In this audio message, Jason Dohm discusses the topic of the relationship between headship and the mission given to Christian families. He explains that they are inextricably connected. God instructs that their mission is to fill the earth and multiply and to subdue it. A wife is to be a helper. Genesis lays out both our mission and a clear hierarchy of gender and specific roles.

Psalm 5:8 (NKJV) - "Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered."

This message is entitled: "Headship and Family Mission" by Jason Dohm at the 2021 "Getting the Picture Right - In Your First Ten Years of Marriage" Retreat.

I want to address something that I think is incredibly important but notoriously under considered. And that's the relationship between headship, hierarchy in marriage, headship and submission, and the mission given to Christian families. So headship, hierarchy, and mission. And I'm actually going to argue we shouldn't view it like this. We should view it like this.

They're inseparable. They're inextricably connected and it's inviting disaster into your marriage to have them be separated. They really are hand in hand. So let's ask the Lord to help us. God, We want to be a people who are embracing your word.

You trust it completely, you surrender to it, embrace it, believe it, and obey it. And even when it's hard, Even when we don't completely understand everything about it, that if you've said it, it would be sufficient for us and we would desire to love it. In this category, I pray that you would help us. Pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Turn to Genesis chapter 1.

We're going to be in really well-trod territory. These are all passages that you'll be very, very familiar with. The first from the creation account in Genesis chapter one. Follow along as I read Genesis chapter one twenty six through twenty eight. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it.

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Okay, what's first here? Mission is first. Dominion is there in that first verse, verse 26. Then the creation of mankind created in the image of God and both male and female, the two genders introduced here, but both bearing the image of God. And then, so that's verse 27, that middle verse, then the blessing of God and a restatement of the mission.

God blesses men and women and restates their mission of dominion, that they are to fill the earth and multiply, and they are to subdue the earth so that's verse 28. So the introduction of gender in the Bible is as a partnership in God-given mission. I just want to just pause there. Think about that. That is really profound.

The introduction of gender in the Bible is as a partnership in God-given mission. Now look at chapter 2. I'm going to read verse 18 and then skip to verse 24. So in Genesis chapter 2, you get a repetition of the creation account of mankind, but you get more detail. So it's again, God creating mankind, but with additional things that aren't said in chapter 1.

So Genesis 2, 18, and the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. And in the verses that follow that, he does make a helper comparable to him. He makes the woman, and then in verse 24, it says this, God says this, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So Scott started talking about that last night because Paul quotes it in Ephesians chapter 5.

The woman was made as a helper for the man. They leave their homes. A man and a woman have grown up each in a home, they leave those homes to form a new home, and they become one, and yet there is hierarchy. So there's the tightest level of union, but they don't sort of dissolve into one another. They are individuals but one, and there is hierarchy.

There is a leader who bears the ultimate responsibility, and he has a helper who is comparable to him. What does it mean that she's comparable to him? Well, it means that she's highly capable, as he is, and she is comparable, having the capacity for companionship and love, unlike any of the other created things that doesn't have the same level of capability and doesn't have these elements that lead to companionship and love. She has all that. Now, helping with what?

Well, we already saw that in chapter 1. Helping with the God-given mission. That is the implication. Not everything that was said in chapter one is repeated in chapter two, but she's given to him as a highly capable companion and partner in love, but a helper in the God-given mission that God has given to them to perform in life and in the world. By the way, if you don't believe that hierarchy is established here, that headship is established here, then flip to chapter 3 and see Eve eat first and see God show up and call Adam to account.

This answers forever the question, is this a human construct? The answer has to be no. There are only two people on planet Earth, one man, one woman, and God shows up and renders this verdict on Eve eating first, he calls Adam to account. He is responsible. He is head in his home.

Now consider Malachi chapter 2 verse 15. So Malachi chapter 2 verse 15. Again this is one you're really familiar with. But did he not make them one? Did God, our Maker, not make that one man and that one woman one, bring them together into one flesh union.

Continuing and why one? This is again from Malachi 2.15. And why one? Why did God do that? He seeks godly offspring.

God had it in His mind when He brought that one man and that one woman together. He was seeking something. He was seeking godly offspring. This is not different from what is said in Genesis 1 and 2, it's just part of what is said in Genesis 1 and 2. God wants Christian marriage to result in an addition, a multiplication of people who grow to know him and to worship him.

Godly offspring. Not just offspring. Put together any man and any woman and you're likely to have offspring, but God wants more than just that. He wants people who grow to know Him and who worship him. He is seeking godly offspring.

