Lecture 1: Marriage and Family Counseling

00:00:00.000 | All right, if you have your Bibles and your notebooks in front of you, you want to take

00:00:11.320 | them and turn them over to the information here that deals with the outline here for

00:00:16.180 | the Marriage and Family Counseling course.

00:00:18.840 | The first thing that we need to do is we have to define what is the family.

00:00:23.440 | Now normally, I can remember teaching this almost 30 years ago or teaching about marriage

00:00:28.200 | and the family 30 years ago, and we didn't have to define this because everybody understood

00:00:32.000 | it.

00:00:33.000 | Everybody understood when I referred to the family, everybody understood what we were

00:00:36.800 | talking about.

00:00:37.800 | A father and a mother with children and sometimes with children, the traditional nuclear family.

00:00:47.520 | But nowadays, things have been so vastly redefined that we have to answer the question, what

00:00:58.360 | is the family?

00:01:01.920 | There was an interesting article that appeared a few years ago in National and International

00:01:06.400 | Religion Report, and it's interesting that, and actually this is a quote from pollster

00:01:14.640 | George Gallup, and he makes a statement, "If a disease were to afflict the majority of

00:01:19.920 | a populace, spreading pain and dysfunction throughout all age groups, we would be frantically

00:01:26.000 | searching for reasons and solutions."

00:01:30.200 | Yet he said, "One particular scourge has become so endemic that it is virtually ignored.

00:01:37.360 | The scourge," he says, "is divorce, an oddly neglected topic."

00:01:44.160 | He goes on and says, "Divorce is a root problem and is the cause of any number of other ills."

00:01:55.240 | In fact, he says, "For many, marriage today is a losing gamble.

00:01:59.440 | Six out of 10 new marriages fail.

00:02:01.480 | Victims of divorce or separation.

00:02:04.520 | Reports on the National Survey of Families and Households at the University of Wisconsin

00:02:08.580 | yields those kind of statistics.

00:02:11.140 | The cold statistics also have a human heart to them.

00:02:14.540 | Divorces like suffering death without a funeral," said one woman still grieving over her marriage

00:02:19.380 | that had broke apart after eight years.

00:02:22.900 | The pain never ends.

00:02:24.620 | It's a living death.

00:02:27.500 | Even though most divorced people eventually remarry, about 60% of second marriages fail.

00:02:34.460 | According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the University of Minnesota's

00:02:38.500 | Dr. David Olson reports 65% of the marriages that managed to remain intact still are profoundly

00:02:48.580 | unhappy.

00:02:49.580 | 40% are devitalized, that's the way he chooses to refer to them, devitalized, filled with

00:02:56.100 | dissatisfaction in every dimension of the relationship.

00:02:59.460 | Another 25% of the marriages are almost as discontent and weak.

00:03:04.100 | But the problem is broader than divorce.

00:03:08.820 | So it's not just divorce that's happening in marriages, but it's people living in very

00:03:14.100 | unhappy marriages.

00:03:18.260 | And the question is, why is this going on?

00:03:20.780 | Why is this happening?

00:03:22.580 | Well, we believe that the scriptures have the answer to this.

00:03:28.460 | You don't have to look very far.

00:03:29.720 | Many of you know, even in your own families and extended families, some of the grief and

00:03:33.940 | heartache that divorce, maybe you've experienced it as even as a child growing up, your parents'

00:03:40.060 | marriage didn't survive.

00:03:42.380 | Or you know of an aunt or uncle or somebody that's close to you whose marriage didn't

00:03:48.140 | survive.

00:03:49.900 | Or maybe you know in tragic situations of friends, leadership in your church, maybe

00:03:57.260 | even your own pastor whose marriage didn't survive.

00:04:02.580 | How many times have I counseled pastoral couples who have been in ministry several years and

00:04:10.660 | they're having serious marital conflict and problems?

00:04:17.900 | Well, the answer to this question, what is the family, is important because many today

00:04:25.300 | are minimizing the importance of the family or they have erroneous ideas about what the

00:04:29.220 | family is and the role that it should play in our society in general or in the lives

00:04:33.500 | of people in particular.

