Biblical Extended Family Interactions
Genesis 3 · Vern Peterman · Mar 4, 2007
Marriage & Family, No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926019287703

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, you got two pieces of paper which are intended to convey two different things. The first one has got these arrows up and down and crossways. And so we'll talk about that one first. Husband and wife as parents, what they teach by modeling and how they influence. Now, I say as parents, but the reality is I list their different relationships between the husband and wife. One of the things to realize is that each of us actually has different roles, even though we're the same person.

A man will, upon marriage, step into the next role, and that is of a husband. That's what the two of you are looking at doing here. roughly six months out. Then from there the role of father, and then from there also the role of adult son. Look at this next week, the life stages. Notice with the woman, she is a woman, then she gets married, she becomes a wife, and then with children becomes a mother, and then there is also the role of adult daughter. What you have there, if you look at those side by side, there is a column in the middle at the top and it says the man and the woman, that's their gender identity. There is with the husband and wife a spousal role. The father and the mother, there is a parental role. Then an adult son and an adult daughter is a relationship to elderly parents role. See that? Make sense? The reality is at any one time you might have one or all four of those things going on.

Take for example when we were in Carson City, we were of course man and woman, husband and wife. We had three kids and they were kind of leaving home a little at a time. So we were mother and father. And then we also had a relationship with elderly parents in Carson City.

There at first both Nancy's parents were alive and then her dad died so her mom was around and then she eventually moved to had a relationship there. My parents are still alive, and so although they live in California and my contact with them is not as close as the other parts of my family where they are living there, there is that. So you might have one of those, as the two of you have now, and maybe you have the adult son and the adult daughter relationship on top of that. And then you are adding these others as you step into them, right? Alright, now, why do we bring those up?

Does scripture have some definition for each one of those roles? Yes. Let's talk about the man and the woman. Just as maleness and femaleness describes it. Something to say about that. Just like we talked about last week. I'll create the male and female. There is a definition for what that is. Scripture continues to talk about what that means on into the New Testament. And, interestingly enough, when we go to be with the Lord, is that going to continue? Maleness and femaleness? No. No. Isn't that something?

The Lord says we will be, in that respect, as the angels who do not reproduce. So there will be reproduction in heaven, contrary to the Mormons. Sorry to disappoint them, they just didn't get it. You have the husband and wife role. Certainly scripture speaks to that. We've been over the passages that talk about that. There is the father and mother role, and that's something we'll be talking about more in the future. It's something we're only kind of introducing here.

And then in the adult son and adult daughter rule, even back in the law, notice it didn't say for all time, obey your parents, but honor your parents. And we'll see that next week as we talk about life stages. There will be, as you go through life, you get to a place where obeying your parents is not the biblical mandate. But honoring them is. So what does that mean? We'll talk more about what that means. At any point in time, we could have certainly at least one, and maybe all four, and maybe backing off to just one or two, depending on what situation we've got.

Notice the arrow that goes down there from the man, pointing down to the sun. Look at the kinds of things that the son is learning from the father. He is, by the way the man lives out his life, he is teaching about the role of a man, of a husband, of a father, and as an adult son. He's learning about all those four roles, isn't he? He is also conveying value and worth. And he also conveys what it's like to be in that same role. The same role versus the opposite situation with the daughter. So he's communicating a lot. Let's ask some questions.

What happens if the husband does a bad job of it? It will reflect on his family. The son then is going to have a tough time figuring out what's a man. How might he do a bad job of it? Not teaching those things at all. Or just being ignorant of your role. Yeah, being ignorant of the role is good. Pardon me, if he's not teaching them spiritually, if he's not providing for them physically, if he's not loving his wife, if he... Abuse. There are ways that he could do very badly. There are also ways in which he could simply fall short. This is a matter of degrees and it may be that he does pretty well in one role but not quite so good in another. That can vary too.

