Please stand for the reading of God's word. We're reading from Genesis chapter two, starting at verse 18. It's on page two of the handout. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field, but Adam, But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now biblical thinking. We'll be going through domestical duties by William Gouge. This book is an excellent book. that goes through the Puritan teaching of the household exceptionally well, deals with all the various offices of husband and wife, parent, child, servant, master, deals with all of that in the institution of the household, does it excellently and well, broken into eight treatises. Now, that's one thing, and so I would like to, if you don't have a copy of it already, we have some here, we have more in order, and if you want one in preparation, please letting me know. And I will have to make sure that we're getting them for everybody, but if you have any that you want to start on, we'll get one to you. But anyways, I wanted to point that out. And what I want to remind you is that in a short form, when you think about the basic duties of station, that's organized, as you know, in the fifth commandment. And what I want to remind you of real quickly are the basic duties of the superior and of the inferior. And so when we think about the duties of superiors in the larger catechism, what we find is the duties of superiors listed out in question 129. And the duties of superiors is stated as follows. It says, what's required of superiors towards their inferiors? So husbands in particular listen to this. But wives, as regards your authority over the children and as the chief lieutenant of your husband, you should consider your duties here as well. It is required of superiors according to that power they receive from God and that relation wherein they stand. Okay, so what powers have God given you for your station? What relationship do you have toward the other people? So if you're talking about children, you know, that's a close relationship with a lot of powers. It's required of the superior. according to that power that he receives from God and that relation wherein he stands, to love, pray for, and bless his inferiors. Love, pray for, and bless. Love the duty of the law and the desire for their well-being. Praying for, in terms of asking for the blessing of God on them and for their well-being. And then blessing them, both in terms of prayer, but also giving them stuff. Doing things, serving them, doing things for their well-being. And here's some of the things to do. Here's the blessings to give. To instruct, counsel, and admonish them. Countenancing, commending, and rewarding, such as do well. Discountencing, reproving, and chastising, such as do ill. Protecting and providing for them all things necessary for soul and body, and by grave, wise, holy, and exemplary courage, to procure glory to God, honor to themselves, and so to preserve that authority which God has put upon them." That right there, this general duty of loving, praying, and blessing. This duty to instruct, counsel, and admonish. Treating people according to what's appropriate, right? Those who do well, those who do ill. And then this idea of carrying yourself in a way that gives glory to God and brings honor to yourself and preserves your authority. That's the basic set of duties of a superior. And we have a duty as people who are under authority. It's explained in 127. What's the honor that inferiors owe to their superiors? The honor which inferiors owe to their superiors is all due reverence in heart, word, and behavior. Reverence in heart, word, and behavior. Remember, reverence has to do with this idea of you have affection. You have a respect, there's esteem or admiration, and then there's fear of the authority of the person. That's what reverence is. It's affection, respect, and fear. So providing that in heart, word, and behavior. Prayer and thanksgiving for them. And sometimes we kind of look down on all the things that we have to give thanks for superiors for, because we kind of think of all the stuff they do as their duty. And it's like, well, sure. And I guess we shouldn't be thankful for the performance of duties by other people, because we can just expect them to do it. William Gouge has this great thing in Domestical Duties where he says, the thing about love is it's a weighty thing. It's a weighty thing. And weighty things tend to fall. They go down. There's a, it's far more frequent that you see people who have authority love the people who are under their authority than to see the people who are under authority to have the love expressed upward. And so there's this recognition of that and what needs to happen is the way you help yourself to not fall into that natural tendency is to pray for and give thanks for people in authority. By doing that, it helps you to remember the things that you should be thankful for, and to remember that their duties, even though they are duties owed by those superiors, they are yet things that they do, things they give. They took the office, they have the responsibility in order to serve and bless you. And so that idea of being thankful for and praying for the duty, or for the superior who performs their duty. The imitation of their virtues and graces Willing obedience to their lawful commands and counsels. Due submission to their corrections. Fidelity to, defense, and maintenance of their persons and authorities. So that's loyalty, defense, and maintenance of their persons and authority. According to their several ranks and the nature of their places. Bearing with their infirmities. Covering them in love. Covering their infirmities in love. That's so they, the inferior, may be an honor to them, the superior, and to the superior's government. Okay, so that's thinking about this in summary form. So now, as we walk through the role of the wife, right, the wife is the inferior of the husband in rank, and the superior in rank of everyone else in the household. And so those things being recognized when we deal with the wife Our age hates the subordination of the wife to the husband and loves any sort of praise of girl boss power-ness. And what we need to understand is that the principal thing for the wife, in order for her to do anything well as the lieutenant of the husband, she has to understand that he's the captain. She has to