“The Case for Christ: - Kingdom/God: Family & God’s Rule” 

Heb 4:2: ‘...for unto us was the gospel preached...but the Word preached did not profit them not being mixed with faith in them that heard it’.

We have been concentrating for some time on Jesus’ teaching about ‘living in the Kingdom of God’.

Those called into it gain the advantage when they mix the words Jesus spoke with faith as they hear it. 

Probably nowhere is this more evident than in its application and practice within the marriage and family.

It is in this private place of the ‘in-house’ disciplines of life where there are unlimited opportunities for full development.

It is a veritable ‘gold mine’ in which our souls can be privately ‘excavated’ and ‘washed’ for the brilliance of the divine ‘gold of Christ’ to shine forth from it. 

With Christ, the love of God must be honestly and openly enthroned to bring to His desired end the purpose of His Kingdom rule.

This rule is God’s gift through Christ to men for a useful and fruitful life.

And living in the rule of God means the heart willingly and cooperatively bows itself to the kingship of Christ.

That is the distinguishing characteristic of the Christ-filled heart of God’s love. 

That is love that is characteristic of the people of His kingdom - a noble, higher love involving the whole mind, heart, and will. 

With all that set before us, let us look, therefore, into this rule of God in His kingdom briefly tonight from the standpoint of marriage and family once more. 

And - again - we go back to the place where Jesus started His discourse of marriage - back to creation.

How was God’s rule first established at that time?

As in the creation of Adam and Eve, also out from His eternal heart of love, He revealed His rule. 

The divine rule was established in a loving, sharing, intimate covenant between the Creator and His creation.

A careful study of this rule can be condensed to four leading features, which I am calling (for practical purposes) the features of perpetuation, provision, protection, and pleasurable enjoyment one with the other.

Perpetuation, provision, protection, and pleasurable enjoyment of one another  - here is the revelation of the dignity God afforded to His creation.    

Let me just quickly mention each separately as they were given to Adam and Eve.

The first thing God decreed was the perpetuation that we saw last week in Mk 10:14-15: that is, the blessings of posterity toward whom His love always will be granted, continued, and enlarged.  

He ‘...blessed them...and said...Be fruitful, multiply...replenish the earth and subdue it...’.  

Then, God provided for their physical well-being.

To Adam and Eve, He said: ‘...have dominion over the fish...the fowl...every living thing...I have given you every herb bearing seed...every tree...the fruit of a tree...to you it shall be food’.

Third, He gave them the protection they needed, by telling them: ‘Of every tree you may freely eat but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat...’.

And, lastly, He expressed His pleasure in them and with them. 

He called His creation ‘good’.

Together, they enjoyed pleasurable fellowship in the cool of the day when He would walk in Eden, in the ‘garden of delight and pleasantness’, with them. 

There it was: His rule over them in the perpetuation of His love to their posterity, in His provision, in His protection and security, and in His pleasurable fellowship with them.

If you would like, study the subsequent covenant with Abraham where you will find the same four features applied in it.

Can we possibly comprehend what this means?

It means nothing less than God having given Himself to man, to bond with His creation!

And it means that God’s heart was still moving in this deep, noble love toward His creation in Abraham. 

It was expressing the closest possible relationship between God and man that had an amazing intimacy in it.

But sin pierced the covenants - this bond between them - so God gave Himself to the world in Christ.

And Christ gave Himself to the world and, for His Church in God, to bring His creation back to this rule and bond of God in His kingdom.

In other words, this same substance of rule is intended for husband and wife in His kingdom today. 

And it is the same substance of rule Christ has for His Church today.

It is not a tyrannical nor despotic rule, as some count ‘rule’ to be; nor is it domineering and arrogant!

With this definition, some have the disposition of placing God into a ‘yardstick’ kind of ruler.

Probably, one of the harshest and most cruel teachings of many years that has plagued Christian marriages is the teaching of the husband’s rule over the wife.

And the rule usually in mind has been a dictatorial, domineering kind of rule - so unlike the rule of Christ in us.

But we must look at God’s mind in the light of what He has revealed of Himself in His Word and adjust our thinking accordingly.

He knew the consequences of sin, the sowing and reaping principle, the principle of death that follows sin, the principle of corruption, depravity, and social injustice of men to man.

These were locked within God’s thought, hidden away in the ‘tree of good and evil.’
 
When judgment fell, it fell from that side of the cup of wrath as the natural outcome of sin.

All His judgments are based on that truth - of that actuality of sin and its natural consequences.

It can be no other way!

When He placed judgment on the various ‘lawbreakers’, as time progressed, the judgment had already been determined by the very nature of the committed sin.

In the Old Testament, there are many, many times when the kings were known as those who did ‘evil in the sight of the Lord.’

In every one of those cases, the judgments pronounced were out from the principles of death that fell naturally upon them.

It was not because God hated the sinner nor was vindictive in His eternal Being. 

No - God could not help them in any way except in the case of a ‘heart after God’, as in David, for example.

