And verse number 22, actually, this is going
to be part two of the same text that I
preached
from last week, and let's read verses 22 to 24
to get started.
The Bible says, wise be subject to your own
husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is
the head of the wife.
As Christ also is the head of the church, he
himself being the savior of the body.
But as the church is subject to Christ, so
also the wives ought to be to their husbands
in everything.
Now, as we've been saying, completely counter-
cultural in our day.
These instructions right here are very simply
God's design.
God working through his spirit inspired the
apostle Paul to call all Christian wives to
submit to their husbands.
That is God's design for the wife's blessing,
for the husband's blessing, for the blessing
of the children, and for the blessing of the
church.
Most women in our society hear these words,
and they recoil at these words.
Leftist feminism has had such an influence in
our nation, especially over the last sixty
years or so, that this idea of wives submit to
your own husbands is laughed at in our
culture.
It's mocked, it's ridiculed, treated with
complete scorn and really utter hatred.
And as with many things, this attitude has
also infected the church and has for many
years now.
Not so much as visceral as we see it with the
unbelieving leftist feminist, but certainly
maybe with what we could call a soft feminism,
maybe we could label it that way, that at
a minimum either outright disagrees with this
or has a different interpretation of which
there are multiple, or just does not deal with
this clear command at all.
Let's just pretend like it's not there, talk
about other things.
A Christian writer named Laura Miller wrote
the following that I think rightly understands
verse 22 here, "Wives be subject to your own
husbands as to the Lord."
She writes this, "I was created to be a helpme
at."
That was the stated purposes in Genesis 2.18
when God gave woman to man to rid man of his
loneliness and to be a helper to him.
Just as when I most perfectly fulfill my
purpose as a human, when I am glorifying and
enjoying
God, when I am a helpmeat, I am most perfectly
fulfilling my purpose as a woman.
By being a helper, I am not a lesser person
than my husband.
My femaleness certainly does not hinder God in
his sovereign design to call me to himself,
nor does it bind me to a lesser relationship
with him.
Indeed, Scripture demonstrates that God did
not consider my gender when he saved me.
For there is neither Jew nor Greek.
There is neither slave nor free.
There is neither male nor female.
For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
In his placing me within the economic
hierarchy of the church family, my womanhood
was inherently
involved in the calling, but in choosing me to
receive the call, being a woman was incidental
.
That was just so well said.
And such a very clear sense of identity as
defined by Scripture is really rejected by
many women even in the church today.
You know why?
Because this text is so misunderstood by so
many in the church today.
They fail to understand the difference women
do in many cases in the church today between
what they are in the kingdom and what they are
in the family and what their God ordained
role is.
And they fail to submit to the purpose that,
think of it, God has uniquely designed for
women.
And a large part of the reason for this is
because in so much of the American evangelical
ism
during the same exact time period that we have
seen the rise of leftist feminism, as
you well know, we have witnessed a departure
in our pulpits away from verse by verse exp
ository
preaching, rooted and sounded and ground
doctrine in favor of what?
Watered down, man-centered, topical, moral
istic, therapeutic deism in our pulpits.
That's what has happened.
There's two things happening at the same time,
have made in so much of the church in America
just women to not even understand what's being
said in these verses.
And so I want to continue to help us
understand them biblically today.
Last time we started with our first point from
verse 22, the matter of submission.
Look at verse 22 again, "Wives be subject to
your own husbands."
Now we discussed that, and if you didn't,
weren't here last time, go back and watch
that.
I don't have time to go back through all of
that.
But I want to take you down to part two, point
two, the manner of submission.
Not only is the woman designed by God to
submit, but there is even a way in which she
should
submit.
There is a manner to her submission.
Look next in verse 22, "As to the Lord."
This means respond to your husband submiss
ively as if you were responding to Christ.
Now that is intense, right?
Think about that.
Think of this.
That is the will of Christ.
So number one, Christian wife, how can you
reject that?
How can you reject what that says?
