Tonight, let us turn in God's Word to Ephesians chapter 5. For those who are visiting with us this evening, we extend a special welcome to you. and uh... during our evening services we are looking at paul's letter to the ephesian christians we are up to chapter five and tonight we have a uh... sermon on wives i have permission from my wife to preach this well really that's why i've been so nervous today it's been about this uh... this passage. We're going to start reading at verse 18. Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery. Remember that was the same word that was used for the prodigal son when he went out to live riotously. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to that kind of life. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to 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. We're talking tonight about spirit-filled wives. And then, you know, we begin to think about that and we think what a wonderful thing it is to be spirit-filled. How joyful, how heavenly, what ecstasy, what pure heavenly joy to be a spirit-filled person. Not really. I mean to say it is not all that heavenly. To be spirit-filled is very earthly and sometimes it is very painful because you see when one is spirit-filled he is directed and influenced in all of his living by the Spirit. And in order to be influenced and directed by the Holy Spirit in all of your living, you have to be in touch with the Holy Spirit. And you get in touch with the Holy Spirit more and more as you get more and more into His Word. And you get more and more into prayer. And you get more and more into obedience to that Word. And then you begin to find that the Spirit-filled life is sometimes very, very painful. Because there are some attitudes that we have that we have to get rid of. It may mean that we have to change our lifestyle. It may mean that we have to change our friends. It may mean that we have to get rid of some bitterness that we have been just holding in for many, many years. It means to forgive one another. It means to turn the cheek. It means to submit to one another. of considering the other better than self. That's all what it means to be spirit-filled, and many other things. Now that's what it means in general. And that was the first thing that I wanted to mention about spirit-filled wives. I had that a little wrong in the outline. But in general, that's what it means to be to be in touch with the Word of God, to let the Word of the Spirit influence us and direct us in every area of life. And then if you want to know what that means in particular to a wife, then the Apostle Paul says this, it means for you, especially as a wife, it means in verse 22 that you are to be submissive to your husband. Now that's amazing when you think about that, that Paul, out of all the things that he could say to you wives, about being good homemakers and, you know, taking hot dishes to the pastor, and about being friends with your husband, and about being good mothers, and all of those things that the Apostle Paul picks on that one. And then that either tells us that that is the one that is most apt to aggravate us, or most apt to be the most difficult for us as a wife to fulfill, or Paul chooses that because it is the most characteristic of your life, of your relationship to your husband. In any case, for whatever reason that Paul, out of all of those things that he could have chosen, chooses this one thing, for whatever reason he does that, it is obvious that submission to husband is something that characterizes a spirit-filled walk with a spirit-filled wife. I want to look at that verse a little more and some other Bible passages tonight to look at the basis for that statement that I've just made, that submission to husband characterizes, chiefly characterizes the spirit-filled wife. I want to look at the basis for that because that's not automatically accepted just because we happen to read that here tonight. It is not infrequent that a pastor is asked to perform the ceremony of a young couple and they say, Pastor, would it be all right if we wrote our own vows? And we say, sure, that's fine. And then many times when those vows come back, we find that they are nice vows, but somehow or other that they have missed that part in the wife's vow particularly where it talks about loving and obeying. Well, it will have loving, but the obeying part somehow is missing. But now that's not only true of young couples. You sometimes find that true also of older ministers and liturgists. For example, when the new Psalter hymnal was coming out, the new marriage form in there almost, the Psalter almost came with that marriage form having the identical vows between husband and wife, one for the other. Somehow or other, these liturgists thought that it wasn't really characteristic of a spirit-filled wife to be submissive to the husband. And then you say, now how in the world could you ignore that? How could you somehow miss that? Because, you know, it's as plain as the nose on your face when you look at this. But you see, it is easy to dismiss it, as it is easy to dismiss so many other things in Scripture if you want to, by simply beginning by saying, well, you know, this is a cultural thing that Paul was talking about. Paul was affected by his culture. He was writing to people in history, and so he He adapts all things to all people. And so he, he writes in that context and the Jewish people didn't think too much about the woman. And so Paul to kind of carries that with him. But, you know, that's a very dangerous thing to, uh, to begin to say about a Bible text, because in the first place it begins to, it begins to challenge. the inspiration of scripture, because after all, if you begin to say, well, Paul is cultural about this, that is a situation thing, then you say, well, does that also apply? Does that apply, for example, to blood atonement? He comes out of a Jewish background with substitutionary atonement, and all the blood that flowed for that, maybe that too is cultural. Furthermore, when you begin to look at that, it becomes very dangerous if you start talking about this being cultural, because after