Battle Ready "Relationships that Reflect Jesus" Ephesians 5:22-23 Pastor Daniel Reese

Good morning.

Did I turn?

There it is.

Sorry.

I want you all to know I appreciate Pastor Scott.

I don't know if he's here yet today, but I appreciate Pastor Scott filling in for me last week,

Pastor Drew the week before.

I got several comments this last week of Pastor Scott preach with walking pneumonia.

What have you done for me lately?

Right?

And I want you to know, just real honest, we had the pine card derby this last,

uh, Wednesday and I was putting together my son's car and I did end up with a blood blister.

Alright?

And so I am preaching this morning with a blood blister.

So take that, Pastor Scott.

We are going to finish chapter five of Ephesians this morning and then we're going to take a little break

for Easter and a couple of other different things before we jump into chapter six.

I knew of Pastor six.

Sorry.

This morning we're going to look at the largest chunk of scripture that we have up until this point

since we began Ephesians in the fall of 2022.

The reason for that is because there's so much in it that if we were to break it down,

we could potentially miss the big picture.

The topic today has not only to do with marriage, but also our relationships with one another.

So if you are not married, I don't want you to just kind of tune me out and think that this passage doesn't apply to you.

Even though parts of it might not apply to you in the stage of life that you were in,

the theme of this passage is relevant to all of us.

And so I'm going to ask Sina to come join me as she reads our passage this morning.

As she comes, I would encourage you to find it in your Bible and I'd encourage you to stand as we honor the Lord together with this text.

All right?

Ephesians 5, 22.

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 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 her to the church,

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 ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.

Because we are members of his body, therefore a man should 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 of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Amen, let's pray, Father God, I thank you for this day, and I thank you for a church that values your Word.

And I pray, Father, that as we discuss this passage that you will fill us with your spirit, that you will open our eyes to not only who you are,

but also how we relate to each other as well. So God, I pray that you bless this time together. Amen.

When Sina and I lived in Ohio, we were in the midst of church, of planting a church, and I had this friend of mine who was in the middle of seminary.

He had never been a pastor up until this point. He had actually never had a job in the church up until this point.

He graduated college and went straight to seminary full time, and he began reading some books about church planting,

and then he started teaching on, well, this is how you plant a church, and it infuriated me, because I was in the middle of it.

I was in the struggle trying to start something essentially from scratch, and then I have this guy over here who's never worked in a church

trying to tell me how to be a successful church planner.

When in reality, his opinion shouldn't have mattered up until this point. He had no experience whatsoever,

but he was trying to come off as this scholar in this arena. Now, for those of you that don't know, I'm not a woman.

I don't know what it is to be someone's wife, and so as I was thinking about this text, I thought about my friend who thought he was a church planner.

I don't believe that I am the best person to tell women how to be submissive to their husbands.

Now, I could, but I felt it would be better received by you ladies if I let Sina handle that part of the text.

I've asked her to join me here this morning as we go through this.

Before we jump into verse 22, though, I'm going to kind of do a little bit of reverse engineering on this passage, because there's a theme here.

It actually started in verse 21 where Paul writes that we are to submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.

I think it's important that before we look at marriage relationships, we need to look at the relationship between Christ and His church.

There are several verses in this passage that allude to the idea that marriage is the earthly representation of Jesus' relationship with His people.

Whether you are married or not, this applies to you.

Paul says that Jesus gave Himself up for His church.

He sanctifies His church.

He cleanses His church.

Because of His love for us, He is able to present us before the Father without any spot or wrinkle.

Because of Jesus, you and I can be seen as holy and without blemish.

Because Jesus was submissive to the will of the Father, you and I have redemption.

And when we submit to one another, we honor the person and work of Jesus.

Now, that 21st verse is a hinge.

It's a hinge between two passages.

It's a transition from the command to be filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit in verse 18 to the section that begins in verse 22 and runs all the way through chapter 6 of verse 9.

Paul writes about our relationship with others in our family and in our workplace.

It is both a result of being controlled by the Holy Spirit and the key to our relationship with others.

It is also the key to this love relationship between Jesus and His church.

Now, Paul could have chosen to use a variety of different words to describe the relationships among those in the body.

How he intended to describe a relationship of an authoritarian leader in which people were to obey that relationship.

They were to do what they were told.

