Marriage as a Gospel Showcase: Ephesians 5:28-33

Good morning, and what a blessing it is to study God's Word with you today. My name is Pastor Simon.

Our mission here at Dillingham Moravian Church is to make disciples of Christ

through the study of God's Word as we trust in Christ together.

Before Christmas, my wife and I went to one of the Christmas bazaars in the

middle school gym at the middle high school that we have here in Dillingham.

While there, I happened to notice that since the last time I had paid attention,

the case for the school trophies had been moved to another location.

And so for a few moments I went over and I looked at the new display and I saw

that there were many new trophies in the display case since the last time I looked.

The point with trophies is that trophies display the accomplishments and achievements

of the students in the school to all those who would visit.

And this is like how God has designed the covenant marriage.

The covenant marriage is a showcase to tell the world how much Christ loves his church. Let's pray.

Oh, Heavenly Father, we come into your presence in adoration,

in worship to you, you as Almighty God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

And we ask for your guidance today as we hear from your word.

May you teach us. May you show us yourself. show us who you are and how you

want us to live in regards to marriage.

Lord, I pray that you work in all of us, not just those who are married.

But all that listen, so that we may know the love of Christ and be able to live with your love.

We praise you and bless you. We thank you. In your precious Son's name,

Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Before the Advent season here at Dillingham Arabian Church, we had been studying

through Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which we return to today.

The main theme of Paul's letter was the unity of God in the Church of Christ

and how the church is to display the unity of God to each other and to the world.

Previously, in Ephesians 5, God, through Paul, taught us that believers in Christ

are to keep watch over their lives,

being careful to live their lives according to the ways of the Lord.

Paul communicated that since the days are evil and human systems and societies

will become even more evil before Christ returns,

We, as Christ believers, are to make the most of the time we have left to advance

the kingdom of Christ to the glory of the Father.

Moreover, within the relationship that we have in Christ, we as Christ believers

are to continually give thanks to God for everything.

Lastly, we must humbly submit ourselves to Christ's authority,

and as we submit to Christ, we must lovingly humble ourselves before each other,

recognizing the authority that God has given each of us in Christ.

And today we're going to continue in our study of Ephesians.

Ephesians chapter 5, verse 22 to 27.

Ephesians 5:22–27

Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church,

he himself being the Savior of the body.

But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their

husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself

up for her, so that he might sanctify her,

having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present

to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such

thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

There are two main truths that I want to bring to your attention today.

The first overarching truth that I see in this passage is that wives are to

be subject to their husbands as the Lord.

My father and many of my uncles were in the military, and they were placed under

the rank or authority of their commanding officers, and they were under orders

to obey their officers' commands.

Did that mean that my dads or my uncles or my grandpa could not do their commanding

officer's job as well as the commander could?

Quite possibly they could have even done a better job. However,

that was not the point. For better or for worse.

They were placed under the officer's authority and they understood that that

was how the system worked.

One of the reasons why my dad and uncles said that they were able to submit

to their commanding officers was because they trusted that their officers were

receiving their directions from their commanders who were seeing the big picture

and hopefully knew what they were doing.

They were getting their orders from above in the chain of command.

And I'm sharing this with you today because the concept of ranking under someone

in authority is what Paul was describing in Ephesians 5, verse 22-24.

Ephesians 5:22–24

Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church,

he himself being the Savior of the body.

But as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

The word that Paul used for to be submit or subject meant to rank under.

To be subject or submit means of submission involving recognition of an ordered structure.

Of the entity to whom which appropriate respect is shown.

However, it's essential to see that Paul did not write, wives submit to your

husbands because they are an authority over you. Absolutely not.

Paul prefaced wives ranking under their husbands with, as to the Lord.

It is within the ranking of the covenant relationship between God and the married

couple that Paul was teaching from.

God ranks first, then the husband and the wife.

Both husband and wife rank under God and take their orders from God.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 3 taught, But I want you to understand that

1 Corinthians 11:3

Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman,

and God is the head of Christ.

There is a hierarchy to authority in all life, for even Christ Himself takes

His orders from His Father.

One commentator wrote, As the church is in submission to Christ,

so also a wife should be to her husband.

It would be foolish to think of the church being head over Christ.

But submission does not mean inferiority.

It means that she recognizes that her husband is the head of the home and responds

to him accordingly without usurping his authority to herself.

However, there is something essential we cannot miss.

For wives to see their husbands as placed over them for God's good,

their husbands must be directed in his actions and decisions by God through

the study of the word and prayer.

Just like a soldier, a wife can submit herself to her husband when she knows

that her husband is receiving and obeying his orders from above.

However, since husbands and wives are one person of the Lord,

our wives must be involved in every part of our lives, including the decision processes.

For all Christ-believing husbands, we need to be getting our commands from above,

from the Lord through His Word and prayer.

We must be in the Word daily and meditating or thinking on it all the time.

A wife's godly submission to her husband takes a great deal of love and trust

in the Lord and in her husband.

