Ephesians: Singleness & Marriage in the Kingdom of God

One of my favorite shows is the show Friends.

Any Friends fans out there?

Let's go.

Let's go.

You know, I don't, it's that there's no like verse in the New Testament that says you should watch that by any stretch of the imagination.

But I watch it and I've been a fan of the show for a long time.

One of my favorite episodes is uh one of the Thanksgiving episodes.

So Monica, who I identify a lot with in the show, very type A, Enneagram one, if uh if I may say.

Very much a control person, very much huge expectations, very much wants everything to go a certain kind of way.

And when it comes to Thanksgiving as a host, there's a lot of pressure on this day.

There's a lot of expectation when it comes to Thanksgiving.

How many of you can connect with that, right?

Like thanks, like yeah, holidays, they're coming up, huge gift.

We all love the holidays.

Some of you are dreading them because you know there's a lot of weight, expectation, and responsibility that's gonna fall on you in the holidays.

And in this particular episode, Monica is responsible for putting together Thanksgiving for the entire friend group.

And they all have different expectations and things that they want and preferences that they have.

And so Monica's trying to please everyone in the room and everyone in the friend group with this Thanksgiving meal, and she gets overwhelmed.

And Rachel, being the good friend that she is, offers to help.

She says, Monica, I would love to help.

Let me help you.

You never let me help, let me help.

There's a reason Monica never lets Rachel help, because Rachel is not very helpful despite her best intentions.

Some of you are like, I am Rachel.

But but anyway, Monica relents.

She says, Okay, okay, Rachel, I'm gonna give you this cookbook.

Follow these directions to a T.

Not even you could mess this up, Rachel.

Not even you could mess this up.

And so Rachel turns to the dessert and she's she's been charged with the responsibility of making an English trifle.

A nice, a nice dessert dish that she is just fully equipped and ready to make, fully confident as she's going through the cookbook.

Everybody's coming up.

Can I have a taste?

What are you making?

You'll just have to wait and see.

It's a surprise, it's gonna be delicious.

Well, then, as this scene, Joey and Ross come over and they say, What is this?

Tell us what's in it.

And she goes, I made the English trifle, and here's what here's what it is: it's a layer of ladyfingers, jam, custard made from scratch, raspberries, more ladyfingers, beef sauteed with peas and onions, more custard, sliced bananas, whipped cream on top.

And you can feel the air kind of go out of the room, and Ross's face goes just like that when she gets to that layer of beef sauteed with peas and onions.

And he he goes, What is happening?

And he he he goes to the cookbook when Rachel walks away and he looks at it and he goes, Oh my gosh, two of the pages were stuck together and she made half an English trifle and half a shepherd's pie.

And so Rachel, they just don't want to let her down.

She's finally helped.

They want her to, they want her to feel good, so they're they're not gonna tell her that she messed everything up.

The dessert at Thanksgiving.

And so everyone sits down and they start to pass out the dessert.

They let everyone know, hey, she screwed this up, don't tell her, uh, just act like it's really good.

And she passes it all out, and all of a sudden, people just begin to disappear from the table.

One's like, I'm gonna go eat it out on the balcony.

One's like, I'm gonna go eat it in the guest room, one's like, I'm gonna go eat it in the bathroom.

And they just start disappearing, and what they're doing is they're getting rid of this disgusting dessert.

And Ross makes this comment.

He goes, It tastes like feet.

And just like that.

He goes, It tastes like feet.

And then Joey's Joey goes, I don't know what there is to complain about.

Jam, good.

Custard, good, beef, good.

You know, he's just like, he's just going with the flow.

And then eventually, as everyone starts to get rid of things, Rachel starts to realize what's going on, and then she goes over to the cookbook, rips apart the pages, and realizes and makes this statement, I wasn't supposed to put beef in the trifle.

And Monica's mother, like, you know, a lot of people's mother, maybe, goes, No, Rachel, you were not supposed to put beef in the trifle.

Your dessert was not good.

And the whole night is just kind of ruined.

The reality of the situation is like an English trifle is delicious.

And a shepherd's pie is delicious.

It's my wife's favorite thing on the planet.

But with ill-equipped hands and broken directions, what was meant to be good becomes bad.

And if you get the ingredients wrong, what was meant to be a blessing becomes a curse.

Right?

You take something really good, really delicious, you look at it in the cookbook, and you get some ingredients wrong, you put the wrong thing in the right place, like I don't know, beef and sauteed peas with jam and custard, and all of a sudden something that was supposed to be really good becomes really, really bad.

But it's not because trifle's bad, and it's not because shepherd's pie is bad, it's because the person making it was ill-equipped to handle it, and she got the directions wrong.

And what Ross and Joey knew, though, was that the issue wasn't Shepherd's Pie, it wasn't English trifles, the issue was Rachel's mishandling of the directions.

Because you're not supposed to put beef in the trifle.

Why am I using this story?

I think this is what has happened to both singleness and marriage in our current culture.

Is I think that people have judged and condemned these seasons and statuses of our lives, not on the merits of God's design, but on the results of people mishandling the directions.

People taking something that is actually meant to be good.

Singleness in God's word is good.

Marriage in God's word is good, but we take this and we misuse it.

We don't follow the directions the way that God tells us to follow the directions.

We get some things confused, we our brokenness enters into the situation, and something that was meant to be really good becomes really bad.

Something that was meant to be beautiful and a blessing becomes a curse.

But it's not because marriage is bad, it's not because singleness is bad, it's because the people are ill-equipped to steward it well and they mishandle the directions.

You know, a good thing becomes a bad thing when you get the ingredients wrong.

I think there's a lot of people they've gotten the ingredients to marriage wrong, they've gotten the ingredients to singleness wrong, they've got the ingredients to relationships wrong.

They get the ingredients wrong and all of a sudden something that was meant to be a good thing becomes a bad thing.

How did we get to this place in our cultural moment?

Where something that was always meant to be good and beautiful, that God designed and gave to us as a gift, all of a sudden becomes something that people dread.

That if you start to ask people about the about the blessing of marriage and family, what used to be sought, but used to be seen as something beautiful and amazing is now seen as the greatest burden and heaviest weight anyone could bear.