When you are submitting to your husband, it's
the same as if you are submitting to Jesus.
That is what this phrase means.
In the same way that you submit to Jesus, you
are to submit to your husband.
It's heavy.
So that's the manner of submission.
That's the highest standard possible that the
apostle Paul is calling Christian wives
to, "As to the Lord."
Remember, I didn't write the mail, ladies.
I'm just a mailman, okay?
If you've got a problem with that right there,
your problem is not with me.
Your problem is with the Word of God.
I'm just telling you what the Word of God
clearly says and what it means.
Now next, we have point three.
What is the motive for this submission?
Look at the start of verse 23, "For the
husband is the head of the wife."
Boy, the feminists, they lose their mind.
This is God's word.
That's the design of God.
That's the divine plan.
Try this illustration on for size.
A body submits to the brain, right?
Which is in the head.
The brain is here by God's design.
In the same way when a wife follows God's
design in marriage, she submits to her husband
,
who is the head.
Remember, we talked about his role of
authority in the family last time.
Now you see a body that's not responding to
the brain, to the head.
What do you see?
Well, you see a deformity.
You see something that's not normal.
You see a dysfunctional person.
And the same is true in a marriage.
When a wife does not submit to her husband and
thereby she does not submit to God's design,
there is and will be dysfunction, distortion.
God has designed the body to respond to the
head.
And verse 23 is telling us that the husband is
the head of the wife.
Now, number four, in line with this, the model
of submission.
Look at verse 23.
Takes it up another notch.
As Christ also is the head of the church.
So you see the comparison here?
In other words, wives, you are to submit to
your own husbands as the church submits to
Christ.
God has an order of things.
As I've been telling you through this whole
passage, with the same willing heart that the
church has in obeying Christ, the wife is to
submit to her husband.
That's what Paul is teaching us here.
And again, Paul continues to give us this very
high standard.
Think of it in the same willing, joyful way in
which the church is to submit to Christ.
So you wives are to submit to your husband and
they look next.
Look next.
He himself being the savior of the body.
As Christians, we joyfully submit to the one
who saves us, right?
King Jesus.
That's what is our new desire after we become
saved and regenerate.
The church very willingly, gladly submits to
Christ.
I mean, we understand, we begin to understand
our weakness once we come to Christ, right?
And we understand his strength in a way we
never did.
We understand that apart from Christ, we can
do absolutely nothing, right?
We submit our weakness to his strength in the
church.
And so the comparison that Paul is trying to
make here or is making is the same thing
as to happen in marriage.
That's intense, right?
Just like Jesus delivered the church from the
dangers of sin and death and hell.
So the husband in his role is to provide,
protect, preserve and love his wife, leading
her to blessing as Christ leads the church to
blessing as we submit.
Number five, the magnitude of submission.
Look at verse 24.
But as the church is subject to Christ, so
also the wives ought to be subject to their
husbands.
Same word.
Remember their submit in everything.
Now that's some magnitude right there, isn't
it?
In what?
Everything.
That's God's design in everything, except, of
course, if you were here last time.
If the husband wants the wife to do something
that dishonors God, she doesn't submit at
that point.
That's obvious, right?
But how does this submission work out?
Let's talk about that.
And I want to use a biblical example to show
you this.
There are several to choose from, there's one
in Timothy, but I want to look at Titus.
And I think this is a great example.
First let's read it and then we'll get into it
.
What does biblical submission from a wife look
like, right?
Well, over in Titus chapter two and verses
three through five, Paul's giving out some
instruction for the women and the men in the
church and all that.
Let's just read this one little section in
three to five.
He's speaking to the older women in the church
here and look what he says.
Older women likewise are to be reverent in
their behavior, not malicious gopsups, nor
enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good
so that they may encourage the young women
to love their husbands, to love their children
, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind,
being subject to their own husbands so that
the word of God will not be dishonored.
Now here we get into some specific
instructions for the women in the church.