understand that he's the captain. So that's, in order for anything else to work well, that has to occur. So on page one of the handout, a reminder, man and woman, the image of God. God gave authority, gave dominion to mankind who is male and female. He gave us Sabbath and ordinary time to work, the Sabbath to rest. The Sabbath is blessed and sanctified. God put man in the earth to work the ground, to till the earth, to work and keep, to extend the garden, to subdue the earth, to multiply, be fruitful, to fill the earth, to subdue it. It's not good for man to be alone. Woman was made as a helper comparable to him. And remember Adam gave names to the animals, but then he gave who were not of his nature, who are not comparable to him in essence. And then he gave a name to woman who was comparable to him in essence, but under his authority. And so that giving of the name was a symbol of that authority. So we looked at the idea of marriage and divorce laid out in chapter 24 of the confession in chapter on page three of the handout. And I want to remind you of section 2. Marriage, this is page 3, section 2. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue and of the church with a holy seed and for preventing of uncleanness. The mutual help is according to station. We're talking about the wife And she has a duty to support the husband's leadership, him as the head, her as the body. And that means she needs to help him with work, support him in worship and in recreation. So this intelligent service, intelligent service to help to make that stuff happen. And man, that means of course that your leadership is required for you to help to lead those things. But we'll talk about that next week. But occasionally things will come up that are implications there. Now, the work of increasing mankind with legitimate issue and the church with the holy seed means that women, you must be willing to show courage by going through the travail of childbirth again and again. The courage of woman is shown in large extent by her submission to her husband to do things that she would rather not and to have children and giving life to others by putting her own life at risk. This is the courage of women. And to do these things is a display of courage. It is a beautiful thing to be willing to take risk to have children. And then also the preventing of uncleanness. The positive side, a part of the mutual help, is the enjoyment of the intimacy of the marriage bed, which should be done, and that the wife should view that as a positive work to be done, to be given to the husband. Now, these things, the basic functions of marriage, are important to keep in mind because we need to have short but weighty ways of thinking about and talking about the basic things in life. And the household is a basic thing. The marriage is that which forms the household. And so when we think about marriage, we need to understand its purpose as well as understanding the purpose of the household. Let me remind you that a household exists in order to be the basic unit of the division of labor in society, that God created the household so that there's a place where there can be a community of goods that's controlled by the patriarch, so that it's a place for capital formation of the labor of multiple persons. And it's also a place where localized teaching and care occurs, in particular with the patriarch teaching and caring for his family. And then also the wife is the chief lieutenant caring for the family as well under the direction of the patriarch. So we think about this when we want to summarize marriage into three purposes of the mutual help and the having of a holy seed and then also of preventing uncleanness. And we think about the household's purpose the household's purpose is to allow for wealth and wisdom to be increased, preserved, and transmitted across generations. The idea of wealth and wisdom being increased, preserved, and transmitted across generations. And the glorious thing about inheritance, when we think about a will, a last will and testament, it's a thing, it's a legal instrument for the transfer of the transmission of property across generations. The giving of wisdom can sometimes occur in terms of property, you can have books, you can have all sorts of things where information is stored, but mostly that transmission occurs across life as a husband and wife teach those who are under their authority to know the truths of God. And remember that there's a need to remind over and over again, there's a need to train, there's a need to have sort of this constant stream of knowledge being transferred, and that constant stream of knowledge being transferred sometimes results in an overflow or spilling over, the need to repeat, the need to repeat, the need to repeat. But I repeat myself. And so there's a need to repeat things because of the fact that it often spills over, falls out, is not stored up, and the household is a place where repetition can be done with care and love. Now, when we think about, when we think about the station of the wife, we go to page five. There's a duty of wives. This is my effort here to organize the things that are particular to the wife in a way that is a little bit more drawn out, more particular than what you see in just the fifth commandments duties of inferiors. So remember the duty of the wife. The wife is a helper. First and foremost, she's a helper of the husband. The work of the husband is to glorify God by exercising dominion in the earth. He's been given authority. He's supposed to know God more, act according to that knowledge, spread that knowledge. alter the earth, make the physical space more useful for man, make that space useful for doing what God commands and for teaching. These are the things that are done. And the wife helps the man in that work. Now there's going to be particularization. There's general and there's specific. And the job of the wife is to adapt herself to the specific ways that the husband has determined he can do that best. The husband is going to say, here are our circumstances, here are the gifts I've got, here's the opportunities that have arisen, and here's how I can pursue glorifying God. Here's the calling that I am going to pursue based upon the law of God and based upon the circumstances around us. And the wife is called to help the man to do that well. Now, and it has a