Ephesians 5-18b

If there is an impasse in a home, it's said that the most spiritual should be the one that will take the place of breaking the impasse. But here we would have, if that's not the case, it's the husband's responsibility to break the impasse, because if the whole family falls down, God holds him ultimately responsible for that. And this will be, shall we say, even easier when the husband is a spirit-filled man.

He will want to take that leadership role, he will want to resolve these difficulties as soon as they arise. Yeah, I know, I'm underlining what our brother David has said, along with what Brother Marcus is saying, and that is, the state of my marriage, God will hold me responsible. I cannot blame certain things on my wife.

I cannot say, if she were different, God says, you're the leader, you're the head. The welfare of this marriage, the whole character of this marriage, really, is your responsibility. So, while we did speak about interpersonal relationships, each taking the lead, yet, ultimately here, a husband is responsible for the marriage.

Very solemn, very sober. And as you have mentioned, the head is physically responsible for the body. Like, there are times when my thumb might be a little sore, and what the head will do, it will compensate for that.

The head gets feedback from the thumb, and acts in keeping with the feedback that it gets from the thumb. It doesn't demand that the thumb work when the thumb's out of joint. It's preserving that, but it's using feedback from the body in order to guide the body.

Tremendously helpful illustrations for a husband and a wife. Because I think that what many wives might say is a prime complaint, would be the lack of communication. Men are the strong, silent type, and the women wish to talk, or want to talk, and communicate, and the man is just there, reading the newspaper at the end of the day, or whatever the case might be.

And so, what we do see here, I think, is a need for communication between the wife and the husband. Now, I think that as we go through these verses as well, whether we're looking at husbands with their wives, or whether we're looking at parents with their children, or whether we're looking at masters with their servants, I think that what Paul is warning us against is an abuse of the authority that they have. Because he's mentioning the fact that we need to love our wives as our own bodies, love as Christ loved the church, love as he loves himself, and so there is obviously the possibility of abusing the position or the role in which God has placed the husband.

He's warning against that in these verses here. How is the church viewed here in verse 24? Has the church submitted to Christ in everything at the end of the verse? Is this the church from the day of Pentecost? Is that the church today, or is this the church as God intends it to be, ideally? How do you understand that? Well, what are your thoughts, Brother William, on this? You must have a thought you want to go back to the future, probably. That's got to be, ideally, in the mind of God, as God intends it to be.

Otherwise, this is me now. And so you're saying it's a present thing, that there ought to be that submission today. It's not something we're looking for to be perfected in the future, but something that ought to be taking place today.

That response to Christ's love and leadership. Isn't one of the themes of the epistle that the church has found all that it needs in its head, in Christ, and it willingly has taken that place of receiving from the source all of its blessing and all that it requires? And so the church is subject to Christ in that sense, that we are in that place of dependency and willing reception of his leadership, of his guidance, of his control. And now that is translated over into this figure that we have.

God's order, ideally, that's how it should be. The whole concept would be that God is the God of order, isn't it? And just to mention quickly, the three great spheres where we see God's order, obviously in the government of a land, a separate subject there, is essential. Without the government of a land, it's chaos.

And then, of course, there is the same when it comes to the assembly. There has to be assembly leadership, otherwise it gets to be confusion. And so we should be careful in the front of these three, the government of a land, the government of assembly, there's the family unit, and Satan who's coming shortly, and I hope you'll leave him behind, but the attacks of Satan, when we think of our current world, would be just to undermine anything of a marriage relationship, the family unit.

Now we have then the examples given to us, and the highest of all possible standards brought in. Submission is unto the Lord. Love your wife even as Christ loved the church.

The illustrations are beautiful. Could I just make a proposal? It might be different from what's been said. I'm wondering if the statement, the church is subject unto Christ, is the statement that flows out of the fact that he is the head of the church.

So we're not actually talking about the church doing what Christ says, but we're talking about the fact that the church has been placed under to Christ. It's not placed under to the Lord and obeys the Lord. So we're actually talking about a positional statement.

