THE LIVESTREAM - What Authority Does a Husband Really Have?
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Length
1 hour and 19 minutes
Words per minute
187.79402
Harmful content
Misogyny
43
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Toxicity
12
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Hate speech
51
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss patriarchy and the role of patriarchy in the home and how it relates to the Christian doctrine of submission and authority within the home. Is this teaching of the Bible really all that controversial? Is it so unthinkable that someone has final authority over important issues? Tune in now as we discuss this viral clip and the authority that a husband really has.
Transcript
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Much uproar has been had in recent weeks about the Christian doctrine of submission and authority
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within marriage. What has been the most controversial, however, is not simply the
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concept of the doctrine itself or the original biblical text in question, but the application
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of the principle. A simple illustration of the practical, functional authority of a husband
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in the home from a sermon has been clipped and now been viewed millions of times resulting
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in significant backlash. But is this teaching of the Bible really all that controversial?
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Is it so unthinkable that someone in the home has final authority over important issues?
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Tune in now as we discuss this viral clip and the authority that a husband really has.
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All right. Welcome back, GA. Good afternoon, gentlemen. It's good to be back here. We're
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going to be talking about everyone's favorite topic, patriarchy and authority. How'd you know
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that's my favorite topic? It was a wild guess. There was a couple topics, but I was like, that
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one might be up there. Now we're gonna be talking about authority, talking about patriarchy. I want
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to lay a little bit of a groundwork though for this. And the groundwork is that authority is
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inevitable. Authority is inevitable in every single context. So the reason we have authority
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in political systems, we have authority in the military, and we even have authority into the
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home, which we'll get to, is that all of these systems are aimed at doing something. So the
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military has to function. Individuals, I was in the military for four years, individuals have
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objectives and missions, things to accomplish. And so somebody has to be vested with the decision
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making, has to be vested with the authority to say, this is what we're going to do, and this is
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how we're going to accomplish it. That's the military. Politically, in the same way, we vest
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a large amount of authority, a lot of power underneath the bounds of the Constitution,
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ideally. Supposed to be. Supposed to be. It lays out the limits of their authority. We vest a lot
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of authority in a Supreme Court of nine individuals, a very small amount. And really, it's just the
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same kind of one to two individuals that really make the decision on that court. We vest a lot
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of authority in them to make the final decision, not because they're always going to get it right,
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but because functionally it helps society keep moving and it makes a decision and we go forward
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from it. So don't be thinking as we talk about the home, we talk about husbands and wives and
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children. Man, this is so backwards that in 2024, we'd be talking about authority and power and
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leadership and all these different things. It's not whether we're going to have authority. So
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it's not maybe there will be authority in the home. Maybe there won't be. It's who will have
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the final authority. I think of parents and children. If the parents are not in authority
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and dictating and training leading the children the children will rule the home yep with their
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caprice with their whatever it is that they want in that given moment which is common you see that
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a lot right so it's not whether we're going to have authority don't think about man it'd just
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be so nice if we get away from these systems of authority and structure and power and all this
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it's who is going to have the authority not whether but which not whether but who exactly
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i want to jump in there for a second i know this is not quite the direction we planned on going but
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you said something there that really triggered a thought for me, Wes. And you said that someone
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has to make a decision because that can allow society, the platoon, the business to keep moving
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in a direction. And I would suspect that among all of the things that we have wrong about marriage
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and leadership and authority, one of them is we have failed to understand the purpose and direction
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of a family a family is not simply finding a lifelong cuddle partner that you can watch movies
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with on saturdays and you know you can go on long walks with in the evening have your dog
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that you treat like a kid like if if that's what you think the purpose of family is and the
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direction of family is just this mutual snuggle fest then the idea of patriarchy and authority
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is jarring, it's startling, it's alarming. But if there's a higher direction, which Scripture
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lays out for family and purpose, if it's supposed to be going somewhere that God has said, then
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that's largely going to change our view of why authority is necessary, why it's inevitable,
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and why it's even good. It's even good. It's not just inevitable, it's good. So our definition
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and understanding of what a family is and the direction that God expects it to go in is really
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fundamental here yeah that's a good friendship is the only relationship where there isn't a power
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dynamic because friendship is oriented towards time together yeah but if you and a friend start
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a business you are going to have to decide who's the majority shareholder yeah remember at a class
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where a startup entrepreneur lawyer he came in he said don't ever do 50 50 because when you do that
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and this decision comes up and you both share equal power it's going to be impossible to make
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a decision so friendship doesn't have authority but the minute it's aimed at exactly like you said
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I want to produce this. I want to generate this. Be productive. A mission. You have to say this
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person is the final say, at least in this arena. And the reality is that without a shared mission,
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the friendship eventually shrivels. It dries up. So there's face-to-face element of relationship,
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and there's also shoulder-to-shoulder. Face-to-face is companionship and intimacy, friendship.
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And certainly, we're not saying that a marriage doesn't have that. We're simply saying that it
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has more. It doesn't have less than that, but it has more than that. But whether it's a platonic
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friendship with the same sex, two men who are friends, even that friendship will wane over time
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if it's only face-to-face and companionship, and it's never shoulder-to-shoulder in terms of a
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shared mission. And certainly in the home, not only would you have that with another man in a
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business partner relationship or in a local church as you're seeking to promote the gospel of Jesus
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Christ and make disciples and win the world. But certainly you have all of that and more
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in the marriage relationship. The marriage relationship is not only companionship. That
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is a piece of it. God looked down and saw Adam and said, this is good. But then also God is the
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one, not Adam, but God is the one who initially takes note that it is not good for the man to be
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alone. So God recognizes a need for companionship. He recognizes the loneliness of Adam. But even in
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that, to be fair, I think that you can accurately read into the text there without it being just
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raw, unfiltered eisegesis. I think that you can exegete by way of implication that God is
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recognizing Adam's need for companionship. But even that is not explicitly in the text. All
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that's explicitly there is that God says it's not good for him to be alone. And a perfectly fair
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reading would be, it's not good for him to be alone because the mission that I'm going to assign
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to him requires a helpmate. So even that, we know that God explicitly, just a few verses later,
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begins to talk about the dominion mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and
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subdue it, and that that cannot be done by Adam alone, that he requires a suitable helper. And so
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it's very possible that God is saying only that it's not good for the man to be alone in relation
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to this mission, he needs a helpmate in order to fulfill that. I think that it's also a fair
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reading in the text to say it's also not good for him to be alone in terms of his need for
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companionship. But my point is that the shoulder-to-shoulder aspect, that's what's explicitly
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mentioned. The face-to-face aspect, although I think that's a fair reading, you would have to
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read that implicitly, not explicitly. So if anything, the shoulder-to-shoulder shared mission,
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that is the clear purpose of marriage the clearest purpose of marriage and that's been
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held by the church down through the centuries until of course you know the last you know
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few years yep all right so we'll go ahead and we'll roll a clip so this has been viewed now
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it'd be impossible to keep track across it's impossible the difference has been shared by
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so many yeah so many platforms i mean it was like uh 750 000 times uh a few months ago before it
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went viral right again it went semi-viral in the past within you know kind of the mostly within the
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reformed camp and this is from when this was from a little while ago now oh yeah it was a long time
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yeah i think it was last spring yeah yeah um yeah so i preached this sermon and this was just
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this wasn't even really the sermon it was just one small segment where i was illustrating the point
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but that yeah it was about a year ago and then it went semi-viral uh when uh a pastor in new york
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who is a reformed, he's a reformed conservative. For the most part, we would differ on multiple
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issues. I would be squarely to his right, but he is still certainly a conservative pastor,
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but he shared the clip and he shared it as kind of a gotcha. He didn't share it positively. It
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wasn't like, hey, here's a great point from Joel Webb and my bud. It was, no, we were disagreeing
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on other things. I think it was namely the book that I had just published, Fight by Flight,
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and where i was making an argument uh that not every single individual christian um but that
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many christians probably shouldn't be behind enemy lines that right now that you know and
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everyone balkanization you're this is the right arm of the left and you're just creating the
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scenario you know for the wf to come in and more easily capsize right into their hands or or maybe
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we're not that smart maybe maybe we're not uh you know plants for george soros maybe we're just
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saying that it seems like a basic biblical principle that Christians would live in community
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with one another, and especially Christians who are parents and have children, that they
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would do everything within their power ordinarily to secure a future for their kids.