all, those who criticize Paul, who say, look, Paul is a man of his age, they are speaking from a cultural perspective. Today, when we look at Paul and we say, hey, he's awful chauvinistic, from what perspective are we speaking? And then I would submit to you that we speak from a culture that is humanistic and hedonistic, a culture that, that flaunts authority at every level. That's the culture from which we are sitting in judgment upon the holy apostle Paul or upon the holy word of God, I should say. And thirdly, if submission is no longer valid for wives, then what about children? Because that comes next. Supposing a junior came to you and said, hey, Pops. No, John. You know, Paul was writing out of his peculiar context. He didn't, you know, when kids were there, they were chattel. We're different today. We've got education. We live in a free society. Now we're going to talk about the allowance that you give. I don't think we would be too impressed by that argument, do we? Would we? So we have to be very careful when we begin to modify and challenge statements in scripture. Now tonight I may be just a little bit feisty. and maybe some of it may be a little argumentative but you know somehow or other we have to deal with this because these are things that people are saying today. These are arguments that you hear. This is the culture that your children are growing up in and somehow or other you have to give them guidance both by word and by teaching and by example what it means to be a spirit-filled husband or wife. And so then we begin to look at what role the scripture gives to the spirit-filled woman, or the spirit-filled wife, I should say, because this is not talking about women in general. And then we look at Ephesians chapter 5, and the first thing that I want you to notice as we look at this passage is how closely, verse 22, about the spirit-filled wife, about the submissive wife, how close that is to verse 18. Now, when we used to have the American Standard versions in our churches, it was much clearer. But when we start reading the New International Version, and I looked at the New King James, and it is quite similar to what we have in our hands tonight, it seems when we start getting to verse 18 that Paul is giving us a lot of different commands. He talks about, verse 18, about being filled with the Spirit and about not getting drunk and about speaking to one another, about speaking to one another and about giving thanks and about submitting to one another and then wives submitting to husbands and on and on you go. And then you begin to think that all of these things are somehow just unrelated. I mean, they're just kind of one rule after the other or one suggestion after the other. But that is not so. They are all related to each other and they all come out of that verse 18. They all come out, as I said last week, out of that, out of the main, the main command, the main injunction, be filled with the spirit. That's the main injunction. And all these other things are subordinate to that. The main command in that section, in this section that we are dealing with is keep being filled with the Spirit! Exclamation point. And then he goes on with all the subordinate things as evidences of what it means to be filled with the spirit, keep being filled with the spirit speaking. That's the way it ought to be translated, speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns, singing to one another, giving thanks in your heart, submitting to one another. But then he doesn't stop there with that submitting to one another. And it's a good thing I said that he didn't because otherwise our children might come up to us one day and say, hey, dad or mom, we have to submit to one another, so when are you going to submit to me? But Paul doesn't stop by with just that general statement of submitting to one another. Rather, Paul begins to elaborate on what that spirit-filled submission is, about how it applies to a spirit-filled wife, and how it applies to a spirit-filled child in chapter 6 verse 1 and how it applies to a spirit-filled slave chapter 6 verse 5. As a matter of fact verse 22 the one regarding wives is so closely tied to verse 21 that you should put brackets around the word submit because it's not even there. It's not even there. It reads like this. And like I said, your American standard version has it correct. It says submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ wives to your husbands. So now we, in our Bibles put a new, a new section here. We, we split these verses by about a half inch or so. But that isn't the way Paul wrote it. He's just submitting to one another, wives to your husbands. So that's why I say what characterizes a spirit-filled wife is that she is submissive to her husband. And then you begin to see why this is so resented. Because these are things of the spirit. Don't expect your neighbor, your ungodly neighbor to understand this and to affirm that because these are spiritual things of spiritual people, and they are discerned only by those who are walking in the spirit. As true and proper and good and right. The world will never understand it because the world by nature is hostile to God and to its neighbors. the closest neighbor you have, ladies, is your husband. So the first thing you have to notice is how close that relationship is. The second thing, as we examine Ephesians 5, is that we have to remember to keep the main thing the main thing. Some have tried to confuse the issue by going to that next phrase and the next verse, verse 23, for the husband is head And then they began to say, now what we really have to do is understand what head means. But that's almost irrelevant at this point. I mean to say it almost sounds like the rich young ruler in Luke 10 who comes to Jesus and says to Jesus, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus says, well, what does the command say? And the man says, well, the command says, love God above all and your neighbor as yourself. And he says, well, Jesus says, well, do that. And he says, but who exactly is my neighbor? Now that's kind of what's happening here. We are ignoring verse 22 and we quickly