The Christian Wife (Ephesians 5:21-24)

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Well, you meet me in the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 5. We continue our series through Ephesians. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians chapter 5. And this morning we'll be looking at verses 21 down through 24. Ephesians chapter 5, verses 21 through 24. Ephesians chapter 5. Beginning at verse 21.

Hear now God's Word. Submit to one another in the fear of God. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. The grass withers and the flower fades, but brothers and sisters, the Word of our God endures forever.

I gotta tell you, I feel like I'm a rookie minor league pitcher on his debut trying to tell the major leaguer veteran how to throw a fastball. Some of you have been married for decades upon decades upon decades and now a whippersnapper is going to get up here for the next couple of weeks and talk to you about marriage and children. But thank the Lord. that you might be able to look past sinful, silly, young, Timothy-like person, not despise my youth, but have reverence for the Lord and His Word.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray that we might be able to do that this morning. Lord, we pray that Your Word would be opened up this morning. We pray, Father, that You would speak. We pray that we would look into Your Word and that we would see what Your will for our lives would be. In Jesus name, Amen.

Sermon

Well, I was talking to my wife this week, and as I was trying to think about how a woman thinks, which guys, I'm telling you, that might be a little bit tough, and you might not like it if you ask the question. I asked Olivia, I said, Olivia, what's the hardest thing about being my wife and having to submit to me? And she said, your brain. The submission is hard. What we're going to talk about this morning, the relationship between a wife and her husband, this is something hard. This is something that the world does not like. This is counter-cultural. This is against what the mores of American idealism is.

And as we get into this text, we're going to see that God has a radical way in which He wants the family to operate. But when the family looks towards God's Word for its pattern in life, We see the wisdom of Christ played out and we see families redeemed. So first, we need to see that there is a structure of the universe. We also need to see that there is a structure of the church. And then we need to see that there is a structure of marriage. And the first thing that we need to address here, first of all, is not something that's necessarily in our text today, but it was in our text last week, was the person who says that they are wise.

But in all reality, they reject God and the Proverbs say that the fool says in his heart, there is no God. But as Christians who are called to walk in wisdom, we recognize that God has created everything. We turn to the book of Genesis and we see that it is God who made the light and it is God who made the darkness. We look to the book of Genesis and we see that the ground upon which we walk was made by the Lord. We look to the book of Genesis and we realize when we stare up into the skies and we see the light of Saturn and of Mercury, that God put those planets there. When we look at the mighty mountains that come up out of the ground, We realize that it was God who rose up the mountains. When we see the deer who leap through the field, we realize that it's God who made the living creatures. And when you see the people next to you, you realize that God made each one of us in his image.

But see, that's not the way our culture thinks about things. That's not the way in which our world likes to view themselves, especially in the American Western context. I am an autonomous individual. In American idealism it is, I am an autonomous individual. I am my own master and maker of my destiny. No one rules over me.

But the problem is that that smacks. in the face of Scripture. See, there's a structure to the universe. There's a God who made everything, and whether people like it or not, they are subject to His authority. This is why we still die. We might think that, oh, I'm not subject to anyone's authority. Well, tell me when you're not going to end up in a grave or an urn. You're still under authority. There's still a God of the universe who is governing all things for His own glory.

So when we come to this passage, we need to recognize that we bring, we carry along with us our own cultural, intellectual baggage. We come with our own presuppositions, we come with our own dislike of these passages when it talks about things like submitting to one another. I'm not going to submit to no one. I'm going to pick myself up by the bootstrap and I'm going to make my own way. That's the American ideal.

But it sure causes a whole lot of wreck in relationships. And so the first thing we need to recognize before we get any further is we need to recognize that there is a supreme authority and it's God. And God is the one who married, created marriage in that Garden of Eden. And it's God who established what the pattern was supposed to be. And so the question is, are we going to follow after his pattern, or are we going to try to fight against it and do whatever we want to do? Will we walk in wisdom, or will we walk as unwise?

