Clough Manhood Series Lesson 3

The Role of Man/Marriage (continued) – Genesis 2

We are in a series of lessons, a topical study, of the doctrine of manhood in Scripture. There’s a great lack, as we have said, of a proper model for Christian man; you will not find it on the book shelves of your local Christian bookstore simply because it’s not written. There’s been very little exegetical study of the Word of God in this area and therefore our generation falls down. In the first lesson we covered Genesis 1 as topically it pertained to man, and we concluded that both man and woman were made in God’s image for ruling the world and that man’s self image is not a goal to be sought after; it’s a result of following another goal and that goal is obeying the Word of God. We said that the dominion ordinance, the calling to subdue the earth, that was given to man and woman together and therefore man and woman together share true humanity and this is the base for what follows. Then last week we were interrupted because of the fire drill so we are not going to progress into Genesis 3 because I don’t think I made myself clear yet about Genesis 2.

So let’s go back to Genesis 2, the sexual differentiation which we studied last time from various passages, Genesis 2:18. We said that the woman is the ‘ezer, or the helper, to the man. She was made as this and she was made in a particular way that elevates her; she is the only creature on the face of the earth that was created indirectly. All other creatures were created directly. Therefore there is something special and particular about the woman, the position of her role. And therefore one of the things that we concluded from last time, based both on this passage and the fact that the sexual differentiation is shown in Genesis 2, is shown in 1 Corinthians 6 and other passages to be temporal only. Therefore, this cuts sex down to size, for in our culture sex is elevated as somehow the source of divine glory. But then the Bible cuts it down and says no, it’s there but don’t expect too much of it. That sounds very anti-romantic, but that’s the message of Scripture compared to our generation.

The primary basis for the relationship of the man and the woman is, therefore, person to person relationship; the sexual side of it is there, it ought to be there, but it is temporal and therefore the eternal value in the relationship is what is personal between them: one creature made in God’s image, having a relationship with another creature made in God’s image. That sounds all theoretical, theological and so on, but you can go from various parts of this country and various parts of other countries and you’ll see various unbiblical humanist ideas that creep into male thinking about the woman. Oftentimes she’s elevated but on a very unrealistic pedestal and somehow she’s never quite the value, as far as spiritual concerns, she’s never quite the value of the man. Men will accept women up to a point, and then quite strongly and firmly, maybe informally but it’s still there, make it very clear that somehow at one vital point they are sub human, they are somehow less than the man. And this is a very anti-biblical thing. The Bible correctly defines the roles; we’ll study that, but the Bible never says that the woman is of less value than the man. The Bible, therefore, is the key protector of the woman against the male [can’t understand word]. So this is the one thing we learned from this, but we saw this in the second lesson with a question. We’re going to try to grapple with that question tonight and in the end draw together all the loose ends and answer the question as far as we can with as much biblical material as we’ve got.

Now that question was handed in by a man in this congregation on the feedback card when I asked the men to hand me in material they’d like to be covered. Again I remind you of the question: I request the Bible’s answers regarding the order or priorities a man should set toward his calling or job, versus the time spent with his wife and family. The either/or problem, the wife and family versus the job.

We’ve seen, mentioned in lesson one that contrary to the way the girls would hand in their question the guys have basically handed in their questions, in fact 60% or more of the questions handed in by the guys do not deal with women at all; those questions dealt with their jobs. And that tells you something about how the man thinks versus how the woman thinks. And so that’s the question that we’re maneuvering on through the various passages of Scripture: the role of the problem between the supposed competition between the wife and the job.

Back in Genesis 2 that competition is not present for the competition is specifically denied in verse 18 when it says, “I will make man an ‘ezer, or a helper; there’s no… you don’t sense pressure there, you don’t sense competition between the wife and the job. Whatever the competition is, it’s something that’s wrong and so we want to study what is wrong. But before we go too much further we want to see if we can pull together this problem of calling. I think I’ve taught you something inaccurately in the past and I want to correct it, and that is: What is the calling? I’ve given you the impression that “the calling” is the job of the man, that is, his profession, whether he’s a doctor, whether he’s a lawyer, whether he is a university professor, whether he’s a carpenter or one of the so-called blue collar skills, that that somehow is the man’s calling. And yet when I carefully stated the word “calling” and found other word studies on the word “calling” I don’t find that to be Scriptural.

The calling is used in one of four ways in the Word of God. It’s used in special ways, like the calling of Israel, the call of Cyrus and so on, but we’ll temporarily describe those special things and concentrate on the general ways the verb “call” is used. And after searching the Scriptures I can only find four general calls that God gives to men. One call, and by men now I’m talking about man and woman together in Adam; one call is the call to subdue, that is given in Genesis 1: I bless you and I tell you to subdue the earth. It is a call given to every man; it is a call given to believer and unbeliever alike. Then there is the call of salvation; Jesus Christ called men to Himself. If I be lifted up, He said, I will call men to Myself and that’s the call of grace. One is the call of dominion, the original call of creation, that defines the human being and what he’s supposed to do.