Why would you do that to yourself?

Despite the fact that statistics say that married people with families are the most satisfied people, or any of those other kind of statistics that pop up, yet there's this narrative that's been created through different personal experiences or through different beliefs that have happened where these are the most unhappy, miserable people in the world.

You look at the overwhelmed person on Instagram who, for whatever reason, posts their morning routine where their kids waking up at four o'clock throwing up when they're trying to get a workout in, and they post that publicly, and people are like, see, told you this is terrible.

And that becomes the narrative that everyone takes.

And they go, Man, something that God says, This is good, this is beautiful, all of a sudden becomes something that we resist and dread.

Or people who are in singleness.

Look at this season as this horrible burden, this curse, this awful thing that they're having to carry around when yet God calls this thing a beautiful thing.

God actually calls it a gift.

But how did we get here?

I think it's I think there's really three key things.

Is first and foremost, as always, there's the enemy's deception.

Like the scriptures call the enemy a liar, call him the father of lies.

The way that he wants to lead you astray, the way that he wants you to distrust or put your trust in wrong things or worship idols instead of worship the Lord, how does he use this?

Does he hop into your body and begin to puppeteer your life around?

No, he uses lies.

He whispers things.

And the thing that he does that's really cunning is a lot of times he'll he'll use an aspect of truth in order to catch you or to lure you and then lead you to a place that's not God's design or destination.

He does this in the Garden of Eden, where he takes an aspect of what God said and slightly twists it to get Eve to lead astray.

He tries to do this with Jesus in the desert.

He says, Jesus, you know God's word says, and then Jesus has to respond back to him.

He says, No, you need to finish your sentence.

God's word also says.

Because what he does is he takes something that sounds like truth that maybe you even know that's true, and then tries to lead you to a false narrative and to a ultimately bad destination.

And I think he's done this when it comes to marriage, he's done this when it comes to singleness, he's done this when it comes to sex, he's done this when it comes to all of these things.

Is the enemy, as always, gets in, gets adds a little deception to the mix, and leads us astray.

I think the second thing is the world's rebellion.

Like ultimately, a lot of people in culture, ultimately, you know, ultimately that we see throughout human history, and scripture tells us that the culture, the world, is kind of under the authority and the influence of the enemy, which is why we're called to not conform to the culture, but to but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind and then step back into the culture as people of influence.

So we're not supposed to let the culture dictate us, but we're meant to, by influence, help dictate the culture.

But the world's rebellion has now kind of leaked into the church.

And so now things that even though God's word says isn't his best for us or isn't his design, we now allow into our lives and see them as not very big deals.

You know, we begin to kind of classify sin and go, yeah, there's big sin, and then there's like little sin, and I'm I'm like in the little sin category, but then, and yet all of it is against God's best and God's design.

And with a little bit of enemies' deception and a little bit of a culture sprinkled into the world, we begin to let things slide and we and we end up missing out on God's best.

And so that rebellion becomes kind of the spirit of the age, and it loses its sting, but it doesn't lose its power and its ability to infect our lives.

And then lastly, I think I think a lot of it comes back to the church's misinterpretation and misapplication of things.

Like, there's, I mean, there's a hundred documentaries and a million articles that you can go to of how the church has has poorly stewarded scriptures like this in order to leverage power and to hurt people.

We've seen this.

Is it because that's what God's word says, or it's because that's God's character?

No, it's because bad men can step into somewhere, grab a microphone, quote some scriptures, and get authority and influence over people.

And the reality is that the church for far too long has been a safe place for abusers and people who desire power to come in and hide when it should be the most dangerous place for them.

Like, like I want you to know that if you're here and you have the heart of an abuser, I hope that we sniff you out and that you get exposed by the Lord and this becomes a not safe, a safe space for you to repent, and but not a safe space for you to hide.

We don't want it to be a safe space for dangerous people, but we do want it to be a safe space for repentant people.

Man, we do pray that God convicts us and of our sin and of our brokenness and that we bring it before him and that he transforms us.

Like that's the design of this.

Safe place for repentant people.

Not a safe place for abusive people.

And yet the church for far too long has been a safe place for dangerous people.

It's one of the highest viewed documentaries at the moment.

Where you look at it and you go, like, man, you even had structures in place.

Like you had you had elder meetings, you had deacons, you had all the structures that were there, and yet, because there was an evil heart in all of these levels, what was meant to be a protection ends up being the very thing that the enemy uses to hurt.

The church is just like anything else.

If you put it in the hands of bad and evil people, it becomes a vessel for destruction.

It's God's, it belongs to him, and he wants to place redeemed people in it and over it and gift them with the Spirit to lead it and to guide it.

But it can become a broken thing in the hands of the wrong people.

This is why Jesus always comes for the heart.

He always wants to transform people and then give them his mission.

But the reality of God's design is this that singleness and marriage are equally beautiful, but singleness and marriage are not equally common.

Okay?

And I think what we've done is we've allowed something that is maybe not as common, which is someone living in singleness for an extended period of time or even for all of their lives, and we've allowed the fact that that's not uncommon, that that's not common to actually become a centerpiece of why it may not be beautiful or may not be valid.

And I think it leaks into our hearts.

And so we have a lot of single people who are living in discontentment thinking that they're in an invalid or thinking that they're not beautiful because they have to get to a status or to a place that God actually blesses because where they're at is not is not a place of God's blessing.

When in reality, singleness and marriage in the New Testament scriptures and all throughout the scriptures are equally beautiful and valid to the Lord, but may they may just but they're not equally common.

First and foremost, I want to I want to just kind of share a quick word on singleness.

That's not what the text is speaking to, but I just want to speak to it in the room.

Singleness, first and foremost, is a gift to be stewarded.

Singleness is a gift to be stewarded from the Lord.

Singleness is a holy gift that's meant to be stewarded from the Lord.

It's a sacred calling.

I would, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, writes this.

He says, I would like for you to be free from concern.

Paul makes it very clear as he as he steps into this, as he steps into this text.

He's saying, Look, this is an opinion from me as an apostle.

He said, This is not God speaking to you, this is me speaking to you, led by the Holy Spirit.

