Latest / Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self / Ephesians 5:22-33 - Marriage, Jesus, and the Church

Transcript

Ephesians 5:22-33 - Marriage, Jesus, and the Church · Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self

• 0:00
  Welcome to Tabernacle Talk. Tabernacle Talk is a Bible study
• 0:03
  podcast brought from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, MD.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Brian Self. We hope this podcast encourages
• 0:10
  you to know Christ, grow in his word, and show his love to
• 0:14
  others. Let's dive right in.
• 0:15
  Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today we are completing
• 0:18
  Ephesians chapter 5 and then we only have one more chapter left
• 0:22
  in Ephesians and I'm going to be taking a little bit of a break,
• 0:26
  not exactly after we finish Ephesians, but just a couple
• 0:30
  episodes after that. So it'll complete a week and
• 0:34
  then we will be going on a little bit of a break and
• 0:38
  that'll give me some time for a very, very busy ministry season
• 0:43
  in October. And so looking forward to that
• 0:46
  time. Hope that this is an
• 0:47
  encouragement to you. One thing that we're going to be
• 0:50
  doing during that last week before the break is I'm going to
• 0:54
  have a couple ask anything episodes.
• 0:56
  So kind of question and answer episodes.
• 0:59
  And so if you have, if you have any questions that you would
• 1:02
  like answered or maybe a topic that you've wondered about that
• 1:06
  either maybe is only briefly been mentioned on the podcast or
• 1:10
  hasn't been mentioned on the podcast, I would love to hear
• 1:13
  from you. So please send that in.
• 1:17
  You can e-mail either pastor at tbcsx.com or podcast at
• 1:22
  tbcsx.com or you can comment on any of the videos on YouTube,
• 1:27
  Facebook, or you can comment or send a DM to any of the church
• 1:36
  pages, whether Instagram, Facebook, anything.
• 1:39
  And so would love to connect with you in that way.
• 1:42
  So today we are completing Ephesians 5 and we are in verses
• 1:45
  22 through 33. And here Paul wants to tell us
• 1:50
  something about the truth of the local church, what it is, how
• 1:56
  God sees it, how Jesus values it.
• 1:59
  And to illustrate how important the church is, Paul uses the
• 2:05
  illustration of marriage. He says just as this reality of
• 2:12
  care and love and affection is between a husband and a wife,
• 2:19
  this is how we ought to think about Christ and his church and
• 2:23
  the affection and commitment and love that there is between Jesus
• 2:28
  and his bride. So let's read through the
• 2:32
  verses. Hopefully we'll come up against
• 2:35
  some common misconceptions about Ephesians 5 and specifically
• 2:40
  what it means to quote UN quote, submit.
• 2:43
  And that's something that we've dealt with before in First Peter
• 2:46
  chapter 3, First Peter two and three, looking at our submission
• 2:52
  to government employees, submission to employers, or
• 2:58
  specifically within the Roman context, slaves bond servants
• 3:03
  and their submission of their masters, the submission of wives
• 3:07
  to husbands and the submission of husbands to wives.
• 3:11
  We saw all of that in First Peter 2 and 3.
• 3:13
  So we're going to look a little bit at that, but focusing more
• 3:16
  on what Paul's actual point is here, which is Jesus and his
• 3:21
  love for the church, and what are thoughts and opinions should
• 3:25
  be towards the church as well. So verse #22 wives, submit to
• 3:30
  your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head
• 3:33
  of the wife. As Christ is the head of the
• 3:36
  church, He is the Savior of the body.
• 3:40
  Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives are to
• 3:44
  submit to their husbands in everything.
• 3:47
  Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and
• 3:52
  gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the
• 3:56
  washing of water by the Word. He did this to present the
• 4:00
  Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or
• 4:05
  anything like that, but holy and blameless.
• 4:08
  In the same way husbands are to love their wives as their own
• 4:12
  bodies. He who loves his wife loves
• 4:15
  himself, for no one ever hates his own flesh, but provides and
• 4:20
  cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we
• 4:24
  are members of His body. For this reason a man will leave
• 4:28
  his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
• 4:32
  will become one flesh. They're quoting from Genesis 2.
