One of the greatest men of God of the twentieth century was Evangelist John
R. Rice (1895-1980). Brother Rice was 31 years older than Pastor Jack Hyles
(1926-2001), who was a mentor to the young “Jackie Boy Hyles” (as he was
nicknamed). These dear saints of God went across America preaching the Words
of God in churches and evangelistic crusades, sharing 2,200 preaching
meetings together. If you ever hopefully take the time to
listen to
Brother Rice's audio preaching, you'll hear the influence that is so
prevalent in Dr. Hyles' awesome Bible-preaching.
I have a classic book in front of me titled, “Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives And Women Preachers!” The book was written back in the good old days of the United States in 1941. Beginning on page 84, Dr. Rice states:
THE HORRIBLE SIN OF REBELLION
I hope you have seen by this time that my subject does not primarily deal with anybody's hair, weather a woman's should be long or a man's short. I am really dealing with the question of rebellion against God and His authority. It will be no trouble for you, dear woman, to let your hair grow, if you first settle the real question: Are you willing today to surrender absolutely to the will of God and to His authority in your life? You can be subject to your husband if first you wholly submit to God.
But may I speak here not only to women but to men and to every reader. Will you face this question of surrender today? Will you confess your rebellion and forsake it today and repent of it? Will you start out today to try to follow the will of God? First of all, there is the will of God as expressed in the Bible. Will you today take the Bible as the rule of your life? Will you honestly seek to know the will of God and to do it, as expressed in the precious Word of God?
Perhaps today God speaks to you also by the Holy Spirit. There is some personal leading, some clear path marked out by the Spirit that you ought to take. Or there is some sin that you should give up, or some work you should begin. Will you follow the leading of God, no matter where it leads you? Will you bow your will to His will today? Will you say as the Saviour said to His Father, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thing, be done”?
“The powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1). Will you begin today to obey the law of the land, as carefully and meticulously as if God had spoken these laws from Heaven? Will you recognize the authority of God in the government?
It may be that your boss is rough, inconsiderate, perhaps incompetent. Perhaps you are a Christian and he is not. But will you say today by God's grace, “I will be a good Christian in obeying orders as if they were from Christ”?
Many a young man or woman, many a boy and girl will read this message. You are a Christian, perhaps, but you find it hard to submit to the will of your father or your mother. And yet it is the will of God. Will you submit to it today? I would pray to God to give me such a surrendered heart, and start out to do His will in the home.
In schools, in churches, in businesses, in homes there should be a new dedication of Christians to lives of obedience. Christians should submit themselves to their own government, to their bosses, to their teachers, to their fathers and to their husbands. It may be, Christian, that God wants something you are not willing to give. When I taught in Wayland Baptist College in Texas, a fine young man, a foreign mission volunteer student, came to me with his problems. He was engaged to be married. I knew the girl and knew him well. He said to me, “What shall I do, Mr. Rice?” My girl says that she loves me and wants to marry me, but that she cannot go to China. She says that it would break her mother's heart, and she cannot leave her home and her country even for me. If I will stay in this country she will marry me, but if I go to China I must go alone. What shall I do?”
I knew how he had felt the call of God to go to China. He had told me of his surrender and felt that he knew God had called him to take the gospel to that far-off land. So I said to him, “You don't need me to tell you what to do. I didn't die for you. I didn't save you. I didn't call you to preach the gospel. You need not ask me what to do. I think you already know what you must do if you are going to be happy.”
He bowed his head for a time and wept and then he said, “Yes, I know what to do! I want my girl if God is willing for me to have her and if He will turn her heart to go with me to China. But I belong to God and there is no use for me to say that I love Him if I am not willing to do what He says. To give up my sweetheart for China is not as much as Christ gave up for me. I know what to do!”
We prayed together that if it pleased God He would give the girl a willingness to go with him to China, but if not, that he might have courage to go alone, if that was God's will for him.
Does God want something you do not want to give? Maybe you have given up a dear baby that God took away. Perhaps there is a bitterness in your heart, a deadness. Perhaps you have never ceased to resent the loss of the one so dear to you. Oh, dear friend, today give up your will! Bow your head to the will of God and let Him have His way. In the long run you are certain to have such peace and joy as you can never know in disobedience and rebellion.