I believe I have some authority to share to you, but I want you to know this is from me, Paul.

And Paul says, I want you to be free from concern.

An unmarried person is concerned about the Lord's affairs, how he can please the Lord, but a married person is concerned about the affairs of this world, how they can please their spouse.

And their interests are divided.

An unmarried person or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs.

Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit, but a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world, how she can please her husband.

I'm saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided or undistracted devotion to the Lord.

And so Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, he says, he says, look, here's what I want you to understand is that singleness is a gift that you've been given.

Some of you have been given this gift temporarily, others of you have been given this gift, and it's going to be yours permanently.

But he's saying, Man, all of you have been given this gift of singleness to steward.

And he said, the reason you have it is that you may secure an undistracted devotion to the Lord.

And what ends up happening for most people when they have singleness is they don't get an undistracted devotion to the Lord, they get an undistracted devotion to wanting to be married.

And they allow discontentment to drive that entire season of their lives.

And I've seen so many people who, because they thought they were gonna be married by 24, they're still living in discontentment and depression at 32, but instead what's happened is they've now wasted 10 years of their lives that could have been used for an undistracted devotion to the Lord and missional impact trying to get somewhere else.

And like we always say, God's never gonna call you to be unfaithful in one season so that he can get you to another season where you can be faithful.

He wants you to be faithful right now.

So he's saying, Man, Paul's saying, I want, I want you to really consider this.

I want you to really consider singleness.

Why?

Because you can have an undistracted devotion to the Lord.

He's just, he's he's just noting a reality that when you get married, your attention gets divided.

Right?

Can we agree with that?

Like, man, when you get married, all of a sudden you have other responsibilities that you have.

I heard Larry Osborne one time talk about the difference between calling and potential.

And he said, man, when you really think about it, the only person who can fulfill all of their potential, everything that they could ever be, is a single person.

And he said, but when you get married, he's like, man, all of a sudden, all the things that you could be as an individual now have to kind of take a back seat and your ambition starts to get pushed to where to, man, what are we meant to be as a family?

What are my responsibilities as a husband or a wife?

What are my responsibilities as a mother or a father?

What are my responsibilities that I have?

And there's so many people because they struggle in that season or they haven't counted those costs, they're still operating, trying to push out, trying to trying to they feel like they're being unfaithful to God because they're not reaching their personal potential.

When in actuality, they're in a new season where God's given them a divine calling, but they've but they're gonna have to lay down all the things that they could have accomplished in and of themselves in order to take up what God's now called them to.

He says, Man, this is just the reality of the tension that we just have distracted or divided attention when it comes to this.

Like, man, how many people have fulfilled all of their potential and sacrificed their marriage or sacrificed their family?

They got to make all the money, they got to climb the ladder, they got to do all the things, yet they lost their family, lost their marriage.

Think about the athletes, think about the think about the actors, the actresses, think about all the famous people who, yes, we look at and we go, look at all that they've accomplished, and yet we none of us see the the wake that's burnt down behind them.

And there's a lot of people in here you carry unnecessary guilt and condemnation because you feel like a failure.

Because you want to be able to be all of these things, and you can't.

And what Paul is saying is like, man, what you need to do and understand is that there's a tension, there's there's there's a cost to what you're stepping into.

And he he can what he's communicating is that singleness is not a curse, but singleness is a gift.

And yes, some of us, like I said, some of us, so for some of us, this gift is gonna be temporary.

A lot of us, statistically, most people are gonna end up married.

Most people at some point in their lives are gonna end up married.

So it's gonna be it's gonna be a temporary gift for however long.

But for some people it's a it's a permanent gift.

You know, Jesus specifically speaks to singleness.

Jesus was single first and foremost, and specifically speaks to singleness.

I think it's important for us to point out that if there was someone who stepped into human history to show us what it meant to be human, and then that person decided not to get married or have children, can we all agree that that that does communicate that someone who is not married and does not have children is not any less worthy value or human, right?

Can we just point that out?

But Jesus points out in Matthew chapter 19, verse 14, he says, for there are eunuchs, this is this is someone who would who who who is either single or could not have sexual activity or sexual relationships, and they would use this word to describe them.

Matthew 19:14

There are eunuchs who were born that way, there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus uses the term eunuch to symbolically describe three kinds of people who live without sexual relations or marriage.

First and foremost, he says, some people are born that way.

These are individuals who are born with conditions or disordered desires or just a natural lifelong lack of sexual desire that prevents any kind of godly sexual activity or sexual relationships.

And and I think Jesus is saying this is like, hey, some people are born that way, and and you're still beautiful and valuable.

And like God has a plan of purpose for your life.

Nothing's wrong with you.

The second thing is he said that there's people who've been made by men that they've that literally they've been they've been castrated or mutilated, forced into the state by others.

And Jesus steps in with compassion and he says, I know that this is some of your stories.

Maybe there was somebody in that room who used to be a slave and they were mistreated by an owner, and he's looking at them and he's going, like, man, I know your story.

You're so valuable, you're so beautiful.

And then lastly, he says, There's some that made themselves that way for the kingdom of heaven.

These are individuals who voluntarily choose lifelong celibacy to dedicate themselves fully to God.

Mainstream Christian tradition interprets this metaphorically as spiritual discipline, not physical self-harm.

And so Jesus looks, because and there, man, there are some people in this room who, because you have disordered desires or broken desires, you are now you are now having to place those desires, surrender those desires under the lordship of Jesus, knowing that you're committed to a life of celibacy and singleness.

And there's a way that you could look at that where that where that looks like absolute suffering and horror.

And in a culture like ours, people would look at that and they would go, like, man, you've lost the meaning of life.

You've lost something essential to your life.

And what Jesus says, He says, No, you haven't.

No, you haven't.

You're equally beautiful, equally valuable without all of these things.

And what's beautiful about this is that God makes eternal promises to single people.

I love this in Isaiah, I think it's 56.

He says, Let no eunuchs complain, I'm only a dry tree.

For this is what the Lord says, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughter.

I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.

And so he looks at me.

He goes, Look, there are some of you who are gonna be single for for for the entirety of your life, and you may, you may never have you may never have children to carry on your legacy or to carry on or to carry on your name into another generation.