• 4:35
  This mystery is profound, but I'm talking about Christ and the
• 4:39
  church. To sum up, each one of you is to
• 4:42
  love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her
• 4:46
  husband. All right, So there's a lot of
• 4:49
  very scary terms in here. There's submission, there's a
• 4:52
  love, there is respect. What do we make of this?
• 4:57
  All right, Paul is using something that the Ephesians
• 5:01
  know and understand to illustrate what perhaps they
• 5:07
  don't understand as well yet. So they know about marriage.
• 5:11
  There are married people that are there in the city of
• 5:14
  Ephesus, so they kind of get how marriage works.
• 5:17
  And they've been around other Christians long enough that they
• 5:21
  have seen godly marriages, marriages that are centered on
• 5:24
  Christ. However, as Paul's writing to
• 5:27
  them, the culture around them did not have godly marriages.
• 5:31
  They didn't treat each other in good ways.
• 5:34
  So Paul is also while he's talking about Jesus in the
• 5:37
  church, he's encouraging them to live in their marriages in a
• 5:43
  particular way. OK so the section starts off
• 5:48
  with in verses 22 and 23 is 1 sentence.
• 5:52
  He starts it off by saying wives submit to your husband's as to
• 5:57
  the Lord. This comes right on the heel of
• 6:01
  verse 21 which says for all Christians submitting to one
• 6:05
  another in the fear of Christ. So this is all Christians are
• 6:10
  called to submit to each other. This is not something that is
• 6:15
  specific to women like women need to submit, but men are
• 6:20
  fine. Men never need to submit.
• 6:22
  No, the Christian life is a life of submission.
• 6:26
  We submit to government, we submit to our employer, we
• 6:28
  submit to a spouse, we submit to our spiritual leaders, our
• 6:32
  pastors and elders. We submit to all of these
• 6:36
  things. What does that mean to submit?
• 6:40
  Number one, I'll say is this. To submit is not to obey.
• 6:45
  Now as you submit, you might quote UN quote obey.
• 6:49
  You might do something that is asked of you, but submission has
• 6:54
  much more to do with your attitude than your actions.
• 6:58
  It will involve your actions, but it's about the attitude.
• 7:03
  Are you on the same team? Are you trying to accomplish the
• 7:07
  mission that you're in this case, your spouse is trying to
• 7:12
  accomplish? It's it's way more than I've
• 7:17
  seen people online say something like, well, submitting to your
• 7:20
  husband means if he wants pancakes every morning and for
• 7:23
  you to wear a red dress everyday, you just need to
• 7:25
  submit. OK, That's not a mission, if you
• 7:30
  will. That's not something that you
• 7:31
  can come alongside and you can be like, yes, I will help you to
• 7:34
  accomplish this goal. Now, as you are submitting, you
• 7:40
  can't be like, yes, I'm on the same team.
• 7:43
  I'm wanting to accomplish the same mission, but I'm never
• 7:47
  going to listen to anything that you have to say.
• 7:50
  Anything you ask me, I will do the opposite or I will just flat
• 7:53
  out refuse to do anything that you ask of me.
• 7:57
  None of us would say that. That is a good partner, one who
• 8:01
  never listens to us. And so here what Paul is calling
• 8:04
  them to is a submission, A adopt the mission of your husband.
• 8:11
  Just as with other Christians, we adopt their mission.
• 8:16
  Now, we don't follow everything that everyone else does.
• 8:21
  Sometimes people have a mission that is against Christ and that
• 8:25
  shouldn't be a path that we follow through on.
• 8:29
  There's another thing at play here.
• 8:32
  In the 1st century in particular, as women were coming
• 8:38
  to faith in Christ, their husbands were not always there
• 8:43
  yet. And so you would have a wife
• 8:45
  that has made Jesus her Lord and now has equality and freedom in
• 8:51
  Christ. And it she is regularly
• 8:54
  interacting with a man who denies Christ as Lord and who
• 9:00
  would view her as a religious heretic of sorts.
• 9:06
  There in Ephesus in particular, you can think back to the story
• 9:10
  of Paul when he was there and Diana of Ephesus that they
• 9:14
  worshipped that was there. And so the other aspect is if
• 9:19
  you were consistently fighting against your husband, constantly
• 9:24
  arguing with, hey, the, the people at church, the, you know,
• 9:28
  the, the, the Jesus community treats me a lot better than you
• 9:32
  treat me, you could actually be very often physically in danger
• 9:38
  if you were constantly arguing with and battling against your
• 9:44
  husband. And so actually here Paul is
• 9:46
  advocating for the safety of these women.