helper, she also, again, has children and helps to raise them. This having of children and the raising of children is a great and noble work of women. We, as a society, have despised home keeping, despised motherhood, despised the teaching of children, and we pretend as though we honor the teaching of children by talking about teachers as being so important. And that's typically in the process of trying to get you to vote to raise taxes in order to pay teachers more. And you go, wait a second, what teachers? The mothers of the children? Voluntarily hired Christian tutors? Or a coercively extracted taxation system imposed for the teaching of secular humanism in opposition to all godliness, in opposition to the authority of parents, in opposition to the passage of property from one generation to the next. The usurping of the household by the state. The public school system is one of the greatest enemies of Christianity in Western civilization. It is the tool that has been used to destroy the fulfillment of mothers, It is a tool that has been used to take children from parents and destroy the passage of a Christian inheritance onto them. It is that which has been used to make it so that people are accustomed to socialism, the reception of goods from the state, the reception of services from the state, and the idea of a paternalist anti-Christian state has become something associated with our childhoods. The public school system, is something that pretends to respect the functions of women while doing everything in the power of the state to seek to seduce people away from respecting the function of the mother. Having children and raising children, when we think of raising children, that's a term that in our time almost sounds like the process of physically taking care of children and giving them food and sort of the idea that they survive through the period of time known as childhood. But the raising of children is about the process of elevating the child's soul and elevating the capabilities and station of the child as the child increases in stature. The duty of a mother, as well as a father, but there's a special place for the mother in the raising of the child is to see that the child's soul is furnished with wisdom. And to see that the care for the physical body of the child is important, but it pales in comparison to the care for the immortal soul of the child. Education, the rearing of a child, is first and foremost about the care of the child's soul. And mothers have been given this extraordinary place to where they are given children in their most tender time when they are the apple of your eye and you are able to care for them and their world in a way that no one else can. That you build into their memories an affection for piety and loyalty and service and discipline. This opportunity to build this into the souls of children is a time of opportunity and is a reward for the travails of childbirth. The ability to take someone who will one day be an adult and to be able to prepare them and to teach them and show them the way they will go We are told when you do that to a child in their youth, when you show them the way they should walk when they're old, they won't depart from it. There is a power there that not only goes into that child's life, into the future of that child, but there's a power there that manifests itself in replication across generations. If it is the case that there are blessings to the thousandth generation, and if it is the case that we are 6,000 years in from the creation of the world, And we are looking at being approximately 150 generations if a generation is about 40 years. We're about 150 in. And that means that what we're looking at is something along the lines of at least 850 generations forward. And the care that's given to children now will have reverberations across those hundreds of generations. You are in the era of the early church, and your children, if they are raised in the seminary of your home, to be a pious, responsible, and disciplined lot, the things that can be accomplished across their lives, and across generations that come from them, are things that men were not meant to be able to measure. We are oftentimes cowed into a sort of submission against evil because we think that it is not possible for us to obtain great achievements in this time and generation. I remind you, it is those who are diligent, those who work hard, those who are resourced, and focused and energetic and zealous that accomplish great things even with small numbers. And that we are promised that if we fear the Lord and are strong and courageous, that we can expect to chase 50 or 500 or 1,000 of our enemies with one of ours. Raise your children that they will either be such warriors or that they will be the raisers of future such warriors. This is the opportunity you have to have one be the strength of a thousand when raised well and wisely. So women, you are made to be helpers of your patriarch, to help to glorify God, to help to extend dominion, to help to have and raise children. And this is for the purpose of the household passing on wealth and wisdom by gaining it, preserving it, and transmitting it. So the next thing, the duties of wives, number two, to acknowledge the office of the husband as over you. This is something that we live in an age where over and over again, we are pounded with the idea that the wife is not under the authority of the husband, that this is silly, that men are silly. You have the special opportunity to acknowledge with your mouth and by your actions the office of the husband is being over you. To recognize that he's the master of the estate and you should follow his directions with regards to the property and to any servants. To recognize that he is your husband and his directions about how you govern yourself are to be intelligently followed. He has a duty of love and you should repay it. with love. Love is defined by the law in terms of what we have means to do. You have a duty in love to like Him, to have affection for Him, and you have a duty in love to seek His good, to help Him to be one who glorifies God. Now, you have a duty of faithfulness in the marriage covenant, and that should be repaid with faithfulness in turn. And that's an active faithfulness. Wives have a duty to seek to please the husband by faithfully and enthusiastically giving herself