life in the spirit

Introduction

So just a couple of things before I get into the sermon. This will be the last time that I preach to you for a while. I'm going to be taking a writing sabbatical this summer for six or seven weeks. I have a five-year deadline on my Isaiah commentary, and I've been endlessly ribbed by others that have written in that series, saying I'm bringing up the rear, so it's due in August, and I'm grateful to the elders for an opportunity to concentrate and work on it and also looking forward to hearing the ministry of the Word from the elders. So I'll be here, our family will be here those weeks and we'll be ministering in all other ways but just I won't be preaching. So pray for me that I would be able to just have the gift of brevity. The commentary is done. It's just 30% too long and well, you know that problem, you have to endure it just about every week, but that's what I'm doing. Also, I'm delighted to see our China team back. I'm looking especially at the team that came back at 4:45 this morning. You guys are still awake. I'm going to be looking at you throughout the sermon and seeing if those eyes are open. I see that you've got your coffee there, so keep going but we're glad to have all of you here.

This morning, I get to preach on parenting. And so, you know how in Ephesians 5 for a section of the time, the husbands get to elbow the wives, and then the next week the wives get to elbow the husband. So I guess this morning, I suppose the children get to elbow the parents. Mom and dad, pay attention now, listen carefully. But I want you to know, I'm not sure who exasperates who more, in parenting, the parent-child relationship because I have been thoroughly exasperated by my children from time to time. And I know that I have also exasperated them, but we turn to the word of God this morning to be blessed, and we really yearn to hear from Scripture what Godly parenting is all about. And I want to resume a theme that I began last week, because it's been much on my mind, especially with the China team coming back and with the heart that all of us should have for the global expanse of the Gospel.

A Vision of the Future

A Glorious Assembly of the Redeemed

I often think in my mind that the vision that the Apostle John had, of the finish line, of this election that we have talked about in Ephesians Chapter 1 before the foundation of the world, God chose His children, His people that He would adopt them at the right time and he had all of human history in his mind, Ephesians 1, teaches this very plainly.

But then you get in Revelation 7:9-10, it says, "After that I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language." “Nation, tribe, people and language. Standing before the throne and in front of the lamb, and they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands, and they cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.’” These are the redeemed. Now, what a sight that's going to be. They were elect from before the foundation of the world, they were chosen in Christ and they will be there in Heaven with clear emblems of their purity, clothed in white, holding palm branches of victory, and they're waving and they're giving all credit and glory to Jesus, the Lamb who died for them.

How Did They Get There?

But then in the text, in Revelation 7:13, it says, "One of the elders asked me, these in white robes, who are they? And where did they come from?" And as I did last week, I want to upload in your mind again, another question, how did they get there? What is the story that will be told in Heaven of how those elect actually came to saving faith in Christ? Now, I love thrilling conversion stories. Of course, we all love the story of Saul of Tarsus, and how breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, the very morning of the day he was converted gives us incredible courage and boldness in evangelism, thinking if that man in that mental state can be converted on that day, anyone can. When I think about all others that have been converted, we're going to have the chance to hear their stories and to rejoice in them.

I read a story, a book once called Death of a Guru and it was an extended testimony of a Brahmin caste Hindu. He comes from a long line of Brahmin priests, his name was Rabi Maharaj. He was trained as a yogi, and he meditated for many hours each day, but he became disillusioned and depressed by Hinduism, heard the Gospel and was radically, permanently transformed by it, and became a passionate follower of Jesus Christ. I look forward to meeting him and hearing his testimony. I love those kind of testimonies.

Or you know Lee Strobel, who wrote The Case for Easter, The Case for Christ and a number of other books, he was Yale educated in law, he was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, he was an avowed Atheist but he was converted to Christ when he began investigating Christianity to debunk it. You know how many people there will be like that in Heaven? I think Josh McDowell was the same way. These apologists, they go after Christianity to debunk it, and the more they get into it, the more powerful and compelling it seems, and they end up being converted.

CS Lewis was similar. He was an Atheist, an intellectual enemy of the Gospel, he eventually became what he called, "The most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England."He'd been fighting Christ and the overwhelming truth of the scripture until he could fight no longer and was saved, wonderfully.

And so I want to hear all of those stories or I think about bold missionary endeavors and these courageous missionaries like William Carey, and Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, John Paton, Elisabeth Elliot and all of these great brothers and sisters in Christ and I was reading the story about the first convert in India under William Carey, he was a man named Krishna Pal. He came to faith in Christ when he slipped on a river bed, a muddy river bed and dislocated his shoulder. He had already become disillusioned with Hinduism and was starting to focus on Theism through Islam, but he heard about this, this missionary compound, this community, and they had some medical knowledge there, his shoulder was dislocated, and he was brought to the missionary compound and a doctor there working with William Carey named John Thomas took care of his shoulder and spoke to this man Krishna about Christ. And he began coming regularly and hearing the gospels, this was after Carey had been there for seven years with no fruit, and Carey and his team led him to Christ, and when this news emerged, all of this man's Indian friends began to mock him and attack him, and persecute him, but he eventually ended up leading dozens and dozens of them to Christ. And in Heaven, we're going to hear stories about brothers and sisters like this.

Or I think about heroic traveling Evangelists like George Whitefield or Billy Graham that have led so many people to Christ. I love reading the stories of Arnold Dallimore wrote a biography of Whitefield and how he crossed the Atlantic Ocean 13 times and all of the detailed stories of people up and down the colonies, the coasts before the American Revolution, just clamoring to hear the Gospel through George Whitefield and being converted. Or in 1957, I read the story of Billy Graham's New York City crusade and you really should Google the photo of Billy Graham preaching in Times Square in New York. I think that will never be repeated again.

Several hundred thousand people crammed in to Time Square, black and white photo, and Billy Graham about to preach the Gospel, and the fruit of that 110-day crusade there, 2 million people heard the gospel and over 50,000 claimed to have come to faith in Christ. And we're going to want to hear all of those stories. But as I said last week, by far the most productive means by which the elect are converted, soundly converted is Christian parenting.

The Great Commission Starts at Home

Now, I don't know the percentages, I guessed it, 60%, 55%, 60%, 70% who knows who can tell? But I want to focus all of you parents on the incredibly high calling that the Lord gives you when he brings a baby into your life. When he brings a child into your home. The high calling that you have to bring those children to a saving faith in Christ. I believe that God uses the Christian family generations down the line from when William Carey or Adoniram Judson or John Paton come to an area, to establish a multi-generational testimony to Christ and bring many, many to faith in Christ. Missionaries in that case, build the bridge, but the parents are the key to that multi-generational structure that gets built-up. Everyone that I've talked to has said that this is true. By far the most effective kind of evangelism there is in the world is parent-child evangelism, nothing is even close. Far more effective than workplace evangelism, contact evangelism or anything else. And so, we want to embrace this concept that the Great Commission starts at home.

The Great Commission that Jesus gave to us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” the most effective disciple-making all around the world is done at home, making disciples of your own children, and teaching them to obey everything, that comprehensive obedience that parents get to teach their children.

So this morning, as I did last week, I'm advocating that you embrace, you who are parents of growing children, embrace this pattern that's given us in 2 Timothy 3:14-15. “As for you,” Paul says to Timothy, “continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it.” You hear that? The people who taught it to you and how from infancy, you have known the Holy Scriptures which were able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. You see the beautiful combination of the in-depth close relationship of the evangelizers and this word that you've known from infancy how beautifully that comes together in Christian parenting.

Understanding the Role of Home Evangelism

Now I need to give a few caveats. I was talking to a dear brother, this week and I want to say a few things what I do not mean in saying all of this. First of all, I do not mean that we don't need evangelism and missions outside the home. I do hope you know that. When I say 55% to 60% maybe get converted at home, you know that leaves 40% to 45% that don't, if those numbers are true. They need Evangelists and missionaries. So we absolutely have to be faithful. I was not brought to an evangelical understanding of the Gospel by my parents. I was led to faith in Christ by a fraternity brother at age 19 in Boston, at Sigma Chi at MIT. That's who led me to Christ. And so I absolutely believe in evangelism and I believe in missions.

So we're not saying that, nor do we say that every child who is raised in a godly Christian home will themselves become godly followers of Christ. We know the heartbreaking reality of how many break away from what their parents taught and exemplified and do not walk with Christ. We know that that's true, and Jesus Himself said it was going to happen. In Matthew 10:34-37, he said these words, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I've come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household," and then he said this, "anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of Me. And anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me." So our top loyalty is always going to be to Christ.

We know sadly, that many children do rebel and do not follow their Godly parents. That's how whole movements like the Moravians and the Puritans, the New England Puritans, fall apart after a few generations, because the children don't follow in the godly footsteps of their parents. That's how in a country like the Czech Republic and all that is 99% Atheist. Whereas in generations before there were far more Christians because the younger generations did not follow in the Gospel. So we know that. But there are many, many things that we parents can and should be doing to enrich our children's lives with the Gospel and that's what I'm going to preach about today.

The Eternal Accountability of Parenting

Primary Responsibility Goes to Fathers

So we've got before us, in this text, I'm zeroing in on verse 4 alone, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." So here we have the eternal accountability of parents. Now, the word, the text says, “fathers,” we stick with that word, it's a good translation. And so the primary responsibility for bringing up the children goes to the fathers. But we know that the Greek word used here can be extended to include mothers as well. So we can think of this in terms of parents, but we continue to embrace the headship and submission pattern of marriage in Ephesians 5 and say that the father is the one primarily responsible for this ministry in the home. But mothers are in view, are too, definitely biblically. Think about the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 6:20-21, says, "My son, keep your Father's commands and do not forsake your mother's teaching." So you got the Father's command, the Mother's teaching they're working together, the father and the mother, in the godly nurturing of the children. “Bind them upon your heart,” he says, “forever and fasten them around your neck.”

Godly Mothers in Church History

So we think about godly mothers in the Bible, and godly mothers throughout church history. You think of Timothy with his mother, Eunice and how she, with her mother Lois brought Timothy up in the faith. We think about heroic mothers in church history like Felicitas in Ancient Rome, who had seven sons, who with her, all of them on the same day were martyred by Marcus Aurelius. And how she had raised them up to be Christians and they all maintained their Christian confession even at the price of their own lives. Or Monica, you know the story of Monica with her son Augustine, one of the most famous conversion stories in all of church history, but it was his godly mother who wept and prayed for him as he was wandering so badly in paganism and philosophy and sexual immorality, and she was just heart broken and would continue to pray and he mentions her quite prominently in his Confessions.

When I think about Susanna Wesley, and her children John and Charles Wesley the most famous of her children, she gave birth, I think, 19 times the records are a little sketchy, 10 of them survived into childhood, think about that, nine not surviving into childhood but that's just how it was back then. With infant mortality and other things that would take children. But Susanna Wesley was a beautiful mixture of piety and practical godliness in her home. I picture a home of high energy, high-powered, intelligent kids. And it said that she would sit in the center of the living room on a chair with her apron over her head that was her prayer closet, kids were to leave her alone for that time while she was praying. I don't know how well that worked, but at any rate, that's what she did. But she made it a point to spend one hour a week evangelizing and discipling each of her children pouring into each one as they were growing.

And then there's Charles Spurgeon with his mother. Spurgeon gives this testimony, he said, "I cannot tell how much I owe to the solemn words of my good mother. I remember on one occasion her praying thus, now Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance that they perish, and my soul must bear a swift witness against them at the Day of Judgment if they lay not hold of Christ." She was praying that out loud. Spurgeon said “That thought of my mother's bearing a swift witness against me pierced my conscience. How can I ever forget when she bowed her knee and with her arms about my neck prayed these words, ‘Oh, that my son might live before thee, Oh Lord.’”

So we have in view I think godly parenting both fathers and mothers, but we're going to zero in, especially in the responsibility of the fathers to evangelize and disciple their own children. And we start in this text, in verse 4 with the negative. There's a prohibition here. “It says Fathers do not provoke your children to anger,” and then the positive, “but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” We've seen this throughout this practical section of Ephesians from Ephesians 4 through 5 and now into 6. The negatives do not do this, “do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth. But only what is helpful for building others up.” We get the same pattern here.

The Negative: Do Not Provoke Your Children to Anger

Limitations to Parental Authority

So we have this prohibition. “Do not provoke your children to anger.” So what this means is that fathers are limited in their authority over their children, they're limited by the word of God. The Father is the highest human authority over the child, with the mother second in command. But parental authority is not absolute. There are limits to parental authority, and there are also limits of parental responsibility. So fundamentally, we just need to get across, your children are not yours, ultimately. They belong to God, they belong to God. For He alone made them, He alone sustains them, He alone can save them and He alone will judge them. They belong to God.

I think about what Job said in Job 10:10-12, he said, "Did... ", speaking to God, "Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews. You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence you watched over my spirit." So he's saying God you knit me together in my mother's womb. So, fathers are restrained in their authority by the higher authority of God, our children belong to God.

God’s Ownership Even During Tragedy

Now, let me say a tender word to any of you who might have the extreme tragedy of burying a child, if that should ever happen. It's been a time of tremendous temptation to parents, grieving parents to find fault with God at times like that. To rage in accusation against God, for “taking my child from me." This is where I want to say to you again what I've been saying to you. They are not yours, they belong to God. They belong to God. And we can never rail against God if you should choose in His providence to take one. I don't think there are any trials that we could face in life, that is poignant and wrenching as burying a child. I think that's one of the hardest things that can ever happen. So, I'm not minimizing the pain that one feels, but if you're not in any way helped by yielding to Satan at that moment and turning away from the God who alone can minister to you, and bring you comfort, and sustaining grace at that time. And Job knew this. Job lost 10 children in one day. Think about it. It's just staggering to me. Seven sons and three daughters in one day, and he said about that, “the Lord gave and the Lord took away, may the name of the Lord be praised.” And in all this, he did not find any fault with God or charge God with wrongdoing. So all of our parenting should be done in light of God's greater ownership and greater responsibility over our children. That's vital, they belong to God.

The Prohibition: Do Not Provoke Your Children to Anger

So what is the prohibition. Let's look at it. It says, "Do not provoke your children to anger," The NIV has “Do not exasperate your children.” I know well when some of my children learned the word exasperate because then I heard it often. We'll get to all that, because I'm going to couch the terms here so that parents are not hindered by the sermon I'm preaching today I'm hoping to help. Alright, but exasperate, I think it's a potent word, but more literally, “provoke your children to wrath.” Don't give them a reason for reasonable anger. There is righteous indignation don't give them a reason for that. And don't tempt them to unrighteous anger either. That's what we're looking at here. Don't be a cause for your children to rebel and run from Christ and from the Gospel because of your bad example and your bad parenting.

So the focus here is the tender hearts of your children. Children can become discouraged, they can become dismayed, they can become beaten down, repressed and ultimately enraged by bad parenting. We desire instead to cherish and nurture and love our children. The child must be brought to broken-hearted repentance over sin, to faith in Christ to a deep love for God and for the Word of God in a pattern of obedience to it. That's what we're trying to do.

Now, let me say a cautionary word here. Just because a child is angry at his parents, especially at moments of discipline, doesn't mean their parents are to blame. You know that, don't you? Parents You definitely know that. Kids tend to get provoked to anger easily whenever any consequences of a sin are brought to them. So it's not necessarily the case that when your kids are angry that you've sinned or done anything wrong. They may just need to get quiet and go pray and see that they are the ones that have sinned and their parents are just trying to be faithful parents. But we need to look at what Paul is prohibiting because there is something that he is prohibiting here. So, I want to get into specifics, What provokes children to wrath? What exasperates children?

13 Points: What Provokes Children to Wrath?

Well, number one, I'm going to go kind of the opposite direction cause all the rest are going to lean on the other side, but number one, just lack of discipline at all. Lack of discipline at all, just letting them roam free and never challenging or crossing their wills that, ironically, in the end will provoke them to wrath. Most of the injunctions I'm about to give seek to restrain from doing discipline too harshly or too abundantly or in a way that will provoke them to wrath, but it's ironically true that no discipline at all will end up feeding their fleshly nature, their fleshly pride, and their rebellious hearts and make them children of wrath, serving the devil.

So you definitely want to cross their sinful wills, and discipline them when they sin, you definitely want to do that. As it says in Proverbs 13:24, "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." As a matter of fact, the author of the Hebrews picks up various Proverbs on discipline. In Hebrews 12 when he says that's how our Heavenly Father treats us, he disciplines us when we need it for our sins. And as a matter of fact, if He doesn't discipline you, you're an illegitimate child, you're not a true son or daughter of God. He will not allow you to just go off into sin, He's going to pull you back, and as someone called it, take you to the divine woodshed. He will do hard things in your life. Hebrews 12. And in that he's quoting the book of Proverbs. So to not discipline at all is to provoke them to wrath. However, beyond this, there's an array of wrong ways to discipline and train a child, ways that will provoke them to anger.

Secondly, on the other hand, excessive strictness will provoke a child to wrath. Some parents see the overall laxness of parental discipline in our culture and they overreact in the opposite direction. They feel the more strictness the better. I don't know why, but I was reminded of the old woman and the shoe. You remember her? Mother goose? I read this with new eyes this week. “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread, whipped them all soundly, and sent them to bed.” I'm thinking that's not good parenting. And it says right in the rhyme she doesn't know what to do. So, be saturated in the Word of God, you will know what to do, and it's not that.

So excessive strictness, the great danger here, of course, all humor aside, is abuse. That can become abusive, even corporal punishment and we know can become abusive because there have been those extremes, some would seek to eliminate corporal punishment as even being legal at all. Some nations have done that. Made it illegal. I think that's obviously going too far, but it is possible that some of it can become abusive.

Thirdly, a lack of love for the children provokes them to wrath. A cold, emotionally, distant, loveless parent never holding the children never cherishing them, never telling them how much you love them. Or perhaps, let's just say not enough. So stern, so angry with them, failing to find your joy in their blessing. Just like I asked between husbands and wives, I said husbands ask your wives, “Do you feel loved by me like Christ loved the Church?” Well, maybe you need to do that with your children. “Do you feel that I delight in you, that I'm glad that you're in our home. I'm glad you're in my life. Do you feel that?” Sorry, there was a wedding yesterday, I get like this, anyway. Do you tell them regularly, how much you love them? You know time goes by like the wind, the days just go by and you won't have that chance anymore to hold them and to tell them. So, loveless parenting.

Fourthly, hypocrisy in the parents can provoke them to wrath. Christianity, not being genuinely lived out before them in the home. Children are observing you constantly, no matter what you're doing, good or ill They see it all, they are astute observers, and imitators. That's how they grow. They can smell out the inconsistencies. “If you say you love God,” quoting 1 John, "If you say you love God and do not keep His commandments, you're a liar," your children will see that lie. So it provokes them to wrath when you are hypocritical when you're acting pious, and godly at church, and then at home you're not living it out, that will provoke them to wrath.

Fifthly, parenting in anger, sinful anger. Remember I spoke a number of weeks ago about carnal anger? “Be angry but do not sin.” So I made a distinction between righteous anger and unrighteous anger. I said that unrighteous anger is frequently motivated by pride or inconvenience, by pride or inconvenience. That really comes to roost in parenting. Your kid embarrasses you out in public, and they get it at home. Why? Because you have their best interest at heart, you're trying to train their character, shape their souls? No, you were ashamed, you were embarrassed. That's why. So you parent at that moment in anger or discipline in anger.