go to 23 and we say, now we've really got to find out what headship is all about. And then, you know, we find people that say, well, headship really means source or origin. And then they will go to some very high-sounding dictionaries and lexicons and say, now look, out of all the meanings of head, you find that it means source or you find that it means origin so many times and hardly ever, if ever, Does it ever mean authority? You say, my oh my, I must have missed that all these years. And then you begin to look at that lexicon and that dictionary and you find out that it is an excellent lexicon or dictionary dealing with classical Greek 600 years before Paul. You don't have to go 600 years back to know what Paul means by head. All you have to do is look in Ephesians to find out what Paul means when he uses head. Now, sometimes we use head in terms of source. We talk about the headwaters of the Mississippi, for example. But I call your attention to Ephesians 1, verse 22. You don't have to go to Plato. I just call your attentions to Ephesians and to the apostle Paul, how he uses the common Greek in his day. And what he understands the word head, at least in Ephesians one verse 22, he says, and God placed all things under Jesus feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church. Now that ought to be plain enough. Furthermore, it talks three times in this text that we are looking at about submission. So you don't have to understand what Head talks about. Submission is plain enough. And I'm always very suspicious, and I think you ought to be suspicious, when you find a major text, a major thought, a major teaching of scripture that you have to go to some, excuse me, professors, to some Greek expert to understand what it means. That's what the cults do. That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses do when they come to your door and they talk about John 1, and they say, well, really, you've got to know the Greek. And in the Greek, it really says this. My friends, it is plain we are to read the scripture and most all of these teachings of scripture where we talk about the major thoughts, the major text, they are clear to the simple child of God. And when you begin to read this text, there is no doubt about the meaning of submission. And what I say then is keep the main thing the main thing. Don't get off. on some kind of tangent and wonder what Liddell and Scott say about the word head in Greek or what that lectionary says. Let the main thing remain the main thing and Paul is talking about submission and there is no doubt ever about the meaning of that word. It's a military word and it has to do with marching to the orders of or keeping in step with. And that's what Paul is talking about here. And then you say, I mean, so then you can say, and that theme is not just unique to Philippians 5, but that theme is also found throughout the scripture. For example, you can go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 verse 16, and there, of course, that's the famous passage of the fall and of the curse and of the promise of the Christ child. And you look at verse 16, and it says there, I will greatly increase your God is talking to the woman. I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing with pain. You will give birth to children and your desire will be for your husband. And he will rule over you. Now, you know, we could ask what it means that your desire is to your husband. And I'm not sure what that means. and I'm sure some expert some good theologian could tell us what that means but you don't have to be told what it means when it says and he will rule over you you don't need to know the first you know what that means and you see that's not cultural I mean to say that's the way God made it in the beginning And that's the way it has been all through history that there has been an order in society, there has been an order in the family, and that is the order. The man is the head, the wife is submissive. And then it was interesting in my study of this that I found a quotation from John Stott who quotes Margaret Mead. Now, anybody who has gone to school and taken any anthropology, Margaret Mead doesn't have to be introduced. Her credentials are there. And Margaret Mead says this, all the claims so glibly made about societies ruled by women are nonsense. We have no reason to believe that they ever existed. So that Genesis 3.16 is something that has followed the history of mankind, pagan and Christian, all through the centuries. And then people do some strange things with that too. They say, well, this subordinate role of the woman that is shown here isn't part of the curse, but what that is is really a prediction of God of what would happen Now, how can you say that? All you have to do is read for yourself these verses and you see that these aren't predictions. First, God comes with a curse on the serpent. Next, God comes with judgment upon the woman. And next, God comes with judgment upon the man. I mean, it's not a prediction. This is part of God's judgment over sin. So then in order to get out of that, then they say, yes, but you know, Jesus has taken away the curse. Praise God, the curse is gone. Praise God, the curse is gone. But is that what the curse, is that gone? Is there no pain in childbearing anymore, ladies? Are there no more weeds and thorns and thistles, men? Do you no longer earn your living with the sweat of your brow? Christ bore the curse of hell, but the consequences of sin are still with us. And by God's grace, the misuse of this order in society, by God's grace, has been taken out of the Christian home. But the order is still there. And we still struggle with the results of the curse. And you can even go before the curse, if you wish, as Paul did, for example, in 1 Timothy 2, when he talks about the creation order. He says that the man was created first, and then the woman. Adam was created first. It was his responsibility to care for the garden, to name the animals. As a matter of fact, naming talks about authority. Adam had authority over creation. He had to name the animals, animals being named, talk about Adam being over them, his