Ephesians 521 through 33. It says, Submit to one another
out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your
own husbands as you do the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which
he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to
Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in
everything. Husbands, love your wives, just
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make
her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church,
without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and
blameless. In this same way husbands ought
to love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife, loves himself.
After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed
and care for their body, just as Christ does the Church, for we
are members of His body. For this reason, a man will
leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the
two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but
I am. But I am talking about Christ
and the Church. However, each one of you also
must love. Sorry, love his wife as he loves
himself and the wife must respect her husband.
Amen. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God, there is this growing trend that's taking
place specifically more on social media.
It's this trend called trad wives.
As any of you any of you heard of this before, which is short
for traditional wives. Basically, they're these women
who are getting on social media and they're showcasing a more
domesticated style of life. OK, so this means they're
getting on on social media, showcasing themselves, making
homemade food, raising their kids, cleaning their house, even
being willing to put on a make up and a dress for their husband
even though they're staying at home.
Now, as you can imagine, this is growing some controversy out on
the Internet. Some people are criticizing it,
saying it's a step backward for women.
Others, they just say it's an unrealistic sort of nostalgic
view of a bygone era and that we don't want to go back to that
time frame. Others, however, maybe even in
some Christian circles, are celebrating the more traditional
gender roles. They're emphasizing the the
beauty of motherhood, they might say, which by the way, we would
all agree is one of the highest and most beautiful callings
ever. So what we're seeing is
especially with younger generations that they are
becoming women more and more are becoming open to the idea of
more traditional gender roles. There was an Australian study
done by The Conversation. What they found that was that
young women significantly increased their support for
gendered roles with the proportion who are disagreeing
with disagreeing with the idea of of poor gender roles.
Basically 5057% in 2010 used to think that traditional gender
roles were were no good. That's down from 57 to 43% in
2024. Isn't that interesting?
Gen. Z women are more and more into
the traditional gender roles now.
What's alarming, and what's alarming for a lot of different
people is that this comes at the same time that there's a spike
in the conversation around men's role in the society.
There's this thing out on the Internet.
It's called the manosphere, and you've ever heard of this?
And what it is, is it's basically a collection of
websites, blogs, and online forums that are promoting
masculinity, promoting misogyny, and promoting opposition to
feminism. So the manosphere includes
groups like Men's Rights Activists in Cells or which is
short for Involuntary Celibates and Pick Up Artists or Puas for
sure. Here's what's happening.
These men in the manosphere are claiming that they are now the
oppressed gender as led by men like Andrew Tate and a few
others. So here's what's happening in
the culture with these trends. The manosphere tells young men
they are losing a rightful status and can get it back
through hardness, discipline, and dominance.
Meanwhile, the trad wife culture tells women that freedom from
the rat race can be found in beauty, dependence and a
domestic order. And what we think is happening
is that because there's been so much confusion out in the
culture surrounding gender politics, because there's been
so much noise out there in regard to this conversation,
we're seeing that people are looking elsewhere for a sense of
structure and stability within chaos.
These two kind of different and opposing streams that we're
seeing, they provide a certain level of certainty and chaos.
It's sort of like saying I want control over my life, often
times pointing to a common enemy.
So the question for us today, does the Bible, does
Christianity have anything to say about men and women in
marriage, about how we should treat each other in our posture
towards one another? Are women designated to be in a
subordinate role forever to men? And are men meant to rule over
their wives and their kids and their employees?
That's the question we're going to address today.
And many of you are thinking, wow, Ben, bold choice on
Mother's Day to preach on this topic, right?
We had this plan before I realized what day it was because
we're working through an Ephesian series today.
So go easy on me. All right, No, I know today's
going to be encouraging for all of us today.
So we're going to be in Ephesians chapter 5 today.
We always encourage physical Bibles, but it'll be on the
screens as well. Just try and get this in front
of you. It's helpful to get the whole
text in front of you, especially today as we're going through the
different passages and jumping around a bit.