The second one is the call to salvation and we said when this call to salvation is given the call to salvation does not erase the first call, nor does it replace the first call. So many Christians often times think of being saved in order to do what? In order to witness. Why? In order to lead more people to Christ? Why? In order to witness. Why? In order to lead more people to Christ. And we have a vicious witnessing machine cycle. But salvation is more than the witnessing machine cycle; salvation has been given to restore man so he fills that creation mandate which was originally given to him. And we saw this, how 1 Corinthians 15 and Hebrews 2 go back to Psalm 8 and go back to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, that man was created for a certain role, and whatever salvation exists later on in history as a result of grace, that salvation ties right back to the very beginning, it’s salvation from damnation in order that the creature can still function as a creature. That’s the reason.

Then there’s the third call; there’s the call to what we will call the discipleship, the call to spiritual maturity. Jesus Christ issued that call on several occasions [can’t understand words], calling them to a more elevated spiritual life. That call is given to a more restricted group of people. You notice the circle gets smaller and smaller. The first call is given to all men; the second call to salvation is given to some in history, given as general revelation to all men but obviously as we historically that some people are favored with a more clear call to salvation than others. And then the third, the call to discipleship, we find that is addressed to Christians who mean business; the Christians who are fooling around, of course God doesn’t bother with.

Then there’s the call to the ministry of the Word; this is a particular call that is given. Nowhere in Scripture do I find any call to any profession. Now this isn’t bad news; this is really good news because what it means is the decision that a man makes to go into field A, or field B, or field C, is not a product of some totally spiritual hocus pocus but rather is a product of wisdom. It goes back again to Genesis 2:19, when God brought the animals to man and steps aside to see what man would call the animals, in other words, to see how man would manage His creation God steps back; it is man’s role to create in history. And so therefore, sometimes when one prays, sure God aids in the decision, we’re not saying you can’t pray about this job or that job, but don’t expect a Jeremiah or Isaiah type call to a profession. There’s no evidence of that in Scripture. And rather the decision has been made on the basis of wisdom, it’s a general principle of Scripture.

What do we mean “principles of Scripture?” Well, there’s economic principles of Scripture, we’ll study some of those in the manhood course, how to handle money, how to deal with wealth, what about property ownership, they’re all principles in Scripture and these if applied can give you wisdom and insight in decision making. And there are other principles that are given, and this is what we mean by a wisdom approach. You search the principles and then you pray to how these principles fit. And I think if most Christian men are honest this is the way decisions have been made all the time anyway. So let’s be honest; the call to subdue the earth is a general call, it doesn’t tell you the details of how you as an individual are to do that because God, as it were, steps aside to see how you are going to do that, that is your high calling as a responsible dominion man. It was your choice, it was my choice, and thus we have the picture of God and the animals.

Now this calling, this first calling, we won’t worry about the other callings right now, this is the first calling; that call is given to both the man and the woman. Look back in Genesis 1:28, it is not just given to the man [“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”]. Now chronologically, of course, Adam heard it and passed it on to Eve; we’re not debating the chronology of which one heard the word first; we’re just talking about the application of the call, that is, does it concern only the male or does it concern both male and female together. And verse 28 very clearly is addressed to both of them as one corporate unit, and it is addressed to them very obviously because a man by himself can’t be fruitful; one doesn’t have to know too much of the birds and bees to know that one can’t go very far in verse 28 without a woman around. So therefore the first call is given to the man and the woman as a family unit.

We’ll expand these points later as we go through and observe incident after incident after incident in Scripture, but a wife is necessary for many things; obviously here she’s necessary to physically bring the family into existence. The man cannot subdue… if Adam and Eve had no children they would have failed. Their job is to bring children into the world; the woman is necessary for this. She’s necessary to help train a godly seed; the man can’t subdue without a godly seed. And the woman is necessary as a balancing counselor; the man needs the balance of the woman.

Now here’s a most interesting thing; if what we are saying here is true, then we’ve said something very strong against our own generation. In our generation the theme is that we have individual people, just like kind of a grid, one happens to be a male and the other happens to be a female and so on. This is the way society is looked upon and we have various relationships and so on going on, but society is basically viewed in that way. And we call that the atomistic way, after the word “atom,” individual. The atomistic view of society which elevates the individual above all other things and this is the heart of our great problem because very subtly this has rubbed off on evangelicals. This was thought about Paul, it was thought about the male’s role, we have bought a presupposition which we should never have bought, and that is that the man is considered as a unit by himself; the female is considered as a unit by herself. All the discussions about ERA are perceived on an atomistic presupposition. But all this time we have given lip service to the second and third divine institution. I hope before we’re finished tonight we’ll see that it is impossible to define the male’s role apart from the second and third divine institutions… impossible, because every place we look in the pages of Scripture that deals with the man’s role, those are the places that elevate the second and third divine institutions. So we’re sort of stuck; the job and the wife question is not an either/or, it’s a both/and and they’re both under that first dominion call, the call to subdue includes wife and job together.

Now all the Scripture is the Word of God; if it is the Word of God there ought to be empirical outworking of this. That is, when I say the world was created in seven days and it was created recently I ought to be able to justify that statement scientifically. I ought to be able to give an answer back to those who believe in, say the long term dating systems, the uranium method, the argon method, the radiocarbon method, I ought to have found intellectual answers to those questions, and we do that when we study creationism. But we just said something of sociological importance; we’ve said that basically the atomistic view of society is wrong and we’ve also said that the man and the woman can’t function as independent people but they function as a team and wherever that teamwork breaks in a society, society will go down.

