INTRO.- It’s all in the family. You remember that old TV show with Archie Bunker and Edith.
All in the Family was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 1971 to April 1979. In September 1979, the show was retooled under the title, Archie Bunker’s Place. This version of the sitcom lasted another four years, finally ending its run in 1983. Here’s a few scenes.
[after returning from the bathroom]
Archie Bunker: Lemme tell ya, Edith, you can’t really *buy* beer... you can only rent it.
[after watching kids dance to Jesus Christ Superstar]
Archie Bunker: The Lord wants you to come to him on your knees, not wigglin’ and jigglin’ ’til your parts fall off.
Archie: Do you believe that guy making suppository remarks while I’m singing "God Bless America"?
Gloria: You just don’t want to be alone with the baby ’cause you’re afraid you might have to change him.
Archie: You think I never changed you, little girl?
Gloria: If I had waited for you to do that, I would’ve worn the same diaper since I was two. Ma told me that.
Archie: Don’t believe your mother, you believe me. Many is the time I changed you, little girl, and it wasn’t always wee-wee. Sometimes it was this here. [Holds up two fingers]
Gloria: Well I never promised you a rose garden.
Edith Bunker: We should take you to the doctor.
Archie Bunker: No, I’ve already had one attempted robbery today.
As you know, Carol O’Connor played the role of Archie Bunker. He married his wife Nancy in Dublin, Ireland (and she later converted to Roman Catholicism for him) in 1951, and their only child, adopted son Hugh O’Connor, committed suicide in 1995 after a long battle with drug addiction. Hugh left a widow and small child behind. O’Connor appeared in public service announcements for Partnership for a Drug Free America and spent the rest of his life working to raise awareness about drug addiction.
Well, it’s all in the family. What is? Life, for one thing. What’s life without family? It would be pretty miserable.
People who are true loners are also very lonely. We need one another. Everyone needs to be a part of a family. And most people start way whether they stay that way or not.
ILL.- A woman was at home doing some cleaning when the telephone rang. In going to answer it, she tripped on a scatter rug and, grabbing for something to hold onto, seized the telephone table. It fell over with a crash, jarring receiver off the hook. As it fell, it hit the family dog, who leaped up, howling and barking. The woman’s three-year-old son, startled by this noise, broke into loud screams. The woman mumbled some colorful words. She finally managed to pick up the receiver and lift it to her ear, just in time to hear her husband’s voice on the other end say, "Nobody’s said hello yet, but I’m positive I have the right number."
What do you think? That may well be how it is with many families. All families have their good days and their bad days.
And once the kids are grown it’s a different ball game, but don’t you miss them as little ones, running around the house? I sure do.
ILL.- Someone said, “As the home goes, so goes society and the nation.” And this may be true. No doubt, one of the best things that we can do is to build a godly home life!
PROP.- In our text, Paul speaks about three different family-type relationships:
1- Husbands and wives
2- Parents and children
3- Masters and servants
I. HUSBANDS AND WIVES – LOVE AND SUBMISSION
ILL.- Someone has suggested that the difference between the sexes is this: When a couple is supposed to go out somewhere, the woman’s first thought is, “What shall I wear?” And the man’s first thought is, “How can I get out of this?”
There is a definitely a different in the sexes in many areas or arenas of life. We think differently, we do differently, because we are different!
Col. 3:18-19 “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.”
In the marriage, there should be mutual love and submission. Of course, everyone has their own idea of love and submission.
Someone has suggested there are four basic types of marriage:
- Love and submit (perhaps the ideal. Whose idea?)
- Hate and submit (this could be the Archie Bunker type)
- Hate and resist (the J.R. Ewing and Sue Ellen type marriage as seen on the old TV show “Dallas.”)
- Love and resist (you love one another but still resist one another)
We won’t get too serious about this marriage business, because if we do things could get serious at home!
ILL.- Tim LaHaye, noted author and lecturer, was holding a family conference in a church in Arizona one time and he announced that the next night he would tell the men who to get their wives to treat them like a king. The next night he started his talked with this statement: “TREAT HER LIKE A QUEEN!”
There’s something to that, no doubt. If we want to be treated royally then we should treat one another royally. Obviously, this is a two-way street. Both husbands and wives need to work at treating their spouse with kindness and love.
ILL.- I read in the LOOKOUT publication one time what a couple of husbands did for their wives.
One wife said, “One evening after work I found a note taped to my steering wheel. That note led to ten more notes. The last one directed me to a restaurant where my husband waited with flowers and dinner reservations.”
What was wrong with that guy? Was he nuts or in love? What kind of standard was he setting for the rest of us married guys?
ILL.- Another wife said, “After making an ‘A’ on a difficult test I found a ‘congratulations’ card on my windshield. My husband had driven 30 miles and spent an hour finding my car in the university parking lot just to encourage me. Wow!
Well, we certainly need to encourage one another in life and in the marriage relationship. “That was a great meal, honey.” “That was an outstanding sermon, dear.”
The old saying applies, “The more good stuff we put into something, the more we get out.” This certainly holds true for marriage.
ILL.- The story is told about a certain psychologist who tried to make the perfect wife. He molded the woman that he planned to marry. He tried to guide her thinking in every way in order to make her perfect and then he married her. But once he married her, things didn’t work out as he had planned. She refused to do this and that and they ended up in the divorce court.
