"Contemporary Attacks Against The Home"

Intro:

1. The fabric of our society is beginning to unravel and tear.

2. Many of our moral and social ills can be attributed to a breakdown in the home (crime, drug abuse, lack of respect for authority, divorce...).

3. Healthy homes produce healthy citizens, and unhealthy homes produce unhealthy and dysfunctional children who grow into adults.

4. There's no question that we have a problem today.

a. 1965 9% lived in single parent homes.

b. 1985 21% lived in single parent homes.

c. 1994 30 % lived in single parent homes.

d. From 1940 to 1993 the divorce rate and grown by 250%.

e. 31% of married couples have admitted to having been guilty of infidelity (Peter Kim & James Patterson "The Day America Told The Truth").

5. However, not everyone is concerned about the breakdown of the home.

a. Some believe it has run its course and ought to be discarded.

b. "The old ship of matrimony that God launched in the Garden of Eden has been caught in a cyclone of change...Wedlock is a padlock which leads to deadlock...and the first institution God established has outlived its usefulness." (Rx For Marital Illness).

c. "The patriarchal marriage system of the Judeo- Christian tradition, based on an agrarian economy, is simply outmoded today." (Open Marriage).

6. Throughout the remainder of this lesson, let us identify some of the major threats to the home.

I. Sexual Perversion.

A. We are being told that sexual perversion is acceptable from a variety of sources.

1. School.

a. "The demand that marriage should entail sexual monogamy may have made sense in an era when contraception was largely impossible and questions of lineage were of considerable moment." (Sociology: Concepts & Characteristics).

b. If the function of the family is to help the individual find fulfillment, it is only logical to encourage him to experiment until he finds a situation to his liking." (Sociology: Concepts & Characteristics).

2. Religion.

a. "If people do not believe it is wrong to have sex relations outside marriage, it isn't, unless they hurt themselves, their partners, or others." (Situation Ethics).

b. "Even the most hard-and-fast moralists of our day have surely come to see that the sex relationship has too many sacred potentialities to be locked up in any human institution." (An Open End To Christian Morals).

c. "My own personal thinking at the present time is leaning toward the view that sexual activity between consenting adults outside marriage is not sinful per se...I cannot believe that two lonely people comforting one another with physical love is necessarily wrong, even if they are not married." (Take A Bishop Like Me).

3. Society.

a. The Homosexual Movement.

1. Adoption is not outlawed.

2. It is only a matter of time that marriages are widely accepted.

b. Rationalizing: “If everybody’s doing it, why shouldn’t I? If everybody is breaking the rules, am I a complete jerk to play by them myself?”

B. God planned marriage for the benefit of man and arranged it to bring about man's well being.

1. Had sexual freedom been good for man, God wouldn't have restricted it.

II. The Influence Of Television

A. I don't know of any one single thing that molds our values as much as does TV.

B. For years, we have been told that TV is only a reflection of society, and does not shape it. Who can believe it!

C. We find ourselves saying bad things about the television, then turn around and put it in charge of raising our children.

D. I'm not interested in telling you what you should or should not watch but I do want to tell you to watch as one who must give account of what he watches.

E. We have become so desensitized to evil.

F. We must begin to supervise TV or resign ourselves to having our children adopt the values it teaches in regard to sexuality, marriage, love, and God.

III. Absentee Parents

A. Parents have been instructed to train and disciple their children (Ephesians 6:4; 1 Timothy 5:14).

B. How can this be accomplished when parents hardly ever see their children?

C. Some parents are too consumed with pursuing certain lifestyles or standards of living.

D. Who is shaping the values of our children?

E. Quality time -vs- Quantity time.

F. Time together is an important means of restoring family unity - schedules will conflict but if you believe in the concept, you'll make the effort.

IV. Divorce

A. Never before in our nation's history has there been so many divorces.

B. "Till death do us part" is spoken tongue and cheek these days.

C. In its wake is destruction.

D. Divorce is a form of martial suicide, and like all suicides it is a permanent mistake in reaction to a temporary problem.

E. (Matthew 19:6).

V. A Lack Of Religious Instruction

A. We are raising a generation of biblically illiterate children.

B. The Bible class, which is supposed to be a supplement to the religious instruction of children, has become the sole instrument in instructing our children.

C. The principles in God's word concerning marriage are what people are wanting, yet they are the things we are failing to teach.

D. A former Prime Minister of Great Britain said concerning the Arabs and the Jews, "Why can't the Jews and Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?"

1. Why should non-Christians live by Christian standards?

2. Why should we think biblically illiterate people will adopt Christian principles in regard to the home?

Conclusion:

1. The American family is not very well today.

2. It is suffering from several threatening infections.

3. But it is not fatal there is an antidote.

4. The antidote is a healthy dose of commitment to God's word.

5. When we quit trying to doctor ourselves, and place ourselves under the care of the Great Physician, we will recover.

6. "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14).