to him with all the efforts of pleasantness to all the senses. Thirdly, his government is to be rewarded with internal and external reverence. Remember what reverence is. It's an affection, a respect, and a fear. affection, respect, and fear. And so this idea of those three wrapped together, that there's an inward affection, respect, and fear, and then there's the outward expression of loyalty, honor, and obedience. Now the husband is the father of the children. His directions of how to raise the children are to be intelligently followed. I emphasize the idea of intelligent or rational service because there's a great difference between literalistic wooden obedience to expressed commands versus the intelligent following out of implications and thinking about the goals and thinking about instructions as regards those goals and thinking about the level of delegation and freedom you've been given to operate. One is sort of a ripe readiness of excuse, and the other is the taking seriously of the idea that you are a woman who has been given authority and responsibility by God, and it's your duty to intelligently, diligently pursue the objectives of your husband, who is your head and captain. So this intelligent service, Women are the image of God. You are the image of God. You are rational and it is your duty to think well and wisely for the accomplishment of goals. Three, to acknowledge your special duty to seek his support by her rational service. That's the general overview that you, you think about his roles and you think about the way that you were made in order to support these roles. That as the mistress, you are to aid him in the estate and serve as his chief lieutenant. As the wife, you're to aid him by being a friend, a fellow worker, a companion, and a lover all under him as your Lord and head. As a mother, to aid him by having and raising his children in the fear of the Lord. So these things connect with the idea of the intelligent or rational service. Four. It is your duty to resist egalitarianism and feminism by denying equality with or superiority over the husband. This is something that you are tempted to do, encouraged to think, encouraged to think of things that help to support this and to undermine and diminish his superiority of rank. The recognition of this authority puts pressure on the man. The recognition of this by the wife puts a weight on the man. And what it does is it pushes men to do their job. The weight of responsibility, the weight of duty, the weight of all the things that the man must do makes the man grow in strength and do more. Go to page 6, point 5. duties of external honor to the husband. I have a quote here from Gouge about this. Inward reverence is an awful respect. Awful is like full of awe. Inward reverence is an awful respect which a wife in her heart has of her husband, esteeming him worthy of all honor for his place and office sake because he is her husband. Not because he's so great, because He is her husband. There's a covenant there. There's an office there. There's a particular duty of loyalty there. Doubtless, Sarah had in her heart a reverend respect and honorable esteem of her husband when being alone and thinking of him in her very thought, she gave him this title, Lord. This inward reverence, the scripture comprises under this word, fear. As where our apostle says, let the wife see that she fear her husband. And where Peter exhorts wives to have their conversation in fear. It is no slavish fear of her husband which ought to possess the heart of a wife, dreading blows, frowns, spiteful words, or the like, but such an awful respect of him as makes her, to use the apostle's word, care how she may please him. This wife-like fear is manifested by two effects. One is joy, when she gives contentment to her husband, and observes him to be pleased with that which she does. The other is grief. Someone could please get me a water. The other is grief, when he is justly offended and grieved, especially with anything that she herself has done. That right there, a joy when he's pleased, and a grief when he's displeased is the attitude that I would encourage wives to have. Thank you. Reverent gesture, carriage, and speech to the husband are ways that you show honor. And also, general obedience is how you show honor. That's on page seven, we'll go to that in a minute. The other two things I want to point out in terms of the showing of general honor are refusal to follow sinful commands because you honor him appropriately, not as God, but as your earthly head. And then also, a contentment with the estate of the husband. Not that things should never improve, But the idea that where he is now, what he has now has been given by the providence of God ought to be honored and appreciated and not used as a thing to throw into his face as a thing to undermine him and his honor. So those four things, reverent gesture, carriage and speech to and of the husband, general obedience, refusal to follow sinful commands, contentment with the estate of the husband. so each of these can be expanded. For reverent gesture, carriage, and speech to and of her husband, what we find in Gouge is this idea of sobriety being listed. By sobriety I mean such a comely, grave, and gracious carriage that gives evidence to the husband that his wife respects his place and authority which God has given him. So in other words, a seriousness of mind that makes you seek to be beautiful, serious, and gracious in the way you carry yourself. Comely is beautiful, grave, serious, and gracious. There's this idea of mildness. Mildness in a wife has respect also to the ordering of her countenance, gesture, and whole carriage before her husband, whereby she manifests a pleasingness to him and a contentedness and willingness to be under him and ruled by him. These little sentences, these are from long sections. Gooch has wonderful things to say, but these are great sentences thinking about these virtues. And wives, I would encourage you to meditate upon these virtues. There are sections in the third treatise in this book that talk about the duties of wives and expand upon these things. And this idea of being sober-minded to give beauty, seriousness, and graciousness to your carriage is one thing. That's the nobility of women. but also this mildness that helps to display the femininity. The strength of the woman is different