OK, we've been going through an Ephesians series and the first
half is all about the victory that Christ has won for all of
the believers. His church talks about the
beautiful family that God is bringing together and building
now through the resurrection and victory of Christ.
So chapters one through three are basically demonstrating.
They're highlighting what has been won.
But chapters 4 through 6, where we're going to be today, it's
emphasizing the practical nature of how we should now live.
So we're going to be in Ephesians chapter 5, and we're
going to begin in verse 15. Verse 15 it says this.
Be careful then how you live, not as unwise but as wise,
making the most of every opportunity, because the days
are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but
understand what the word Lord's will is.
Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery.
Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 This is what it looks
like to be filled with the Spirit speaking to one another
with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving
thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul begins here by saying he
he gives a series of not but statements, not as unwise but as
wise, not drunk on wine, but filled with the Spirit.
And so when Paul talks about being filled with the Spirit in
the Greek, it's the idea of he's saying be being filled with the
Spirit. This is a continual ongoing
filling of the Holy Spirit. Now, sometimes an encounter and
filling with the Holy Spirit is radical and it's powerful.
You can feel it. You feel maybe a moment of peace
or warmth or power come over you.
Maybe in a time of desperation. You feel a supernatural comfort
within you. And those are all wonderful
things. We encourage that.
We believe that the Holy Spirit moves in real and mighty ways
even today. He still heals, He still gives
gifts, etcetera. But Paul here gives a list of
five participles of what it looks like for the Christian to
be filled with the Spirit. The five are these speaking,
singing, making music, giving thanks and then finally our our
focus today submitting to one another.
OK, so do you see how this passage is kind of laid out,
Paul saying be continually filled with the spirit.
This is what this looks like. It's not always in like, you
know, tingles down your back or goose pimples or anything like
that, but rather being filled with the Holy Spirit is
exhibited by these things, including submitting to one
another. You with me so far, Harold
Honour puts it this way with the indwelling meaning like the the
Holy Spirit living in us. He says with the indwelling,
each Christian has all of the Spirit.
Amen. He says, but the command to be
filled with the Spirit enables the Spirit to have all of the
believer. Wow.
So when we have when we have the Holy Spirit, we have all of the
Holy Spirit, but being filled with the Spirit is allowing the
Spirit to have all of us. You with me, OK, I hear you.
I hear you a little bit. That's good.
And so Paul specifically, he gets into three different, three
different sort of relationships in which this is lived out.
He talks about submission to wives, to husbands, husband to
wives, children to parents, parents to children, slaves to
masters, masters to slaves. Ephesians 5, verse 21.
Take a look at it. Ephesians 521.
This is the banner text. This is the most important thing
we are going to cover today. Paul writes this.
Submit to one another out of reverence to Christ, submit to
one another out of reverence for Jesus.
In the Greek, this is the word hypotasomanoe.
It's in the present passive participle.
So again, it's the idea of an ongoing willing yielding to one
another, yielding to your spouse and whatever relationship you're
in. And so the command to be
submitted to one another in verse 21 is the banner
instruction over this entire passage all the way through 69.
So this is sort of the umbrella by which everything else falls
underneath it. Does that make sense?
And So what we see here is Paul is commanding and instructing
the believers in the churches of Ephesus to practice something
called mutual voluntary submission.
It's mutual because it involves both parties.
It's together, it's voluntary, and that it's freely done or
it's consensual if you want to use that word.
And it's also submission, meaning there is a humble
yielding happening with one another.
So if someone were to come up to me and say, hey, Ben, how would
you describe your relationship with Susan Susan's my wife?
How would you describe the relationship between my wife and
I? We would likely say something
like this. Susan and I are continually
submitted to one another. Right, babe?
We would say something like that.
OK, She's nodding her head. Let the record show she's
nodding her head. Took a risk there.
It paid off. We did not plan that.
OK, continually submitted to one another.
But this is so difficult in a marriage, is it not?