• 9:49
  He says don't insist on your way in everything.
• 9:55
  This would be something that is dangerous to you and you might
• 9:58
  go, well, he is not a saved man. He's not a godly man.
• 10:02
  And so why in the world would I care what he has to think when
• 10:06
  he's not even a child of God? He doesn't have the Holy Spirit.
• 10:09
  And Paul says you're not, you're not submitting to him because he
• 10:14
  deserves this. He says you're submitting to him
• 10:18
  because you're actually submitting to God.
• 10:21
  You're saying God, you call the shots in my life and I'm
• 10:24
  accomplishing the mission of Team Jesus.
• 10:27
  And because I'm on Team Jesus, I can adopt the mission of my
• 10:32
  husband for the family, for the maintenance of the household.
• 10:38
  Often the women would be the ones that were overseeing the
• 10:41
  servants and the slaves, the kids, the all of those things.
• 10:48
  Within that context there in the 1st century Rome, they would
• 10:52
  oversee a lot of that. And so he says make their
• 10:56
  mission your mission, realizing you're not doing this in a sense
• 11:01
  because they're worthy of it, but because God is worthy of it,
• 11:04
  because Jesus is worthy of you giving your best.
• 11:07
  And if you will, you're marching orders from day-to-day, you're
• 11:10
  getting from Jesus through your spouse, imperfect and flawed as
• 11:16
  they may be. And then he says because the
• 11:19
  husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the
• 11:24
  church. And the So the submission is
• 11:27
  anything with, as you've heard me say before, anything with two
• 11:31
  heads is a monster. And so there is a, if you will,
• 11:36
  there's an authority structure that is here from the Lord that
• 11:41
  is modeled amongst all Christians here in this context
• 11:45
  that wives are specifically called to within the home.
• 11:49
  And Jesus here is described as the Savior of the body that is
• 11:54
  the church. And so Jesus is the head of the
• 11:56
  church. He's the one that saves the
• 11:58
  body. He is responsible for her.
• 12:00
  And so here the husband is the one that he is responsible for
• 12:06
  the wife. And so he has a vested interest
• 12:09
  in guiding her in a good manner, in providing for her needs and
• 12:14
  making sure that she is happy and contented.
• 12:17
  And when there is unity within a marriage, that makes that
• 12:21
  process easier. So again, he's talking about
• 12:27
  Jesus and the church. The church is called to submit
• 12:30
  to Christ. Jesus is the one that is
• 12:33
  overseeing the church. So if you will do church quote,
• 12:38
  UN quote in the way that God has called us to, we perform the
• 12:43
  actions that Jesus has called us to both in the Lord's Supper and
• 12:48
  in baptism in exhibiting the characteristics that are the
• 12:51
  fruit of the Spirit. All the ones that we heard about
• 12:53
  in Ephesians 4. This new, new spiritual clothing
• 12:57
  that we have put on in recognizing our unity with all
• 13:01
  people from all backgrounds and all ethnicities.
• 13:04
  All of us are unified in these wonderful ways because it's not
• 13:09
  about our desires. It's about the desires of the
• 13:12
  head of Jesus, of what he wants accomplished.
• 13:15
  We are called to do. We don't set our own mission.
• 13:18
  We have received a mission from Jesus.
• 13:22
  Verse 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives
• 13:26
  are to submit to their husbands and everything.
• 13:30
  So again, as he says at the end, he's talking about Jesus and the
• 13:34
  church. So wives model in the home what
• 13:38
  you think the church should do in following Jesus.
• 13:42
  You might go wow, that that's that's a hard statement.
• 13:46
  Absolutely. But then he double S down on
• 13:49
  something that would have been crazy in the Roman world.
• 13:55
  He says in verse 25, Husbands, love your wives.
• 13:59
  OK, number one, that's a new thing for the Roman culture.
• 14:05
  Other people were something to be used.
• 14:07
  They were something to give you airs.
• 14:10
  They were someone that would manage the household for you.