Now there’s a tight statement that we don’t have to accept; we can go out in society and look at some results. Fortunately one man has already looked at these results. The man was George Gilder who wrote a book in 1973 for the New York Times Book Company; it’s entitled Sexual Suicide. Now like many unbelievers he took a position that is extreme because he uncovered eight proofs and ran with it a little too far, but nevertheless, George Gilder has brought to light many empirical evidences, just like when we studied creationism we looked at the rocks and we looked at the dating systems that concerned the claims of Scripture. So also Gilder, though unconsciously because he didn’t do it to help the fundamentalists out, has discovered a wealth of material that says this biblical picture of the role of the man versus the role of the woman is indeed the right one, and wherever a society breaks with this role it pays a very severe price.

I’m going to read several sections of his book and I’m grouping these by two parts. I’m going to group some quotations from this book that deal with the breakdown of the woman’s role and the price the man pays. Then I’m going to deal with some of these materials that he found, most amazing, on what happens when the male role breaks down. Here’s what he says on page 6, “Single men comprise eighty to ninety percent of most of the categories of social pathology,” not very complimentary, that is, they’re screwballs, “and on the whole they make less money than any other group in the country. As any insurance actuary will tell you, single men are also less responsible about their bills, less responsible about their driving, and less responsible about other personal conduct. Together with the disintegration of the family single males constitute our leading social problem.” Now the question is why? Believe me, as a pastor I’ve seen men marry and they still act like single males and they still can’t take care of their money and they still can’t take care of their car, so I’m all for old George, he’s found some materials here that fit. His problem is that it’s not categorical; there are fine single men who are oriented and are not this way, and George Gilder’s grid being humanistic he can’t picture this himself, but generally, specifically he’s right, unfortunately.

Now, he makes another observation and this observation has to do with defining the male versus the female asking the question, why does this happen, and he goes back to the elementary sexual roles of the man and the woman. “In the most elemental sense the sex drive is the survival instinct; the primal tie to the future. When the people lose faith in themselves and their prospects they also lose faith in their procreative energy, they commit sexual suicide, they just cannot bear the idea of” (quote) “‘bringing children into the world,’” (end quote). “Such a people may indulge a lot in which they call sex but it is a kind of aimless copulation, having little to do with the deeper currents of sexuality and love that carry and communicate into the future.” And he goes on to expand the fact, it’s very obvious that a woman, as a result of one sex act has a nine-month problem and the point is that biologically it’s very obvious that the woman has to be more long-term, just the way she’s created, than the man can be, or the man has to be. The man is created for short-term; the woman is created for long-term, and therefore Gilder, I think, makes a very surprising sociological statement in which he says, therefore, sexually speaking, it’s the woman, not the man that gives stability. It is the woman who is necessarily forced to be future oriented whereas the male is not forced to be future oriented.

And he then makes this interesting remark: “Love is thus optimistic,” now he’s talking about love within marriage, “an investment of faith in the future of the family, society and mankind. When sex is no longer procreative, no longer love expression, no longer submissive of the male to the female long-term program, it becomes destructive.” And then he adds what’s happening and the threat, and this book, by the way is written against the ERA movement, he says what the threat is that when you take the woman out of this role sexually she tries to mimic the man’s behavior pattern and so then sexually she tries to mimic the man’s short-term view, and then he remarks this way and he ends this quotation in a beautiful confirmation, though he doesn’t realize it, of a verse we just read in Scripture, Genesis 1:26-28.

He says on page 70, “Partly because the pill reduces woman’s consciousness of their longer sexuality, partly because of the long period of male oriented premarital activity, all too many women today pursue sex in essentially the same way as men, as a relatively undiscriminating quest for a temporary release and gratification. Men can find partners too easily; women become so available on male terms that men have not been induced to submit to the futurity of feminine love.” That’s not futility, that’s futurity that is the idea of the future, the long-term picture. “Wives fail to keep their husbands; the cycles of femininity,” that’s the idea of the long-term perspective, “thus even though the marriage may be happy the male is not durably bound to the woman through her womb and the hope for presence of progeny. He does not experience a unique depth of passion for one woman,” and a tremendous way, probably the guy is a non-Christian but just listen how he phrases this truth, and then we’ll read the Scripture that confirms it. Now this is a guy who’s not doing this to prove Scripture, he’s just going out and looking at the sociological data at hand and here’s what he notes. “The man who is not, therefore, active in seducing and raising a family, does not experience the unique depth of passion for one woman as the individual through whom he wishes to define his participation in the future of the race.” A tremendous statement, let me read that again because he’s got all the elements; I don’t know how the guy lucked out here with this statement but he’s got all the elements of Genesis 1:28, “The one woman as the individual through whom he wishes to define his participation in the future of the race.”

Now let’s compare with Genesis 1:28. “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,” the word “be fruitful” is first. How are they to subdue the earth? To “be fruitful and multiply,” in other words, in Adam’s own personal generation it can’t be done. Adam, therefore, to carry out call number one, the call to subdue, must always think of the future; he must think of the godly seed that will come forth from him and that godly seed must be on his mind and he can’t, therefore, approach his job as just something to do between 20 and 65. This is not a 45 year program; this is a program that will go on till history ends, and therefore the man must think in terms of the godly seed that he will leave in history after he’s gone. That’s the future orientation, the family orientation that this man spots. And this is interesting because Gilder goes on in page after page after page to show studies that have been done to show what’s happening when we permit liberalized divorce. What have we done? We have destroyed the futurity, the idea of the family unit persisting in time.