authority over them, to call them what he saw them to be. And now God brings woman to man, to Adam, and he names her, an implication of the order of creation. and she is his helpmeet, not the other way around. And when Eve sinned, she turned that whole business upside down. Instead of being a helpmeet and conferring with her husband, she took the role of leadership and Adam in sin followed that aberration. So you see, beginning all the way before the fall and all the way to Ephesians chapter 5, the theme is the same. That is the order that God put in society. Now, if you are convinced of that, I hope you are, then I would like to make a few comments on the nature of this submission. We are so sensitive about that today. Because, you know, somehow or other, we think that it infers a superior versus an inferior person. And I challenge that. It has nothing to do with that. When Adam and Eve were created, they were both created perfectly. They were different, but perfectly. And to talk about submission as an indication of inferiority, I hope to you is nonsense because I submit to my elders. At least I hope I do. I'm supposed to. Does that make me inferior to them? I hope not. When you join a firm and you become a, you submit to the, to the rules and the regulations of the head of the department, the head of the department, that doesn't make you inferior, does it? When you join the army, when you were in the army, some of you, you listen to the corporal and when you were a corporal you listen to the sergeant when you were a sergeant you listen to the second lieutenant when you were a second lieutenant you listen to the first lieutenant and the captain and on the way up it didn't make you less less of a person didn't make you inferior as a matter of fact we usually felt the privates were most superior and when a woman in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ willingly unites herself in a Christian marriage and submits to her husband that does not make her inferior to him. She has willfully done it. She has willingly done it. She could have remained single. She could have done what she wanted, but she freely enters into that relationship and freely accepts the order that God has given. But that does not make her inferior. And that doesn't say anything about ability or wisdom either because we know that there are some husbands, maybe many husbands, who are blessed with wives who are far smarter and wiser and more gifted than they. So it says nothing about that either. As a matter of fact, Those women were so wise and so gifted you cannot fault them for the marriage they entered into. So it doesn't say anything about inferiority or superiority. It only talks about God's arrangement for an orderly society so you don't have to battle it out on your honeymoon. The second thing I want to say is it allows great freedom in a marriage relationship. We don't have to think that a submissive wife has to have a passive role in a marriage. All one has to do is look at Proverbs 31 and you'll be impressed with what you see there. The woman in Proverbs 31, you know, the ideal wife, and I hope none of you wives ever try to match that woman, but She's one who managed her household and she stretched dollars and she provided for hard times and she comforted her children and she provided for the poor and she opened her mouth with wisdom and she dabbled in real estate and she was so successful that her husband was elected to the council, city council. A submissive wife is still the help meet the one that is suitably created, suitable in terms of emotions to fill what that man lacks and to have the wisdom that he lacks and the understanding and the insight that he lacks. That's why she's called a help meet because she's ideally suited to be his right-hand person, if you will. She feels what he lacks. And normally, the decisions, you know, we talk so much about this that we think that it is a matter of great anxiety and warfare within Christian homes. But normally, 99 and nine-tenths of all the decisions are made mutually anyhow. And the ones that aren't made mutually, the wife makes them. Isn't that true? Most of the decisions in the house probably are made by the wives. But sometimes when agreement cannot be reached, it is in that situation that the husband has to take the responsibility. It is his to take. And if his choice proves wrong, which it many times does, the wise woman will not rub his nose in it. will not blab about it to the neighbors about what a moron she married, nor bad mouth him to the children, saying we could have afforded that if dad hadn't done that. But she will honor him and encourage him and affirm his headship and even probably find excuses why he chose the thing that he did. A wise woman like that will have a husband who is never afraid to take her advice and to seek her wisdom. But if you are in an adversarial position, if you say, I told you so, you always want to go your own way, if you begin that way, then you will exclude that kind of working, loving, conciliatory arrangement that most spirit-filled wives and husbands enjoy. And the third thing I want to talk about is that submission has its limits. Submission has its limits. Now you might read this passage and say, it says here, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. And therefore you must obey your husband as if he is God himself. And there are some that teach that. There are some Christians that teach that. that talk about a line of authority that runs from God to the husband to the wife and to them to the children. And that the wife is to listen and to obey her husband as if he were God and he is supposed to obey God. But that is not what this text says or means. Submission is never a blank check. We have only one God. And man and woman are both responsible to him. And you say here, but it says, as unto the Lord. Martin Lloyd-Jones has reminded me of something many times in his writing, and that is we must not make the word of God ridiculous. We must not make the Word of God ridiculous. You must take it always. You must always let Scripture interpret Scripture. We mustn't make the Apostle Paul irrational