from the strength of the man. The strength of the man must sometimes be hard. The strength of the woman is a firmness in kindness that is distinct. It's softer. So that mildness being pleasing to the husband and content and willing to be under his authority and to be ruled by him. That thing when seen, that right there, that's lightning in a bottle. That right there is a powerful and beautiful witness. When others see a wife who is content to be ruled by her husband and to intelligently support his rule, that is such a powerful witness, people don't even know what to do with it. It shakes their world. That they see a woman who's not stupidly following, but intelligently following. Who's not miserable, but joyful. To understand that this is her place and station given by God. And to joyfully and intelligently and diligently work in it. This is a thing that the world doesn't know what to do with it. And it's one of those things that people don't really get to see. Because unless they come into the hospitality of your home, it's to a large extent a hidden thing, a secret treasure. And one of the beauties of hospitality is you get to take people out of the world and bring them into the refuge of your home, share with them in good things, and they get to enjoy the pleasantness of the company of your wife. And they see her contentedness under your reign. Wives, this opportunity to display that gives such honor to your husbands and brings such glory to God. It is the secret beauty of the Christian religion that when men see it, it shuts their mouths. Part of what's been lost and what people hate is courtesy and obeisance. Courtesy is a word that we think of as meaning civility. Let me tell you the difference between civility and courtesy. Civility is how you act when you are dealing with others in the public who are generally your equals, and you're trying to engage with them in such a way as to encourage the relationship of equals to be maintained, that there might be interaction between men who have a distinction of boundaries and want to continue dealing with each other because they live in the same civitas, the same city. The civility is the behavior that helps you to live in the same civitas. Being polite is rooted in the same thing. The word polite comes from the word polis, which is just the Greek word for civitas. The polis or the civitas are the city. And the being polite and being civil is the kind of behavior you expect of men who are equals in a republic, dealing with each other. Courtesy is the kind of behavior you give when you're in the court of a king. It's courtly behavior. It's courtesy. And that courtesy, that giving of the honors that are due in the court of some king, are signs, not that you give to equals. These are the things that you give to those who are over you in authority. And so obeisance is an act of honoring. An act of honoring. And so wives and husbands, I would encourage you to think for a second, are there any acts of honoring that are permitted that you have in your house that make it so that your wife can show her subjection in a way that doesn't make her seem low but merely in a way that pleasantly shows your station and the honor she gives to you. Examples of this might be the way that she greets you when you come home, in a way that others might see. It might be how she speaks of you and to you. Acts of courtesy involve or obeisance involve either gestures, carriage, or words, that are done towards you for honor, men. And so wives, this is a thing that should be delighted in. And the sad thing is that the only response our culture teaches us to have to courtesy and obeisance is to sneer at it. And so we have to militate against that. We have to aggressively assault it. We have to hate that. The sneer towards courtesy cannot be tolerated. It is necessary for the rooting out of feminism, root and branch, it is necessary that courtesy not be sneered at, but instead rejoiced in. So the types of things that can be done in order to show this sort of courtesy and obeisance are general obedience and the ordering of things in such a way that it's pleasing to the husband and little acts of honor. Modesty in apparel, right? The way that a wife dresses herself, not in an attention-getting way that's meant to make her the center, not in a way that's above his station so as to call attention to the extravagance of her dress compared to his means or station. Not showing nakedness, the covering of the whole of the breast, the top of the breast is covered down to the bottom of the thigh. The idea of those places that are meant to be covered are not uncovered. And there's not a giving of the intimacy of form so that there's a care to preserve the wife's body for the husband. And this should obviously be applied to daughters as well. Speech, meekness of speech, reverence about him and to him, honoring titles. Makeness of speech to the husband involves being careful to not be aggressive to the husband and to not seek to domineer or overbear the husband, but being careful to control and restrain the manner of speech in a courtesy, in a courtly way, as though speaking to a superior. The control of the voice to be appropriate. This doesn't mean always pleasant. Sometimes there's a need to bring a reproof to a husband with mildness, but there is a need with meekness to make sure that even when difficult things are being done and dealt with, that the voice is controlled and that the place is displayed. Speaking reverently of the husband when he's absent. One of the things I tell people, and I've always told my kids this, and I've always said this to people in marriage counseling, is no one can say things about you that are negative with more credibility than your spouse. And wives, it's very important that you guard the reputation of your husbands and that you be loathe to say bad things about him. That what you say, if you have to say something negative to some counselor in private to be able to deal with getting help, that that is like surgery, right? You're making cuts in order to heal. You're causing temporary pain in order to heal. But that needs to be done very carefully in the same way that you would expect great care of a surgeon. Being careful to guard the honor of the husband, to cover his failings in love, and to speak of him in a way that magnifies what's good about him and brings