He is learning by, the son is learning by watching how does a father and a husband relate to kids and wife? How does my dad take care of my grandparents? How does he relate to them? So all those are things that, I mean, there's a tremendous education process going on here. Even if the Father doesn't make a point of communicating things, and certainly should, but even if he doesn't, he's still communicating things, isn't he?

And Scripture has something to say about all those things. Scripture has something, you know, Scripture talks about what does it mean to be a man. Scripture talks about what does it mean to be a husband, and we've been going over those passages. Scripture talks about it and we'll see what does it mean to be a father. Scripture talks about what does it mean to be an adult son.

And it's not just what do those look like, but it's also what am I teaching my son. See that? That's why we put the diagram together, you notice there aren't any scripture references, but if you start thinking about it, does scripture address that? Oh yeah. So there is a great deal that is communicated massively by the man, husband, father, adult, son, and the way he lives that out before his kids. Now let's look, oh, let's address something else. Value and work.

Why do we say that the Father conveys value and work? Is that something biblical or is Vern just cooking that up? Why is it biblical? In what ways can you pick out from scripture that the Father is conveying value? The way Christ does with us. Certainly you see that the Lord by His dying on the cross expressed that value. But let's think particularly of the Father in that role.

How about, for example, You go through the book of Genesis and what was the thing that the sons were looking for from the father? The blessing. I want my father to say the right thing and even you see some kind of shenanigans going on trying to get the father to blindly blessed the wrong one. It was real important. What does my dad say about me?

The Father is communicating value and worth by what He says and does and how He treats the Son. That's one example. Here's another one. Let's take it from this picture. The Heavenly Father. Did He bless us? I'm talking about us who are in the church.

Ephesians 1.3. God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has done what? Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing and heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Did he express just phenomenal things? Oh yeah! Amazing things! And so here is the Father conveying upon us value and worth. Those would be a couple of examples. It is interesting that the father has that role in the family.

Now, let's go to the woman, wife, mother, adult daughter, and look right below there and there's the daughter. The woman, the wife, the mother, and adult daughter in that relationship conveys to the daughter, what is the role of a woman? What is a wife like? What's a mother like? What's an adult daughter like? All those different family roles. And the mother is conveying what those are and conveys the same role. That is, you're this daughter when she grows up. What do those things mean? Now, we can go over a lot of the same things. Essentially, scripture communicates things about that as well.

What does it mean to be a woman? Scripture talks about that. What is a biblically defined wife? What does that look like? Scripture talks about that, and we've been talking about that. What is a mother biblically? What does that look like? We'll look at some of the passages that deal with that in the weeks ahead. We have an adult daughter who is taking care of a parent. How does that look?

When Nancy's mom was over in California and we were still in Nevada, we would go and have contact with Nancy's mom after her dad had passed away. And so part of what's going on, aside from caring for Nancy's mom, is also Nancy is teaching how to care for an adult parent that needs help. Even my involvement conveys how does a husband get involved in caring for this adult parent. So there are lessons to be learned there all the way around.

Look at the cross-ways of this. Think about this. What you have is the man, husband, father and adult son is communicating to the daughter. What does it mean to be in the role of a man, husband, father and adult son? How does that relationship work out? How does a man relate to a woman? And in the case of a godly man-husband father, that's the kind of a thing that a daughter can say, I want that kind of character in my husband.

Or we have people here at Holly Hills that said, we knew that the way our parents were is not what we wanted in our life. So it was a good-bad example. And that's kind of interesting to see. Though certainly we're encouraging positive examples, there are instances where people can point to a bad example and look at it and say, boy, I don't want to do that, as a motivator for them to do things differently. What it does, and we put this kind of in the middle of the cross there, conveys the complementary role. Our daughter would look at me and get an example.

That's how you relate to a man. That's what a husband looks like. That's what a father looks like. So she's learning from that complementary role. Does she want to imitate me? No. But she's still learning, here's what that interaction looks like. By the same token, the son is looking at the mother, the wife, the adult daughter. the woman and say, oh, that's how she looks like. And then has a better idea also of even who's a good candidate to be a wife. So what you have here is both the husband and wife, man and woman, they're all teaching, aren't they? They're teaching even if they're They're not explicitly making attempts to communicate. They're still teaching. What do you do when either the example is bad, or for whatever reason, the role is absent? How do you fill in the blanks? That's a word? And here's, I think, where you look at it. You're right on target.