But here's what he says, he says, but but I give you a better promise that you don't just need your name to go to the next generation.

I'm gonna make sure your name is remembered for eternity.

He says, I'm gonna write your name.

I'm gonna be, I'm gonna have a memory, I'm gonna have a memorium for your name, and it will never be forgotten.

He says, I'll give you a memorial, I'll give you an honor in my temple, a name better than sons and daughters, and I'll give you an everlasting name that will endure forever.

So your legacy may not be children, but do not let the enemy convince you that you have no legacy.

God promises you an eternal legacy, safe and sealed in his holy temple, never lost or forgotten.

And do not allow any kind of lie or discontentment lead you into compromise.

Because your single devotion is beautiful to the Lord.

Some of you may need to hear this: that single devotion will always be more beautiful and compelling than married compromise.

Single devotion will always be more beautiful and compelling than married compromise.

There's so there's so what God is not calling us to is to secure an undistracted devotion to the Lord in singleness and then get married and go compromise in our faith.

It's not what he's calling us to do.

To go now settle for less than his best, to now go to go worship the idol of money or security.

He's saying, Man, I want you to secure an undistracted devotion to the Lord, and I want you to have this and I want you to enjoy it.

And man, the the reality is that some of us are in this room right now, you're either in singleness and you're going, like, man, I need that.

What a beautiful opportunity to turn to the Lord and secure an undistracted devotion to the Lord.

Others of you are here and you're thinking, man, I've I've wasted so much of my single season.

Man, what a beautiful opportunity to turn and redeem this season.

For others of you, you're married or you're in you're in a relationship and you you look at that and you go, man, I feel like I wasted it.

Man, God can redeem any season that you're in, and it's going to be beautiful.

If you surrender it to him, give it to him.

Now, back to our text.

Thank you for that long segue.

I don't want anyone in this room walking out of here thinking.

Thinking that someone else or some other season or some other status is better or more beautiful than who you are and what you have.

Not one of you.

He loves you.

Your season, your status, who you are and what you have right now is beautiful and significant to him.

Alright, back to the text.

Marriage as a sacred calling and covenant partnership.

So, first and foremost, as we approach this text, and it connects to everything that we were just talking about when it comes to singleness, that Paul's focus throughout Ephesians is on how Jesus makes us a new and redeemed people living in the midst of the old broken world.

This has been Paul's goal the entire time.

Ephesians is all about the new humanity.

Jesus is making you new, making you beautiful, redeeming you, making you who and what you were always meant to be, and then he and then he sends you back into this broken old world as a new people who have a new name, new calling, new power to live within this broken context.

And once again, we have to remind ourselves as we approach this text that the original context is not chapters and verses.

Paul is writing this as one fluid motion and one fluid letter.

And so it all builds on top of the other.

And so, what's the context of this passage as we get to this?

Paul's just talked about a few different things.

He said, first and foremost, you got to put on the new self.

That meant if you're in Christ, you got to put on the new self.

You got to become someone new, you gotta, you gotta embody this new way of life, this new identity, this new name that Jesus gave you.

It comes with a new lifestyle.

You gotta put that on, you gotta walk in it.

The second thing he says is you're meant to be imitators of God.

That if you're gonna be known by Christ's name, you've got to imitate Christ's character.

The third thing he says is walk as children of light.

He says, Man, the world loves darkness.

You gotta walk as children of light.

And then he says, be intentional with how you live.

He says this earlier in Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

He says, He says, look, be careful how you live.

What's the opposite of careful?

Care less.

He says, so be intentional, be careful with how you live.

And then he adds this clause.

He says, Because the days are evil.

So what's he saying?

He's saying, look, you're surrounded.

The water you're swimming in is this broken culture.

And I want you to wake up every single day with an intentional vision and mission about who God has called you to be and what God has called you to do.

And you're meant to walk into that culture and live intentionally and carefully in a culture that lives care carelessly and recklessly.

And then he says, be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Be filled with the Holy Spirit.

One of the last things he tells us before getting into this scripture on marriage is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And so I think this is super important.

Because Christian marriage was an apologetic in the Greco-Roman world and it's an apologetic now.

And so as he's getting to this to the scripture about marriage, he's saying, look, none of what I'm saying is going to be possible for you or beautiful to you if all that I've already said is not a reality to you.

Right?

None of what I'm about to say is going to be possible for you or beautiful to you if what I've already said is not a reality for you.

If you're not putting on the new self, if you're not seeking to imitate God, if you're not walking as children of light, if you're not being intentional with how you live and caring about how you live in the world, and if you're not seeking to be filled and walk in intimacy with the Holy Spirit, nothing that I'm about to say to you is going to be beautiful.

And we say the same thing to you.

That as you approach this text, if you're not here seeking, going like, man, how can I become who God's called me to be?

As you approach this text, you're going to put the text under you're going to put the text in a in a in a judgment seat and you're going to try to step back and go, like, what do I not like about this text?

What do I not like?

What offends me and how can I resist it or get around it?

But he says that no, if if this, what we just talked about in chapter five, chapter four and chapter five, is a reality to you, then you're going to put this text under a microscope and you're going to go, God, how can I, how can I get in alignment with what you say is good for me?

He wants passive men who don't want to lead and want to sit and play games, to approach this text and go, Jesus, you're calling me to lead.

How can I lead?

He wants critical wives, critical wives to come to this text and go, God, how can I, Jesus, you're telling me that you want me to honor, to, to encourage my husband, man, how can I cheer my husband on in what God's called him to do?

And yet, for many of us, we're gonna look at the text and we're gonna go, maybe willing to do that, and that's where we get to go.

Okay, you don't need to go here, you need to go back.

You need to go back to putting on the new self, to being imitators of God, to walking as children of light, to being intentional with how you live, and you need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Because if that's true, then we want what he wants, amen.

We want what he wants.

Christian marriage was an apologetic in the Greco-Roman world, and it's an apologetic now.

What do I mean by that?

That when that what Paul is describing in this text is that, man, people are meant to look at a Christian marriage and see something very specific and beautiful about the character of God and go, wow.

And there's actually historical merit to this, that one of the things that actually attracted people in the Greco-Roman world to Christians was their marriage ethic, was their sexual and marital ethic.