It may be God has called you to preach. You have in mind a great and happy career. So had I. It may be already that the future seems to promise glowing and wonderful things, success, prosperity, friends or even fame. So it seemed to me that night in 1921 in the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. I was a graduate student in the University of Chicago. I had a contract as a college teacher for the following year. The future looked, oh, so bright! But when I led a drunken bum to the Lord, God seemed to speak to my heart and say that that was the way of joy and usefulness for me. And so with some trembling and many doubts and fears, I gave myself up to do the will of God wherever it led me; to poverty, to obscurity, to sickness, to loss of friends, to a hard life, and then to an obscure grave. I say, I faced it all in my heart, but I took the long look and with all my heart I presented my body as a living sacrifice to God. I said with Isaiah, “Here am I; send me” (Isa. 6:8). Will you surrender to the call of God today? Perhaps God does not call you to preach, but he calls you to come out and be separate. He wants you to leave the worldly ways. He wants you to leave the primrose path you have been traveling. he wants you to come out and be separate and touch not the unclean thing. He wants you to give up certain friends, certain ways of living, and put yourself on the altar as an out-and-out Christian. Is that too hard for you?
It was not too hard for Paul. He called himself the bond salve of Jesus Christ. He said, “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). There were shipwrecks, beatings, stonings, the hate of his Jewish people, with his life in danger again and again, yet Paul did not waver. He bore in his body the scars of the Lord Jesus. He fought the lions at Ephesus. he lived in chains until their rattle and weight must have been as familiar as the beating of his own heart.
“Paul the aged” lived alone. No wife, no child. He had no time to marry in his eager concern to get out the gospel. In the prison he urged Timothy to come before winter, and “bring the cloke.” Paul suffered the loss of all things and counted them dung that he might find the Christ and be found in Him And it is not too much to ask of any person if they love the Lord Jesus. If you love Him, then keep His commandments, surrender yourself to His dear will.
And in the generations that are gone, people died at the stake and died singing, because they loved the Lord Jesus. Missionaries went to the lepers, expecting to contract the terrible disease themselves, as they did. Missionaries have died in the blackness of Africa or in the burning sands of the South Sea Islands. They have been beheaded in China. They have been shipped to Siberia from Russia. Is it too much to ask of Christians that they submit now to the will of God in every detail.
Rev. Joseph P. Boone, a dear Southern Baptist Minister, told me how he struggled with God when it was clear to his soul that God had called him to preach the gospel, to spend his life in soulwinning. He had planned to be a lawyer; the prospects for the future were bright. His soul shrank from giving up his rosy dreams. When he analyzed his attitude and found he was in rebellion against the will of God, he said he was desperately ashamed. To think that after God had saved him, had kept him out of Hell, had given him a home in Heaven, a new heart and a wonderful peace, he would now refuse to do the will of God about anything. Convicted of the sin of his rebellion, he went into his room at Baylor University where he was a student and locked the door. He said, “God helping me, I will never leave this room until this question is settled and settled right.” Either they will carry me out in a casket or I will go out of here surrendered to whatever plan God has for me. He owns me, body and soul. He deserves the best of my love, my service. He shall have it or I will die before I leave this room!”
He threw himself across the bed and wept out his heart until peace came and he could say, not only with his submitted will, but with a glad, and voluntary surrender,
“I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain or plain or sea;
I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord,
I'll be what you want me to be.”11Used by permission of Homer A. Rodenheaver, copyright owner.
And when he told me the story, he testified that the yoke of the Lord is easy and His burden light. And he told of the sweet rest of soul and His burden light. And he told of the sweet rest of soul that he had found in a life surrendered to the will of God.
SOURCE: Dr. John R. Rice - “Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives And Women Preachers,” pages 84-88; Sword of The Lord Publishers ©1941.
What
an important writing by Dr. Rice. My dear reader, have you ever truly
humbled yourself before God? I mean total surrender, willing to do whatever
God's will for your life is! Countless marriages could be saved if wives
would simply surrender to their own husband. Wives are commanded to wholly
submit to their “OWN HUSBANDS, AS UNTO THE LORD.” Ephesians 5:22,
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto
the Lord.” Even in the heathen world, there is always a chain
of command. Everybody cannot be in charge. If there were all chiefs and no
Indians, then who would lead? Who would follow? Anything with two heads is a
monster! God's plan for marriage is that the man is in charge, and the wife
is commanded to be in subjection to her own husband.
