Cocking, Roger: Marriage-04 ~ Submission

Ephesians chapter five and verse one. Be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love. Live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Verse eighteen: Do not get drunk on wine wherein is excess. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music or melody in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to set her apart, literally, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a glorious church, a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect, reverence or respect her husband. Now, we have to get the setting for this passage because the setting makes it so much more emphatic. And that first verse tells us that we should be imitators of God, and that we should live a life of love. And what is the measure that we should love? As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. When one gives himself up for another, that is to God a fragrant offering and sacrifice. That is, as it were, copying the Lord Jesus Christ, who was in all things well pleasing to his Father, and in all things a fragrant offering and sacrifice. And then it tells us in that verse eighteen that we should not get drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Now, this expression, be filled with the Spirit, we must examine that, and we must examine what follows carefully. But in order to get the setting, let us, uh, go back to John chapter seven. John chapter seven and verse thirty seven. On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, if a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him, will flow out of his innermost being. By this he meant the spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Now, the literal reading of John seven thirty seven would be, let him keep coming and let him keep drinking. It's the continuous present tense, and it's not asking for this water that's spoken of as actually taking it. Let him keep coming, let him keep drinking it, let him keep taking it in. And that, of course, is what we have in Ephesians chapter five and verse eighteen. There's a continual drinking which results in a continually out- continual outflowing in John seven, As we continually drink of the Spirit of God, there is a continual outflow from our lives to others. One day in Colorado, I, many years ago, I went up Gold Camp Road and, uh, stopped my car and parked it and walked up a trail up into the mountains. I knew about this trail, I'd been up it before, sometimes took the family children. This day I was alone. I wanted time to meditate and be alone with the Lord. And as I walked up this trail, I came to the waterfalls, and I hadn't thought about it before. I'd been praying as I walked up the trail and praising the Lord. And I got to that waterfalls, and I stood and watched it. And the water was pouring over the rocks and dropping down about fifteen or twenty feet onto the rocks down below. And, uh, it had evidently been doing this for a long, long time because in these tremendous, I can't quite reach far enough, granite rocks at the bottom, uh, the water had washed out and made a dish at the bottom, a concave place in that rock there at the bottom, as the water had tumbled down all of these years, it had made a concave place in this tremendous rock, granite rock. And, but I watched the water kept falling into this basin, but it didn't stay there. It kept flowing out and going down the stream, and on down the stream were many houses, and some of that water was being used to water lawns down along the way. If there had been farms down there, the farms would have been irrigated by this water and refreshed by it. Many trees were going along the creek all the way down, and bushes and so on, and they were like the tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also does not wither, and whatever he does prospers. And it was a great object lesson to me. You see a pool of water into which water is not flowing and out of which water is not flowing, and it becomes stagnant. How come many of our lives as believers become stagnant? Because we're not drinking of the Spirit of God continually. We're not feeding upon the Lord as he has revealed to us in his word. We're not taking in these precious truths of God. We're not worshiping, we're not meditating, we're not studying, we're not enjoying the things of God as we should. But then, let me use another example. Here's a person that's always studying the scriptures and never giving out to anybody else. He can become like the Dead Sea, which has accumulated a tremendous, vast wealth of minerals and so on, but it never flows out to anybody else. And God would have us continually drinking of the Spirit of God, the continual inflowing into our little pool, our little basin, as it were, and the continual outflowing to others. And as that water flows into the basin, it cleans the basin, doesn't it? You wouldn't expect the, that hollow place, that pool in that rock, you wouldn't expect that rock to be dirty, would you? You wouldn't expect the water in there to be dirty unless the water flowing in was dirty, which it wasn't. It was coming from pure snow melting up in the mountains way above. And I drank out of that. And I was refreshed with that clear, cold spring water, so soft. There's nothing here tastes like that. I haven't tasted anything like that since I left the mountains, the high mountains, because you can't drink out of the streams lower down. Well, that's the picture of what you and I should be, continually taking in of the Lord so that we can continually be flowing out to others, to refresh and to help others. Now, in Ephesians five eighteen, we have exactly the same thing. There's a continuous present tense, but it's coupled with an imperative, a command. The command is you be filled with the Spirit. And the reason I say allow yourself is because it's in the passive voice in the Greek. So here's a continuous process. Here's something that's passive. You present to the Lord, in other words, a vessel which he can fill. And what goes before in chapter five and in the last half of chapter four tells us what is necessary for the cleansing of our vessels. We need to be cleansed so that the Lord can fill us with his spirit. And when he finds a clean vessel with a desire, a heart for him, he will fill us. And that's why it's imperative you be filled. You allow yourself to be filled, and you allow yourself to continually be filled. I've got to