00:04:38.480 | In fact, the biblical concept of the family has been strenuously opposed by many people

00:04:44.940 | around the world.

00:04:54.100 | I want to give you a few instances of that if I can.

00:05:04.460 | For example, Karl Marx, you remember he was the infamous author of the Communist Manifesto.

00:05:14.100 | And in 1848 when he wrote the Communist Manifesto, he makes this statement.

00:05:19.300 | He says, "On what foundation is the present family?"

00:05:25.100 | The bourgeois family based, he asks, on capital, on private gain is his answer.

00:05:37.460 | In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeois.

00:05:43.580 | But this state of things finds its complement in the enforced absence of the family among

00:05:49.900 | the proletarians, which is the lower class, and in public prostitution.

00:05:56.060 | The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes and

00:06:02.500 | both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

00:06:06.220 | The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed relationship

00:06:11.060 | of parent and the child becomes all the more disgusting the more by the action of modern

00:06:16.140 | industry all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder and their children transformed

00:06:23.100 | into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.

00:06:28.940 | So he sees the family as primarily a product of an industrial society that's driven by

00:06:34.220 | the desire to make more and more capital.

00:06:44.940 | And it's the use of the proletarians or the lower class of people by the middle class,

00:06:49.320 | the bourgeois, that keeps people in this enslaved state.

00:07:01.500 | That's Karl Marx's view on the family, which is radically opposed to what obviously the

00:07:10.380 | scripture would say about this.

00:07:16.260 | There was another book entitled "People Making" by an American therapist by the name of Virginia

00:07:22.540 | Satter.

00:07:27.140 | In her last chapter on the family of the future she sketches the basic Christian and

00:07:35.820 | traditional ethic of the family and then asks the question why should we accept this as

00:07:39.900 | the only possible way?

00:07:44.060 | So she lays out what the Christian view of the family is and the traditional view of

00:07:51.780 | the family and she says why should we accept this as the only way?

00:07:58.020 | In fact she suggests a variety of things that might happen in the future.

00:08:05.420 | She says what if all the practices now going on which we have labeled as morally bad were

00:08:12.820 | instead really evidence of great variations in human beings.

00:08:17.300 | In the case of many times married person, perhaps there are some people whose level

00:08:21.580 | of interest is short and so they choose one mate after another.

00:08:28.140 | Instead of considering this a shortcoming, what would happen if we treated this as a

00:08:31.380 | simple variation?

00:08:35.020 | Such people could enter a limited marital contract, say from one to five years, if the

00:08:39.560 | contract were not renewed at the end then dissolution of the marriage could take place.

00:08:45.980 | Perhaps the married people who have heterosexual relationships outside of marriage are not

00:08:50.740 | simply adulterers but are people with a human need.

00:08:56.420 | After all, ploandery, which is a woman with many husbands, and polygamy, which is a man

00:09:03.220 | with many wives, were once respected forms of marriage.

00:09:10.660 | And why not have a group of communal marriage?

00:09:13.820 | When you think about it, marriage merely legalizes a relationship between a male and a female

00:09:18.340 | adult that entitles them to certain property and a certain guarantee against exploitation.

00:09:26.220 | Why does it have to be limited to just one man and one woman?

00:09:29.820 | If we fully trusted one another and were truly responsible, we would not be exploitive and

00:09:35.180 | we would share fairly.

00:09:39.180 | You see what she's saying, saying if a person has gone in and out of marriage several times,

00:09:45.300 | then maybe it's really not a shortcoming on that person's part, that's just one variation

00:09:50.180 | of a different type of person, and why don't we view it as a variation?

00:09:53.980 | So we'll create a special type of marriage category for this person.

00:09:57.220 | This is the type of person who will have a marriage for maybe two, three years, maybe

00:10:00.220 | five years, and then at the end of that particular contract it can be renewed, and if it's not

00:10:05.260 | renewable then they can move into another relationship.

00:10:11.220 | Or why do we have a problem accepting a woman that has several husbands, or a palandery,

00:10:18.700 | or polygamy?

00:10:23.420 | Why do we have a problem with a man who has several wives?

