I invite you to turn with me as we continue our series through the fruit of the Spirit, and again focusing upon the fruit of faith or faithfulness in Galatians 5.22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. And then in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 through 24, these words, Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. People may publicly profane and blaspheme the name of God. They may openly, in a public setting, discuss their recent sexual escapades or a recent abortion, and people around them will say nothing. They will hardly bat an eye. but let the word submission be mentioned in a public context and watch the sparks fly. The idea of submission in any context, whether submission to God, submission to lawful rulers, submission to lawful elders, but especially it seems In our context, a wife's submission to her husband is despised and hated in our egalitarian society, in which the idea of submission is considered antiquated, perhaps even barbaric, but certainly not for a civilized and informed enlightened society. The biblical concept of a wife's submission to her husband is hated by many, in part because of gross ignorance as to the true meaning of submission, in part because of the abuse of authority in the home or in other contexts. but especially because of a hatred for submission to the absolute authority of the Lord God Himself. I submit to you that is the bottom line. People do not want to submit to the Lord God Himself. Dear ones, if we do not find a place of love, safety, and trust in faithfully submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ, we will grow to despise submission in every other context in which we find ourselves. In such a case, we will only see submission as threatening our independence, our freedom, our equality, our desires, our pleasures, or our dreams. In order to understand the biblical and the faithful duty of submission for us all, not just for wives, but for us all, we must begin with the loving submission of Jesus Christ to the will of His Father in His incarnation and in His own life. In Philippians chapter 2, and though we read this passage, In our New Testament scripture reading, it's not a part of the sermon. I want to go through this just very briefly for those of you here, so that you are able to see the connection here in the submission of Christ. Philippians chapter 2, beginning with verse 5 and reading through verse 8 at this point. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." You see, Jesus Christ was fulfilling, was submitting Himself in coming into this world to the decree, to the will of His Father. And once the Lord Jesus Christ was born, and as He was raised within the home of Joseph and Mary, we find that even there He had not perfect and sinless parents, contrary to perhaps the teaching of Rome about Mary and the fact that they view her as being sinless from conception. But Mary cries out to God as her Savior. Someone who is sinless, who is perfect, doesn't need a Savior. But as she cries out to the Lord after the angel Gabriel appears unto her, she cries out to God, my Savior. And yet, in the context of Luke chapter 2, Jesus had been unjustly chastened, rebuked by his parents because he was doing the work of his father. In fact, when they found him in the temple talking with the religious leaders at that time, asking questions, answering questions. He said to his parents, in effect, don't you know I must be about my father's business? And yet, the perfect and sinless Lord Jesus Christ we read in Luke 2.51, immediately after this rebuke from his parents, This unjust, unwarranted rebuke from his parents. It says, And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, notice, and was subject, subject, submissive, if you will, unto them, and was subject unto them. And we see, especially in the suffering, the full wrath of God for His elect. There in the Garden of Gethsemane, you'll recall, the Lord Jesus, at the horror of the wrath of God that He was about to bear, began to sweat forth great drops of blood that fell from his forehead. Suffering. And yet, you remember in his prayer, that prayer of submission, Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done. He says in Luke 22, verse 42. Submissive to death. submissive to death. You see, dear ones, without first understanding that our salvation from the guilt and the penalty of our sins rests upon the submission of Jesus Christ to his Father, None of us, but speaking to women at this time, women will not appreciate the fact that biblical submission is not disparaging to them. It is not treating them as inferior to their husbands. It is not trampling upon their conscience before God. Faithful submission to your husbands, dear women. is ultimately submitting to Jesus Christ as he submitted to his Father to bring about your salvation. Biblical submission in our lives is the way of life. Resistance and rebellion is the way of destruction, is the way of death. And so as we Look at our text for this Lord's Day. These particular points I would draw from the sermon today and elaborate on them. These main points. First of all, the role of a faithful wife. And we're going to go back to Genesis 2.18 to very briefly consider what is said there, the role of a faithful wife in Genesis 2.18, and then the submission, secondly, the submission of a faithful wife from Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 24. The role, first of all, of a faithful wife in