respect to him. That when you say negative things about your husband, his defense is always going to be weak. So it's important to guard the husband's reputation and to speak in honoring ways of him to others. When you speak to him, there's the meekness of speech. There's reverence in speaking to him. And one of the ways of giving a sort of courtesy or obeisance is to find an honoring title. Appropriate ones would include, for example, husband. Husband is an appropriate and honoring title. The idea of referring to him as your head or as your Lord. These are all things that the further you get towards the respect side, the more it starts to feel a little bit awkward in a world that hates women showing respect to their husbands. And so I would suggest to you that if you have the guts for it, both of you, if he's pleased to hear it, that you lean in and be awesome. You could also just be less awesome. That's fine. I won't judge you, but I'm just saying you can be awesome. Husband, head, Lord, think about it. Now, When we deal with general obedience, page seven, the general obedience of the wife involves trying to understand the will of your husband. And wives, let me say something that I want you to latch onto that many would gasp at. If you understand what your husband wants to you, it should be as a straight command. If you understand what your husband wants to you, it should be like a straight command. That is how you show reverence for him in your thoughts as you make choices and as you seek to provide a general obedience. When he gives you space, property, budgets, inheritance to think about, allowances for people under your authority or for yourself as a part of a budget, or beasts to govern and generosity or liberality to give out, these are all things that you want to understand his policy of. Men, it's your duty to provide and to protect, and that provision includes giving resources to do these things. Now, you might go, hey, what's space? Well, even if you don't own a house, you rent one, and that space has to be governed, and the wife should seek to govern that where there's a lease or where there's a freehold. Either one, there should be an effort to govern that space in a manner that is pleasing to your patriarch. You should seek to deal with the property in it, whether it be capital goods or goods for consumption. You know what the difference is? Capital goods are things that are meant to be invested to produce more money. And consumptive goods are things you buy to enjoy the pleasantness of them or the use of them as they get used up or worn out. So whichever it is, whether this is capital property or consumptive property, it is something that you seek to govern in a manner that will be pleasing to your husband. He gives you a budget that helps to understand that. Here's the amount over what period of time. Here are some goals to be accomplished with it. If he won't give you a formal budget, I'll bet you, wives, that if you respectfully speak to him and you want to understand what he wants you to do with the money, you'll be able to construct a budget pretty well by respectful speech across a relatively short period of time. You'll be able to figure it out. A husband should make this easier by formalizing it, helping you to understand, to give guidelines, to systematize and organize. But even if they don't, you are called to an intelligent service. You are called to an intelligent service. When you find that the expressed will of your husband is something that seems self-contradictory, you try to manage the prioritization of the things and figure out which thing he really wants more in the situation You can ask him, you can try to get it resolved, but make sure to approach in a way where you're not going, these things contradict, your rules are bad. Instead, it's these things look like they contradict when they do appear in a circumstance to do that, which do you want me to prioritize or do you want me to just do my best to try to manage it? Now, there's a principle called coverture, which is a principle of common law which is the idea coming from the Bible that a man is a legal covering for a woman. And what you find in Numbers 30, for example, is that if a woman enters into an oath or a vow or contract, her patriarch has a day upon hearing it to nullify it if she didn't get his approval first. That is an example of the legal principle of coverture. It used to be a part of American law coming out of common law, and it was destroyed as a part of the feminist movement. And the idea here is supposed to be that this empowers women. But I'll tell you what it does is it removes the protection of husbands and fathers from women so that women can be manipulated and given situations where they are largely enslaved, like student debt or any other contracts that consume their productivity. What you find is, typically speaking, when women enter into contracts that have long-lasting effects, as they do a worse job of getting out of those awful effects than men do over time, it is easier to keep them in a place where they continue to be abused. Coverture is a protection. Who would you rather have the deciding factor here? Would you rather have the other party in the contract, or would you prefer to have a patriarch who either raised you or who married you be the one responsible for guarding you against predatory contracts and obligations. Coverture is the principle of representation where a man is a legal representative, where a man has the ability to nullify contracts, who is this patriarch, and to be able to generally deal with the public dealings, the political dealings, the legal dealings of that woman to protect her. One of the things that makes coverture sound bad is the vain conceit of women that they are the same as men. This was such a ridiculous blindness that it took men pretending to be women coming into girls' sports for women to start to see it. The ridiculous violence that men are capable of, the brutal strength that you can see, is one of the things that's a reminder. If you just ask random women if they think that the average man can run faster than them or not, they'll kind of think, no, I think it's about the same. The speed records and the average speed is something that is very different from the vain imaginings of feminist drenched minds of women in America. These lies that have been