He could have used the word that's used in chapter 6 to describe how children are to obey their parents or slaves

and how they were to relate to their masters.

But instead, he chose to use this word translated submit or be subject to depending on your translation, which is often misused by those who don't understand this meaning.

Now, Pastor Drew mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it is a military term.

And it means to take a position in a phalanx of soldiers.

Now, a phalanx is a military formation that was developed by the Greeks in which the infantry members would march in close proximity to one another in a rectangular formation.

Now, in such a formation, although one person gave the orders, the strength of the phalanx was that all the soldiers shared equally in the task.

The word carries more the idea of proper order than it does the idea of a superior with his or her subjects.

Submission in this context is never forced, but it's a voluntary act that we choose to do out of reverence for Christ.

Now, Jesus is the head of the church and he doesn't make us pure by being a taskmaster.

Instead, he lovingly leads us.

He cleanses us.

He cares for us because that is his character.

So we as a church, we form a phalanx.

We are to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God and we are to be willingly submit ourselves to Christ as our head.

And when we do that, when we submit ourselves under his authority, we become a much stronger force to stand against the enemy.

But when we fail to move together, it creates the opportunity for the enemy to divide us.

It wouldn't go well.

Now, I'm no military expert, but I don't think it would go well for an army that is entering into a battle to not submit to the general.

If those who are in the army decide to follow their own preferences or to follow their own direction of what they think is right,

they become weaker as an army and they become more susceptible to defeat.

So as Christ leads us, we must submit if we were to have any shot at fighting off the enemy.

That means we move together.

That means we do things together and view the well-being of the entire church as more important than our own preferences.

Now that we've established that, let's look at the wife's relationship to her husband.

Now, ladies, I don't know about you, but when I read a verse like this that says,

I have to submit to my husband as the head of me, I get a little cringy inside.

That's my automatic reaction is to cringe.

And the very fact that that's my automatic reaction to these verses is proof that we live in a fallen world.

You see, our marriage relationships, our relationships with each other are supposed to point people to Jesus.

And anything that is pointing people to Jesus is glorifying God, and Satan is out to utterly destroy anything that glorifies God.

And so he wants us to look at these passages and at the very least find them controversial, but they're not.

Submission is not a bad thing.

Even the secular world doesn't see submission as a bad thing.

You have your CEOs, your bosses, and those that are subordinate under them.

You have your ranks in the military.

Just about every entity and organization that there is has people in authority and people subordinate under them.

So submission is not a bad thing, but Satan would have us think that it is because it's in the context of the Bible and in male-female relationships.

And so women might be tempted to look at this as something that is sexist when we are told in the Bible to submit to our husband as the head of us.

But today I want to challenge the wives and hopefully all of you to view this passage a little differently with a different attitude.

First, I want you to see that this is an overarching opportunity that we are given to be more like Jesus.

Philippians 2-3 tells us that even though Jesus was God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself.

He made himself a servant in the form of a man and he was obedient even to death on a cross.

Being submissive does not mean that you are less than anybody.

Jesus was the king of kings.

He was the one through whom all things were created and yet he submitted himself under the government and the priest and his earthly parents.

I cannot imagine how hard that would be because I struggle just as imperfect as I am.

I still struggle to submit myself under the authority of people that I feel like maybe don't do the job as well as I could or that I don't think have earned that position of authority.

Wives, you might think that you could be the head of your household better than your husband and maybe you could, but so could Jesus and yet he was the model of submissiveness to us.

And so we are to follow his lead in this and it's hard.

It can be really hard at times and it's sanctifying.

But Jesus is our model and he gives us the power of his Holy Spirit to obey that command.

So I want you to look at this as a challenge to be like Jesus.

In the following verses, the men will be outright challenged to be like Jesus to love their wives like Christ love the church.

But I want you to see your command also is to be like Jesus.

He is our model.

So they call us to be like Jesus firstly and secondly they call us to trust God and his design for marriage.

Ephesians 5 wasn't written because all the men proved to be these wise and good husbands.

That's not why it was written that way.

It was written because God is a wise and good father.

He created us. He knows what's best for us.

Now I won't pretend that I always just read these verses and I'm like, okay, great.

I struggle with them sometimes.

Sometimes I'm like, I flat out don't agree.

But whether or not I like them or agree with them does not change the fact that this is the truth of God's word.