And therefore you have that position, that authority ranking, that is to be seen in the wife being subject to the husband. Ordained of God. That's my point.

This is God's order. Yes. As Christ is the head of the church, therefore the church is under order to him, and that is to be the picture that's seen in that with the wife.

So it's not such obedience, but it's a willing submission to the place. It's recognition of different roles. So as for the wife, we see that it's as to the Lord, which is her obedience primarily to the Lord in submission.

And then we see that the man is the head of the wife. That is the order that God has placed the husband and the wife in. And then we'll notice as well that there is this object lesson that Paul is teaching us as far as Christ and the church.

Now we do have to move along. Verses number 25. Husband, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

Now love perhaps isn't so much an attitude as it is an action, although it is wonderful when the emotion is there as well. But I think that when we come to these verses here, it's Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And it says that he might sanctify it.

So there's purpose, obviously, in the love of Christ, and we ought to see that in the marriage relationship as well. The other thing I wanted to mention just briefly, when we look at submission, we talked about the fact that it's not silenced so much. Abigail would perhaps be a good example, would she not, of a wife that was submissive that perhaps did something that did not at the moment please her husband, but did something that pleased her husband.

But we don't really have time to go back to the Old Testament right now. We're just moving forward. Same self-sacrifice, walking in love as Christ loved and gave.

And here it is loving and giving. So it's self-sacrifice. The husband's headship is not an ego trip.

It's a call for self-sacrifice. There ought to be no selfishness in his love either. Selfishness and love seem to be a paradox, opposites.

Every position of leadership, would you agree, is a call to serve those whom we lead? So whether it is husbands to wives, leadership in the assembly to the flock of God, it always carries with it not the idea of being boss, giving orders, but of serving the well-being, the welfare of others. And obviously the prime example of that perhaps in other aspects of the John chapter 13 where he's just washing the feet of his disciples, showing his love in that humble service. Because that's what he says.

I've given you an example. I love you as I have loved you. And anywhere we see anything of the love of Christ or the love of God, as you said, it's not just an attitude.

It's an action. It's a calling. God so loved the world that he gave it.

Beautiful illustration. So despite the fact that perhaps emotions, shall we say, ebb and flow perhaps in marriage, there is no provision in the word of God to cease loving your wife. It is a permanent love.

It is, shall we say, an unconditional love as well. And the purpose that we see here in verse 26, if we could move into that verse and perhaps have some help from our brethren here, that he might sanctify cleansing it with the washing of water by the word. And so we ask ourselves, what is he telling us as far as husbands and wives? Is he telling us something about husbands and wives here as well? Or is he just making a reference here to the person of Christ and the church? Maybe we could ask the question, what is Christ doing by the expression you've used? That he might sanctify it, having cleansed it with the washing of water by the word.

What is the ultimate goal Christ has? That's what we get in verse number 27. To raise the church to its highest beauty and its ultimate goal. So should a husband then be working actively with his wife? Is this part of his responsibility? To bring her to her ultimate usefulness and beauty for God? Do we see three time aspects in this? Are you happy with that? Go ahead.

What do you have? Well, I'm thinking he loved the church, but that'll take us back into eternity. And then when we think of his sanctifying and cleansing and so on, I appreciate there's a past element, but there's sort of an ongoing aspect in there too. That he might present it to himself.

Obviously there's a future day that's where he would present it. Gordon, just tell me on this, and I'm interested in learning here, for one. Sanctify and cleanse are both the same tense.

Both a completed tense. Yeah, so how do... Is he presently sanctifying or did he sanctify? My earlier point was that the love would take us back to eternity, right? I'm with you on that. I just wonder what you said about this in your part.

Sanctify and cleanse, it takes us of course to the work of the cross. But in the sense of Ephesians, we have a building that is growing, a body that is fitted, and here a bride that will be adorned for her husband in the coming day. So there's that sanctification work.

