Woman’s Sin Can Destroy a Great Nation
This 2005 sermon discussed the decline of our church and of our nation. We know about the obvious sins that are bringing our land low-drug abuse, crime, fornication, illegitimacy, homosexuality, the destruction of families-but there is a subtle sin spreading in our society that contributes to many of these obvious sins.
My purpose is to warn you about this sin so you can protect your family. 30 years ago, or maybe even 20, we could send our children to public schools. Now, our society has decayed so badly that we have to send our children to our own school to keep them from following society over a cliff to destruction. Similarly, we have to teach our children to avoid this more subtle sin which I’ll explain.
We are going to be reading from Ezekiel Chapter 16.
Ezekiel was a prophet of exile who ministered to the Jews who had been carried away from the nation of Israel before Jerusalem was destroyed. He spoke about 660 BC, nearly 700 years before Christ.
One the major questions in Ezekiel’s congregation was their burning desire to know “Why.” Every Jew in captivity knew that God had promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants forever. They were descendants of Abraham, yet they had been dragged away from Canaan and were living among a very wicked people. They wanted to know why.
Ezekiel’s people were like us, they remembered God’s promise but forgot God’s “if.” Ezekiel reminded his people that God’s promise had an “if” as God’s promises usually do. God said they would dwell in the land
... if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments ... Deuteronomy 28:1
The book of Ezekiel is filled with sermons about how the people failed to hearken and failed to do, and explaining that that was why God took them away. We’re going to look at one specific passage where Ezekiel concentrated on how the people failed to do what God commanded, starting in chapter 16 verse 44:
Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter. Thou art thy mother’s daughter, that loatheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite. And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters. Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways. As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. Ezekiel 16:44-50
What in the world does this mean? What was Ezekiel talking about? We’ll look at it after a prayer:
Almighty God, help us to understand and to heed the words you sent by your prophets of old. Help us to see how they apply to our own lives. Help us to understand this new way our nation is going wrong so we can speak out against it and stop it from harming our families. Amen.
To understand this passage we have to know what sins the people had committed. We know the abomination of Sodom-sodomy, where men have men instead of women. The Bible says sodomy was a problem in Israel:
And there were sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel. I Kings 14:24
That was in the time of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, about 975 BC, more than 400 years before Ezekiel.
And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. I Kings 15:12
That was during the rule of Asa, about 914 BC, and again we see homosexuality condemned in the same terms as following after the teachings of other nations and other peoples. Did Asa get rid of them? Not really:
And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land. I Kings 22:46
Sodomites are persistent. Asa got rid of them, then Asa’s son Jehoshefat got rid of them again about 14 years later. The next mention of sodomy comes 300 years later during the rule of Josiah:
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove. II Kings 23:7
This was in 611 BC, shortly before Ezekiel preached his sermon.
These verses show that sodomy a persistent problem in Israel over a 300 year period from the time of Solomon until the very end. By the time of Josiah, sodomites had moved into special houses next door to God’s house! The Bible condemns sodomy:
Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude 7
Although sodomy is a terrible abomination, sodomy itself is not destroying our nation, sodomy is a symptom of a deeper, subtler sin that contributes to the destruction of our nation. Let’s re-read verse 45:
Thou art thy mother’s daughter, that loatheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite. Ezekiel 16:45
and he goes on to say that the women of Israel were sisters in conduct to the women of Sodom.
What did these women do? They loathed their husbands and their children as the women of Sodom had loathed theirs. “Loathe” is not a common word, so I looked it up. “Loathe” means “to cast away, reject with aversion, have disgust for, abhor, hate very much.”
Read the messages of women’s liberation, Ms. Magazine, the National Organization of Women. All of them proclaim that men are “too macho,” they are “too possessive,” their desires are “disgusting.” So many single women who want nothing to do with men are choosing to have children on their own either by fornication or by artificial insemination that it no longer makes the news.
What could be a clearer example of loathing husbands? It is true that most men are quite possessive and that they desire women very much, but let’s read what God says about that:
There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid. Proverbs 30:18-19
The Bible says that the way an eagle flies and the way a serpent crawls on a rock without feet are too wonderful to describe. So is the possessive way in which a man wants to care for his wife, but “modern” women will not hear of it. The world teaches that the way of a man with a maid is awful which conflicts with the Biblical statement that the way of a man is wonderful. The Bible teaches us which to choose:
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, Jeremiah 10:2
What does God say about children?
I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. I Timothy 5:14
God wants women to have children, yet “liberation” organizations teach that having children is “beneath” them, that children are “confining” and that they should find fulfillment by leaving home and having a career!