Well, so first we need to recognize that there's a structure to the universe, but there's also a structure to the church here. And you might think, this is kind of a weird place to start, Brian. Why are you starting here? Just keep tracking with me, okay?

There is a structure to the church. Look with me at verse 23. Because the man is the head of the woman, even as Christ is the head of the church, He is the Savior of the body. It is Christ who is the head of His church. Husbands, we're going to get to your wives in a second. Wives, we're going to talk about you in a second. But before we look at that, we need to make sure that we remember where we came from in Ephesians chapter 1, 2, and 3.

That it was God who redeemed us. It is God who saved us by His grace. For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It's not your own works, but it is God's loving you. And it is Jesus Christ dying for you. And that is what God has done for the church. And out of that love for the church, we submit to Christ. Let me ask you, what happens when the church stops listening to Jesus?

That's a live question. In this community, when I tell someone I'm the minister at Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church, in their minds, Presbyterian rings out as, oh no, does he actually believe the Bible? It's a sad state that we live in, in our country, when there are people who masquerade as ministers and preachers of God's Word, but do not actually submit themselves to the Word of Christ. What happens? What happens?

Unfaithfulness happens in the church. Apostasy happens in the church. People get together and they're having all sorts of fun. The church might even be growing. All the while, people's souls are withering away because we have not submitted ourselves to Jesus Christ as the head of the church.

It's Jesus who makes the rules for his church. It's Jesus who tells us how we worship. It's Jesus who tells us how we organize. It's Jesus who tells us what we believe. It's Jesus who leads us. It's Jesus who loves us and we lovingly submit to Him because He has laid down His life for us. Jesus demonstrated His own love for us on that cross. When we look at Jesus Christ, By the power of the Holy Spirit, we get to come and we get to submit to Him, not out of compulsion, but out of a newness of heart.

First Point

So first we must realize that there is a structure to the universe that is God who is our Master and our Maker and we need to submit to Him. We need to recognize that there is a structure in the Church and that Jesus Christ is the head of His Church and we submit to Jesus because He is the Savior of His body, the Church.

But then, man, Paul does something weird. Therefore, wives, submit to your husbands. What? We're going to find out more next week. And so, guys, we really have a whole lot to do next week. We could probably spend six weeks on the next couple of verses. I'm not going to do that. But what does it say?

Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. Verse 21 said, submitting to one another out of reverence to the Lord. When we recognize God's structure in the universe, when we recognize how God made the family, when we see that Jesus is the head of the church, that Jesus is the husband of His church, and we are His bride, we submit to Jesus. That is the model, that is the pattern. We carry that into the home. And now wives submit lovingly to their husbands.

But we have a whole bunch to get here, nine different sub-points of this, that I hope that by the time you walk out of here, I pray that your heart might not feel that you are burdened down by this, but that you might see the heart of Jesus Christ. and that you might go home refreshed in your soul and ready to live a wise and redeemed life in the light of Christ. We need to ask ourselves, what is the heart of submission? The heart of submission is humility. The heart of submission is humility.

And that is exactly what we find in the book of Philippians. Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2, Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus.

What did Christ do? Though Christ, being in the form of God, did not consider robbery to be equal with God, he made himself of what? Of no reputation. Taking the form of a bondservant. and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became, what? Obedient, submissive, even to the point of death, even the death of the cross. See, submission is not this bad thing. Submission is what the Son does to the Father. Submission is what Jesus did in the Garden.

Even though He was so overwhelmed within His humanity with the weight of the cross, with what was going to happen that night, what did Jesus Christ say to His Father as He was sweating drops of blood? Not my will be done, but Yours. as he submitted to the will of his father because he loved his bride that much.

Will we have that type of heart? Will we have that type of mind that we would consider others better than ourselves? This is not just a virtue for wise, but this is a Christian virtue. And God is extolling women. You get to show this virtue of Jesus Christ in your marriage. And Jesus is indeed that model of humility. Jesus is that model of humility. Jesus himself says it when he says, I did not come to be served, but to serve. Do you remember again on that last night, Jesus was literally just about to go to his trial and execution. And in that moment, When he's there for one last meal with the people he loves, what does he do? He gets down and he washes his beloved's feet. He lowers himself, he gets humble, and he washes his loved one's feet.