One of the reasons we're studying these passages is because any one of us can have one or more areas where things are not optimal. We live in a world that has been impacted by sin. But we can learn from God's word. When something needs to be corrected, changed, we can fill in where there is a blank. That is very important and that is very good news. That's really neat because then we're not simply at a loss of saying, well, I guess I'm doomed to repeat the same crazy, stupid errors. We can learn from God's word. Now, there's another way of helping aside from God's word, but still spiritual. What might that be?

Christian or spiritual examples? Sure. Yeah, you look at instances and you might say, gee, my dad or my mom, they just weren't there for whatever reason, or the example I saw wasn't a good one. What is a good one? And so that's another thing within the body of Christ there is a role there. Take your Bible if you have one, turn to the book of Titus, chapter 2, and I think we're looking at verse 2 in Titus, chapter 2. So here's an example.

You're talking about what's the character at different ages. Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith. By the way, the word is translated from the word hygiene, so it means healthy. Healthy in faith, in love, in perseverance. Was that the character of the culture?

No. So what is he doing? He is doing exactly what you said. He is giving direction on something. Titus was sent to Crete, and Crete was a culture where dishonesty was admired greatly, where being a cheater and a liar and doing a really good job of it, that made you a culture hero. So what does he do? He says, here's a direction when your examples are all lousy.

This is the character that older men need to be growing towards. Notice what he says to older women, and this is interesting because it's not only what's her character, but what does she do in her context in the body of Christ. Look at that, verse 3. Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior. So here's what she's like.

Not malicious gossips. And by the way, the Greek sitcoms played out the older women as just malicious gossips. Just busy bodies and gossips. They were enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good. So now it's not just what's their lifestyle, but also what are they doing to influence other people. So you have older women in the body And specifically, verse 4, so that they may encourage the young woman to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. So not only is the older woman told, here's the character name for it, not what you saw, not what you saw in your own household or anything else in the culture, but here's the character name for it, and here is the ministry of the older woman to the younger woman.

Isn't that cool? And this is in a culture that's raunchy. Lying and cheating was so good that the Cretans were like the empire-wide symbol If you want somebody to really lie and cheat good, look to a Cretan. They even had special words for lying and cheating that included the word Cretan. Isn't that a derogatory word now? We still use it today. Are you a Cretan? Yeah. Really decrepit, debauched. That was it.

Verse 6, Likewise urge the young men to be sensible in all things, show yourself to be an example, here's this example thing again, of good deeds with purity in doctrine, dignified sound in speech, which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.

So as you look at this, Scripture is giving us, this is not only a map of the influences, a map of how we learn, but Scripture also gives us the guidebook on what do we do if it's not right? What do we do if we don't have anything to learn from? Mom wasn't home. Dad wasn't home. Maybe it's even a death or serious illness or something like that that reduces that. It doesn't matter.

Scripture between God's word, and you're right, God's word and the body of Christ provides the means to reconstruct things in a healthy way even if they weren't there or they weren't healthy before. Isn't that cool? That's neat stuff. In your sociology studies, have you ever looked through some of this kind of thing? It sounds very sociological.

No, not really. They studied the outcome of single women, the prevalence of homeless families. The fastest growing population is homeless families. Homelessness is homeless families. I'm not sure if you addressed that fully, what you did here, but I don't know what you did there. This is interesting.

I noticed Nancy's bring up the point that I put value and worth as communicated by the man, husband, father, and adult son for both the son and the daughter. The reason I put that is, take for example in Genesis where they are looking for the blessing from the father. It is the father's place to convey that value and worth to the kids. Their sense of worth comes from the father. It's a really interesting thing. Also, as we've looked at these various passages, it points to there's a very important role there that the husband must not lose sight of, the father must not lose sight of, that he is conveying value and worth to the kids. I'm just looking at the relationship between Nancy and I. My treating Nancy as of value conveys value and worth to the kids. Why would that be? Because they're attached to the mother, especially at birth, right? Sure. There's a really close connection. Yeah.