When we pass inheritance taxes, as I have said time and time again, what have we done? We have stopped you from passing, or any father, from passing his wealth to his sons, he’s been cut off, he can never accumulate wealth to pass on into the next generation because he has this barrier of double taxation. The inheritance tax, remember, was never designed to raise revenue. The amount of revenue raised in the inheritance taxes is infinitesimally small. The inheritance tax is passed for social construction purposes, not for revenue raising, and it was passed to destroy the family. It’s a very serious thing. Liberalized divorce acts to destroy the family unit and undercut the first call. Inheritance taxes do the same thing. The laws of property and ownership… do you know why the word “bastard” has such a bad connotation.

The reason the word “bastard” has such a bad connotation is that not so many years ago a bastard was property-less; he could never inherit the property of the family. This meant something; you either were a legitimate child and you inherited or you were illegitimate and didn’t inherit, and then you were a bastard, and this is a very strong word and that’s why today we use it as a slang word but originally it was a very technical word. And so what have we done? The courts have very generously provided for all the bastards and every time the courts provide for the bastards they destroy the family, because therefore they make the bastard, who is not legitimate, they’ve rewarded him for his illegitimacy, they’ve rewarded the whole system that promotes the bastard when they give them full property rights. It is not merciful, not in the long run, to give bastards full property rights. The Scriptures never do; the Scriptures are very careful to eliminate the bastards from full inheritance. Well, these are the ways the whole system is structured; to tear apart these divine institutions.

And then he would know how its working its effect out and the effect is that the women now no longer, as a society principle, the women lose out on their input; it was the woman that held it together with her long-term viewpoint. Here is an example of a woman, a retired prostitute if one of those retires ever, she describes the change that came over her as a result of her little activities. “I began to change in my own thinking and outlook towards sex and realized more of what a man feels. It didn’t take long for me to understand that sex is pretty much like hunger. If I get hungry I eat; if I get horny good sex will take care of my urge. Men’s attitudes began to rub off on me because they were so much a part of my experience. I became no different from most men. There was a time when I used to look upon every man, I took an interest in as a prospective husband, and every time things didn’t get that far I came away feeling disappointed. Once I geared myself to the pleasure of the moment and stopped regarding every man I met as a prospect, the number and intensity of my disappointments dropped sharply.” Well, obviously here is a woman who has total and wholesale results against her position in history. And notice the key word, when she says, “I geared myself to the pleasure of the moment.” This is the complete reverse. She has become entirely male in her outlook.

Let’s look at how this empirical data confirms various passages of Scripture. What is the point we’re making? The empirical evidence that woman had part of a mandate to subdue the earth. Remember, the first call is given to man and woman together and the woman functions also to help subdue the earth and her contribution is to make the male think long-term. Let’s see how that works out in the New Testament. Turn to 1 Timothy 5, a critical question to ask Paul but he will call us up the case of a woman’s contribution to subduing the earth, what do you do about the woman who has lost her husband. What about the widow? What about the woman who is beyond having an effect on her husband, and therefore the woman who’s beyond a direct opportunity to subdue the earth with her direct family. Now isn’t it interesting that in 1 Timothy 5:14 what does Paul counsel about women who have lost their husbands? There are two passages given; one in verse 14, “I will, therefore, that the younger women marry, bear children, guide [rule] the house, and give none occasion for the adversary to speak reproachfully.” Of course the presupposition is that there weren’t some eligible men around. I always get the complaint from the female side of the fence that the statistics within Christian circles don’t favor them. I don’t know what they did then at this particular time, but you can ask Paul how he worked it out, I’d be glad to pass the information on but I don’t know if he does have that presupposition. But he wills the younger women to get back, then, into another family unit and do the same thing, promote the “futurity,” in Gilder’s words, of that unity.

But that’s the younger woman; what about the older woman who’s truly the widow. Turn to Titus 2:3-5, here’s a test case because here’s a woman who can’t elongate the horizons of her husband, but then, notice, “The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, [4] That they may teach the young women … to love their husbands, and to love their children,” now isn’t that an interesting role for the older woman? It doesn’t say anything about the ladies missionary society in verses 3-4. It says that those older women are to help the younger women to learn the skill of child raising, of management around the house. Now isn’t that interesting that the New Testament points the woman forever back to that role, never lets her get out of it, never says with the ERA advocates, oh but there’s a career outside of the home that’s open to you. This may or may not be, but the New Testament doesn’t certainly emphasize that. The New Testament is emphasizing, even with the aged woman, back in the home. That’s some of Gilder’s comments and remarks and empirical data about the woman and what happens when it breaks down; she becomes male like and she loses a unique thing that she’s contributing into the system to make it work.

Now let’s look at the male a little bit. According to the Bible we would expect that the male must subdue the earth only through his family. In other words, all this problem about job versus wife is a false dichotomy. The Scriptures don’t know that there’s competition between job and wife; the Scriptures recognize them as two parts to the same thing, subduing the earth.