Okay, but I think what Sandy has emphasized for us is, both these verses, 26 and 27, start with, in order then, in order then. And therefore what we're looking at is, there is a purpose for her highest good. For her ultimate blessing.

That would be a profitable thing for every husband to grasp. Not how I can become all the man I'm supposed to be, but how I can contribute to my wife being all that God intends her to be. And in so doing, I take it that then that person submitting to that will come to his highest good as well.

But that's not the motive, it's for the good of others. Well, just this is very simple, and you may have more in mind, but I think it's a husband's responsibility, as we'll see, to see to the spiritual welfare of his wife. Now, for example, if she has four or five children, where is she going to find time to have her own private time with the Lord? He may have to help in very, very practical ways with those children to foster her own spiritual development and growth, to recognize she has a spiritual life to maintain and a spiritual life to foster.

So that's one way. And then as well, there are other practical ways with encouraging her as he sees ability that she may have relative to personal work or children. But I think the key is to recognize she has a spiritual life to develop with God.

She's just not here to meet my needs. I'm responsible for her spiritual welfare. Our brother has mentioned, I'll just repeat that for the sake of the audio, that another responsibility of a husband is to share with his wife spiritual communication, what he has received from the Word of God, not preaching at his wife, I know you don't mean that, but seeking to encourage and help her with what he has seen from the Word of God and building her up in that way.

If there's a background of positive nurturing from the Word of God, then I would imagine a wife might be willing to listen to that one time every 20 years that he might need to say to her, but you know, I'm concerned about this. So this is taking us into verses 28 and 29, where he speaks about nourishing and cherishing the if, obviously there it's referring to his own flesh, but he has spoken in verse number 28 about the fact that he that loveth his wife loveth himself. A man does not hate his own flesh.

A man is going to nourish and cherish his own body. And so the wife being one with the man, which is the verse number 31, he is going to do all he can to see that wife, his wife, his only wife, develop in the best way she can for God. And whether that is, as Brother Sandy has mentioned, making sure that I can get the children into a different room for a while so she can spend time alone with God, or whether it's sharing something that I have got from the Word of God, but it's making sure that she is receiving something spiritual from the Word of God each day.

But not only saying to her spiritual needs, I think saying to her emotional needs as well. A woman that has spent all day with five crying children perhaps, or perhaps she has children that are crying, five crying children crying all day, and the husband gets home at the end of the day, and he just wants to put his feet up and read the newspaper. He ought to take into consideration the fact that his wife needs some time as well, and that perhaps her emotional well-being will require a sacrifice.

Can I just add another trailer on this, not to be too long? I guess I'm sensitive to this because my mother was 36 when she was widowed. To be a husband who contributes to a wife being all that she can be is to prepare a wife so that she will be sufficient to meet whatever challenges of life she has to face should she have to be alone. Not to make her so dependent on me that she doesn't know how to do whatever.

Not to make her independent, but to share with her in nurturing sufficiency. I.e., she should know how to write a check. You may laugh.

There are women, wives, that have never written a check, don't know how to balance a checkbook. And a husband goes, and they are totally at a loss. Knowing why a husband makes certain financial decisions.

I mean, that whole sphere of things. There are two words that I think you both use that have helped me a lot on this, and the words are significance and security. That's an algorithm.

Okay. That's learned by all. But it's a real clear picture of the needs of both the man and the woman and how they're met.

Could you elaborate on that? God has made the man for leadership. It is important to him that his wife gives him significance, that he is functioning as he should for leadership. God has made the woman for relationships.

Genesis chapter 2. It is important that the husband nurture with her the sense that she is secure in the relationship she has with her husband. Would you just allow me one practical link with that for just a moment? Christ's love has made each of us secure. Never question his love.

There should never be provided by a husband a reason for a wife to question his love. Never. There should never be more attention paid to another woman, eyes that grove and roam, and all that goes with that.