I would also say that as their parents are their source of security, obviously God is the ultimate source. I've heard that kids care more about if their parents love each other than if they love them. There is a priority in terms of what the kids see in the parents and that gets to the next piece of paper we're going to look at. So thank you for that.

Good segue. Here we go into the next piece of paper, which at first looks like a strange thing, because it looks like it ought to be on the target range. What we have there is titled God's Design for the Family, Basic Family Relationships. It's a sequence that goes like this, and it has to do with the kind of a life cycle thing that we'll talk about next time, life stages. So this is the introduction to that.

Obviously, you get to a place where you've got sort of a chicken and egg kind of question, but let's start with the circle that's on the bottom. What we have is the husband or wife as adult child is one of the things marked there in the circle, but in the bottom part, husband and then slash wife and you notice I have husband underlined in that. What are we showing here? At the center of the relationship and the priority in the family is always inward in the circle. In the center of the relationship is God himself.

The husband has a relationship with the Lord and the relationship with the wife flows from that relationship with the Lord. The spiritual relationship that husband has is the basis for the relationship between the husband and wife. Likewise, the wife's focus is upon the Lord first and the husband second. That's why, for example, Paul would write, the wife should be submissive to the husbands as to the Lord. So he's pointing back to that relationship to the Lord as key. As the husband and wife jointly put their focus upon the Lord, it provides a center point for the marriage relationship. That's also the place from which the husband and or wife will be an adult child as well, and that may be in that case.

The lower right-hand circle there is no kids in the picture. The responsibility in there is to honor the parents. Why doesn't it say obey the parents? Yeah, that's right. Because they are leaving the father and mother, not to ignore them and neglect them for all the rest of their days, but what we are saying, the reason we put the underline under the husband is the husband is now the new head. And you have to have an understanding, not only between the husband and wife, but the others involved in the relationship. An understanding that the husband is now the head of the home, and the husband-wife relationship now has a priority over the relationships to their extended families. Number one is the relationship with the Lord, and it is a new relationship that is now established that has priority over the extended family relationships.

And the Lord is at the middle of it. They are to honor parents, not to obey the parents. The parents are not calling the shots. Why? Because the husband is now the head of the household before the Lord. Now the next circle, so we have this arrow pointing to the middle circle. What do you see that's different?

Children. Now you've got kids in the mix. I put three kids. You can put whatever number you want. Fifteen if you like. But notice that now the relationship between husband and wife and God, that didn't change. The same is done here basically. I didn't put husband and wife as adult child, but that may be as well. But that inner circle didn't change.

The kids are added on to the outside. Why did they put the circle on the outside? Because the parents teach the children spiritual things. Okay. They're now teaching, just like we talked about here, they're now teaching about what's priority in life? Where's the center of the circle? God. They teach the kids about what's priority, not just by what they say, but what they do. What's priority?

There's something else and that's the security for those kids, which you just pointed out. The security for those kids is going to come because they look at mom and dad, like with our kids. When our kids got older, Nancy and I would be in the kitchen and they'd say, get a room. But on the one hand they poke fun at us, but the other thing is comforting to them. They say mom and dad love each other. We turn to them and say, should we fight? Should we get a divorce? No!

So it's a comfort to them. I even heard one parent say that they were in a situation where there's mom and dad sitting down and they're like watching a movie or TV or something like that. And the younger daughter came over and put their hands together. Everything is okay with mom and dad. That's the way we want it. Even though kids may at times come in and yank and pull, in their heart of hearts they want mom and dad to be together. That's what they're longing for. They like that. That's security for them. We put the children close but to the outside of that circle.