It is what it is.

And when I struggle to accept what scripture is telling me, I have to lean on the character of God.

I have to lean on who I know God to be and he is good.

I know that his precepts are perfect.

I know they are practical and I know that they are for my good.

I know that he has a plan for me and it is good.

And I'm going to hold fast to that whether or not I fully understand the logistics of how I'm supposed to do that.

When we first moved to La Mesa, Texas in 2012, pretty quickly some members of this tiny dying church approached us about Daniel being the pastor of that church.

And I was against it immediately.

That church was like a hot mess and I wanted nothing to do with it.

And I even called Daniel after hearing about this and I said, run, run far away.

Don't even answer the phone when they call.

We don't want to go there.

Like I knew best.

And one night, really softly we're laying in bed and he says, I think God is calling me to go help this church.

And I was like, are you serious?

I thought I'd already settled that for us.

We're not doing that.

And you have to understand that in this time we had just moved, we were living with my parents, which is a hard situation anyway.

And our marriage was kind of struggling and I was struggling to trust Daniel's wisdom in some things.

But he said, I feel like God is calling me to do this.

Will you pray about it?

He didn't demand that this is what we're going to do.

He didn't dictate it.

He wanted us to be unified under the leadership of Christ.

So I prayed about it pretty much knowing what the answer was going to be.

And God didn't say clearly, yes, you should go there or no, you should not go there.

But I clearly sensed in my spirit that he was telling me to follow the leadership of my husband in this.

And so I did.

And going to that church has been, was one of the greatest blessings of my life.

I'm so glad that I followed his leadership and I'm so glad he was listening to the Lord.

There's been a lot of times when I have doubted Daniel and doubted his, his wisdom or something.

And I've wondered how God would possibly expect me to be submissive to him.

But God has reminded me over and over again that the Holy Spirit lives in him.

And that is who I'm trusting in those situations.

I am trusting God.

I am trusting that God is not done working on him.

I am trusting that God will bless me for my obedience.

I am trusting that God will bring about good for us.

And I pray.

I'm not even sure how much I would pray honestly if I were not married.

But nothing drives you to your needs more than living with somebody that you can't control.

So it drives me to my savior because I know that I need him to do this.

I know I need the Holy Spirit to help me fulfill this command.

And I know that the Holy Spirit's power is at work in me and at him and in Daniel.

So these verses challenge me to be like Jesus and these verses challenge me to trust God and his design for marriage.

And his design for the husband's relationship to the wife is a beautiful thing.

Now, if you've been in church any amount of time, you will know that there's different words for the word love.

Now, we miss that sometimes in our English translations, right?

Like, I love fajitas, but I also love my wife.

Now, thankfully, I don't love those two things in the same way, right?

And so what does it mean? What is Paul saying when he says, hey, you need to love your wife?

Well, he doesn't use the Greek word eros, which is the physical love between a husband and a wife.

He doesn't use the word phileo, which is used to describe a brotherly love.

Instead, you know this, if you've been in church, he uses the word agape, which is the love used to describe God's love towards us.

And really, there are times where that's extremely difficult.

It's extremely difficult. I mean, it's easy to love Sina.

When everything's going well and we're getting along, it's another thing to love her with that kind of love when she's getting on my nerves.

I never get on your nerves.

God's love towards us is sacrificial. It's never ending.

It's not just vagant. It's extravagant.

It's extravagant.

It's extravagant.

Scripture says that when we were at our worst, that's what Christ gave himself up for us.

He didn't wait until we cleaned ourselves up. He didn't wait until we got our act together.

He laid down his life for us when we didn't deserve it.

That's how we were to love our wives.

It's easier to love our wives on our wedding day when the future is bright, when she looks beautiful, walking down the aisle towards you.

When you still have in your imagination that she is perfect, it's another thing to love your wife like Christ loves the church.

When she forgets to put her car in park and it goes through a brick wall.

Never happens.

We should have.

I'm not used to running commentary behind you.

In all honesty, I didn't fully understand how difficult it was going to be to love like Christ until I got married.

There were times when we were seeing a set of things or did things that hurt me deeply.

There were times early on in our marriage where I didn't know if I would make it another day with her.

In those moments, it sure is hard to love like Jesus and I failed in that way time and time again.

