What Makes A Home Christian Series

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WHAT MAKES A HOME CHRISTIAN?

Eph. 5:15-6:4

Annual Sermons: Vol. 3 Sermon 10

homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle

In 1641 Richard Baxter went as pastor to the English village of Kidderminster. He found the church to be cold and apathetic. As he worked and prayed for revival, God led him to go into the homes one by one and establish family worship. In a few years his church completely turned around and became an example of evangelical life and fervor.

Such a revival is desperately needed in our homes today. Our families are being torn and tempted as never before. Divorce is the order of the day. Drugs are camping out on everyone’s doorstep. Television pumps a steady stream of immorality, profanity and violence into the minds and hearts and lives of family members.

Alex Carrell says modern man “simple does not have the nervous system to keep pace with modern civilization.” We Americans swallow ove ten billion sleeping pills a year. Valium is the number one prescription drug in America.

Fifty years also we boasted that an increase in leisure time would make us healthier, happier people. That belief has been silenced by the facts.

No simple solution will help our homes. What we must do is build our families on solid Biblical principles as we practice Christianity at home. Family worship is no magic cure-all. The cure must run far deeper than simply adding one more religious routine.

If family worship is merely a habit we tack on, it it is mechanical, if it is more “churchianity,” if it is not backed up by consistent Christian living day by day, then it will do more harm than good. .

One tragedy of modern " churchianity" is that we have COMPARTMENTALIZED religion. Religion is what we do on Sunday and Wednesday, down at the church. The rest of the time we are busy in the real world of living.

The result is that Christianity is seen as something unreal and Jesus and David are put in the same category by our children as Santa Clause and Jason and his Golden Fleece.

It is when our relationship to Christ transforms our home life, our business life and our recreational life that our children will sit up and take notice.

Christianity is more caught than taught. It is not just another philosophy to be debated, it is a way of life to be shared. One frivolous, high-tempered, moderate churchgoing mother said, “I don’t know what has got into my Jane. Anything I say goes in one ear and out the other.”

I know what “got into” Jane. Her mother! We reproduce ourselves in our children and all the formal religious instruction in the world cannot outweigh the witness of a weak life.

Christianity is not a flag we stick on the roof, it is the mortar between the bricks. Without it our homes will crumble.

Wherever Abraham carried his family he built an altar. God gold the Israelite parents to teach His truth to their children all through the day (Deut. 6:4-9).

When Paul wrote the Philemon letter, he addressed it to “the church in thy house” (1:2). It was at the feet of his grandmother and mother that Timo¬thy received his faith (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:15) by being taught and shown the Word of God.

I. RESPONSIBILITY WILL BE ASSUMED (6:4)

This begin with PARENTS. The Bible says, “Parents . . .bring them (your children) up with the loving discipline the Lord Himself approves, with suggestions and godly advice” (Eph. 6:4, LB). The two pillars of a Christian home, says Wayne Dehoney, are a Christian father and a Christian mother. If only one is a Christian then he or she must assume the spiritual responsibility.

In every church there are those parents who take their children home because they don’t LIKE to sit through church. The problem here runs far deeper than church attendance.

It is the problem of parents trying to PLEASE their children instead of preparing them for life’s responsibility; of parents more interested in worldly pleasure than spiritual maturity. These same children grow up to “do their own thing” all though life and the results are disastrous. Kids don’t like dentists, shots, or school but they endure it and are better for it.

II. ROLES WILL BE ACCEPTED (5:21)

Being a member of a home is a responsibility and God tells each member in Ephesians five and six how and where we are to fit in. When we disobey this we invite heartache and trouble.

We are ALL TO “SUBMIT ourselves to one another because of our reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21). We yield our wishes to the wishes of others.

But we must humbly and obediently submit to our assigned place in the home.

Christian wives are to SUBMIT. This doesn’t mean you become a doormat and neither does it mean you always obey your husband no matter what.