Genesis 2.18 And there we read, And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him. I will make him and help meet for him. You see, God created Eve to be a help. That is, to be a helper to assist Adam in his calling under God. Eve was not created to be Adam's slave, or to the opposite extreme, to be Adam's master, or even to be Adam's rival. But Eve was created to be Adam's helper. There was no competition. with an eve to struggle with Adam for leadership in the home when she was created by God. She was endowed by God with all of the gifts necessary to be a great helper to Adam. Dear women, to be a helper is not the role of a lowly worthless slave, for God uses the exact same Hebrew word, azer, to describe His own role in coming to the aid and to the help of His people. In Psalm 70, verse 5, we read, David says, but I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God. Thou art my help, my helper, my help, and my deliverer, O Lord. Make no tearing. Likewise, we read in Psalm 124.8, our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. We despise and disparage God himself as our helper if we disparage and despise a wife as being the helper of her husband. Dear men, this may come as a shock to you, but we need help. We need help. God has created for us a helper in our wives. Thank God for the help that our wives give to us. We may be too full of pride to admit it and may think it is only our wives that really need our help. But God says in his own holy and inspired word, And that may be true that we help our wives, but God says in his word that he created our wives to be our helper, so that we may fulfill the calling that he has given to us. Therefore, let none of us believe or act as if the role of a wife within the home as helper to her husband is a meaningless and mindless role. For to wives is given the high and holy calling of managing the home under the husband and of bearing and raising children to the glory of Jesus Christ. There is neither a higher nor is there a more noble calling for a woman in all of the earth than to be a helper to her husband. In fact, I submit that the husband's role as a faithful head is no more necessary than the wife's role of a faithful helper within a blessed Christian marriage. The role of a husband and wife, I would submit to you, are equally important within a Christian marriage. For one without the other is a sure formula, a recipe for disaster. It's like asking which wing of an airplane is more important, the right wing or the left wing? Ladies, your divine calling in the home is a noble calling and one without which the marriage will suffer great damage. Although, dear wives, you are not called to lead your husband, you are nevertheless called to come alongside of your husband to help him, to encourage him, to lift him up, to give him your input on matters, to pray for him, and to seek to make your home a haven of rest and peace. Yea, even a picture here upon the earth, a picture of heaven to come. Now that's no small task, but one for which a faithful helper in the home does fervently, daily pray. For this requires, this requires the power of the Holy Spirit bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit in your life and in the life of your husband. It takes two. both a godly loving husband and a helping and submissive wife to make that home what it ought to be. Both working together, both working on those particular roles and duties and responsibilities that God gives. And rather than pointing the finger continually back and forth at one another, there is more than enough room in our own lives to be working on And so often it is when we stop pointing the finger and begin pointing the finger this way rather than that way and begin to focus upon our own lives and our own duties and responsibilities that we set the example, whether it's a husband or whether it's a wife, in what God has called us to do. And we see how God uses that in the lives of one another within the home. Dear wives, rather than envying the role of leader that God has given to your husbands, which is incidentally a violation of the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet, learn to be content. Learn to be content and even appreciate the role God has given to you as his assistant. Is the role of an assistant to the president or to the prime minister an insignificant and menial role? Of course not. Of course it's not. Nor is assistant to the leader within the home a menial, a lowly position within the home. Study to be, therefore, the best helper a husband ever had. Don't be like Eve, to whom God gave every tree in the garden, but because he withheld one tree from her, she viewed God as being unfair, unjust. She was not content. Eve was not content with what God had graciously given to her in abundance. She wanted it all. And like men or women, don't despise the calling of being the helper to your husband simply because you cannot be the head within the home. Don't be like Eve in coveting what God has not given to you. By God's grace, find that place of service and joy in being your husband's helper. Second main point, the submission of a faithful wife. And again, from Ephesians, chapter 5, verses 22 through 24. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Just as the duty of a faithful husband as head is summarized in the word love, So the duty of a faithful wife as helper is summarized in the word submit. It's interesting because I would submit to you that the Lord summarizes the duty of a husband to love because of his tendency to abuse his authority as head. But on the other hand, I submit to you that the Lord summarizes the duty of a wife in the word submit because of her inclination, natural inclination and tendency to usurp his authority, to become his rival, his competitor within the home. And so the Lord in each case has addressed our own separate weaknesses by way of these duties to love and to submit. Paul here uses a word in the Greek language which means to arrange or to place under. that is the word submit means to arrange or to place under which was used in the military to refer to those who held subordinate ranks to their superior officers. Thus the Lord through the Apostle Paul calls wives to recognize their proper role and place within the marriage as that of a subordinate officer to that of their husband as it relates to good order and lawful authority within the home. Now, these are not my words. These are rather the words of God himself as it is spoken through the Apostle Paul to us. Moreover, this is not a suggestion that God's offers to us through the Apostle Paul, it is rather a command to the wives to submit themselves to their husbands, a command to be obeyed. And one, incidentally, to be obeyed continuously inasmuch as this command is in the present tense, and in the present tense Again, the Greek present tense has the force of being continuous to characterize a particular duty. In other words, wives continuously submit yourselves unto your husbands. The specific spirit-filled duty of the wife here to her husband is stated in Ephesians 5.22, wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. Just as God calls a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church, because that is the pattern for the husband, so likewise he calls the wife to submit unto her husband following the pattern of the church's submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. A sincere and cheerful submission, I submit to you, is the work of God's Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian wife. It is the fruit of faithfulness in action, this very fruit that we are now considering from Galatians 5, verse 22. This is the fruit of faithfulness, submission. And again, by way of more general application, it's the fruit of faithfulness in the lives of us men, by way of submission to God, submission to our employers. submission to elders. So again, this is again the fruit of the Holy Spirit that God produces within our lives. No Christian wife, no Christian wife will be sinlessly perfect in her submission to her husband any more than a Christian husband will be sinlessly perfect in his love to his wife. We all fail Every one of us fails in these duties and falls short of God's holy standards, His commandments, His laws for our life. And that's why we all need the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we need Christ's righteousness. That's why we need Christ's forgiveness. That's why we need His power working and operating in our lives. Without Christ, dear ones, we can do nothing, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. So do not grow weary in well-doing, dear women. Press on. When you fail, just as when we husbands fail, There's access to the Lord Jesus Christ. We live out the gospel even in our failures by going to Christ seeking his forgiveness seeking the forgiveness of Wives of your husband husbands of our wives when we fail in these duties and responsibilities Your husbands If we want our wives to cherish the biblical concept of submission, and I pray we do, then let us lead them in love, cast our protective wing about them, honor and appreciate them for all that they do, and treat them as those who with us are made in the image of God and are heirs together of the grace of life. And as we said in a previous sermon, when our wives truly know that our authority is being used for their benefit and for their spiritual and physical well-being because we love them, our wives then will learn by God's grace to embrace submission rather than to despise it. In order to better understand this faithful duty of biblical submission that the Lord gives to wives, I'm going to divide this sermon up into a subsequent sermon, and in the remainder of this sermon I'm going to be stating, first of all, what biblical submission is not. but it is not. Then, in the next sermon, we'll consider what biblical submission is. And so, first of all, and there may be other, this is not an exhaustive list, this is a representative list. First of all, biblical submission is not servitude or slavery. The wife is distinguished, in fact, from a servant or slave. For servants and slaves are addressed later on in the book of Ephesians, in chapter 6, verses 5 through 8. They're not addressed at the time that he's addressing wives. The wife is said by the apostle Peter, in the epistle of 1 Peter, to be an heir to gather the grace of life with her husband. For that reason, husbands are severely, seriously warned that if they do not honor their wives, treat them as those who are a special treasure unto them, their prayers will not be answered. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered." I don't know about you men, but I don't want my prayers being hindered or unanswered at all. In this particular matter that we just have read about, God will hinder. God takes this matter very, very seriously. Remember, dear ones, that God did not create Eve from Adam's foot to be trampled on or to be his slave, but created her from his side to be his companion and helper. 