Look at verse three.
"Older women likewise are to be reverent in
their behavior, not malicious gopsups, nor
enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good."
So first thing that Paul does here is that he
establishes what is to be the godly behavior
of the older women in the church and he uses
those categories as a good example of how
the older women are to behave.
But here's what I really want to focus on for
this illustration's purpose.
Look at that last phrase in verse three, "Te
aching what is good."
Because that takes us into verse four and five
.
What Paul is considering here after their
years of raising a family are over, the older
women are to then take this role upon
themselves of being teachers and mentors to
the younger
women in the church.
And that's a great thought, right?
That's a great thing for the older women to do
.
A generation of godly older women instructing
and mentoring a new generation of younger
women, women with young children.
And again, at the end of verse three, look
what it says, teaching what is good, literally
that which is noble, that which is excellent,
that which is lofty.
By the way they live their daily lives, by the
way that they conduct themselves, they
are to pass down Christian virtue in their
behavior to these younger women.
That's what he's getting at.
And boy, do we sure need this today in the
church.
Would you agree?
The first phrase in verse four shows how
important this really is.
Look what it says.
So that they may encourage the younger women.
Other words could be used there like admonish,
instruct.
In fact, in the Greek word here literally
means this, to train in self-control,
encourage.
This means to teach someone self-control, self
-discipline, sensibility.
So what a great responsibility this is for the
older women in the church.
Now let's go on to verse four to see the
specifics and what is first?
Encourage the young women to love their
husbands.
And we're going to see, coming up, men get
yourselves ready and later in Ephesians five,
husbands love your wives.
Look at what this says, encourage the young
women to love their husbands.
So there's a mutual love.
Just like I taught you in the first two
messages about a mutual submission that there
must
be between husband and wife as the ground
floor.
Before we ever get to the roles, there has to
be mutual love and mutual submission.
And this is a command.
This is not a suggestion.
And a command demands obedience and it also
assumes the possibility of obedience.
This is something that can be done no matter
how the husband is acting.
Remember we talked about that last time.
Now think about that, a command.
Well, what about a lady who says, "Well, I
just don't love my husband anymore.
I mean, I used to love him when we had the
butterflies and the fireworks.
I mean, but now I think I just kind of fell
out of love with him.
You got to know him."
Now for Christians, with this right here being
a command, that excuse isn't going to
cut it either, is it?
I just don't love him anymore.
Well, wait a minute.
What makes a marriage is a commitment to love
your spouse.
Not to love your spouse is a sin.
And what we're talking about here is not
Hollywood love.
That's fake.
It has nothing to do with Christian love.
What we're talking about here is mature
Christian agape sacrificial love that holds
the other
as more important than yourself.
Of course the butterflies fly away.
That happens pretty quick, right?
Christian love is that which grows deep and
strong and is above all things the number
one characteristic.
I'll say it over and over and over and over
and over until I die.
Sacrificial love, that is the key to biblical
marital love.
So policy and it's the responsibility of the
older women to teach that reality to the
younger
women and that's the heart of actually what a
woman needs in order to be able to submit
to her husband.
If you love your husband rightly, this whole
submit to your own husband sure works out
a lot better for you if you love him, right?
And then next, in verse four, the older women
are encouraged, look at it, the young women
to love their children for the wife beyond the
overarching purpose of life and being
and existence on earth, which is living for
the glory of God.
Her life is her husband, her life is her
children.
And guess what?
When that is lived out rightly, that does
bring glory to God.
So you're accomplishing both of those things,
the overarching purpose and bring glory to
God through loving your husband, through
loving your children.
A woman, as we saw earlier message, led the
human race into sin in the garden and yet
it is women who influence the next generation
in their motherhood, especially in the younger
years of a child's life.
Think of it a mother's godliness, a mother's
virtue has a profound effect on the life of
her children.
The rearing of children is one of the greatest
contributions that a woman can make.
Obviously God does not have that as a plan for
all women.