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And so anyway, so I'd written this little book, Fight by Flight, Why Leaving Blue Places
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I was basically trying to provide an argument to clear the consciences of some Christians
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who were in deep blue pockets where they had very little provisions and very little protections for
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their family and for their children and struggling immensely and wanted to move, but were in their
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conscience felt bound and unable to leave their city in large part because of their pastors of
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their local churches that they attended saying, well, that's the antithesis to the entirety of
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the gospel that you know christ uh i bet he was real comfortable in heaven but he laid down his
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comfort and his privileges and came to earth for the city in the city for the city you know and
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and so um and yes here's here's my point my point is not to eradicate that that is a viable
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legitimate valid biblical category we call it missionary missionaries are a thing but i think
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that at the as the united states becomes more polarized um and as certain portions the the you
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know, the country as a whole, certainly, but certain portions of the United States, even more
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so, become increasingly hostile towards Christ and his people, Christians in the Christian worldview,
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and those who want to live Christianly lives, then I think that we're going to always have
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missionaries in the providence of God. He'll reserve for himself a remnant, but we're going
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to need to begin to think about certain pockets of our country the way historically we've had no
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problem thinking about other countries, right? So we say, you know, every Christian in a lower
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lowercase in the general sense, every Christian is called to be a lowercase m missionary. That is,
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we're all called to do the work of an evangelist. We're all called to be ambassadors of Christ
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and to go out to the best of our ability by grace and fueled by the power of the Spirit to carry out
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the Great Commission wherever we are. But not everybody is called to be an uppercase, a capital
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M missionary in the proper sense. So same with a pastor, right? Every man should be a pastor of his
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home, lowercase p, but not every man is called to the office of elder. There are specific, you know,
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Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3. So we'd recognize every Christian man is going to be a pastor in the
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general sense. And every Christian, whether he's a man or not, or a woman, or even a Christian
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child, should be a missionary in the lowercase m general sense. But not everyone will be
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appointed to the formal office of a pastor or the formal office of a missionary. And so in the same
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way that we've thought about other countries like the Sudan, we would not send any Christian or
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every Christian to be a missionary in the Sudan. We just want to do it. And so my whole point with
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this little book was to say, I think we're going to, a time is coming, and I think we're already
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there in, at least in some part, but I think over time, it's only going to become even more and more
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blatantly obvious that we're going to have to start thinking about certain places like
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San Francisco, California, or Manhattan, New York, the way we have previously thought about
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the Sudan. This is not a place for your average Christian to live. The average Christian has not
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been sovereignly and providentially equipped by God. This is a place for missionaries, not in the
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general sense, but the proper sense. So I wrote this little book and Andy Woodard is a pastor in
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New York City. And so naturally, if people from his church read this book and were convinced by
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it, it's not good for business. So anyways, because he was unable to engage me on the merit
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of my arguments, because they're very simple arguments as I've just laid out, right? That's
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hard to disagree with. It's like, well, that's so incredibly reasonable. How can I argue? So what
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you do instead is you clip up, you know, a portion of a man's sermon that you think makes him look
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like a misogynist chauvinistic pig, and you put that out for everyone to see. And really what
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you're trying to do as a conservative reformed pastor is just simply, you know, you're not trying
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to be a monster. You're just trying to crush this other pastor and ruin his life. That's all you're
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trying to do. You know, you're not trying to, you know, hurt every conservative Christian in the
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world, just this one. But the sad, tragic reality is that Andy Woodard has, in his attempts to crush
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me, has been picked up by a ton of Democrats and former congressmen and major accounts,
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and they want to crush, they don't want to crush Joel. They want to crush Joel and Andy. They want
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to crush both of us and all of Christianity. And so Andy Woodard, you know, unwittingly like Gollum,
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you know, in the end actually was the one who destroyed the ring. And Andy Woodard unwittingly,
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you know, he's just trying to, you know, keep members in his church and beat Joel Webin on his
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little fight-by-flight book. But unwittingly, he, you know, said, you know, here is a picture of
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what, you know, the big, bad boogeyman of, you know, patriarchal, conservative, hands-made tale
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Christians look like. And the Democrats said, Andy Woodard, well done, son. Thank you so much.
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And boom. And so now it's millions of people going viral everywhere. And the big takeaway
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from Democrats is not, hey, Andy Woodard is a stand-up guy, but Joel Webin, he's unique.
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No, they want to crush all of us. So well done, Andy. All right, here is the clip.
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There are certain books that I've just had to say, hey, I don't know if this is a bad book,
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but I don't have time to read it. And so you're not going to read it either.
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i remember recently my wife had a book and i saw her reading it on the couch
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we're not doing that yet we will become pedo-baptist when i'm ready
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but my wife's not going to be a pedo-baptist for three years before i am
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and i don't have time to read it right now i know the arguments will be great i will agree and
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disagree i'm not sure which arguments are better but for the time being this is what i'm persuaded
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of and you're not going to outpace me and that's not for the record that's not lazy
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it can be and you have to be honest with yourself and discerning of your motives
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okay um i'll give it to you guys first what do you think you were there yeah when the
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sermon was preached? Well, I heard a lot of chuckling in the background, and I distinctly
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remember that the women themselves were chuckling because they know your wife, and they know you,
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and they know your kids. And, you know, this was clipped out of the context. And you've said in
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the past, Joel, okay, technically, maybe I could have been more precise about this particular word,
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that particular word. I could have said outpaced me in theology, in this area.
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this area um but the the people that were the intended audience were completely fine with what
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you were saying we understood your overall point and you know as as this topic has festered and
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bubbled up and gotten bigger and bigger you know i think that the list could be much bigger of the
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things that a husband ought to have a good and necessary hand over as far as what his wife and
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his children are doing and being exposed to. I just don't understand the logic of, well,
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the husband has to be the one to get out of bed at night when there's maybe an intruder downstairs.
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He ought to protect her. But then to say, well, he ought to have no regard for protecting her
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I mean, the same, I would apply this same principle to
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if your wife is reading a bunch of trashy romance novels,
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Like this idea of protecting, leading, guiding,
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shepherding, encouraging, feeding with the word
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I mean, men and women have gotten so far from this topic that even just the smallest, well, don't get ahead of me in this area, is creating this huge outrage.
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With that real quick, I get, you know, to play the devil's advocate, I could hear, you know, the counterpoint being, well, you know, a book on pedo-baptism is not the same as trashy romance novels.
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But, you know, in the clip, you know, I was very clear in saying, no, you're not going to read this.
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for one, I told you guys, you know, in the past,
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She works full time in the home with our children.
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But before we had multiple children in the home,
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My wife has always, based off of her knowledge and experience, she's always outpaced me in
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My wife, and that's just to name one area, but still to this day, I ultimately am responsible
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as the head of our family for making decisions for the health of the children.
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But I am constantly relying and leaning heavily on the expertise and the knowledge of my wife
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to be a good and competent deputy who reinforces my decisions that I can go to like a general
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would and you know he would go to one of his lieutenants and say look you've been over here
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with these troops on this battlefield for this long um give me brief me right a lot of with
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authority and chain of command a lot of it's not that the person at the top of the authority
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is the most proficient in every single uh subject under the sun because because that's not a matter
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of laziness or fallenness that's a matter of simply finitude if you're a human being a creature
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a finite um creature then there's just only so much time in the day and only so much you can know
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A president would, he would have all these different people, exactly, and he would rely
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on their expertise and he'd say, brief me, brief me, brief me, right?