that one day he says this and the next day he says that. Last week, Sunday morning, I said, there is nothing wrong with evil, I think, in the first service. Well, you people didn't take that as being infallibly spoken, I hope. You knew I meant there was nothing wrong, nothing evil about work. Well, Paul, we mustn't make this ridiculous. Paul is not saying that the husband is God to the wife. That's not what he is saying. All through the scripture, we are reminded that there is only one God and that we must submit to him. And for example, in Romans 13, it talks the same way that we are to submit to the authorities because the authorities are ruling for God. But the Apostle Peter and John tell us what that means because when they contradicted God's orders, when the authority of the state which was ruling in God's behalf, when it contradicted God's orders, then John and Peter said, we must obey God rather than man. And so that is not what it means here. There's only one God. We are called to obey Him whether we are in a marriage relationship or relationship to our elders or in a relationship to our parents or in a relationship to the government. A wife may not submit to a husband in things that are contrary to God's Word. When it speaks here, as unto the Lord, it is saying we must submit to our husbands because because Christ commanded it. And it is not because they are such godly necessary, such godly men or such wise men, but we are submitting unto them because God commands it. That's how we are doing it, with that kind of devotion and that kind of commitment. And then this evening, let me just finish with one more thing, and that is that I want to talk just a moment about the joy of a spirit-filled wife's walk. Sometimes we have to put these things in perspective, I think. I am fortunate enough or unfortunate enough, whichever way you might think, to spend, you know, all my waking days at home. So I get to see quite a bit of the family and quite a bit of what wives put up with. And I suppose if I wasn't such an ideal husband, my wife couldn't handle it. But I think we've got to put it in perspective as wives. You know, with all the negative publicity about submission, And with all the attempts to eradicate differences between man and woman, between wife and husband, and with the emphasis today on this wonder woman who, you know, who goes to college and who becomes president or vice president of a company and who stays lean and mean on the golf course or tennis court and who has a wonderful relationship with her husband and who entertains and who has three children and he is a super mom. There is no such person. There is no such person. When you wives come into this church and you feel haggard and worn and you look at somebody across the aisle and you say, man, I must be a failure because I can't handle it anymore. There are no super moms. They all have the same kind of kids and the same kind of irritations. So keep that in perspective. When did you ever see the super mom on television working? She's always off. She never works. There is no such a woman. So put it in perspective. So you've got to choose. You've got to make some hard choices, young women. You've got to choose whether you want a career or you've got to choose whether you want to be a wife and a mother, because those two things go together, providing the Lord blesses you with children, but wives and mothers go together. But you have to make that choice. I don't think that you can do both. You maybe have a career after the children are raised, If you decide to have a family, that is your full-time occupation. And there are some, there are, you know, maybe one or two in a city like this who can do lots of things, but most women have all they can do to take care of their family. And if you can possibly not work part-time or whatever, try not to. I know sometimes that's impossible. But do your best not to because motherhood is a full-time job. And then when you are that mother, which, you know, is also a very glamorous thing, then you've got to remember that you chose that. You've got to remember that when your elbows are up to here in diapers and when the kids are screaming and you want to get in the playpen and let them have the rest of the house, you've got to remember that you chose that and you've got to get a bigger perspective on it because it is aggravating. Someone once said, when I see the kids at night sleeping, I could eat them and in the morning, I wish I had. But you've got to get the big perspective. These are God's children, those little rascals. They are God's children. And you, if at all possible, not the neighborhood care center, but you, if at all possible, are called and privileged to train them in the fear of the Lord. That's not the Christian school's responsibility. It's not the church's responsibility. It's not their privilege. It is yours, first of all. So make every effort to do that. You see, what you are doing with that child, as tedious sometimes as it is, is something that will last forever, even into eternity. I quoted from Proverbs chapter 31, but you know how that, that chapter begins. It says, these are the sayings of King Lemuel in Oracle, his mother taught him. Those are the things that you are called as a wife and a mother to be privileged, to do, to train that child in the fear of the Lord. There's no greater calling. Even the calling of teaching, you know, full-time teaching is a marvelous calling, tremendous opportunities, and having great impact, but not as great an impact as the mother or the father, I should say, too. And then when you are that deep in diapers and pulling your hair out and your husband wondering why dinner isn't ready when he gets home, You've got to remember that there comes a day when the kids grow up and that they're in school or that they even take naps and that there is time to sit and to have personal devotions and to reflect on the things of God's kingdom and to prepare yourself to be a better mother but also to be a minister in the neighborhood and in the church Because, you know, the ministry of the church and of the Christian school, PTA, Mother's Club,