Could you imagine a better example of loathing children than mothers leaving home in search of “fulfillment”? Some women are forced regretfully away from their children to take jobs due to overwhelming poverty, but could anything be a better example of loathing children than deciding to pursue a career instead of motherhood? There is one-abortion. Abandoning children to grow up unsupervised is bad enough, but millions of American women hate their unborn children enough to kill them by having abortions. We are becoming a nation of women who loathe their husbands and loathe their children.
The Bible not only says women should have children, it says women are saved by having children:
Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. I Timothy 2:15
That verse puzzled me for a long time-saved from what? Childbearing does not save women from eternal damnation; there is no mention of having to have children as a condition of being born again.
There’s a clue in the verse I just read. I Timothy 5:14 begins “I will therefore...” Let’s read I Timothy 5:13:
And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not. I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. I Timothy 5:13-14
That’s a clue. The Bible says women should marry and have children to give them something worthwhile to do and keep them from getting involved in others’ affairs. Good news, mothers, kids help keep you out of trouble!
Yet there is more. Let’s go back to Ezekiel 16 and re-read verses 49 and 50:
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. Ezekiel 16:49-50
How’s that again? Pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness? Does that sound like any mother you know?
My dad used to say that we children were perfect little mirrors; we picked up every fault of his and moms and amplified them so they could see them. Children show us our faults which is good treatment for pride. Just when we think we are doing OK, our children do something unspeakable which reminds us of something awful we used to do. These memories bring us crashing to earth again.
What about abundance of bread? Every family in this church is hurting financially, but most of us would be OK if we did not have kids to pay for. Children save you from the temptations of wealth.
Abundance of idleness? Ha. Every mother in this church is run right off her feet, day in, day out, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. There is a saying “Every mother is a working mother” and how true that is! My dad gave my wife a sticker for her refrigerator, “Are a few dull moments too much to ask?”
Outside the church, we see women teaching other women to lothe their husbands. In our city there is an organization to help battered wives, that is, women who have been beaten by their husbands. This group was set up because men were harming wives instead of cherishing them, but it quickly started harming families.
Some friends told me of a man who came to them in despair because his wife was leaving him. He had cut off their credit cards when he ran short of money. His wife went to see this support group. They told her that cutting off her credit was unreasonable, that she was married to a contemptible oaf, and that she ought to demand her rights. She listened for a while and decided to leave her husband.
Idle women with nothing better to do than criticize her husband helped destroy her marriage. Society is teaching wives to loathe husbands instead of teaching them to love their husbands as God commanded in Titus 2:3-5, we’ll be turning there in a minute. Women with time on their hands are repeating the sins of Sodom.
Now I have to point out that much of this is the fault of men. Men are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves the church. This Plymouth organization which taught this woman to lothe her husband was originally set up to protect women from husbands who chose to disobey God and beat their wives instead of nourishing them. Like most human institutions, however, these protection organizations went too far. They went from defending wives against bad husbands to teaching women to lothe all husbands.
But how does loathing husbands destroy society? That’s simple. God gave men strong desires for women so that husbands would come home and take care of their families instead of going on endless hunting trips. These desires are so strong that our school has rules for keeping young men and young women apart to help them control their desires.
When husbands are rejected and loathed by wives, their desires go somewhere. Godly men try to stay with their wives even so, but many unsaved men start running with the boys and turn homosexual. Haven’t you noticed that homosexuality has become more and more accepted as divorce has become common and talk of women’s liberation has filled the news? When men chase men and women pursue careers instead of guiding the house, who takes care of the children?
“But,” you might argue, “just because homosexuality and women’s lib grew up together doesn’t mean one caused the other.” True, but think about it. The Bible says the women of Sodom loathed their husbands and that the men of Sodom were so depraved that the name of the town was attached to the sin of sodomy. American women have loathed their husbands more and more over the years and sodomy has increased and come out in the open over the same period.
If you want to say these sins both came from the same cause, the destruction of the family, that’s OK, but remember, the Bible said women are to be keepers at home. Women build families. Even the unsaved say, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” recognizing women’s vital role in training children to be future members of society. A woman with a career has neither the time nor the emotional energy to teach her children.
When women loathe their husbands and children as women’s lib teaches, families are weakened and children are not taught how to be successful adults. We have seen the results in the statistics of juvenile crime, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy.
This is not strictly the fault of women, and in fact is hardly women’s fault at all. Women’s lib started because men did not nurture and cherish their wives as commanded in the Bible. Women’s lib started as a movement to help women deal with their sufferings at the hands of men who refused to care for women properly, but the idea of protecting women from harm at the hands of men rapidly grew into the idea that men are evil and can only relate to women in a harmful way. Instead of working to reform the men, women went to war with men.