They were actually drawn to them because it made zero sense, but they saw how people flourished in it and under it.

He looked at, he looked at the family, he looked at these marriages and he said, Man, all of you are flourishing in this context and in this design, but man, when you give me the directions or the ingredients of this, I don't like those directions and those ingredients.

And yet I'm looking at this, and y'all's society is flourishing, your people are flourishing, and yet our culture is breaking down.

And Paul says, It's because we're doing stuff a little bit different.

So, so before we even get to marriage, Paul is assuming something of both the husband and the wife as he's writing to them.

Remember, he's writing to the churches.

Paul is assuming that this is not two needy people trying to find their needs met in another person or trying to seek out their own personal happiness or personal contentment, putting this other person in a position where they can use them for their own fulfillment.

He's assuming that these two people have already answered the large questions of life, been filled with the Spirit of God, and are now stepping into a calling and a covenant partnership with Jesus at the center.

He's making that assumption before he gives these directions.

So if you're here and you're not following Jesus and you don't want to live underneath the authority of God's word, then like, yeah, you can ignore this.

Because you're you're not following Jesus.

We would challenge you to listen to it and apply it because we believe that God's design is beautiful and good, but you don't have to.

But if you're here and you're saying, Jesus is my Lord, He's saved me, He's reconciled me, He's redeemed me, He's given me a new name, He's given me a new destiny, give me a new calling, then man, we want to place ourselves underneath his authority because his hand is good, his leadership is good.

So marriage according to God's design isn't just between two people, but it's between three, a husband, a wife, and Christ.

And this is important because Paul uses Ephesians chapter 5, verse 21 as kind of the foundation for how he's leading into the rest of this.

Ephesians 5:21

521 says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

So he says, he says, your commitment to Christ is what's gonna enable you and empower you to actually submit to one another, to care for one another, to be what one another needs in a relationship and in a marriage.

If one of you is is underneath the lordship of Jesus and one of you is underneath the lordship of him or herself, this marriage isn't gonna work.

And so he says, your commitment to one another has got to flow out of your submission to the Lord.

So he and this this idea of submit, it's really important for us.

The word submit means to place yourself under.

So he's calling people to place themselves under by their own volition.

This is not a commandment to subjugate another.

It's called to voluntarily submit myself, not subjugate the other person.

This is a call to view the other as more important than yourself.

And we get this inspiration from Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 through 8, where we hear about this when it comes to Jesus.

Philippians 2:1–8

The text says, Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, take uh value others above yourself, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interest of the others.

And your relationship to one other have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of being a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself with becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

So he says, This Christ has set you an example.

He submitted himself to the Father, and you're meant to take on this same posture that he had, being imitators of God, and out of reverence to Christ, here's how you're meant to love and care and submit to one another.

To place the other as in more importance to yourself.

Not operating out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, placing the other as a person to be used in the way of my own ambition, my own desires, but as someone that I value and place myself under in a place of saying, Man, how can I care for you?

Because I value what you want, what you desire, what you love.

I see it as more important than myself.

So as we approach the role of wives in God's design, Paul throws a couple of verses in here specifically addressed to wives.

What I think is really important is that the word submit in the Greek is actually not there after verse 21.

It's applied.

It trickles down into the rest of the passage, but it but it actually doesn't say submit yourselves one to another, wives submit, wives submit.

It says submitting yourselves one to another, wives to your husbands, wives to your husbands as the head.

It doesn't say submit, submit, submit.

So, because I and I think that's important because as we read the, as we read this text, even though it's applied, what we can happen is we go, submit, submit, submit.

And you're like, Paul, dude, I get it.

I get it.

But he's not being aggressive in his tone.

He's saying, he's saying, look, we submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.

Wives to your own husbands, wives to your husbands.

So he says this this way.

I think it's really important to kind of hear how it's actually coming out of Paul's, come coming through Paul's writing.

So it's carried over, but it's not re-emphasized over and over like we read it in kind of our modern texts.

But why is Paul emphasizing, because it's interesting that Paul really calls wives to one thing and he calls husbands to one thing.

And then at the close of this text, he kind of hits it back again.

He says, So wives, what I'm telling you is respect your husbands, husbands, love your wives.

And he really kind of gives us these two things.

Why specifically these two things does he tell us?

Why does he say love for men?

Why does he say or for for husbands?

Why does he say submit for wives?

It's an interesting, it's an interesting thing that he does.

Another important thing to notice here is what Paul does not say is women submit to men.

Other ladies said, Amen.

Yes, praise the Lord.

He does not say, Hey, women, submit to men.

He says, wives, wives, submitting to one another, wives to your husbands.

Wives to your husbands.

Man, we are created equal.

Equal in the eyes of God.

Whether the culture sees us that way or not, what what's amazing is when people are able to step into a church and see the way men and women honor one another and then the way we act specifically within the context of marriage.

And so this is this is why so many people have mishandled or misused texts like these, is because it's your wife does not have to submit to me as a man.

My wife does not have to submit to you because you got some bass in your voice.

That's not how this works.

It says, man, that we are called to submit to one another, and this covenant union that we have together in the context of marriage is where we do this, is where we do the submission for one another.

But specifically, why is he carrying over submission?

So I think it's important for us once again reading the reading the text in context.

Marriage in Ephesus, Greco-Roman context.

This is super important.

Because some of us might read this and go, man, look at Paul.

He's writing to all these abused women in this in this first century culture, and he's going, Yeah, women, submit more, submit more, submit more.

They're already in this culture where they're being dominated.

That's actually not the case in Ephesus in the first century.

I thought it was important to put a couple of different ways that marriage was kind of displaying itself.

There's two different marriages that were kind of existent in the culture at this time.

One was called with authority, and this is an older traditional form where the bride was completely transferred out of her father's control and into her husband's household.

So he legally owned her and everything she possessed.

But what was actually common in first century Ephesus was something called without authority, marriage without authority.

So this was the most common form in Ephesus.

The wife remained under her biological father's legal authority rather than her husband's, and this gave Ephesian women significant freedom.

Her husband could not legally control her, inherited wealth, property, or slave holdings, allowing elite women to independently fund civic projects and hold priestess positions.