It's hard in those moments to put her needs above my own.

It's hard to remember that moment when she was dressed in white and she looked radiant walking towards me.

The reality though is that before the foundation of the world, when all of my sin was future sin, Christ chose me and gave himself up for me.

He humbled himself from his rightful place next to his father so that he could show me how much he loves me.

Knowing I would put other things before him.

Knowing I would not honor his commands. Knowing I would not represent him well on this earth at times.

Knowing I would try and do things my own way.

He still said he's worth it.

And I'm to love my wife in that same way.

When she doesn't answer the phone that I pay for.

When she forgets to do something that I've asked her.

When she walks out in her robe wearing things on her face that are supposed to prevent aging.

I still love her in those moments.

When life is hard and we don't get along.

When those moments come where I feel like she's trying to hurt me on purpose.

I'm still commanded to love her with a sacrificial love.

And I truly believe that the main reason that Christian marriages are ending at almost the same rate as secular ones

is because men have failed to sacrificially love their wives.

If it cost me time. If it cost me money. If it cost me convenience.

I am commanded to love Sina anyway.

How can you as a husband love your wife better?

Have you ever asked her that?

Have you ever pulled her aside and said hey how can I love you better?

What can I do to make our marriage stronger?

What do you need from me that I'm not giving to you now?

Maybe you should ask her that today.

Finally I want to tie all this together by reminding us.

By reminding all of us that we are stronger together.

That goes for marriages and that goes for our relationships in the church.

Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 412, a three fold cord is not quickly broken.

You and I have a relationship of some sort.

You and every person here has a relationship of some kind.

If we don't have Christ in the middle of it.

If Christ isn't the focus of every single relationship that we have.

It's far too easy for the enemy to destroy them.

In Christ we might not have the same interest but we have the same calling.

That means that when we don't agree with one another.

Whether that be in my marriage with Sina, whether that be with my children.

Whether that be with you and I in this church.

We can find common ground because of Jesus.

We can pray through things together because he is the mediator.

The enemy wants us to gossip.

He wants us to find small pockets of people that will agree with us so that we can complain freely.

He wants us to become bitter and angry at one another because in doing so that weakens our army.

That weakens the failings.

And when our army is weak, when our army is divided, when there's a group of people saying,

This way is better. It allows the enemy a better chance at defeating us. We are stronger together.

We have to move together in submission under the authority of Christ.

That way it brings honor to Christ. That way we can attack the enemy.

That way we can storm the gates of hell together.

We have to move together in submission because that is what brings honor to Christ.

So practically speaking, submitting it to your husband as the head of the family does not mean that you never disagree.

It does not mean that you have no opinion or have to become a doormat. It means embracing your God-given title as helpmate.

This is the word that was used to describe Eve for Adam.

It's the same word that's used to describe the Holy Spirit and God the Father throughout Scripture.

That does not mean that you are His Holy Spirit. It's just the same description.

We are to be our husband's helpmates.

It's a high calling. It means you have the opportunity to be your spouse's biggest influencer, his biggest cheerleader, and his biggest prayer warrior.

There was a time in our ministry in Lomisa that we were having some family struggles, and Daniel was worried that this might disqualify him from being a pastor.

In a moment of weakness and frustration, he had a letter of resignation ready to go and was going to submit it to the elders.

In my flesh, I wanted to throw a bit of a fit at the thought of him uprooting our lives and changing it so drastically.

I didn't feel like he was thinking through it, and I just wanted to tell him what was up.

I truly felt led by the Spirit to try to help him see the bigger picture and to simply ask him not to submit it that day.

To sleep on it. To just give it a beat before he turned it in.

We prayed about it, and Daniel changed his mind. He persevered through that trial, and he came out on the other side of Better Shepherd for the church.

That was one of those moments where she truly was my helpmate. There's been many of those since then, but it was in that moment where if I didn't have her, where she wasn't submitting to the authority, where she wasn't loving the Lord,

I could have made a decision that would have changed the trajectory of my family.

Guys, loving our wives looks a lot of different ways. Paul says that Jesus loved the church in a way that he could present her in splendor.

Now, I don't know if any of you can relate to this, but when I was working as an electrician, I was around a group of guys all day long.

Most of them were married. Some of them just had long-term girlfriends.

And what these men would do almost every single day, multiple times a day, was complain about their wives.