A wife should be absolutely secure. Now, some wives may be insecure by nature, but I'm saying a husband should not provide reason for a wife to feel any insecurity in that marriage relationship. And if she has a basic insecurity, he has a higher demand to provide security.

Now, we do have to move along because it is almost 5 o'clock and we still have quite a bit to do. But perhaps we could have just a couple of comments on the last number of verses here from verse number 30 and on, where we are members of his body, of his flesh, of his bones, and the fact that the requirement is to leave and to cleave, as we sometimes hear. The mystery is great.

We heard this morning from our brother Higgins that a mystery is not something mysterious as such, but something that the Old Testament did not reveal to us in any way. And so we come to the New Testament, we find out that Christ and the Church, that is something unrevealed in the Old Testament. And then he sums it up, and we will have to sum it up fairly quickly here too, and move along to verse number 33, speaking about reverence for the husband and about another requirement, another mention of the love for the wife.

The two words, significance and security, actually are parallel to what you have in 33. And that is, the husband loves, gives security to his wife, the wife respects her husband, gives him a sense of significance. Marcus, it would be tragic to leave this without emphasizing one other thing.

The Spirit of God did not search. Now, where can I find an illustration to use for husbands and wives to understand what marriage is all about? Oh, I'll use the picture of Christ and the Church. It's the opposite.

God had in mind Christ and the Church before the world began, and he gave, instituted marriage. One of the great reasons he instituted marriage was to give us an object lesson. I think you'd use that word.

An object lesson, hands-on, every day, to learn what that wonderful relationship is. So in my failure to love my wife as I ought to, I learned something of the love of Christ, totally unchanging, unconditional. All human relationships, as we're looking at it, all human relationships are given to us as object lessons to learn spiritual truths, not just in themselves.

They are object. Every human relationship is an object lesson to teach us of a higher spiritual truth that we will enjoy for eternity. So no husband should leave this Bible reading today content with a dysfunctional marriage, rather recognize this is something that involves the highest thing that God has ever done.

It demands my utmost to produce a reasonable facsimile. Now perhaps moving to Chapter 6, I know there's much more that could be said in Chapter 5, but we do have a limitation of time. And we're going to look at children and parents.

And again, as he started with the wives, he starts with the children. And as he does that, he starts with the servants later on as well. And so it's always the one that is to submit that he begins with in each of these different passages.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, and I think that that would take us back to what we have seen earlier as well. There may be some few cases where there is a believing child and a non-believing parent where they are put into a situation where they ask themselves, should I, can I obey my parents or not? But that is not generally the tenor of the life. And the other thing is if the child is obedient in 99.5% of the cases, when it is that other 0.5%, there is a better possibility that the parent will understand the reason for disobedience.

But he's going to state the need for obedience here in verse number one. And he gives a reason. It's very simple.

It's right. It's the just thing. It's the correct thing to do.

Even in the exceptions, Marcus, that 5.5% exceptions, I think a child should be encouraged to find a way to still honor their mother and father. That is, Father, you have taught me to respect the Bible and to fear God. And I'm trying to follow what you taught me by obeying the word of God and being baptized.

I know you don't want me to be, but I'm honoring what you have taught me about respect for God. Some way to honor the parents and still. And so again, we go back to the attitude that is shown in these cases.

So the Lord Jesus himself, our Dr. Masterson, he was subject to imperfect parents. Again, he states that. So I had just this verse two.

We'll go through verses one to two. And perhaps we can note the difference between obeying and honor. Honor would have to do with respect, and I don't think that that ends when somebody moves out of their parent's home.

But the idea is that we always need to honor our father and mother. And I think that that would include in types of financial need, meeting their needs as well as possible. If somebody could help us briefly here on the first commandment with promise.

What does it mean that it's the first commandment with promise? We know what the promise is because it's in verse number three. But why does he say it's the first commandment with promise? That's a question. Because it was the first commandment with promise.

That's a good answer. I mean the other commandments are basically just the stateless commands. But now God emphasizes the importance of this particular commandment by saying it will produce a result.