Husbands, make sure you're easy to love and are trustworthy as you depend upon

the Lord for your strength and direction.

I also want to say that if we as Christian husbands had have lived according

to what God through Paul taught in the next section of Ephesians chapter 5,

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

then much of the abuses and challenges that women had endured at the hands of

men for millennia would not have happened.

And our Western society may have been radically different in that regard,

and some of the recent abuses of the feminist movement and their work with the

LBGTQIA movement and their fight for abortion rights may have not become so

widespread or happened at all.

In fact, abortion and LBGTQIA may not have become organized into movements in the first place,

because godly husbands are godly fathers, and most of these issues stem from

a dysfunctional home life and a lack of a godly father figure in their lives.

Up to this point, Paul addressed wives within the covenant marriage.

Now we'll look at what the Lord through Paul commands, husbands.

Paul continued to teach that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

I want to share with you a real-life story of Robertson and Muriel McQuilkin.

Robertson was the president of Columbia International University when his wife

Muriel was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Robertson was at the peak of his career. The university was thriving and training

young people to serve Christ.

At first, Robertson tried juggling his work at the college and his wife's health needs.

But as Muriel's condition worsened, Robertson had to make a choice.

He could leave the university or care for his wife.

And as he prayed over the situation, he realized he had already made his choice long before.

I promise that in sickness and in health, till death do us part,

he told the university leaders.

It's not that I have to, I get to.

For the next 13 years, Robertson put his career and accomplishments aside to

focus on the greater work of caring for his wife.

Husbands, love your wives, the Apostle Paul encouraged men in the church at

Ephesus. Love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Robertson would be the first to say that he's not a knight in shining armor.

He's just a husband who loved his wife and honored his commitment to her.

But his story points us to Christ's sacrificial love for His bride, the church.

We as Christ's trusting husbands have the privilege to love our wives as Christ

loved the church and gave Himself up for her.

Paul in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 25 to 27. Husbands, love your wives just

Ephesians 5:25–27

as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her,

so that he might sanctify her,

having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present

to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such

thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

What does it mean to actually love our wives as Christ loved the church?

Paul gave us some help by using the action word that is derived from agape, or the love of God.

Agape love, or God's love, means to have a strong non-sexual affection and love

for a person and their good as understood by God's moral character,

especially characterized by a willing forfeiture of rights or privileges on

another person's behalf.

Loving with God's love is having a strong affection for our wives based upon

God's character as we as husbands willingly give up our rights and privileges for our wives.

Paul in Philippians 2, verses 3-7 commanded, Do nothing from selfishness or

Philippians 2:3–7

empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Have this attitude in yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus,

who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equally with God

a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant,

being made in the likeness of men.

The reason why Jesus was able to

sacrifice so much was because he lowered himself in his own perspective.

This is what humility means, to lower oneself, so that the Father and we as

miserable human beings would be more important or more valuable to Christ than he was to himself.

Jesus could humble himself in this way because he was secure in his Father's love.

This is how Christ loved us. This is how we as husbands ought to love our wives,

by lowering ourselves in our

own perspective and viewing God as most valuable, that he is our treasure.

And in God, viewing our wives as more valuable, more important,

more significant than ourselves.

This is love. We cannot love unless we do this.

Now, this is super challenging, and it can be only accomplished through the

Holy Spirit's power and a lot of humility and prayer as we trust in Christ's

love for us moment by moment.

There's also another analogy that I want to point out to you about Christ loving his bride, the church.

In verse 26, Paul wrote, so that he might sanctify her,

having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present

to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such

thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

Although we as husbands cannot save our wives, nor can we sanctify her or make

her holy and blameless before God, we can be an instrument of God's help.

To help Christ, through the Holy Spirit, sanctify and grow our wives into holy

blamelessness that Christ bought for all believers in Christ.

And just as it was Christ's sacrificial love through His death on the cross

that made the way for us to be sanctified and cleansed by the blood of Jesus

as we responded to the cleansing water of the truth of God's Word,

so also the husband's sacrificial love for their wives allows the Holy Spirit

to work in our brides to cleanse them and grow them in Christ.

And since we are being cleansed in response to hearing and obeying the washing

of the cleansing water of God's Word,

regarding who Jesus is, what He has done for us, what He will do in the future,

we as husbands can lead our wives in the study of the Word so that the Holy

Spirit can do His cleansing work in her.

Additionally, to take Paul's analogy further, husbands may also present their

wives before the Lord when we are brought physically before the throne room of God.

In 2 Corinthians 11, verse 2, Paul warned the Corinthian church for being led

2 Corinthians 11:2

astray by another gospel.

This is what Paul said, verse 2, For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy,

for I betrothed you to one husband, meaning Christ, that I might,

here it is, present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

I share this scripture with you to show that it's entirely plausible that we

as husbands get to present our wives before God.

Oh, what a glorious and joyous day that will be.

There are five applications that I want to point out to you for verses 25 to 27.