Why? Because he loves them and he cares for them, and it's not somehow degrading for him to humble himself, but he finds a joy to serve those who are around him. This is the model that Christian women, you get to show in your family, that you get to show how large your heart is for the love of Jesus Christ and how large your care is for your family, that you get to do the hard thing. And if you think for a second it ain't hard, well, if you're married, you know it's hard. But it's costly love. It's costly humility. What does submission mean? Does it mean subjugation? No. No, biblical submission does not look like subjugation. But biblical submission looks like loving humility.

It looks like restoring what was broken in the garden. Do you remember what happened in Genesis chapter 3? Look at me back there for a second. When Adam and Eve transgressed the Lord's commands and there's an immediate break in the family. Genesis chapter 3, the woman eats of the fruit.

She gives it to her husband. They immediately start fighting with each other. He immediately blames her. She blamed the servants of the Lord. God said to the serpent, and he speaks curses to the serpent. But then in verse 16, what does he say? I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. This is part of the curse. The curse is this ruling, this heavy handedness of the husband upon the women, and the women having to be subjugated to the husband in a harsh way. But that's not the way it originally was, was it? No, when God first made Adam and Eve, what did Adam say? This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I shall call her Eve, for she came out of me." And God made her to be a helpmate for Adam.

Women, you are part, God's desire for you in the marriage is that you might live out your redeemed role of being your spouse's helper. Of being that thing that was not low, but that thing which was there before sin. That you were there as a supporter, as an encourager, as a helper to your husband.

We don't look back at Genesis chapter 2 when God said that Eve was a helper and go, pfft, chauvinist God. No. No, we see that there's a beautiful harmony between the husband and wife. We get to partake in this restoration of what was broken. But in a sinful world, there is the reality.

That people will take these words in Ephesians, wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, and they will use it as a beating stick rather than as a loving instruction. There have been countless men who treat this as a justification to use their wives as a doormat.

That's not what this is for. Nor is this passage given because somehow you are ontologically in your worth as a being less valuable than your husband. That's not what this is saying whatsoever. Jesus Christ paid the same blood for you as He paid for your husband. It is your value as Imago Dei, as made in the image of God, that cannot be pushed down by this commandment. But this is the structure for the family.

But there are difficulties in submission. Oh, there are difficulties in submission. What if my husband's not a Christian? What if you're a Christian woman and you weren't a Christian, you got married and then you become a Christian and now you have a non-Christian husband and do I still need to submit to my husband? Well, yes. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to the limits of how far that goes in a moment.

I remember R.C. Sproul one time was saying that he had a Christian woman come up to him and and she said, you know, R.C., I have this unbelieving husband and and he he just, you know, he doesn't come to church and he doesn't treat me the way he doesn't make me sin.

But he just he doesn't love me like a Christian husband is supposed to. I just want to leave him. And he says she says, is that OK? And he says, well, no. No, even if your unbelieving husband wants to stay with you, the unbelieving wife sanctifies the unbelieving husband. But you're not allowed to leave him, and she got really upset with him, and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You asked me what the Bible said about this, not what I would tell you humanly speaking. If it was my wisdom, I would have said you should have never married him in the first place. Don't be unequally yoked with a non-believer, but yet, But yet, if you are married, you have to submit, and you get to show that love of Jesus Christ to him. There's difficulties, though, with wives who are married to Christian husbands. Sorry, I just looked at my wife. Yeah, there's a lot of difficulties being married to a Christian husband.

Why? Because we're sinners. I always wonder this, you know, when I run into people who are perfectionist theology people who say, oh, I no longer willfully sin, I want to think, can I get five minutes with your spouse? Can I just ask some penetrating questions just for a few seconds? Because I have a feeling you're playing down your sin. You're playing down your proclivities for being your tendencies for being thoughtless towards your spouse. for being mean at times, for saying things out of season, for being harsh.