As a matter of fact, since the since the beginning of time,
since the beginning of man, this has been a problem for men and
women. In chapter 3 we see already how
difficult it is. Genesis 3 we see that beginning.
God had made everything good. He made it beautiful, He made it
perfect. He made man and woman to be in
relationship with one another and with Him.
But then man rebelled and he sinned and entered in the curse.
And part of this curse, part of the part of the byproduct of
man's sin, is found in chapter 316 in Genesis.
The curses, your desire will be for your husband and he will
rule over you. This is not God's intended
design for marriage. Rather, this is the natural
consequence of a broken and fallen world.
This is the curse. Does that make sense?
Human beings, you and I believers in Christ.
We are designed to reverse the curse through Christ likeness.
More and more we see the battle of the sexes playing out all
over in our culture. It's been going on since the
dawn of man. Now, in Paul's day, no surprise,
there was also power plays taking place to which he was
likely addressing. In fact, in the Greco Roman
society, there was these things called household codes.
It was basically the ethic and the rule of the day.
So this is a quote from Aristotle.
You maybe heard of him. Great guy, pretty smart.
This highlights the thinking and the understanding of how
households should run in their day.
This is what he says of household management.
We have seen that there are three parts. 1 is the rule of a
master over slaves, another of a father and 1/3 of a husband.
A husband and father rules over wife and children.
Sheesh. Kind of harsh there, Aristotle.
OK, notice how he's only addressing the men here.
He's addressing the masters, the fathers, and the husband.
Notice the language he says they are to rule over their
respective partners there. He's only addressing the men.
Aren't we glad we followed Jesus and not Aristotle?
OK Paul, on the other hand, is subverting this.
He flips this completely on its head.
Instead, he addresses everyone as equal moral agents, starting
with the wives first, That's significant.
Paul is doing something here in this passage that we're
addressing. Ben Witherington, the third.
He's a scholar. He puts it this way.
Paul, by placing this verse here, is critiquing the normal
understanding of household relationships, where only a
certain members of the household are doing the submitting or
serving. Not in the Christian Church,
says Paul, where everyone should submit to and serve everyone
else out of reverence for Christ.
Paul's subverting it on purpose. So then what he does next is
Paul's saying, hey, I'm doing something different.
I know you've been told it's one way in the culture, but watch
this. So he begins by addressing each
individual, beginning with the wives, giving them dignity and
priority. Ephesians 522 wives submit to
your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
So he begins by addressing specifically how the wives are
to submit to one another. First we need to understand
something about 22 is that 22 doesn't make sense except for
when you look at the verse right before it, 21.
In other words, that word submit isn't actually in the Greek.
So it should say something like this, submitting to one another.
That's 21 wives to your husband's, and so he's
illustrating how the submission should look in each individual
context. The new Living Translation
actually gets this right and communicates it quite well.
It says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
For wives, this means to your husbands.
For husbands this means love your wives.
So does that make sense? So again, the banner
instruction, submit to one another out of reverence for
Christ, submit to one another. Here's how it looks in each
individual context for each person.
So the instruction then to the wives flows from the previous
thought in verse 21. In other words, they're
inseparable. You can't just start preaching
verse 22 without preaching 21. That's significant.
In other words, verse 22 submits to verse 21.
That's an easy way to remember that.
You're welcome. This matters when it comes to
controversial passages when let's say wives submit to your
husbands. Does that make sense?
This is why we're taking time to address this.
He continues on Paul in verse 23, verse 23.
Wives submit to your husbands for the husband is the head or
or sorry is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the
church, his body of which he is the Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should
submit to their husbands in everything.
Now there's some controversy over the word head of the wife.
What exactly does that mean? There's a little bit of debate
over this, but the scholarship leans towards interpreting the
word kephalae, which is the Greek word for head.
Kephalae is commonly most literally translated as a
literal head, as in a crown of thorns on Jesus's kephalae.
Does that make sense? So it's often times it's a
literal head, but when it's used metaphorically in the ancient
Greek, it means the origin or the source of something.