00:10:25.740 | Why do we have a problem with that, she says.

00:10:32.220 | So she defines marriage as merely legalizing a relationship between a male and female adult

00:10:36.420 | that entitles them to certain property and a certain guarantee against exploitation.

00:10:42.240 | That's her definition of marriage.

00:10:45.580 | Now we're going to take exception to that, but that's the way that she would view it.

00:10:52.740 | Virginia Satter, S-A-T-I-R, in a book entitled People Making, she's an American therapist.

00:11:07.620 | Or some of you remember Alvin Toffler, now many of you in our class are not old enough

00:11:13.560 | to remember clear back to the 1970s, unfortunately I do, and a very famous book came out then

00:11:21.020 | called Future Shock.

00:11:23.540 | And in that book Toffler actually, he has a chapter in that book entitled The Frustrated

00:11:31.620 | Family where he depicts motherhood and he says, "Motherhood is killed in the future

00:11:38.100 | by birth technology and parenthood as a convenient legal and financial arrangement is soon to

00:11:44.220 | be dispatched."

00:11:45.380 | He envisions professional parents who bring up children from many biological sources and

00:11:50.780 | communes of three to six parents where biological origins will be happily confused.

00:11:56.300 | There will be geriatric group families, homosexual family units, and so on and so on.

00:12:02.540 | The odds are very heavily against the monogamous pattern as a provider of fulfillment and satisfaction.

00:12:08.620 | That's what Toffler was writing back in 1970, almost 40 years ago.

00:12:17.540 | Toffler sees tailor-made divorce with serial marriage as the new pattern starting quite

00:12:22.820 | naturally with trial marriage before anyone understands the first proper one.

00:12:30.100 | He admits that the stability and the sense of continuity afforded by the traditional

00:12:34.420 | family pattern of birth, growth, parenthood, and fidelity is undermined by this future

00:12:38.860 | prediction but he does not believe that the traditional family can survive.

00:12:44.200 | So he's saying that back in 1970s.

00:12:47.860 | That's when I was in college.

00:12:52.000 | They're predicting the demise of the family.

00:12:58.900 | When you take a look at what the United Nations says about the family, I don't know whether

00:13:03.060 | you've read very much about that but that is certainly eye-opening.

00:13:10.320 | To the United Nations, family is whatever anyone wants it to be and everyone is invited.

00:13:26.460 | Back in 1994, 1994 was referred to as the International Year of the Family by the United

00:13:45.740 | Nations.

00:13:46.740 | The United Nations General Secretary at that time, Boutros Ghali, calls the International

00:13:49.140 | Year of the Family a celebration of the family in all of its many cultural and societal forms

00:13:54.220 | adding that the diversity of society is fully reflected in the diversity of our families.

00:13:59.720 | There's no single definition of family, there's no one model, he says.

00:14:04.920 | In fact, the UN's International Year of the Family Handbook says that the family is the

00:14:10.140 | basic unit of society and it's described as a vital means of preserving and transmitting

00:14:16.520 | cultural values, end of quote.

00:14:19.820 | Well wow, we could say that as Christians.

00:14:22.220 | We could reproduce that word for word.

00:14:24.420 | The family is a basic unit of society and described as a vital means of preserving and

00:14:28.540 | transmitting cultural values.

00:14:30.100 | Hey, there's nothing wrong with that but what he means by the family is totally different

00:14:36.540 | than what we mean by the family because a few sentences later he makes this statement

00:14:44.860 | or a statement is made in that pamphlet that says many societies change the nature of what

00:14:49.340 | is considered a family, exposure to ideas and behavioral norms beyond traditional spheres

00:14:55.940 | and to the different lifestyles is praised as a positive development since it permits

00:14:59.660 | additional opportunities for more diversified lives.

00:15:06.500 | Now this is the culture that you're going out to minister in, it's everywhere, it's

00:15:10.660 | all over the world.

00:15:13.900 | Now what does the UN mean, the United Nations mean about diversified lives?

00:15:18.660 | Well they mean plenty and in International Year of the Family document entitled the Changing

00:15:23.940 | Family Structure, the UN describes various family, types of family units as comparable

00:15:29.780 | and equally acceptable.