I believe that parents, especially if you're administering the rod, you're administering corporal punishment, you must make certain you're not angry at all. You go get yourself under control, you go be Spirit-filled, you make sure you remember what this is all about. It's their souls you're trying to see them come to faith in Christ. They're not yours, they're going to stand before God, and not you on judgment day. And so, you're not their Savior, you're not their king, you're their parent. And so calm yourself down. The thing they broke through childishness is not worth all of that. And so calm yourself down and then go back and do the discipline as needed and do it wisely and consistently.

Sixth, injustice. Injustice. Injustice provokes a child to wrath. Sometimes the parental discipline, the parents discipline mechanically with no opportunity for the child to be heard. No opportunity to express his or her side of the story, the parent may feel that the child has no right to speech. Children should be seen and not heard that kind of thing, especially at moments like that. “All they must do is listen and submit.” However, we celebrate in our legal system, the writ of habeas corpus, and the fact that no one accused of a crime and can be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. What that means is that their case has to be heard. And we celebrate that out in public. And so I would just urge parents to give your child an opportunity to make his or her case, within reason, I've noticed they'll make it as long as it takes. They'll filibuster. I've seen all kinds of things going on. Alright, but if they have never had a chance to tell their side of the story, that is frustrating. It can provoke a child to wrath. Now again, a child may feel that any discipline is unjust. We hear often about our injustices at home. Alright, but some of it can be. And if you are parenting or disciplining unjustly, it can provoke a child to wrath.

Seventh, excessive protection. Excessive protection. It is a dangerous world you brought children into. It's physically dangerous and it's spiritually dangerous and you know it. And it's right for you to want to protect your children, but there is a pattern of excessive protection. Some parents seek to remove their children in every way from all the dangers of the world. They're extremely protective they keep them close at all times and so the operative word is, “No.” No to everything. So as they grow and develop and they experience things in life, they're going to get hurt, and we want to protect them, but ultimately only God can do that.

Number eight, excessive control. Some parents expect absolute obedience to parental commands throughout every moment of the child's life at home. Well, this is in one sense a biblical standard as we said “all the way, right away, with a happy spirit, that is the biblical standard.” The problem comes when the parent covers the growing child's life thick with commands and it's inevitable that almost anything that happens at that point is going to be some pattern of disobedience. And so that's difficult. That's a challenge. Parents have to be sure not to become control freaks, especially as the child grows and rightly needs to make more and more decisions for him or herself. There's like, as I've said, a dimmer switch. And so more and more they're going to need to be able to make their own decisions, then they're going to need to be able to fail, to make bad decisions, they need to be permitted to mess up and still be loved.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was speaking in his context in England of adult men and women that he knew never got married because it would displease their parents. I mean, that's unbelievably selfish on the part of the parents as though the children were born exclusively for them. You can, especially think of women growing and the father keeps them close and they just, dad just never lets go. And so, she misses her opportunity, and goes on through and never gets married. But there are actually just many examples of the temptation we parents have to become control freaks. And just absolutely down to the smallest detail, controlling things of our children's lives.

Nine, failure of parents to encourage children. If the parents hardly ever encourage, but instead always pointing out failures, ways it could have been done better, the child's going to feel about his father or mother, “I just can never make him happy. It's never enough. No matter how well I do every day, it's just never enough to make him happy or her happy.”

Number 10, Unreasonable expectations of achievement. Some parents put extreme pressure on their children to achieve. They're really, in some ways, just living out their ego through their children, pushing them to excel. This could be in academics, it could be in athletics, music, could be in Christianity and just living out the Christian faith, pushing hard. The children then become little performing monkeys and often the last issue comes up as well. The parents rarely encourage the child because they're pushing them on to even higher and higher levels of achievement. And so, that can be very provoking to wrath.

Eleventh, inconsistency in discipline. Sometimes the parent is strict, sometimes they're lenient. Sometimes they espouse a family value, and other times they ignore it, back and forth. The standards become murky. The child really doesn't know what the parents want or expect, and so it's hard to know. Now, if you can just pause and see now the incredible difficulty and humbling of parenting. Alright, so which is it? Alright, are we supposed to be extremely consistent but not overly strict in discipline? Pastor, how do you put it all together? My answer, I don't know. I know this, it says, "Our fathers disciplined us for a short time as they thought best." So I say, frequently, my kids, they know that I'm saying “I'm doing as I think best. God is better than me. Okay, trust in your father. But this is what I think right now, I am not lowering the standard on that thing that you've done, but I'm giving you grace right now.” Oh they get, they love grace, that kind of grace. Alright, give me grace, I want grace. Yeah, I understand, well, there's other kinds of grace, there's the grace that teaches you to say no to ungodliness. We're going to work on that one today. That's the grace you'll get today. But it's hard, this is humbling. Come to God and bring him this list and say, Oh God, teach me to parent because I don't know what to do and I need your help.

Twelve, favoritism. Favoritism, showing preference to one child over the rest or over others. Clear example of this in the Bible, Jacob with Joseph. It says it straight in the text. Genesis 37:3. Look it up, “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his sons.” Your eyebrows go up at that point. He's setting Joseph up to be murdered. Now, I'm not in anyway condoning the murderous jealousy that was in the hearts of his brothers, but I think the pattern of the royal, the rich coat.

Do you remember when Esau showed up with 400 armed men to greet his brother after he'd been away for a long time? Remember that? Hey we're going to have a family reunion. I just happened to bring along 400 soldiers to help us celebrate. It was a very tough night. And Jacob, spent the night wrestling with an angel, and then the next night, next day he got ready to meet Esau and he put his children in concentric circles almost of preference. The slave women and their children were outer circle, then Leah and her children next, and then Rachel and Joseph on the inner circle. What does that say to you if you're one of the other kids? Favoritism can be provocative to children.

And finally, failure of parents to sacrifice cheerfully for their children. “Oh, what a burden you are to me.” That's the message. It's like, no, that's not the message. The message is what a blessing you are. Do you know how blessed I am to have you in my life? And so, there's a Bible verse in the 2 Corinthians 12:14-15, “Children should not have to save up for parents, but parents for their children. So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well.” Now that's Paul the apostle speaking to the Corinthian church, but He's speaking in the idea of parenting. I am very gladly spending everything that I have to give it to you. Alright, so that's the negative. This is a good time, I think for fathers and mothers to just reflect, and as needed repent and ask God to forgive you, and if you feel like you've been parenting in a way that's not been helpful, then just ask God to give you grace.

The Positives: Nourish, Train, Admonish

Now, in the short time I have left, now I'm going to resume preaching on parenting when I get back. I did not want to do this, but there are lots of things I want to say about marks of regeneration, how to parent your children toward conversion and how to know they are converted. I want to talk about child baptism and all that. That will be after I return to the pulpit. But let me talk about the positives here briefly. And we'll get into them a little more next time.

All Parenting to Be Done “In the Lord”

The positives, the three words given us here are “nourish, train and admonish,” all in the Lord. “But instead nourish them or bring them up in the nurture [or training] and admonition, [I think is the best translation of that word] in the Lord.” Alright, so first of all, all parenting is to be done in the Lord, as a subset of the Spirit-filled life, as a subset, it's done as Christians. “As a prisoner for the Lord,” he said, "I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you've received." So your parenting should be worthy of your calling. You should be Christian parents and then again, Ephesians 5:18, "Be filled with the Spirit." So, Spirit-filled parenting that's what we're looking for. Spirit-filled parenting. So we're not looking for just mere morality. We're bringing them up in the Lord. We know there are all kinds of moral instructions we can give them.

Have you ever looked online George Washington's rules of civility? Okay, look that up. He teaches you not to spit into the fire. Okay, I guess that's really important. It was important back then. Don't spit in the fire. Or all kinds of things, how to eat in a mannerly way. How to not turn your back on someone speaking to you, how to deal with bodily fluids, frankly, George Washington was very detailed about these rules of civility.

Well, look, we Christian parents, we're going to embrace that basic level of philosophical morality too. We're going to teach people how to be good citizens, good students, good people, holding the doors for people, mannered at the table, we're going to teach them all that, but this goes so far beyond that. We're going to bring them up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” So all things pointed toward the Lord Jesus Christ focused on Jesus with a constant reference to Christ and his shed blood. And we're going to nourish them.

Nourish Your Children

It says "nourish your children", it's translated “bring them up,” but rear them raise them. But it's that feeding image here. Ephesians 5:29 speaks about what the husband does, or what Christ does for the Church. No one ever hated his own flesh but He nourishes it and cherishes it just as Christ does the Church, same word. So there's the sense of nourishing your children, feeding them.

Now, of course, a godly father will see to it that his children don't go to bed hungry. So, you're going to physically feed them. But especially, you're going to feed them in the word. Jesus said “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” You're going to feed them the Word of God, and fundamentally you're going to feed them the bread of life who is Jesus. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." You're going to feed them. So nourish them, feed their souls. We're going to talk more about this next time, but I'm just giving you an overview. Nourish them.

Train Your Children

Secondly, train them, train them. The Greek word here is “paideía.” It's a concept of systematic preparation of the child for adult life. Shape their minds, get them ready for everything they're going to do in life, especially spiritually. Begins with language, the mother tongue, this is where the invaluable assistance of a godly mother who teaches the mother tongue comes in. The infant learns how to speak and then beyond that, full education. Just getting them ready. Jesus grew in wisdom, and stature and favor with God and man, Luke 2:52. You're getting them ready for every phase of their lives.

Now, next time I'm going to say some things about education, there's a lot to be said about education. We homeschool our kids. I think the divide between government school and homeschool has never been wider. I think it's getting even wider. There's also private school. Those are the three basic options. There's a hybrid as well, but you're going to have some weighty decisions to make, especially as government gets more and more aggressive in its worldview, you're going to have some weighty decisions to make. There's some godly brothers and sisters in public school, some of our own church members have given their lives to pouring out good education in the government school setting, but things are getting harder and harder for them to do what they would really like to do and for parents to make wise decisions. So we'll talk more about that next time, but we're going to discuss the “paideía,” the training of a child, and then finally the instruction of the child will talk more about this again. But the idea here is, correction in the face of sin.

Admonish Your Children

You're going to be admonishing them, showing them their sins, and especially what will happen if they continue in patterns of sin. So, Fathers raising their teenage sons, mothers raising the daughters. Parents raising their children getting ready for the heavy things that they're going to face in life and dealing all along with their sins. So as I said, we're going to stop there. I'm going to talk next time more about these three words. I'm going to talk more about marks of regeneration, and we'll talk also about child baptism and just the difficulties, challenges, and interesting aspects of that for a church, but be praying for us as we do that. So that'll be about in, maybe about seven weeks after my writing sabbatical is done. So, let's close in prayer.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for all the things that we have been learning through Ephesians. We thank you for these very clear instructions that come from your Word, and Lord I pray that You would be strengthening right now fathers and mothers in the sometimes seemingly overwhelming challenges of parenting. I pray that you would be raising up before our very eyes, a generation of godly children, of sons and daughters who will embrace Christ at a very early age and begin living out patterns of obedience in their lives because their parents are raising them up in obeying this pattern. Father, I pray right now for any that are here that do not know Christ as their Lord and Savior. Maybe they didn't have a godly mother and father to teach them the Gospel, or maybe they did and they've been straying. Thank you for bringing them here today. I pray that you would reach out to them now through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that they might know the salvation that He alone can work. Father, we thank you for this time to assemble, to worship, and for the ministry of the word, in Jesus's name, amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Ephesians 6:1-3 and how children must honor their parents through obedience, by the Spirit's power.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT  - 

Introduction

This morning we're going to be looking in our continuing study in the book of Ephesians, in chapter 6:1-3, which you just heard Brad read. For me, I love biographies. I love missionary biographies. I love the heroic spread of the Gospel, some of which I just prayed about a moment ago. 

The Life of John Paton

One of the most moving biographical accounts I've ever read or heard about is the story of John Paton, the courageous Scottish missionary to the cannibal infested islands of the New Hebrides in the mith century in the South Pacific. Through Paton's influence, 3500 cannibals, through his direct influence, 3500 cannibals renounced their heathenism for Christ in the tiny island of Aneityum where he poured out his labors. In Fiji, 79,000 cannibals were converted by missionaries that he mobilized mostly from Australia. 79,000 converted. In Samoa, 34,000 cannibals professed Christianity through the labors of those same missionaries. In the New Hebrides where he focused his attention, which is a chain of islands, 12,000 were converted, and he said 133 of them were trained, specially trained, raised up, and sent out as missionaries to their own people.

Amazing fruitfulness in an overwhelmingly challenging and terrifying situation because a mere 18 years before he arrived there in 1858, in 1840 the first two missionaries to the island of Tanna, where he first began his missionary service, were clubbed to death and cannibalized immediately on the beach in the full view of the ship that brought them. 18 years later, he got on a boat and went to that same exact island with amazing courage. And he risked his life, his family. His wife died, his child died, he himself, 18 times stricken with fevers, the exact same fever that took the life of his wife. And with amazing courage, for those many, many years, led so many people to Christ. What are the roots of John Paton's character, his courage, his calling as a missionary? How can we understand what led to that kind of character, what led to a man like that? And I would have to say at the human level, in large measure, it was his relationship with his father, James Paton.

James Paton was a poor tradesman who raised his 11 children in the Scottish, Calvinistic heritage that he had inherited. Raised 11 children. He himself yearned to be a minister of the Gospel but providentially was prevented from doing so. And so, he entrusted himself to the Lord and poured himself into his family. When John was born, he and his wife, metaphorically, laid him on the altar before God with prayer, and dedicated him to the Lord's service that, if God saw fit, he could be a missionary of the cross. He did that just days after he was born, after John was born. And then this godly father bathed John in prayer as he was growing up, every day, family altar, solid doctrine, an intellectual depth to their faith that was unmatched. Also, the Covenanters heritage of martyrdom also was preached and taught in that household. Their father, James, had a prayer closet that he retired to three times a day, and he prayed with great passion for the conversion and for the discipleship of his own children.

When the time came for John to leave home for good and go off and serve as a missionary, the very thing that his mother and father had wanted when he was born, his father walked with him six miles along the road until the place came where they had to part. And as the two of them, father and son, were walking along the road together, the father was weeping, praying, pouring out heavenly counsels, prayers, advice, scripture, in these last few minutes they had together. And when the time came when he couldn't even speak anymore, he just continued to pray silently, his lips moving, and John remembered this many, many years later. No words could come out, but he knew his father was burning in prayer for him, tears flowing down his face. And they stood there, they were at the parting place, they had no more time together, the time had ended, and all he could say at that point was this. "God bless you, my son. May your father's God prosper you, and may He keep you from all evil." Then they embraced one last time and he walked away. John waved his hat in saying good-bye to his father, but his heart was breaking. 

And so, he dove into a ditch to just have a good cry, and he's just laying there weeping about the separation, but also eager to begin his work. And after he'd been there some time he climbed up the dike to see if his father could still be seen along the road as he returned back to their home village. And just at that moment, his father also was climbing up the dike to look back to see if he could still see his son. There were some distance apart, and it was clear the father, James, didn't see him, but then just continued to talk, and he assumed, John assumed, praying for him as he walked on his way. And he watched through blinding tears, John did, until he could see his father no more.

Then he got up and hastened on his way to serve Christ as a missionary. These are his own words. "Vowing deeply and oft, by the help of God, to live and act so as never to grieve and dishonor such a father and mother." So that is on my mind as I preach on “children obey your parents in the Lord, honor your father and mother.” As we come to Ephesians 6, we come to the next section in Ephesians, but for me, a very powerful and moving one.

My desire is to be that kind of a father. My desire is all you fathers listening to me would be fathers like that. And beyond that, you children, at whatever age, some of you are coloring, scribbling, some of you listening as best you can, some very attentive as you get older. I understand. The text is written to you. I'm going to be speaking also to your parents about the text. I desire that a generation of servants of Christ like this would be raised up. There's a lot of missionary work left to be done, and also I think it's going to take an unusual amount of courage for you to be a Christian in America going forward, more than perhaps in our generation. So I want you to be ready to face the challenges you're going to face in the years ahead. In Ephesians, as we come to chapter 6, I want you to see it in continuity. It's not just popping up out of nowhere but it's a flow that we've seen in this beautiful book.

The Parent-Child Relationship: A Subset of the Christian Life

This idea of the parent-child relationship is a subset, or a part, of the Christian life that Jesus bought for us with His own blood. It's part of the life he bought. It's part of what it means to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,” for us to be godly parents and children. It's a life that flows from the salvation that's been so clearly taught in this magnificent book of Ephesians. "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast." We were saved, we were justified, we were forgiven by grace through faith in the shed blood of Christ, “having been chosen in Christ before the creation of the world, having been predestined to be adopted as his sons and daughters, having received the hearing of the Gospel, having believed, having been marked in Him with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, all of this flowing. Having been rescued from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son, having all of these blessings, we are now called on to do good works.” Ephesians 2:10, "For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do."

The Rising Temple of God

Now the centerpiece of those good works is the building of an eternal temple, a dwelling place, rising in every generation described beautifully at the end of Ephesians 2, as a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. And this dwelling, this temple, this holy structure, which I think is the Church of Jesus Christ. I think we could also say it as the Heavenly Zion. It is the New Jerusalem. It is rising in every generation as living stones are quarried from Satan's dark kingdom and rescued and brought over and set in this spiritual wall, this image of the structure that we have at the end of Ephesians 2. Bringing in 1Peter 2:5, "you are living stones." And we are put into this rising temple. This magnificent, glorious structure is presently under construction. Amen? But it's looking really good, I've been told, by the Spirit of God in my heart. It is magnificent and glorious and it's better than it was a month ago, much better than it was 10 years ago. Every generation of elect people who hear the Gospel and come over and believe, beautify and glorify it even more, and none of them ever gets lost. And it's just getting better and better.

This is the work of our lives, the glory of God, and the rising of this spiritual holy dwelling place. Now I believe, in the end when we get to heaven we're going to hear all the stories. Not just John Paton and his father, and not just what happened with those cannibals. We're going to hear them all. And we're going to be so eager to hear them. I'm telling you, all of you are going to be super PhDs in church history. You're going to love it, you're going to want to hear all the details, and you're going to hear from the heavenly perspective what God did by His sovereign grace to get those people saved. And we are going to glory in those stories. But I believe, I can't prove this, but I believe that when we get to heaven and we find out how it all happened, the overwhelming majority of those in Heaven will be there primarily and first and foremost because their parents led them to Christ. "Overwhelming majority. What is that Pastor? 55%?" I don't know what overwhelming majority means. 

Parents and Missions

When I was at the IMB last week, or last month, knowing I was going to preach this, I went to five of the best missiologists and veteran missionaries in the Southern Baptist Convention, in the IMB. And I asked them this question. "Worldwide, what percentage of genuine believers do you think had Christian parents who led them to Christ, essentially?" They said, "Well do you want a number? I said, "Yes." Obviously, it's anecdotal, I don't know. But the numbers ranged anywhere from 60%-75%. These are veteran missionaries. Because what happens is the missionaries go to that land, and none of them are Christians. They find some bridge people, those bridge people come to faith in Christ. Immediately, what do those bridge people do? They turn to the people they know, first and foremost their own families, their parents, their siblings, their children. And they begin to share the Gospel. Some of them believe, receive, and trust. Some of them turn in hostility and persecute. But that's where it all starts. Give it two, three, four generations, ask what's going on in that nation, the overwhelming majority had Christian parents. It just happens again, and again, and again. And it's a powerful thing to see this.  So fundamentally, we believe that this parent-child relationship is essential to God's sovereign plan for the rising of the Church of Jesus Christ, for the building of this holy temple. It's foundational, it's vital. 