One of the most inflammatory reports in recent years to come down the pipe, that is inflammatory to the liberals that is, was a report by one of their own, none other than the famous flamboyant Irishman to the United Nations, Patrick Moynihan. Patrick Moynihan was commissioned during LBJ’s administration to study the problem of the black ghetto and why is it that no matter what social welfare program we have, it never seems to work. We pour money in and pour money in and pour money into ghetto after ghetto after ghetto and nothing comes out the other end except higher crime statistics, lower SAT scores on the exams and so on. It’s something, at least somebody had the foresight to see there might be something wrong here. So he commissioned Patrick Moynihan who went into the area and asked him, Mr. Moynihan, what do you find? And Moynihan issued the famous report, and many books have been written about this report, but one of the key thins that Moynihan found was a problem in the ghetto that could not be solved by money and here’s the problem. He said it’s very obvious, the entire structure of the black ghetto is matriarchal; the women run the families. The men are not responsible. He said when you go through who do you worry about raping you? Who do you worry about robbing you? Who do you worry about shooting you? The women or the men? Who is it that runs in the streets in the gangs, women or men primarily? It’s always the men. Now why is this? Because the men don’t have any place in the home, they’ve been essentially rendered socially impotent and we’ve done it with the system we’ve given welfare to. We give the woman as much as the man and therefore the man has equal or less money than the women. And this is one of the factors Moynihan pointed out; you’ve just rendered the man… by rendering him financially weak you’ve rendered him socially impotent, he has no role left.

And so the very welfare programs that were supposed to help have only perpetuated the problems that they never dealt with, optimism. The welfare presupposition was that the ghetto is a society of individual people and all we have to do is give this person food stamps, this person food stamps, this person… wrong! Those people are locked into family units; you’ve got to approach them not as individuals; you’ve got to approach them as families and this is one of Moynihan’s findings. He says black children from fatherless families experience unusual difficulties in differentiating the roles of man and woman; they never learned this. And so as Moynihan pointed out, it’s simply perpetuated into the next generation.

And he says consider the poor black man in the ghetto on welfare; what is he reduced to but an errand boy who runs an errand between two women, the woman at the welfare office who gives him his check and the woman at home. Now he says do you expect a man to exercise leadership when you set up the programs to render him responsible to two women, like a little boy to his mother? You’ve just rendered him socially impotent by the very system of the design of the welfare. Of course the report was not well liked.

But then Gilder goes on and shows two other interesting results that sort of confirm this position. He says you study the black ghetto, and again we’re not concentrating on the blacks because they’re black, it’s just that these are the major areas of research that have been done. He says, the strange thing, there are in the black ghetto places that have completely reversed the trend, who have been completely successful at building solid black families with integrity and business sense. And he says do you know what one of them is? The black Muslims. Now how are the Black Muslims able to reverse all of these trends that people said we’ve spent millions and we can’t do it? It’s very [can’t understand word], an article of the religion of the Black Muslims is that the man takes responsibility for his home; it’s not money, a shift in values not a program but a change in beliefs. That’s what works the change. And so he says the result is that the Muslims have created an extraordinary network of small business, comparable on a lesser scale to the entrepreneurial accomplishment of Jews and Chinese, both of whom also employ a patriarchal religion to affirm their males. Also, like the Jews, the Muslims, almost uniquely among the blacks, have succeeded in establishing a school system that actually teaches poor black children to read and write as white grade levels. Now why? Was it because of money or government programs? Not at all. It was because somebody had the foresight to see these people are believing the wrong doctrine and ideas have consequences. It’s not a racial problem at all. It’s an ideological problem, a crisis of culture, and you’ve got to change the culture and you can’t change the culture with money. You change the culture by challenging its ideas and its behavior patterns.

Then most astoundingly, a doctor gathered together a whole bunch of statistics to find out among the blacks who were succeeding in America, he studied 500 leading PhDs and MDs in our country; his name was Andrew Billingsley, after studying all these he found four common factors among the successful black men. (1) they had a history of family literacy where they were taught to read in the home, where the family demanded that their children read and encouraged reading. (2) a father with a determination of iron, an ambition for his children that is illimitable and a disciplined mind that will exemplify and induce and foster good habits in children, not so much that he crushes the child, but he conveys a spark of ambition to his sons, the second factor common to all highly excelling man. (3) A mother who cooperated with her husband; and (4) a good school. And here’s a phenomenal thing and this should encourage those of us who think in evangelical terms as to how we’re thinking well, our little puttering efforts can never wield good results and here we are, just one little congregation of a few hundred people, what are we going to do to change the world. Well, listen to this statistic and maybe this will encourage you. [First side of cassette was quite difficult to hear]

After studying these 500 leading black PhDs and MDs, he found that most of them had come from one county in the United States. It makes you wonder, what’s unique about that one county. So he went to the county; it was Perry County, Alabama. And then he began to look at each one of these men’s fathers and their grandfathers and he discovered a major thing. Every one of these people that had come from Perry County had fathers or grandfathers that had gone to Lincoln Memorial School, one school started in 1868 in Marion, the county seat, and it was set up, he doesn’t say by Christians but apparently somebody was real concerned, for only black boys, not black girls. Now isn’t that interesting; one school, in 1868 a hundred years later 500 black PhDs and MDs, no government program, just a school that instilled discipline and training and look at the results, carrying on to the second and third generations. Now isn’t that amazing dynamics? See what you can do when the ball gets rolling in the right direction; a little force creates a tremendous acceleration.