So for instance, the spring or a fountainhead is the source in
the beginning of a river. We see this is how it's used
contextually in Greco Roman societies.
That make sense. So the head then is the source
or the origin. The scholars over at the Bible
Project, whom I love, they write it this way.
The physical head in ancient Greek thought was assumed to be
the source of the body's functions, the source of
information, perception and provision for the entire body.
In Ephesians 522 and 23, Paul portrays the husband as the head
of the wife, primarily in terms of source, as an allusion to
Adam and Eve and as the story shows, where the woman was made
out of the man. So if you've been in church long
enough, you've heard about how Eve came from Adam's what rib,
right? Better translation is Adam's
side connotating equality, connotating nextness.
OK. And So what what we're seeing
here is that woman, it's her source.
And the story of Adam and Eve woman's source was literally
Adam. Does that make sense?
He is the head in this terminology.
We see in the in the beginning that when God created man and
woman, He created them to be equal leaders.
Genesis 218 the Lord said it is not good for man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him.
In the Hebrew this is the phrase azare connecto.
Azare is used for military might, as in a rescuer military,
military aid, and it's also used 16 times for God.
The word azare is used to describe God as Israel's rescuer
and helper. The word connecto is the idea of
a face to face equal. There's the idea of there's
difference in gender and sexuality.
Yes, there's difference, but there's a quality.
They're standing face to face with one another.
So helper suitable isn't maybe the best translation.
For this, it's not strong enough.
Perhaps a better paraphrase is God is saying this when it comes
to woman being made from man. God is saying I will make a
partner equal to him and that a beautiful picture.
And what's their job? What's their role to rule over
creation together. This is the calling for men and
women, wives and husbands, to rule over creation as equals
with one another. Doctor Cynthia L Westfall puts
it this way again, going back to the idea of men being head over
their wives. She says Adam is appropriately
Eve's head by virtue of being her origin and source, and Eve
is in turn his body by virtue of their unity as one flesh.
From here, Paul finds an interpretive correlation between
Eve created from Adam and the traditional cultural
relationship between husbands and wives in the Roman world
where the husband is the benefactor and patron of the
wife from whom she derives her identity and the necessities of
life. During the Greco Roman society,
women very much relied on their husbands for provision, for
status, etcetera. They didn't have the ability to
be legal witnesses, they didn't have rights in this case, and so
the husband was very much to take care of the wife.
So 3 verses, 3 verses here about wives submitting to their
husband and what that looks like in their context.
Now, 9 verses dedicated to the husbands.
OK, here we go husbands, how are we supposed to be submitting?
Verse 25? This is what it says for us.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and
gave himself up for her, to make her holy by cleansing her by the
washing with water through the Word, and to present her to
Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any
other blemish, but holy and blameless.
What a vision, verse 28. In the same way, husbands ought
to love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
After all, no one has ever hated their own body, but they feed
and care for their body, just as Christ does the Church, for we
are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two
will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but
I'm talking about Christ and the Church, so here.
The instruction for husbands, then, is to love, love your
spouse as Christ loved the church, to lay down your life
for your wives, to be willing to sacrifice, to be willing to give
yourself up, to take care of your spouse as if you're taking
care of your own body. We all take care of our own
bodies, right? We feed it, we clothe it.
You're here today. You look great, by the way.
In the same way, we're meant to be taking care of our spouses.
Now we see verse 33, which is sort of the bottom piece of
bread on the submission sandwich.
OK. This is the kind of the summary
verse here for what we just read.
However, each of you must also love his wife as he loves
himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
So the summary verse is here. Let me summarize it.
Husbands love your wives. Wives respect your husbands.
This is the intention that Paul is trying to communicate here.
All under the banner of submit to one another out of reverence
for Christ. Here's the point.
This passage is not about enforcing submission on others,
but Paul is calling all believers to willingly adopt
Jesus's posture of submission. Jesus himself was willing to
submit himself to the Father's will to come to earth and and
pay the ultimate price of death on the cross for your sins and
for my sins. That all who believe in Him put
their faith in Him and confess Him as Lord will be saved.
