The following is the introduction to "God's Calling for Husbands." You can read the entire sermon by following the link below or by listening to the audio.
This morning we are looking at God’s Calling for Husbands and Fathers. Last month, we looked at God’s Calling for Wives and Mothers, so today I want to spend our time addressing husbands and fathers. It is true that we’re living in a day where we’re watching the disintegration of marriage as we know it. With the rise of homosexuality and lesbianism, the traditional marriage of a man and a woman is almost becoming extinct in our society. On Thursday, June 8, 2006, the Senate voted to end debate on a federal amendment to the Constitution stating that marriage is between a man and a woman. The vote was 49-48 leaving it stalled in debate (htt p://w ww.fo xnews .com/ story /0,29 33,19 8511, 00.ht ml). Years ago, such an amendment was not needed because everyone understood that marriage between and a man and a women was the cornerstone of society but not so today. Some years ago, there was an article published in the Saturday Evening Post entitled “The Seven Ages of the Married Cold. In this article was a not-so-funny look at the decline of marriage as seen through the common cold. It went like this:
The first year: “Sugar dumpling, I’m really worried about my baby girl. You’ve got a bad sniffle, and there’s no telling about these things with all this strep throat going around. I’m putting you in the hospital this afternoon for a general checkup and a good rest. I know the food’s lousy, but I’ll be bringing your meals in from Rossini’s. I’ve already got it all arranged with the floor superintendent.”
The second year: “Listen, darling, I don’t like the sound of that cough. I called Doc Miller and asked him to rush over here. Now go to bed like a good girl, please? Just for papa.”
The third year: “Maybe you’d better lie down, honey; nothing like a little rest when you feel lousy. I’ll bring you something to eat. Have got any canned soup?”
The fourth year: “Now look, dear, be sensible. After you’ve fed the kids, washed the dishes, and finished the floor, you’d better lie down.”
The fifth year: “Why don’t you take a couple of aspirin?”
The sixth year: “I wish you’d just gargle or something, instead of sitting around all evening barking like a seal!”
The seventh year: “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing! Are you trying to give me pneumonia?”
Psychologist Carl Rogers in his book Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives, said, “To me it seems that we are living in an important and uncertain age, the institution of marriage is most assuredly in an uncertain state. If 50 to 75 percent of Ford or General Motors' cars completely fell apart within the early part of their lifetimes as automobiles, drastic steps would be taken. We have no such well organized way of dealing with our social institutions, so people are groping, more or less blindly, to find alternatives to marriage (which is certainly less than 50 percent successful). Living together without marriage, living in communes, extensive child care centers, serial monogamy (with one divorce after another), the women's liberation movement to establish the woman as a person in her own right, new divorce laws which do away with the concept of guilt-these are all groping toward some new form of man-woman relationship for the future. It would take a bolder man than I to predict what will emerge” [New York: Delacorte, 1972], p. 11).
Carl Rogers admits that in trying those alternatives to marriage people are “groping” for a new definition of man-woman relationships. But we don't need to grope; all we need to do is to go back to the Creator to find out how these relationships ought to work. After all, God made us-He must know. Carl Rogers said it would take a bolder man that he to predict what will happen to marriage. The Bible itself predicts what will happen in 2 Timothy 3.
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