"We believe that this parent-child relationship is essential to God's sovereign plan for the rising of the Church of Jesus Christ, for the building of this holy temple. It's foundational, it's vital. "

When I was there at the commissioning service there were 36 missionaries commissioned. 29 of the 36 in their written testimonies, which I as a trustee get to read, 29 out of 36 said, "Effectively, my parents led me to Christ." 29 out of 36. It's amazing. And how my own son, when he was baptized a few weeks ago, zeroed in on 2 Timothy 3:15, which says, "How from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." I believe this is the very thing that was promised to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 when He said, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse. And through you all the families of the Earth will be blessed." The families.

In all of the types or patterns of evangelism that there is in the world, workplace evangelism, street evangelism, missionary type work, contact evangelism, airplane evangelism, which I love. Where can they go? They're captive. Especially if they have the window, and I have the aisle, where are they going to go? So we're going to talk about Jesus until they don't want to talk about Jesus anymore. I try to be kind, I try to find out if they're interested. But of all of the types of evangelism there is, by far, overwhelmingly, the most effective is parent-child evangelism. Nothing else even close. This is by God's will and by His power. And so, my desire is to put inside you, parents, especially, a zeal and a fervency for the souls of your children. The healthy Christian family is a great, magnificent factory, a machine, for the production of children of God who will live before Him forever. And it's been working now for centuries.

So we come to Ephesians 6:1-4. Listen again. I'm going to read verse four even though I'm not dealing with it today. But look at the text again. "Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the Earth. And Fathers do not exasperate your children or provoke them into wrath, instead bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." We’ll deal with verse four next week, God willing.

The Blessings and Challenges of Children 

Children: One of God’s Greatest Blessings

So I want to start by talking about the blessings and challenges of children. Children are one of the greatest blessings that God can ever bring into your life. They are endlessly fascinating, endlessly unpredictable. They are a rich Biblical blessing, and we need to be told that because in our nation, in our culture, there is a negativity toward children. A negativity like children are a burden, children are almost what feels somewhat like a curse. But in Psalm 127 it says, "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward.” And to borrow a phrase, an idea from 1 Timothy 4:8 about godliness, Paul is talking there about godliness and it says, "godliness has value for all things", listen, "holding promise both for the present life and the life to come." Children are like that. They hold promise both for the present life, to bless you in this present life, and to bless you in the life to come.

So in this present life, when Noah was born, his father Lamech called him Noah, which sounds like the word comfort, because he said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground that the Lord has cursed." He's going to alleviate our suffering here, just to have a child. And then in Ruth chapter 4, the women said to Naomi, when Obed had been born to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, the women said to Naomi, "Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age." Think about that. How beautiful is that? "For your daughter-in-law who loves you and who's better to you than seven sons has given him birth. Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap, and cared for him. And the women living there said, 'Behold Naomi has a son.' And they named him Obed." He was the father of Jesse, the father of David,” the father of Jesus, Matthew 1:1.

And so, in God's sovereign plan we see the beauty of children. Children hold promise for this present life in more ways than we can count. There are just the joys of watching them grow and develop, speaking their first words, taking their first steps, continuously acquiring greater and greater capabilities. It's really a stunning thing to watch. I've mentioned this before, but I still can't get over it. When Christy and I were missionaries in Japan, the first year our primary job was to learn the language, the Japanese language. And that was hard. And I'll never forget, we had tutoring sessions, we had books, we had tapes, we had flash cards, we had all these things going on. We also had a one-year-old daughter named Jenny who came over with us basically inarticulate, and left two years later fluent in English. No flash cards, no tapes, nothing, no effort. I was so jealous. It's like, "How can this be?" And I figured there was some corresponding Japanese kid who was one-year-old when he came over, couldn't speak a word of Japanese. Two years later, fluent, conversational. And I just think it's amazing, going on right before your eyes as it's happening. It's a marvel.

So also you parents can testify how many earthly blessings have come to you from having children. The unforgettable moments, the things that can never be repeated and you treasure forever. I have drawers and drawers of memorabilia. What am I going to do with it? I don't know, but I'm not giving them away. Toward the end when the kids were getting older, I didn't accept just any art work, it had to be good. Okay? They had to have put some work into it, there had to be some thought. Just a couple of scribbles and crayon on the… We're not putting that on the refrigerator. But if you worked at it we would put it up on the fridge and it would be there for a while. And then I'd take it down. And I learned in the course of time to write on the back the circumstances, because what happens is, five years later it's like I don't even know what it is. Is it a tree, is it a mountain? I don't know. When was it given? But to write on the back who gave it when, same thing with cards, different things that are written, it's just absolutely precious. At every moment the way they just look up to you for approval, for love, the way that they just trust you at an early stage, the way that they are obedient at a certain level, and the way they just grow and grow and grow before your very eyes.

I've likened them before to a sunset. You can just picture that, and just the colors of it. And it's just different colors and it's continually changing so that if you look away for just a minute or two and talk to your friend and look back, it's different now. And that's the way it is with the children. They go through these stages, and you can't hold on, they're not going to be in them for long. They mispronounce a word, kind of really cute. And you actually want, at least I did, wanted them to keep mispronouncing the word because it was so cute. But they don't, they learn how to say it right. But it's just these sweet things.

And then they just keep growing and they challenge you and they ask questions and you share experience. You go to national parks together and you share that, and they remember that. Pretty soon, they're teens, and they're so intelligent, so gifted, so full of promise, so aware of your failures and weaknesses. Acutely aware. And you know it, and it's an interesting relationship, and you're just kind of along for the ride, and you're able to celebrate their amazing achievements academically or in athletics, or in music, or art, or other things that they love to do, things that are different than you love to do. And then come the later blessings as the kids get even older, walking your daughter down the aisle to give her to somebody else's precious son. Or seeing your son receive somebody else's precious daughter. And to be commanded by your son to do that wedding and not cry. That's just cruel. How am I going to get through a wedding like that and not cry? He asked me if I could, he's not here, so I can just talk about him. "Dad, I want you to be my best man." I remember he said that to me. "But I also want you to do the service. Can you do both?" I said, "I don't think so because the best man stands over here and I'll have to stand here. So the only way could do it is if I wear a sign, 'By the way, I'm also best man.' So that's not really going to work." But my daughters have asked, are you going to both walk me down the aisle and then receive me?" And I haven't figured that one out yet. I got maybe some time on that one. But all of those things. And then,. I've been told, we don't have this experience yet. But grandchildren come in and you have most of the blessings and almost none of the challenges. Amen, hallelujah. Looking forward to that. So we're looking for all of that. 

The Challenge of Children

But then you've got the challenges of children too, and we have to be honest about that. Honestly, the challenges of the parent-child relationship is caused by the spiritual warfare that we're about to get into in Ephesians 6, and by indwelling sin. The Bible teaches the clear doctrine of Original Sin. Every human baby is born in Adam, and they come into your family with that Adamic nature, a commitment to sin. Romans 5:12 says, "Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned." You have to meditate on the words "because all sinned". Every human sinned in Adam. And so it says in 1 Corinthians 15:22, "In Adam all die." And we've seen in Ephesians 2:1 that we were dead in our transgressions and sins in which we used to live. And verse 3 in that same chapter, "All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts, and like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath." Now, this sin nature may not be obvious to new parents immediately when their precious little child is wrapped up in a sweet smelling blanket. But what it is, is, as I've mentioned before, fanatical commitment to self-interest. And that you can see immediately in an infant. That fanatical commitment to self-interest is the essence of the trouble you'll have in raising them. And you have the same thing too.

There was a police study in San Francisco on juvenile delinquency, this is cited by Jim Eliff. These are striking words, because they're not written from a Christian perspective, they were just written from a secular policing perspective. This is what it said. "Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered, he wants what he wants, his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to their impulsive actions to satisfy everyone, every child would grow up a criminal, a killer, a thief, a rapist." Well, that's the essence of parenting, the negative side of parenting, is that's what you're facing, the sin nature. Fanatical commitment to self. 

"That's the essence of parenting, the negative side of parenting is that's what you're facing, the sin nature. Fanatical commitment to self."

Along with that, as I just mentioned in passing, but it's very much the issue as well. We ourselves, even redeemed in Christ, we still have that flesh nature. We still have a fanatical commitment to self in there too. So we struggle with pride, we struggle with anger, we struggle with sins and selfishness and habitual patterns of evil. And our children, I have found, pick those up much more readily than they pick up our good habits in Christ. They pick up your particular habits and patterns, which is a great source of shame to parents, where they can see that in their own kids.

The Future of American Parenting

So, beyond that there's a constant demonic satanic side, and a world side, that Satan is cleverly assaulting your children's souls, and the world is pouring acid on them as you seek to develop them, etcetera. And so you've got all of this at work. Furthermore, we just need to understand the future of American parenting. Where are we going? Where are we heading here? I do fear for the future of our country. I already hinted at it in my prayer. But we have moved quickly beyond gay marriage at this point to an acceleration of wickedness and bizarreness that I just don't know where we're heading as a nation, as a culture. And there is a direct worldly attack on the right and responsibility of Christian parents to bring their children up in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You're going to see that more and more. 

I believe that the government is going to try to put a wedge between Christians and their children, and assert their right to indoctrinate our children. It's happened many, many times before. We, Christian fathers, feel the authority and the responsibility we have to say to the surrounding pagan world, in the words of Joshua 24:15, saying to the pagan world, "If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." But I was on a website recently that said every child should have the freedom to choose for himself or herself what religion they will follow.

The website is, I don't know how to pronounce this, but humanium.org. Wow. Listed the fundamental rights of children. Right to Freedom. "Children have the right to have an opinion different from their parents." By the way, they know that. "I have an opinion different from you." I'm aware. Alright. "A child should not be the victim of the pressure of an adult who would try to force him or her in order to influence them in their opinion." That's just called parenting. I'm sorry, I'm editorializing. Let me just read. "Children have a right to be informed, so they can make their own minds up about important subjects." Now, next heading, Freedom of Religion. "Children have the right not to undergo constraint or oppression which will injure their freedom of religion or other rights. Children can freely determine the religion or conviction of their choice. A religion doesn't have to be imposed on them." So basically, I'm supposed to, as a father, just be a world religion instructor. "This is what Buddhism teaches, this is what Hinduism... So now you make your own decision." It's actually abusive then it seems to bring them up “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

My daughter Carolyn showed me a tweet sometime ago that shocked me at how weird things are getting. It said effectively that it's child abuse to name a newborn baby before they've had a chance to choose their own gender. I don't know how that works. "Baby one, baby two." Here, the tweet said, "Use gender inclusive pronouns like baby-self or toddler-self until they are old enough to make their own choice." So in the name of individual freedom, all children should be free to choose everything for themselves, and not have anything forced on them. And yet it's plain that in the Bible parents are to bring their children up “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Borrowing from the old covenant language in Deuteronomy 6:7-9, they're talking about these precepts and ordinances, but I'm going to just talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. "Impress them", the words of God, "On your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands, bind them on your foreheads, write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates." If I can just summarize, brainwash your kids. Just brainwash them in the word of God. Let them be transformed by the renewing of their mind, because I'm telling you, the world will try to do it. It's not going to stand idly by, it's going to try to brainwash your kids in its direction. Along with this is the danger, as I just mentioned a moment ago, of ever encroaching government rights to the training of the future generation. Reading about what school was like in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, basically every child there was indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, and frequently got to the point in their teen years where then they would start turning their parents in to the Gestapo. So also the same kinds of things happened in communist countries during the Cold War.

John McArthur cited a letter he received from a man in his church who emigrated from Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. This is what he said. "My wife and I experienced the dissolution of the family unit by the communist government. From our own experience, the godless doctrine pumped into our little children's souls brought up the most cynical generation you can imagine." Parenthetically, less than 1% of Czechs in the Czech Republic are believers. 93% are atheists. But this individual said, "Most young people do not believe in anything, not even God. The godless system destroyed, in great part, the will of the people and produced an obeying array of cynical and different disposable robots. The same thing is beginning to happen to us now in this country." So, blessings and challenges. 

God’s Goal for Parenting: His Glory in their Salvation

What is the Purpose of Parenting

Let's talk about God's goal for parenting, and that is His glory. Now, your outline says they're salvation, but I'm going to actually amend it. God's goal in parenting is His glory in your salvation too. So, just put "... His glory in their salvation... and yours." because God's going to be at work in both of you, and you're not any of you done being saved. So God has a wise purpose in all of this. Okay? So what is the purpose of parenting? I would say it's the exact same purpose of why God made the world. His glory, ultimately. God made all things for His glory. And the thing that glorifies him the most is the salvation of human souls. So that's the goal of parenting too, is His glory in the salvation of your children and of yourself. But let's focus on the children.

Key Verse

A key verse I use for parenting is one with which you should be very familiar. It's in Mark 8:36-37. "What good would it be? What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul? So let me put that in parenting language. “What good would it be for your child if he or she should gain the whole world, whatever that means, and forfeit their souls? And what would you give in exchange for the souls of your children?” I know parents want to give their children so many good things. Good character, education, fine clothing, a comfortable lifestyle, fruitful career, athletic success, academic achievement, acceptance at a prestigious college. All the material blessings of prosperity, good morals, legacy, heritage, sweet memories, all of that. All of those earthly blessings are sweet, good things from God. But what would it profit you or your child if they gained all of them and they had to hear on Judgment Day, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels"? What good would it be if after they've been well-fed, well-clothed, well-educated, well-employed, worldly successful, you can boast to all your friends in your retirement home about what your kids are achieving and all that, if in the end they're lost, then what good would it be? So my desire in this sermon and next is that God would be glorified in the salvation of your children. That's my center desire. 

“You Didn’t Come with a Training Manual!”

So, let's turn to the text, and here's the text, the Bible. I remember my father used to say to us in exasperation, because we drove him crazy, and we did. But he said, "You didn't come with a training manual." Here it is. Here's the training manual. The Bible is sufficient for raising your children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” I'm not saying there's not good materials out there, there are. But it's sufficient. Here again, 2 Timothy 3:15-17. "How from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." That sounds like parenting to me. Thoroughly equipped and ready for any good thing God wants them to do. Now we're focusing this morning on 6:1-3, that's the command to the children. Next week I want to focus, God willing, on the command to fathers and mothers, parents.

God’s Command to Children: Obey and Honor Your Parents

So, the words are going to come to children, but I want the parents to listen as well because it's the parent's job to hold these commands over their children and pray toward and act toward them obeying them. If the parents don't train their children to honor and obey them, they never will. And so the parents really need to embrace these words before the children do. These commands need to be on your heart, and then you can impress them on your children. Alright? So God's command to children is, "Obey and honor your parents." That's the order it gives in the text. 

Children are Those Who are Still Dependent on Parents

Look at it, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the Earth." The address is to children, and the first command here that's given is, "obey." Now, you may say, "Alright, does this go on forever?" No, it doesn't. I think the word children would be certainly minors and teens and all that. And then on up until they are no longer dependent on you financially. There's still a pattern of obedience in Jacob's life. It says in Genesis 28:7, "Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and gone to Paddan-aram to seek a wife." The word obey is there. Now, I do not need to obey my mother anymore. When I got married, I left my father and mother, and I was united to my wife, and I started my own home. I need to honor her the rest of our lives, but I don't need to obey her. So there is a weaning off of parental obedience until they're on their own. That's the challenge. 

The Meaning of “Obey”

Now, the word “obey” has to do with external behavior patterns. So the text in the order it gives us here is, I think, wise. Parents, to some degree, work on your children's external patterns of compliance, that they would obey you. And then it moves to honor, which is something from the heart. Our goal is a heartfelt obedience that's a genuine work of grace. But it starts with this idea of obey. And it means literally to hear under, it means to submit as in Ephesians 5:21, "Submitting to one another in the fear of Christ." Submission is obedience to God-ordained authority. Authority I define as the God given right to command, the God-given right to command. Parents have that. I feel like we're too squeamish about it. You have this sense of weakness. But we have the right and responsibility to give wise, loving, godly commands to our children. 

And so, from infancy, they need to be trained to obey their parents. This is coming straight from God. Before they have the capacity to comprehend an invisible being who created them and whom they must obey above all, almighty God, they must first submit their wills to their parents who they can see and be trained to obey them. And they need to be taught that their obedience to their parents is ultimately obedience to God. So that's what you're teaching them.

The Moral Beauty of Obedient Children

Now, what is obedience? We covered this this morning in Bible for Life in the parenting class. I love it, and it's something that I heard years ago from a parenting curriculum that Kristy and I used early on. And it defined obedience in the pattern, I think, of Matthew 6:10. "May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." So how is God obeyed in Heaven? And what this curriculum writer said is, "That the angels obey God all the way, right away, with a happy spirit." So those were the standards we used for our kids. All the way means everything we said to do, 100%. So 80% obedience, that's not obedience. Right away means now. It's not hard. Now. No, not later. Now. Okay? No delay. To delay is to disobey. And with a happy spirit means we're ultimately trying to get to the heart. We want you to delight in the commands that were given and see them as wise. 

Now, this pattern is for infants and young children and going up. And there's this pyramid where you're going to be early on covering your kids lives with commands, just covering them, papering them over with commands when they're young. And then dimmer switch turning them down more and more, until at last, they're ready to just take over their physical lives and look after themselves. And so, there's going to be all of these commands. Now, children it says are to obey their parents “in the Lord.” In the Lord means with a mind to Christ, you're looking to Christ. It implies the parents better be giving godly commands to them. So all authority is ultimately under Jesus. And we see the moral beauty of the obedience. "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." The word gives a sense of morally beautiful. It's attractive when you have an obedient son or daughter. It's just delightful.

The Ten Commandments

And then he quotes the Ten Commandments. "Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy life on the Earth." Now, here's the complexity. I've meditated on this a lot in the last couple of months. The hard thing about Christian parenting is how we have to harmonize or synthesize the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. That's really hard to do. The kids are under the Law, they're under the Old Covenant. They're under the tutor, so to speak, until they are brought to Christ. So they have to be trained, in effect, just like the Jews were in the language of blessings and curses. This is what we've got, this is what you have to do, and this is what will happen if you don't do it. That's what we call in our family the if-then chart. "If you do this, this is what will happen." Alright? That's early on. And then as you go further and further in, you're wanting them to move into a New Covenant walk with Christ. In which from the heart, from a transformed nature, they are loving God and loving His Law, and His commands, and by the power of the Spirit, are fulfilling the Law. And that's the challenge.

You need to therefore, teach them the fullness of what the Law means. Talk about how when the Ten Commandments were given what the circumstances were, how God descended from Heaven in fire to the top of Mount Sinai, and how the ground shook beneath their feet, and how it became supernaturally dark. And how God spoke with a voice so loud and so terrifying that everyone in the camp trembled and they begged to not hear that voice anymore. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt." And He is the one who's saying, "Honor your father and mother." So there's a sense of the terror of the Law, a sense of the judgment that comes if there's disobedience to the Law, all of that has to come. But that's not enough, that's not enough. You have to move from the Law to the Gospel. And so it says in Romans 3:20-24, "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the Law."