00:15:32.820 | Polygamous and community families are lumped together on an equal footing with biological

00:15:36.700 | and adoptive families.

00:15:38.980 | Same gender families are also included in the listing.

00:15:42.020 | So you can have anything, you can have polygamy, philanthropy, homosexual, lesbian relationships

00:15:51.380 | as all lumped into this very generalized idea of what the family is.

00:15:59.140 | Jane Carney Schultz is the International Year of the Family's North American coordinator

00:16:04.780 | and she says the family is such a subjective thing, really.

00:16:11.460 | The family is a subjective thing.

00:16:14.160 | She goes and said it's important to accept that there are a lot of different models,

00:16:18.340 | whether it's two women or two men raising children.

00:16:21.400 | So in the International Year of the Family promotional literature provided by Schultz

00:16:26.780 | entitled Gay and Lesbian Community Groups are listed under the heading Could Child and

00:16:30.780 | Family Oriented and Family, Child and Family Oriented Contacts.

00:16:41.180 | And in that same article it says new forms of the family life have developed to meet

00:16:45.420 | the challenges of the modern world.

00:16:47.900 | The UN's International Year of the Family handbook adds that policies affecting the

00:16:52.460 | family should seek to avoid promoting implicitly or explicitly a single ideal image of the

00:16:58.700 | family.

00:16:59.980 | So they'd hate a class like ours.

00:17:02.540 | They wouldn't like this at all because we're promoting a single ideal image of the family,

00:17:11.700 | not because this is Professor John Street's interpretation of the family.

00:17:17.220 | It's what the word of God says the family is supposed to be.

00:17:21.580 | They go on and say we're trying to encourage the stability that families give, said UN

00:17:26.140 | spokesman William Haas, but we're not going to get trapped into any definition of the

00:17:31.460 | family.

00:17:32.460 | Trapped.

00:17:33.460 | It goes on and says it's a diversified world and unless we respect that we cannot achieve

00:17:42.180 | any progress.

00:17:43.180 | No one has a monopoly on the best form, definition, or concept of the family.

00:17:51.300 | Schultz says I think the UN's attitude about diversity and accepting all kinds of families

00:17:55.380 | without any definition is really excellent.

00:18:00.460 | So there we have it.

00:18:04.340 | So some of the things that Marx predicted, Sater predicted, Toffler predicted, is already

00:18:18.640 | reaping huge fruit in international definitions of the family.

00:18:25.860 | What is the family?

00:18:28.460 | O.R. Johnson, in a book entitled Who Needs the Family?

00:18:40.540 | How about that?

00:18:42.420 | In a book entitled Who Needs the Family?

00:18:46.060 | Listen to the way that he describes the traditional family.

00:18:49.520 | He says in traditional pre-industrial societies the family was a type of microcosm undertaking

00:18:56.420 | itself most of the tasks which the family group needed to survive.

00:19:00.060 | It may be useful to list these functions as anthropologists and sociologists have analyzed

00:19:04.100 | them.

00:19:05.100 | Firstly, the family regulated sexual expression and satisfaction, thus preventing constant

00:19:09.500 | conflict, confusion, and competition.

00:19:11.300 | Second, the family regulated the production of children, thus ensuring that the community

00:19:15.260 | continued.

00:19:16.260 | Thirdly, the family socialized the children, transmitting the culture and ensuring, therefore,

00:19:20.620 | that they become mature citizens at some point in the future to enter into a productive and

00:19:26.460 | continuing life as a society.

00:19:28.260 | Fourth, the family protected the children.

00:19:30.740 | This protective form was in most cases undertaken not only in relationship to the children,

00:19:35.460 | but also to their grandparents.

00:19:37.540 | The active adults in most societies have not only handed duties downward to their children,

00:19:42.580 | but also upwards to their elderly patients.

00:19:45.980 | Fifthly, after protection comes simple economic division of labor.

00:19:51.380 | This is seen in the most primitive societies where there are hunting societies or gathering

00:19:56.980 | societies.

