is a life of faithful service and obedience to God’s purpose and calling. Christians are on a completely different plateau. When you look around at society today, you will find all kinds of women usurping over male dominance, but that is expected because they are of the world. When you enter into church life, you enter into completely different territory. Women need to be in complete submission to men. The men need to be in complete submission to God. Instead of listening to the women, men must listen to the instructions of God. A woman’s duty to Christ is to serve and obediently follow her husband, or male leadership in the church. Christian men don’t follow women around like a dog on a leash. Women are to follow men. Men are not puppets whose strings are pulled by females. A man’s duty is to obediently follow and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why many people don’t preach the gospel, because their own wives are more important than the things of God. Love for your own family will always be secondary, when it comes down to love for God. Genuine love for God and others will stand up for the truth of God’s Word, even when it flies in the face of your wife, your household, or even your relatives.
A husband has complete authority in his home, and has been ordained to that position, (not by man), but by God. He is required to instruct his family in Scripture. His family is required by God to be in complete submission to him in everything. For a husband to follow through on this great commission, you will always need to remember that love for God is the first and great commandment. We must serve Him with a perfect heart and….
…….A Love Beyond all Others.
Let’s think about these things for right now. We can be found on your web browser by searching, tlkjbc where you can find our diaries distributed through various platforms. We are not associated, nor affiliated with any other religious groups. You can get our entire podcast feeds directly, along with transcripts at tlkjbc.com or I suppose that you could find us somewhere up here, in the Great Northern Minnesota woods. Peace to you, and Lord willing, we will talk with you some more tomorrow. Till then, bye bye everybody. ❤️
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