They're not going to get saved by obeying you. They're not going to get saved by the Law. Instead they're going to find out that they're sinners in need of a savior by the Law. And so, Romans 3:20-24, it says, "No one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law, rather through the Law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God apart from the Law has been made known to which the Law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." So you're going to want, every time they sin and you're disciplining them and you're training them, to preach the Gospel to them, to tell them that Jesus came for exactly these kinds of sins. Jesus came to take out the heart of stone and to give you the heart of flesh. Jesus came to change your very nature.

"They're not going to get saved by obeying you. They're not going to get saved by the Law. Instead they're going to find out that they're sinners in need of a savior by the Law. "

What is the Command? Honor Your Father and Mother

And so, the command here given to the child is fascinating. "honor." "Honor your father and mother." What does that mean, “honor”? Been thinking about this. It's related to worship, I think. But it's obviously at a lower level. You only worship God. But it has to do with an esteem, it comes from the heart, a respect. Love is involved in there, but it's a sense of esteem and honor in the family of, or the relationship of worship. But ultimate honor is given to God in worship. And so the idea here is a heart attitude of respect toward the parents. I honor my father, I honor my mother. And that's something that parents have to teach to their children. Do you teach your children to honor you? Do you teach, each of you, teach your child to honor the opposite parent? The father's telling their children to honor their mother, and not speak disrespectfully. And the mother doing the same thing in reference to the father. A heart attitude.

Now, we, as parents don't have power over the heart. I can't make my child honor me, something they do with their heart. But I can show them the word, I can pray that God would work in them, I can yearn for the Holy Spirit to work this. Now, as your kids get older, as they get to be teens, as I already mentioned, it's not funny but it's just true, they just know your sins. But here's the thing, you don't have to be a sinless parent to be worthy of honor. You're worthy of honor because you're the father or the mother. Do you member when Noah got drunk and lay exposed in his tent? Remember that story in Genesis 9? And how one son, it seemed, mocked him. But two other sons put a cloak on their shoulders and walked in backward and covered their naked father. That's a timeless lesson on how you honor a sinful parent. The requirement to honor is not tied to how righteous your father and mother is, but to God's will.

Now, what is the promise that comes to children? Well earthly and heavenly blessedness. "Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the Earth." So there's a promise here. It zeros in on a promise. This is the first commandment that gives you a promise. And it's blessedness, it's going to go well with you, you're going to have a good rich blessed life if you do this. And long life, in other words you won't be struck dead. I meditate on this. There is an Old Covenant feel here and both quality and quantity of life is linked to honoring your parents. We know that God struck two of Judah's sons dead. Ur was wicked so God put Him to death, and Onan was wicked so God put Him to death. Nadab and Abihu were struck dead by fire that came out from the Lord because they were irreverent. Ananias and Sapphira, this happened in the New Covenant era, God struck them dead for their lying. So children, honor your father and mother so that you may live long on the earth, and that it may be a richly blessed life, a quality of life.

Ultimately, this is what I yearn for. Early conversion, growth and discipleship from these kids, a development in spiritual gifts and knowledge of the Word of God so that they are unleashed in ministry for the Lord, just as James Paton did for John Paton. That's my desire. 

Application

Value Children as Fellow Image-Bearers

So, quickly, applications. Start by just delighting in the blessings of children. Behold, they are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” “God knit them together in their mother's wombs.” Cherish them, they are created in the image of God. They're not yours to command like they're your slaves. Alright? They are precious human beings. As I said about the husband-wife relationship, by far more significant than that she's wife is that she's human, and redeemed. And the same thing is going to end up true of your children. Far more significant that they're your children is that they are created in the image of God, and that they can believe the Gospel. So cherish them, and just cherish these times. You know what I mean. You older parents know exactly. The days, the years go by like the wind. Like the wind. Don't waste these days, don't waste the time. So parents, embrace your responsibility to bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. More next week. Embrace your responsibility to preach the Gospel to them. "How from infancy they have known the Holy Scriptures." Saturate them.

Spurgeon’s Thoughts of Child-Rearing

Charles Spurgeon said this, "Some wrongly say, 'Do not teach your children, they'll be converted in God's own time, if it be His purpose. Therefore leave them to run wild in the streets.' Well, people who do that will certainly both sin against the child and the Lord Jesus. We might as well say, 'If that patch of ground over there is to grow a harvest, God will do it if it's God's good pleasure. Therefore, leave it and let the weeds overgrow it. And do not endeavor for a moment to kill the weeds or to sow any good seed.' Why such reasoning as this would not only be cruel to our children, but grievously displeasing to Christ.” Parents, I do hope you are all endeavoring to bring your children to Christ by teaching them the things of God. Let them not be strangers to the plan of salvation." This is Spurgeon, listen though. "Never let it be said that a child of yours reached years in which his conscience could act, and he could judge between good and evil, without knowing the doctrine of the atonement. Without understanding the great substitutionary work of Christ. Set before your child life and death, Hell and Heaven, judgment and mercy, his own sin, Christ's most precious blood. And as you set these things before him, labor with him, persuade him as the apostle did his congregation with tears and weeping to turn unto the Lord. And your prayers and supplications shall be heard so that the Spirit of God shall bring them to Jesus."

Say a final word to children, especially to teenagers. Let me speak directly to you teens. By now you are fully aware of your parents' strengths and weaknesses. By the way, they do have some strengths. You'll find that out more and more as you get older. But it is your time now, and these words I think are most understandable to you, because they are written to you. "Children, obey and honor." That's what God's calling on you to do. Remember how Noah's sons were blessed by respecting their father, even at his weakest, most sinful moment. Ask the Lord to give you a heart of honor toward both your mother and father. Ask Him to bless you with long life in the richness of the Gospel. And you younger children, I'm almost done, praise God. Love your parents, do what they tell, study the Bible, pray, ask your mom and dad questions that are on your hearts. And mom and dad be ready for them to do it, because they'll keep saying, "Why, why, why?" Until you have no other answer, and just say, "Because God wanted it that way, that's why." Close with me in prayer. 

Prayer

Father, we thank you so much for children. We thank you for the blessing that they are. Thank you that this church is so lavishly blessed. Every year, O Lord, at Mother's Day we see how many babies were born in our church, and as their parents yearn to dedicate them to Christ. We thank you for the blessing. We thank you for how we can see, at every stage, children that we've been blessed with. Lord, give parents grace to parent well, and give the children grace to be obedient and to honor. In Jesus' name, amen.

Introduction

What Makes a Good Sermon?

For the third week, I have the privilege of preaching on Christian marriage, and as I've been meditating on Ephesians 5, I've found these verses that I'm about to preach on searching my soul. I preach best when the message preaches first to me. When I feel that I'm sitting under the word of God myself, that I'm able best to explain it to others. I also think the best sermons are those in which you have a sense of an encounter with the living God. I was talking some time ago to Don Carson, D.A. Carson, about his first time hearing Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher preaching, and he had heard so much about Lloyd-Jones, who many consider the greatest preacher of the 20th century. And he went to hear him, and as he was listening to him preach, after a number of minutes, he had one thought. "This guy is overrated." He was disappointed. Lloyd-Jones' introductions are not really that noteworthy, he starts the same way every time. "I should like to call your attention this morning to," and then off he goes. And he begins every sermon that way. But as the sermon progressed, Don Carson changed his opinion entirely. Two-thirds of the way through that sermon, he thought, "This man is the greatest preacher I've ever heard." But by the end of the sermon, he wasn't thinking about Lloyd-Jones at all. He had one overwhelming thought, "What a majestic, holy, great God we serve and what a great savior is Christ." He was to some degree, transported out of the place, and wasn't thinking about the human messenger at all. And I think that's the best you can do in a sermon, the best you can do is through the text, to have an encounter with the living God. And for me as a preacher, to feel that I'm also hearing from God and sitting under that.

The Task: Bringing Light to the Marital Union

That's my desire today, as we look at this section on the message to husbands. I feel very much my own weakness and my own sinfulness. Frankly, I feel that any husband that reads these words and doesn't feel that, you haven't read them carefully, or you don't know yourself. Talk to your wife. I actually would say, do that. Take Ephesians 5, read it out loud to your wife and say, "Hun, how am I doing?" She'll tell you. Ouch. That's the very thing I'm going to urge you to do at the end of this sermon. But I've felt that and I feel the conviction of it and to feel that I, like Isaiah, I am a man of unclean lips. I'm a sinner. And I live in a land of people of unclean lips. We're surrounded by people who are messing up in the area of marriage, they're messing up in the area of sex. This is a virulent issue in our culture. We are surrounded by wickedness in this area, and aberration, and darkness. Deep darkness, a darkness that can be felt. We live among people who don't really understand what God intended when He set up marriage. They don't understand the sacredness of the marital union.

And we are called on to testify to the light, we are called on to be the light. We are the light of the world, and to proclaim the light to people who are sitting in darkness, who are walking in darkness, the people who are walking in darkness have seen a great light. And that light is Christ. And we get to it, as it says in Philippians, “to hold out the word of life is as we shine like stars in a crooked and depraved generation.” We get to do that. And I think marriage may be one of the best platforms to do that. It's one of the best displays of the Gospel there is. A good, healthy Christian marriage, and the burden for that, I think, is on the husbands, primarily. That we would lead our wives toward a beautiful display of the Gospel, in a crooked and depraved generation that needs to see this truth.

Now, you heard Ron read these words. I'd like to read them again and I really want to marinate in the text this morning, for you men and for all of us. Look again at Ephesians 5: 25-33. There it says, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, cleansing her, by the washing with water through the word, to present her to Himself as a radiant Church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the Church, for we are members of His body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery. And I'm talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband." I think the world that we live in, this country that we're living in, needs desperately a generation of godly Christian husbands who will live out as best they can, by the power of the Spirit, the challenging words that are here.

My desire is that this would set our marriages up as a platform, that we would be a city on a hill, that we would be a light that has been lit by the Spirit of God and put up on a lampstand. This Christian marriage lived out by the power of the Spirit has converting power. First and foremost, we're going to see over the next few weeks, in the lives of your children who are observing you as they watch the way you interact, but also a surrounding community.

The Command: Husbands, Love Your Wives!

The Basic Command

We're going to begin now with the command. In verse 25, the simple straightforward command to husbands: “Husbands, love your wives.” This is the basic command. Now, this may be surprising to some, because men get married because they love the women that they're marrying. They're in love with them. He's in love with her, so why in the world would he need to be commanded to love her? Because this is the very reason they're getting married, so he would think. So it seems a little odd to some, but Martin Luther, speaking of married love, and especially of newlywed love, spoke in the earthy way that only Luther could do. He said it's like “drunken joy.” “It's irrational and short-lived. Soon, you will wake up and the wine will have worn off, and you're left with this woman, and now comes the real story.”

You have to love Luther. He just says it unvarnished, just like he thinks it is. The real question then is, will you love the real person you're married to? Stanley Hauerwas put it this way, "The faulty assumption is that there is someone just right, the perfect person for us to marry. And that if we look closely enough, we will find that perfect person. This moral assumption overlooks a critical aspect of marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we will marry, we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while, and he or she will change, for marriage being the enormous thing that it is, means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem, then, is this: Learning how to love and care for the stranger whom you actually married." 

We actually do need to be commanded to love our wives. We need to be commanded to love our wives because biblical love is the most challenging thing our sinful beings will ever do. It searches us to the bottom of our souls. Genuine, spiritual love, genuine, Biblical love does not come naturally to any of us. It is a supernatural work in us by the sovereign Spirit of God. And it begins here for us with the command. I really have tended in sanctification and the overall promises, the marvel of the Gospel, to look at all commands as promises. It's a beautiful thing. All of us should see all commands in the Christian life as promises of what the sovereign grace of God will work. Someday, I will love my wife as perfectly as Christ loved me. That's a beautiful thing, and it gives me hope, it fills me with such hope. But for us as Christians, the idea of being commanded to love should not surprise us. Isn't this the fundamental summary of the law that Jesus gave us? “The first and greatest command is this: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second command is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”

We have to be commanded to love God. How much more then commanded to love our wives? So this shouldn't surprise is that there is this command to love. And then on the second commandment, “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” the command of a Christian husband to love his wife is a subset of that overarching command that God gave us. Your wife is your nearest and best neighbor. She is the one that you are commanded on, horizontally, to love the best. This shouldn't surprise us that we are commanded in this way, and this is the very thing the Holy Spirit of God has come to work in us. He has come to work in us by the blood of Christ, so that the law of God may be perfectly fulfilled in us who “do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” See what He's doing?

And so this husband's love for his wife, set in this context now, Ephesians 5, is a subset of the overarching kind of ethical approach that Paul's taken, that we, Ephesians 4:1, are to “live a life worthy of the calling we have received.” And we are only able to do this, Ephesians 5:18, by the power of the Spirit, as we are filled with the Spirit, we can live a life worthy of the calling we have received. We saw last week that the command to the wife to submit to her husband was directly, even grammatically connected to being filled with the Spirit, because it has all those participles, be being filled with the Spirit, and then there's, -ing, -ing, -ing, -ing, five of them. The last one is submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord, "Wives to your husbands." So it just flows right from the Spirit-filled life. But we should see the extension also to the husband. As the husband is filled with the power of the Spirit of God. He is enabled to love his wife in this way. It's a subset of the Spirit-filled life.

The Command Is: Love Your Wives!

Now, what do we mean by love? Now, I have given a definition multiple times in previous sermons. But I want you to know, the definition that I've given you in the past, it came, it started for me personally in meditating on Ephesians 5. This is where it started. How would I define love? Love is heart attraction resulting in cheerful, sacrificial action. Attraction, action, both of those aspects are Biblical love. If you only have one or the other, or neither, you don't have Biblical love. You need both, as the heart is drawn out to and delights in the object of love, that's the first, it flows out in actions that actually meet needs for that person. That's action. And so there's a sense of heart attraction, your heart is drawn toward the person, and it results in cheerful delighted sacrificial action. That's what love is.

Now, John Piper makes a strong case for marriage in his book on Christian hedonism called Desiring God. Now, Christian hedonism is the idea that Christians should live for pleasure. That's what hedonism is. We should live for pleasure. We should be pleased. But the thing is, we're just so messed up on what should please us. We should be ultimately pleased or delighted in God. And if we're not delighted in God, we're not born again. And we should be genuinely, horizontally in love toward others, toward our neighbor, we should be delighted in their blessing. We should enjoy blessing the other person. It should bring us pleasure. And if we are not pleased, it isn't love. I think he makes his case. I think he's right. Fundamentally then, love, horizontally is for me to knit my heart together with another person, and find personal delight in their blessing. God loves a cheerful giver. It's more blessed to give than to receive. I want to live for that pleasure vertically toward God, horizontally toward others. These are the two great commandments. That's what I want.

Piper argues that genuine love must flow from a deeply interested heart. I am personally delighted to bless you, to give to you. Well, this is even more true when it comes to a husband. This is the pinnacle of that horizontal relationship. I am personally delighted to live for your blessedness. I get my highest earthly joy out of seeing you blessed. That's what I want. That's what love is. Because this is a command, and it must be obeyed, and because other people sometimes say, "I just can't help how I feel. There's nothing I can do about how I feel." They say that love is an action. It's an act of the will. Friends, I'm telling you, that's only half of the equation. If that's all you have, you're a hypocrite. And I guarantee, your wife will sniff it out. If she doesn't know you are delighted to bless her, then she will not be blessed. And she'll know. We have to press through to the real thing, by the power of the Spirit. We have to find a transformation of the heart, where I actually personally am invested in the blessedness of my wife. That's what love is. 

Vastly Beyond the Initial Fireworks of Romance

Now, this goes vastly beyond the initial fireworks of romance. The command may seem strange for those just falling in love, those who have recently been engaged, or are dating, or courting. Let me say, “Why you have to be commanded to love your wife. If you have to be commanded, now something's wrong.” Friends, something's wrong! Did you not know that? Something is wrong. It's called indwelling sin. There's a parasite inside us, there's a tumor growing inside us. Something is wrong. And guess what? The two of you, you've been on your best behavior during your dating lives, haven't you? Come on, be honest. You didn't want your intended getting too close to your family, because they're going to spill the beans and what you're really like. Alright? Well, soon enough, he or she will know. Your spouse will know. Husband, your wife will know. Wife, your husband will know what you're really like. And then you settle in. And then, actual sin patterns will start to emerge for both of you. And the things that you found so delightful in the other, the things you found, husband, so delightful and your wife, not so delightful down the road sometimes. "Oh, she's so quiet and shy, and so tender and all that." It's going to drive you crazy five years in. And the same thing, "She's so neat, I love the way that she's so neat. That really helps me in my not neatness." Yeah, try that 10 years down the road. Are you still delighting in that part of her personality? So we need to be commanded, and here is the command. Husband, here's your command: Love her. Let your heart be warmed toward her. Be delighted in her, cherish her, and serve her. Heart attraction that results in cheerful sacrificial action, that's what Ephesians 5 is teaching. That's the summation of what's going on here.

The First Pattern for a Husband’s Love: Christ’s Love for the Church

A Husband’s Love is Like Christ’s for the Church

Alright, now, we're given some patterns here. The first pattern given here is Christ's love for the Church. Looking at it in verses 25-27, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." The pattern for the husband's love is Christ's sacrifice at the cross for the Church. That's the pattern here. Now, Jesus spoke quite directly about love and sacrifice in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." It's the idea, Christ delighted to lay down his life for His bride. It was his joy that He did. Now, this cost was immeasurable, but the ultimate glory of what He's done is also infinite and immeasurable. And will make it all worthwhile. But He had to pay a price for His bride. Now, this is an old covenant feature. It's not something that happens so much anymore.

I remember a friend of mine, Zane Prat, who's with the IMB now. He told a funny story. He came back, he was in his late 20s and single, which was very strange for the Afghan men that he was ministering to. Muslim Afghan refugees in Pakistan. They were saying, "Why aren't you married? Haven't you been able to afford a wife?" they asked. He said, "Well, I don't... You don't have to pay. In my country, they're free." They're like out of their minds. "Then why aren't you married? Hasn't your father been able to choose one for you? There must be plenty of women." "Well, actually, we make our own choice." "Then why aren't you married? You get to choose your own and they're free." "Yes, but in America, she gets to choose, too." And then their circuit breakers just went off at that point. It made no sense at all. Entirely different pattern in the Islamic world.

Similarities to Jacob and David

But in the Old Testament, there was frequently a bride price. Like, do you remember how Jacob had to serve that conniving con artist Laban for seven years. You remember that whole thing? Seven years. But I love what it says about those seven years, as he was serving to marry Rachel. “Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.” Can you actually imagine Jesus thinking in that way about His own price that He paid? "It seemed actually small compared to what I get." I ponder that. I don't know how to think about that, but He was delighted to pay that price. Or then you remember David, it was more of a warrior thing with King Saul. "If you want to marry my daughter, I need a 100 Philistine dead men. You going to kill 100 Philistine soldiers." I think he was hoping to get rid of David, but he underestimated him. He killed 200. He went out and killed 200. And in that way, he was enabled to win Michal, Saul's daughter.

