Text: Ephesians 5:21-32

• Charles Haddon Spurgeon: "When home is ruled according to God’s Word angels might be asked to stay with us, and they would not find themselves out of their element."
• The poet William Cowper called the home "the only bliss of Paradise that hast surviv’d the Fall."
• The trouble is that many homes are not governed by God’s Word—even homes where the members are professing Christians—and the consequences are tragic. Instead of angels being guests in some homes, it seems that demons are the masters. Too many marriages end in the divorce court, and nobody knows how many husbands and wives are emotionally divorced even though they share the same address.
• Too many get married for "better for worse, but not for long."
• Carl Rogers: "To me it seems that we are living in a an important and uncertain age, and the institution of marriage is most assuredly in an uncertain state. If 50-75% of Ford of GM cars completely fell apart within the early part of their lifetime as automobiles drastic steps would be taken. We have no such well organized way of dealing with our social institutions, so many people are groping, more or less blindly, to find alternatives to marriage (which is certainly less than 50% successful). Living together without marriage, living in communes, extensive child-care centers, serial monogamy (with one divorce after another), the women’s liberation movement who established the woman as a person in her own right, new divorce laws that do away with the concept of guilt¾ these are all groping towards some new form of man-women relationship for the future. It would take a bolder man than I to predict what will emerge."
• Note: he thinks that the answer is to get rid of cars (marriage) when it is really the design or foundation that is wrong, not the institution.
• "The Nuclear Family Goes Boom!" Time Magazine, Dec. 1992

• The family as we know it will soon die. It is nothing more than an interesting anomaly—a mere blip in human history. We thought of it as "normal," but we were wrong. The very term "nuclear family" will give off a musty smell in the days ahead.
• Replacing it will be multiple marriages, or what will be known as "serial monogamy." Divorce will be so common as to be considered normal. Some marriage contracts will have "sunset clauses" to automatically terminate at a given age. Couples reaching their 50^th anniversaries will be as rare as today’s piano or cello virtuosos—gifted masters of their craft.
• Children will live with a bewildering array of relatives—mothers, fathers, multiple stepmothers and stepfathers, stepbrothers and stepsisters, grandparents and former grandparents, etc.
• The taboo against incest will weaken.
• The trend toward childlessness will accelerate.
• Children will be routinely victimized. They will be bounced from home to home as families splinter and re-form. Many will have no one to care for them. Boys and girls will roam the streets much like they did in Charles Dickens’ London, or as they still do in Brazil today.
• Pediatricians will teach children about the use of condoms at the time of their vaccinations against disease.
• Theology, the study of God and the Bible, will soon die. School children of tomorrow will have no knowledge of spiritual matters, nor even any interest in this topic.
• The triumph of feminist religion will cause many Christians and Jews to shun references to God in personal terms (no more Lord or Heavenly Father). This in turn (will) strengthen the groups that worship a mysterious nature-force which seek to deify the self.
• Forced abortion as practiced in China will be necessary in nations with exploding populations. As Rep. Pat Schroeder suggests, "The most important goal for the 21^st century is family planning for everyone."
• An even more radical approach may evolve. It is reasonable to ask whether there will be a family at all. Given the propensity for divorce, the growing number of adults who choose to remain single, the declining popularity of having children and the evaporation of the time families spend together, another way may eventually evolve. It may be quicker and more efficient to dispense with family-based reproduction. Society could then produce its future generations in institutions that might resemble state-sponsored baby hatcheries…"

