The passage that we are studying this afternoon is taken from Ephesians chapter 5 verses 21 through the end of the chapter, and then we'll read verses 1 through 9 of chapter 6. You can find this in your bulletins or using your church Bibles. And I will actually be reading one more verse, which is verse 21 of chapter five, which is not printed in your bulletins. So in case you want to use your Bibles or just listen to my reading. Submitting 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, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hath ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and searches it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, this is the first commandment with a promise, that it might go well with you and that you might live a long you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Bound servants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you will Christ. Not by the way of I serving as people pleasers, but as bound servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. rendering service with a goodwill as to the Lord and no to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bound servant or is free. Masters do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven. and that there is no partiality with him. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you give us the opportunity, Lord, as Christians, believers, to hear your voice, and even for those who are not yet believers to listen to your word. And we thank you that you have given us the spirit, your spirit, to have understanding of your word and more than just having a head understanding to bring your word deep into our souls, into our hearts. So Lord, we pray in this afternoon that you will help us as we meditate on these verses to be ministered by you, that our faith in you will grow so that During this week, as we interact with our spouses, with our children, with our coworkers, with our neighbors and those around us, what we have learned from you today will be manifested in our words and actions and thoughts. May you help us, Lord, to be ministered by your word. May you use me as your instrument to declare your word. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. So this topic of submission or submitting to one another is no one of those desirable topics that we probably wanna hear. Maybe you, because you are a Christian, you wanna hear about it, but it doesn't come from our desires, deep in our desires to hear that somebody is exhorting us to submit to others. And I know that by my own experience how difficult for me is to submit to God and to the Word of God and to others. It's a challenge because I deal with my own sinful nature. And I know that also as I interact and I see brothers and sisters in Christ struggling with submission as well. And I also have gotten to know that even more just as I see a three years old and a one year old in my home struggling to submit to my wife and myself. And even though I knew that from my own understanding of God's Word that we all are born with a sinful nature, I am so amazed just to see that we have We invest so much time trying to teach them one thing, to submit, to obey. But the other part, which is to disobey, they didn't need to learn it from anybody. I saw my son, he was only six months, and he was so upset that I would take a toy from him, that he would go back like this, and he would cry, and he would be so angry. And I wonder, where is all that coming from? And I remember, oh, yeah. My great, great, great, great, great grandparents, Adam and Eve, that they inherited this sinful appetite for disobeying parents and disobeying God. So even though this is a topic that probably is not those topics that Christians come to church in, I really want to hear about this because I want to be blessed by this. It is so important for us as Christians It shows the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ, God, the creator of the world, in his mission to rescue us, what he did was basically that he submit. He surrendered his rights as king. He emptied himself and he humbled himself and he took the form of a servant and dwell among human beings. And you see that in example of submission and we are called to imitate him as followers of Jesus and we see even the Apostle Paul who call us to imitate him as he imitates Christ that that he surrender his rights for the sake of gaining some more or sometimes that he didn't want to be a stumbling block for some others that that they will be able to hear the gospel with clarity and this is very important for for us as Christians as believers submission. And God is teaching us through these words about this. through these verses about this. In fact, when you look at the structure of this test, you will see that the outline that Paul is presenting before us, it start with that title, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Verse 21, which you find probably as part of the previous section, but at the end, when you look at the test, you can see that verse 21 is connected with this section. It's connected with the rest of the test because that's the frame for these three examples of submission that Paul is giving to us today. One is a submission between husbands and wife, and then submission between children and parents, and submission among bound servants or slaves and masters. That's the frame for all of these things, and that's what I want us to spend some time today looking at these three parts. And if you remember from last week, one of the things that I mentioned is that if you look at the way Paul organized this structure, it's clear that he's trying to teach us that this is actually the order how we should apply this principle in our lives. first he starts with submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ which is referring to the body of Christ one another brothers and sisters in Christ but then he sent us to go and work this out with our spouses in the covenant of marriage when we look at verses 22 and Why is that important? Because I said last week that sometimes we try to apply this principle here in the church and we forget about applying this principle at home first. And what happened here is in an interactions with brothers and sisters should be a reflection of what is going on in our home with our spouses, in