Christ Gave Himself Up at the Cross

But Jesus had to go and destroy the devil and his kingdom at the cross. He had to destroy the devil and his kingdom by dying. That was the bride price, and He paid it. He gave himself up at the cross. “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church,” heart attraction. And gave Himself up for her, sacrificial action. Cheerful because it's for the joy that was said before, and we'll get to that in a minute, to make her holy. This is obviously speaking of Christ's blood atonement, how He shed his blood. Ephesians 1:7, "In Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." And he did it for the benefit of the blessing of the Church, the immeasurable blessing in the New Heaven and New Earth of her eternal salvation. Every blessing you have as a Christian, from great to small, all of them are blood-bought, paid for by the blood of Christ. What blessedness? And you haven't seen anything yet compared to what you're going to get in Heaven. All of them blood bought, paid for by Jesus. And this is the measure of his commitment and his love for His bride, the Church.

Christ Gave Himself Up for the Benefit of the Church

Song of Solomon 8:6 says this, "Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death. It's jealousy is unyielding as the grave, it burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame." Song of Solomon 8:6. Jesus' love is like that, only better. His love burns like a holy fire, like a zeal for the holiness of His bride, the Church. And His love is stronger than death, it's not as strong as death, it's stronger. It defeated death on behalf of the Church. That's the commitment and the love that Jesus has for His bride, the Church. And He gave Himself up, as I've mentioned, because He was delighted to do it. It made him happy, ultimately joyful to do this.

Christ Gave Himself Up for His Own Delight in the Church

Hebrews 12:2, it says, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God." For the joy that was set before Him, He did it. He could see the future, how there would be some from “every tribe and language and people and nation,” clothed in white, standing around the throne, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb." And He could see it and He wanted it. He said in John 17, "Father, I want those whom you have given me, the elect, to be with Me and to see My glory. I want to share this blessedness together, and I am delighted to give My life to make that happen." It's a shared joy, and eternally perfect, perfectly shared joy, and eternal marriage in Heaven between Christ and the Church, a shared experience of delight in each other. And for this, He laid down His life.

Husbands are to do that for their wives. Do you not see how infinite, how soaring this command is? How this will search you the rest of your life? Saying, "Am I doing this for my wife? Am I laying down my life for my wife?" Jesus made it daily in terms of discipleship. “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself daily and take up his cross and follow me.” This is a daily dying to self. And I think a huge part of a Christian husband's sanctification and service is toward his wife and his family. And so daily, he's going to deny himself and take up his cross and live for his wife.

Practical Application

Practical application, just going to make it all the way through, just keep making practical application. Can you just be honest, husbands, how this is the hardest thing you'll ever do? Just be honest that it's hard for you to give yourself up for your wife, to lay down your life for your wife. Just be honest. The essence of the flesh is a fanatical commitment to self. All of us have it. And you're being called on here as a Christian husband to deny that, for the sake of your wife, to say no to your flesh, to what you want in the flesh to do, to benefit your wife.

Christ's death on the cross teaches all husbands to lay down their lives for their wives. You have to think consistently daily, what would most bless my wife. How could I be the best blessing to her? Does that not search you, O Christian husbands? Are you doing that? Are you thinking every day, "How can I bless my wife today? What can I do to bring her joy?" It means to deny your own selfish interests and your pleasures and find your pleasure in her pleasure. Certainly involves the hard work of holding down a job that will meet her physical needs, to be a breadwinner, definitely to do that, but it's so much more than that.

Remember, in Genesis 2:15, “the Lord God put the man in the garden to serve it and protect it?” Protect her by providing for her, but more than that, what about your time? What about your free time? Costly hobbies, I've been thinking about that. The ones where you're there all day, golfing, hunting, fishing, watching a sport, doing something like that all day long. Meanwhile, your marriage is shriveling. Your wife's just learned to kind of be on her own, doesn't need you, you don't need her. It means learning to find out what blesses her. One writer talked about speaking her love language and had these five love languages. I think that's helpful. I don't know if there's only five, but I thought that the listing of the five was beneficial and helpful to me. Maybe serving her, acts of service, maybe it's gifts, words of affirmation, words of love, physical touch, especially of the non-sexual type, holding her hand, hugging her, serving her in some way, giving her quality time, full attention, a good conversation, whatever she likes. And I think all of the above, not "That's her one." She's blessed by all them. But just to a greater degree, maybe in one more than others, but just learning how to do that.

The First Goal of a Husband’s Love: The Wife’s Radiant Holiness

Christ Died for the Church to Be Radiantly Holy

Okay. Now, what is the goal of a husband's love? Well, the first and primary goal in all of this is your wife's radiant holiness. You should have an eschatological and end time view of your marriage. Think about her on Judgment Day. What's she going to be like on Judgment Day? How can I serve Jesus' ends for her on Judgment Day? How can I get her ready for Judgment Day?

Look again at 25 through 27, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy. To make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, radiant holiness, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." Christ laid down His life for His Church to make her radiantly holy, beautiful. He wanted her pure, and clean, and holy and beautiful, in radiant glory.

Now, spiritually, he found her the exact opposite of all those things. Ephesians has made that very plain, how we were enslaved to lust, we were serving Satan, how all of us were sinful and wicked and degraded, depraved, that's how he found us. Defiled. How different is that from us husbands? When we found our wives, when we first met them, they were beautiful to us, and attractive. And in Christ, we married a Christian, so there's already been justification and some progress and sanctification, all that's beautiful, but that's not how Jesus found the Church. No, He found us serving Satan, found us dead in our transgressions and sins and corrupt.

Now, I don't think there's anything wrong. I think there's everything right with a young man seeing a young woman's physical beauty as attractive and being attracted to her. That's just a gift of God. That was exactly how it was with Jacob and Rachel. He saw her, and as soon as he saw her, he loved her. That was a biblical example of love at first sight, and he loved her until the day she died. And so there was an attraction there and there's nothing wrong with that, but we were repulsive. And the beautiful thing about all this is, we are found corrupted and dead and all that, and we are, Revelation 21, someday going to be beautifully dressed for our husband, descending from Heaven, and we are ready for the wedding day. And we're going to be radiant and glorious and beautiful. It's going to work, in other words. And He's going to make his bride beautiful and radiantly holy, so He can enjoy her forever. And He is very zealous for this.

Isaiah 62:1, I believe this is Jesus speaking about his church. "For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent." This is Jesus speaking, "For Jerusalem's sake, I will not remain quiet till her righteousness shines out like the dawn and her salvation like a blazing torch." He is zealous for the holiness of the church.

Now, if you look carefully at the words of 26-27, Jesus gave Himself for the Church to make her holy, that is totally conformed to God's nature, free from all sin, free from all stains and blemishes and any such thing, anything that would mar her radiance. And it says He washed her with water through the word, the word of the Gospel cleansed her conscience and her heart by faith. And positionally, she seemed to be in justification, holy and blameless in his sight, but then in actuality, she's not. She has bad habits, she has a sin nature, all that kind of thing. And there is progressive salvation, the sanctification that goes on. That's the marvel of all of this. We're not done being saved yet. And one of the beauties of marriage is that God has given us marriage as a workshop of salvation, of sanctification, because neither the husband nor the wife are done being saved. We both need to be made progressively holy, and yet we have these roles to play.

“To Present Her to Himself as a Radiant Church”

So it says in the text, “in the same way, husbands ought to love their wives,” so we are to wash them with water through the word for the purpose of her holiness and growth in Christ. And guess what? While that's happening, you're going to be growing, too. because you need to grow, too. Same thing in pastoral ministry, there are no perfect pastors. We're growing together. And it's just such a beautiful thing. No, you are not Christ to your wife, you don't shed your blood for her. You're not the atoning sacrifice turning away the wrath of God. That's been done once for all. But now you get to act like Jesus in her life, and that is to partner with Him through the Spirit in her ongoing salvation, sanctification, to help her grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ. And you get to do that by washing her with water through the word. And this idea is beautiful. Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians 11:2, he's talking about the Corinthian church, a local church. He said, "I'm jealous for you, with a godly jealousy." He said, "I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so I might present you as a pure virgin to him." I think every husband ought to think of his wife that way. Like I'm not your real husband, Jesus is. And I want to get you ready for the real wedding day, the eternal one. I want to do everything I can to get you ready for Jesus. That's what this marriage is about. And I know that I'm also part of the Bride of Christ, and He's going to use that whole thing to get me ready too. And this is just a beautiful, beautiful picture.

And as you do that, you're getting her ready for Judgment Day, guess what? You're going to have a better and better marriage. Brothers, you're a fool if you don't do this, because it says in the text, "He who loves his wife loves himself." Hint, hint. Want a happy life? Do this. Bless your wife, pour into her. Make her happy, live for her joy, her only joy. Do that, and 10 years, 20 years down the road, you will be a blessed man. He who loves his wife, loves himself. John Piper said that's probably the most hedonistic verse he can find in the Bible. It's like, “You want to get something good out of this? Do this.” You're a fool if you don't. That's what he's saying. You're going to get benefits.

Practical Ways to Obey This Command

Practically, just practically, husbands, are you doing this? Have you set aside time for the two of you to be in the word together? I was convicted by this. We have family devotions, but I need more time with just the two of us over the Word of God, I think it would help. We've not been doing it. We've been busy doing other things. We're faithful in the family altar. Don't miss, really. But I think there's some times, we could have just the two of us in the word. I think it would help. But if I could just say, husbands, get to know the word. You say, "Well, you don't know my wife, she's a real Bible person. She knows the Bible far better than I do." Well, let that not be so 10 years from now. Get into a competition. You guys are competitive. I know you. Compete with her. Don't tell you're doing it. She's got a big head start on you, maybe. Catch up and pass. Or not. I don't care if to the grave, she knows more of the Bible than you, just as long as you're both growing and accelerating in your knowledge of the word of God. Be the priest, the pastor of your family, especially to your wife. And pray for her, take her weak areas, the ones that you would be tempted to complain about, don't complain, don't tell it to some other person. Bring it up vertically to God in prayer, pray for your wife's weak areas.

The Second Pattern for a Husband’s Love: His Love for Himself

The Second Pattern

The second pattern for a husband's love is his love for himself. Look at verse 28-30, "In the same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies, he who loves his wife, loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the Church, for we are members of His body." So we have the one pattern, love her as Christ loved the Church. Now, here's a second one if that's too lofty for you, you need it, it will pull you up, but here's a practical one: Just love her the way you already do love yourself. This is very practical and it's easily understood. There's a basic premise here, husbands. You already love yourself. As a matter of fact, you've been loving yourself your whole life. When you were an infant, you were fanatically committed to the care of your own body. Just ask your mother, "Mom, was I fanatically committed to the care of my own body when I was an infant?" "Oh yes. Three in the morning, you didn't care what I was going through, that you wanted what you wanted when you wanted it. You were committed to your own body then, and I saw it all the way through. It never left. You continued to feed and care for yourself, and if you were hurt, to cry because you were hurt, and to look after it and I saw it all the way through. Actually, it's never stopped.

You Already Love Yourself

You already do love your own body. In the same way, love your wife. That's what it means. When you're hungry, you feed yourself. When you’re thirsty, you give yourself drink. When you are weary, you rest. When you have an itch, you scratch it. Everything you have needed, you have looked after your whole life. Now, you're married. This is the pattern. You have become now, one flesh. Look at verse 31, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." Her flesh then has become your concern as much as your flesh is. You need to feed and care for her. And I'll tell you what, I have seen some magnificent older godly couples show me how to do this. Show me how to do this. I remember one woman years ago, early in my marriage, at my pastoral ministry here. And her husband had Parkinson's and she cared for him for 10 years, daily. I remember asking her, "Is it hard?" She said, in a very simple way, she just said, "It's not hard if you really love someone." Cheerful, just caring for him. Feeding. And so, that's a wife to the husband, but it's something husbands can and often do for the wife. I've seen it the other way, too. Where her body, her bodily needs, are the same as if it were your needs.

The Second Goal of a Husband’s Love: The Wife’s Healthy Delight

Her Physical Delight Must Be Your Own

Now, the second goal of a husband's love is the wife's healthy delight. The husband lives for the wife's healthy physical delight as much as for his own, and also her spiritual delight. Their hearts are linked together. He loves his wife, loves himself, means if you're happy, I'm happy. Do you understand how practical this gets in the issue of conflicts and arguments? What ends up happening is Satan deceives you in the midst of a conflict, marital discussion. Ever had a marital discussion? We've had lots of marital discussions. Alright, you're having one of those. Alright? You are deceived in the middle of it by a demon who whispers in your ear that it's possible for you to hurt your wife and not be hurt too. He's whispering the same thing in her ear, but you're forgetting that you're one flesh. You're one. You can't hurt her and not be hurt. It's impossible. This just causes you to say, "What can I do right now to bless you? How can I lead us out of this conflict in a way that will cause you to flourish and grow, actually?" Conflicts are going to happen. But ultimately, “he who loves his wife loves himself,” means I'm going to seek a shared experience of joy. My joy is going to be yours, your joy is going to be mine. That's what we're looking for, that's the oneness. So we're no longer selfish.

I love what it says in Deuteronomy 24:5. I don't know if we can get this in the federal code, in terms of military service. Listen to this. Concerning serving in the military in Israel, "If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. Instead, for one year, he is to be free to stay at home, listen, and bring happiness to the wife he has married." Isn't that beautiful? That's such a clear statement of what I'm talking about. Live to bring her happiness, I would say, a holy happiness. That's what you're seeking to do.

The Timeless Mystery of Marriage: Christ and the Church

Now, we've already talked about this timeless mystery of marriage. I don't need to say much more about it because we've said some things, well I’ll make a few comments. It says in verse 31-32, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ in the Church." This healthy Christian marriage puts the mysterious Gospel on visible display. People can see it. The IMB loves to send married couples on the field, because it's seeking to give a multi-generational vision to the Church. Now then, not only them because Paul was single, but there is a desire to put marriage on display wherever possible.

And as I said at the beginning of the sermon, there's one audience that's just observing all the time. And that's your growing children, they're just watching the Gospel in the way the husband and the wife are interrelating. We'll talk about that over the next few weeks. As you grow in your one flesh, one spirit union, you are growing putting the Gospel on display.

Sexual Union

Now, let me say one thing about the idea of “one flesh.” I think it's pretty clear that the word “flesh” refers to the marital union of sex, of sexually relating, marital relations. Our nation, our age is completely insane in this. It's completely insane. Part of it, the sexual revolution of the 1960s has made sex not sacred anymore. It's not sacred. It's just a physical thing, like a handshake. Something you could do at a party with a total stranger. Someone could say, "It didn't mean anything to me, it was nothing to me. I didn't even know her name," or "his name," that kind of thing. It's insane. And now it's gotten into even weirder things over the last 15-20 years, where gender itself is being questioned, but it started with the sexual revolution. As Christians, we should not, must not be deceived. Sex is sacred. It's meant for marriage. “For this reason,” for marriage, “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” Sexual purity is of the essence of a healthy marital union.

If I could just speak to all you single people, you young men and young women, commit yourselves to absolute purity with regard to sex. As Christians, we need to have a sacred view of marital relations. Be pure. And you married people, recommit yourself to what you promised in your vows. You said something like “forsaking all others, keeping yourself only for this one person, the spouse.” You said something like that, live it. It's especially hard in this time of Internet pornography, and other assaults from the media, and from romance novels, and other things that pull hearts of married couples away from each other in terms of sexual purity. Be zealous in these things. 

Application

Husbands Pursue, Wives Respect

Now, let me make some final practical commands and we'll be done. Verse 33, "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband." Isn't it amazing how just by way of summary, the Apostle Paul goes back and hits the thing that each gender, each person needs to hear the most? Husband, let me tell you again, love her, cherish her like you did when you were dating her. Cherish her. Take her out on dates, love her, give her gifts, win her heart, woo her, still, even 20 years in. Love her, cherish her. And you wives, you see to it that you respect your husband. Don't bad mouth him, don't gossip about him, don't talk with your girlfriends about what he's like. But respect him. And respect his authority in the home. Submit to his leadership. That's the summation that Paul gives here at the end.

The Gospel

I want to add some practical things. Now, I have made a commitment always to preach the Gospel in every text. Now, this focus has been to Christian husbands, but I can easily preach the Gospel. We've already heard it. Jesus left Heaven and gave His lifeblood for the Bride, the Church, for sinners like you and me. That's the Gospel. Jesus died in our place, the holy for the unholy, to bring us to God, put to death in the body, made alive by the Spirit. That's the Gospel. And if you trust in Christ, your sins will be forgiven, all of your sins forgiven, and you will be part of the Church, the Bride of Christ. You'll be part of what Christ came to do, and he will love you forever.

Christ’s Love

And if I can just say, apart to all Christians, apart from even marriage, do you not see in these words to the Christian husband, just how much Jesus loves you? Whether you're a widower or widow, single, never married, whoever you are, Jesus loves you. This is how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ for you. He died for you, He shed His blood for you, because He cherishes you and delights in you.

Husband’s in Need of Repentance

But now, I want to speak specifically quickly to different categories of husbands. Let me start to the husband who needs to repent. Now, those of you who don't need to repent, you don't need to listen for the next minute or two, alright? No, actually you do. You need to come and talk to me after the sermon. Say, "I was the husband who didn't need to repent." “Glad to meet you. I want to enroll in your class. I want to enroll in your college. I don't know how you do it. But first, before I do that enrolling, I really want to talk to your wife, and see if she thinks you need to repent.”

So to husbands who need to repent, all joking aside, husbands who need to repent, repent, repent. Look over Ephesians 5:25-30, and say, "Search me, O God and know me." Say, "Have I been this kind of a husband to my wife?" Were there different kind of failure modes? There are abusive husbands, sinfully angry, physically abusive, emotionally abusive. There are some of those. More commonly, there are just neglectful, lazy, negligent husbands who are not zealous about their marriages, and don't really do much, and they're just on autopilot, and they're not zealous for their wife's sanctification. I'm just calling on you to repent. Go to God and say, God forgive me for not being a Christ-like husband these many years to my wife. Lament over the wasted years, and ask forgiveness of God. And if you confess your sins to Him, He is faithful and just. And He will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

Secondly, go to your wife when she can listen to you, and you're not distracted and ask her forgiveness, too. Confess your sins, that you've been negligent, whatever the Lord lays on your heart, whatever ways you have not loved her, or served her, or been godly toward her. Ask her forgiveness. And she will forgive you. And let that be the beginning of the rest of your years together.

New Husbands

New husbands, maybe the intoxicating wine of your honeymoon hasn't worn off yet. Great, enjoy it. But maybe you're already seeing that you're married to a real person. All I'm going to say to you as a new husband is set good patterns. Set up patterns of Bible study together and prayer. Set patterns of praying for your wife. Go back to Ephesians 5 frequently. Early in your marriage, set up good habits and patterns. Be quick to ask forgiveness, don't be prideful. You have a long way to go as a husband, she has a long way to go as a wife. Grow together.