What happened? He forgot to psychoanalyze himself.
If we all want a better marriage, it starts with us, not our mate. We must change our thinking and our ways, if we want a better marriage or if we want to change our mate.
II. PARENTS AND CHILDREN – ENCOURAGEMENT AND OBEDIENCE
Col. 3:20-21 “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.”
ILL.- A little boy was balancing himself on his head. An older lady came by. “Aren’t you too young to do that? You are only six,” said the lady who knew him.
“It’s alright,” replied the boy. “You see, I’m nine when I am upside-down.”
ILL.- A father of four boys came home to find them all engaged in something of a free-for-all. Addressing his remarks to the most aggressive of the four, he asked, “Butch, who started this?” “Well, it all started when Harold hit me back,” exclaimed Butch.
Children need encouragement from mom and dad and they need to learn to obey. Even the best of kids will be kids. And even the best of parents will sometimes fail in their child training.
Children obey your parents. Children won’t obey unless they’ve been taught to obey.
ILL.- The Vancouver Province reports the story of a New York “mad mother.” Mrs. William Morris Friday paid a $55 traffic fine for her 18-year-old son, then drew back her right hand and gave him a resounding smack. Magistrate Charles Solomon appeared startled at first, but quickly recovered himself and broke into a grin.
“Madam,” he said, “that calls, for a $10 reduction in the fine.” “That’s nothing,” replied Mrs. Morris, “wait till I get him home.”
It appears that Mrs. William Morris may have needed to start with that smacking business a lot earlier in life.
Prov. 13:24 “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”
Prov. 22:15 “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.”
Discipline is a must when it comes to raising children, regardless of how that discipline is administered. I personally believe in the rod, the switch, etc. Then later, hopefully, a child will learn to listen and obey mom and when they are told thus and so.
ILL.- Old preacher Vance Havner said, “Some time ago a school principal said to the teachers, ‘Don’t tell the kids to obey. That’s out. Tell them to cooperate, but not obey.’ Now cooperate is not the word my daddy used when I was growing up. If I had not cooperated, he would have operated, you can be sure of that.” We must teach children to obey and have consequences for their disobedience.
If they don’t learn obedience in the home then they have will serious problems at school and in the working world.
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. Too much discipline and not encouragement is not good. We need to encourage our children when they do right as well as discipline them when they do wrong.
If a child lives with criticism,
He learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
He learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
He learns to be shy.
If a child lives with tolerance,
He learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
He learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise,
He learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness,
He learns justice.
If a child lives with security,
He learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval,
He learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship,
He learns to find love.
III. MASTERS AND SERVANTS – HONESTY AND DEVOTION
Col. 3:22-24 “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
When Paul wrote these words slavery was a common thing. However, many of the slaves were well educated (or so I’ve read) and had great responsibilities in the homes of the wealthy.
In I Cor. 7:21 Paul did instruct slaves to gain their freedom if they could. But he did not encourage rebellion or overthrow of the existing order of things.
The purpose of the church was to spread the gospel of Christ, not to get involved in social activities or political action.
Our goal in the church today is not so much to change people by political power but through Christ. The answer to America’s problems is not political correctness but the power of Christ! True change, lasting change must come from within when Christ changes people for the better.
Paul encouraged the slaves to obey their masters in everything. And he encouraged the Christian masters to treat their slaves with fairness and honesty.
Since slavery is abolished we must apply this text to the employee/employer relationship. Employees must obey their employers in everything as long as it doesn’t conflict with their Christian faith.
ILL.- Charles F. Kettering said: I often tell my people that I don’t want any fellow who has a job working for me. What I want is a fellow whom a job has. I want the job to get the fellow and not the fellow to get the job. And I want that job to get hold of this young man so hard that no matter where he is the job has got him for keeps. I want that job to have him in its clutches when he goes to bed at night, and in the morning I want that same job to be sitting on the foot of his bed telling him it’s time to get up and go to work. And when a job gets a fellow that way he’ll amount to something.
ILL.- Andrew Carnegie said: The average person puts only 25 percent of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50 percent of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100 percent.
ILL.- A man applied for a job and asked the manager, “How many people work in this plant?” He said, “Oh, about one in fifteen.”
Certainly Christian people need to give a dollar’s worth of work for a dollar’s worth of pay. Far too many people in the working world want to do as little as possible and still get paid a decent salary.
ILL.- William Carey, when asked about his great accomplishments in his work of translating the Bible into Indian languages and dialects, said: “I am not a genius, just a plodder.” But what a plodder! In forty years of labor, he translated all or portions of the Bible into thirty-four of the languages and dialects of India.
God help us to “plod” as well in our work as Carey did in his.
CONCLUSION------------------------------
Marriage, raising children and work. The point of the text is that Christ should make a difference in our lives no matter what we’re doing or what we’re talking about.
ILL.- It is said that the Duke of Wellington asked one of his officers, “Why do you stand in such a slouched position?” The officer replied, “Sir, I am off duty.” Wellington fired back, “A British officer is never off duty.”
As Christians we are not “off duty.” We should on duty and live for Christ at home, at work, at play and you name it.