So women were actually in a position of great prominence in the Ephesian culture.

Why?

Because there's something called the Temple of Artemis that Paul has already hit on in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And this gave, this gave Artemis was the protector of women.

And so this gave women a prominent place in the culture at Ephesus in that moment.

And so Paul is actually writing to a group of people where usually women are separate from the husband, and there's actually no unity in this marriage.

Women enjoy their own separate prominence, their separate wealth, they're separate over here, and they're not united to their husband.

They may be in the marriage bed, but they but they don't actually have united lives.

And so I believe Paul is actually telling these wives to go, hey, join yourselves to one another, submit yourself, submit your life to one another, actually belong to one another.

During the first century, a cultural shift occurred in major trade hubs like Ephesus.

Wealthy aristocratic women began leveraging this marriage and these laws to gain unprecedented financial autonomy.

And so rather, and so it was actually they were married, but wives were actually seeking to be autonomous from their husbands, not united to their husbands.

They were dubbed the New Roman woman.

And these wives frequently engaged in public life, initiated their own divorces, and managed vast personal fortunes, drastically altering the traditional patriarchal fabric of the city.

So because of Artemis' influence, Ephesus offered elite women a rare avenue to achieve wealth, public autonomy, and high political status, independent of marriage or male control.

So it's interesting that as Paul's writing this, he's actually saying, hey, the key isn't to try to escape your husband or to have autonomy from your husband, but to actually seek unity with your husband.

To actually place yourself in intimacy with your husband.

And he connects this to the way the church responds to the initiation of Jesus.

This all makes sense when we start to dig into what the husband's role is.

So it's interesting, Paul uses two verses and a few words to describe women's roles.

He uses the rest of this passage to really call the men to a certain role.

Specifically earlier on in the text, he says, he says, wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, who is the head?

And this is something that has carried a lot of a lot of tension kind of over the years as people read this and they go, like, okay, the head is Christ is the head.

They're like a husband is the head of the home and the wife is meant to submit to him.

But what is the this word kafal?

Like, what does it actually mean?

And what I did was I took the text because he says, do this as just like Christ, and I took all the texts where kefal is used to describe Christ.

And there's really four key things that we see when describing Christ.

First and foremost, that Christ gives abundant life.

He gives abundant life.

You can look at Colossians 1.18, 2.18 through 19, Ephesians 1, 20 through 23, 4, 15 through 16, 5, 23 through 25 to see all these texts where Jesus has mentioned his head.

Jesus is also, his role as head is to help the church flourish.

His role is to save her and to love her.

He gives himself up for her and dies for her.

He actually connects the role of men as head.

In the very next line, he says, as the savior.

Now, is he actually, is he actually calling men like saviors and women are kind of this needy kind of person who needs a rescuer?

No, Paul, Paul, what Paul is saying is that he's not he's not connecting it to our role as savior because your savior is just like my savior.

You need Jesus as your savior, not me as your savior, not your husband as your savior.

But so what is he connecting it to?

He's connecting it to Christ's saving act as savior.

And what does Christ do to save?

He lays his life down in sacrifice.

He initiates, takes the blows, takes the hits in order to protect, in order to save, in order to rescue.

So what is Paul doing with this word in the text?

Well, it was it was a word often used in the Greco-Roman world to communicate authority and rule.

It was a word used for kings and emperors, and the idea was that the head is prominent and must be protected at all costs.

So, for instance, the emperor was the head and he was meant to be protected.

He couldn't, we couldn't allow him to be in danger.

He was the source and must be separated from the common and kept safe at all costs.

And what Paul actually does is he uses this common term, but then he flips it on his head.

He uses a literary device.

And so people think they know what Paul's about to say, but then he flips it.

So he uses the, he says, Yes, you are the head, the kefal.

And so people are like, Yeah, I'm separate, I'm greater, I'm this.

And he goes, You know what the kefhal does in the kingdom of God?

It leverages its strength to serve.

It doesn't exist to protect itself, it sacrifices itself.

It doesn't sacrifice the body for the sake of the head, it sacrifices the head for the sake of the body.

So he actually flips it.

And he says, the way that you initiate and lead as a husband in your home is through self-sacrifice.

And what does the text describe about the role of Jesus?

What did Jesus do that?

He did this to sanctify and ensure that his bride could flourish underneath his leadership and care.

So he sacrificed this so that the bride may flourish.

And so what is he saying to husbands?

He says, Yeah, you are the confallor, you are the stronger one in the marriage.

You are going to be the one that people are going to look to.

And what is your role in that?

To protect.

What is your role in that to sacrifice?

What's your role in that to lead, to initiate so that she flourishes, your children flourish underneath your care?

So it's a call to sacrificial service and self-giving love.

To what end?

To do whatever the wife says to do?

Some of you are like, Yes, that's what we wanted.

But he says, no, no, no, not to do whatever your wife says to do.

We don't play in this shtick, this cultural game where it's like, yeah, the husband's some you know idiot who exists to just do whatever his wife tells him to do.

That's not what we that's not what we say either.

The text says, to what end?

What to what end do you sacrifice so that she can flourish under God?

So that we can flourish under God.

So why is he emphasizing love for husbands?

Why does he emphasize what he emphasizes for women?

Why does he emphasize what he emphasizes or for wives?

And why does he emphasize what he emphasizes for husbands?

You know, in this in the cultural moment of this Greco-Roman world, marriage was a strategic decision.

Who could advance my reputation or position?

Who could produce an heir?

Marriage was a duty.

I have to provide and protect, it's my obligation.

But what it was devoid of was love.

It was love.

And so he says, Husbands, this isn't strategy.

You're not trying to find a woman who can produce an heir and help you help you figure out your own ambition and get all the places that you want to go.

He says, No, no, no, your calling is agape love, the love displayed in Christ, this covenant love expressed through initiation and self-sacrifice.

He says, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.

He did this to present the church to himself with splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless.

In the same way, husbands love your wives as your own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hates his own flesh, but provides and cares for it just as Christ does for the church since we are members of his body.

So he says, Man, this isn't, you don't sit idly by.

