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    The Fulfilled Family: God's Design for Your Home
    The Fulfilled Family: God's Design for Your Home
    The Fulfilled Family: God's Design for Your Home
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    The Fulfilled Family: God's Design for Your Home

    By John F. MacArthur

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    About this ebook

    In a world of divorce, casual sex, and homosexual unions, "family"?once the bedrock of our culture?is becoming a matter of uncertainty and argument. From some quarters, traditional roles for men and women are ridiculed. And standing firm in a healthy, well-functioning family is harder than ever.

    So how can you have a happy home? How can you pass on strong morals to your children in a world going awry? By following God's divine plan for family life," writes Bible teacher, pastor, father, and grandfather John MacArthur in this book.

    There's no magic formula. There's no gimmick. It's not about how many times you do something, or who is in charge of this or that, or what kind of processes or methods you use. It comes down to answering these questions: "Am I committed to obedience to the Spirit of God? Am I committed to the controlling influences of the Word of God? Am I going to live out a Christian life?" If you can answer yes to all of those questions, then you are bound to have a successful, fulfilled, God-honoring family life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateJun 8, 2008
    ISBN9781418515225
    The Fulfilled Family: God's Design for Your Home
    Author

    John F. MacArthur

    Widely known for his thorough, candid approach to teaching God's Word, John MacArthur is a popular author and conference speaker. He has served as pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, since 1969. John and his wife, Patricia, have four married children and fifteen grandchildren. John's pulpit ministry has been extended around the globe through his media ministry, Grace to You, and its satellite offices in seven countries. In addition to producing daily radio programs for nearly two thousand English and Spanish radio outlets worldwide, Grace to You distributes books, software, and digital recordings by John MacArthur. John is chancellor of The Master's University and Seminary and has written hundreds of books and study guides, each one biblical and practical. Bestselling titles include The Gospel  According to Jesus, Twelve Ordinary Men, Twelve Extraordinary Women, Slave, and The MacArthur Study Bible, a 1998 ECPA Gold Medallion recipient.

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    • 4/5
      This is a quick read. It gives a great overview of the biblical teaching on the family: the role of the husband, wife, father, mother, and children. It is based on Ephesians though other passages are cross-referenced.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Terrible fantasy crap

    Book preview

    The Fulfilled Family - John F. MacArthur

    1

    OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN MACARTHUR

    The Book on Leadership

    Hard to Believe

    Welcome to the Family

    Twelve Ordinary Men

    The Murder of Jesus

    The MacArthur Study Bible

    and many more

    2

    © 2005 by John MacArthur

    All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

    Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

    Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

    Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

    Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from The New King James Version. © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

    Scriptures marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

    Edited by Phillip R. Johnson

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    MacArthur, John, 1939–

    The fulfilled family : God’s design for your family / John MacArthur.

    p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references.

    ISBN 978-0-7852-6254-1 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-400280-445 (trade paper)

    1.Marriage—Biblical teaching. 2. Family—Biblical teaching. 3. Bible. N.T.

    Ephesians V, 21–VI, 4—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

    BS2655.M34M34 2005

    248.4—dc22

    2005008268

    Printed in the United States of America

    08 09 10 11 12 LSI 5 4 3 2 1

    To my own dear family,

    especially my beloved Patricia.

    Her worth is far above rubies.

    (PROVERBS 31:10)

    Contents

    Introduction

    The Family

    1. The First Principle for Family Harmony:

    Mutual Submission

    The Wife

    2. The Wife’s Role:

    Submission, Not Slavery

    The Husband

    3. The Husband’s Duty:

    Love

    The Children

    4. The Children’s Duty:

    Obedience

    The Parents

    5. The Parents’ Duty:

    Nurture and Admonition

    About the Author

    Notes

    3

    INTRODUCTION

    I have been speaking and writing about God’s design for the family since the earliest days of my ministry. A series of sermons I preached many years ago on Ephesians 5–6, carefully examining what Scripture teaches about the roles of parents and children, has for three decades stood alone as the single best-selling set of tapes and CDs our ministry has ever produced. I first published a book on the family more than two decades ago.¹That book was so well received that the publisher followed it up with a four-part film and video series a few years later.²A decade or so after that, I wrote another book and produced a new video series on Christian parenting.³Over the years we’ve published several other study guides and parenting manuals to provide practical help on family issues. Parents have devoured those resources and asked for more.

    Meanwhile, in the church I have pastored for more than thirty-five years, people who were just entering the youth group when I arrived are now becoming grandparents. They, like their own parents and grandparents, want to see each successive generation of their families resist the powerful cultural trends that are steadily eroding what remains of our society’s commitment to the family. And so I have been prevailed upon to address the issue of the family from a biblical perspective in writing yet again—this time in a simple handbook that distills the heart of what Scripture teaches about this most essential of all earthly institutions.

    According to the Bible, God Himself ordained the family as the basic building block of human society, because He deemed it not good that man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). That verse stands out starkly in the biblical Creation narrative, because as Scripture describes the successive days of the Creation week, the text punctuates each stage of Creation with the words "God saw that it was good" (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, italics added). The goodness of creation emerges as the main theme of Genesis 1, and the statement God saw that it was good is repeated again and again, like the refrain after each stanza of a lengthy song. Then finally, after the sixth day of Creation, we’re told with emphasis, "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good" (v. 31, italics added).

    But then Genesis 2:18 takes us back to the end of day six and reveals that just before God ended His creative work, just one thing was left that was "not good. Every aspect of the entire universe was finished. Each galaxy, star, planet, rock, grain of sand, and tiny molecule was in place. God had created all the species of living things. Adam had already given names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field (v. 20). But one glaring unfinished aspect of Creation remained: For Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him" (v. 20). Adam was alone, and in need of a suitable mate. Therefore God’s final act of creation on day six—the crowning step that made everything in the universe perfect—He accomplished by forming Eve from Adam’s rib. Then He brought her to the man (v. 22).

    By that act, God established the family for all time. The Genesis narrative says,Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh (v. 24). Jesus quoted that verse in Matthew 19:5 to underscore the sanctity and permanence of marriage as an institution. A minister quotes that same verse practically every time he unites two believers in a Christian marriage ceremony. It is a reminder that God ordained marriage and the family, and therefore they are sacred in His sight.

    So it is no mere accident of history that family relationships have always been the very nucleus of all human civilization. According to Scripture, that is precisely the way God designed it to be.And therefore, if the family crumbles as an institution, all of civilization will ultimately crumble along with it.

    Over the past few generations, we have seen that destructive process taking place before our eyes. It seems contemporary secular society has declared war on the family. Casual sex is expected. Divorce is epidemic. Marriage itself is in decline, as multitudes of men and women have decided it’s preferable to live together without making a covenant or formally constituting a family. Abortion is a worldwide plague. Juvenile delinquency is rampant, and many parents have deliberately abandoned their roles of authority in the family. On the other hand, child abuse in many forms is escalating. Modern and postmodern philosophies have attacked the traditional roles of men and women within the family. Special-interest groups and even government agencies seem bent on the dissolution of the traditional family, advocating the normalization of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and (in some cultures nowadays) sterilization programs. Divorce has been made easy, tax laws penalize marriage, and government welfare rewards childbirth outside of wedlock. All those trends (and

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