In Paul’s letter to Titus, he gave the young man some instructions to pass on to “aged women” (Titus 2:1-3). Whenever I read these verses while preaching, I always explain to my congregation that I’ll teach Paul’s instructions, “even though we don’t have any aged women in our church.” This policy has always made me very popular with the aged women in our church!
One of the things Paul tells aged women to do is to “teach…young women” with “husbands” and “children” to be “keepers at home” (vs. 4,5). Since there is a lot of controversy about the exact meaning of that phrase, in an earlier edition of Two Minutes I shared some examples of how that word keeper is used in Scripture, to try to determine what “keepers at home” might mean.
For instance, the Bible talks about the doorkeepers of the temple (Ps. 84: 10). We discussed some of the Bible duties of doorkeepers, and another is found in II Kings 23:4:
“And the king commanded… the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal…”
Doorkeepers in the temple were commanded by the king to expel idolatry from God’s home. From this example I think it is safe to extrapolate and say that Christian moms should guard the temple of their homes against idolatry as well. Now you might think that there is little danger of idolatry rearing it’s ugly head in a Christian home, but remember that the Apostle Paul says that “covetousness…is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). If you’re a Christian mom, and you’ve never witnessed any covetousness in your home among your children, you are a fortunate mom indeed! Most moms have to work hard to keep their children from the pitfalls of always wanting things.
But the “the vessels that were made for Baal” in the temple didn’t just promote idolatry, they also promoted false doctrine. So I would further submit that it is the job of the door keepers of the Christian home to keep the influences of false doctrine out of the home. Moms need to be careful about the kinds of religious programming they allow to enter their homes via the radio, television and internet, etc. Kids might not seem to be paying attention to the words of the programs you listen to, but do you remember what the Bible says about how children learn?
“Whom shall He teach knowledge? and whom shall He make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little” (Isaiah 28:9,10).
Did you ever wonder why those verses repeat themselves so much? It is because children learn by constant repetition. And if a mom is constantly listening to errant Bible teachers, her children are learning error—line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. Christian mom, you are your children’s first line of defense against unsound doctrine.
Finally, there is yet another kind of keeper mentioned in Scripture, the “keeper of the wardrobe” (II Kings 22:14). Moms are in charge of providing suitable clothing for their children (Prov. 31:21)—and then there’s the endless job of washing and ironing the wardrobe!
But there is more to being the keeper of the wardrobe than this. Christian moms must see that daughters learn to dress like young ladies, and boys learn to dress like young men. This might not seem very important on the surface, but stop for a minute and consider how the world around us is pushing our society toward what they call a “gender neutral” status. In the face of this onslaught of evil, could anything be more important than for moms to be “keepers of the wardrobe.”
As you can see, being “keepers at home” involves far more than just housekeeping. A mom who is keeping a Christian home is standing firm on the front line of the battle for the minds and hearts and souls of her children. And is there anything more important than that?
To the Reader:
Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:
"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."
To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.
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