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So you read 5,000 books, but now I want 5,000 words in an essay form, and then I'm going
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So with medical decisions, and like when we were working through our convictions on vaccines,
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and she had much more knowledge than i did i relied heavily on our knowledge but then ultimately i
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made the decision and in that decision along with 99.9 of the decisions that i make we both agreed
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but it was ultimately my decision whether we agreed or not because back to what west's point
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it's not whether but which um because that's one of those scenarios right you're up for your four
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month appointment there's you know um 1700 vacs uh vaccines uh that your child is scheduled for
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for in our modern medical world insisting they get the yeah the p your doctor is insisting that
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oh my goodness they need to get all of them um you know with with the aluminum and and mercury
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and everything included and not just one at a time they need to get you know 17 of them all in
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one injection you know and and yeah the kid may not wake up for the next 11 hours or whatever you
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know but it's it's for their health it's for their safety so you know so my point is that day is
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coming and and it's not whether but which you're either going to say yes or no there's not a a
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third way Tim Keller option. There's this, you're going to say, no, we're not going to get the
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vaccine or, or we are going to do it. But, but some decision has to be made. And, and that's,
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that's just the nature of life. My point, you're absolutely right that the romance novel is
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different. My point is protection. If your wife, if my wife is going to get, start reading something
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that would fundamentally change the dynamic understanding mission how our family operates
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and then is going to be coming back to me and the children and saying we need to change this
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not just a small thing like you know let's start drinking two percent milk instead of whole milk
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right like to switch from a credo baptist to a pedo baptist position is going to cause a lot of
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strife. It's going to cause a lot of arguments between the two. It's going to cause her to view
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child-rearing differently. It's going to cause her a lot of fear because now she's thinking,
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well, our children aren't protected, they're not in the covenant, things like that. So the reason
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I went to protection is it's right for a man to evaluate, wait a minute, you're reading this,
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and that has the potential to fundamentally alter your vision of the mission and direction of our
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family. And if we're going to do that, that had better be done together. And so I said protection
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because you're protecting from a lot of fights, a lot of conflicts, a lot of distrust, all of those
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things. And in that sense, that's why I think it falls under the banner of protection.
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Yep. Thoughts for us? It's just interesting to see online, mostly women probably, but there's
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probably a good 30, 40% of men in the comments expressing their outrage. And the man who would
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get offended on behalf of a woman who herself is not offended is a really sad man uh feodoro
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that's this novel he writes a lot of you think of the landlady and that's the character is the
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character who never has the courage or the gumption to ask a woman out so all that he does
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is play this passive aggressive behind the scenes oh my lady i can't believe that he would do that
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right uh don't be that guy right getting offended for women that they themselves just said like
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your wife okay that sounds good not offended not hurt not impeded upon uh my wife was not offended
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my children were not offended and as far as i know most of the women in the church who were laughing
00:23:27.840
and you know them and their husbands you know even made a point of saying you know that they
00:23:32.440
appreciated that part of the sermon after um they were not offended yeah now i can't speak to every
00:23:37.140
single woman a visitor who might have been there that day but um they were they were okay with it
00:23:42.100
But that's because we have a church that is patriarchal.
00:23:46.380
We have a church that is, you know, we don't shy away from those kinds of texts.
00:23:49.560
You know, things like 1 Timothy 2 or 1 Peter 3, these are, you know, Ephesians 5.
00:23:57.080
And people, they don't come to our church despite those points.
00:24:01.940
But for the most part, people who come to our church are specifically looking for a church that holds to biblical patriarchy.
00:24:08.040
And that this is going to teach the Bible as it was taught for, you know, 19 and a half centuries up until, you know, our modern world when, you know, feminism completely took over, you know, with a stranglehold of all of theology and everything now is read through that lens.
00:24:24.680
So all that being said, yeah, that like you were saying, Michael, I agree with you.
00:24:28.680
The pedo-baptism is one of those things that will be a point of contention in a marriage
00:24:38.140
And then it's like, well, then why don't you just read the book?
00:24:41.000
And, you know, again, to provide context and people in my church know this because...
00:24:45.800
You said, I don't have time for that right now.
00:24:47.760
and um before the clip uh before i preached it you know even up you know a year ago i uh it's not as
00:24:55.860
though um i was unaware of the concept of pedo-baptism i've read you know at least a dozen
00:25:00.600
books and have not been persuaded had not read this one book in particular i had heard from my
00:25:07.060
presbyterian friends that i trust that it's particularly persuasive a good book to read
00:25:11.020
on the subject and so i didn't want my wife reading that book without me and the potential
00:25:16.220
of her conscience being bound that this is right.
1.00
00:25:37.640
her husband is sinning against her and the children,
00:25:42.040
that I am depriving our children of a sacrament
00:25:45.940
that is owed to them as the children of believers.
00:25:48.140
And not only am I sinning against our own children,
00:25:57.180
for the infants of other believers in this church,
0.93
00:26:01.000
and all these other families in the local church setting.
00:26:07.380
It is not, diversity is not our greatest strength.
00:26:30.320
You wouldn't say, no, we will never be pedo-baptists,
00:26:35.260
my credo-baptist stance is by putting my head in the sand
00:26:37.760
like an ostrich, and that's not a good position to take.
00:26:44.180
and this is the kind of book that deals with a significant enough issue that I don't want you
00:26:50.640
reading that without me. I don't want you outpacing me. People didn't like that phrase,
00:26:54.320
but what I'm saying is I don't want to see you convictionally getting ahead of me in your
00:26:58.960
conscience on this issue to where you now are losing sleep, thinking that your husband is
00:27:05.080
sinning against your children. So let's not get your conscience bound before mine. If our
00:27:11.220
consciences are going to be bound on this matter if we are going to switch teams with our theological
00:27:15.360
conviction let's take this journey together yeah and that's to take it together because i've got
00:27:20.500
other things on my plate right now that means we need to take the journey at a later date we'll do
00:27:24.380
it together perfectly reasonable perfectly within the husband's authority and uh and perfectly uh
0.91
00:27:32.720
caused uh not just uh democrat purple haired baby murdering you know progressives uh but but long
00:27:41.020
before the progressives found this clip and made it go viral and they all got upset there was just
00:27:45.720
as much vitriol within the complementarian heckling hens in the reformed world of both sexes both the
00:27:53.420
men and the women screeching and seething and coping for weeks on end and the only difference
00:28:00.580
as god is my witness the only difference i can tell between uh the pro-biden democrats who have
00:28:07.320
now found the clip, thanks to Andy Woodard. And then the complementarian, you know, reformed
00:28:12.980
Christians is same objections, same seething, same coping, just one group, namely the unbelievers,
0.99
00:28:22.360
curses. And the other one doesn't. But in terms of substance, the same arguments, same outrage,
1.00
00:28:28.740
no difference at all, right? Pam in the office, corporate needs you to see the difference between
0.99
00:28:32.480
these two pictures, reformed complementarian woman and, you know, former congressman who's
1.00
00:28:39.240
Democrat and pro-abortion. What's the difference? They're the same picture.
00:28:43.300
Yep. That's a good call too for our episode we did last week on Baptist covenant theology.
