The Weekly Diner

Dear Weekly Readers!

God’s Peace!   Our article this week reminds us of some very important things.  Please read and share with your friends, congregations, and children! 

May God Bless your Week!  John R.

Christianity Begins at Home

Pastor Wayne Juntunen

Esko, Minnesota

Many times in the Bible we can read how important is the home in the eyes of God. God begins with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:26-3:24) from whom have come all nations, kindred, peoples and tongues. But as they yielded to Satan's lie, the effects of that "fall" infected all of creation and home life became a battle ground. And from there the infection of sin has spread to all peoples. God, the All-Knowing, All-Powerful, and Everywhere-Present Lord of all, provides the blood sacrifice Himself in and through Jesus Christ to reclaim and restore all that was lost in the Garden of Eden. Jesus, God in the flesh, is born of a woman.

A new home begins through Mary and a substitute father, Joseph; God, the Father, being the true

Father. Even though Joseph was not the true father of Jesus, it was necessary that he be a godly man. The beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew records a long history of Joseph's godly heritage (Matthew 1:1-16).

Mary, too, came from a godly heritage being a relative of Elisabeth (Luke 1:36), the wife of Zacharias, a priest, whose genealogy would go all the way back to Levi from whom the entire Old Testament priesthood started. While it was important that the home was a godly one into which Jesus was to be born and in which he would be raised to manhood, the timing of Mary's conception was also important.

Engagement in Bible times was as binding as the marriage itself. It was important that Joseph and Mary were engaged before the angel brought the message from God that she was to conceive a son through the power of the Holy Spirit. Had it occurred before Joseph and Mary were engaged, Joseph could simply separate from her and have no further connections. He would be breaking no law but Mary, quite likely, would have been stoned to death—the punishment for adultery (Deuteronomy 22:23-24).

At best she would have been left to raise Jesus outside of marriage. God waited until they were engaged to guarantee the marriage, although an angelic message to Joseph was necessary in order for him to understand the reason for Mary's pregnancy. Mary was not to raise Jesus as a single parent. Beginning with Adam and Eve, the blueprint for marriage is one man with one woman for life. Children need both a mother and a father for proper nurturing. As Jesus began the work of saving creation and mankind from sin, death, hell and the devil, the first miracle He performed was at a wedding (John 2:1-11). Why? Because only a home where Jesus Christ is present can mankind's history and civilization itself survive and flourish. In every home where Christ is not enthroned as Lord, there the fruit of our fallen nature will reign. Since the original home from which God was to build humankind had departed from the Word of the Lord, Jesus, the Word made flesh, began in a home at a wedding to reveal both His human and divine nature that was needful not only for life after death, but life before death.

For, as the Apostle Paul said in his sermon to the gathered crowd on Mars Hill in Athens, "In Christ we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28)."  While Christ, through His life, suffering, death and resurrection, has finished the work necessary to save man-kind from his destructive course, each of us is still responsible to be the "doers of that Word (James1:22).

And the Bible is full of instructions as to how marriage and family life is to be carried out in the home. Each of us has a responsibility to live in harmony with God's Word as parents, children, brothers and sisters within a household. It has been said, "The light that shines the farthest shines the brightest at home." May the light of God's Word, the two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), penetrate into our hearts. And as it reveals our thoughts and intentions, may each of us yield to its truth.

The only way Christianity can spread is from heart to heart, from house to house because the church, as a body of believers, is only as strong as each household within it. Then out of each heart and out of each home, Christianity can then spread to the neighborhood, the community, the nation, and the world. ~