2. Biblical submission does not imply inferiority as to nature, essence, or being. God created both man and woman in His own image. That's the more generic term for the word man, not the gender related term for man. God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. Male and female created he them in his own image. Submission on the part of a wife to her husband no more implies her essential inferiority than does Christ's submission to His Father. In 1 Corinthians 11.3 we read, But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. That is, the head of Christ as being mediator is God. Certainly there is an essential, as to within the Trinity, there is an essential equality, the same substance, equal in power and glory amongst each person of the Trinity. But as Christ is mediator, There is a submission on the part of Christ to His Father, but does not in any way imply an essential inferiority as to nature from the Father. To infer inferiority of nature from the concept of biblical submission, I submit to you, is to deny the Trinity. Is to deny the Trinity. For the Son perfectly obeys the will of the Father in all things, and yet the Son is not inferior to the Father as to nature or essence. God has bestowed upon the husband and wife different roles within the family, but they are equal in nature and equal in status as well before the Lord. Biblical submission is not the mindless act of a wife who cannot think for herself. Biblical submission does not imply stupidity or lack of intelligence in the least. Wives, in fact, may be superior to their husbands in knowledge and intellect, or in particular, gifts and graces. Again I ask, does Christ's submission to his Heavenly Father imply his intellectual inferiority? Such a thought is blasphemous. For just as the Father knows all, so does the Son know all, according to John 16.30. Although Christ grew, in knowledge and wisdom as he was a man, according to Luke 2, verse 52. He knew everything as he was God. Biblical submission does not mean that women must leave their minds behind when they become married. Their input their counsel, their advice in various areas will prove to be an important asset, a necessary asset within a good Christian marriage. It is only the proud and arrogant man that cannot receive the counsel from his wife. Remember God told Abraham, that he should listen to the counsel of his wife Sarah in casting Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp in Genesis 21. And God commended, you'll recall, the wisdom of Abigail, who appeased the wrath of David rather than inciting David's wrath, as did her foolish husband Nabal in 1 Samuel 25. Fourthly, biblical submission is not an unqualified submission on the part of a wife to her husband. Now, perhaps some controversy is raised. When we read in Ephesians 5, verse 24, Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything. Does Paul require an unqualified submission on the part of a wife to a husband in everything? Absolutely. Is that what is being taught? Well, I would say absolutely not. Absolutely? Absolutely not. Such a view would make a husband the lord of a wife's conscience and would make him, in effect, be God. And it is to God alone, dear ones, that we owe an unqualified submission only to God. God alone is lord of the conscience. I submit to you as well that such a view would be a total abrogation of the first commandment. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Submission is always, dear ones, to be in only those things that are agreeable to the word of God. Notice in Colossians 3.18, submission is qualified on the part of a wife with these words, as it is fit in the Lord. That is, as it is becoming and proper in the Lord. To submit to that which is unlawful, to submit to that which is contrary to what God says, is not a submission in the Lord. It is a submission outside of the Lord. If the husband commands a wife to believe or to do that which she knows to be contrary to God's word, she should very humbly and respectfully explain why she cannot submit at that point. And she must explain that her ultimate submission must be to God. Just as the Apostle Peter says, In Acts 5.29, we ought to obey God rather than men. When Paul states that a wife should submit to her husband in all things, he means in all things lawful. All things lawful. In all things agreeable to Scripture. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 23 we find the same phrase all things are the same word used here all things and it says all things are lawful for me but all things are not expedient all things are lawful for me but all things edify not now is Paul saying All things in an absolute sense are lawful to me. Murder, rape, incest, mass slaughter, massacre, terrorism, all things absolutely are lawful unto me. Of course not. What he's saying is all things that are agreeable to scripture are lawful to me. All things, he says, are not expedient. All things in scripture are lawful for me, but all things in any particular situation may not be edifying. Paul never requires a wife to disobey God. Never. in order to obey her husband. As if whatever the husband tells the wife to do, she must do, regardless of whether it's agreeable to God's word or not. Let me also add that a wife's submission to her husband's word implies that the husband's word is not only agreeable to God's word, and therefore not contrary