00:28:47.880
There's good reasons to be a Baptist. You can read the books and still feel
00:28:50.920
secure and convinced by scripture for it. Let's go to a break and then we'll come back and continue
00:28:55.280
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All right. Well, welcome back. Michael, I want to pick up on something that you mentioned
00:31:30.840
very briefly. You were talking earlier, and you mentioned about how a husband, for example,
00:31:34.620
is tasked with security and that literally goes up to the physical security of the home if someone
00:31:38.900
just start banging on your door at 2 a.m it would be the man my god it better be the man uh to go
00:31:45.300
down there even if he has not a firearm in the home nothing to defend himself it is him and it's
00:31:50.120
up to his life if there was ever a situation where he could sacrifice himself so his wife and kids
00:31:55.580
could get away or be safe women and children first women and children first it would be expected of
00:31:59.900
the man and what's interesting is we'll give men this responsibility so we'll say men you have the
00:32:04.900
responsibility and lay down your life that's still a culturally expected thing that has carried over
00:32:10.840
yes so we'll say we expect you to do this but but watch what's withheld on the back end so you have
00:32:16.140
the responsibility for the home both in matters of grave physical potentially death danger and you'll
00:32:24.100
also have responsibility over the spiritual state but we'll withhold from them the authority to
00:32:27.840
actually carry it out i think you said it uh authority without responsibility is tyranny
00:32:32.840
so we never give to a young man authority to do anything that he would want to do
00:32:36.680
with no responsibility no accountability but in the same way to give someone responsibility
00:32:41.420
but then not give them the authority to actually carry it out to do his best to lead and to guide
00:32:47.600
in this case the family is exasperation slavery was the word you used for it authority no
00:32:53.000
responsibility tyranny responsibility no authority slavery right and uh and that's what we have
00:32:58.840
currently men are uh slaves i want us to and and real quick in every aspect of society in the home
0.93
00:33:05.200
but also in the workplace as citizens at every in our legal system which favors the woman over
00:33:09.960
the at every single level we live in the divine feminine you know uh pagan god age and men are
00:33:18.460
slaves and if on it honestly if you are you know this um you fancy yourself as a conservative you
00:33:26.060
know beacon for truth and you know here i stand come what may you know if you're one of those
00:33:30.320
pastors i i am a complementarian and i am reformed and i am conservative and i am courageous uh but
00:33:37.720
you constantly are harping on the responsibilities of men man up man up uh but but at the end of the
00:33:43.860
day, you hear a clip like mine where it just gives one practical example on an example of what a
00:33:53.000
husband's authority might look like, and you screech and moan and wail, then you are the
00:33:58.980
problem. You're not the solution. You're not helping. You are one of the slave masters helping
00:34:03.200
to, every time a man might start to break free of his bondage, you're actually the guy who's going
00:34:08.220
over there and putting him back in the chains. And you will lose men. Men are not going to come
00:34:12.500
to your church. Boomers will continue to fill your coffers as donors for the next 15, 20 years.
1.00
00:34:18.220
But that gravy train is going to end very soon and you will lose the men.
00:34:24.240
Yeah. So that's going to come across like, it's going to sound like, oh, you poor men,
00:34:33.120
you've had everything for all of history. And now for the last five minutes, you don't have
00:34:36.660
everything you want. Whiny, whiny, whiny. So I think it would be worth unpacking what we mean
00:34:42.120
by saying that responsibility without authority is slavery.
00:34:48.980
but I think it's necessary to explore that a little bit.
00:34:55.700
That was your comment, and I'm still mulling it over,
00:35:01.940
It's slavery because it ties the man to an outcome
00:35:07.060
So you say, young man, take this woman and marry her,
00:35:11.380
have children, and at the end of the day, you're going to stand before God and you're going to
00:35:14.900
answer for how you loved your wife, how you raised your children. However, you don't get any influence,
00:35:20.940
any leadership, any power in that dynamic to actually change the outcome. So maybe he marries
00:35:26.720
a good, godly, pious woman, and there would never be a situation that would ever come up where he
00:35:30.820
would have to say, honey, I think we're going to go this path. I think we're not going to do this.
00:35:35.300
Another man could marry a woman that wants to put their children in public school. And if you take
00:35:39.060
from that man the authority he has to sit back and watch as the mother of his children tries to
00:35:44.400
send them off to public school allow them to have influences that are bad to them he's still
00:35:48.580
responsible you're in charge of this family look how bad that kid's turning up but he's like i can't
00:35:53.100
even she would flip out she would divorce me if i try to take them out of the school that's
00:35:57.180
influencing them discipline him in a biblical way if i tried to take away his video game system
00:36:01.320
that would be one example i'd be excruciating i i know that it's um controversial and i want to be
00:36:07.460
careful in the way that i explained but um corporal punishment in the home uh the bible you
00:36:12.240
know if you say you know uh spare the rod spoil the child you know people say that's not the bible
00:36:17.300
doesn't say that you're right that that is not in the bible um as a principle you could you could
00:36:21.920
interpret it that way what is in the bible is not spare the rod spoil the child what is explicitly
00:36:26.840
in the bible is the one who spares the rod hates his child um so if you're saying that's just a
00:36:32.580
a common misnomer you know spare the rod spoil the child yeah you're right that what the bible
00:36:37.120
actually says is stronger. And I pastorally have dealt with couples in marriages where
00:36:42.980
the woman has held hostage the husband in his authority as a father and has explicitly verbally
0.60
00:36:51.880
threatened him multiple times saying, if you spank our child, if you spank our child, I don't care
1.00
00:36:57.500
how loving it is. I don't care if it's perfectly aligning with the word of God, because at the end
00:37:01.260
of the day, the word of God is precisely my problem. I hate the word of God. If you spank
00:37:07.000
our child and love our child according to what God defines as love, then I will call the police.
00:37:14.320
And in our current law system, that man doesn't stand a chance. And so I've counseled those
00:37:22.520
marriages and I've done it recently. Of course, I'm not going to name names, but that is a
00:37:27.200
reoccurring theme and it's always always the woman i've never had a counseling situation where
00:37:32.120
the man um is saying yeah i think spanking is is icky and oh i just you know i just love my child
00:37:38.720
and you know gentle parenting like no men get it you know men understand men i don't know very men
00:37:44.120
who've bought into the idea of gentle parenting which is a lie so anyway so my my point is like
00:37:48.960
well how is it slavery it's uh bricks with no straw it's pharaoh saying i want the same results
00:37:54.280
but i'm not going to give you the necessary resources to get them so it would be the
00:37:59.140
equivalent of a police officer saying um you still have the duty to serve and protect but you don't
00:38:04.580
get the badge or the gun the car or even the salary yeah um and so then what he's saying is
00:38:12.880
i can't i can't do it well too bad it's still and that's that's your typical complementarian
00:38:19.280
woman today saying, you, husband, you, father, you are responsible to make sure these kids turn
00:38:25.500
out all right, to discipline them, but don't discipline, to teach them, but not with any
00:38:31.340
authority. It's bricks without straw. It is absolutely emasculating and exasperating,
00:38:38.260
and men are enslaved. And we still levy the weight of the man's responsibility before the Lord
00:39:04.200
to, on the one hand, say you will stand before the Lord.
00:39:07.900
I mean, not just if your kid is a degenerate or not,
00:39:16.220
And you will be judged by God himself for your faithfulness to the call of being responsible for your family.
00:39:24.180
And then on the other hand, say, but you only have, you know, a broken hammer and a flathead screwdriver.
00:39:34.200
So, yeah, that's very exasperating, very slavish.
1.00
00:39:40.300
So someone put in the comments, I think I remember it, but maybe Nate, if you could scroll up, it would help.
00:39:44.320
when it comes to the question of how many or when to stop having children how does the husband's
00:39:51.340
authority and the wife how do they work together to reach a decision on that and and let me say
00:39:56.940
this too in a time when i just think of all the health stuff but uh from microplastics and
00:40:03.320
endocrine disruptors there's there's a lot of issues with fertility now and complications that
00:40:08.580
arise from maybe not the first pregnancy or the second but it is not at all unthinkable that
00:40:13.600
couples experience health complications, a mother particularly, that begin to make childbearing
00:40:18.900
more dangerous. I won't necessarily say much more dangerous. But we live in such an industrialized
00:40:24.380
age that there are considerations that I don't think previous generations had to think about.
00:40:29.360
Previous generations encountering problems with these things, with having children,
00:40:33.660
that certainly did happen. We had higher infant mortality rates. But I would say there are new
00:40:37.640
considerations that pastors, and specifically fathers and husbands, are having to think about
00:40:42.620
when it comes to we the preliminary the premier text would be psalm 127 children are a heritage
00:40:48.640
from the lord so children are good so the father takes that he's thinking about that but also i
00:40:53.940
saw what the last pregnancy did to my wife yeah so i want to honor the scripture but i'm also called
00:40:58.580
to love my wife a man is to love his wife as his own body no man hateth his own flesh but loveth it
00:41:03.780
balancing those two and there will be the individual situation is going to dictate the
00:41:08.360
exact answer but what are some of your thoughts on handling that question maybe the husband says
00:41:12.720
i think we should aim to have more the wife says i'm done i'm tapped out child spacing is another
00:41:18.400
question it really depends on what the issue is if the issue is health wise um there are no signs
00:41:27.360
that having another child would would harm or damage my wife we just we think that you know
00:42:01.020
But if it's an issue of needing to be very wise
00:42:05.700
or a particular case with a child that you have
00:42:20.160
Yeah, I think that a husband needs to hear his wife out.