Bitter Husbands

Thirdly, to resentful or bitter husbands, your wife has hurt you in some way. Forgive her, as the Lord forgave you. It says in Ephesians, express that forgiveness and ask her if she's holding anything against you. Almost certainly, the root of bitterness has defiled both of you. Give and receive forgiveness. And if you've been one of those neglectful lazy husbands, what I would suggest is a question that I think would be good for all husbands regularly to ask your wives. "Do you feel loved by me?" It's a yes, no question, but better, maybe, "How can I love you better?" Let's read Ephesians 5:25-30 together right now. Okay, read it. And then say, "How can I love you better?" And listen. And put into practice the things that she says. And then ask the Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to give you power to love, and lead, and serve, and teach, and serve, and protect as the Lord has called you to do. There's many more things I could say, but I'm just going to close now in prayer that God would strengthen you Christian husbands to live out what he's called on us to do. Let's pray.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the beauty of the word. We thank you for all of the many ways it instructs us and teaches us. I just want to pray for my brothers right now who are husbands, who are Christians, who have been searched by the text today, who have been probed by it, who have been convicted by it. Lord, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. And I pray, O Lord, give them strength and humility and wisdom to repent. And Father, I pray for wives, as they see their husbands grow, that they would be encouraging to them and pray for them, and that they also would submit to them as we talked last week. And through their godly submission, would help their husbands become more and more Christ-like leaders. I pray for both husbands and wives, that you would sanctify them through these beautiful roles that you've given us to play. These roles are temporary, but they are powerful and important. O Father, I pray that you'd help us to live out the Gospel in front of an unbelieving and watching world that needs it so much. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction

 Amen. Amen. So we come this morning, in my unfolding of the book of Ephesians, we come to Ephesians 5:22-24, this section on wives submitting to their husbands, and as we do so, I'm very well aware that these verses and the topics in here are controversial in our day and age. I'm aware of that. I remember some of you may remember back in 2001 when the Baptist Faith and Message was changed and there was a brouhaha over a simple phrase that wives should be graciously submitting to their husbands. And I remember that and being surprised at the surprise, shocked at the shock. I don't know how to put it. I was amazed that people saw this as an innovation or something new when it really is a pretty straight rephrasing of what it teaches in Ephesians 5. So as I come to this text, I'm aware that we are surrounded by people who will take umbrage with some of the things I'm going to say today I'm aware of that. And yet, for all of that, I have a high level of confidence. And a high level of joy in the word of God today and then what I'm going to do.

Trust the Word of the Lord: Three Reasons

I have that for a number of reasons: First, because I just trust the word of God. I trust that “all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” I trust the inerrancy of the word. I feel that we are not listening this morning to the words of a man 2000 years ago but really what it actually is the word of God, which is at work in us who believe, and that's my second reason for confidence. I believe that I'm in a community of believers. I'm surrounded by brothers, and sisters in Christ, and I get to interact with you, my family of God every week, and I know your heart. And I have been surrounded by godly sisters in Christ who are wives, and who yearned to obey this passage. They're not fighting it, they're not pushing back, they just want to do it better, they want to be more faithful. And I am blessed by you, sisters in Christ who feel that way. And I know that next week, when I'm preaching, to my brothers in Christ that are members of this church, I'm going to be preaching to the same demeanor. Men who really want to be Christ-like husbands to their wives, they want to live out that self-sacrifice, with their wives, they just find it a challenge and they want to be faithful. And so I have a great level of confidence in you, the church. I guess the approach I'm taking is you're doing these things now we ask you and I urge you in the Lord, to do so more and more. And thirdly, I just believe that this is a vital topic for this day, this is the idea of healthy marriage, of biblical patterns of marriage, of biblical gender-based roles in marriage. I think more than ever, our culture needs to hear the truth, the truth on this, and as I prayed this is the role of the Church, we get to proclaim this we get to shine forth the beauty of the truth of the Word of God.

So for those three reasons, I have a great level of hope and joy as I preach today. My hope is that through the ministry of the Word of God, that specifically this morning, wives will be strengthened that their “arms and their knees will be strengthened” as the book of Hebrews says for the journey that's in front of them and that you, sisters in Christ, will be enabled to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord, and you'll be made ready to give an account to Christ on Judgment Day. That's my desire toward my sisters in Christ. I desire also that brothers, the brothers in Christ would be praying for their wives would understand the, the role of the wives because we get to read each other's mail to some degree. 

Sermon to Follow

Wives get to read next week's passage of the husbands, and pray for that and yearn for their husbands to fulfill that and we also can pray toward and help our wives to fulfill their roles as well. My desire is that by the end of the sermon, by the ministry of the word, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit that you'll have the same attitude toward the word of God toward the law that the psalmist said in Psalm 119:32, “I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free.” But there's just a freedom that comes from living life the way that God has intended and laid out. So I'm going to speak this morning to wives primarily. I'm going to say some things to the husbands that will help the wives, but I'm going to save a lot of that for next week. So my goal here is the glory of God in the health, and scriptural precision, and eternal fruitfulness of the marriages of this church. That's my desire.

The Topic: Submission

So in the text you've already heard, I'm going to read it again, and this is what we're going to walk through this morning. Ephesians 5, 22-24, it says, "Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife. As Christ is the head of the Church, His body of which He is the Savior, now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." So, we begin by looking at the issue of submission and we began to talk about it last week, I did a little work on this last week. We're in a section in the book of Ephesians, which is practical, it talks about ethics, about morality of the Gospel applied, and there's a flow, and I'm going to get into that flow again, but in verse 21, there is this command, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” or “in the fear of the Lord.” And I mentioned last week that there are some that teach the idea of mutual submission, from that, and I think that that can be a very misleading phrase. I think it can lead us in bad directions. I think that my brother pastors that do that are emphasizing the one another part and leaning on the one another part more than on the submit part and understanding what that word means biblically.

The word, biblically, means to yield to or obey God-ordained authority, that's how it's used again and again in the Bible. And so, we can't redefine the word at that point to mean something like mutual servant-hood, or mutual loving yielding or various patterns of deferring to one another, which are clearly taught in Philippians and other places, 1 Corinthians 13, but that's not what submission is. What I said last week is that mutual submission in that sense makes as much sense as mutual obedience. And so, what Paul is doing, he's saying, “Submit one another, Church, mixed assembly, this group to this one. But then this group should carry their authority in this way, and then this group to this one, but then this group should carry themselves in that way, and then this group to this group should submit, but then this group should carry themselves in that way.” That's how the chapters, Ephesians 5-6 unfold. 

God Has Given Specific Individuals Authority

Now, I will say that among at least one member of my family, the idea of mutual obedience was very attractive. One of my kids said "I would love it if we could just alternate and you obey us, and then we obey you.” And that idea was taking root, and I felt the need to kind of pull it up from the roots. I don't know if it's been fully rooted out, but the idea of mutual obedience between parent and child is not going. Hopefully not going to take root in our family, although it would be an interesting ride. I wouldn't deny that, I'd be interested in what we would eat, what we would wear, and what we would do with our time. But I think that's what I'm getting at. But obedient submission has to do with recognizing that God entrusts to created beings responsible positions, that authority is the God-given right to command that with peers, we can give each other council, we can give each other advice, but we can't give each other commands. But there is such a thing as authority, that there are individuals created beings, who are given the right to command and that others must obey those commands and they're held accountable in reference that obedience. So we're told to submit to every governing authority instituted among men, 1st Peter, same thing in Romans 13. So that's what we're looking at here.

Submission is Not Demeaning

Now, this submission does not in any way demean the one that's doing this submitting. There's multiple ways we know that that's true, but the best is just to look at Jesus Christ. First and foremost, we need to see that it is Christ who's giving us this command. It is a bit of a red herring or a dodge to focus on Paul and who he was and what his upbringing was, his mentality and all that. We as Christians look beyond the Human messenger to the God who enables prophets and apostles to speak the truth, that's the essence of inerrancy the essence of the word of God. So we're not too concerned about Paul's attitudes and Paul's training and Paul's personality, any of that behind that we see Jesus Christ telling us what we must do, and we recognize that Jesus is our king, He's not merely our Savior, He is our king, we have entered the Kingdom of God by faith. And so, Jesus has told us and we're going to talk more about this later, but. Jesus as Our king is saying saying, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. From gentle and humble and hard and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And that yoke, I think is submission to kingly authority, biblically. And so, it is saying is my authority is not a crushing burden for you. John says the same thing in 1 John 5:3.

He says, “His commands are not burdensome.” And so, we understand that submission is not demeaning because Jesus is the one commanding he's not trying to demean anyone. We also know that submission is not demeaning to the person who does it, because Jesus Himself submitted to His parents, Joseph and Mary, when He was 12, He submitted to them and He wasn't in any way saying He was essentially or ontological below them, or that they were better in God's eyes, it's just that they were His parents and the Law of Moses commands it, the children need to honor their parents and obey them, and so Jesus submitted them though He was intrinsically higher than them, because He was incarnate, the incarnate Son of God, but in Luke 2:51, it says that He was submissive, it's the same Greek word. And then, we get in 1 Corinthian 15-28, “the Son Himself will be made subject to Him [God the Father] who put everything under Him, so that God may be all in all.” So the Son Himself submits to the Father. That's why Jesus speaks in the Great Commission. "All authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to Me. I didn't usurp it I didn't grab it. It was given to Me by someone above Me, namely the Father.” And so, there's nothing demeaning about submission at all. Jesus Himself submitted. 

Satanic Lies About Obedience

I think it's the essence of Satan's lie in the garden to think that if we obey God's word, we're going to be robbed of joy. I mean, he's been trying to trick us on this ever since. You know, “for God knows that when you eat of the tree,” he's implying that we're missing out on something, and I think what we need to do is, instead, just have that delight in the word of God, in the commands of God in Psalm 1 in the Law of God, it says, “blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the Law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf never withers. And whatever he does prospers.” You want a prosperous life, yield to the Word of God, delight in the Word of God. And that includes, in our marriage.

Now I'm aware of how challenging this command can be to obey. So let's start with the challenges. You have the, what is it, seven-fold outline? It's just getting worse. Every week we started with the standard Baptist three points, now we're up to seven. But I think we can move quickly through these and I hope that this will give good coverage on the issue of submission. Let’s start with the challenges.

The Challenges of a Wife’s Submission

Simply Put: Indwelling Sin

The challenges of a wife submission. I can just probably boil it down to one word, sin. That's what makes this a challenge. And by that I mean sin on the part of the wife, and sin on the part of the husband. Every Christian husband, and every Christian wife still has the horrible burden, the grotesque deformity, to some degree of indwelling sin. It's a very strange thing. It's, praise God, temporary someday we're going to be free of all indwelling sin, but we're not free yet. And so, we have in Romans 7, it's very plainly taught where the Apostle Paul says, "I do not understand what I do, for the very thing I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. Now, if I do what I do not want to do it is no longer I who do it but it is sin living in me that does it." Well, that's going to be true, absolutely of both the husband and the wife. We have this wickedness, this sin that grows like a tumor inside us, and it makes it very, very hard for us to submit to God, it makes it hard for us to obey His commands. We don't yield easily to authority, we tend to fight it, neither on the other side do we wield authority well. We tend to lord it over or domineer. And pride as it makes submission very hard.

Then there's just the issue of knowledge. A wife knows her husband very well. She probably knows him better than any person on the face of the earth knows him. She studies him probably more carefully than he studies her. It's not always true but I think it's generally true. And it's easy for her, as she sees the pattern of indwelling sin, work its way out in his life for her to lose respect for him. It's easy for her to lose respect for a husband that's inconsistent, or hypocritical, or harsh, or lazy, or sinfully angry, or any one of a number of other outbreaks of indwelling sin. It's easy to lose respect for a man like that, but every man is a man like that all of us struggle with indwelling sin nature. But honestly, it's a problem because even if he were sinless, even if he were flawless, she would still have trouble submitting because she has her own indwelling sin nature, too. And the proof of that every godly Christian women will say is, how difficult she finds it submitting to Christ. All of us do. We're all on that pattern. We understand God's word is pure. Romans 7 says, "In my inner being, I delight in God's law, but I can't keep it. I have trouble keeping it. And so even if he were sinless she would still have a hard time.

Greater Challenge With an Unbelieving Husband

Now, all of this is even more challenging if the husband is not a believer at all and I want to talk more about that later in the sermon, so I'm not going to say much about it, now, but 1 Peter 3 addresses that. It  still calls on the wife to submit and to seek to win over her husband without a word by the submissiveness of her life. 1 Peter 3. 

Increased Pressure to Disobey from the World

Also, we know that it's difficult for the woman, or the wife to submit to her husband because the world is ratcheting up the pressure on the marriage at many levels and right on this very issue, I'm teaching on today saying, “It's not true, it's a display of patriarchal sexism or etc.”. Those are the kinds of things floating around and that can weaken resolve. Satan is active on this issue. He's assaulting the wife's mind in her heart, accusing her and tempting her. He's assaulting the husband's mind and heart and causing him to behave in ways that make it hard for her to submit. And the world's system is just filling our minds and hearts all the time, and we've got to fight it. It comes in our entertainment and books that we read, it comes in news stories, it just comes in all the time. And feminism is part of the spirit of the age, and egalitarianism, and that kind of thing, and the idea that anything less than that is demeaning to the human and makes them less worthwhile. So this command is challenging. Secondly, let's talk about the power of a wife’s submission.

The Power of a Wife’s Submission

The Word “Submit” Does Not Appear in Verse 22

With all of these challenges, how can she do it? How is it going to be possible for her to submit to her husband? Well, the word “submit,” actually does not appear in verse 22, in the original language. It really is just a continuation of a flow from verse 21, which is a flow all the way back to verse 18. We need to see this whole thing in context. So the idea here, what I'm going to tell you is that the wife, the Christian wife is able to submit to her husband as the Lord intended only by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. As she is filled with the Spirit, she will be able to submit to her husband. So you just have to pick up if you would Ephesians 5:18. It says, "Do not get drunk with wine which leads to debauchery, but instead, be filled with the Spirit.” And as I've mentioned before, what flows after that grammatically, and it comes across in many translations, but not all of them is a series of participles, “-ing” words that describe what Paul means by “be being filled with the Spirit.” So they flow, and this would not be an exhaustive list at all, there'd be many other verbs that would flow from the Spirit-filled life. Like evangelizing for example, or praying. Which aren't mentioned here so there are a lot of things, but he's just giving a sample of the kinds of things that describe the Spirit-filled life.

Submission is a Subset of the Spirit-filled Life

So be being filled with the Spirit, verse 19, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” secondly, “singing” and thirdly, “making music to the Lord in your hearts.” Fourthly, “giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and then fifthly “submitting to one another in the fear of Christ,” "wives to your own husbands." That's how it flows. So I think to some degree, I think every English translation starts a new sentence, at verse 22, and inserts, “the word wives submit, etcetera,” might break off the flow and we don't see the beautiful power of the Spirit that comes to enable the wife to do this and I think we definitely next week we're going to need to see the same flow toward the husband. He will be able to be a Christ-like head to his wife, only by the power of the Spirit. So, it is the Spirit's power that enables her to submit to her own husband, only by the power of the indwelling Spirit and this be done. 

This Only Happens By the Indwelling Spirit

And so I think it's just so vital that we see Christian ethics Christian behavior, do’s and don'ts in the Christian life as they flow from the Gospel. You're not Christian, because you behave Christianly. Quite the opposite. Jesus said, "Make a tree good then its fruit will be good.” And so, we are trees that have been supernaturally made good by the sovereign grace of God. We have been transformed by the power of God by the Gospel. We are those Ephesians 1 that says, “we were chosen in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.” So the wife was chosen for that and she was predestined to be adopted as a daughter of God, by the sovereign power of God. So this is something God's been working from before the foundation of the world, and in Christ, His blood has atoned for all of your sins, you are completely forgiven you're redeemed by the blood of Christ. And “having believed the Gospel,” Ephesians 1:13, “you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, you received the gift of the indwelling Spirit,” which is a marvel to me, because, earlier in the sermon I reminded you that you also have indwelling sin. So here we have the weirdness and the grotesqueness of the Spirit-filled Christian who also has indwelling sin. So we have both indwelling Spirit and indwelling sin.

Well, the Spirit's not going to put up with that forever. He's going to kick the sin out, amen. We're not going to become perfect in this world, but He will win. We will be victorious in the end, both Christian husbands and Christian wives in the end, we will be glorious, in Heaven. And so, that's the foundation we have. We have the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God and the Christian wife has had from Ezekiel 36, her heart of stone removed, and the heart of flesh put in, and there in Ezekiel 36 He said I will move you, “I'll put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and obey my laws and my commands.” And that's the beauty of the Christian life. We have the transformation, we've been made new, we have a heart of flesh, responsive now to the Lord, we have the moving of the Spirit, we have the perfect word of God, and we see it and do it. Both husbands and wives. So that is the power that we have.

Practical Application

So if I can just step aside and just say, a word of practical application to you wives. I saw a book title, a number of years ago. It stuck with me, I didn't read the book, but I saw it and just that was interesting is, on this very topic, I'm preaching on and it was, “Me? Submit to him?” That's kind of how I read the title. And it was written by a Christian woman who is seeking to help sisters in Christ still obey the very command I'm preaching on. But you get that sense, it's like I'm having a hard time doing this, and quickly you can start getting into, "you don't know my husband, you don't know the challenges I face and those kinds of things.

What I would say to you is go to the cross, go to the power of the Spirit, go to the flow of Ephesians 1-5. Remind yourselves of the supernatural work that God's already done in your lives, remind yourself of the new creation you are in Christ, remind yourself that you can be indwelt by the Spirit, but not filled with the Spirit, that that actually happens a lot. and that it's only by our sin that we stop being filled with the Spirit, and so confess sins at that point. And just breathe in the ministry of the Spirit, breathe in the sense of forgiveness, and the cleansing and the power. And say, “Lord, you through the Spirit, wrote these words, for me. I want to do them, I see the beauty. Would you please fill me? Forgive me and help me.” I think that that's the key both for husbands and wives, but that's the key for a wife to submit to her husband. Thirdly, the pattern of the wives submission. Let's talk about the pattern. Look again at the verses. Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife. As Christ is the head of the Church, His body, of which He is the Savior.

The Pattern of a Wife’s Submission 

As the Church Submits to Christ

Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. So we have two phrases here that give us a sense of the pattern, the type that the wife can latch on to in our her mind, “as to the Lord,” and “as the Church submits to Christ,” in the end it's going to be the same thing. But her submission should be similar to the submission that she yields to Christ or that the Church submits to Christ, so a wife's godly submission or husband is pattern in this way. Actually, her submission to her husband is a subset of her submission to Christ. Christ has far more commands covering her life than just submit to your own husband, there are many other commands that Christ is giving her. This is just one of many just like the husband's command to be a Christ-like husband, or head to his wife is just one of many commands for him. So, this is a subset of our general submission to Christ our King. And so, that's the pattern as you submit to Jesus, your king, in the same way in a patterned way submit to your husband.

Now we know that this extends, I think, to all submission that the Bible teaches. We will submit to governing authorities, in the same way. Children will submit to their parents, and in every case, whether it's the wife to the husband, children, to the parents, slaves to the master, citizens to government, we're not in any case, saying that by our submission, we are saying that each of these is exactly like Jesus and is sinless and perfect. We're not saying that at all. We understand that all of those authority figures will give to God an account of how they wielded their authority. All of them will. So we're not saying that the wife by submitting is saying that her husband is Jesus, or is as flawless as Jesus or perfect, it's not that at all, but it's in the pattern of that, as to her Lord, and this comes from a heart attitude that then flows out into outward actions. She submits in her heart. And then it flows out into action.