00:19:57.980 | It is the father who hunts or gathers and it is the mother who rears the children.

00:20:01.460 | And sixthly, the family provides other resources which we can lump together, health care, recreation,

00:20:07.740 | training for work, initiating into religion and myth, lore and literature.

00:20:12.540 | All these tasks in early societies and in most primitive societies today were and are

00:20:17.060 | undertaken in the family for itself.

00:20:19.180 | Admittedly, there was sometimes a certain degree of specialization in addition.

00:20:23.900 | There was the priest for religion and medicine for the man for the health, but the family

00:20:28.860 | was a many-faceted operational group rich in a variety of tasks and it could shoulder

00:20:36.380 | for itself.

00:20:39.500 | A broad generalization is at once obvious.

00:20:42.600 | In the transition from primitive to modern Western types of society, many of these functions

00:20:47.780 | have become institutionalized outside the home.

00:20:52.940 | So we don't need that.

00:20:54.620 | So he basically sets up a description of what the family was supposed to do by his definition.

00:21:01.060 | And then he begins to set it up in such a way that, well, in our industrialized society

00:21:05.660 | today, there are other institutions that have taken over for these purposes that the family

00:21:11.980 | provided.

00:21:12.980 | And therefore, the implication is we really don't need the traditional family.

00:21:19.540 | He says, "We have witnessed the stripping of the family of many of its former reasons

00:21:23.460 | for existence and the handing over of these tasks to other specialized agencies put very

00:21:28.500 | crudely in modern societies.

00:21:30.480 | Work itself, that is economically profitable work, employment in order to exist, mostly

00:21:37.560 | goes on outside of the home.

00:21:40.720 | Religion is left to the churches or perhaps as a vestigial superstition to the astrology

00:21:48.520 | columns of magazines.

00:21:51.160 | Work training is provided by an industry or by the state or by a specialized institution.

00:21:57.000 | Only it now only rarely occurs in the family."

00:22:02.520 | So he's beginning to go through and just systematically, piece by piece, show how the industrialized

00:22:07.840 | society has taken over for the family.

00:22:10.660 | His ultimate argument is basically, "Who needs a family?

00:22:14.840 | Who needs it?

00:22:16.640 | You don't need it any longer.

00:22:17.640 | We have all kinds of organizations and institutions out there that have basically

00:22:30.240 | supplanted the family's role.

00:22:35.480 | So why should there be any kind of problem with redefining the family?"

00:22:42.080 | Well, you get the idea.

00:22:44.440 | Here's we've got up on the screen.

00:22:48.400 | There are many people today minimizing the importance of the family or they have erroneous

00:22:52.400 | ideas about what the family is and the role that it should play in society in general

00:22:58.600 | or in the lives of people in particular.

00:23:02.400 | Now in asking the question, what is the family?

00:23:06.160 | Second thing we want to make an observation here is that the answer to this question is

00:23:09.760 | important because it has consequences.

00:23:14.040 | It has consequences.

00:23:17.280 | If your conclusion about whatever the family is, if that's wrong, it will affect you and

00:23:35.000 | it will affect the way that you minister in horrible ways.

00:23:47.520 | If for example you don't understand what a church or a school is, then you don't know

00:23:53.200 | what to do with it.

00:23:57.000 | You have to understand what something is if you are going to use it correctly.

00:24:06.560 | You can hardly be expected to be able to benefit from something like a church or a school if

00:24:11.940 | you don't know what it is and you're confused about what it is.

00:24:18.180 | Some of you have probably seen the old movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy" where an African

00:24:22.040 | Bushman finds a coke bottle and he doesn't know what it is.

00:24:26.140 | So he tries to use it as a hammer and that doesn't work and he tries to use it as hanging

00:24:35.760 | on his body somehow and it's too awkward to hang it on his body and he doesn't know what

00:24:41.720 | the function of this particular item is because he's never seen a coke bottle before.

00:24:49.920 | Back ten years ago when we moved out to California, we were like that.

00:24:53.420 | I was put in charge by my wife of cleaning out our garage.