pounded into the minds of people for generations now are things that we have to look at and laugh at. Coverture is a principle that protects women who we want to be less hardened than men. from being preyed upon by other people through emotional appeals. Women are easier to manipulate with emotional appeals to get them to make commitments on the spot than men are in general. In general. So that being the case, coverture is something that's used to protect women. And the other thing is, we want to develop women to not be as hardened as we want men to be. We want men to be more hardened so they can do their job, go out into the world, be more competitive, fight in wars, govern men, punish criminals. We want that. We want women to not be that. We want them to be able to care well for the single husband they have and to care about the detailed sense of his positive favor or negative favor. We want a single woman to be concerned about a small group of children and to care about the details of their lives and to care about the finery and small things about going from okay to beautiful. That care for the detail and beauty of a small space and a few relationships is very different from a concern to make men that are willing to let other men die in a battle plan. These are very different things. We do not want to make men and women the same. And the vain conceit that they were made to be the same and to fill the same roles is the conceit that's been used to help women to throw off the protection and care of fathers. And the willingness to accept a desire to make women feel good is the manipulation that effectively worked on men because we wouldn't say No. We wouldn't refuse. We wouldn't oppose the evil. We wouldn't oppose the evil men that wanted to manipulate our women. We wouldn't oppose the evil men that lied to women to destroy their worlds. We wouldn't oppose the wickedness that came to destroy our daughters and our wives. So men, Supporting these structures, these principles of law, these orders of operation is about protecting our women. And it is cruelty if we will not defend these boundaries and maintain the role of women and maintain the protections of law that God meant for them to have. To remove coverture and allow them to enter covenants and to enter into contracts and to not have the man, the husband, the father, be able to nullify it for the first day is an act of cruelty. that leaves them exposed. And so, wives and daughters, heed this warning. You live in a world that is cruel to you. does not care about the rights of your fathers and husbands, and has made a law code designed to make it so you can be manipulated and have money and contracts extracted from you without the protection of your fathers or husbands. So do not enter into contracts without the approval of your husband or father. Be careful to understand what you're committing yourself and your house to, and to be careful to not do it without the approval or extreme necessity without approval of your husband or extreme necessity. Wives, you have a duty to manage children, servants, the positions of honor under your control, external relations with other households and families, and hospitality in a manner that is pleasing to your husband. Women are particularly prone to love and care about relationships, and it can particularly grind against their happiness to think that the way they should manage their children, servants, stations of honor available to them, external relationships with other households, and the hospitality according to the will of the husband, overcome that, subdue that. Do these things as the queen of your husband to help his throne, his honor. Use these things to help him. When you deal with other households, you're acting in terms of foreign affairs and you need to be concerned to be the one who carries out the foreign policy of the king of your house. You think about the relationships and you think about hospitality and sharing in things and doing these things and behaving in a manner that helps to accomplish the goals of your husband. You take offenses, you take people stepping on your toes, you take difficulties in accordance with accomplishing the goals of your husband. You think about relationships and prioritization of where to spend time according to the policy of your husband. These are things that if you try, even if he hasn't given you a list and an order of priority and a formal memo, I'll bet you can figure it out pretty easily by the conversations you've had with him while both of you are about to fall asleep. It's not the hardest thing in the world to figure out. People know this, but the issue is, do you want to reverence your husband by carrying out his revealed will to you? There's a duty of care in anything he assigns to you for you to intelligently and reasonably seek to accomplish the goals he's given. Care, where you give your own attention, There's a duty of obedience, where you humbly and sincerely seek to do what he's commanded you to do, knowing his goals and intentions, understanding the level of freedom he's given you, the resources he's budgeted for you, and the due date or rate of success he wants to see. These are the kinds of things you go, well, that seems a lot. Look, anybody who's got to work for anybody, even an employee who's going to care about those things for their boss, do you want your service to your husband to be inferior to that of an employee to a boss, or do you want it to be equal to or better? Like, do you want to think that people, the average person who's getting paid for their time is going to give better service to their boss than you're going to give to your husband? Like, is that the way you want it to be? Do you want employees to have more loyalty to their bosses than you have to your husband? There's an act of obedience where you're trying to figure out how to do what He has appointed for you to do, and a passive obedience of avoiding transgression of His will. You're trying to avoid doing stuff that He's going to be unhappy with. There's a great danger for women to have a conceit of judgment where they say this, you know, I'm allowed to not do the stuff that's sinful. My husband gives me a sinful command. I don't have to obey it. My husband's plan is worse. We are called to always do the best and highest. Therefore, my husband's plan is sin. Therefore, I'm going