There are many contributions a woman can make
to advance the kingdom of God besides rearing
children that are indeed very important and
very necessary.
But it is the role that a mother plays in a
very short period of time of being an
influence
in a child's life when it's a child and it
shapes who that child will be in adulthood.
And of course, there are no absolute
guarantees with that, right?
We know that.
We've seen that.
You can do everything you can possibly do to
the best of your ability to raise your
children,
right?
But at the end of the day, it is still the
responsibility of that grown adult that you
raise as a child to live their life for the
glory of God, but also in many cases, God uses
that special relationship of a godly mother to
shape who that child will be for his glory.
So the older women in the church are to teach
the younger women in the church to love their
husbands, to love their children, and then
look next, verse five, to be sensible.
Oh, man, I love that one right there.
That's a good one.
It's so sad to think about this world in which
we live today having so many women who just
don't think right at all.
I mean, they can't think straight.
I mean, just this past week, examples about
grown adult professional women with high
degrees
of learning across the board, nurses, doctors,
business women going out of their way to make
videos, to post online celebrating the murder
and assassination of Charlie Kirk.
You're not thinking straight.
And I'll bring up AOC again on the floor of
the House of Representatives, voting no to
a simple resolution to honor the memory of
Charlie Kirk, but purposely, severely mischar
acterizing
who he was and what he stood for and twisting
his words and taking them completely out of
context to make him look like an ignorant,
racist and bigot.
So many women, literally half of the voting
women in our country, have lost the ability
to make sound judgments.
They've lost common sense.
So here in verse five is just the most basic
thing, teach the younger women to be sensible.
Next, look what it says, teach them to be pure
, agnus.
It means chased.
They are to be faithful to their husbands in
every conceivable way.
Now I want to give you another illustration, 1
Timothy 2, 9 to 10.
Likewise, I want women, this is Paul instruct
ing Timothy in the church there and he's past
oring,
likewise I want women to adorn themselves with
proper clothing, modestly and discreetly,
not with braided hair and gold or pearls or
costly garments, but rather by means of good
works as is proper for women, making a claim
to godliness, godliness.
Now there's no need to take that legal
istically.
Take it sensibly.
How do we begin in this day and age in 2025 to
take that sensibly?
Well remember to look up the historical
context, just like we did last time in 1
Corinthians
with the head coverings.
In Paul's day, and this church that he's
writing to, there were women in that church
who were
making distractions and they were sewing
discord in that church and what they would do
is they
would actually weave gold and pearls and other
jewelry into their hairstyles in order
to call attention to themselves.
So they showed up to church with these gold
and jewels weaved in their hair and the same
was true, you see the phrase there, "costly
garments."
They would draw attention to themselves with
their costly clothing and what would that
do for the poorer women, we would make them en
vious, just stirring up all kind of stuff.
And what's Paul's point?
Paul's point was all of that is distracting
away from why we're here at the church.
We're here to worship God and y'all are
causing distraction, you're sewing discord
unnecessarily
in the church and by way of application also
under the exhortation of being pure.
Think about how some women dress today.
I mean a trip to Walmart can really be an eye-
opener in our day and I won't make reference to
certain
geographical locations being more intense in
that situation than other geographical
locations
but as previous jokes of mine have been you
can guess the particular Walmorts that I'm
thinking about right now and I'm being
sensible, not naming it.
But blending sensible and pure together, it's
real simple, this is rocket science, godly
women are to dress in such a way that calls
attention to their virtue and to their god
liness
and not to themselves.
You're going to come to church, dress nice, it
's good to dress nice but you're not going
to come in here like you're walking down the
red carpet at the Grammys, right?
That's calling attention to yourself, that's
not legalism.
Now some churches make that legalism with
dress and all the rest but of course we don't.
This is just sensible.
Look now, next in verse five we get down to
the real nitty gritty.
This is the place where the leftist feminists
lose their ever-loving minds right here.