• 14:14
  But Paul says for and for many people, they married out of
• 14:19
  convenience. They married out of, you know,
• 14:22
  an arranged marriage to set up connections, business endeavors,
• 14:29
  sometimes political connections. And Paul says husbands love your
• 14:34
  wives, but not just love them. He says love them just as Christ
• 14:40
  loved the church and gave himself for her.
• 14:45
  That's the kind of love that self giving, sacrificial, self
• 14:50
  emptying love is what we are called to give to our wives.
• 14:55
  So if you think a call submit to your husband like the church is
• 15:00
  supposed to submit to Jesus. If you think that's hard, the
• 15:04
  even greater call for husbands is love your wife like Christ
• 15:09
  loved the church. I don't know if you guys know
• 15:11
  this. Jesus died for the Church.
• 15:15
  Jesus, every single moment of his existence, is devoted to
• 15:21
  equipping the church. He has given her everything that
• 15:25
  she needs. He upholds her.
• 15:28
  He makes it so that she is protected that she does not.
• 15:32
  If you will be eradicated from the face of the earth.
• 15:35
  Jesus loves and cares for the church.
• 15:39
  And if you are a man and you are listening to or watching this
• 15:43
  podcast, you are called to live in constant death to yourself,
• 15:51
  to your desires, to your wants for stuff and things and
• 15:56
  intimacy. And you are called to lay your
• 15:59
  life down for your bride. You are not just called to like,
• 16:03
  oh, yeah, I'd take a bullet for my wife.
• 16:05
  Great. Will you live for her each day?
• 16:10
  Are you providing the things that she needs financially?
• 16:13
  Are you a hard worker, not just at your job?
• 16:16
  Are you a hard worker at home? Are you attentive to her needs?
• 16:19
  Do you care about her? Do you listen to her when she
• 16:23
  speaks? As I'm learning I'm in like year
• 16:29
  6 of marriage time is honestly just flown by.
• 16:32
  It's it's been a wonderful thing to experience marriage and and
• 16:38
  life with Samantha has been amazing.
• 16:40
  I could not ask God for a better wife as as I've learned, listen
• 16:50
  for not just what she tells me, but what she insinuates like, oh
• 16:56
  man, the trash is getting full in my brain.
• 16:59
  I'm not hearing. Take out the trash.
• 17:02
  What I'm hearing is, oh, it's almost full or it's getting
• 17:05
  full, but she didn't tell me to take it out.
• 17:07
  No, no, listen. Understand.
• 17:10
  As we learn in first Peter 3, dwell with your wife in an
• 17:13
  understanding way. Give yourself entirely for your
• 17:18
  spouse, for your wife. So love your wives like Christ
• 17:21
  loved the church, and he gave himself for her to make her
• 17:26
  holy. The church, the people of God,
• 17:29
  could not have been holy without Jesus's death.
• 17:34
  But because he lived a perfect life and he died in our place
• 17:38
  and he offers us his perfect record, we can be holy as a
• 17:44
  result of what Jesus has done, not as a result of what we've
• 17:48
  done. So Jesus gave himself for the
• 17:51
  church to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing
• 17:55
  of water by the Word. So the word, the message of the
• 17:59
  gospel that is given there with the washing of water, you have
• 18:02
  baptism that all those that have followed Christ as a disciple, A
• 18:06
  believer, a follower in Jesus over the past 2000 years,
• 18:11
  everyone that was able to underwent the waters of baptism.
• 18:16
  And so here we are washed with water, but it's not just like
• 18:20
  water that saves us. It's the reception of the
• 18:22
  message of the gospel. And as we have received that we
• 18:27
  have followed that message into the waters of baptism.
• 18:30
  Verse 27. He did this to present the
• 18:33
  church to himself in splendor. The church exists for Jesus to
• 18:37
  bring Jesus glory, to bring Jesus praise so that Jesus has
• 18:41
  someone to love. The church does not exist for
• 18:44
  the world. The church does not exist for if
• 18:47
  you will. The church doesn't exist for the
• 18:49
  poor. The church doesn't exist for our
• 18:51
  boredom. The church doesn't exist for a
• 18:54
  programs for us so that we are not bored.
• 18:59
  The church exists for Jesus. Now, as we follow Jesus, all
• 19:03
  sorts of possibilities open up, and what glorifies God many,
• 19:08
  many, many, many times benefits tons of people in tons of
• 19:12
  different life circumstances. But ultimately the church's
• 19:15
  purpose is for Jesus to bring him praise and him glory, that
• 19:19
  he would have a bride, one to love.