He was willing to submit Himself to the even the authorities over
Him being nailed to a cross for you and for me.
If Jesus can do it, so can we. This is the posture that we are
meant to adopt. Paul was intentionally
challenging the oppressive ruling power dynamics of men
over women in his time. There are many people who look
at Christianity Today and they look at us and they say, oh, the
Bible really that antiquated ancient texts that does that
really have any say over my life today?
Isn't the Bible used to domineer over women and keep us stuck in
the past? Well, potentially, And yes,
certain verses have been used to do just that.
However, the science tells a different story about the role
of religion and marriage satisfaction.
Here's a study. The 2019 study by the Institute
of Family Studies found that highly religious couples
actually have the most marital satisfaction and the most sexual
satisfaction. By the way, kind of interesting.
Just a little heads up. If you want to have great sex,
be religious, I guess. OK, strike that from the record,
OK, The National Survey of Families, check this out.
The National Survey of Families and Household also found that
check this out. Church going.
Evangelical Protestant husbands were the least likely to be
engaged in domestic abuse. OK, so pause here for a second.
Church going evangelical Protestant men were the least
likely to engage in domestic violence.
So that's that would be us here today.
We're in church Protestant non Catholic evangelical men least
likely to engage in domestic abuse scientifically, the data
shows. Now here's the caveat to this.
The opposite is actually true for the men who don't actually
go to church. Meaning men who claim to be
Christian but don't actually go to church are some of the worst
offenders when it comes to domestic abuse, evidently.
Evidently, if you take passages like these and you use them to
domineer over your spouse, problems happen.
If you take passages like these, but you're not actually
following in the way of Jesus in your real life by attending
church and being discipled and being in community and learning
what the text actually says. Evidently that is damaging to
women and relationships and damaging to the reputation of
Christians out in the broader world.
Would you agree? Listen, this is important, guys,
when it comes to passages like these, you cannot just preach
verse 22, wives, submit to your husbands.
You have to preach verse 21, submit to one another out of
reverence for Christ. Does that make sense?
So husbands, keep coming to church.
Way to go, man, You're here. Keep going to church.
Wives, respect your husbands and love them.
Well, you hear the passion here because a lot of damage has been
done by men claiming to be Christian who cherry pick
certain passages to mean certain things that they did not mean
that Paul did not intend for them to mean.
We have to get clear about some of the stuff and what the text
actually says and what Paul is trying to do.
Husbands, love your wives. Wives, respect your husbands.
The text does not support any kind of male dominance or
domestic abuse. The text does not support
telling that women must submit in silence or discouraging women
from using their gifts and leadership in the church or
teaching in the church. That's not what the text says.
So the question becomes then, what does submission actually
look like in each of these various dynamics that Paul is
mentioning? So under under again the banner
of submitting to one another, there's various different
instructions that Paul gives. We just mentioned two of them.
So wives, submission means yielded respect to your
husbands. For husbands, this means
submission through sacrificial love.
Later on next week, we'll talk about children submission
through honouring obedience. For parents this means
submission through non provoking training.
For slaves this means submission by respectful obedience unto the
Lord. Pause here.
This is not an endorsement of slavery at all.
And matter of fact, Paul elsewhere says if you can get
free from slavery, please do that.
What Paul is saying if you find yourself in a circumstance like
this, this is how you are to submit.
Does that make sense? And so for masters, same thing,
submission to your slaves by non threatening equity and respect.
So Paul's saying submit to one another.
Here's how it looks. Wherever you find yourself,
whatever context you find yourself in, whatever
circumstance you find yourself in, this is how it should play
out. Whether you're a married,
whether you're parenting, whether you're a slave, and
each. Paul's goal here is not to
reinforce or codify the hierarchical or domineering rule
of law for his day. Rather, he subverts it,
acknowledging, dignifying, and giving credit to each member of
the relationship, women and men, children and parents, slaves and
masters. All right, So what does this
look like for us here today? Some application points #1
believers are called to continually yield to one another
regardless of cultural norms. And the church said Amen, Amen.