Look next, workers at home, oh boy, literally
a house worker.
This the apostle Paul has said is to be the
primary sphere of a wife and a mother.
It's her domain, it's her kingdom, it's her
realm, it's Christie's Castle on Kerry Road.
That's what it is.
This phrase, workers at home, does not simply
refer to just scrubbing the floors and
cleaning
the bathrooms, it includes that but it's
broader than that.
It carries the idea that the home is the
sphere of all her labors, whatever they may be
.
It means that the home is her particular
divine assignment.
She is to be the home keeper and to take care
of her husband, to take care of her children
and her grandchildren in certain cases, right?
My guys, now, if I counsel a young couple just
starting out, I'm going to be very honest
with them and I always will be.
I will be quick to tell them that you cannot
follow the example that Christie and I carried
out in raising our children.
We were new Christians, we were coming from a
complete opposite realm of the church, the
Christian church and I would go back and
change everything that we did.
Starting with, just as an aside, I would have
never entered into the ministry without going
to a sound biblical seminary and any young man
that wants to go into the pastorate, I
would go learn the languages, go learn the
Greek, go learn the Hebrew, go to a saint,
well, we got a brand new seminary, Founder's
Seminary over in Florida where Vodibachem
is the president, a great seminary you can go
to, another one up in Arkansas.
There's a lot of liberal ones, but there's
great ones too.
Christie and I are very much anomalies.
Now obviously, I'm not against women working,
my own wife has been working in City Hall
for over 30 years, right, but I counsel young
couples.
I'm honest, I'm very quick to say, if you want
to go about the very best way possible
of raising a Christian family, follow these
verses and men, you do whatever you have to
do to make sure that your wife can stay at
home with those kids and raise those kids and
you've got to work three jobs, do that if
necessary.
Now after the kids are grown, you know, and
you want to get a job, no problem, but have
your woman, especially in those early years,
toddler, six, seven, eight, also don't ever
put your kids in a public school ever, okay.
I did, bad move, all right, and look, I
understand that there are certain situations
that cannot
be avoided, like for example, with my own
grandchildren, can't be avoided.
There's reasons, everybody's got different
situations.
I'm talking about the best, I'm talking about
the standard, I'm giving you the very best
way, the Christian standard, maybe it can't be
done, there are certain situations like
in ours where that can't be done, but if it
can be, if a woman is capable, homeschool
those
kids.
I'm telling you, that's the very best way.
If she's not capable, send them to one of
those co-ops.
As Vody Backem said, if you send your children
to pagan government schools, don't be
surprised
when they come home acting like Romans, okay,
because the biggest thing they're influenced
by is not only woke education, it's also the
children that happen to be there who come
from every walk of life imaginable in the
public school setting.
God's highest standard is giving right here in
verse five, look at it again.
Children are to be workers at home, rearing
those children, both spiritually and with
a solid, biblically based Christian education
along with all the other things that go into
running a solid Christian home.
Now, I cannot help but brag on my wife back
there.
She works a solid, solid 40 hours a week, and
she still comes home every day, cooks
a meal, cleans, does the lion's share of the
housework so that I have the opportunity to
sit at the desk and also keep up with the
outside and also 50% of the week also serving
the grandchildren as well, which is six, four
and two, quite a task.
Now, for sure, we have not ever followed the
highest pattern in this regard, and again,
I don't ever counsel anybody to follow what we
have done, both by way of ministry and
in the home, but God in His kindness and His
mercy has made this work out for us.
That's just God's grace.
That's just God's mercy in our life.
We are literally a team in what I do here in
ministry in every possible single sense
of that phrase, a team.
I could not do this without Christie, and that
is not any kind of hyperbole.
I couldn't.
I couldn't do it.
So, like the old saying goes, I'm saying to
young couples, do what I say and not what
I did and what I do, because guess what?
It may not work out for you as it did for us.
It's just God in His kindness has made it work
for us.
And as a Christian, you should want to go
about raising a family, striving to live
according
to the gold standard of God's Word.