00:42:32.100
yeah but psalm 127 says right so have another we're not quiverful right as many kids as fast
00:42:37.600
as possible no restrictions yeah and that's probably helpful for the listener to you know
00:42:43.360
to maybe specify a little bit more there there are um christians that in many regards we you know
00:42:49.120
you know we would say are very faithful and we're grateful for them but yeah that's not um our
00:42:54.820
position the quiver fools uh position typically there'd be some nuances but not many um in in a
00:43:01.820
nutshell it's you have as many kids as biologically possible right you know think um uh you know the
0.72
00:43:07.440
kind of thing you know you're having as many as possible um whereas we're saying uh well we do
00:43:13.560
want a quiver full in the sense that you know the text explicitly uses that term so we want we would
00:43:19.040
rather have many than few um but we would not put a number on that and we would um allow for the
00:43:25.360
husband and wife to, you know, to exercise prudence and to consider certain factors. But all that
00:43:33.540
with, you know, at the same time, really fighting our sin and our idolatry, recognizing that most
00:43:40.620
couples, more often than not, the couple that says, we can't have any more kids, it's not from
00:43:45.200
an argument of prudence. It's really from a place of idolatry. In our modern American mindset,
00:43:51.440
for lack of faith yeah we're like well we can't have any more kids because we only have you know
00:43:55.140
three bedrooms and it's like that's a that is a first world you know yeah that's that is a unique
00:44:01.720
you know people people would look at the square footage of your house from previous generations
00:44:05.900
and they had 10 kids and they'd be like what are you talking about right so and i think parents
00:44:10.800
that are good parents of three will typically be good parents of six but if you've had one and
00:44:15.700
you're really realizing uh that god is stretching you that's already the one that you're struggling
00:44:20.160
to parent well but if you by god's grace are a good husband or a good father and a good mother
00:44:24.420
i generally don't think that there's some magical tipping point now certainly as you get up there
00:44:29.460
there gets to be a lot but there's not a magical tipping point where if i had just one more i would
00:44:33.300
lose all the time to care for them and all my ability to love them and train them like no god
00:44:37.820
stretches us often and we realize oh i had that capacity in me this whole time i didn't think i
00:44:42.460
was cut out to be a dad of this many but i'm doing it now and i love it and i love these kids
00:44:46.520
brian silvey and lexi on their podcast bright hearth they said something good as well too
00:44:51.240
god ordained that that men and women are fertile for a set amount of time he could have made it
00:44:56.440
16 to 30 if he only wanted it to be 14 years he could have made it 20 to 30 he could have made it
00:45:02.040
25 to 35 he said an amount of time and generally not in every single case but in general we should
00:45:08.640
be thinking about okay god sovereignly put these bounds he ordained also the time that i would be
00:45:12.940
married so if you're married at 30 there are less years that you're able to have children
00:45:16.460
but our default thinking should be god gave me this number of years where i'm able to produce
00:45:20.760
children and children are a blessing and a good thing the default and the expectation should not
00:45:25.560
be that i would cut that off early at a certain point this blessing that god's given this fertility
00:45:31.140
that is also a blessing not everyone is able to have children well i'll cut that off because it's
00:45:35.400
too much blessing at 35 or 30 your default mindset should be barring health conditions
00:45:41.060
barring this provided i'm literally able to afford to feed them the expectation that it
00:45:46.000
would use those years that god gave me that i married to my spouse to have children the default
00:45:51.220
assumption that is really what you said there wes is a is fundamental to many many of the problems
00:45:58.000
that we are having in society right now which is god has designed something a certain way
00:46:02.660
and we in faith are required to submit to that design trusting that it was god's good design
00:46:10.780
You apply that to issues of gender ideology, really what is at stake is will I submit to
00:46:21.080
Men, when you hit 30s and your metabolism slows down, you must submit to God's design
00:46:28.100
for your body and not eat five cheeseburgers every night.
00:46:31.220
Like, it requires a change of behavior and a submission to how God has arranged things.
00:46:44.820
Then to fight against that is to fight against God's design and his purpose.
00:46:50.780
And really, at that point, there's no positive outcome, right?
00:46:55.580
There can only be tolerable outcomes at that point.
00:46:57.740
But when we're fighting against the creational design that God has put in nature, in our
00:47:03.920
bodies and our dna in our hormones all of these things um the call the call in all things is to
00:47:11.540
submit to how god has created us and to submit to the borders and designs that he has built
00:47:17.660
all throughout and this this principle extends through all of life right there's a reason why
00:47:22.700
um if you have a high metabolism and a low metabolism you have to be self-controlled
00:47:35.700
He's a teenager who's playing two sports, right?
00:47:41.460
God made my body slow down with his metabolism.
00:47:43.860
I cannot just indulge in ice cream every night.
00:47:47.220
but I must submit to how God has designed that process.
00:47:53.240
Yeah, so God has, we're talking about authority.
00:47:59.160
we're talking about hierarchy. God has baked hierarchy into the, you know, into the pie
00:48:03.360
across the board in every single realm. It's, you know, it's within nature. It's within, you know,
00:48:09.440
his image bearing creatures, humankind and every sphere of human life is in the home. It's in civil
00:48:14.620
politics. It's in markets. It's with employee and employer, with master and slave. It's with
00:48:20.940
parents and children, adults and children. So at every level, you know, it's within the church,
00:48:25.300
the ecclesiastical realm hierarchy is inescapable it's inescapable and um this you know so much of
0.94
00:48:32.000
it you know we're combating feminism um but feminism is in some ways we could say it's it's
00:48:36.540
one unique expression of egalitarianism would be the the big banner and um egalitarianism um
00:48:43.980
just it uh it it forces right it tries to force the square peg into the circle hole it tries to
00:48:50.160
force equality and and uh you might even say well i'm not woke i'm a you know i'm a george floyd
00:48:55.760
conservative you know i'm a you know i'm a martin luther uh you know kings uh junior junior king
00:49:02.020
whatever uh conservative you know aka i'm i'm being silly um you're you're a lib uh you need
00:49:08.040
to acknowledge your lib and be a real conservative but if you're you know a lib who thinks he's
00:49:12.000
conservative and you're like i you know uh i'm against uh you know socialism and i'm against
00:49:17.580
equality of outcome, but I'm very much for equality of opportunity. You just have to
00:49:24.360
recognize that that is a myth. When I say God has baked hierarchy into all of society and all of
00:49:30.760
human life and all of plant life and all of animal life and all, when I say that God has
00:49:35.860
baked hierarchy into the entire created cosmos, I'm not just talking about equality of outcome
00:49:42.920
being impossible but also equality of opportunity i did not have the same opportunity to go to the
00:49:49.500
nba as michael jordan yeah i didn't um where you're born when you're born who you're born to
00:49:57.320
your iq like what about the kid who's uh born as you know uh paraplegic yep right what are you
00:50:05.360
going to like part of this is um it's it's well not part of all of it is arrogance it's assuming
00:50:11.820
that we get that that we have achieved somehow the status of god we think that because of the
00:50:16.960
industrial revolution and technical technological innovation and uh the that we've somehow we get
00:50:23.100
to be god like you want to oh you want to change your gender we can do that yeah oh you want to um
00:50:28.280
you want to be able to walk well elon's he's he's working on it we'll get the you know the
0.67
00:50:32.860
neurochip in the back of your brain and we can we'll do that you know like at every single level
00:50:36.800
we think that we, that we're God. But when you say, well, we want equality, it sounds like a
00:50:41.900
nice thing. But, but the only way to actually force equality of outcome is you have to,
00:50:47.940
you have to steamroll everything at the level of opportunity to, and there's not equality of
00:50:53.060
opportunity. There's not because some people are born smarter and dumber, faster and slower,
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00:50:58.640
stronger and weaker. That's just a fact of life, richer and poor. So the only way that you can
00:51:04.660
get equality of outcome is to force equality of opportunity. And the only way to do that
00:51:10.260
is no child left behind would be a great example, which means you can't make the quadriplegic
00:51:17.380
bodily able. So instead what you have to do is you have to break the arms and legs of every other
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00:51:23.800
able body. And that's what we've done. So you can't make all the poor rich. So instead what
00:51:30.580
you can do is you can make the rich poor. You can eradicate the middle class. So you can do it
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00:51:34.160
economically you could at every level right you can't make someone who is less attractive
00:51:38.460
a supermodel so then what do you do well you just make everybody ugly you know you disfigure and
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00:51:44.240
mar everybody so everyone is disabled everyone is ugly everyone is poor and you know welcome
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00:51:50.840
to communism the the original temptation of adam to eve was that we can remove the hierarchy
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00:52:03.160
And at the core of the topic of feminism and patriarchy
00:52:09.160
and men's and women's roles in society and in marriage
00:52:12.260
is really the claim that we can step outside of God's design
00:52:18.620
and that, in fact, God was unfair to have given that design.