Your job isn't to just get a paycheck, make sure the bills are paid, and tell her to go do her own thing.

No, no, you're meant to be intentional.

You're meant to be connected, you're meant to be involved, you're meant to have a role to play.

He says, Husbands, love.

Husbands, cleanse, wash.

Like you have a role to play in this.

There's two extremes to avoid as as men and as husbands.

I think it's passivity and possessiveness.

Two extremes to avoid as husbands, passivity and possessiveness.

I think ungodly passivity is where you abdicate your strength, where you give up your strength.

You go, you know, I I I got married, okay, whatever.

I'm not gonna really lead you, I'm not gonna really instruct you, I'm not gonna really chart the course forward for you.

I'm just gonna I'm just gonna kind of sit back here, make sure the bills are paid, I'm just gonna kind of passively play.

Or maybe you're someone who sits in the room next door and you play video games late into the hours of night while your wife scrolls on her phone in the living room.

And he says, No, no, no, the goal isn't passivity to disconnect.

And then I think the other thing is an ungodly possessiveness where our families become possessions to us that we use for our own means or what we believe is right.

And what what this is, is not abdicating your strength, but abusing your strength.

And so, yeah, you have strength that God has given you.

Peter actually addresses this in his own letter, and he says, he says, Men, you are the stronger vestral.

Like most of the time, you are actually bigger, you are actually stronger, you do actually carry a more prominent place in society.

And then he says, How do you leverage that strength?

You leverage it to honor your wife and to serve her.

You don't leverage it to control, you don't leverage it to abuse.

So godly power does what?

It's leveraging your strength.

Leveraging your strength.

I love what John Tyson says.

He says, masculinity is the joyful pursuit of sacrificial responsibility.

The joyful pursuit of sacrificial responsibility.

You have a responsibility, a weight to carry, and it's yours, and no one else is going to carry it.

And he says, this is not meant to be something you begrudgingly carry underneath as if it's so hard.

He says, No, it's a joyful pursuit of sacrificial responsibility.

So what does Paul ultimately at the end?

He summarizes.

He says, So, wives, what I'm telling you is respect your husbands, and husbands love your wives.

Submission for wives, he connects to the word respect.

And what does that mean or look?

Like.

It means you want to honor and you want to affirm.

You want to honor and you want to affirm.

When a man leading is scary.

When a man wants to take initiation or he wants to lead, a lot of times what's met on the other side is criticism.

And nothing can shatter a man's heart like criticism.

And I'll tell you this, wives, you may not know how important your voice is.

Your voice is the most important voice in a man's life.

The most important voice in your husband's life.

It just is.

It just is.

And Jesus is his greater.

Yeah.

When it comes to people, your voice is most important.

A man can conquer the world in his professional life, but he's not respected in his own home.

He's filled with insecurity.

And yet a man can accomplish absolutely nothing, but if he comes home to someone who believes in him and encourages him and honors him, the world is his oyster.

And so what is he saying?

He says, man, honor and affirm your husband.

Is he saying be enslaved to your husband?

No.

He's saying honor and affirm to respect him, to honor him, to affirm.

What are you trying to do?

And then what and then he says, Your role isn't your role isn't to criticize and humiliate, to criticize and humiliate, but your role isn't also not to mother and nag.

Your role is to honor and affirm.

Some men are looking for a mother.

You are not called to be his mother, called to be his wife.

Men, if you want a mama, move back home.

Move back home.

And then men, what does it mean to love?

It means your ambition, your greatest ambition, doesn't become your own name.

It becomes the flourishing of your home, your wife, your family under God.

You used to exist for yourself, but when you stepped into marriage, you made a different commitment and you now place yourself in sacrificial service to the people that God has placed under your care.

That God is now placed in your influence.

And that vision and ambition is meant to be channeled to your own family.

You don't use or sacrifice your wife and family for the sake of your own ambition.

You don't sacrifice them for the sake of your own ambition.

You leverage your ambition and strength in service to them.

Your role isn't to passively neglect, your role isn't to neglect or to possessively dominate.

Your role is to initiate and sacrifice.

And then carrying into chapter six, what happens?

When marriage looks like this, children thrive.

Families thrive.

Children want to obey parents like that.

Children want to live in a home like that.

Where there's structure and there's encouragement, but there's also safety and there's carefully where they can receive training and instruction.

You know, your home is your garden to go back to Eden language.

Your home is your kingdom, it's your temple.

How are you tending to it?

How can you make that an altar to the Lord, a thin place between heaven and earth where God abides and influences, where people are blessed, and where the world gets a front row to see something sacred and beautiful?

So a few things I'll say about marriage, then we'll close.

First and foremost, just something that I I in my relationship, some things that I that I just want to point out is first and foremost, I just felt like this is a man, wives, there's an acute there's an accuser in the world.

And his name is Lucifer, his name is Satan, his name is the enemy, and he doesn't need any friends.

And so, man, when it comes to wives and husbands, your responsibility, your role, your voice in one another's life should be one of encouragement.

Like encourage each other.

Man, how many marriages have you been around where there's constant critique?

There's constant nagging, do this better, why'd you do that that way?

Why'd you do that that way?

Can't believe you did that.

And and there, the culture of the home, the culture of the marriage is one of criticism and discouragement.

If that becomes the culture of your home, where do you want to be?

Not home.

But you want to you want to rush home because what the presence in the culture there is one of honor, encouragement, love.

So you want that to be the voice in the culture of your home.

So don't partner with the accuser in your significant other's life.

Partner with Jesus.

Speak identity, speak courage, speak life over them.

Second thing is, man, make your marriage and your family your greatest ambition.

Make your marriage and your family.

Some of you have great jobs and great careers.

And that's amazing.

You should be you should be able to lay all of it down if your family came to you tomorrow and said it's us or that.

If too much of your identity is wrapped up in that, it's too much.

I'll never forget when I was when I was sitting out in the in the back patio and I was holding Asa, and you literally fit in the palm of my hand like this.

And I had all this church planning stuff that was going on in my head and all these different things, and I was sitting here holding them just like that.

And I literally said, Lord, I will work at Home Depot joyfully, if it means this kid is gonna grow up to love you and be healthy and have a beautiful life.