And look, listen, please listen to me.
I understand that we could sit here for hours
and go through, well, what about this
situation
and what about that situation?
Of course, of course, though, there's all
kinds of situations where the Bible's pattern
for the home is something that can't be worked
out in the way that we might want it to.
There's situational circumstances that block
that from being able to happen.
We are example number one, but guess what my
job is to give you the best possible standard
from biblical principles to carry out as best
as you can to strive to live according to
the Word of God.
That's what I'm doing here today.
Now, I can't do anything other.
Just be completely honest with you about this
whole thing.
You have to use godly wisdom to act within the
situation that you're in and be discerning
as best you can to carry this out according to
God's precepts and understand to most most
of our society.
God's standard right here in this text for the
home is absolutely ridiculous.
But while they think that and you know this in
your own life of people that you know that
are not believers, look at the extreme level
of dysfunction that characterizes so many
people's households that we know who do not
follow this power, who do not believe in
Christ.
And because of the world's influence within
the church, and I've said this before, God's
way may even seem a little strange to us
because we've been so impacted by the world.
But what I'm telling you is, this is the Word
of God.
These words are plain and easy to understand.
Words have meaning and here they are and this
is what they mean.
Godly women are to be content at home, content
to love their husbands, content to love their
children and serving the Lord through serving
their families.
I promise you, I promise you, this is the best
way to live life in the family.
Look next in verse 5 of Titus 2.
Hmm, looks familiar, huh?
Being subject to their own husbands, same
exact thing in our text Ephesians 5-22.
Look at it.
Wives be subject to your own husbands.
Submit to your own husbands.
We saw it last week in Colossians.
It's over and over, Paul is repeating this
because he wants all Christian families to
get this, not to other men, you don't submit
to other men, ladies, to your own man.
Now look next in Titus 2-5.
So that the Word of God will not be dishonored
, literally so that it will not be blasphemed
or slandered.
So what's at stake here?
What's at stake is the honor of the Word of
God.
If we say we believe in the Word of God, if we
say we want to preach to you the gospel
of the Word of God and that the Bible has the
answers and that Christ is the answer,
but in our daily lives, in the many different
situations and circumstances that we may find
ourselves in, we are not striving as best we
can to live obedient to the Word of God.
Why should any person outside of the church
believe that it is as important as we claim
it is?
Why should they believe us?
The very honor of Scripture itself is at stake
is what Paul is saying.
I mean really just, even for an unbeliever, in
the land of just common sense, who can
argue with teach the young women to love their
husbands?
I mean teach them to love their children, to
be workers at home, be subject, I mean it's
just sensible.
That's not, is that confusing?
That's not confusing, that's what the Bible
says.
And if we are to be an example again to those
outside the church, that's the Bible's way
of raising a family is the best way, and guess
what?
We better have our own house in order or we're
not going to be an example, right?
This in itself is a form of evangelism.
This is something that God can use to draw a
lost people to himself.
So that's the biblical standard for the women,
men, you are next.
And I would advise you to come to church, next
time we're here in Ephesians 5, with
your steel toe boots on, you will be convicted
, and primarily because, as I've already laid
the groundwork for, your position is the
position of authority, and that carries with
it a much
higher responsibility.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you, this clear instruction
from your Word, Inspiring Apostle Paul.
This is your design for how the mechanics of
the family is to work, and it's so counter
cultural,
and we've been so influenced by the world, and
even influences our thinking, the world
does.
But if we're going to say we believe the Bible
is the Word of God, then we have to conform
to what it says and not worry about what the
world thinks.
Clearly, it's not working on that side.
And so, Father, help us to be submissive
ourselves, all of us, to the teaching of the
Word of
God as to how we are to order our families,
and how we are to live obediently to you,
that it might be an example to others, that
the truth is the truth, that Christ alone is
the one and only Savior of sinners, and that
the Bible is your Word, all to your glory.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.