1. Submitting yourselves
1. Textual issue, bridge verse between filling of the Spirit and relationships
2. "Submit" does not mean "obey." It is a milder military term referring to putting oneself under the rank of another. It is esteeming others better than yourself.
1. Compare 4:2 where we are to walk in lowliness and meekness.
2. We are not to "throw our weight around" or demand our way. We are to submit, considering others before ourselves.
3. We are to esteem others "more important than ourselves" (Rom 12:10; Phil. 2:1-4)
4. All to submit and have this attitude (Ph. 2:5-8)
5. Not a "my way" proposition. "I will do as I please" or "You can’t tell me what to do" attitude is unchristian. It is wrong and shows a rebellious, self-centered heart.
3. Illustrations
1. Illus. Son is submissive to the Father in function, but is His equal in nature. So too women and men.
2. Illus. policeman is the authority in civil matters. The principal is the authority in educational matters. The judge is the authority in legal matters. Pastor is the spiritual authority in the church. Not that the one in authority is better or superior, it is that he has been invested with certain authority.
2. Marriage Principles
1. Not good for man to be alone
1. For one thing, it meets man’s emotional needs. "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18).
2. Marriage also has a social purpose in the bearing of children to continue the race (Gen. 1:28).
3. Paul indicated a physical purpose for marriage—to help man and woman fulfill the normal desires given them by God (1 Cor. 7:1-3).
4. But in Ephesians 5, Paul indicated also a spiritual purpose in marriage, as the husband and wife experience with each other the submission and the love of Christ (Eph. 5:22-33).
5. Women and kids keep men from getting in trouble.
6. Woman completes the man. He is only half a man without her.
2. Our marriage union should be indissoluble just as salvation is eternal.
3. James 4: "conflicts come from selfishness, not submission."
3. Wives
1. "Wives, submit unto your own husbands"
1. Wives is not qualified, meaning it is referring to all wives with husbands, even if your husband is not a believer.
2. "submit" is the key term.
1. Cp. Gen. 1:26-27 with Gen. 3:16 & 4:7.
2. There was an authority relationship before the fall. Man, though not superior to the woman, was given the authority in the home.
3. "desire" same word as in 4:7 where "sin lieth at the door."
1. Women would have a desire to usurp the man’s rightful authority.
2. The man would desire to put the woman under his foot to make her submit.
4. Cp. 1 Pet. 3:1-7
2. Christian perspective elevates women.
1. In NT times many women were considered little more than property. Many Jewish men prayed, "God I thank you that I am not a Gentile, slave, or woman."
2. Roman society: many women did not want children because it ruined the looks of their bodies. Desiring to do what men did, they went into wrestling, run barebreasted wild pigs, women’s lib movement was in total contrast to the immoral standards of those around them.
3. Demosthenes "We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the sake of co-habitation, and we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately and being faithful guardians for our household affairs."
4. Divorce in Gk. society was rare because women had no recourse and men had no reason because men had:
1. Concubines for housework
2. Wives for legitimate children
3. Prostitutes for sexual gratification.
3. Divine role of women
1. "She shall be saved in child bearing" (1 Tim. 2:15) means that she shall be saved from competing with a man in his assigned role in creation as the authority.
2. Women’s main role is the nurturing and training of children, not doing man’s work. Women, when they train their children, civilize society
3. In matters of role and function, there are distinctions, while intrinsically there is no difference.
4. Acts 13:2 "work" corresponds to woman’s divinely called "work" is in the home. God’s standard is for the wife to work in the home, not outside the home.
5. Older women are to teach younger women.
4. Husbands
1. Paul had much more to say to the Christian husbands than to the wives. He set for them a very high standard: Love your wives "even as Christ also loved the church." Paul was lifting married love to the highest level possible, for he saw in the Christian home an illustration of the relationship between Christ and the church
2. How to Love Your Wife
1. Publicly
1. Song of Solomon 2:3-4, "His banner over me is love"
2. Public declaration of love. Flying a flag with your wife’s name on it.
1. Banner in our house that I made for Lisa. She didn’t take it down until we moved.
2. Men need to show their love publicly.
2. Love sacrificially.
1. Agape
2. Philos
3. eros
3. Love unconditionally (commitment)
4. Love sanctifyingly. Love to bring her to perfection. (Desire what is best for her, not you)
1. We are to love our wives, not make them obey. Any man who is trying to make his wife obey is not following Scripture.
2. Men, you are to love your wife just as Christ loved the church. If you will love her in this way, she will respond.
3. One flesh, so when you mistreat your wife you are mistreating yourself.
4. Women’s lib is wrong. But much of it got started as a result of men being wrong.
3. Why we love
1. Example of Christ
2. Way to make her respond
3. She is one-flesh with us
4. Purpose of our love
1. Present her holy before the Lord
2. Symbolize the relationship of Christ and the church