Let’s see if we can go to Scripture and pull some of this stuff together and then conclude with an answer to that man’s question about the job and his wife. We’ve already made the point that women are involved in that first mandate to subdue the earth, through their strong family role. And therefore any man, particularly you single men, when you look, look at the woman; is this the kind of woman that you want to participate, in Gilder’s words, “into the future of the human race.” She is your key to the future so look her over carefully, look at her character, find out what kind of a woman she is.

Now the men, on their side, their subduing the earth is inevitably tied to the family. This is an amazing thing; I’m going to take you through some Scriptures here and as we read these Scriptures, starting in Genesis 18, let’s try to ask one question of the Word. Let’s keep asking ourselves every time we read one of these passages, how does the male prosper. In every one of these references we’re asking this one question, how does the male, not the female, how does the male prosper? How is he seen to prosper? Genesis 18:17, “And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? [18] Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” Now what does it say about Abraham’s character? [19] For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him.” Now is there a word in there about Abraham being the great sheep rancher, that in fact he was? And he was a great rancher who had many, many camels, was a very wealthy businessman; does it say that that’s why and that’s the thing? Not at all. The one thing God says that is a signal of the man’s prosperity from God’s point of view is that he produces a godly seed. Now that will include wealth… that will include wealth, this is not a mandate for living poorly. But notice the emphasis in the Word of God; it is on the man’s godly seed.

Now turn to Deuteronomy 28, one of the blessing passages to Israel. This is the cursings and the blessings and in Deuteronomy 28:2-6 the blessings upon the nation are given. “And all these blessings shall come upon thee,” this is legitimate blessing, there’s nothing wrong about being concerned about material wealth, it’s just how you use it. “All these blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.” Now look at the list of blessings. [3] “Blessed shalt thou be in the city,” urban life, “and blessed shalt thou be in the field,” that’s rural life, it’s just talking about the divisions geographically in the society. But now look in verse 4 and look at the juxtaposition of these blessings; look at how they weave from one to the other. “Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body,” it’s talking about children, “Blessed shall the fruit of thy body be, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine [cows], and the flocks of thy sheep. [5] Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store [kneading-trough]. [6] Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.”

What was the first blessing? “Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body. It’s intermingled quite freely with the blessings of the cattle, which is wealth. We read that as, you know, what kind of an agricultural bit is this? That’s money, cattle in the Old Testament, when they talk about multiplying cattle they’re talking about multiplying your stock, they’re talking about multiplying your basic wealth and your capital assets, that’s what the cattle is, that’s what the land is. So learn to read it in 20^th century categories, this is wealth. God promises to bless them financially, but the blessing financially is not seen, as we often get this hang-up, job versus wife, and I don’t know one man that hasn’t grappled with the problem because the man has to grapple with this; this is a 24 hour a day problem. What do I do, my job or my wife? My job or my wife? But when you look at these passages they put the two underneath the overall; the overall thing is subduing and blessing and they’re both brought in underneath that umbrella.

Let’s watch this and trace it a little bit further. Turn to Joshua 24:15 Joshua is giving the mandate, just before he dies, to the nation. He’s talking about blessing. He’s talking about the spiritual reality. He’s talking about his position in life. And in verse 15 he makes that famous statement, you’ve all heard it if you’ve been in fundamental circles for some time but don’t let it go by this time, just look at it. “If it seem evil to you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” For whom does Joshua speak? For his house, his bayith is the Hebrew word, and the Hebrew word bayith, we might as well introduce it here because this becomes a key; it’s not the atomist view of society. Do you know where we’re getting this? That comes from the Greeks; that’s Platonism. The Greeks never could get their stuff together, they had city states all over the place and they never could run the things; they were always chaotic. And do you know why? The Greeks introduced, with a vigor, the idea of individual freedom, as little atoms in the air bumping against each other. But that’s not the picture, in the Hebrew it’s bayith, and it’s all within terms of the bayith, never in terms of the individual that the blessing is happening. Here Joshua is speaking you’d swear he was making an individual decision, wouldn’t you? You would swear that he has no right to speak for his little atomistic children. Joshua wouldn’t say that; I’m ruler of this house and I decide this house will be run according to the Word of God and it will be. And that’s what the declaration, “I and my house,” not just I, the atom, I, but I and my bayith will serve the Lord.

Let’s continue to 1 Samuel 8:1-3, the problem of Samuel the prophet. “And it came to pass when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.” This is his seed. [2] “Now the name of his first-born was Joel; and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beer-sheba. [3] And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre [money], and took bribes, and perverted judgment. [4] Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, [and came unto Samuel unto Ramah,] [5] “And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways; now make us a king….” There was a collapse of Samuel’s bayith, Samuel’s house failed and that failure of one man and his family destroyed political freedom in the nation Israel. That directly led to the rise of the monarchy and the loss of freedom, because this one prophet failed and his bayith collapsed. See how the Hebrew thought links prosperity, freedom, blessing, with the welfare of the bayith.