Regardless of what's going on in the culture around us.
In other words, it doesn't matter if like, you know, the
Internet and the manosphere is saying men, we got to take back
our rightful, rightful place and domineer women, they're
oppressing us now. It doesn't matter, you know, if
the trad wives are going back to sort of a 1950s version of
gender roles regardless of cultural norms any anyway the
cultural swings, it doesn't matter because in other words,
the focus isn't on who's in power, who's better, or who's in
control. What Paul is saying here is that
all are equal under Christ Jesus.
All are equal. He reiterates this in Galatians
3. There is neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female.
For you are all read it with me one in Christ Jesus.
The focus instead is how to submit within your unique
relational context wherever you find yourself in submit.
So what is Christian submission and what is it not #1 being
submitted in marriage is not obedience, subordination,
passivity, or neglecting your leadership responsibilities.
The older generations, you know, the boomers and above, they've
gotten a little bit of criticism.
First of all, we want to honour that generation.
A lot of great came out of that, especially the greatest
generation. But the criticism was that for a
lot of the men, they were detached from parenting and
child rearing, right? And so studies show that
actually millennial men's or millennial dads are some of the
most engaged in changing diapers and hanging out with their kids,
which I think we can take a moment to celebrate, right?
That's a good thing. Moms are more engaged than ever.
There is a beautiful thing that's happening where men are
no longer saying that's the woman's role, that's her job to
take care of the kids and be affectionate and change their
diapers. There is a there's a swing
happening, which is a good thing.
And so being submitted then are these things.
It's releasing of control. It's choosing humility and it's
being others focused. In other words, it's mutual
voluntary submission. Now, there's a caveat here,
right? We got to have a disclaimer here
when we're talking about this. There are in fact limits to
submission, OK? Obviously, in cases of domestic
abuse, in the case where your spouse is trying to lead you to
do something that is ungodly and directly counteract scripture,
of course there are limits to that.
Does that make sense? So I share that to say like,
like this isn't just a blind, blind submission.
There are certain limits in particular cases.
So the question obviously becomes, and I hear it a lot.
OK, Ben. So then who leads in the
marriage? Who leads?
And we need to be careful here because sometimes what people
are actually asking is who's in charge in a marriage, OK?
This is a different, different question.
We need to be reminded that marriage is a covenantal
relationship, not a hierarchical, hierarchical chain
of command. An overemphasis on the power
dynamics often times is a sign of a deeper issue going on.
Maybe, for instance, it's a sign of emotional neglect.
Maybe a husband is neglecting a wife's emotions and they're not
loving them and supporting them in the way that they need to.
Or the inverse, maybe maybe the spouse is withholding some
respect from her husband. He's feeling degraded and so on,
so forth. So usually when couples are
like, well, yeah, but yeah, but who makes the call?
Often times there can be something going on deeper there.
OK, but who leads in your marriage, Ben?
OK, here's what I would say. Here's who leads in my marriage.
Jesus leads in our marriage. OK, Hang with me.
Hang with me. Jesus is the one that ultimately
leads. We both follow and in doing so,
we both lead our family together.
This is what I believe Paul is presenting before us.
We are both leading in our family as we follow the true
leader, as we follow his model of servant leadership, which is
laying down his life for others. Practically speaking, this means
that Susan and I have agreed upon roles and responsibilities
and they're not based on gender specifically, OK, We each have
different giftings and callings. We each have different passions,
OK. So for instance, this is, this
is maybe an inverse for a lot of families or traditional family
values. So, for instance, my wife
handles all of the finances in our home.
She tracks every single transaction we make.
She puts it in our budget. She sends off checks for the tax
and IRA. She collects all of those
documents. She does a phenomenal job.
Yeah. Bimbo, why don't why don't you
take care of that? Here's why.
When we were both in college, I was studying Greek words and
Hebrew, and she was studying business management.