It's hard. God is telling you to do something hard. This is not something that you can do just because, oh, somehow God commanded it, and get some gumption and do it. No, you've got to rely on the Holy Spirit, because sometimes you're going to have to go into your prayer closet and cry out to God, Lord, that man, I don't know what's going through his brain. Lord, I don't know why I'm being treated this way.

Father, please give me the humility and strength to submit to Him. Let me show the love of Jesus Christ to this husband of mine. That is your blessing. Is it a hard blessing? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But it is the role that God gives. And this is the motivation, though, for it is verse... I lost my page. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 21 tells us what is the motivation for it, though. Submitting to one another. in the fear of God, or out of reverence to Christ. Why do you submit to your husband? Do you submit to your husband because you submit to Jesus? Do you submit to your husband just because that's what you think the traditional family structure is supposed to be?

Or do you see that it is God-ordained and that this is the pattern that Jesus has set? This is how your marriage will flourish. This is how your children will flourish. This is how your family will have strength. This is how you will be a testimony, a light upon the hill to your neighbors around you. The motivation is out of reverence to Christ. There are limits. There are clear limits here to submission. The first one is right in our text, verse 22.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. To your own husbands. The Greek is absolutely out of its way clear that Paul is saying, you don't have to listen to every John or every Bob or every Mark who might come into your life. No, you need to listen to your husband. I just realized I've mentioned three names in the church. None of you guys I'm saying this about. But you don't need to listen to every single man who happens to be around you. No, it's specifically the relationship between wives and husbands that are put together here. And it goes out of its way even more and says, obey or be submissive to your own husband.

I don't have a right to walk into Joe and Kathy's house and tell Kathy how she needs to make dinner. I don't have a right to go into Jay and Terry's house and tell Terry, hey, hold on, you're not keeping house the right way. You need to do that. No, you don't. I don't have that type of authority. You know, you don't have that type of authority in someone else's house.

You are to be submission, submissive to your own husband. That's a first thing here. But submissive in what? Submissive in what? That's a big question. And that question is actually opened up in verse 24. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything. I have to loosen up the tie there a little bit. Because there's a difficulty here.

Our kids like watching the Lego movie. And in the Lego movie, the evil villain has something called a micromanager bot. And the micromanager wants to make every single little thing right. And then when it's all right, it shoots it with super glue to make sure it stays that way.

There's a temptation here for husbands that we might think, like, oh, hold on, I can be a micromanager, she has to submit in everything. Well, yeah, if you want to rule like a dictator and tyrant, we'll get to husbands next week, don't worry, we got stuff for you. But this does mean that every sphere of life, right, this is every sphere in life. This means seeking to live in harmony with your husband.

And again, husband, we're going to get to how we do this in a loving way next week, but this is a broad brush that Paul is giving us. This is talking about simple things like how we do our hair, what you wear, how you cook clothes, how you cook meals, If your husband tells you that I really hate spaghetti with cheese on it, please don't make it with cheese on it anymore. Give him the cheese. Give him the cheese.

There's a reality here though, and that's a simple example, but this goes into big examples too. The reality is, is what we learned in the Navy. We would have a saying all the time in the Navy. There's too many chiefs in this shop and not enough Indians. If you work in a manufacturing industry, you might think there are too many managers at the store and not enough workers, or too many workers who think they're managers in this store. The reality is, in the God-ordained family structure, God gives ahead of the home. And if the head of the home makes a bad decision, that's on his head. But when there's decisions to be made, the buck stops with the head. This is one of my favorite things. I've told lots of stories about grandma and grandpa, and they've become more special to me lately.

Grandma, in her wedding vows, would not say that she would obey my grandpa. And she said, I'm not going to make a vow which I'm going to break. But I'll tell you what, I think she would have been okay with that vow. Because time and again, and I'm not holding them up as the perfect model of holiness here.