So first and foremost, as we've said she submits to Christ, Matthew 11:22-30, Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest, take My yoke upon you and learn from me. For I'm gentle and humble in heart and you'll find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” That is the fundamental moment of her conversion of taking her neck as all of us do, and yielding to the yoke of Jesus, the king. We're not going to fight as commands anymore, we're going to submit to His commands. And so that submission must come from the heart. It comes from a transformed heart, as we've been saying a heart of love to the Lord, and it's in that way also, in the subset sort of way, in a pattern way she's going to do toward her husband. And then it flows out into actions that comply with her submission to her husband's leadership.

This is the Key to Understanding Gender-Based Roles

If I could just say also, this is the key for me to all gender-based roles and all gender understanding. Fundamentally as our culture gets more and more confused about gender. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. And it goes way beyond bathrooms. Way beyond House Bill 2 and any of that. It's really a stripping away of the moral confusion that's happening in our nation where people just don't know what masculinity and femininity are anymore. Well, if somebody's going to come to me and say, Help me understand what it means to be a masculine man. What it means for me to be a feminine woman or what does that mean biblically? I would bring you right to Ephesians 5. Even if you're not married. I would just say this is the essential difference. All the other virtues that you give to masculinity, you could probably see corresponding virtues similar to that, like courage boldness leadership, other things like that in a woman, and they're actually commanded in other places in scripture. What then? I think it's this pattern within marriage of headship and submission, and then extends also in terms of an elders leadership of the church in a godly sort way, in a Christ-like sort of way. I would just take your meditations there. If you want to try to understand what the Bible means by masculinity, etcetera. It's the key to everything in terms of gender-based roles.

The Ground of a Wife’s Submission

The Reason for the Command

Fourth, what is the ground of a wife submission? What is the reason why she should do it? What does Paul say? What is the reason for the command? We'll look again at the verses. Verse 22 and 23 “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the savior.” That's the reason why. Okay, you could take Verse 22, wives submit your husbands as to the Lord, stop. The wife then says, "Why should I do that? What's the reason you're giving me for that verse? 23 is the answer. “For,” or, “because,” or “since the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior.” That's the reason why it answers the question why? So in other words, the ground for her submission is his status, his state in her life as her head. That's the reason why, that's what Paul would say. That's the reason why she submits. 

The Headship is Beneficial to the Body

Now, the word “head” is an interesting word. Let me tell you. On the issue of gender and egalitarianism, and the struggles that have been going on in this over the last two or three, four decades, almost every keyword has been fought over. I can just tell you, there are battles that are fought over, the word “head.” Some scholars seeking, I think, to evade the sense of authority, the right to command say that head means source, like the head of a river, something like that. But if you look at, I think Ephesians, go ahead and look back their Ephesians 1:20-23. I think you'll get a sense of what Paul means by the word head in Ephesians 5.

So Ephesians 1:20-23, it says, "God raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms,”  Ephesians 1:21, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” Now here comes verse 22, “And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.” That's what “head” means. I actually think there's almost a direct correlation between these words here at the end of Ephesians 1, and in Matthew 28:18, then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to me.” I think this is Paul's version of it in Ephesians 1, "God placed all things under Christ's feet rulers, authorities, powers, dominions everything and made Him head over the universe.” And I read it this way for the Church or for the benefit of the Church. So that's Christ headship over the church and over everything.

I think in the same way the husband, headship of the husband in reference to the wife is similar to it. It's patterned after that saying. It's a position of authority, the right to lead the right to give commands, and make decisions in the marriage and ultimately in the family. Now, one thing we note in both Ephesians 1 and then in Ephesians 5, is that this headship is beneficial to the body. It causes the body to live and flourish and thrive. It's absolutely vital for us to see that it says he is, Ephesians 5:23, says the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body of which He is the Savior. You see, the saving work of Christ here, he's not a domineering tyrant here, He is the savior of the Church, and so his headship is beneficial to her. So the worldly vision of authority must be rejected.

You remember how the apostles were arguing about which of them would be greatest in the kingdom, remember that? There's just so many little ugly moments there in the Gospels, we get a sense of the humanity of the 12 apostles, and the sinfulness too, and Christ’s patience and dealing, but they're arguing about which of them is going to be the greatest. Jesus called them together and He said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles, lord over them. And their high officials domineer [or exercise] authority over them not so with you, instead, whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” We're going to see that exact same thing being said in Ephesians 5, about the husband toward his wife. So, this headship benefits, it is servant leadership, it causes the wife to flourish and grow in every way.

The Simple Truth: The Husband IS the Head

Now as we look at the ground over submission, we need to look at the simple indicative statement here. There's not an imperative or subjunctive here. What do I mean by that? The husband is declared to be the head, the husband is the head of the wife, he's not encouraged to be the head, he's not commanded to be the head. Nothing is said about what kind of head you should be here, that'll come, I think later in the chapter. You should be a Christ-like it but it's not the husband ought to be the head of the wife or his expected to be, he just is. We just need to understand how unconfused, God is about all of this. He's not confused at all about what he intends in marriage. He's not confused by Supreme Court decisions or by high-level academic books. He just knows exactly what He intended in marriage.

 And so, this has nothing to do with his behavior, his height, his racial origin. Even his, I would say regenerate status, it just has to do with marriage. That's what happened when they got married. The moment that she said “I do” at that wedding, he became, in God's eyes, her head. That's what you can clearly see that it's not merely a piece of paper at that point, nothing that we can do will change God's perception of that, that God sees her sees him as her head and he will evaluate both of them on Judgment Day, on that basis. So it's good for us to know that that's how He will evaluate. That's the basis of her submission.

Husbands: Embrace Your Responsibility

So husbands or I can just say in an aside, to husbands embrace your responsibility. I often think of the garden of Eden after the fall, remember after Adam and Eve had both eaten from the fruit, and then there was the sound of the garden, coming in the cool of the day, or of God coming, and He's moving. God is moving through the garden. And they became terrified, because they felt guilty, they were guilty and they hid. But who is He calling for, who is he calling for? He's calling for Adam. Now it's not that He didn't know what Eve had done. It's not that at all, and it's not that she's not just as accountable to God for what she's done, because He will call her to account it's who does He call for first. There's a sense of that responsibility of taking responsibility with positions of authority, come corresponding accountability, and responsibility for which we will give an account on Judgment Day. So husband just step up into your responsibility. We’ll talk more about this next week, but it's not that you ought to be the head. If you're married, you are the head. And that's the ground also for submission.

The Extent of a Wife’s Submission

How Far Does Submission Go?

Now what about the extent of the wife submission how far does this submission go? We'll look at verse 24. Now, as the “Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything,” in everything. So, in everything I take to mean in every topical area of life, and down to its details. So, that would be money and possessions, it would be life management, it would be scheduling it would be parenting, church involvement, careers, ministry, mission, anything and everything. You put a heading over that's relevant to their marriage. So that's the way I take the phrase in everything. So, turning around with that means there's no area that either the husband or wife could say, that this idea of headship and submission is irrelevant to that, or doesn't fit there. Basically there is no topic or area of life, which the wife can say that's off-limits or the husband could say it's off-limits. Headship and submission do not extend to that.

Now, brothers let's not be fools here. I've mentioned this before. She has the right to set her kitchen up the way she wants. She has the right to set her dresser up the way she wants. She can put this in this drawer that in that drawer etcetera. She has the right to quote the standards to you while you're putting dishes away from the dishwasher. “It doesn't go there, it goes over here, yes dear.” Alright? Put it where she wants. Don't like, pull rank and say, I'm going to rearrange your kitchen just because I can. Alright, that's not wise. There are areas of jurisdiction. And if she just has a more refined eye for fashion than you do, and if you ever have that marital moment, that I've had many times in which your wife asks you, “Is that what you're wearing?” That is a good moment for you not so much to be thinking about headship and submission, but to ask advice. Alright, do you think I ought not to wear this? What's up, you know, what's the deal? Well I hope we're not at the level of  Garanimals where you need the top and the bottom to match, but they don't. Okay, that's not ideal right now. We're not saying that it extends so, she can't give some advice, and let's get more serious that she can't confront you on a sin pattern in your life, that she can't rebuke you, because she sees sin in your life, you can't say, "Well headship and submission, you're not allowed to do that.” Your wife has the right to rebuke you for sins.

Application

So toward the wife, this idea of, in everything means you should broaden not constrict the sense of headship and submission. Say, "Lord are there some areas in which I'm not being submissive. Are there some areas, maybe the finances, or life direction, or there's some areas where I am feeling some resistance to my husband's godly leadership." And as you Christian wives gladly and willingly by the power of the Spirit, put this submission on display and everything, you'll be putting the Gospel on display beautifully in everything, especially before your children. So, if there is that gentle and quiet spirit, which Peter says, is of great worth in the sight of God, she will beautify not only herself, but she'll actually beautify the Gospel. 

She'll make the Gospel appear attractive to anyone that's watching. Like it says in Titus 2:4-5, “older women can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and be subject to their husbands. Same teaching, so that no one will malign the Word of God.” That means so people want think negatively of the Bible or the Gospel. And then later in the same chapter, in Titus 2:10, it says so that “in everything they may adorn or beautify the doctrine of God our savior.” So it's both negatively, so that people won't malign the Gospel and positively so people would see how beautiful the Gospel is. So, a Spirit-filled submission, in everything in all the areas really beautifies the Gospel, it powerfully puts the Gospel on display. So, that's the extent of the wives submission. It's in everything but are there limits to the wife, submission? Well, the answer is Absolutely, as with all human authority, it's not absolute. It's not absolute.

The Limits of a Wife’s Submission

The Husband’s Authority is Not Absolute

The first limit to the wife’s submission is in the intensive right from the beginning, verse 22, and not every translation has this is. NIV doesn't have this, but I'll just read it as it is. It says "Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” So, it's intensive, it's made clear it's just pretty obvious, from that, that Paul is making it clear. You don't need to submit to every husband. You don't submit to a sister in Christ's husband or to every man. That's not true either, it's just to your own husband, also the words your own your own husband, implies a sense of ownership that the wife has over the husband like the husband has over the wife. And that we get into the issue of marital relations. Basically, she owns his body sexually just like he owns her body sexually. That's what 1 Corinthian 7 teaches beautifully, it says In Song of Solomon, 2:16, “my lover is mine and I am His.” So the sense of that mutual ownership specifically in the area of marital relations. Or in 1 Corinthian 7:3-5, it says “A husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife. And likewise, the wife to her husband, a wife, doesn't have authority over her own body, but her husband does. Equally a husband does not have authority over his own body, but his wife does. So, that's a limit.”

So the man doesn't have freedom to roam, as in some cultures like, “Men will be men, nothing you can do to stop it. They're going to be polygamists one way or another.” No! Christians have from the beginning said that is not true and it's a sin to be judged, and so he does not have the right, to do that. There's a limit there, that she owns their marital relations just as He owns hers. Next also even to her own husband and even within this, the wife's submission is limited. She is to submit as to the Lord, but he is not the Lord, he is a sinner. And there may be times that his leadership will not be godly, this is even more true if he's not a believer. Says in Deuteronomy 13:6-8, basically, we're going to say this, she, the wife, must never, ever follow her husband into sin, ever.

Deuteronomy 13:6-8. It says, “if your very own, brother or your son, or daughter or the wife whom you love or your closest friend secretly entices you saying, 'let us go and worship other gods, gods that neither you know your fathers have known, gods of the people around you, whether near or far from one end of the land of the other, do not yield to Him or listen to him.” Actually your hand should be the first in putting him to death that says In the Old Covenant scriptures. So, no, you can't even if the one you love, the most in this world says, "Hey let's go worship another God. Let me put it to you this way. We must never follow God-ordained authority into God-forbidden activity. Let me say that again, we must never follow God-ordained authority, into God-forbidden activity. That point we break and it says in Acts 4-5, the apostles, when they were commanded by the Jewish authorities to stop preaching the Gospel of Christ that We must obey God rather than men. And so, it is.

The situation with Ananias and Sapphira is a case study for this. It turns out they both mutually agreed to lie to the Holy Spirit about the amount of money they got from the sale. But suppose only Ananias had wanted to do, Sapphira would not have been compelled to follow her husband into lying before the church about the amount of money they got from that real estate deal. Her fraud was her own and headship and submission you're not allowed to command your spouse to sin, ever. So the wife’s submission to her husband must be a subset of her submission of Christ.

What if Your Husband is an Unbeliever?

Now, more specifically, "what if my husband is a non-Christian, what do I do then? Well, I want to commend to you, 1 Corinthians 7:13-16, and also 1 Peter 3:1-6. I'm not going to go carefully through those, but in 1 Corinthians 7, basically, it says if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her she must not divorce him. Instead she must live with him there to do life together. Paul says, The husband is in some sense sanctified or set apart by having a godly wife. Clearly Paul does not mean he's definitely going to be saved, because he says at the end, you don't know that you're going to save your husband, but if he's willing to live with her they should live together. You do your best as a Christian wife in that situation to follow whatever leadership he gives that's not ungodly. When it comes to the raising of the children, you should raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, you should say. I've got to bring them to church. This is what's commanded. Obviously, the more belligerent or intractable he gets about that the harder it gets, I understand that but fundamentally do what you can to submit to your husband when he doesn't contradict the word of God. Your overall demeanor should be one of loving submissiveness.

Same thing in 1 Peter 3. The idea in 1 Peter 3, as he says that without a word, you can win over an unbelieving husband when he sees the purity and submission and beauty of your life. The gentle and quiet spirit, so you're not murmuring or rolling under him. And when it says without a word, it means you don't nag your husband into the kingdom. You don't manipulate him into the kingdom, you just share the Gospel, and pray, and live your life, and pray and pray and pray some more. Honestly, I actually think 1 Peter 3 goes also for the Christian husband who's not behaving well on a given Tuesday afternoon, it's been known to happen. I'm not sure how bad I am on Tuesdays, but Wednesday can be a tough day.

Alright, so there are times that Christian husbands don't behave well, they don't seem to believe the word. I think it's wrong to take 1 Peter 3 and say it's only for the unbelieving husband. I think in general, all sin comes from unbelief and there's going to be a time that every husband in here, will be, to some degree, not believing the word at that moment. Same principles 1 Peter 3. Win them over without a word. Not saying you should never speak a word of correction. I already said you can, but I'm just saying your demeanor and your submissiveness will be powerful.

Practical Advice

More practical advice. What about abusive situations? Well, I don't think we're ever commanded by God to stand there and take a beating. As a matter of fact, the apostles, sent out on mission, he said “If they persecute you in one place, flee to the next, if you can get your freedom, do it.” And so, I think most Christian pastors that teach on this say that an abusive situation is grounds for separation and divorce and I believe that. Now when it comes to emotional or verbal abuse, obviously it gets a little more difficult just because you've had an argument, I wouldn't use the word “abuse” there. We all have a sin nature. You just need to be very careful what you mean. But fundamentally, the desire is that this headship is not abusive. This is something that feeds and nourishes the wife, ultimately the godly wife as you feed her with the word of God, as you pour into her the Gospel she's going to become a better and better counselor she's going to be able to give good advice to her husband. And she will be a helper suitable for him. So we'll talk about that more next time, but as you pour the Word of God into your wife cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, she will give godlier and godlier council.

The Delight of a Wife’s Submission 

The Husband’s Obedience Leads to the Wife’s Delight

Finally, the delight of a wife's submission. Well, the basic idea is this, and you've heard it before, but I'll say it. The more the husbands do their part, the more delightful it is for the wife to do her part. And so, next week, we're going to talk about the husband's work and his calling to be a Christ-like head. The more he actually lives that out by the Spirit, the more delightful this will be. So, “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.” The more you love your wife brothers, the more delightful this will be for the wife. But even if the husband doesn't, there's still a secret delight that comes to any Christian, who by the power of the Spirit even when it's very difficult, obeys the commands of God. So wives submit to your husbands by the power of the Spirit next week, pray for me as I preach to the husbands. I want to say one final thing, as we go to the time of the Lord's supper.

Call to Repentance

This is a time for us to celebrate the ordinance of communion. It's a time for Christians who have confessed faith in Christ and been baptized to partake. If you have not been converted, if you're not a Christian. If you've not testified to your conversion by water baptism, we'd ask that you refrain. But I just want you to know how glad I am that you're here, how glad I am that you've heard even if you wonder “What is this, how is this relevant to my life? I'm a single guy. I'm 30 or whatever, not a Christian etcetera.” Well, if I can just say this, maybe you're here for just this moment. That you would realize that God sent His Son into the world to die for sinners like you and me, and that maybe God brought you here, not so much to hear about a submission of a wife to her husband, but your submission to Christ the King.

So I'm going to say again, Matthew 11, come to Him, Christ come to me. All you who are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest" yield to Jesus submit to him, let Him forgive you for your sins. Now I'm going to close the sermon time in prayer, and then we'll have the time of the Lord's supper. 

Prayer

 Father, we thank you for the opportunity we've had today to hear the Gospel, to see it applied specifically to Christian wives and how they relate to their husbands. Father, as we turn now to the ordinance of communion, we pray that you would please enable us to hear and believe the Word and take it to heart. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction

Well, I come this morning to the first of three sermons in our series in Ephesians. We've come to the section on marriage. It was not intentionally lined up with Mother's Day, it just happened that way. And Jared, I have six points in my sermon this morning. Is that okay? So this is like two sermons I guess, two Baptist sermons, I guess. But we're going to look this morning in an overarching, overview, sense of marriage. And we're not going to get into the exegetical details of Ephesians 5, but we're going to talk some, in a big picture, about Christian marriage. And then God willing, next week we'll have a second sermon zeroing in on the wife's responsibilities in that section, that scripture. And then, the following week, God willing, we'll look at the husband's responsibilities. So that's where we're going.

A Fruitful Garden Needing Protection

And as I begin this sermon this morning, my mind goes back in time. I imagine, I don't know that this happened, but I think it must have happened back to a warm, late June day in 1863 in a Pennsylvania farm area, where a peach farmer was just walking through his orchard. I can picture this, and I've walked through orchards myself, and you just smell the fragrance of those peach blossoms and you see the peaches growing on the trees, and you just anticipate the harvest and the time when the fruit is going to get ripe. And your heart is so filled with hope. The problem was that peach orchard was near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and within a week it would be the site of one of the worst battles in history. And that those peach blossoms were going to get ripped to shreds by bullets and by artillery fire, and the peace of that place was going to be rent by the screams of agonizing wounds and men dying. And we picture that image of a beautiful garden, a rich, beautiful garden that has become a battlefield. And you think to yourself, "How could such a fruitful garden become such a battlefield?" And this is the image that's in my mind as I think about Christian marriage. 

Marriage: One of God’s Richest Gifts

And as we come to the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:21-33, I look on marriage as a fruitful garden, a beautiful, rich garden that needs protection. That it is a battlefield. And we're going to find out later in Ephesians, not yet, but maybe in the future if God gives us the time, how we are in a place of spiritual warfare all the time. And our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against the rulers and the authorities and the powers of this dark age, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. And that Satan has made marriage a special focus of his activity, a special focus of his attack. Marriage is one of God's richest gifts, a fruitful garden. You look at the book of Song of Solomon, and marriage, the beauties and the mysteries and the allure, the attraction of marriage is pictured as a garden, a walled garden with fragrant spices and a fruitful harvest that's to come. And it's just a beautiful picture. And so, that garden imagery there in the Song of Solomon about married love, even sexual love, that picture in the Song of Songs, I think, harkens back to the original garden, the Garden of Eden where God first set up marriage, and established it right at the beginning. Adam, the first man, created by the sovereign power of God, and God brought Eve into his life. But before that, God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:15. It says, "To work it and take care of it." Most English translations go in that direction, but I think the Hebrew more simply says, "To serve and protect it." And so, the man's job there was to serve the garden and pour his intelligence and his skill as a gardener into that Garden of Eden. It was perfect, but incomplete. And there were certain shrubs and plants that needed human cultivation.