• 19:22
  So he presents the church to himself in splendor, without
• 19:25
  spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless.
• 19:30
  This is why, as I've mentioned before, church discipline is
• 19:33
  such an important thing, because the Church of God is called to
• 19:37
  be holy and blameless, that we would have no spot or wrinkle
• 19:41
  within the church. It's why we can't just exist in
• 19:45
  church at odds with one another, constantly angry or bitter or
• 19:50
  fighting or gossiping or avoiding one another.
• 19:54
  Instead, there must be unity, because we cannot mar the bride.
• 20:00
  Of Christ. And may we present Jesus's bride
• 20:04
  as a beautiful, if you will. May we present her as beautiful
• 20:09
  to those around us. May our spouses, may our kids,
• 20:14
  may our siblings, may our friends or neighbors or fellow
• 20:17
  church members, when they think of the local church, may they
• 20:21
  think of it as a beautiful thing that they want to be a part of.
• 20:24
  There'd be no dread. There'd be no concern.
• 20:28
  May it just be excitement that the bride of Christ is beautiful
• 20:32
  and we want to spend time with her.
• 20:36
  Verse 28 In the same way as Jesus loves the church, husbands
• 20:40
  are to love their wives as their own body.
• 20:43
  So it's as much care as I would take for myself, making sure I'm
• 20:46
  fed, I'm clothed, I'm happy, I'm whatever.
• 20:49
  I need to make sure Samantha has that he who loves his wife loves
• 20:53
  himself for no one ever hates his own flesh, but provides and
• 20:57
  cares for it just as Christ does for the church.
• 21:00
  So Jesus takes care of the church.
• 21:02
  He makes sure that she is fed. He is the one that gives her,
• 21:06
  you know, the spiritual clothing He provides for her.
• 21:09
  And so we are called to provide for our spouse just as we do for
• 21:13
  our own body. Verse 30 since we are members of
• 21:16
  his body, Jesus cares for his body.
• 21:18
  We are to care for ours, which includes our wives. 30 verse 31,
• 21:24
  quoting there from Genesis 2, that we have become one flesh.
• 21:28
  So if I neglect to take care of Samantha, I'm actually
• 21:31
  neglecting to take care of myself, and it harms both myself
• 21:37
  and her. Verse 32.
• 21:38
  This mystery is profound, but I'm talking about Christ and the
• 21:42
  church. To sum up, each one of you is to
• 21:45
  love his wife as himself and the wife is to respect her husband.
• 21:51
  Here he says love and respect is the name of the game.
• 21:54
  Do you love and respect your spouse?
• 21:56
  If you don't, that needs to be something that is worked on.
• 22:01
  That needs to be something that you pursue because it's here.
• 22:04
  It is commanded by the Lord. Let love, cherishing actions,
• 22:09
  words, affection, may that flow out from us to our wives and
• 22:14
  vice versa. Certainly.
• 22:16
  And then wives respect your husband here.
• 22:19
  I want to look at this word respect as we end Oh, here, this
• 22:23
  is the Greek word phobio. It's it's to fear.
• 22:27
  There is a reverence. There is a I'm going to use the
• 22:32
  word fear here and then hopefully I can categorize it
• 22:35
  correctly for you. There ought to be AI actually
• 22:40
  care about what he thinks. I, if you will, I, I, I give a
• 22:46
  care whether or not he likes something or doesn't like
• 22:50
  something or if he approves of something or disapproves of
• 22:53
  something. This doesn't mean that you're
• 22:55
  just a slave and you always obey him, but as you submit to him,
• 22:59
  it's because you actually care about what he thinks.
• 23:02
  You view his input as valuable and as love and respect flows
• 23:09
  between the husband and wife in a marriage that is a good and
• 23:14
  godly. Anything that shows other people
• 23:17
  how Jesus loves his church and how the church loves and cares
• 23:21
  about and listens to the voice of the head of the Church, Jesus
• 23:25
  Christ. Well, much, much more could be
• 23:27
  said, but time fails us. Looking forward to beginning
• 23:30
  chapter 6 with you next time. Thanks for tuning in.