Sermon Tone Analysis

God designed marriage to be the very best that life has to offer, the very best.

In fact, Peter rightly called it “the grace of life.”

But since the fall of man, it is anything but the best for most people.

In fact, for most marriage starts in a euphoria of emotion and love, bliss and gradually descends at varying rates into war characterized by bickering, bitterness, discontent, unforgiveness, separation and divorce, punctuated all along by moments of truce.

A losing struggle and most today bail out.

God’s original design was very clear; one man, one woman together for life, the best, the very best.

But since the fall it has not been an easy road for marriage.

We are reminded of Genesis 3:16 where God cursed man and woman for the sin that they committed and sin caused the curse and the curse hit marriage right at the heart.

The woman, as a result of the curse, seeks to rule and not submit.

She wants control.

That is the fallen woman’s tendency.

And God commands again in the New Testament, “I permit not a woman to usurp authority over the man,” 1 Timothy 2. And the man, also cursed, is given to overpowering the woman, crushing her, subduing her, and thus the conflict.

And sin therefore left its mark and part of that mark is marital conflict on the very inside of the marriage.

You can add to that the terrible assault that Satan makes on the outside.

And we are reminded that before we ever get out of the book of Genesis, marriage has been assaulted formidably from the outside.

In 4 of Genesis is polygamy.

In 9, pornography is born.

In 16, adultery.

In 19, homosexuality.

In 34, fornication and unequal marriages.

In 38, incest.

In 38 also the first prostitute is mentioned.

And in chapter 39 the first specific case of seduction.

Last week we discovered the Matter of Submission is for influence.

As Christians, submission is mandatory proof of the filling of the Holy Spirit.

This submission is not just in the church but should break out of the church into the personal areas of our life, work and marriage.

Today, I want us to continue this discussion of Submission.

Please stay with me as this will make even more sense as we go through this passage all the way through the familiar passages of the Armor of God.

Remember, you are no longer you, but rather have been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore are representative of Him.

So notice,

This word submit means “to voluntarily place yourself under the authority of another person.”

The Manner of Submission

Ephesians 5:22 (KJV 1900)

22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

Respond to your husband submissively, listen to this, as if you were responding to Jesus Christ.

This is Christ’s will and when you submit to your husband, you are submitting to Him, you are responding as if to Christ.

As a woman is to be subject to the Lord Himself, so she is to be subject to her own husband as if he were Christ.

The Motive of Submission

Now, wives, this is not for punishment, but for purpose.

God has a purpose.

God knows that no society can long exist without order.

When we get away from order in government, in the schools, in the home, or wherever it might be, we have disorder, which turns to anarchy.

And Satan wants us not to have order, but he wants us to have anarchy.

And God knows that sinful human beings as we are need an order.

And without this God-given order, society would come apart at the seams.

And so, God said, in His wisdom, that the husband is to be the head of the family.

God has a chain of command: there is God the Father, God the Son, the husband, the wife.

That is God’s chain of command, and God has set this up.

And I’m so glad for this scripture in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 3, because it clears up some things for us.

That’s the design of God, that’s the divine plan.

Just as a body submits to the brain which is in the head by design, so the wife submits to the husband who is the head.

When you see a body that does not respond to the head, you see a deformity, you see something that is not normal.

You see a dysfunctional person.

And the same is true in a marriage.

Where a wife does not submit, there is distortion, deformity and dysfunction.

God has designed that the body respond to the head.

And the husband is the head of the wife.

The Model of Submission

Ephesians 5:23 (KJV 1900)

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

In other words, you are to submit to your husband as the church submits to Christ.

With the same willing heart that the church has in obeying Christ, the wife is to submit to her husband.

Now this is a very lofty concept, ladies, and gentlemen as well.

I mean, we’re talking about a significant model here.

In the same complete non-grudging, joyful way in which the church is to submit to Christ, so you are to submit to your husband.

And then it adds in verse 23, “Being the savior of the body.”

We anxiously, joyfully submit to the one who saves us, namely the Lord Jesus Christ.

The church gladly submits to Christ.

We understand our weakness.

We understand His strength.

We submit our weakness to His strength in the church and we are to do the same thing in marriage.

A woman is to realize that her husband is her protector, her deliverer … that’s what savior means.

She is humbly to give herself to that protection, to that care.

The Magnitude of Submission

Ephesians 5:24 (KJV 1900)

24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

To submit is a spiritual mystery comparable to Christ & the church, vv.

23–24

You say, “My, my!

That means that I won’t have much to do.

He’s going to get all the glory, and he’s going to do it all.”

No, look at verse 24 again: “as the church is subject unto Christ.”

How does Jesus treat the Church?

Do you know what the Lord Jesus Christ has delegated to the Church?

The job of evangelizing the world—the job of evangelizing the world.

Listen.

When a wife is subject to her husband, that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have any responsibility.

That means she has tremendous responsibility.

Submission does not take away freedom; it gives true freedom.

Adrian Rogers gives this illustration.

When is a train more free: when it leaves the railroad tracks and starts to ramble over the hills, or when it stays on the tracks?

A train is more free to be what a train ought to be when it stays on the tracks.

It will accomplish far more on the tracks than it will ever be trying to go through the meadow.

And I will guarantee you that a wife who stays on God’s tracks will never be freer

The matter of submission is very clearly indicated here, it’s unarguable, the wife is to submit to her husband.

The manner, as unto the Lord.

The motive, because it is God’s design to make the husband the head of the wife.

The model is the way the church submits to Christ.

And the magnitude is in everything, in everything.

That’s God’s design.

See, this is more important than just being right or wrong.