But as a pattern I saw in my life, when there were important decisions to make, they would sit down, they would work it out. But when my grandpa said, I think this is the way we should go. Grandma might not agree with it. but she trusted her husband that that was the way that they needed to go. Now, if it was a bad way, you remember when you made that mistake? No, she didn't do that too often, right?

We don't keep a record of wrongs, 1 Corinthians 13 says. But the reality is that if people are both saying, no, we got to go this way, no, we got to go that way, what does that create in the marriage? Friction and tension and fighting. If nobody's willing to give up, if nobody's willing to humble themselves, if nobody's willing to submit, The marriage is always going to face that friction, always face that tension, and it will eventually fail. But does that mean you have to obey even when your husband tells you to do something sinful?

No. No, absolutely not. Acts chapter 5, when the Apostle Paul faces that dilemma, he says that we ought to obey God rather than man. Right? His submission stops where God's command says. So why is if your husband's trying to tell you, hey, we need to go and do this, and we're going to just move out to this area because I want to go fishing every Sunday, and I want to go into debt because I want to buy all this stuff, and you find out that you're being a bad steward with your money, or he's trying to rip you away from the church, or etc., etc., and there's sinful things he's trying to get you into, you can honestly say, well, hold on here. You're part of the church, and the church submits to Jesus Christ. And that's not what God says how you're supposed to lead this family. So there is a limit on this. Right? It's all encompassing, but it's encompassing under the beautiful guidance of God's Word. So there is a limit to that, even though we submit in everything.

But again, there's blessings. There's great blessings in submission. There's blessings in showing your children what it looks like to show someone the love of Jesus Christ. There's blessings in submitting to your husbands in the longevity that comes with it, with marriage. There's blessings that come from it when you see tension that gets suppressed. There's blessings because you find yourself being conformed more and more to the image of Jesus who is your model for humility and submission. There are blessings in submission. But what is the goal? What's the goal of submission? What's the goal of this whole sermon? What's the goal of this whole family code that we're looking at?

Brothers and sisters, God has given us a whole bunch of ways to live, a whole bunch of putting off and putting on in Ephesians chapter 4 and the beginning part of Ephesians chapter 5. And now God is telling you, this is how the core unit of society, this is how the core family structure will operate.

This is how you will flourish in your marriage. This is how you will be conformed to Jesus Christ. This is how you will have opportunity to show the love of Jesus Christ to your spouse. This is how you will pass on a heritage of godliness to your children. This is how society will change. This is how our culture will be redeemed. This is how we love one another in the structure that God has made.

And when people see this and live this, Things are made right and God is glorified. We should be scared about what's happening with the American family. We should be on our knees pleading with God, because when the family erodes, when the Christian biblical family erodes, brothers and sisters, history is clear, and secular historians have said this, when the family structure erodes, So does the culture. Every civilization where the family structure erodes, the country in which they reside also quickly erodes. Because when we fight against God's structure, when we fight against the structure of the universe, even in the church, when we fight against the structure of the church, it is going to fail.

But God doesn't want your marriage to fail. God wants your marriage to grow. God wants your marriage to thrive. God wants you to walk in wisdom, not worldly wisdom. The world will give you all sorts of marriage advice. Oh boy, go check on Apple Podcasts for marriage podcasts. And the world will give you all sorts of wisdom. But indeed, it's foolishness. And what the Scriptures say here will be foolishness to them. Because the wisdom of this world is at enmity with the wisdom of God.

But brothers and sisters, in our marriages, when we submit to the model which God gives us in marriage, we bring God glory. And though it might be hard, after 40, 50, 60 years of marriage, you'll look back and you won't regret it. because your heart will be full of blessings.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you so much for telling us hard things, though they might be counter-cultural things. Father, I pray that the foolish things which I might have said might be burned away like chaff, but that the wisdom of your word might be like precious gold to us who hear. Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would apply these things in our hearts and that we would live them in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.