00:52:23.900
The counterclaim from the Bible is this design is not only there,
00:52:27.980
that's not the Bible's claim. The Bible's claim is this design is good. It is good for men to act
00:52:34.900
like men, and it's good for women to act like women. Hard? Yes. Difficult? Yes. In our sin,
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are we going to resist it at times? Yes, of course. But the biblical response is not,
00:52:46.620
you just have to deal with it, life's hard, get through it, and heaven will be great. No,
00:52:50.660
the biblical response is God's design of men being husbands and acting like husbands,
00:53:25.260
and therefore he has authority um that's not why it initially went viral that you know it initially
00:53:31.560
went viral again not with the the screeching leftists um and unbelievers in the democrat
00:53:36.280
party it originally went viral with complementarian reformed uh christians uh and the and the uh the
00:53:43.180
charge was led by a pastor uh you know allegedly you know conservative pastor and he he is conservative
00:53:48.700
he's just you know compared to us he's a lib but you know but for all intents and purposes he's
00:53:54.080
conservative and so um all that being said um my point is you know why why so irate why was he so
00:54:01.480
upset why it was the reform complementarian world um it wasn't the principle that upset them it was
00:54:06.680
it was providing an example of its application and that's what guys do and that's why i give
00:54:12.820
application and examples uh recognizing that i'm fallible and that i could be wrong but i would
00:54:17.920
rather give applications, give 10 of them and be wrong occasionally. If I was wrong 10 out of 10
00:54:24.240
times, then I would probably stop doing it. But wrong occasionally. I'd rather give ample examples
00:54:28.640
and be wrong on occasion and get slaughtered in the court of, you know, the peanut gallery's
00:54:36.840
opinion, you know, and get, you know, voicemails endlessly of people who, you know, like, you know,
00:54:44.680
get all the backlash and all the criticism and all those kinds of things. I'd rather have that
00:54:48.540
and be one of the few pastors who actually will provide, because there's so many men and women
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00:54:56.780
for that matter, Christian men and women who are saying, we can see that patriarchy is the design
00:55:01.880
and we want to please the Lord, but no one, there's only like 10 of you in the whole world
00:55:07.240
who even use the word patriarchy. But then the pool gets even narrower when it comes to not just
00:55:13.840
espousing the language or the principle, but actually providing the application. And that's
00:55:19.540
what made people lose their minds, is I didn't just say, husband is head of the wife and he has
00:55:23.380
authority in the home. But then I actually gave an example of here would be an example of the
00:55:28.880
kind of authority a husband has. So when we come back from the commercial, I think that it would,
00:55:34.940
you know, obviously plenty of people will be mad because they hate God's word. And I'm not just
00:55:39.560
talking about unbelievers. I'm talking about complementarians. They do hate God's Word on
00:55:43.780
this subject, sadly. I wish they didn't, but they do. But even if it's the vast minority of the
00:55:50.760
people who listen, even if 90% of them are upset, the 10% who love God's Word and simply want to
00:55:57.020
practically obey, they deserve us taking the risk and giving some practical examples. So we'll do
00:56:02.060
that right after these sponsors. The danger of centralized power is often represented by the
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a republic there is no king but christ we are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor
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spread choice all right so to close out we're going to name as you said take the risk we're
00:57:03.500
going to name some situations where practically a husband has the authority to make a decision.
00:57:08.460
I should note Michael Foster has said this, Scripture doesn't provide us a recourse for
00:57:12.960
enforcement. So a man cannot force his wife to submit. If she says no, he does have the recourse
00:57:18.120
of the church if it's flagrant or dangerous or something like that of other means. But he is not
00:57:23.440
to force his wife to submit. There's no punishment. There's no enforcement mechanism in Scripture,
00:57:27.360
to be clear about that. The other thing is that just because you can does not mean you have to.
00:57:33.500
I think again of the military, a platoon sergeant has the authority to say at 2 a.m., everyone will
00:57:38.000
be here and we're going to go run. It might not be wise if he wants his platoon to love him and like
00:57:43.040
him. So it's not just balancing, I can do this and so I will. It's the husband has the authority
00:57:47.400
to say this and he may. He has the prerogative. He's allowed to. And in certain decisions,
00:57:53.120
it may be judicious. An example would be a husband and his wife and her friends. A husband
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can say, honey, this friend that I've known and that you've known for a while is a bad influence
00:58:04.300
on you, and I would love for you to stop spending time with her. You can be clear, I am happy to
00:58:09.840
call perhaps her husband and explain why I would like you to stop hanging out, to explain to her,
00:58:15.540
but I don't think she's a good influence, and I would greatly appreciate if you would honor me
00:58:18.880
by making that clear to her and taking some time away. A husband in love can, he does not have to,
00:58:25.220
He does not at all have to pick and choose your friends.
00:58:27.380
But he could say, this friend is a bad influence on you,
00:58:30.180
and I'd like you to stop spending time with her.
00:58:31.940
And I've got to give credit to a good brother from the church.
00:58:34.620
He said, people won't like it, but that is a husband.
00:58:51.180
And that word means to subject herself to the husband and everything.
00:58:54.960
so he could say this friend is not a good idea rank under like an inferior yeah now you're
00:59:01.140
dangerous william gooch and who um well we don't have to we don't have to name them but
00:59:07.580
we'll just say this there there are notable publishing companies that um have published
00:59:12.500
puritans um such as william gooch and uh and edited a lot of the language you know or others
00:59:18.940
like you know rl dabney and taking out what he would say about masters and slaves you know and
00:59:24.880
on the issue of patriarchy, William Gouge, his book On Domestical Duties. If you're reading a
00:59:34.180
modern English version of that, there's no problem with the fact that the language has been altered
00:59:39.760
for modernized, for a simpler read. That's fine. But you just need to recognize that the ministry
00:59:45.860
that did that also took the liberty to remove when William Gouge talks about inferiors and
00:59:51.220
superiors and they didn't just change the language they changed his arguments um because um although
00:59:58.140
that ministry you know would say we're very conservative they're not as conservatives
01:00:02.100
william gouge so wes and i are working on a book on witchcraft modernizing it i'm also working on
01:00:07.640
that very william gouge book and modernizing it but leaving it totally unabridged and uh in the
01:00:12.460
original spirit of the well the original argument entirely so awesome that's great uh so mine is
01:00:19.940
A husband ought to trust his wife, like you said, Wes, a husband trusts his wife, and yet he has authority over not just his schedule and calendar, not just the family schedule and calendar, but hers as well.
01:00:36.760
And the other day, you know, this is very practical.
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I never have to ask her to do less leisure.
