Another Ephesians Part 4 "The Ephesians Family"
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And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
And now then, we find out that we have come to another Ephesians, another Ephesus now. Where, that, in our intellectual denominations and so forth, and all of our educational programs has come to its Jordan, then we must have an Ephesians again. We must have an exodus, to “come out” and to “go into,” for the Rapture. 65-0119 - The God Who Is Rich In Mercy
Ephesians places the believer as Joshua placed the Israelites.
Ephesians. Progression:
Chapter 1-3 is the principles of Election and Adoption in the land of the Holy Ghost.
Chapter 4 is the individual walk, our position in the Body and the five ministerial gifts.
Chapter 5-6 deals with family life.
This had to be taught because Family life in Ephesus was influenced by the Grecian and Roman cultures.
Paul sums up the culture of the world in Romans 1.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Idolatry leads to immorality.
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
This was the culture the New Generation of Ephesians was raised in.
Oh, you see, it’s this intellectual day that we’re living in. Education, civilization, and the modern trend of the day, is all of the devil.
“Civilization of the devil?” Yes, sir! The Bible said it is. This civilization has death. “Will we have a civilization like this in the other world?” No, sir! We’ll have a different kind of civilization.
Education, all these things, they’re of the devil; science perverting the natural things, making something else.
Look what they’ve done to you now.... The Reader’s Digest said that “Young men and young women go through the middle age, women in menopause between twenty and twenty-five years old.”
One more generation, they’ll be nothing but…It’ll be horrible-looking. What the creatures will be, softened, mucky. Look at the spirit, look how the spirit in the church has got, hybrid, intermarried to the world.
Oh, what a hour! Flee, children! Flee! Flee to the Cross! Come to Christ, let Him lead you. 65-1207 - Leadership
Let me prophesy something to you, just before it comes to pass. The whole world is grouping in insanity, and will get worse and worse and worse, until they’ll be a bunch of maniacs. And it’s almost that way now. 65-0815 - And Knoweth It Not
Grouping in Insanity
In the same year Bro. Branham spoke, 1965, Lawrence Roberts made two separate computers in different places ‘talk’ to each other for the first time.
Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the idea of a ‘web of information’ in 1989.
On 6 August 1991 the code to create more web pages and the software to view them was made freely available on the internet.
The first social media was invented in 1997.
Myspace 2003, Facebook 2004, Instagram 2010,
Snapchat 2011, Tiktok 2016. Now the world is literally grouping in insanity.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
And don’t let the devil spray you with education and poison, and stuff like that, “You have to be modern. You have to be this.” You don’t have to be nothing but sons and daughters of God.
And if you’re borned of the Word, you do. Notice that spray. If you take a seed, a good seed, and you spray it, it’ll kill it. And when they spray this denominational stuff over the top of you, it’ll ruin the influence of the original Word.
If they tell you, “You have to do this. Why, the other girls do it. The other men do it.” Don’t you believe that. It’ll ruin God’s influence of His Word upon you. 65-1031M - Power Of Transformation
This is matching time.
You paint your steps red, and see if the neighbor don’t paint his steps red. That’s right. Buy a Mercury and see if the neighbor don’t want a Mercury. They want to match. I don’t care whether my pants match my coat, or my shirt matches my suit; I want my experience to match God’s Bible.
That’s the kind of a match that Christians ought to have. Not whether Jones has got a big church and I got a little one. I want Christ. 50-0716 - Believest Thou This?
We want our families to match the pattern of the Word, not the pattern of the World Order (Cosmos).
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
We don’t need to be jealous of the world.
Then there’s another little door called jealousy. I don’t know whether you yankees know anything about it or not, but down south you have a lot of that. Oh, just a little inferior to the other man. Just a little better than the other church.
If the Joneses paint their steps red, you got to have yours red. Oh, what a horrible spirit to be in a Christian. Why don’t you let Christ come in and make Him Lord over that little spirit room of selfishness and indifference. 57-1212 - The Door Of The Door
Paul wants to establish the pattern of the way family should be, because in that we see the Mystery of Christ and the Church.
Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
“Submit yourself.” Congregation, submit yourself to your pastor. Pastor, submit yourself to your congregation. If a little clique rises up, don’t be on either side, submit yourself to the whole congregation.
Congregation, if you start in a clique, submit yourself to your pastor in the fear of God. 61-0108 - Revelation, Chapter Four #3
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
How many knows that, you women? That’s exactly right. The Bible said so at the beginning. It’s still the same way. 61-0108 - Revelation, Chapter Four #3
Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
Oh, for the grace of God, that He would give us understanding of such great mysteries! As Paul spoke here, further on down in Ephesians, speaking of the husband and wife, and said, “This is a mystery,” how the women should be in respects to their husband.