to God's word, but her submission, I submit to you, also implies that the husband's word to her is reasonable and edifying. For example, You won't find in the scripture a prohibition of what I'm about to tell you. Search the scripture wherever you want to go, you won't find that this is contrary to what God says, that a husband can command or authorize his wife to do. But suppose a husband were to tell his wife to stand on her head for five minutes, After that, jump up and down for five minutes, and after that throw five rocks through the window. There is no reasonable or edifying goal or end in view to such a command. Such a command As I said, it may not be specifically prohibited by God's word, but it is neither reasonable nor edifying. And since a husband's authority is not arbitrary, capricious, and is not for the whim of his mere will, the exercise of his authority must have some good, edifying, and reasonable end and purpose in view. This is all that the Apostle Paul is saying, for example, in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 10, where he writes, Therefore I write these things being absent, lest, being present, I should use sharpness according to the power, that is, the authority, which the Lord hath given me, to what end? to edification. Authority and power to edification and not to destruction. You tell somebody to do those types of things throughout the day and I guarantee you it is using authority to the destruction of that person and not to the edification of that person. Simply switch it around and have your boss expect you to do the same thing, or the elders to do the same thing. And you would see how unreasonable, how unedifying, and therefore how unlawful that is. I like what the godly and learned Samuel Rutherford said, though he was addressing the limited authority of church officers, not husbands, in this quote that follows. Nevertheless, I believe what he says equally may apply to all who are in places of authority, even to husbands. And he says this, no wise man would say that the church might make a law that all its people should cast stones in the water. For what actions hath no good, nor lawfulness, nor aptitude to edify in themselves, these the mere will of man can never make good, lawful, and apt to edify, because only God, whose will is the prime rule of all goodness, can create moral goodness in actions. What rulers can in law and reason command that they must will as good and apt to edify, before they can bind others to will it. Rulers commandeth as God's ministers for our good. Romans 13, 4. They are the ministers of God to us for good, for our edification. And if they aren't, well, they're not ruling on behalf of God. This also means that biblical submission to the lawful office that a husband holds is not contrary to fleeing the abusive threats and actions of a wicked husband. It does not imply an unsubmissiveness on the part of a wife to flee an abusive, destructive husband who seeks to hurt, to damage, to destroy a wife. It's not unsubmissiveness to the office of a husband. It is fleeing from the tyranny and the abuse and the destruction of a husband. with the threat of life, limb, health that might be in view at that time. This is simply in accordance with the Sixth Amendment that we're not only to protect the lives of others, but we are, according to the Sixth Amendment, as well, to protect our own life. It's also in keeping with the injunction of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 10, 23, to flee persecution, to flee persecution. In closing, the sermon this Lord's Day, men, we're not really prepared to be the leader God has called us to be until we have ourselves first learned the principle of biblical submission, that we have learned the principle of biblical submission. How can we apply it to others until we ourselves learn to be submissive to those in authority over us? Let us not play, therefore, the hypocrite, expecting our wives to be submissive to us while we refuse to be submissive in all things lawful to those in authority over us. Young men, single men, how do you prepare to lead your future wife in submitting to you? I submit to you right now that you do so by learning how to submit to those who are over you in the home, at work, in the church. When we become upset and frustrated by what we men deem to be a lack of submission in our wives, perhaps it would be a good time to take inventory in our own lives. For the Word of God not only commands wives to practice submission as we have already seen, but husbands to practice submission in various areas of their lives as well, whether to God supremely James 4.7, whether to our boss in 1 Peter 2.18, whether to those who are simply elderly, older than ourselves in 1 Peter 5.5, or to lawful elders within the Church, Hebrews 13.7, or to lawful civil magistrates in Romans 13.1, or even submitting within the Church to one another. Before we read in Ephesians 5, verse 22, wives, submit to your husbands. You know what the previous verse says? Submitting yourselves one to another within the church. If a dear woman within the church comes to me as a minister, opens up the Bible and presents to me something that I am in error about or in my practice I have fallen away from the truth of God in how I practice the truth. Should I submit to her as she brings the Word of God? Absolutely. Submitting ourselves one to another. And so there's a mutual submission within the church. Yes, there is the submission to