00:24:56.740 | Now we had lived in one location for many, many years and you can really collect a lot

00:25:02.420 | of stuff when you live in one location for many, many years.

00:25:06.440 | And I found stuff in that garage I haven't seen for years and I couldn't remember what

00:25:11.140 | it was.

00:25:13.140 | And if I didn't know what it was, then I didn't know, it looked important though, I didn't

00:25:17.860 | know whether I should throw it away or keep it and if I kept it, I didn't know what I'd

00:25:22.300 | use it for.

00:25:24.460 | But I was scared to throw it away.

00:25:26.820 | Should I throw that thing away?

00:25:27.820 | I don't know.

00:25:28.820 | What is that thing?

00:25:29.820 | It looks really familiar to me.

00:25:32.780 | That's the way it is.

00:25:33.780 | If you don't know what the family is, then you're not going to really know how to use

00:25:36.220 | it.

00:25:37.220 | If you don't know how to use it, then that's going to have huge consequences in your ministry.

00:25:50.680 | This is what happens when people don't clearly understand the answer to the question, what

00:25:53.580 | is the family?

00:25:56.020 | Because ideas have consequences.

00:25:59.700 | The way you think about and conceive of marriage, family, the role of the husband, the role

00:26:07.980 | of the wife, the role of the parent, the function of children in the family, how the children

00:26:14.420 | are supposed to respond to the parents, how the parents are supposed to respond to the

00:26:18.020 | children, the way that you conceive of these things drastically affects not only that family

00:26:24.260 | but all of society and even your church if you don't understand it correctly.

00:26:30.980 | The answer to this question is important because destroying the biblical family is one of Satan's

00:26:34.800 | primary objectives.

00:26:39.260 | That's certainly true.

00:26:43.980 | Scripture tells us in many places that we who are believers are really involved in a

00:26:51.180 | war.

00:26:56.700 | We're involved in a war.

00:26:58.940 | It's not a war that you can see.

00:27:02.740 | You don't see the fighting going on literally, but it is nonetheless a war with lots of casualties.

00:27:13.380 | Describe your Bible just for a moment.

00:27:14.380 | Let's go over to 2 Corinthians 10 and let's take a look at verses 3 through 5.

00:27:21.540 | 2 Corinthians 10 and verses 3 through 5.

00:27:28.340 | Paul says here, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,

00:27:33.340 | for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but are divinely powerful for the

00:27:37.460 | destruction of fortresses.

00:27:39.160 | We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God,

00:27:43.960 | and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ."

00:27:49.240 | There's part of that warfare.

00:27:52.960 | This is not a medieval mystical type of warfare with gargoyles and demons hiding under every

00:28:03.760 | rock.

00:28:04.760 | That's not the idea of this warfare.

00:28:07.760 | In the context of this, Paul is talking about an ideological warfare that is very demonic,

00:28:19.600 | but not demonic in a medieval sense, but demonic in just as a devastating sense because it

00:28:29.000 | is destroying the way that people think about life and reality.

00:28:36.480 | Paul says he goes to battle, not against flesh and blood, but against these wrong ideas about

00:28:45.200 | life.

00:28:46.440 | That's his ministry.

00:28:48.600 | These ideologies, these speculations, these lofty things that are raised up against the

00:28:55.280 | knowledge of God.

00:28:57.680 | Paul is trying to promote and uplift the knowledge of God.

00:29:05.280 | Not human knowledge.

00:29:08.960 | The scripture is very clear that there is a war that's going on there.

00:29:14.320 | Let's go over to 2 Timothy 2, 3 and 4.

00:29:24.920 | Here he says, "Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

00:29:28.800 | No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he

00:29:33.560 | may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier."

00:29:36.960 | So in this warfare, we're called to be soldiers in this kind of ministry.

00:29:43.800 | We've got to see ourselves as soldiers, but we're ideological warriors where the word

00:29:52.880 | of God is our primary tool.

00:29:54.740 | This is what we minister.

00:29:57.680 | Not only that, but other scriptures make it clear that our real enemy in this war is Satan

00:30:04.560 | and demonic forces.

00:30:19.040 | We go over to Ephesians 6, verses 11 and 12.