This, too, is against the Bible. The Bible teaches that older women are to teach younger women to love their husbands. Why do they have to be taught? Because they don’t know how!
The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Titus 2:3-5
Would God have commanded aged women to teach young women to love husbands and to be keepers at home if young women did this naturally? God does not tell men to seek after women, He warns against seeking women too much (Pr. 31:3) because men seek women naturally. God does not tell women to dress to attract men, God warns against too much adornment and recommends a meek and quiet sprit because women seek attention from men naturally. God doesn’t command what people are going to do anyway, He generally warns against doing such things too much.
The story of my friend’s friend and the women’s shelter shows that women can teach other women to loathe husbands instead of loving them. What would have happened if his wife had been told “Yes, having your credit cut off is a pain, but your husband is trying to fulfill his responsibility to care for you. If he doesn’t pay the bills, you will lose your furniture, your car, and your home. He’s trying to cut back so he can afford to care for you. It’s in your interest to help him during his time of trouble.” If she had been told that, would she have loathed her man or would she have loved him for doing his best to care for her when times were hard?
Men and women are very different in outlook, and many things men do can be taken either for good or for ill. I’ve heard many pregnant women complain that their husbands are overly protective and won’t let them do anything. I try to point out that her husband loves her and is trying to protect her in a fumbling, masculine sort of way. I say that he’s never been pregnant, how can he know what she can do and what she can’t? Then I ask would she rather her husband didn’t care about her or her baby during pregnancy? I’m trying to teach these women to love their husbands instead of thinking ill of them but I’m not an “aged woman” so I’m not really qualified to do that.
Let’s look at what the world teaches and what an “aged woman” should teach. The world says husbands are too possessive. The aged woman says “Of course he’s possessive. The Bible says it is not good for a man to be alone. You have no idea how lonely men are without women; that’s why they chase us so hard. Of course your husband is possessive-he’s incomplete without you. He needs you badly and you should rejoice in his need.”
When a young woman first notices that the boys are watching her, she wants to know what it’s all about. The world teaches that a man’s desires are disgusting and that young ladies should take self-defense courses so they know how to force a man to keep his repulsive paws to himself. The Bible says passion is a precious gift which should be reserved to hold her marriage together. If women are taught that intimacy is disgusting, why save it for marriage? This teaching makes young women more willing to fornicate by devaluing a major part of the man-woman relationship which God reserved for marriage alone.
A young girl wonders how to dress and how to act to get a boy to notice her. The aged woman points out that God warns young women not to dress so as to arouse men (I Tim. 2:9) and that a girl should wait on the Lord for a man to be attracted to her meek and quiet spirit (I Peter 3:3-4). The aged woman knows that a relationship built on looks fades as the looks fade, but that a marriage build on the spirit stands firm.
The world teaches that men are too aggressive. The aged woman says “God gave men a desire to care for their families, and that includes protecting you from danger. When there is no danger, his aggressive nature is still there even if it isn’t needed. He’s aggressive because he’s always ready to defend you against anything. It’s easy to make him less aggressive--just give him what he wants, which is you, and in the meantime, rejoice in his desire to protect you!”
With respect to a man’s passion, the aged woman might say “Sure, it’s inconvenient to have your man chase you all the time, but God gave him a desire to get out of the house to earn money to support you. Your husband does not value your home nearly as much as you do. After he spends the day away from home and away from the sight of you, what do you think brings him back? He comes home because he wants you. God says the way of a man with a woman is wonderful (Proverbs 30:19). Men’s desire for us has to be powerful to bring men back home-otherwise they wander. Look at it this way; satisfying your husband is like taking a shower. There are times when you really want to step into the warm, soapy water and feel it run over your body and other times when getting wet is the last thing you want. Similarly, there are times when you want to give yourself to your husband and times when you want nothing to do with his needs. But just as it is impolite to go out when you need a shower, it is impolite to let your husband go out when his hormones are raging with need for you, he’s likely to snap at people in frustration and be open to temptation.”
The world teaches that submitting to a husband destroys a woman’s independence. The aged woman says “You’re right, submitting to your husband when you don’t want him takes away your independence, but the Bible says that your desire shall be to your husband (Genesis 3:16b). If you stay independent, you can’t become one flesh with your husband as God ordained. Believe me, you will be much happier if you follow the Word of God and belong to your husband than if you try to stay independent. Ephesians 5:29 says that if you become part of your husband, he will nourish and cherish you and that’s what you really want, not independence.”
The world teaches that children are restrictive and that a career is more fulfilling. The aged woman teaches that a child left to himself brings his mother to shame and that a virtuous wife’s children rise up and call her blessed, which is fulfilling indeed. No boss is ever going to call a working wife “blessed” and mean it.