Countless churches could be salvaged, if their pastors would submit to God's one authority in the inspired King James Bible, instead of recognizing dozens of Bible perversions as being from the Lord. For any church to sanction dozens of Bible versions is the same as having no authority in a marriage or home, where anything goes—this Bible, that Bible, this gospel, that gospel—come one come all. Rebellion is epidemic across the United States today. Wives rebel against their husbands, which is why there are so many divorces and broken homes. Children rebel against their parents. Citizens rebel against the laws and local police. Men rebel against God. Pastors rebel against the King James Bible. There is much rebellion in marriages today, and in our homes and schools.
Young people have lost their respect for authority, because “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15). Brother Lester Roloff (1914-1982) talks about this truth in his wonderful sermon titled, The Lack Of Wisdom, which I highly recommend. Brother Roloff is right, babies are dumb! They are helpless, totally vulnerable, just laying there in their crib and mindless, lacking wisdom. As they grow, children must be taught wisdom, and disciplined to drive foolishness from them the Bible says. Many (but not all) criminals incarcerated in prison will testify that they grew up without proper parental discipline in the home. Proverbs 29:15, “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” The Scripture says that parents who fail to discipline their children hate them! Proverbs 13:24, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” A good and loving parent disciplines properly their child as often as deemed necessary, because they love and care about that child, and want them to grow up to be a responsible and happy adult. I am not condoning abuse, God forbid. God put that padded area in the back of every human being for a reason—for spankings!
The Holy Bible says that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as the sin of idolatry. Rebellion and stubbornness are sins that go hand in hand. 1st Samuel 15:23, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” Listen to what Moses said to the Jews in the Wilderness. Deuteronomy 31:27, “For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death?” The Bible says that Satan works in rebellious hearts. Ephesians 2:1-2, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Acts 5:3, “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?” Although a believer cannot be demon-possessed, Satan can fill the heart of a rebellious believer, as we see with Ananias. The apostle Peter said that Satan filled his heart to lie. Proverbs 4:23, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
If
you think about it, Rebecca ruined her son Jacob! Abraham and Sarah were
given a son from God, named Isaac. Abraham sent his servant to find a wife
for Isaac, and her name was Sarah. I am partial toward that tradition by the
way, of parents picking a wife for their son. Parents are much wiser and
know what to look for, and what warning signs to see. I wish to God that my
parents had chosen a wife for me when I was a young man, because I chose
very poorly. Albeit, I am grateful to God for the opportunity and privilege
to be married and have four children. Sadly, my wife quit and divorced me in
2006, and I have lived alone since, often giving her money voluntarily and
overcoming her evil with my good (Romans 12:21). She refuses to apologize
for anything, still 13 years later in 2019, blaming me and others for her
failures in the marriage. That hinders us from reuniting. 
Read
this ladies, about the dangers of having a BIG MOUTH! Esther 5:14 and
9:25, “Then said Zeresh his wife and all his friends unto
him, Let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and tomorrow
speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon: then go thou
in merrily with the king unto the banquet. And the thing pleased Haman; and
he caused the gallows to be made. ... But when Esther came before the king,
he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against the
Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his
sons should be hanged on the gallows.” Talk about poetic
justice! Zeresh suggested that her husband Haman build a gallows 75 feet
high to hand the Christian Mordecai, and then all their friends agreed with
the idea, but it horribly backfired, causing her husband with all ten of her
sons to be hanged instead on those gallows! This ought to be a lesson to you
dear reader about the potential dangers of taking ungodly advice from family
members and friends! 
Very
few women nowadays have a Biblical mindset that the husband is in charge,
and the wife is his servant. A lot of woman get upset at the very mention of
the word “servant.” Genesis 2:18, “And the LORD God said, It is not good
that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet
for him.” Jesus taught that the “GREATEST” person among any
group is the servant! Matthew 23:11, “But he that is greatest among you
shall be your servant.” Jesus didn't say that the “greatest” person is
the leader or pastor or big shot, but the humble servant. That is
what the word “minister” means in the Word of God—“a servant.” Mark
10:43, “But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among
you, shall be your minister.” When it comes to authority in a
marriage and home, there is no 50/50 division—THE MAN IS IN CHARGE! If you
don't believe that—whether you be a man or woman—get right with God!