Even the second place, I believe it is, the entire Bible, that reverence was ever spoke to. Said, “The women, seeing she reverence her husband, reverence her husband.” Then a husband ought to live such a life before his wife that his wife could reverence him as a son of God.
And if he doesn’t live that kind of life, well, then, course, she wouldn’t reverence him, because she knows what he’s made of.
But when it is a man that is reverent man, reverent and clean, with his wife and before his family, a real servant of God, then the women, children, and all, should respect that servant of God, with reverence. 65-0822E - A Thinking Man's Filter
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.
Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
The man is uniquely commanded to agapao his wife.
Phileo love would make you shoot a man for insulting your wife. Agapao love would make you pray for his lost soul. That’s the difference. 58-0619B - Ye Must Be Born Again
Agapao love is elective love, not a love of emotion.
Men are commanded to love their wives:
Sacrificially
Redemptively
Unselfishly
1. Sacrificially
1. Sacrificially
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
Faithlife Study Bible Chapter 5
Husbands, love your wives Paul is referring primarily to sacrificial actions for the benefit of the wife. The model for this kind of love is Christ’s death on the cross
Now, wouldn’t you all like to have a real Bible church? A real Bible church where all the spiritual gifts were set in order, everything making manifest just exactly the way it should be. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Now, you’re going to have to sacrifice, not money. You’re going to have to sacrifice what? Some of your own ideas.
You’re going to have to sacrifice some time in prayer. You’re going to have to sacrifice your…maybe a stubborn will, to break down in humility. The whole Christian move is sacrificial.
“He that will follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me daily.” Is that right? How often do you have to sacrifice? Every day. Paul said, “He died daily; every day, he died.” 54-0516 - Questions And Answers (Law Having A Shadow)
Sacrifice yourself like He did.
Sacrifice your will to God’s will for the benefit of your wife.
He gave Himself. God had already given us His universe. He already provided a home for us, He already made all things beautiful, but then He came Himself, and gave Himself for us.
Your wife doesn’t just want your money or your goods, she wants you. Yet a sacrificial love will work their fingers to the bone to give their wife a gift.
If you love your wife, you love to do something for her.
56-0223 - God's Covenant With Abraham And His Seed
Boaz dropping handfuls on purpose.
2. Redemptively
2. Redemptively
That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
He takes a wife who is unworthy and redeems her. This is a higher call than taking a worthy wife and loving her for her worthiness.
Adam left the garden out of redemptive love for his wife.
The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord.
The Lord wanted Hosea to experience what He experienced with Israel, heartbreak. Hosea’s wife was a chronic backslider, she was that way when he married her, and she remained that way. She finally left him and ended up a slave on the auction block.
Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine.
So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley:
And I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also be for thee.
He was manifesting Agapao Love to her. Unmerited favor, not because she deserved it, but because He chose her to be His wife. This is a great mystery. This is redeeming love.
When the dishes haven’t been done and the children are crying, when the house is a mess and the food is burning, redeeming love condescends to the take the place of a wife, to do for her what she cannot do herself.
3. Unselfishly
3. Unselfishly
So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
nourisheth—Greek, “nourisheth it up,” namely, to maturity. “Nourisheth,” refers to food and internal sustenance; “cherisheth,” to clothing and external fostering.
You don’t dress yourself or feed yourself any old way, but with care. Christ makes no decisions which do not build up the church. He doesn’t eat steak while His wife eats sausages from a can.
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
Now watch. Look, them hands designed this for His Beloved Bride, designs in tenderly love for His Bride.
64-0802 - The Future Home Of The Heavenly Bridegroom And The Earthly Bride
He actually prepares a home for your pleasure. To make you happy.
Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
Bro. Branham always wanted to go West.
Another thing I’d like to say. Just before we built this house up here, the parsonage, where it is now, I did not want to build there. My wife’s mother was old. And she even wept about it, she said, “I just can’t leave mom here, with knowing she’s old, and she might not be taken care of.”
Well, I understood that. I understand. That’s her mother, and the only mother she ever had, or ever will have. So, I understood that. So I prayed to the Lord, I said, “Lord, being that I do not like the place,” I said, “make me satisfied. I’ll go anywhere You want me to go, from anywhere.
But I don’t want to grieve my wife, to take her away from here, into a strange country where she knows no one. And then I’m gone all the time, anyhow. Just make me satisfied to be here with her.” 61-0723M - The Ever-Present Water From The Rock
That is unselfish love, and it ended up being God’s time.
Conclusion.
Conclusion.
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
Christ loves us Sacrificially, Redemptively, Unselfishly. Can you accept that love today? I’m convinced if we loved our wives this way there would never be a broken home. His home will never be broken, He overwhelms us with His love.