the elders, but let's not forget there's a mutual submission to one another within the body of Christ. Since lack of submission, dear ones, is a sin, whether it's in our wives or whether it's in ourselves as men, since it is a sin that manifests itself, it is always important, dear men, within the Church, it is important to begin by taking the beam out of our own eyes before we seek to remove the speck out of our wife's eye. Husbands, our own humble submission to those who are in lawful authority over us will set an example for our wives to follow. One last thing to the men, and then we'll talk to the wives. Husbands, if you would make the submission of your wife to be a joy to her, to be a joy to her, to be a delight to her, love her as Christ loved the church, Wives, if you would make your husband's leadership a joy to him and not a burden to him, submit to him as the Church does to Christ. Wives, this truth should encourage you that you're not the only ones that have to submit. men have to submit to. It just so happens within the family, as God has ordained and instituted the family, the husband, by divine appointment, is the head of the home. And the wife is to submit to her husband. But it should encourage you that you're not the only one who has to practice the command to submit. You're not the only one. Also, wives, understand God does not despise women and therefore call them to submit to their husbands any more than God despises children and therefore calls them to submit to you as a parent, or despises your husband and calls them to submit to the elders of the church. Because God calls us to submit in various areas of our life, He doesn't despise us. Submission, we need to get in our heads. Biblical submission is the way of life and salvation. Resistance and rebellion is the way of death and destruction. Wives and mothers, if you want your children to submit to you, I submit to you. I give to you this set an example of submission before them by the way you submit to your own husbands. Submission, again, is not evil, it is good. Submission, that is biblical and lawful submission, is good. Submission is simply the keeping of the fifth commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Dear ones, submission carries with it a glorious promise, a glorious promise of blessing, that it may be well with thee. Thou mayest live long upon the land, or upon the earth, as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 6. Upon the earth. Do you desire the blessing of God in your life? Or do you say, no, I don't want any of God's blessings. I never pray for any of God's blessings upon my life. Well, here is a promise of God's blessing to you. To be submissive in the various relationships, men that we have with others, women within the home. There's a blessing that is promised. And therefore, dear ones, let us all fall upon our knees and repent of our lack of submission. our lack of submission in any area, women, to your husbands, men, to others in lawful authority over us, that Christ might fill us with the beautiful grace of submission, the beautiful grace. You see, submission is not a demeaning grace. It's a beautifying grace, according to God. Beautifying grace and know and be assured that a willing and humble submission will lead, not to you exalting yourself, but a humble and willing submission will lead to God exalting you. In the case of the Lord Jesus, in Philippians chapter 2, verses 9 through 11, after reading the section about how Christ humbled himself, submitted himself to the will of the Father. What happened? What do we read afterwards? Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Because he submitted himself to the will of God. And likewise, two wives. Your submission. leads to blessing in 1 Peter 3. Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of their wives. Again, God offers to us these blessings And so as to encourage us, do not give up, do not buy into the philosophy of the world about what the world tells you about submission and how contrary to our own freedom and our own desires, they are. Again, I believe that in some cases lawful submission may be contrary to our own wicked desires, but certainly submission is not contrary to the holy and godly desires of a Christian. It's perfectly in keeping with those holy and scriptural desires that we ought to have. Amen. Let us stand in prayer at this time. Our Heavenly Father, we praise Thee and thank Thee for Thy holy word for Lord, we do bow before Thee now. Submit ourselves unto Thee and to the word which Thou dost speak unto us by Thy Word and Spirit. We pray our God that submission would not be a dirty word unto us, that even if, O God, We have only seen authority abused. May we, our God, see that Thine authority is precious. Thine authority is good and holy. Thine authority is for our good and for our well-being as Thy children. And may we, O Lord, learn that the authority of Jesus Christ over His bride is indeed a holy and good and edifying authority. It is an authority which has redeemed us and saved us and is sanctifying us. And so, Lord, we pray that we would relearn If we have learned wrongly the concept of submission, biblical submission, that, Lord, we would be willing to relearn and to understand that concept as it is taught in Thy word. We ask, Lord, that Thou would hear our prayers. In Jesus' name, amen. Still Waters Revival Books is now located at PuritanDownloads.com. 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