Turn to 2 Samuel 7:11 and now the significance of the word bayith will come to the fore. 2 Samuel 7 is the Davidic Covenant. God wants to bless David, it’s a very poignant chapter, 2 Samuel 7. When you understand the background of ancient near eastern culture and you realize that every other king, of Assyria, Egypt, and so on, the pagan countries, whenever they came back from a campaign to conquer the first item on the agenda would be to build a temple for their god; this is always the first thing. So this is why the chapter begins in verse 2, David’s been given rest, he’s in exactly the same position as the Pharaoh or the King of Assyria, and that’s why David says to Nathan, hey, I want to build God a house. David’s thinking in terms of anything the other kings would have thought of; he’s not… you know, there’s nothing wrong about this, except God wants to show David grace. And God is going to show David that God isn’t going to be given a gift, God is going to give David a gift. And so, as we read, the announcement goes on, in verse 11, “And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people, Israel, I have caused thee to rest from all thine enemies. Also, the LORD tells thee that he will make thee a bayith.” Now there’s a pun on the word. When David uses the word bayith he thinks in terms of a physical temple; God says I’ll build you a bayith David, a bayith that will last forever and ever and ever, but it won’t be a bayith out of boards and lumber and cloth, it’s going to be a dynasty and a family that will live and be the kings of the earth.

Now if God considers, at this point of 2 Samuel, this is kind of God’s Christmas present to David. Think of the wisdom of God in giving us a gift; He gave us Christ, a perfectly designed gift for our salvation. Now do you suppose that God gives gifts without thought? Not at all. So here we have God giving David the greatest gift that He could give a king. Now if we were to think in terms of our Platonism and our Aristotelian atomism we’d think why what He could give to David would be wealth, then He could pay for his son’s education, what He could do would be give him a mighty addition to his kingdom or a new military weapon. No! The greatest gift that God could give a king is a family, a bayith and that’s the gift that God gives David. And there again the Hebrew thought is rigorous in its consistency. The male’s prosperity is seen in his bayith, not in his job or in his wife as individuals but in them together as a family corpus.

Let’s go to 1 Kings 11:11, this is when Solomon is cursed. Notice the terms of the cursing, cursing upon a male king and how is that cursing expressed toward the male king. “Wherefore, the LORD said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done by you, and you have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from the and will give it to thy servant. [12] Nevertheless, in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father’s sake; but I will rend [tear] it out of the hand of thy son. [13] However, I will not rend away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to thy son, for David My servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, which I have chosen.” Now notice, consistently in verse 12 and verse 13 the blessing rendered back to David and the cursing rendered to Solomon is in terms of the bayith, in terms of his house. It is only David’s bayith that God loves and just because God loves David and the present He gave David, which was his bayith, his home, his dynasty, only because of that… only because of that does this man not lose his entire kingdom. And it emphasizes it again in verse 13, the same point.

Turn to Proverbs and look at some passages there about the role of the man. Proverbs 10:1, these are the things and the blessings of the male in Proverbs. Notice, “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.” Notice the happiness theme.

Turn to Proverbs 15:20, we’ll just quickly go through some of these proverbs, one after the other, so you can see that we’re not picking an isolated verse, this is not an isolated theme that I have picked up; it’s embedded in the very text. “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish man despises his mother.” Now what’s the wisdom and the foolishness? Ordering their life in the Word of God, being productive, carrying out that first calling.

A real proverb, Proverbs 17:6 and this has a unique twist to it and this little twist enables us to get behind the Hebrew mind a little bit more. It talks about the crown of the old men, the males; what is their crown seen as. “Children’s children are the crown of old men; that’s the third generation’s son, and where is the male blessed in God’s point of view? By his grandson. And you can’t have a blessed grandson if he hasn’t had sons that would raise those blessed grandsons. But then the last part of the verse seems to reverse itself. You don’t expect to read what you read there. “…the glory of children are their fathers.” Now you’d think, wait a minute, isn’t that kind of… isn’t that reverse, shouldn’t we read “the glory of the fathers are the children.” That’s what you’d expect to read, but it doesn’t say that. It says “the glory of the children are their fathers.” Now why is that? Here’s the father, here’s the son, here’s the grandson. That father is blessed and he has a crown; that crown upon that man is because of his godly seed, his bayith. When God looks down he says that is the reward of the man. It may involve material wealth but you notice consistently in these passages it’s not said that wealth makes the father happy, wealth makes the man happy. It’s there but it’s never prominently there.

Now this verse, when it says the glory of the children are their fathers, what is the glory of the children but their character? That which radiates out from them, that’s glory. And what is the verse saying? The glory, or the character of the third generation is the character of their father. So far from being opposite polls in verse 6, it’s saying the same thing; the first part of verse 6 and the last part of verse 6. It’s just saying the truth this way; one is approaching it from the grandfather, looking at his grandson, and the grandson becomes the father’s crown, and the other verse looks at it the reverse and says the character that the grandson does, that is the basis of his prosperity, is the character of his father. And so the father and his son and his grandson are united in a stream of continuity, a godly seed has been raised.

Proverbs 17:21, “He that begets a fool does it to his sorrow, [and the father of a fool has no joy],” the godly seed has failed, and the male is unhappy and he’s looked upon as a cursed man, it’s his sorrow and he has no joy.

