Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

According to Pew Research the number of people who have never been married is on the rise.

In 1960 the number of adults not married was 1 in 10.

Today that number has doubled.

Millennials are the highest in this category, with 4 in 10 not living with a family of their own.

They are also more likely to test-drive marriage.

Research show that more millennials cohabitate before marriage than previous generations.

Men are more likely to remain single and women are more likely to get married later in life because of careers.

We are living in time when way too many people are single and the honor of marriage is nearly gone.

We are watching the death of marriage for many reasons: because of divorce, because of homosexuality, because of abortion.

It is the death of the family because we live in a highly self-center society that is more focused on our own wants, goals, and needs than God’s plan for man and woman.

Some of this is because of the idealistic illusions portrayed of marriage.

The modern view of marriage is the idea that you are going to find “the one” who is going to fulfill all your dreams.

It is an idealistic romanticism that places your spouse on a pedestal as this perfect person and you just have to find that perfect person.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You can find your ideal mate.

The one who looks, talks, and acts just the way you think is perfect.

They may dress the way you want them and share your interests.

You could marry that person and that person can feel just as giddy about you.

But if you do walk in the Spirit, that marriage will have massive problems.

That’s where we are today.

We’ve traveled through Ephesians looking at Paul’s letter giving us the understanding of how God predestined us to his Kingdom and bestowed on us every spiritual blessing in Christ, sealing us with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:1-14).

We look at how the Christian walk is vastly different than all others.

And we saw the blessing of the Holy Spirit, filling us to move us into action and abundance in life.

Now, sandwiched between godly living and spiritual warfare is Paul’s treatise of marriage and this is not by accident.

The Biblical Distinctive

I think it is vital that we approach and understand marriage from the biblical context.

Marriage was instituted and is upheld by God and God’s design.

It is not a government institution.

When the Supreme Court in 2015 redefined marriage, it stepped over its God-given authority.

We talked about the origin of marriage last Fall in our creation series.

Marriage really is designed by God for four things:

To Procreate Children - “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28)

to eliminate solitude - “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18)

to prevent sexual immorality - (1 Cor 7:2)

For the sheer joy and affection of being in union (Gen 26:6-9)

Which makes Satan the enemy of marriage.

Immediately after the fall, marriage comes under assault.

Perhaps even maybe marriage was the jealous reason Satan deceives the woman.

Regardless, everything from here begins to erode God’s design and sanctity in marriage.

In Genesis Satan introduces to man’s fallen heart polygamy, evil, sexual thoughts, adultery, gross homosexuality, fornication, unequal yoking, incest, evil seduction, rape, and prostitution.

Today, marriage is the sacrificial lamb of the sexual revolution, the homosexual revolution, and the women’s liberation movement.

And yet we still romanticize it in pop culture with our entertainment and music.

It’s the Cinderella story of finding your prince charming or sweeping a beautiful woman off her feet.

The most popular songs are love songs and those songs carry the longing for a man and woman be in love.

Here, in Ephesians 5:22 to the end of the chapter, we have the greatest treatise on marriage ever written.

For marriage to work it has to be a marriage rooted in God’s plan and strengthened by the Holy Spirit.

It is the three-stranded cord that will not be broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

The problems that arise in marriage are when one party begins to demand the right to have their wants, needs, and desires be the higher priority.

God’s design in marriage is not superiority, but sacrifice and submission.

As a general characteristic, Christians are to be submissive (Eph 5:21).

We are to be Spirit-filled, humbly submissive people.

That is to say, we are not dominating or proud, we are not self-willed or live by our own agenda, but we are always giving preference to the other (Romans 10:12-13), especially our spouse.

Hebrews 13:17 (ESV)

17 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls,

Now there are men who say, “Wait a minute, aren’t men supposed to be the head of the house in a relationship?”

Yes, but it is a humble kind of authority that builds your wife up to Christ.

I think a godly leader is selfless and not preoccupied with his own agenda or his own will, and plans.

I don’t have any question about my role as the head of Andrea and my household, but I also don’t live under the illusion that makes me some sort of king.

For God placed her needs in my hands.

The Submissive Wife

A woman is to be submissive to her husband, because it is fitting, it is appropriate, it is correct, it is legally binding, it is the created order of God.

You may not like that, and your flesh will resist that, but in the Divine order of things, this is God’s plan.

The headship of man is tied to man’s physicality; he is stronger, he is more aggressive.

He is constitutionally designed by God to work , to protect, and to provide for his wife, who is identified in Scripture as the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7) .

Now I do not mean that she not weaker spiritually, intellectually, or morally, but rather she is weaker physically (ie. the vessel).

The phrase “as to the Lord,” (Eph 5:22) is an interesting phrase.

The parallel chapter, Colossians 3:18 says, “as is fitting in the Lord.”

anēkō - a word that means “seemly, appropriate, correct, the right thing.”

It is saying, “This is God’s design, and if it is God’s design, then it is best.”

So a wife’s submission is not as a sub-servant or a diminishing manner, but as a woman created in God’s image to complete and fulfill her husband (and her husband to her).

I don’t think that submit is not an arbitrary term that Paul used.

As a woman voluntarily enters into the marriage covenant, she is putting herself under the headship of her husband.

Not to surrender her identity, but to elevate it and complete it under his protection, provision, and love.

Obviously, the world, especially feminists, would be repulsed and revile such a characteristic of marriage, but marriage is not a worldly institution, it is a Divine institution.

God designed marriage so that man and woman complete and fulfill each other.

God designed men to be the, the workers, protectors, and providers; that is obvious to anybody with an open mind.

Men are physically designed a certain way and so are woman.

Women are emotionally designed a certain way that give them the ability to care and nurture children and the home in ways that men never could.

It’s a godly distinction of the genders that we should never disparage or be ashamed.

1 Peter 3:1 “1 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives,” The word submissive is the same word – hupotassō, it means “to rank yourself under.”

The premise Peter is giving here is that through godliness in submission, the unbelieving husband will come to faith in Christ as well.

The word head is a very important term – kephalē in the Greek.

It doesn’t mean authority; it means origin.

It gives reference to the creative order and purpose of man and woman.

It is going back to creation and saying that since woman was taken out of the side of man (Gen 2:22).

There is a headship in the creative design between man and woman.

God made man out of the ground (Gen 2:7).

That is man’s origin, woman was made from man.

Wayne Grudem did a study of the word kephalēin the history of the Greek language, and every time it doesn’t speak of a specific task - like the head waiter - every time it is used in terms of relationship, it always means authority.

Thus, headship convey the sense of taking responsibility for what God created and commits to one’s care.

The husband is the head of the wife and house, because that is the duty God gave to the man.

It is not an image of superiority or preference, but service.

1 Timothy 5:8 (ESV)

8 But if anyone [meaning a man] does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

The man is a reflection of Christ’s headship over the church.

Now, no one denies the God placed Christ over the Church, nor do they worry about that Christ is a man.

Why? His godly, humble, love that exalts the church with his strength.

Revelation 2:27 “and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.”

Now, men, put your iron rods away… this is an image of protection and uprightness that does not give room for ungodliness.