In Adam and Eve’s case, the principle of sin and death could bring no other judgment than the one God rehearsed to them. 

Thus, the actual rule God established was based strictly on His rule of love - a love that was to be perpetuated, a love that provided and protected, and a love that was reciprocal and pleasurable.

How did Jesus show this actual ‘rule of His kingdom’ to Peter?

When Peter failed to mine the depths of his heart of love for Christ in his temptation trials, Jesus did not cast him out and refuse to minister His love to Peter.

He just settled for what Peter had to offer at the moment.

It was a love Peter had for Christ that was coming out from under his animated, hot-headed, crusty, evil temper. 

His heart was in the right place but that was all he had to give Christ at the time. 

But - there came the time when Peter grew up. 

He had to - if his intention was to move onward in Christ’s kingdom.

So God saw to it that Peter was pressed into Christ!

He brought Peter up to the height of love, to that noble, higher plane of love, that Christ in His kingdom is.

Yes - Peter had to go through some hard discipline out from the divine hand of the holy requirements of God’s rule of the kingdom.

And - yes - he had to experience the purifying power of the Word and the recovering grace of Christ.

But his disgrace did not stand in the way of Christ fully forgiving and restoring Peter.

It was only the love of Christ that constrained Peter to go on without discouragement and giving up.

And, in the same way, the ‘in-house’ problems in marriage and family are to press into Christ and His love for healing. 

In order to know and experience this high and noble love of God, it is in the more intimate group of the family where the warmer, closer affection is constantly being pressed into a consistent harmony that dignifies the rights and needs of others.

And this is how marriage and family and Christ’s church become agents in His hands to minister to the very highest ideal of life.

But - how, we ask, is this to come about?

How can this ‘rule of God’s kingdom’ solve the discords of family living?

Jesus gave the solution in Lu 11:34-36.

There He said: ‘The light of the body is the eye: when thine eye is single, thy whole body is also full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body is also full of darkness.

Take good care, then, that this principle of light which is in thee is light, not darkness.

If thy whole body therefore is full of light, with no trace of darkness, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.’

Yes - there is where the key is: full illumination comes when we are willing to receive light from the lamp of Jesus’ teaching of His kingdom.

It is against this background of overcoming evil with good that Jesus’ teaching about the opportunities given in family living should be read.

It is in living in His kingdom of light that problems can be solved.

In it, there is no darkness, just as there was no darkness in Adam and Eve before evil entered.

That means that in His kingdom, wrong is squarely faced and eliminated when it shows its ugly head.

It means that we learn to use the only spiritual weapon available to us in those instances: the power of God in Christ Jesus to overcome the evil.

It also means that, at times, we have to suffer ourselves in the cloak of Christ’s meekness so that we do not pay back evil with evil whereby others are hurt by us. 

So, then, if the family discord is of our own doing, the obvious course is to remove the evil at once.

We do what Zaccheus did.

He said to Jesus, when he met Him: ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.’ (Lu 19:8)

He quickly made restitution many fold. He bowed to the Kingship of Jesus - and he did it gladly and willingly!

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Sometime, as soon as you can, read 1 Cor 13 in the light of God’s rule for husband and wife, of His rule in His church.
  
There - Paul was just echoing exactly what God’s heart purposed for His creation when he wrote (and I am reading from a composite of translations): 

‘Love is very patient, very kind; it knows no jealousy, is neither anxious to impress, makes no parade; it is not arrogant nor conceited. It is never rude nor unmannerly, nor is it indecent.

Love does not insist on its own way, does not pursue selfish aims.

Love is never provoked, never reckons up her wrongs. It takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, does not gloat over other men’s sin but is always glad when truth prevails, delights in the truth.

Love overlooks faults, is always slow to expose. It bears up under anything.

It has unquenchable faith, hopes under all circumstances, ever patient, endures without limit.

Love will never come to an end, never disappear, never pass away. Love never fails.’

Love never fails! 

Do we really believe that statement as Paul pictured it here?

We will not know the truth of it until we have practiced it in all the opportunities afforded in family living each day of our lives.

It is then that we will find the proof of it for ourselves!

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Yes - Christians do make shipwreck of their marriages - of their lives - within their families.

Sometimes, there are conditions that seem impossible for true home life ever to be realized.

But even here, the underlying principle of Jesus’ teaching still holds true. 

Although marriage and family problems are prevalent today in our society, we still need to go back to God’s rule of marriage.

We need to go back to His rule of the perpetuation of His love, of provision, of protection, and of the pleasures of fellowship one with the other.

We need to see God’s rule as the most enduring and most promising fixative for marriage and family living in our day and in the days to come.

We need to see it as a sacred gift God has given us in which we are merging ourselves into the highest and most noblest of institutions.

These are the things Jesus taught and we will profit by them when we mix faith into what we hear from Him.

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With this, I will close this short study on marriage and family with the prayer that we will ponder these things seriously before the Lord.

And that we will keep growing up into Him to become the examples of His great love in all our relationships.

Amen.

Let us pray.