The husband and wife each having their own relationship with the Lord. So notice the priority is towards the center of the circle. Each of them then having and maintaining a relationship with the Lord are then able to maintain a spiritual relationship with each other and a relationship with the kids where they are properly modeling things. Now let's play a little game. and put one of the children in the next circle up and take the wife and put her in the next circle out. What's happening there? We have a mess. Let's say the husband, whether it's the daughter or the son, the husband is tightly linked with that child. The wife is kind of on the outside. Bummer. Not good, right? This is not God's design.

I don't know that I actually have seen any statistical evidence of this or any studies done on it, but just from things that I've heard over time, isn't it more typical that the wife would put the husband as a child and bring a child into that inner circle.

So here's an interesting thing. You all have various combinations. Nancy's got a good point. Part of what happens is, not officially, but in terms of how the roles get played out. When things get distorted, you can have a circumstance where a husband or wife pulls one of the kids into that kind of inner circle and pushes off the spouse into the outer circle and things get pretty distorted. Here's something else. You might also have, here's this circle and we've got husband and wife with God in the middle and the three kids. What about extended family? Is it possible that extended family can start pulling themselves into one of these circles?

It could happen, and sometimes it can get pretty nasty. Nancy and I, as I tell this story, we had friends who were both sets of parents despised the one that their child married. and both sets of parents were extremely tight in their accounting of hours and minutes. You spent so much time with that set of parents and this other, you know, we need equal time. And they would keep, both of them, keep track of the other person's, you know, the other couple's time and monitor it carefully. And we've seen situations where A parent comes in, boy they are meddling and reaching in and trying to pull the strings here.

What's wrong with that whole picture? What's the difficulty with that? They're still acting as the head of their children. Notice the husband underlined there. That's indicating he's the head of the home. One of the ways that I'll put it sometimes is I talk to guys and say, well you're the family shepherd. You are the family shepherd. You have the shepherdess alongside you there, but you are watching over this little family flock here. The husband needs to be the head of the home.

What happens is somebody else who comes in from the outside, extended family, close friend, comes in and starts dictating. I've even seen situations where a pastor comes in. It starts dictating things. Dictating what happens in the home. Where they should live, what activities the children should be involved in, how they have finances. It can get nasty, but anybody on the outside can start stepping in and yanking and pulling on what God designed as this family relationship that needs to be watched out for. If that happens, who should deal with it?

The husband. The husband is the family shepherd in the same way that you would tell, okay, look, the shepherd's got to watch out. There's some enemy in here. The husband needs to draw the line. In several different instances where we counseled with people, we said, look, you're the family shepherd. You need to go and tell this party on the outside. Sometimes it has to be done real gently and sometimes it has to be done pretty firmly. However, it needs to be communicated that this is the best way to go about it.

That's the husband's place. He's the head of the household. He needs to say, look, this is the way we do things here. I noticed that even at a wedding that Hal did, he even talked about this principle we're talking about right now at the wedding ceremony.

He had the parents come up, the parents of the bride and the parents of the groom, and he said, now you realize that you, parents of the bride, are handing your daughter off to the headship of this young man. and you no longer have a place to tell her what to do. You realize, parents of the groom, that you are setting your son into a position of headship and you no longer have a place to tell him what to do. It was very good. It was very good.

In fact, Vern and I have talked about Gosh, should we have the parents of the bride and the groom come for a counseling session to explain this to them to make sure they understand it? Generally, what we've concluded is that we should at least talk with the couple and see if it's an issue.

In some families, it's not a problem. In others, it's a big problem. So it's something at least to be kept in mind. We've seen instances where both sets of parents had it wrong. We've seen instances where both sets of parents understood well. So just be aware of it and recognize that it might not be parents. It might be we've seen siblings. We've seen friends that didn't understand.

You're no fun anymore since you got married. And then we'll recognize the priority that's taking place here. Notice what you have here is the couple will start off simple, husband and wife, no kids. The kids come into the mix, however many. moving on to a situation very much like this. Now the parents of the husband and or wife, kids are out of the picture. Kids have established their own home and are either, once married, are either that lower circle or the middle circle. Now the situation is they are the ones who are moving in a situation where they are the ones who might need help.