OK. Does that make sense to people?
OK, we use our, we use our God-given giftings, our passions
or whatever. And then we define the roles not
around gender, but around giftings as God leads.
Does that make sense? And so that's going to look
radically different for each of your individual contexts.
But the point is we lead together because we are on
mission together. We're on mission together.
We're heading in the same direction.
So many petty squabbles and power plays are usually
diminished when the couple has a common vision and a common
mission for what their marriage is and where their family's
headed. All the petty stuff just kind of
goes away. Same is true in a church, by the
way, right? We, we spend very little time
when there's like little, little complaints or little comments
about like preference oriented things in the church, like the,
the, the volume of the music or what kind of coffee we use,
right? We don't really care about some
of that stuff. It's not because we're mean,
it's because we're on mission to make disciples and that's what
matters most. Does that make sense?
And so in the marriage, the same thing has to be true.
What are you aiming at? What are you headed towards?
Because all the little petty stuff can can diminish and
decrease as long as you're following Christ together,
making disciples and leading your household towards him.
You need mission alignment in a marriage.
You with me? We got to have it, John.
Mark Homer says that this way, couples who exist simply for one
another are doomed to failure. Marriage is a means to an end.
It exists for something larger than itself.
So for the singles in the room, first of all, welcome.
We're glad you're here. In no way do I mean to elevate
marriage as a better or higher status.
As a matter of fact, Paul would almost indicate the opposite,
which is kind of cool. Singleness is a high calling.
And it's it's wonderful. But you may be asking the
question like, OK, so who should I marry then?
And I would say this, marry whomever has mission alignment
with you. Marry someone you love being
around, but it has to have mission alignment.
And yes, there's natural chemistry and desire that takes
place. But are you pointed towards the
same thing? I was recently in my
discipleship band and one of my members is very, very wise.
And he basically posed this question.
Like when it comes to choosing a spouse, you have to ask, is she
on your team, right? Is she your ride or die?
Is he on your team? Is he going to go with you for
thick or thin chasing Jesus with you?
Why? Because if, if you're on mission
together, you can both share the yoke together as you're working
towards the same mission, equally yoked, not tilted one
way or the other, not fighting one another, but equally yoked
towards Jesus, towards the Master.
Now I'm preaching to myself as I say all of this.
Let me just let me just stop for a second, OK?
As I was writing the sermon, there was a moment where I had
to pause and be like, oh crap, I forgot to do the dishes.
You know what I mean? And I had to go and do the
dishes, right? Because I'm yielded to, to what
we agreed on, right? And a little more seriously,
there was a moment I was writing the sermon.
I'm like, Oh my goodness, I don't know that I'm, I'm
yielding at all. I don't know that I'm doing well
at this. I don't even know if I have a
right to preach this this weekend.
And so honestly, I just took a moment where I sat down with
Susan and we sat on the bed and I just said, how are we doing?
How are we doing at this yielding thing?
And she was so gracious and she reassured me.
She's like, Ben, you can, you can preach this sermon with
integrity this week. And we had a good talk.
And it was just like a really cool moment of coming together.
Not because we we're doing it perfectly.
Like we would be the first to say that like we got, we have a
lot of work to do, but it was just cool to have that level of
unity. And I just so appreciated having
that. But I wanted to preach this with
integrity. But please hear me still trying
to figure out how this works, Philosopher and theologian
Dallas Willard said. Submission is a putting of
ourselves under the interest of another person.
And at first that's terrifying, right?
Like putting myself under the interests of another person.
But but marriage provides this beautiful framework where the
unconditional love prevails, unconditional grace prevails.
Like we can put ourself in the interest of another person
because we know we're going to be met with unconditional
commitment and love. And when we do that, it's scary
at first, but we find is it's incredibly freeing for us no
matter what the relationship is. Here's why.
No matter the relationship we find ourselves, we can put
ourselves under the interest of another.