She's a nag. She does this wrong all the time. All she does is spend money. She is so bad at cooking, I don't know that she could make a bowl of cereal.

So me being the pastor that I was, I pulled up that verse that says, it's better to live on the corner of your house than to live with a nagging wife.

Just kidding, I didn't do that.

One of the best ways that I found that I can love my wife like Christ loves the church is to present her with splendor.

So in the middle of all that complaining, I would chime in and say how awesome Sina is.

How much I love being married to her. How my life is so much better because of her.

It's one of the best ways that I can share the gospel because it's a picture of how much the Lord loves us.

So men, I'm going to challenge you to constantly, continuously present your wife in splendor. That's how to love her well.

We can talk all day about practical practices and respecting your husband. That last verse today said, and wives respect your husbands.

So we can talk about that. We could do a whole series on these passages today. But honestly, I feel like actions follow attitude.

And so I want us to have the right attitude. And I encourage you to have a proper attitude towards your husbands by acknowledging the load that they carry.

They are the head of the family, and this is by God's design. And when I really think about that, I don't want that job. That is a heavy burden.

I think that's the reason that the Levitical sacrifices in the Old Testament were male animals.

The priest would put his hand on the head of the animal, and it was a symbolic transfer of the sin from the people to the animal, and then the animal would have to die for those sins.

Our husbands can't take away our sin any more than that animal could. But they are the ones who are called to carry that load.

They are the ones who are called to sacrifice. They have a high standard set for them by God.

They are the ones that are responsible for the spiritual health of the family. That's a heavy load to carry.

And when I think about that and keep that in mind, it softens my heart towards my husband, and it drives me to my knees for my husband.

Pray, ladies, pray for your husband every day. And when I willingly submit to Daniel, and when I give him respect, whether he has earned it or whether I think he deserves it or not, it bolsters him, and it encourages him.

And then God is able to use me to help Daniel become the kind of man that can love his family like Christ loved the church.

So where do we need to be better? Where do we need to seek reconciliation and forgiveness?

Man, where have you failed to love your wife like Christ loves the church? Women. Where are you struggling to submit and trust your husband as he leads you?

Church, where do you see yourself trying to break off from the failings and head in your own direction?

We are stronger together when we seek after the Lord's will, not only for our lives, not only for our marriages or our families, but also for this church.

When we move together, when we attack together, the enemy doesn't stand a chance.

So we've got to fight for it. We've got to humble ourselves constantly. Even though I think something might be right, and this is the way we should go, if it's not how the Lord's leading,

then I've got to keep my mouth shut, don't I? So here's how I would like to end today.

We're going to sing a song here in just a few minutes. Time for a response. You can sing along or you can walk out the back door.

It's whatever you feel like, but I feel like we need to just kind of spend some time this morning.

Maybe you grab the hand of your spouse that's sitting next to you, and maybe you're in the middle of a horrific season right now.

Maybe you were where we were several, many years ago, where we're like, I don't know that I want to do this the rest of my life.

Maybe you just grab their hand and say, I'm so sorry that I failed in this way or this way. We're going to be better.

And so if that's you, then I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to, seeing how I'll be right down here, I'm going to invite the elders, of course, to be here to minister to you in that moment.

But if we can pray with you, offer any sort of advice to you, we want to make ourselves available to you.

Or maybe you're not married. Maybe you're engaged, maybe you're single. It doesn't matter.

I hope that as you sat under this this morning, that you understand this is what a marriage should look like.

This is the way that God ordained it and laid it out because that's what's best.

And maybe you're in this church and you've just had a hard time submitting to people.

You've had a hard time honoring the Lord in that arena. Maybe today we just laid that out at the altar.

So I'm going to invite the worship team to come up. I'm going to pray for us.

And we're just going to ask the Lord to work and minister in this place.

And however he leads you, whatever he's calling you to, will you respond?

Father, I pray right now that you will speak to our hearts.

I thank you for the beauty that is marriage.

I thank you that this is how you've ordained it. Some days are harder, but God, we still trust the process.

And so Father, I pray for reconciliation to come to this room today.

I pray for salt hearts to come to this. I pray for humble attitudes to be in this place today.

And so God, will you move? Will you speak? Will your voice be louder than anything else we hear in this place right now?

And we're going to respond to your name. I ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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