Sermon Tone Analysis

[TITLE SLIDE]

We’re continuing our series on Holy Things and today we are talking about marriage.

Historically, the church has always considered marriage to be holy and is often considered a sacrament or ordinance much like baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

But, what makes marriage a holy thing?

In our passage for today, the Apostle Paul answers that question.

For Paul, marriage is holy because it images Christ’s relationship with the church.

Or at least, it does if it is done well.

Paul explains quite of few significant truths about the way that husbands and wives relate to each other and then he writes this:

(CSB) — This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church.

To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.

In the intro, explain illustration and Paul’s clever use of illustration to explain two very complicated issues.

(CSB) — This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church.

To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.

To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.

There are really two facets of this passage.

On one hand, Paul uses the churches relationship with Jesus to illustrate God’s design for marriage.

But, then, he seems to say that it’s a double illustration.

Paul also wants you to learn about Christ’s relationship to the church by looking at marriage.

He is teaching two principles in parallel.

So, for purposes of this discussion it won’t matter if you are single, which can make messages about marriage frustrating, because there’s a lot here for everyone who is a part of the church as well.

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So, I have three ways from our passage that holiness is demonstrated: Leading, Sacrificing, Caring.

So, I have three ways from our passage that holiness is demonstrated: Leading, Sacrificing, Caring.

The first way that holiness is demonstrated is through…

Leading (22-24)

…because leading results in submission.

And then..... “You are to lead your wife as much as possible so that your wife can submit to you without having any fear that you are leading her in a direction contrary to God’s purposes to her”—rather than “contrary to God’s purposes for her….it

might be better to say “contrary to what will build her up, prosper her, and be for her good.”

It’s clearer than the mysterious “God’s purposes” and mirrors what Christ does for the church.

RETHINK ‘You have to know God’s plan section’

And then..... “You are to lead your wife as much as possible so that your wife can submit to you without having any fear that you are leading her in a direction contrary to God’s purposes to her”—rather than “contrary to God’s purposes for her….it

might be better to say “contrary to what will build her up, prosper her, and be for her good.”

It’s clearer than the mysterious “God’s purposes” and mirrors what Christ does for the church.

The Apostle Paul wrote,

(CSB) — Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

He is the Savior of the body.

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.

I want to begin each section by looking at the Christ and the church motif and then move to marriage.

[LEADING]

This passage teaches that Christ is the head of the church and the church is the body of Christ.

We can draw that illustration out quite a bit.

The head contains the brain.

That means that Jesus is responsible for the thinking of the church.

The head also contains the mouth.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote,

(CSB) — Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways.

In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.

In the church, we don’t speak what we think is true or what we think makes sense, but what Christ says is true.

[LEADING]

We don’t speak what we want to be true.

We don’t speak what we feel should be true.

But, we submit all of our faculties—everything we think, want, and feel—to what Jesus actually said.

And, since we don’t hear Jesus speak to us directly, we refer to the record of what Jesus has said, which is in the Bible.

As the church, we always turn to the source of truth which is Jesus our head and let Jesus direct our paths.

Further, Jesus is the savior of the body.

He sacrificed himself, very literally, dying on the cross, so that we can be reconciled to God.

The Apostle Paul tells us that, because of Jesus’s humility in sacrificing himself…

(CSB) — God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth— and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In other words, God made Jesus the head of the body.

And as the head, the body must submit to Christ.

[LEADING]

I think this illustration of the body makes so much sense.

When your heart beats irregularly or something like that, you sense that there is something wrong with your body and you go to the doctor.

In the same way, when there is strife in the church, there is something wrong with the body and it needs to get looked at.

You have to imagine what this might be like, but What if one of your legs decided it wasn’t going to listen to your brain, but went off on it’s own to do it’s own thing?

What would that do to your body?

And what if both legs decided to do so and both went off in different directions?

You’d never get anywhere like that.

The body must always submit to the head to function properly.

The mind exists to inform the members of the body so that they can function together as one body.

The members of the church should be thinking people, but must be thoughtful about scripture so that their thoughts follow Christ’s thoughts.

We don’t think on our own, but we have the mind of Christ, the head.

And that’s fine, right?

because, Jesus is God.

No one is concerned about letting God govern their choices, at least not so long as you believe that God is working for your good; God is on your side.

That’s way easier than submitting to your husband.

As a husband, I am painfully aware of the reality that I am not God.

I don’t think perfectly.

My body doesn’t work perfectly.

My emotions don’t always reflect what I know to be good and right.

I know that I am not a perfect person.

But, the Apostle Paul said that just like Christ is the head of the church, the husband is the head of the wife.

And as scary as that may seem to the wives in the room or the future wives in the room, I think it ought to be scarier to the husbands.

As I read this passage, I’m confronted with the reality that I am being called by the Apostle Paul to lead my wife like Jesus leads the church, so that my wife can submit to me just like the church is supposed to submit to Christ.

There’s grace written into this passage for the wife.

Looking at the parallel, when the church fails, that’s literally what Jesus died for, so the church is forgiven and moves forward.

But, Jesus never failed, never fails, and never will fail.

As the husband, your task is to think and live as much as humanly possible like Jesus.

You are to lead your wife in righteousness as much as possible, so that your wife can submit to you without having any fear that you are leading her in a direction contrary to God’s design for her.

That’s the goal, to be such a godly man and husband that your wife will want to follow you where God is leading you together.

And that’s how we ought to look at it.

God doesn’t have one plan for you as a husband and one plan for you as a wife.

Paul quotes the book of Genesis,

(CSB) — For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

It’s not that you lose everything distinct about you as a man or a woman when you get married, but God’s plans for you as individuals become so intermingled in marriage that the become indistinct.

You are one flesh.

That means that you have one life direction.

And you share one worldview.

You are one body when you are married.

You aren’t two people any more.