to do what I want. Therefore, I don't really have to obey him. That right there, that conceit that your judgment is better, where you say anything that seems slightly more efficient, slightly better, is in my judgment therefore the right thing to do and the other thing is sin, that is not what is meant. Obedience to and submission to the commands that do not seem the meatiest, the most efficient, the best route to accomplish it, he has the authority to command that. If he can't even command you to do things in a sequence, then he has no authority. No, zero authority. That's just egalitarianism. That's just a denial of the biblical order. He has the ability to command you to do stuff in a way that's different from how you'd want to do it. Accounting. Your husband has a right to ask you what you did with your time, what you did with the property, what you're doing in your relationships with people, how things are going on a task or over a jurisdiction or area you govern. If you punish your husband when he asks you about it, how is this going? If you do that, that's rebellion, it is not reverence. It is dissuading your husband from doing his job. Your husband's leadership is not a thing that you want to encourage in this way. Could you lead me in the way I want, when I want, how I want? That is not what you want your husband to be. You want your husband to be strong enough to overcome external enemies. and you want him to know that he can come to you and you'll show him respect. One of the best ways to get your husband to perform better outside of the home and bringing bacon into the home is to make sure that he gets respect in the home and there's something beautiful and pleasant that he knows he wants to guard, protect, and advance. There is a duty of loyalty where you know his goals, his good, the means he wants, and how to obtain honor for him and you pursue it. There's a duty to be with him. One of the things that happens when women start to realize their duty of obedience to a husband and respect is you start to go, my husband's not perfect and I have to obey him. This is kind of not great because when I want to do something different than he wants to do, I have to obey him. Being around him means I have to do more things I don't want to do. Therefore, maybe I can try to reduce the time I'm around him. This idea, kind of like kids who don't want to obey their parents start to go like, maybe I'll just go hang out with my friends someplace else more often. When you find that, you have to overcome that, and your duty is to seek to be present with your husband, to dwell with him, to seek to be in his presence as a good thing and privilege. Imagine if your husband, as he was earning money, started to resent you, thinking, all the money I make I have to spend to provide a home. and to provide food and clothing and utility money for these people. I'm getting resentful. Maybe if I just stop trying so hard or whatever I can, or go spend the money on myself first. Like that's the kind of response of not giving your presence, your positive presence to your patriarch is. It's like the resentment of earning money and then not being happy to give it for the blessing of your wife. Coming when he calls you, going where he sends you. Taking a reproof well and redressing what he reproves. Taking judgment to do things without the consent of the husband. Making judgment to do things without the consent of the husband in extraordinary cases. There are times when you go, I can't get a hold of my husband or my father. I have to make a call. If I don't do something, I know his goals will be damaged, harmed, destroyed. And there are times, sort of like you, there works a necessity and mercy for the Sabbath. There's also times for extraordinary call where you do things where you would ordinarily seek consent from your husband or father. So this is the general rules of obedience. We are thinking about how do I behave in a manner that by my general obedience shows a reverence for my patriarch. Another thing to show proper honor is to refuse to follow sinful commands. So in other words, if he forbids you from doing a duty, or commands you to sin. Not a judgment of empirical things, where you're evaluating the most efficient methods to accomplish something. Not where you're predicting the future and think my plan is more likely to accomplish the goal. But the question of, is this forbidden by God's command? If it's forbidden, I can't do what my husband is commanding. If this thing is commanded and my husband forbids it, like going to church, You have to obey God. D, contentment with the estate of the husband. Your husband is not God and does not have infinite resources. You must recognize that the station he has, the giftings he has, the property he has, the relationships he has, are things that providentially have been given by God. And if he is working to seek to bring those things into the home, then you must be content with him and honor him for the ways he's seeking to improve his station and yours. The best thing you can do to advance his estate and therefore your estate, wives, is to work with your husband intelligently showing him reverence and giving general obedience to help to carry out his plan. These are the things to be done to advance the estate of your own house. The foolish woman tears down her own house, brick by brick, with her own hands. The wise woman builds her house, and she does it first and foremost by honoring her husband. Comments, questions, objections from the voting members and those with speaking rights? Let's pray. Father, we ask for blessing upon the teaching of your word. We ask that you would Prosper this words to our hearts, that you would renew us after the image of Christ, and that you would cause our homes to be beautiful, well and rightly ordered. I ask that you would cause husbands to acknowledge the virtue of their wives and to praise them in the gates, and that you would cause them to lead well and to be willing to press in where there's need. Father, I pray that you would cause these things to be meditated upon, and that you would cause wives and daughters to honor their patriarchs, and for patriarchs to feel the weight of their station, and to seek to work hard, diligently, intelligently, to advance their own homes, and to bring honor to your name. I pray this in the name of Jesus, amen.