Finally, New Testament texts, one that I won't spend much time here because we're spending all weekend here, is Ephesians 5 verses 31 and 32. Let me just read it again quickly. Ephesians 5, 31 and 32. "'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." It's just this quoting of Genesis 1, and then Paul says this, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. So this is at the end of a section where Paul instructs husbands to relate to their wives modeling after how Christ relates to this people.

So Christ is the target. Christ is the model for how a husband is to relate to his wife. And a wife has a model or a pattern too, and it's how the Lord's people, the Lord's saved people, blood-bought people, ought to relate to her Savior, to our Savior. So we're both given a model here. So this is mission.

This is mission. Christian marriage is supposed to reflect to the world Christ's passionate love for His people and His people's adoration for their Savior. It's sometimes called the sacred reflection, the reflection of Christ and his people. Christian marriages are supposed to supply to the world this picture testimony of Jesus' love for his people and his people's adoration for their Savior. It's a picture testimony to the world.

That is a mission. Now, finally, Matthew 28, 18 through 20. This might be the best known of all the texts that I'm using this morning of a bunch of well-known texts. Matthew 18, excuse me, Matthew 28, 18 through 20, Jesus came and spoke to them saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." What is this known as?

This is known as the Great Commission. And it is given to the church, but I want to argue or submit to you that it is also a refining and a focusing of the dominion mandate. You should not view this as separate from what God is saying in Genesis chapter 1 in the dominion mandate. It is a refining and a focusing of the commands to fill the earth and to subdue it. It is to take the good news to the ends of the earth.

It's sort of a subset of the Great Commission. So Christian families are right in the middle of that. It is given to the church, but Christian marriages and Christian families are building blocks in churches and participate in the Great Commission. All of that to say this. A headship is for the mission.

The hierarchy exists for the serving of the mission, for the serving of the partnership that God intended between the genders in marriage in advancing his causes in the world. That's why headship. It doesn't make sense without the mission. Now what can happen? A husband can be very interested in headship, I'm boss, but not very interested in the mission.

And it becomes a way to have his best life now. To put himself at the center of the marriage and create a life around his preferences and his comforts and his headship and the hierarchy in the home becomes disconnected from the God-given partnership in mission that God intended. And that is death in a marriage. That is toxic and corrosive in a marriage. Jeff Pollard one time was giving a message and he asked a question that I remember word for word.

It has to be 15 years ago when I heard this, but I can't get it out of my mind and I use it frequently in messages about gender and roles because it really is the question. And it's a question to men, it's a question to husbands and fathers, and the question is this. Are you relating with your wife in a way that makes her sorry she's a woman? Just think about that for a second as a husband. Husbands, dads, are you relating with your wife in a way that makes her sorry that she's a woman, that makes her wish she could be in your shoes and so craft your family life around her preferences for her comfort.

This is exactly what home life is not to be. It is thrilling to a Christian woman when she has the privilege of helping her husband in partnership in their God-given mission. I don't know godly women who resist that at all. They're thrilled by it. But they can't figure out why headship and why hierarchy if that's absent.

If it's just so you get to be the boss and craft a life where you're at the center around your preferences and your comforts, no wife can figure out why headship exists then, and it frustrates and embitters. So all of us men should be asking ourselves, in what way? Because it's probably not an all or nothing proposition. Are you relating with your wife in a way that makes her sorry she's a woman? We should just assume that there are some gradations of that and say, in what way am I relating to my wife in ways that makes her sorry that she's a woman?

And then attack those ways because it's counter to what God had in mind. What God has in mind is a wife who is thrilled at the prospects of helping her husband in a partnership for their God-given mission. And so headship and hierarchy in their home not only isn't an irritant, she understands why and she's delighted to help, because there's something compelling on the horizon. We're taking the world by storm for our savior. A wife gets that.

A wife gets why in organizations or in the military there has to be hierarchy to take the hill in military terms. But if our family's not taking a hill, Then why? Why do we need a captain, a general, if there's no hill to take, if we're just organizing around preferences and comforts? Then my preferences and comforts can be as valid as yours. As yours, headship and family mission are inextricably related.

It is not this. It is absolutely this. And husbands, I particularly want to exhort us to be taking a hill. It will thrill our wives to help us to take the world by storm for our Savior. God, I thank you for saving.

I thank you for Christian marriage, the bringing together of a blood-bought son and a blood-bought daughter into this close, sweet partnership to serve and honor the Lord Jesus. And I pray that this ideal would be increasingly becoming a reality under our roofs. This ideal of me being a blood-bought son of yours and Janet being a blood-bought daughter of yours now wanting to spend and be spent to honor, bring honor to this one who has saved us in the world would become more and more a reality. Help us to walk closely with you in it I pray in Jesus name amen