present a clean vessel to him. I've got to look up to him with desire. He's the one that does the filling, but I'm the one that's to see to it there's a clean vessel. Now, we have been, our sins have been put away. Their judgment is gone when we're believers, when we know the Lord, when we're saved. But we get contaminated in our walk through this world, don't we? In our life in the world. And we need to come to the Lord with confession and appropriate his forgiveness and cleansing from all unrighteousness. And we need to be continually reading the word of God, which will cleanse our vessels, our person, our innermost being. Now, that is a message in itself, and I just very briefly pass over it because this is so important. A Christian husband and wife, to fulfill what is commanded them a little later on in the chapter, must have this filling of the spirit, this fullness of the Spirit. In other words, we must be under the inf- influence and control of the Holy Spirit of God. We must allow him to control us in all that we do in our lives. It's a terrible thing to be under the control of any person except the person of the Spirit of God, or God himself, we could say. To be under the control of any other person in this world can bring terrible results. You know, that's what happens in cults. You remember Jim Jones? He got these people under his control. He said, what I say about the scriptures and anything else is law. I know what the right answers are. You must follow me. You must do as I tell you. And he got an unnatural, psychological, and of course, as we look back over, it must have been a demonic hold on these people. Setting himself up in the place of the Spirit of God as the one who had the right to dictate to these people. That's what a cult is. It's an unnatural, undue subjection to a person. To all he says, to his thinking, it's a- allowing him to brainwash you and everything else so that you have no thoughts of your own. Now, we don't find this in the husband and wife relationship. We find something entirely different, something far higher. The wife is not to be brainwashed by the husband, for example, nor vice versa. Now, following this verse eighteen, we have the, uh, the evidences of being filled with the Spirit of God. Uh, the chief evidence of being filled with the Spirit of God is not more, more- is is moral. These evidences are moral evidences, really spiritual. They're not miraculous. Evidence of you and me being filled with the Spirit of God is moral, and not miraculous. The fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control. These are the things which are evidences of the filling of the Spirit of God. And in verse... verses, uh, nineteen and twenty and twenty one, we have four present participles following this im- these two imperative verbs in verse eighteen. And the four present part- participles are speaking, singing and making melody, giving thanks, and submitting. Four things: speaking, singing and making melody, giving thanks, submitting. Now contrast drunkenness with the spirit's fullness. When one is drunk with alcohol or any other drug, whatever it might be, one loses his self-control. But when one is filled with the Spirit, he has positive self-control. And self-control, in Galatians five, is one of the evidences, one of the fruits of the Spirit. And so the fullness of the Spirit of God, being filled with the Spirit of God, results in an intelligent, controlled, healthy relationship with God and with each other in this world. The excess of drugs, alcohol and all the other drugs, makes us like beasts, and worse. But being controlled by the Spirit of God makes us like the Lord Jesus Christ, something which is beautiful. And so the signs again of the fullness of the Spirit. Spiritual fellowship. That's man word. We have fellowship with one another. It says speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Oh, what a joyous way to speak to one another, isn't it? And how we can lift each other if we come to each other with psalms and hymns and spirit. The second is heartfelt worship. That's God word. Worshiping him from the heart. He knows what's in our heart. Third, thankfulness to God. That's God. In all things, we should be thankful to God. And then fourth, humble submission to one another. That's manward. And in this connection, we have the command, the imperative, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now, the Christian home is one where the Lord is honored. It's a fellowship based on love and obedience. Love for each other. Obedience, the wife obedient to her husband, the children obedient to father and mother, and all obedient to the Lord. And Joshua twenty four fifteen, Joshua told the children of Israel, choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Sometimes we go into a home and we see this, Christ is the head of this house, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation. Is he? Is he in your home? Is Christ the head of your home? Is he the unseen guest at every meal that you welcome? Is he the silent listener to every conversation? Oh, if we remembered that, we'd be more careful what and how we said, wouldn't we? What we say and how we say. It would save a lot of outbursts. And so we read, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Out of an act of obedience, as it were, to the Lord, submit to your own husbands. It doesn't say to somebody else's husband, it says to your own husband. Wives, submit to your own husbands as is, as is fitting in the Lord. And this is Colossians three eighteen. It's just a little bit different. Here in Ephesians in Ephesians five twenty two, it's wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. And in Colossians three eighteen, as is fitting in the Lord. Now, the word submit, the Greek word means to place under. It has to do with rank or position, and it has to do with subjection, which is equivalent to loyalty. When one properly submits, that one is loyal. It's a voluntary thing in obedience to the Lord, and isn't dependent on how one feels. You may not feel like submitting to your husband. This is especially true if the husband is not a believer, or if he's wa- a believer and not walking in fellowship with God, you may not feel like submitting to him. But you're told to do it anyhow. And you're told to do it out of obedience to the Lord himself. And it's to be shown, your submission is to be shown by obedience. Now, that does not mean that the husband