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that has never ever been an issue in our marriage but she was trying to do too much in a day and
01:00:52.980
she was stressed and i said look um this this let's talk about what what are you stressed about
01:01:00.080
what is on your list of things that need to get done today we had this and this and this and i
01:01:04.760
don't know i'm going to do this i don't i don't know when i'm going to do this i said look don't
01:01:08.660
do that that is not something that you need to do today well it's not going to get done even if it
01:01:13.560
doesn't get done let's prioritize that's the one that doesn't really matter if it gets done it would
01:01:18.520
be nice they got done but no so the ability to look at a schedule and to encourage your wife
01:01:25.600
maybe if you need to to be more industrious right hey honey maybe not quite so many you know spin
01:01:32.280
classes or whatever um not even not even that that gracious like you need to be home more
01:01:37.880
or to be able to remove things and say you don't need to be doing that i'm going to step in i'm
01:01:43.660
going to say don't do that today right that's for the good of you for me for the family and i'm
01:01:50.280
making a call it's not going to happen today yep that's good that's a good example yeah i regularly
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01:01:55.340
do that with my wife same thing yep she's she is not lazy and so often having to tell her to
01:02:00.560
step back yep you know you got to do less um okay uh do with the good one yeah another another
01:02:06.700
example would be um what what the wife wears clothing and so um i absolutely believe that
01:02:12.120
you know the husband would have authority over the clothing same thing here um but you know in
01:02:16.600
all these we're we're saying okay you know again c.a look at all the look at the principle uh
01:02:22.680
ephesians 5 and and other texts about how authority should be used not lording it over or domineering
01:02:28.080
and so all this should be done graciously all this should be done uh lovingly and gently and
01:02:33.180
all those kinds of things. But the question is, but at the end of the day, right, all the disclaimers
01:02:38.340
being made about gentleness, about affection, about love, about being willing to sacrifice your
01:02:43.660
own life for the sake of your wife as Christ, lay down his life for the church, all those things
01:02:49.000
are absolutely true. So we're assuming those things. That's baked into the pie. So you must
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do those things. But then the question still remains, does the husband actually have authority
01:02:59.620
Or is it just a metaphor, just symbolism, just ethereal, just abstract?
01:03:04.520
And we're saying, no, he has real authority that can be executed in real, tangible ways.
01:03:11.440
And so one example would be, like you said, Wes, with friends.
01:03:16.140
I don't like this particular woman and the influence that I see her with you.
01:03:21.820
And I'm telling you that you need to step back relationally.
01:03:25.000
um you know the other would be um you are uh stressing out and overburdening yourself you're
01:03:30.680
too tired you must rest stop it yep um and that one you guys might say well that's that's that's
01:03:36.160
kind of like that's just sweet on that though like i there was a time my wife loves to run distance
01:03:40.520
and she ran a marathon and i was glad for her to do it we talked about it it's not like she
01:03:46.020
went and did it on her own but the training leading up to it was intense it was multiple
01:03:50.480
hours a day especially like the last four weeks you know she had to go on 10 12 16 and this is
01:03:57.340
like four three four hours a day that she's out running we had talked about i agree but when she
01:04:01.880
finished the marathon i said what do you think she said i i would like to do another marathon
01:04:06.400
someday not right away i said at this time that is too much on our family and i'm i'm asking you
01:04:11.640
right i'm also telling you you can't do a marathon half marathons she can do in her sleep she doesn't
01:04:17.260
have to train for those but the the burden of time and so there's one where i did step in
01:04:22.640
and said no you like marathons are not going to happen anymore it's too much of a time commitment
01:04:28.260
and uh you can still be fit you can still be healthy you can still run without having to do
01:04:33.380
that yep right yep that's great that's helpful and so and then the dress thing um like now my
01:04:38.640
wife you know wants she desires to be modest um but uh if you're a you know a new married couple
01:04:45.620
and perhaps your wife is less mature in the faith and you're both now coming into deeper,
01:04:52.580
more mature Christian convictions, you may be a husband, a new husband who's only been
01:04:58.980
married a year or two and coming into convictions about modesty and what that looks like and
01:05:04.600
realizing, oh yeah, my wife, maybe she needs to wear clothes when she's out in public.
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01:05:10.240
you know like maybe she shouldn't uh just take paint and and paint her legs right you know um
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01:05:17.340
and then go to the grocery store to be limits for a christian woman yeah like maybe my wife
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01:05:21.460
should use more than simply paint on her legs and then go to a public grocery store to be oogled at
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01:05:27.620
by uh hundreds of men over the course of an hour and a half um who are then going to think about
01:05:33.280
my wife later on that day and yeah maybe that's not crazy right and i'm using that kind of language
01:05:39.820
it's just not to be crude, but just to say, this is not legalism. This is not petty. This is not
01:05:45.000
small. This is not up in arms. Yoga pants is paint. There is no imagination whatsoever. I mean,
01:05:53.240
it is virtually the equivalent. It is barely, barely a sentiment. I mean, microscopic,
01:05:59.260
you would have to use certain scientific instruments to even display the difference
01:06:05.380
between paint and yoga pants in terms of its, you know, its thickness and blah, blah, blah.
01:06:10.820
So, I mean, it is literally skin-tight clothing, usually accompanied by a, you know, a midriff
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01:06:18.100
shirt in many cases, and then a woman goes out in public wearing that. Of course, that is immodest.
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Of course, that is sin. And of course, no woman should be doing that, but especially a Christian
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01:06:31.680
woman and so of course if that christian woman and and in this scenario let's let's play you know
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01:06:36.740
give the benefit of the doubt let's say it's ignorance and it's not you know it's not uh
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01:06:40.660
you know mark driscoll's jezebel spirit you know it's it's uh no it's just ignorance she's just
01:06:45.680
she's a new believer she's newly married and you know and and praise god she's a woman and not a
01:06:51.380
man and so she doesn't she's not particularly um adept to the way that men think right a husband
01:06:58.100
has to disciple his wife this is how you don't understand the way that men think i was about to
01:07:03.480
say the authority is vested in the man not at a flip of a coin god was like well i can give the
01:07:07.180
authority to the man or the woman he has given the man certain qualities the ability to think
01:07:12.740
like a man and vested the authority in him to then make the decision so she would say and and
01:07:17.680
genuinely not any of our wives but a woman could say i had no idea but the man is saying i i know
01:07:22.620
what how other men think and i would love for you to change please yes and so there's a reason it's
01:07:27.940
and also do it yeah i would love i would and you can start with i would love it because i care for
01:07:33.220
you i want your protection um and i also don't want to cause all these other men to stumble
01:07:39.580
and most of all first i want to honor the lord uh through obedience second i want to protect you
01:07:45.580
my wife that i love the wife of my youth um and then three i don't want to cause other men to uh
01:07:50.680
i don't want to provide in my own wife a stumbling block for other men so for those three reasons i
01:07:55.280
would love for you to dress modestly. If she doubles down and says no, then we're talking
01:08:02.560
about authority. What does authority mean? It means that he really does have the authority to
01:08:06.480
say, no, you are not allowed to dress that way and go out. Now, back to a previous point that
01:08:11.140
Wes made that is worth mentioning, because there are some young men who would listen to this.
01:08:17.500
Exactly. And they would assume too much. There is not a biblical measure that has been prescribed
01:08:24.300
for corporal punishment between a husband and a wife. So if the child refuses, right? If the
01:08:30.440
child refuses, God has actually given to the parents the instrument of the rot, right? If
01:08:37.200
the citizen refuses, God has given to the state the sword. And if the member of the church refuses.
01:08:42.760
If the member of the church refuses, God has given not a rot, not a sword, but keys to bar
01:08:47.640
them from the Lord's table and to remove them from the membership and excommunication. But with
01:08:52.240
the husband to the wife, God has given no such instrument. And so if the wife absolutely refuses,
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the husband would exercise stronger authority and say, I am telling you, I'm not just saying I would
01:09:04.360
love it. I'm not just asking or request. I am telling you that you must not do this. This is
01:09:10.100
sin. Do not do it. And if you do, then I'm going to bring this to the elders of the church and
01:09:16.880
they're going to come as one or two witnesses alongside me to exercise even stronger authority
01:09:24.760
to call you out for your sin in this and to call you to repentance. And slowly, this isn't carried
01:09:30.060
out over the course of a week and a half, but slowly over time, months, perhaps even years,
01:09:35.840
eventually we will tell this to the church if there is just impenitence and stubbornness.