And I meant every single bit of it.

There's been multiple conversations that Katie and I have had to have over the past few years where I just said, hey, you know, I work really hard at this, I work a lot of hours.

But multiple times we have to go, you know, I would drop it all if you told me I had to.

But the beauty of this, once again, partnership, joint vision, is this was not a surprise to her.

We came to this together.

I didn't hide this from her and spring it on her.

We came to this together.

And so we've done this together.

And so now our mission and our family is our joint ambition together.

And then couples, make your home, your garden, your kingdom, pursue oneness and partner together to build something that blesses God and advances his mission in the world.

As we move into a time of response, a few things I want to say.

Alex, you can go ahead and come up, man, whenever you're ready.

First and foremost, man, I I think it's important for you to get God's heart and vision for your season, for your status.

Whatever your relationship status, whatever season you're in, man, you've got to get God's vision for this.

Get God's heart and get God's vision for the season that you're in.

Look at me.

If you're single, get God's heart and vision for your singleness.

Get God's heart and vision for your singleness.

If you're married, get God's heart and vision for your marriage.

If you're if you're a family, get God's heart and vision for what for family.

And you get that together if you're married.

If you're a single person, get God's heart and vision.

Know that this is a gift.

Know it's something that God's given you.

Know that you're meant to secure an undistracted devotion to the Lord.

Get God's heart and vision for the season that you're in.

The second thing is, man, be faithful to God's design.

Be faithful to God's design.

Follow the instructions.

Why?

Because beef doesn't go in English trifle.

Okay?

Like follow God's design.

His desire is for you to flourish under his care.

So look at the way he says to do it and do it.

Steward your singleness the way God says to steward your singleness.

You will never have this much availability to make an impact for the kingdom of God in your life.

It doesn't mean that you're not ever going to be able to make an impact, or that husbands and wives are marriages or family.

Can't do that.

We're obviously married with a family.

But you will never have the time and the opportunity that you have to see people, to care for people, to love people, to offer your life on the altar than you do right now.

You'll never have as much time to read books.

Oh my gosh, books.

I used to love them.

You'll never read again.

I'm just kidding.

Learn.

Grow.

Get a vision for the season of your life and steward it.

Don't wallow.

Don't allow the enemy to speak discontentment over this.

It's a gift that the Lord has given you.

Receive it and use it.

And then lastly, man, put Jesus at the center as your inspiration and your reward.

Put Jesus at the center as your inspiration and your reward.

Wives.

Why how what empowers you to be able to submit, to care, to do the things that this text is saying?

The behavior of the husband.

We all know that's fickle.

He's broken and he's unstable.

He's inconsistent.

And if you're constantly looking to that for your cues, you'll never be able to obey this.

You'll be constantly kind of drifting off left and right, going, once you show me, then I'll he says, no, no, no.

You put Jesus at the center.

And it's out of your reverence, your devotion, your love for him that you operate a certain way in your home.

Husbands, how can you lay down your personal ambition and your selfishness to lead and to operate in self-sacrifice?

You get a vision of Jesus in the kingdom of God.

Why can you lay down your ambition?

Why can you take a pay cut if it means less hours?

Why can you sacrifice a little bit of that personal need?

It's because you have everything in Jesus.

Because you have everything in Jesus.

You don't look at your wife and go, When you when you encourage me and honor me, then I'll No, no, no.

Jesus, I place myself in submission to you and out of reverence to you, you is my inspiration, my reward, and my ambition.

I look at you and I take my cues from you.

Whatever you say goes, because you're my reward, you're my prize.

And Jesus, he's the one.

And that's the inspiration that Paul uses in this entire text.

He says, Man, look at what he's done.

He's stepped out of heaven, he's he's made himself as a servant, he's put himself on a cross to take your sin, to take your shame, to take all the worst things that you've ever done, and all the things that you regret, and all the things that separated you from God, and he took that on himself.

He nailed he got nailed to a cross, he died in your place, and then raised from the dead, and now offers you life, not holding your sin against you, but offering you life.

And he says, That's your inspiration for everything that I've called you to do.

He's the inspiration and he's the reward.

He's the one we follow, the example that we follow, and he's the reward, all that we get at the end of our days.

And so, man, as we respond, our prayer team's up here.

And man, we were thinking through a few different things.

I think that there are, I think that there are some single people in the room today.

You need to repent and get your eyes fixed back on Jesus because you've been wasting your single season, and it's the time to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord.

Some of you are men in the room, are husbands in the room, and you need to repent.

You need to repent because of your selfishness, and you've idly sat by while your family has suffered, waiting for you to show up.

And this is an opportunity for you to repent.

Wives, this is an opportunity for you to repent and to put yourself in submission to Jesus again.

I go, man, out of that, I'll step into my home and I'll encourage and I'll honor and I'll affirm, even when he's broken, and I won't I won't show up and criticize and nag, but I'll encourage.

Because I'm his helper.

God's called us to partner together, to lock arms together.

We're not each other's enemy, we're each other's partner.

The enemy is the enemy.

And the vision of Jesus is the vision of our home, and we partner together to pursue that together, and we need to be teammates again.

Some of you have a lot of divide to get between you, and you need to lock arms again.

And then, man, I think I think there's some of you.

It's just like a fresh place of surrender, contentment in Jesus again.

Maybe you're married, you're you're married and the enemy is trying to point you back to singleness.

Remember how much better I was?

Or maybe you're sitting here and you're single, and he's like, Oh, yeah, life sucks right now, but just wait.

It'll get way better.

One day.

Get your eyes set back on Jesus.

Find your contentment in Jesus, your satisfaction in Jesus, your joy in Jesus.

And so, Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in this room, we invite you, place ourselves before you.

Ask you to move in our hearts and in our lives in a fresh way.

I pray that we'd be quick to repent, to confess.

Receive the washing.

Place ourselves underneath your care again.

Get a vision for the life that you have for us.

Have our hearts stirred by you again.

To show up ready.

For our home to be the garden that flourishes under our care, that we tend to, the kingdom that you've placed us over, to partner together.

More than anything, just stir our affections for you, Jesus.

In your name.

Amen.

Let's respond together.

However, the Spirit's leading you.