There's a stage where you still have children at home, and yet your parents are getting elderly. If you don't have children until you're older yourself, then you might often fall into this. We were there for a while, where you still have children at home, but your parents are beginning to need help. They call that the Oreo cookie generation. You're the cream of the filling because you've got a cookie over here that's your kids and a cookie over here that's your parents.

So it's interesting actually having both the kids in the house who need your help and the adult parents who need help too. So it can be an interesting stage. And we'll go into the life stages thing next week, but it's just as we talk to couples who are in the process of planning a wedding or even early stages of marriage, just to look ahead at what these kinds of things mean. And it varies, doesn't it? You'll have instances where maybe both sets of parents need all kinds of help. One set of parents need all kinds of help. Some instances where the parents probably didn't need any help.

So there can be quite a variety, but it's important to recognize what might I be signing up for. and to recognize ahead of time that that comes along with when I married Nancy. It meant that when her parents need help, I'm a part of that. That's a part of what I'm marrying into. As we look at things, it's just a part of the perspective. When we say, I do, part of what we're saying yes to is, I love you and I even will love you to the point of honoring your family obligations and supporting you in that and doing whatever is necessary for that to take place.

So I do, was that three letters? Really big. Really big. Okay, next time we'll get into the life stages thing, we'll kind of take a further look at something we've begun to address here. Dots, questions? Surprises? Sorry. That's all right. Just don't want to skip something like that.

Just like you were asking a question earlier about Genesis. this center set of circles where the husband and wife relationship still has to take priority. Honestly, I think in our culture in the last, say, maybe 10 years, what you see is parents have an obligation to protect their children, which is true. But they would take the parent-child relationship over the husband and wife relationship. And there are times when one parent or the other will have to take the children and remove them from a home because it's a dangerous situation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you stick in your marriage no matter what if there's a danger. You don't want to have your children in a dangerous situation, but you don't override that relationship because of an issue with a kid. A child with a handicap, a child with some sort of an emotional problem at a time or something like that. It's real easy to have certain demands kind of flipping with the practical priority.

We even know of a woman who divorced her husband because their daughter-in-law had died and their son was left with a child to take care of. She said, I had a dream from the Lord where to move by him. The husband said, no we're not. She said, then I'm divorcing you and I'm moving there anyway.

That would be a twist on what this would lay out as a priority. Yeah, and as a head, she's basically going over and bypassing the head, his decision. And that relationship, that priority. And that's one of the ways in which things can get distorted compared to what's biblical. But what she did, and it wasn't a situation where we had an input, What she did was not biblical. It didn't fit. Ultimately, it comes down to the question, who has God put in place there as the family shepherd? That shouldn't be violated by other people in the family or outside.

Here Nancy and I are in a spot where all three of our kids are married and so we're this You know, a couple here, our kids, we've got two of them here with their own kids, and then we've got one of the kids where it's just the two of them. So we've got two in this spot, one in this spot. And looking at that, we in every case need to honor who the Lord has made head. And to recognize that and support that in any involvement that we have. And recognize that when we step into their home situation, we are guests but subject They have their house and their house rules and how they want to do things. And that's our place.

It's not ours to come in and start, you know, running office and that. And I think in the case of our sons, they wouldn't have any problem telling us, hey, you're over the line. Yeah, and we've told them, you know, hey, You're the head of the household here. You call the shots.

They know that that's at least our intent, even if at some point we might overlook something. And it's a good thing. It's a good thing that they know that. Okay, let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, certainly there are lots of things that we can look ahead to and say, boy, this or that could happen. Sometimes things happen that are surprises too, and in either case, we look to you for wisdom. Wisdom not only for what am I signing up for, for someone looking ahead to getting married, but also those who are in the midst of this, of one of these circles, so to speak. I just look to you for wisdom in that, that you would guide and lead and direct. Pray in Jesus' name. Amen.