Why? Because we have a true master
that's above all of it. In other words, a posture of
Christ like submission brings. Freedom, because ultimately our
trust is in Jesus alone. It's in Jesus, Richard Foster
says what freedom corresponds to submission.
It is the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always
needing to get our way right. Would any of you like to lay
down the burden of always needing to get your way?
I hope you would. Freedom is not having your way
because life is not about you. Freedom is trusting that even if
the circumstances are rough, even if the idea or the partner
isn't ideal and he's not perfect or she's not perfect, we can
still trust in King Jesus, Casey's ruler over it all.
Ephesians 51, the beginning of this chapter says, follow God's
example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the
way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for
us. Giving yourself up for others is
only possible through the filling of the Holy Spirit.
To be yielded to one another is to be surrendered to the Holy
Spirit 1st. And so as we wrap up this
sermon, a couple practical next steps for you #1 there's a book
that Pastor Patrick and I love. I use it every time I go through
premarital counselling with couples.
It's Tim Keller, meaning of marriage.
Incredible theologian. I don't even fully align with
him on certain views, but it's just too good to not recommend.
Secondly, I'd encourage you and your spouse to find hobbies
together. Find ways that you connect.
Find ways where you just enjoy going and having fun together.
The demands of life are heavy. Demands of parenting are heavy.
Go have fun, go reconnect. I encourage you all, parents or
parents and couples, I encourage you to do some work on
identifying your family of origin.
What are some of the patterns you saw in your parents
marriage, grandparents marriage, the roles that you've identified
for them and for you? Encouraging weekly check
insurance. There's a couple in our church
that goes through a marriage journal every single week.
They just check in weekly and go through a series of questions
like clockwork and just check on check in on each other
emotionally. And finally, I want to turn you
on to this free resource. This is a prepare enrich
workbook, which I go through with couples.
You can go to presence dot city slash workbook.
So just our website slash workbook free PDF download.
What this is, it's a series of exercises you can run by
yourself with your spouse and you can just work on very
practical tools for getting better at marriage because
marriage is a skill, right? Marriage is a skill and we all
have to get better at it. You guys have been amazing and I
know this sermons a little bit long but I want to close by
sharing with you. I kept praying this week.
God just give me a word for the people on Sunday.
What is your word like? What do you want them to hear?
And the thing that just kept coming up over and over and what
I believe God kind of maybe maybe whispered at me to, to
give to you today because I believe God is just basically
saying this. Tell him to try again.
There may be people in here who
you've, you have forgiven your spouse and you've forgiven them
over and over and over again and you're not sure you can forgive
even one more time here today. Maybe the Lord is just saying to
you, try it again. There may be some of you who are
like, I've tried building connection, I've tried building
intimacy with my spouse, we've tried reconnecting and it just
seems like it's going the opposite direction.
And I wonder for some of you today, the Lord is just saying
try it again. We've tried to figure out our
relationship dynamics, our roles, our household order.
We've tried doing that before. It just leads to failure.
It just leads to frustration. So we don't even talk about it
anymore. And maybe the Lord's inviting
you and he's just saying try again, try again, forgive, show
grace, work on it, practice the skill, go on a date night,
whatever it is, try again. Because marriage isn't
ultimately about you. Marriage is a signpost pointing
to Christ and the church. This entire passage we just read
is not about wives and husbands, it's about Jesus, It's about
Jesus. We must learn, each of us, to
look through our spouse in order to see Christ.
We have to learn to look through our spouses failures, their
inadequacies, their imperfections, and their sins
and instead see Jesus. We have to see Jesus's
forgiveness and the forgiveness that he's given you and see
Jesus's forgiveness for them. We have to be able to have a
vision for who God is creating them to be.
So finally, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves
himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
The battle of the sexes may be raging on out in our culture.
Out there, there may be trad wives and manosphere in all
sorts of confusion about dominance and who's right, who's
on top, who's on the bottom, and may be raging on out in our
culture. But in here, in God's holy
Church, we will submit to one another out of reverence for
Christ. Amen.