I have spoken to many women about marriage. Not once have I met a woman who was taught why a man would marry her beforehand and very few who figured it out afterward. Some received a few hours of counseling from a pastor, a few were told about the birds and the bees, but none received the hours, days, and years of teaching from mothers or other aged women that are needed to prepare them to be loving wives.
This used to be OK. In the 1960’s, no divorced man could hope for much of a career at Ford Motor Company-management would not tolerate it. Then Henry Ford II divorced his wife and divorce became accepted.
The Bible and our experience make it clear that women can be taught either to love or to lothe their husbands. If women love their husbands, we have good, strong homes; if women lothe their husbands, our families and our society fall apart.
Back when divorce was unacceptable, when women were expected to be keepers at home, when schools taught responsibility, it was not necessary for church women to teach their daughters how to be Godly wives, but society has changed. We have to counteract the message of society and teach our young women how to be good wives just as we have to counteract the message of the public schools and educate our children to become Godly adults.
Thus, we have the following points:
Point: The Bible says that the women of Sodom loathed their husbands instead of loving them.
Point: The men of Sodom were so depraved that God had to remove them from the face of the earth.
Point: Our society is teaching young women to loathe men and to abort children so they can have careers outside the home.
Point: Homosexuality in America is increasing along with divorce, juvenile delinquency, school dropouts, and other signs of weakening of family structure.
Point: The Bible says that a child left to himself brings his mother to shame. American children are growing up unsupervised and bringing our entire society to shame and destruction.
This all comes from the subtle sin of letting society teach our young women to lothe their families. We need our older women to be peculiar people and counteract the message of society by teaching the joys of loving and serving as we need our school to fight the message of the public schools.
The real tragedy of letting society teach young women to lothe men is that it leads to fornication. Most secular sex education courses teach that the desire of men for women is “just another body function” like eating and eliminating. Young people are taught that when they are hungry, they eat; when they desire companionship, they reach out and touch someone. If physical desire is dirty or just another instinct, why should anyone save it for marriage?
The trouble is that God is not mocked. Just because society teaches that sex is nothing special does not make it so. God imposes all kinds of emotional and physical penalties for fornication. I really pity the many well-traveled young women I have met who have no idea why no man values them. They do not know that the Japanese word for “whore” means “woman who sells her flower.” If a woman’s flower passes from hand to hand instead of being carefully cultivated and nurtured as a free, loving gift for one man and only one man, it withers, and no man wants to commit himself to caring for her.
Brigitte Bardot[1] was thought for years to be one of the world’s most desirable women, yet she suffered three failed marriages and many bitter love affairs. How did she feel when one man after another dealt her out of his life? How could she believe herself to be a desirable woman when so many men left her? Bardot said:
I had a visceral need to be loved, to be desired, to belong body and soul to the [emphasis added] man whom I admire, whom I love, whom I respect.
How did she know that? She knew she needed to admire a husband, the Bible teaches that a woman should call her husband “Lord.” Did she get it from the Bible? Probably not, because if she had learned about men from the Bible, she would have understood how a woman had to conduct herself so that a worthwhile, admirable man would want to love her.
For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. I Corinthians 11:8-9 |
She described her desire to belong to a man as a “visceral need” which meant it was a strong desire from deep inside her soul. Bardot became famous in the 1956 film ‘And God Created Women’ in which she danced on a table top. This gave her a ‘sex kitten’ image so powerful and so lasting that no man could see her as more than a toy.
God gave Bardot her ‘visceral need’ to belong to a loving man (Genesis 3:16, I Corinthians 11:8-9), but exposing herself to the lustful gaze of all made it impossible for any man to value her for his own. She became a sex toy. Many men lined up to play with her; none wanted to stay with her. Men could not treasure her; they could only lust after her.
She wanted to belong to a man whom she respected; she doesn’t seem to have realized that a man would have to be able to respect her and value her beyond her body in order to let himself belong to her and love her as she desired. Given the way she was treated by so many men, she had every reason to loathe men and not want to have children. How sad that she wasn’t taught how to behave! The Bible teaches us that the problem of men and women treating each other so badly that their families are destroyed goes back thousands of years. As Solomon put it, “there is no new thing under the sun (Ecc. 1:9).”
There was a Godly remnant in Israel at the time of the invasion which began the captivity, but they suffered along with the rest. If our nation falls, we fall with it. I only hope that revival and a turning back to God’s Simple Plan of Marriage comes to this nation before God loses patience and takes us all away as He sees fit. How long do you think God will wait?
posted by Bill Taylor at 8:16 AM
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