And the result that it will produce, I'll just be fast on this and help you get going. The result is that there will be prosperity in the nation and there will be a perpetuity of the nation's responsibility. The nation being preserved in the land depended on order in the homes.

And actually when it comes even to spiritual things, I don't mean that God saves our families. But order in the family unit is important to assembly testimony as well. So this is not how you get to live to be 95.

It's how you get to leave behind you something that is of God. But the promise is twofold, is it not? It may be well with thee and thou mayest live long in Europe. And again, it's not necessarily that you get to 95.

But the idea I think is a child that is submissive to their parents has a much better probability of getting to an older age than a child that is completely unsubmissive. In the Old Testament, thou mayest live long in the land. So I think it was a national promise to the nation of longevity in the land because of a recognition of authority, learn first in the home, and then carry over into their relationship with God.

When they got to the place of offering their children to other gods and so on, they're at the point where they're going to be vacating the land. So disorder in the home, lack of testimony from God. Okay, we'll move on to the fathers in verse number four.

The fathers provoke not your children to wrath. This is the idea of exasperating your children. I think that perhaps children can exasperate their parents as well.

But that's not the difficulty that Paul is dealing with here. The idea is not to exasperate them, not to provoke them to wrath. And that can be with an overcritical, unkind attitude that the parents or the father shows towards his child.

It can be with the idea of exacting more from the child than what the child is capable of doing. The child can get to a point where he's completely frustrated, completely exasperated. A statement that is helpful to me is rules without relationship creates rebellion.

And that actually is what this verse is saying. The relationship of nurturing and cherishing is in contrast to rules that create rebellion. And we saw the word nurture or nourish back in verse number 29, but here we can look at it again.

And here the idea is training or discipline. And again, I mentioned that perhaps we're living in a world where discipline is not a common thing to do with children. But the word of God hasn't changed, the principles haven't changed.

And I purchased my copy of Proverbs today, and I think that there's probably a lot about bringing children up in that particular book. But it's to bring them up, to see them be what God wants them to be. I know you don't mean this, but just so no one leaves with the wrong idea, discipline should be primarily positive and not negative.

Right. There is a need for the negative, but it should be overshadowed by positive nurturing and positive direction giving and positive reinforcement of what is right. Now, I'm not saying that children are all good, just nurture the good, but a constant negative type of discipline is not going to really produce what God intends here, is it? Right.

I think you said it's training or discipline. Training, right. Or training.

Right. And so I think the idea is the more you bring the child up in the way that he should go, the way that he should go, the more you will see the lack of it for the physical discipline. Admonition is the warnings that are perhaps needed from time to time, putting in mind the expectation to do what is right instead of what is wrong.

Now, I'm sure there's lots of children here that would love to spend more time on these verses, but we'll move on to verses number five to nine in the last seven or eight minutes that we have. And it was servants obedient to their masters and the masters that are to do the same things unto them and have to see what the same things indicates to us. These are masters according to your flesh, and obviously Paul is writing primarily to a group of believers where there were many that were slaves.

They weren't employed, but they were actual slaves. And I don't know if you saw the news this week. It wasn't slaves and masters, but over in France, I think it was.

The employees locked the manager up in the office and said, you're not getting out until you raise our pay or you give us better working conditions. Now, that obviously would not be a biblical way to deal with the problem at all. OK, so Paul is going to tell us what we ought to do as believers.

And one of the things that he mentions is, number one, it's with fear and trembling, not so much fear and trembling of the master or the employer, but it's as unto Christ. And so in each of these relationships, we see Christ brought in and we see the Lord brought in. Brother, the apostle is not endorsing it here at the institution of slavery, is he? No, but neither is he abolishing it here in this particular chapter.

He is dealing with people where they are, but he's not trying to abolish it either. But he definitely is not approving it. The response of Christianity to social ills is still to carry out Christianity within that framework.