In Proverbs 19:14, we normally look at the second part of the verse, talking about the wife, but let’s look at the first part. We sometimes read it wrong also. Verse 14 says, “House and riches are the inheritance of fathers, and a prudent wife is from the LORD.” Now we often say, sentimentally, it’s a good verse, “a prudent wife is from the LORD,” but let’s look at the other part of the verse because we’re looking at it more from this other point. Notice riches are mentioned here, “riches are the inheritance of the fathers,” but what else is mentioned? The bayith, the house; that’s not talking about a house that you build; it’s talking about his family. It’s a bayith and his riches, it’s not talking about the material physical home. So notice again, the riches are not denied, but the emphasis time and time and time again in all these verses is on the male and his bayith.

Proverbs 20:20, the breakdown of the bayith due them to the second generation. “Whoso curses his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.” That’s the son who revolts, as we examined it in the days when we did the Proverbs series; there’s the son who revolts against the continuity of the bayith, who tries to destroy it, and the result is that everything goes into darkness. J

What can we conclude and pull together so far because this has been sort of a survey to show the structure of that sexual differentiation and then answer the question of the job versus the wife. We’ve answered that it’s a false presupposition that asks the question. It is not a question of the job versus the wife. That’s the Greek idea of looking at things, that we have sort of a whole set of marbles here that are somehow not inherently connected. And that, in the very beginning, is the wrong way to look at the problem; the problem is that the wife and the riches and the home and the holdings are all considered part of the bayith, part of the third divine institution of the family. And the Scriptures insist that we constantly look at the bayith, that the wife and the job together is the calling. The calling is not the job ripped away from the wife and she’s sort of an appendage to it but rather, the wife is part and parcel of the calling.

Let’s see if we can summarize it in a series of propositions. The calling includes the job and the wife, or the job and the family if you want to pull it together that way. This means two things: there’s a calling to produce material wealth for the family to use in this and the next generation. Material wealth is not denied the male; the male is to generate some material wealth, but why, that’s the critical question. Why the wealth? Why the house if you’re going to slave away at a job; the issue is why, what is the goal. The Hebrew insists it’d better be for the family to use it. If your job is so structured that you put so many hours into the job that the family can’t use it, the job’s a job, it’s wrong. The job ought to flow back and edify the family. Yes, there will be times on the job, every farmer has a problem, that certain times of the year, when he’s out day and night in the field, yes, but those are temporary periods. We’re talking about a job that’s consistently that way, that tears the male away from his wife and away from his children. Yeah, he’s generating wealth but for what? Is he contributing spiritual edification so the family knows how to use it? Is he training his son to know the value of the wealth that he’s supposedly accumulating for a later day or not? So looking at it first from the wealth toward the family, we say I generate wealth in order that the family be blessed, and can use that wealth in a godly, doctrinal way.

But now let’s reverse it and look at the family toward the wealth. I am called to edify my family, to train them to use the accumulated wealth. It flows both ways; the wealth is there for the family’s benefit, and the family is to be trained to use it, and therefore it integrates the two. There’s not this constant hassle. The fact that there is this hassle in the American male is because the American male is submerged in a hostile culture, and as Christian men we ought to fight against this; we have to pray against it and the wives ought to help and fortify their husbands to pray against it. The American society is built to idolize the job and tear the man out of the home. Look at the companies and the corporations in this ridiculous deal about moving every two or three years. That is again, whether it’s deliberate or not we’re not concerned with that, but the point is spiritually you pay the same price, you gradually destroy your family. Your family doesn’t have a place called home; no place to sit down. It’s been a rich rootless by a stupid policy of transferring a person from here to there and everywhere. It’s ridiculous the mobility of present day society. The visiting that goes on, in long-term areas, from one side of the country to the next; the tremendous mobility is destructive.

A second point. The first point is the calling includes the job and the family together. The second point is the call to subdue, contrary to what I’ve said before, the call to subdue ought to be seen as located in the third divine institution. The first divine institution is personal responsibility; I’m going to be judged individually before the Lord, but the call to subdue the earth and generate wealth is familial. And I’ll prove that later when we go through the Mosaic legislation I’ll show you that all property is held never by an individual; property is always held in the name of a family. That’s why there are laws against bastards, that’s why the divorce laws are the way they are, because the family held the property, not people in the family.

The third point, if you want a picture of the male’s position, let’s take David as just a working model. How would David have been blessed as a king in Israel? He would rule over his home. What do you suppose David would do for his sons? He’d generate them a kingdom, wouldn’t he? What would that kingdom include, but material possessions, obviously. What else would it include? Training for his sons to rule after he’d gone, that kingdom. David would rule as a king, but then be careful; this is not carte blanche for males doing whatever they want to. Who would always stand over David versus, for example, no one standing over Pharaoh, no one standing over the Mesopotamian kings; it’d always be a Nathan with the Word of God, standing over David. And so the picture of the male is that he’s a king; his house isn’t castle but his family is his kingdom. And the family holdings are his kingdom, and he’s a king reigning under the Word of God. What a contrast to the horrible thing of the black male in the ghetto, the little errand boy between the woman and the welfare office and momma at home, and David, the mighty king who rules his son for the future generations.

Next week we’ll deal with Genesis 3.