00:30:26.840 | Here Paul says, "Put on the full armor of God so that you may able to stand firm against

00:30:35.800 | the schemes of the devil."

00:30:39.720 | You see the little phrase "of God," you take a look at that in the Greek, that's a genitive

00:30:43.880 | of source.

00:30:44.880 | It's God who's the one who supplies, he's the source of the armor.

00:30:50.260 | It's a genitive of source.

00:30:52.280 | He's the source of the armor.

00:30:54.280 | "So that you may be able to stand firm," that is hold your ground, "against the devil."

00:31:07.500 | And the word for devil is diabolos, which is the word that in the early Greek was a

00:31:14.240 | word for slanderer.

00:31:17.500 | So it's probably descriptive of Satan's main tool, and that is to slander the truth, slander

00:31:27.320 | you as a messenger of the truth, is the implication.

00:31:35.320 | Then in verse 12 he says, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against

00:31:40.240 | the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the

00:31:44.760 | spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places."

00:31:47.800 | And then verse 13 says, "Therefore take up the full armor of God so that you will be

00:31:54.920 | able to resist," that's our Greek word, "anthistemi," resist.

00:32:06.800 | This is an aorist active infinitive, "anthistemi," stand against, challenge, oppose in the evil

00:32:14.160 | day and having done everything to stand firm by putting on Christ.

00:32:24.560 | So God tells us that our enemy is a real enemy.

00:32:33.160 | Even though we can't see this enemy, taste this enemy, feel this enemy, this enemy is

00:32:40.360 | very, very real.

00:32:42.280 | And we have to stand firm against this enemy.

00:32:45.720 | And our war is against Satan and that of demonic forces.

00:32:51.080 | Take your Bible again, let's go over to 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 8.

00:32:58.600 | Here's our adversary, "Be a sober spirit," he says, "be on alert, your adversary the

00:33:04.400 | devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour."

00:33:12.520 | So we have an adversary that is looking out to devour us.

00:33:18.680 | So we're in a war, this is an ideological war.

00:33:22.480 | Our main enemy is Satan who is a slanderer.

00:33:26.700 | He slanders the truth, he slanders agents of the truth.

00:33:33.880 | And we are called upon to be good soldiers and to take our stand, to stand against.

00:33:39.400 | There's where our word, "anthistemi," stand firm, stand against, against him.

00:33:46.320 | Thirdly, Satan and his demonic forces are opposed to God and all that God stands for,

00:33:50.920 | all that God wants, Satan and his demonic forces are in veritable adversaries or enemies

00:33:59.960 | of God.

00:34:04.900 | So now, nowhere is this particular battle more intense, I believe, than in the area

00:34:22.740 | of marriage and the family.

00:34:29.220 | And we can see it throughout modern society today, or we could even say post-modern society

00:34:36.420 | today, even though there are a lot of philosophers who believe that we've even moved beyond post-modernity,

00:34:44.880 | but we can see that and how it's affecting the family.

00:34:53.140 | And we would say this, that anyone who is in touch with what is happening in the area

00:34:57.880 | of marriage and family life knows that the changes that have taken place ideologically

00:35:04.340 | and structurally in the last 50 years have been nothing short of catastrophic.

00:35:08.880 | More changes have taken place in the last 50 years than have taken place in the thousands

00:35:12.540 | of years previously.

00:35:19.380 | That's devastating to think about.

00:35:21.500 | There has been radical, radical changes that have occurred in the last 50 years.

00:35:28.880 | Changes that have been so dramatic and so sweeping that our great, great, great, great

00:35:35.620 | grandparents would be shocked by what has occurred.

00:35:41.260 | So things are changing very, very rapidly.

00:35:46.380 | Fourth, Satan has declared war on the family and now is focusing much of his attention

00:35:54.520 | on the family because he knows how important the family is.

00:36:03.660 | What is it that Satan knows?

00:36:05.340 | You understand that Satan is far more intelligent than we will ever be.

00:36:09.300 | He's existed long before we existed.

00:36:13.200 | He saw and was very much a part of the fall of man.