is to be a dictator and the wife to be a slave. That's not what the passage is bringing before us. But, uh, it does tell the wife to submit, to be subject to, to submit to her husband as to the Lord, as is fitting in the Lord. Now, the wife is her husband's chief advisor, but the husband must make the decisions. Now, he can delegate to his wife certain areas. For example, most of us who are husbands like to delegate to our wives the responsibility of, uh, taking care of the home and, uh, the meals and things like that. And, uh, yeah, I found out it's not a very good idea to try to reorganize my wife's kitchen. I can get her all shook up by reorganizing it. She can't find anything. I'd better leave that in her hand. When I was busy, uh, with my vocation, gone a lot, how wonderful it was to know that she was taking care of things. That when I was gone, I could delegate to her the responsibility for taking care of the children, for disciplining them, for whatever was needed. She took care of them. She took care of the home. She did most of the buying for the home. This was her responsibility. And, uh, it's really not for me to question what she does unless it's something that's very obviously wrong, and then it ought to be done in the way that the husband should do it, according to the following instructions, with great self-sacrificing love. Of course, I'm setting forth the ideal. I- I- I'm not professing that I've lived up to these things. Don't accuse me of that. I w- if I had, I'd be a perfect man, but I'm not a perfect man, far from it. Yes, she's his chief advisor. The husband should make the decision. And it says to your own husband, and then also in Titus two five, if you want to jot that down, it says that wives should be obedient to their own husbands. And now, I heard someone say one time, I'm not sure who it was, one of the teachers, it was either Dan Smith of Emmaus or else it was Bill McRae, that he believed that if the wife needed to be dealt with for some reason by the brethren of the assembly, that they should deal with her through the husband. The question came up, what if her husband is not a believer? Still will, he said, still deal with her through the husband. Go to the husband first, even if he's not a believer, and present the problem. Something to think about, isn't it, brethren? Maybe we haven't always done things in God's way. You know, we, we should read also, uh, Hebrews, uh, uh, I mean, uh, First Peter chapter three. and I would like to do some exposition on this, but I guess I won't be able to this morning. We'll just refer to it very briefly. First Peter chapter three, wives, in the same way, be submissive to your husbands, so that if any of them do not believe the word. Now here's a situation where a husband does not believe the word. He's not saved. The wife is still to be submissive to him, it says. Wives, in the same way, be submissive to your own husbands, that if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without a word. The definite article is not in the Greek. It's not without the word, the word of God. It's without a word from the wife, without talk, that they might be won over without talk. How? By the behavior of their wives, by her loving submission. And then it tells something about her outward adornment, adornment. It shouldn't be a worldly lavish sort of a thing, but how much more important is the adornment of the meek and gentle spirit, which is as in the sight of God of great worth. And it says in this, in verse five, in the same way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who... does the word make you shudder? Obeyed Abraham and called him. That's held up in the New Testament as an example. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. And then there's a word for the husbands too in verse seven, which we want to refer to later on. Now, by her submission, a godly wife shows her relationship to the Lord, and this is especially true if, uh, the wife is a person who finds it difficult to be submissive. If she's the type of personality that's aggressive, outgoing, the leader type of person- personality, and many women are that. They're ex- excellent leaders. They have tremendous capacities, and oftentimes some of the women have greater capacities than their husbands by far. They're still to be submissive, lovingly submissive, and she shows that she has a right relationship with the Lord when she is lovingly submissive to her husband, especially if it's hard to be submissive to him. And the submission depends not on the husband's worthiness, but on the worthiness of the Lord himself, because he's the one that has asked it. You know, Paul wrote to the Romans and told them that they should be subject or be in submission to the powers that be. You know who was the reigning ruling power in Rome at that time? It was Nero, that wicked man who used to dip the Christians in hot tar and hang them up on posts around his garden and burn them to light his garden in the evening. That's the man that Paul said they should be submissive to, because he was the one who had the authority in the land. It's a far cry from our attitude in America today, isn't it? And one of the things that makes me cringe is to hear a man who aspires to be a president saying such terrible things about the president of the United States of America. It's a disgrace. Things like this ought not to be. God hears them, and there's a judgment day coming. So you see how far submission goes. Submission is something that is required of all of us to the powers that be, to one another, as is proper and fitting according to the word of God. We in the assembly are told to obey those that have the rule over us, those that are our leaders, the shepherds, the guides in the assembly. The rest of us are to obey them, to submit to them. Yes, submission is not a very popular word today, but it's in God's vocabulary, and God emphasizes it as one of the roads to blessing. May God help us for his name's sake. Uh, next week we want to look at the Christian husband and his responsibilities. Father, we thank you for the instructions of your word. We would err in so many things if we did not have your word to rightly instruct us. Help us to continually search the scriptures to find what is the right way, that which is right in your eyes, because this is only the only right way. And help us to be willingly submissive. Yes, may we allow ourselves to be filled with your spirit.