01:09:41.880
And you're like, well, I'm going to wear yoga pants even harder. And when I'm shopping,
01:09:46.280
I'm only going to look for items on the bottom row, then, okay, all right, you have made
01:09:51.920
it very clear that you hate God's Word, you hate God, ultimately His authority, me, your
01:09:57.040
husband's authority, your pastors, the church, and the only course of recourse there would
01:10:02.240
be in the sphere of the church, not the husband, not the home, but with the church, that we
01:10:06.440
would eventually tell it to the whole congregation that the church would exercise the keys of
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and here's the crazy thing last thing that i'll add there uh the church would excommunicate that
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01:10:18.200
woman but the husband in the setting of the home would still be married to her yeah um unless she
01:10:23.100
abandons him right um that's first corinthians 7 or commits adultery and not adultery of heart
01:10:29.620
not matthew 5 right not not that kind of adultery well if you look at a woman lustfully you know
01:10:35.020
then you've committed adultery in your heart uh-huh that's true and that uh adultery of heart
01:10:39.540
is enough to send you to hell apart from grace and faith in Christ alone. But adultery of heart
01:10:45.300
is not enough to meet the biblical standard to end a marriage, to divorce. So unless this wife
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commits adultery or abandons, she can be excommunicated from the church, but you are
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01:10:57.260
still obligated to live with her in an understanding manner, recognizing that she's the weaker vessel.
01:11:02.540
And I stress all that to say, I know that's tough. I know that's tough. And so some of you guys,
01:11:10.120
So you're telling me I can never get rid of her without sinning against God?
01:11:13.440
Like I would just have an obstinate wife for the next 40 years that's not even a member
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01:11:17.800
in the church, and as I'm parenting my children, she's actively going against me every step
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01:11:25.980
And you young guys who are listening to this, you're like, your response is actually very
01:11:38.940
Like, who should be married, you know, if this is the case?
01:11:41.760
And Jesus says, you know, what is impossible with man is possible with God.
01:11:50.400
And the miracle is either going to be the transformation of the wife
01:11:54.200
or the miracle will be the long-suffering and Christ-like patience of the husband.
01:11:59.460
And God will spare the children even despite a demonic mom.
01:12:04.980
This is where we come back to what we said earlier and we put the cards on the table.
01:12:08.940
Because to call a man to that sort of thing is still calling him to submit to the providence that God has dealt him.
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We're calling women to deal with the providence that God has dealt you in creating you as a woman.
01:12:21.680
Men, the providence that God has dealt you in being a man.
01:12:25.960
But also, if you're in a difficult marriage like that, we are calling you to submit to the providence that God in his grace and wisdom has dealt.
01:12:38.940
but you are supposed to submit to God, will you?
01:12:44.720
Are you going to be condemning the insubordination in your wife
01:12:47.880
while ironically modeling that very insubordination
01:12:51.120
in regards to your refusal to submit to God and His providence?
01:12:57.460
Yeah, I just wanted to add, for the women especially,
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01:12:59.880
so we don't personally choose our civil magistrate.
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01:13:04.120
We don't personally even really choose our pastor.
01:13:06.560
They would generally be anointed by the body.
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01:13:07.900
but when it comes to the woman and choosing the man that she will submit to as a product of
01:13:12.920
christianity that doesn't do arranged marriages or just sell women off you young woman have the
01:13:18.540
choice of the man that you are going to submit to to the rest of your life you didn't choose your
01:13:22.900
father but eventually you will go out from under his roof to the roof of your husband think about
01:13:28.100
that carefully employ other men employ your father and your brothers and a pastor to sit down with
01:13:33.440
that man and ask them, Dad, can you tell me if this should be a man that I should commit to
01:13:38.580
submitting to? Because when you go to the altar and you take those vows, sometimes it's been
01:13:43.660
removed, but it should be included in all wedding liturgies, that she's committing to obey him.
01:13:47.920
When you do that, there's no going back. So choose carefully. And then when you choose carefully,
01:13:54.140
it's meant to be a good and an easy thing. Spurgeon said how beautiful it is when a husband
01:13:59.000
and wife live in harmony together so choose wisely choose well if you've chosen unwisely in
01:14:05.000
the past there is grace and god will see you through it uh but don't yeah don't be foolhardy
01:14:10.020
with it and uh and it should be a good thing this is not intended to be something dour and serious
01:14:14.620
uh husband and wife their marriage should be warm and enjoyable and reflect christ in the church
01:14:19.220
amen amen yeah wives uh potential wives need to be very careful who they choose as a husband
01:14:24.740
um and likewise young men have to be very careful um like i you know i got married at 29 i wish i
01:14:32.880
had gotten married earlier part of the reason i got married later was just my own sin and idolatry
01:14:36.700
and a disney version of marriage instead of a biblical one and postponed you know and drug my
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feet all those kinds of things um that was part of it so i want to own that um my own sin my own
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idolatry but um in my defense that was that was definitely part of it wasn't all of it another
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part of it was you know it was difficult to find um a woman you know that uh that i could marry
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uh that wouldn't ruin my life right yeah you know i think of ecclesiastes it says
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um there's a verse that says i found one upright man among a thousand but not one
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upright woman among them all um solomon so uh he tried them all solomon he tried them all he says
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i know they're not they don't exist and obviously um we do believe that god saves women so there are
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righteous women but if that was true in solomon's age the the general sense of of that proverb in
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ecclesiastes um how it would be infinitely not infinitely but exponentially more true in our day
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and age that's just been completely immersed in feminism um i yeah like you and there's but it's
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it's not um it doesn't require sherlock holmes you know this is not like this this doesn't really
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yes this doesn't require like a supernatural sixth sense in order like you can you can meet
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a woman and probably in less than a minute you can tell uh does is she have an inward beauty
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which is imperishable and pleasing in the sight of god which is uh most notably characterized by
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two qualities, quiet and gentle spirit? Or is she loud? Is she loud? Are her feet swift to go
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anywhere and everywhere but home? Or is she domestic? Is she a lady of the hearth? Does she
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love her home? Is she industrious in all the right ways? Or is she a boss babe in all the wrong ways?
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She actually produces nothing, but she wants to be at work, but she doesn't work.
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And when I met my wife, Megan, it was her disposition.
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Obviously, God saves and God transforms and the Holy Spirit actually does sanctify and
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So all those things being said, those are true Christian doctrines.
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However, however, don't overlook a woman's just, a particular woman, her natural disposition.
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When I met my wife, her and I were both immature, but theologically I was immature, but she
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There was a lot of things she didn't know, but part of what attracted me to her was she
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what what uh tell me about calvinism explain that to me i don't really like it but i want to submit
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to the word of god say that again and asking questions and not just trying to you know uh you
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know uh trap me and prove me wrong and at every turn and i just knew and i was looking at her
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as in comparison to many of her peers and and other women and i just realized she just has a
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gentle disposition yeah like her own family uh said that when i met her family for the first time
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they're like yeah this is our baby sis you know and she's uh she's the you know they would make
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jokes about she's the favorite you know because um she you know she's never done it she never
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rebels you know she's not you know loud like we're we're feisty you know the other two sisters we're
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feisty you know but she's just uh compliant i was like yes yes you know like right now because
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we're so drenched in feminism even within the church women all you all you have to do is ask
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a couple key questions and they'll tell on themselves. They'll give it away. They'll be
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like, yeah, I'm a firecracker. Yeah, I'm feisty. And you, young man, should hear that. And she's
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saying, yeah, I'm not marriage material. That's what she's saying. I do not have a quiet and
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gentle spirit. I am not beautiful in terms of inward beauty. It is that simple. First Peter
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says it explicitly, not outward beauty that perishes, but inward beauty, which is imperishable
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and pleasing the sight of God, which is a gentle and quiet spirit. When she says, I'm loud, I'm a
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firecracker. I'm feisty. She is telling you, according to God's standard, I am not attractive.
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Therefore, you should not be attracted to me. So listen to her. When she tells you not to marry her,
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listen to her. Yeah. Because that's what she's telling you. All right. Yeah. All right. I know
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I said any final thoughts. I just thought about that at the end. That was great. Yeah. Okay. All
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right. Thank you guys for tuning in. God bless.