The first truth that we can apply for us as godly husbands to learn is that

we are to love our wives with God's love, which is based upon Christ's character

as we joyfully give up our rights and our privileges.

Single men take note of all this.

One of the ways that we can sacrificially let go of our rights and privileges

for our wives is not to flaunt our authority over our wives,

unless absolutely needed.

What I mean by this is that we are not to misuse our authority or continue to

declare our authority to our wives because this will cause them to be embittered

against us and they're more likely to rebel against what God has taught.

For example, one time I said to Abigail, you know that you're supposed to submit to me as your husband?

To which she responded, well, yes, but you don't have to be rude about it.

And she was exactly right.

We as husbands are to lead our wives, not rule them.

Secondly, we need to love our wives in a way that they understand.

According to Gary Chapman, author of Five Love Languages, there are five emotional

love languages that humans communicate with.

The first is words of affirmation, second quality time, third is receiving gifts,

fourth is acts of service, and five is physical touch.

I encourage all of us as husbands, including myself, to study our wives to find

out what their love languages are.

My love languages range from words of affirmation to physical touch,

but for Abigail, quality time is her biggest way that she understands love.

And her quality of time is getting outdoors, being in the garden.

Berry picking, cross-country skiing and me reading to her.

My point with using this example is to impress upon us that no two people understand

love emotionally in the same way.

So we need to get to know our wives' love languages and then sacrificially put

our wants and even needs aside to make sure that our wives are loved well.

The third way to love others, especially our wives, is to love what they love.

My six-year-old son, Paul, has a favorite blanket that he cannot sleep without,

which he calls scratch-a-cat.

When Paul was younger, he left his blanket at the Dillingham Bible Fellowship

after a Friday night potluck. And this is across town.

So even though it was 10 p.m., I called up Pastor Rob and I drove back to Dillingham

Bible Fellowship where Rob graciously let me in to get the blanket.

I then returned the blanket to my grateful little boy.

I'm so thankful that we didn't leave the blanket in another state or something.

I share this story with you to explain that I went back to get Paul's blanket

at that late of night because Paul loves that blanket, and I was showing my

love for him in doing that.

For childish wives, it may be a favorite pet that they love.

When we first got married, I sacrificed my dislike for chickens and cats because

Abigail loved them. Now I love them both.

However, for mothers, the ones that they will love deeply is their children.

Husbands, we must love our children sacrificially. Not just because they're

our children, but because when we love our kids, we are loving their mother. Does that make sense?

Another of the most important ways to love our wives is to lead her in the study

of the Word or infusing our conversations with our wives with Scripture.

There is no command about doing Bible study with our wives, but it's an extremely

good practice so that the Holy Spirit can grow our wives and us in the Lord.

Also intentionally bringing up Scripture in conversation and talking about it

is a great way to let the cleansing power of the Word work in relationships with our wives.

And lastly, but most important, is the lowering of ourselves and considering

God as most important or significant than ourselves, and then in God,

seeing our wives as more important than ourselves.

When we do this, we realize that our wants and needs are not as valuable as

our wives are. And a fundamental aspect of humility and lowering ourselves before

God and others is service.

This aspect of love is one that is generic for all Christ's believers.

Mark 9, 33-35 recorded, And they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house,

he began to question them, What were you discussing on the way?

But they kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which

of them was the greatest.

And sitting down, he called the twelve and said to them, This is what I want you to see.

If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.

We as husbands are the head of

the wife in Christ, or we are first in the husband and wife relationship.

But in God's economy, that means that we are to serve our wife as Christ served us.

There are two key takeaways from today's passage.

The first essential truth that God has taught us through Paul is that wives

are to be subject to or ranking under their husbands as to the Lord.

Secondly, husbands are to love their wives just as Christ has loved his bride, the church.

It's so important to recognize that the ranking of both husband and wife are

designed to be of humble subservience to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, I truly believe that we as husbands, the leaders of our household,

when we truly grasp the sacrificial servant leadership of Christ and apply it

to how we love our wives, then God will truly work on our wives to grow them

into what they've been called to do.

You see, both submission and humble sacrificial leadership are core aspects

of love and worship to God.

And the more we love, and the more we worship God together, Father,

the more we reflect Christ's love for the church.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are thankful for You,

thankful for the institution of marriage, where You have shown us in a small

but great way the love that You've had for us.

Through your son for your church. Thank you. Use us, Lord.

Grow our marriages, marriages in this church, marriages of all those who are

listening, those who are planning to get married in the future, Lord.

Grow them, work in them, Lord.

Use the marriages amongst your church to grow their children.

And from those family unit, Lord, may you do a mighty revival in the Church

of Christ, and may that revival spread to everywhere in the world.

May people come to know Christ in droves as a result of your love being shown

in the family, especially in the marriage.

We ask this in your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, and we praise you, O Father.

In the name of Jesus Christ, we say, amen.

I'll leave you with this benediction. From Romans 15, verse 13,

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,

so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

Amen. Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless you all.