our most intimate relationship that we have with anybody. And then he goes in the second layer, which is parents and children. And then he goes to talks about bound servants and masters, which was something that happened very widespread in the Roman Empire, which is the slavery. But today we could apply these principles to our interactions to any authority that is above us or if we are authority to somebody else. So let us look at first this concept of submission in marriage. So first of all, Paul starts, as I said, in verse 21, talking about submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. It is really important that we read verse 22 in connection with verse 21. In fact, if you were to read the Greek, you will realize that verse 22 doesn't have a verb in Greek. What that means is that when you read verse 20 that says, wife, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, that word submits is added there in order to make it more clear. So if you were to read it in Greek, it would be something like this. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives, to your own husbands as to the Lord. So why is that important that we make a connection between that command or that principle in marriage with the principle that is in the body of Christ? Because before that wife is your wife, that wife or husband is your husband, he or she is also your brother and sister in Christ as well. One of the reasons why I love when I'm invited or asked to marry a couple and preach from a passage, I love to always pick Philippians chapter two, verses two or verses three ahead. When he says, Paul says, like this, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself. This is a principle for the body of Christ, right? For each one of us, as believers, we have to count others more significant than ourselves. But if this is a principle for the body of Christ, even more should be a principle within marriage within a couple, that we count our spouse more significant than ourselves. In the same way, we are called to submit to one another in the body of Christ, and husband and wife are called in the body of Christ to submit to each other. It's important also that we understand what is that idea of submitting to one another. This is the way basically God sanctifies his church. When we think about Matthew 18, when we think about God's calling us to exhort our brothers and sisters That's the way God uses to sanctify the body of Christ, to use members of the body to call each other when we are seeing that the son of the brothers and sisters are walking according to the gospel, according to the word of God. In the same way, the husband and the wife are called to submit to one another in this principle of calling each other as husband and wife, but also as brother and sister. But beside that, as we saw from last week, there is a wonderful and beautiful principle which we see here, which is the role that God has given to the husband and the wife in marriage. We saw last week that this role is that marriage is a metaphor, an illustration of the relationship between Christ and His church. In this sense, the church is called to submit to Christ and Christ is the head of the church. In the same way, wives are called to submit to their husband as to the Lord, as husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. But here there are a couple of things that I'd like to highlight. For example, there is a long quote from John Stott that I would love to read to you because I think that help us to see that sometimes this concept of submission have to be cleansed from the ideas of the world that don't help us to see what is real submission within the body of Christ and within marriage. Let me read it to you. We picture the authoritative husband as somebody who dominates, who makes all the decisions himself, issues, commands, and expects obedience, inhibits and suppresses his wife, and so prevents her from growing into a mature and fulfilled person. But this is not at all the kind of headship which the Apostle is describing, whose model is Jesus Christ. Certainly headship implies a degree of leadership and initiative, as when Christ came to woo and to win his bride. But more specifically implies sacrifice, self-giving for the sake of the beloved. As when Christ gave himself for his bride, his helpship means power in any sense. Then if his helpship means powers in any sense, then it is power to care, not to crush. Power to serve, not to dominate. Power to facilitate self-fulfillment, not to frustrate or destroy it. And in all this, the standard of the husband's love is to be the cross of Christ in which he surrender himself even to death as his selfless love for his bride. One thing that is important that we look at when we see the call in marriage for the wife to submit to the husband is that in reality this is one side of the same coin. This is the husband are also called to submit to the wife when they are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Because they are called to give their life as Christ, for their wives as Christ gave her life or his life for the church. Now let's look at what about children and parents. Well, first of all, as we saw last week, you hear from Paul two commands. One is to obey and the other one is to honor. One thing that we can say about one is that to obey is as soon as the child continue to be under the the family because he's still under the household with the parents. But when we talk about honoring our parents, it's referring to something that is for the rest of our life. We are called to honor our parents for the rest of our lives. But you see what Paul teach or what Paul also called the fathers to do is another form of submission as well. Look what Paul says in verse four. Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This was particularly striking in the context of the Roman culture. Children were seen just as a slave. Parents would sell their children whenever they wanted, and children never had a voice at home. But here, parents are called to not to provoke their children in anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, which means that what Paul is doing here is a contrast between a father or a mother leading a child based on his own principles and desires versus a father or a mother leading a child based on the Word of God, which is bringing up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So there is a degree of submission from the parents, first to the Word of God, first to the Lord, and then submitting his own will to do the will of God. Now, one important thing that you can see throughout the whole test is that everything is in submission to the Lord. First of all, in verse 21, it says, Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, for Christ. And when you see the command to the wife is, why submit to your own husband as to the Lord? Then to husbands, love your wives as to Christ. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, and at the end, for or of the Lord. It says, your children to anger, but bring them up in discipline and instruction of the Lord. Now Paul goes down to talk about this issue that was very present around him, which is the issue of bound servants and masters. To bound servants or slaves in this case, Paul was talking to obey their earthly masters as they will do to Christ. Basically what Paul was addressing was the issue of bound servants submitting to Christ and setting an example of obedience for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. But at the same time, Paul talks to the masters where they are also called to submit to Christ or to God in the way they deal with their bound servants. Says, masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is born their master and is he who is both their master and your is in heaven and that there is no partiality with him. So there is in a sense what we can see in this versus also a mutual submission, first to the bound servant to the master, but then the master to the bound servant. But a common question that people ask when they come to these verses is, why did Paul not address some of the issues, they will say, the issues that were common in the society? For example, that wives were not treated well. And they were abused. And they were not considered as partners, but they were considered just as another object. Why did Paul didn't address the issue that children were not treated well as well? That they were even considered as slaves? And people ask, why did Paul not address the issue that slavery was a very sinful thing or a very sinful expression of the heart of man? Well, there are many answers that people give to these questions, but I would say that actually Paul is addressing the issue but with divine wisdom. Because what Paul is doing in all these cases is pointing each one of these interactions to the design of God. For example, when Paul talks to the wives and he talks to the husbands, Even though he might not be addressing the issue directly of how husbands has abused their authority at home, Paul is teaching the marriage to live according to the design that God has established for marriage. Where husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Therefore, the submission of the wife is a submission to the love of Christ. Here, another quote of John Stott refers to how this is a two sides of the coin in terms of husband and wife. We have seen that the essence of Paul's instruction is wives submit husband's love. and that these words are different from one another since they recognize the headship which God has given to the husband. Yet, when we try to define the two verbs, it is not easy to distinguish clearly between them. What does it mean to submit? It is to give oneself up to somebody. What does it mean to love? It is to give oneself up for somebody as Christ himself gave himself for the church. Thus submission and love are two aspects of the very same theme, namely of the selfless self-giving, which is the foundation of an enduring and growing marriage. So when Paul is reminding men and women the original design for marriage, basically what he is doing is addressing the abuses that are happening in society. The same thing happens when Paul is addressing the issue of how parents are called to treat their children. do not provoke their children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This, again, principle was totally against the culture, and the society, and the ideas that were in the society. And the same thing happened when Paul speaks about bound servants and masters. If you read Boyle's commentary on this, Boyle is saying, Paul is not addressing the question, is slavery something bad or good? What Paul is actually doing here is demonstrating, or proving, or showing the way how Christians should treat one another. Because look what Paul tells to the master, he says, masters do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and your master is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. In other words, when Paul was saying this, he was saying, masters and servants, you who are Christians, are the same before the Lord. And you both have a master to whom you are accountable, who is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. Therefore, what we see here, brothers and sisters, as we look at these verses is another picture of how Paul is reminding us to walk according to the calling that he has, that God has calling us to walk, which is according to the gospel of Christ, where in our marriages, in the way we treat each other, parents and children, in the way we treat each other outside in society, to our authorities or to whom we are authority. Sometimes we try to outsmart God by trying to discern how to apply principles in the world, but what we have here is that God who designed the world is the one who is giving us the way to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are gracious and merciful and has been patient. And you have shown us your grace in the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ emptied himself and came and show humility, real humility by dying on the cross for us. And we thank you that you also continue, Lord, helping us in our spiritual growth in our understanding of your will as we consider your word. Help us, Lord, as we think about these verses and as we think about this passage today, to be ministered by it. That this will influence the way we treat one another, that it will influence the way we live with our families, but also with those outside our families and our brothers and sisters and those in the world. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.