But what he does do is raise it to a far higher level in the sense that he says, as bond slaves to Christ. So he really takes what seemed to be menial and invests it with tremendous potential for cleansing God and honoring God. Puts it into an eternal perspective.

Colossians says, serving the Lord Christ with all the full dignity of all that Christ brings. And I think that would take us back to what Brother Williams mentioned earlier about the authority and the lack of authority that is seen in the world today. It's a lovely thing to see that this section is going to end with the fact that the reward is coming from the Lord.

Certainly likely deprived by the master, but rewarded by the Lord. So if we take this out of the slave and master context and apply it to ourselves today and employees and employers, I think that the principles are the same. And one of the principles that we find here is not with eye service.

In other words, not just when the boss happens to be looking, but when I happen to be working. And I think that perhaps we could fit in here what we saw in chapter number four as regards to not stealing anymore. Because we could steal from our employer without taking the pens and pencils from the telephone company that I work for.

But even stealing time from the employer is not correct. One of the verses that came to my mind when I was looking at this was Titus 2 and verse number 10. Verse number nine.

Servants to be obedient to their own masters and to please them well in all things, not answering again, not purloining, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. And so the Christian employee can adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. In his workplace, his submissive attitude, not working just with eye service when the boss happens to be looking at me, will perhaps impress the employer in such a way that the doctrine of Christ is adorned.

And his well-doing is not with the idea that he will get promoted. And it is really – there may be no recognition for it from the employer, which is why he says that he shall receive of the Lord whether bond or free. Really, he's doing it with a view to the Lord, pleasing him and accepting whatever the Lord brings him as far as reward.

So it may not be reward upon earth at all. We saw in the last Bible reading as well the will of God. And perhaps that was a different aspect, but here we have something that is the will of God.

And Christians often ask, and younger believers especially ask, what is the will of God for my life? A number of years ago, Brother Oliver told me that it has to do with lights and lighthouses. I don't know if you remember that illustration or not. But here we have something as the will of God as a submission in the workplace.

Interesting, we sing from the heart. I know it may be a different word here, but it's still being done with a full agreement internally. It's not just external, got to do this.

Christianity makes me do this. I do this from the heart because I'm doing it for the Lord or I'm doing it connected with Christ and all the exaltation of his person. And that ought to elevate our work, our employment in whatever field we happen to be in, understanding that it is with the idea of pleasing him.

There actually would be in the workplace a greater potential and likelihood of having to say, for conscience sake, I cannot do that, than there would be in a marriage or in a family. The secretary who's told to lie for her boss, the accountant who was told to just manipulate the figures of it to make things look better, the person, their expense account and so on. So recognizing that we are really serving the Lord and pleasing the Lord and doing the will of God, then we'll really establish how far I can go in my obedience to my master.

Verse number nine, in our remaining time. Ye masters, or if we wish, ye employers, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening. Obviously, here we see again the idea that they were slaves or perhaps more than free, but still the idea is that a Christian employer ought to be an honest man that is showing the heart of God, the heart of Christ in his workplace as well.

Because we cannot, we should not divide our spiritual life from our secular life. It's one life, it's one walk. Whether we be in the assembly meeting or whether we be in a workplace, it is the same character of God that should be shown.

Christian doesn't have a secular life, does he? Exactly. How do we understand the same things unto them? Would we understand it, the master acts as unto Christ, in the will of God, conscious of the future day? The idea of obeying his will, I think, and understanding this, that he is just a temporary master. Maybe embraces the statement of verse eight, whatsoever good thing any man doeth.

So the slave does the good thing for his master. The master does the good thing for his slave. And then he finishes this section here saying there's not a respected person with God.

We have a master in heaven, and he's not looking so much at the distinction of persons, whether they be a slave or a master, an employer or employee, a wife or a husband in that case, in one case as well. But there's not respected persons with him. We are serving God, we are serving Christ in whatever role he has placed us in.

We have to remember that in our daily life, that we are serving as unto a heavenly master.