00:36:15.940 | He's seen all of humanity from the beginning right up until this very moment.

00:36:22.260 | He studied human behavior.

00:36:24.280 | He studied the way in which human beings have interacted with life and circumstances and

00:36:29.220 | stress and difficulty and hardship.

00:36:31.900 | He's seen all of this and he knows.

00:36:34.860 | He predicts, he's not omniscient like God, but he certainly predicts and is a good predictor

00:36:41.500 | of how we're going to respond to certain things and what we think about things.

00:36:44.940 | We can't out-think him.

00:36:47.700 | What is it that he knows?

00:36:48.700 | He knows that the family is the basic building block of every other social institution, social

00:36:53.860 | unit or institution.

00:36:56.820 | He knows that.

00:37:03.060 | How is it that God started the world?

00:37:07.980 | He started the world not with the church, not with some kind of government, but he started

00:37:19.020 | the world with a family.

00:37:23.740 | That's the way God started the world.

00:37:28.500 | It was Adam and Eve.

00:37:29.660 | It was not good that man be alone.

00:37:32.700 | I will make a helper suitable for him.

00:37:37.060 | That's the way everything got started.

00:37:40.780 | Satan understands that.

00:37:44.260 | It is the basic building block.

00:37:48.060 | There is theological priority given to the family in Genesis 1, 2 and 3.

00:37:59.460 | It was through the family relationship that sin comes into the world.

00:38:07.860 | What else does Satan know?

00:38:08.860 | Satan knows that the command to multiply, replenish, fill and subdue the earth was given

00:38:12.880 | to a family unit.

00:38:16.340 | Satan knows that as well.

00:38:19.540 | It was given to a family unit.

00:38:26.140 | Grab your Bible for a moment.

00:38:27.140 | Let's go back to Genesis chapter 1 and verse 28.

00:38:34.940 | Some theologians call this the cultural mandate.

00:38:41.300 | God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue

00:38:47.060 | it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living

00:38:49.900 | thing that moves on the earth."

00:38:54.860 | We can see that part of the blessing that God gives the husband and wife relationship

00:38:59.600 | is that of children.

00:39:04.080 | Right from the very beginning.

00:39:07.320 | That's part of the blessing upon that relationship is children.

00:39:15.660 | Satan understands that.

00:39:19.300 | That was something that was given to a family unit.

00:39:21.700 | Something that he could do to interrupt that or stop that.

00:39:27.980 | Because when families thrive, then the image of God thrives.

00:39:37.140 | We can see this.

00:39:40.260 | What else does Satan know?

00:39:41.260 | Well, Satan knows that the family is unique and irreplaceable in God's program.

00:39:49.900 | The family is very unique and irreplaceable in God's program.

00:40:00.900 | The family is not one of several different type of optional ways that people should live.

00:40:16.860 | It was God's only declared way for people to live.

00:40:25.780 | God didn't create polygamy.

00:40:30.720 | He didn't create, you've heard the old story, God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

00:40:40.660 | He didn't do that.

00:40:46.420 | God didn't create a lesbian relationship from the beginning.

00:40:50.100 | He created a husband and wife relationship so that the two sexes, the male and the female,

00:41:01.220 | can complement one another in their gender distinctiveness.

00:41:08.660 | That is lost in every other definition of the family.

00:41:14.620 | Satan knows that and if Satan can destroy that concept, he can destroy the family.

00:41:25.060 | Thank you.

00:41:25.560 | [END]

00:41:26.060 | 1.

00:41:27.060 | The Family is Unique and Irreplaceable in God's Program.

00:41:28.060 | The Family is Not One of Several Different Type of Optional Ways that People Should Live.

00:41:29.060 | The Family is Not One of Several Different Type of Optional Ways that People Should Live.

00:41:30.060 | The Family is Not One of Several Different Type of Optional Ways that People Should Live.

00:41:31.060 | The Family is Not One of Several Different Type of Optional Ways that People Should Live.

00:41:32.060 | The Family is Not One of Several Different Type of Optional Ways that People Should Live.

Lecture 1: Marriage and Family Counseling - Dr. John D. Street

Chapters