And so, God gave to the man work to do and he was to serve that garden to the end, that that Garden could be everything God intended it to be. What a beautiful image for the man in his protection role of the garden, or his serving role, and also protection. When you think, "To serve and protect", the image of protect comes in my mind of an impending threat. You protect because there's danger. And you might think, "What danger could there be?" But by then, putting the whole Bible together, Satan had already fallen and been cast down to earth with a third of the angels, it seems, from Revelation 12. And so, Satan and the demons are coming and there's going to be a temptation and there's going to be danger. And there would be a severe threat to the garden and to the whole planet. And it was Adam's job to protect the world from that threat, to serve and protect. I've thought about that often, since I had those insights. And I said, what Adam is called to do with the garden, I'm called to do with my family, with my marriage, and with my children, to serve them and protect them. And that's what I want. My purpose in these sermons is that husbands would serve and protect their wives and their children, and that wives would fulfill the role that God has for them as well. And then we'll get to the children's section, God willing.

Marriage Under Attack in this Age

But we understand that marriage, as an institution, is under direct attack in our day and age. I don't have to elucidate this for you, you know very well what I'm talking about. You know that the idea of one man, one woman, in a permanent covenantal union, for life, is under direct attack. The Supreme Court's decision last year to allow or endorse, I don't know what verb to put, gay marriage, is I think a satanic attack on biblical marriage. I find it staggering that the justices there could so arrogantly overturn millennia of jurisprudence and common understanding of marriage, and make that decision.

In Scandinavia, in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, where gay marriage has been legal since the early 1990s, the result has been a clear decline in marriage itself. Fewer and fewer young couples even get married, they just cohabit together, they might even have children, then they move on to another partner. And so, the idea of marriage itself has become, there, it seems, passé. But this is only the most recent attack on marriage, marriage has been under attack from the beginning. But even in our own culture we see it. The escalating divorce rates is an attack on marriage. The ideas of sexual freedom, open marriage, different things, cohabitation. And then just in general, constant marital strife. Marriage is a battleground, it's a fruitful garden that has become a battleground.

No New Model Needed

Because of all of these faulty assumptions, because of various things, Tim Keller in his book on marriage related that many younger people, who we often call millennials, these would be young people who have come to their adult years around the year 2000, thereabouts, "Are increasingly skeptical about the traditional pattern of marriage, one man, one woman, and a binding exclusive covenant for life." 

Keller quotes a star of the film Monogamy. This star, a woman, said, "In this country we have kind of failed with marriage. We're so protective of this really sacred, but failed institution. There's got to be a new model", she said. Well, do you not see that that's exactly what our world is saying? We need a new model of marriage, we need to come up with something new. because that thing didn't work. Well, friends, we as Christians know very well, we don't need a new model. We need instead to live up to what God has committed to us in the Word of God. We need to live up, as Christians now, speaking as a Christian to Christians, we need to live up to Ephesians 5 marriage. That's what we need to do.

And so, that's what I want to do. And I want to go to the end of this section here and talk about what Paul says to get a sense of the importance, and the spirituality, and the mystical truth of marriage that Paul gives us there. Look at Ephesians 5:31 and 32. He says there, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. And the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the Church."

Marriage is a Profound Mystery

So marriage, there is a profound mystery, it is a picture of Christ's union with the Church. Profound mystery. Now, when we come to the word mystery we're not talking about something like Sherlock Holmes where you look at something and with deductive skill and reasoning you pick out the clues and you put the whole thing together. I think there's a lot of young married men that are like that. They're trying to figure their wives out. "I don't get it. I don't understand how that even happened. What just happened? Something happened. I can tell something happened. She's upset. I must have done something. I must have said something. Don't know what it is, but something happened there." So I think a young man like that, a young husband would say, "Amen, marriage is a profound mystery." That's not, I think, what Paul means there when he says that.

This is not in my outline but I'm going to go ahead and say it. Alright, you're off message, handlers running, "Don't do it." But I'll say it anyway. Here's the thing, a man is constantly studying his wife, trying to understand her. The first wife was brought by God, and He explained to Adam where she came from, because he was in a deep sleep at the time. That's kind of a symbol, isn't it? But anyway. Deep sleep, here is this woman, and he gets it and says, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Where did he get that? God told him. So here's the thing, you confused husbands, go to God. He understands your wife. She might not even understand herself. Romans 7 says we don't understand ourselves. But God knows her. That's just an aside. But what does Paul mean when he says that marriage is, literally in the Greek, a "mega mystērion", a "profound mystery"?

Mystery: An Eternal Truth Kept Hidden

What he is saying is that every marriage there's ever been, including non-Christians, any tribe, language, people, nation, any marriage, all marriages from the beginning have been a picture of Christ and the Church, whether they knew it or not. And that God, when He established marriage in the garden, was intending to give a lasting picture of Christ's union with his Church. That's the mystery. A mystery then, in Paul's way of speaking, a mystery is something hidden in God that has to do with His redemptive purpose that He is now revealing and making known in Christ. And marriage is now fully understood in this way. It's a picture of Christ and the Church. So therefore marriage is important. And it's especially under this kind of confusion, this mental fog, this spiritual fog our people are in, this culture that we're in is in. We need to live out Christian marriage according to Ephesians 5 for the cause of the Gospel. So that's what this is a call to do.

The Biblical Foundation

Matthew 19: Christ’s Teaching on Marriage

So let's go to the foundation. I'm going to step back and look biblically at marriage and just give an overview. I don't think we can go over these things enough. When I do premarital counseling, and after we've gotten to know each other, me and the couple, and we have some time to talk, the first text I go to is Matthew 19. And you can turn there in your Bibles if you'd like, or just listen. But in Matthew 19:3-6, there Jesus teaches on divorce. Now in doing premarital counseling I'm not trying to be negative. "You guys are so excited, and you're engaged, and you're looking forward. Let's talk about divorce." But I'm not trying to be negative because what Jesus does so beautifully, the divorce question comes to Him, and He answers by scripturally defining marriage. So it actually is a very good place to begin premarital counseling. In effect, I'm trying to just get out of the way and say, "I would love for Jesus to be your premarital counselor. If He were your counselor what would He do?"

And so, look what it says in Matthew 19:3-6. Some Pharisees came to him and said, to test him, they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" "Haven't you read", He replied, "That at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, 'For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate." So that's Jesus' teaching on divorce, but even more significantly, He's teaching on marriage. The question that's posed is, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" The answer's plain, Jesus' answer is plain. "No, it is not, it is not lawful." And He gives the reasons why. But the reasons just transcend the question, they just transcend. So in effect Jesus says, "If you want to understand marriage, we're going to start with scripture, you're going to start with the Bible." If we could all, in our society, agree on the inspiration and authority of scripture, we wouldn't have problems on marriage. It's because we don't, that's where we're getting into strange definitions, and we will continue to have that problem.

The Bible is the Ultimate Authority on Marriage

The basic presupposition for us as Christians is the Bible is the word of God. And you can see that that's Jesus' presupposition too, "Haven't you read?" If you want to understand marriage, you have to go to the scripture, you have to understand the Bible. And so, there are dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of books on marriage, many of them are very helpful. There are lots of conferences you could go to on marriage and many of them will be very helpful. But ultimately, if I can just say, the scripture is sufficient for a healthy marriage. Scripture is sufficient for a blessed, fruitful, Christian marriage. It's ultimately all we need. I think Jesus would say that. So He says, "Haven't you read?" And it's not just any scripture. All scripture is God-breathed, all scripture is helpful. But when it comes to marriage He’s going to bring you back to the beginning. "Haven't you read that at the beginning... " So He's going to bring you to Genesis. And so beautifully he's going to bring you to Genesis 1 and then Genesis 2. 

Genesis 1: Man and Woman Equally Made in the Image of God

And you learn different lessons from each of those chapters. In Genesis 1 you learn that the Creator made them male and female. Now, Jesus doesn't quote the whole thing in Genesis 1, but you know it very well. "Let us make man in our image[, in our likeness.]” “And so God created man in the image of God, male and female, He created them.” And so, what we learn in Genesis 1 is the significance of the husband and wife, the man and the woman, first and foremost, as human beings created in the image of God. Now, we're going to learn later in the New Covenant, we also learn that they're absolutely equal. The husband and wife are absolutely equal, not only in being created in the image of God, but they’re absolutely equal in being redeemed by the blood of Christ. They're equally heirs of Heaven. And so, the first most important thing that a husband needs to know about his wife is that she's created in the image of God, and then that she's redeemed by the blood of Christ. 

And we'll get into all that. So the equality of male and female in the image of God and then later in Christ, is established. And frankly, if all we had were Genesis 1, we wouldn't actually think of any kind of differentiation of roles within marriage. It's very egalitarian. But Genesis 1 is not all we have, we also have Genesis 2. And so, Genesis 1 gives this overarching view of marriage set in creation as part of the six days of creation. Or of humanity, not marriage. Of humanity set in the six days of creation. But then we're zeroing in, in Genesis 2, on a detail. These accounts are not contradictory, they can actually very easily be harmonized. It's not written by different authors as some liberal scholars have told us. But it's just in effect like a map of the state of North Carolina, and then zooming in on the Raleigh-Durham area, let's say, or on Charlotte. Because that's a metropolitan area. You've seen that state map, so then zero on the capital or something like that. So, we're zeroing in, in Genesis 2, I would say on marriage. I mean there's other things, but more than anything by the end of the chapter, we understand we've zeroed in on marriage. 

Genesis 2: Special Roles within Marriage

So humanity, male and female, equally in the image of God, Genesis 1. But then we zero in on marriage. And within that, we are taught some very significant things. Special roles happen. "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the Earth and breathed into his nostrils and he became a living being" Genesis 2:7. So there was a time that Adam was alone. He was formed first, and then Eve, as it says in 1 Timothy 2. So there was a time he was alone, and he was walking around in the garden, and the Lord was instructing him in terms of his role. And I already quoted Genesis 2:15 where God gives him a command. "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." I'm thinking that is the most well-ordered, most beautiful, most fragrantly appealing bachelor pad in history. Probably don't quote me on that. But I'm thinking there he is, he's alone, and it's a very beautiful ordered place. But there's work to be done. He said he put him there to serve it and to protect it, and “He commanded him not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when he ate of it he would surely die.” So this setting. But then comes this statement in Genesis 2:18, "It is not good for the man to be alone." It is very vital for us to understand. We don't have to change the scripture, we should never change the scripture. But I hear it this way, "It is not good for the man to remain alone." 

It was very good for him to be alone for a while. How do we know that? Because that's how God did it. God could have created Adam and Eve instantly at the same time. As a matter of fact, if all we had is Genesis 1, we'd think that's what He did do. And he could have done that, but he didn't do that. Why? To create, I think, the headship and submission relationship that we're going to have more clearly unfolded in Ephesians 5. To establish the male-leadership. To establish Adam, not just as head over his wife, but actually that Adam as head over the entire human-race. And there's all kinds of theology that flows from that. So He establishes him there, but He makes this statement, "It's not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Also, it's important for you to realize, his aloneness was utterly unique in redemptive history. There was no other human being on the face of the earth. No one.

So I don't think it's good for us to take that in terms of a bachelor, or a single woman, and say, in reference to them, "It's not good for them to be alone." It may be very good for a man to never marry. There are some men that never marry. And it could be very good for some women to never marry, because that's what God wills. Jesus talks about that in Matthew 19. But Adam's aloneness was unique. There was just no other human being, and there was no way that Adam, alone, could fulfill the cultural mandate of filling the earth, subduing it, and ruling over it and being fruitful and multiple. He had to have a wife. And so it was not good for him to remain alone. So God said, "I will make a helper suitable for him." And so I find in Genesis 2:15, "serve and protect" is the man's calling. Genesis 2:18 is a quick take at the woman's calling, "helper suitable."

And I think those words are worthy of a great deal of meditation. And so the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall on him, and He created his wife from the rib of the man, and brought her to the man. Such a picture of how God makes marriages. The bringing to is a picture to me now in this world of God's providential activity in putting couples together. And it's a beautiful thing to watch, isn't it? So, He brings the woman to the man, and the man celebrates. "This now bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." And then the statement that Jesus quotes in Matthew 19, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." And then it says in Genesis 2, "The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame."

Scripture Provides the Permanent Definition of Marriage

Now what Jesus is doing in Matthew 19 with Genesis 2 is He's saying, "What happened then between Adam and Eve, that's the lasting paradigm for all time." We don't need a new pattern of marriage, that is it. What we need to do is live up to it. We need to embrace what God says about it and live up to it, and we will have a fruitful harvest in our marriages and our family lives. So, that's the kind of biblical foundation.

The Christian Foundation: The Spirit-Filled Life

The Context in Ephesians

Let's look at the Christian foundation. I want to go to Ephesians, and you can follow with me along in Ephesians 1 up through 5. And I'm just going to give an overview of the book to where we've come, but this time I'm going to look at it through the lens of marriage. Because this is what I'm going to assert: That marriage flourishes best in the context of the redemption worked by Christ. Christian marriage is the best kind of marriage there is, and it's established on the foundation of salvation by the triune God. So, I'm going to go back and just get a context of Paul's commands here, so we understand it. We know Ephesians breaks into two main sections. Ephesians 1-3 just basically gives us salvation through Father, Son, and Spirit. And then Ephesians 4-6 gives us “how then shall we live.” What kind of lives shall we live? And so that's what we're doing. So, in Ephesians 1-3, we have salvation. Beginning in verse 4 and 5 of chapter one, “God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ.” So, I'm going to say we are able to have God-honoring marriages because we have been chosen before the foundation of the world to be Christians, and we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.

And that gives us a solid basis for an excellent marriage. And then, in Ephesians 1:7-8, "In Christ we have redemption through His blood. The forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding." So, I'm going to say we're able to have God-honoring marriages because we, both the husband and the wife as Christians, have been completely forgiven by the shed blood of Christ. We've been atoned for. By grace, we are blameless positionally before God. The Christian husband is blameless. The Christian wife is blameless positionally before God by the redeeming blood of Christ. So what that does is it gives a solid basis for the continual forgiveness you're going to need to give each other in marriage. It's never going to stop.

And I actually think the giving and receiving of forgiveness is very much the essence of a healthy marriage between two sinners. That we can give and receive forgiveness. It's based on the fact we've been forgiven already by the shed blood of Christ. And God has given us wisdom to understand His big picture. We get what marriage is about. We understand it's not just about me and you. Or just about me, that's even worse. That individualism, I'm seeking my own pleasure. No, no. There's a big purpose for my marriage, and your marriage. And that is in Ephesians 1:9-10, God was doing this to bring all things together under one head, even Christ. So there's this incredibly work of unification going on in the universe, and marriage is a subset of that. The two becoming one. Also, we have been given the gift of the indwelling Spirit. 

Ephesians 1:13-14, it says, "You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. Who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance, until the redemption of those who are God's possession." So, the sealing of the Spirit is essential to the Christian marriage. Each one of you, the Christian husband and the Christian wife, has the gift, the infinite, immeasurable gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. You've been sealed with the Spirit, and the Spirit is there to help you, in part, have an excellent marriage. So you're indwelt by the Spirit. Now, in Ephesians 2, we learn that each of you have been saved by grace. You were dead in your transgressions and sins, and you have a lot of bad habits. Romans 7 makes that plain. 

But because we walked in the pattern of wickedness in Satan's kingdom, we've got a lot of bad habits. We were dead in our transgressions and sins, and you're going to bring that into the marriage. Both of you is. But we've been “saved by grace through faith, and this not of ourselves, it's the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” And again, that same solid basis for giving and receiving forgiveness. I've been saved by grace. I was a tool of Satan's. I was a slave of Satan's. I did his will, and now I've been redeemed. And you can see your spouse that way too, and you can extend that grace and mercy that's been extended to you. And then in Ephesians 2:10 says, "Now that we've been saved by grace through faith, we have a life of good works to do. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them."

So, if you're married, a lot of your good works are going to be in the context of your marriage. Christian husbands, you're going to do a lot of good works toward your wife, because she's your wife. Christians wives, you're going to do a lot of good works that God's laid out ahead of time for you to do because you're a wife. And that's going to be an organizing pattern of your good works toward one another.

And then at the end of Ephesians 2, we see Christian marriage as a part of of what God's doing to build this magnificent spiritual structure. The Church of Jesus Christ, the Temple of the Living God, the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Zion. This beautiful structure that's in the heavenly realms, and living stones through conversion are being brought into that, and the structures rising and becoming more and more glorious all the time. It's a dwelling in which God lives and will live eternally by His Spirit. And so my marriage, then, serves that end. My children aren't given to me for my own personal enjoyment, but that they might be converted and be living stones in that. And my marriage is to be a platform of the Gospel, and we're to have people in our homes and lead people to Christ, because our this marriage, like this, is temporary. ‘Til death do you part.’ So it's going to serve that vision of Ephesians 2. The building of the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Church, and that's a beautiful thing. And then, in Ephesians 3, we learn that we, having been redeemed by the blood of Christ, we are infinitely, perfectly loved by Jesus. He wants you to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

So, a Christian marriage isn't two empty people clinging and clutching to each other, and trying to find meaning from each other, and then failing once you get into marriage. Like, “this person is not going to satisfy me, I'm not self-actualized by this person.” And then you're going to get a divorce and go try to find your soulmate, who completes you and all that. Jesus completes you, you're already complete. In Him you have fullness, and you're bringing that fullness to the marriage. And she's bringing that fullness to the marriage. You understand what that means? If you're single and you never get married, you're full. You're complete in Jesus. If the Lord wills to add a husband to you or a wife, He's not going to improve your fullness at all. He's just going to give you good works to do and the blessings of marriage and all that, but you're already full. And that means if you're a widow or a widower, and you may never get married again, you're not an incomplete person now. You are full in Jesus, and that's a beautiful thing.

How Then Shall We Live?

So Ephesians 1-3, a very solid foundation for a Christian marriage. But then, how then shall we live? “As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you've received.” I want a marriage worthy of this Christian calling, that's what I want. And so, verse 2-6, Ephesians 4, "Be completely humble and gentle." Might be helpful in Christian marriage. Oh, Christian husbands. "Be completely humble and be gentle, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There's one body and one spirit, just as you were called the one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all, and in all.” And so, in Christian marriage, you're already one. Live like it.

You're going to Heaven. Live like it. Live a heavenly day now between the two of you. Live as two who have become one, as we all are in the Church. That's a beautiful thing. And then Paul defines holiness. Saying, "You're not supposed to live like the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. Don't think about your life like a Gentile. Don't think like a Pagan. Don't think about your marriage like a Pagan." Christian husband, if you're going to have a good marriage, you need to be transformed. “You need to put off the old man. That old nature which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. You need to be made new in the spirit of your mind by the ministry of the word of God, and you need to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” That's how you'll be able to do your Ephesians 5 work, which we'll get to in a couple of weeks. And Christian wives, same thing. “You have to put off the old man, you have to be made new in the spirit of your mind, and you have to put on the new self which is created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Then you'll be able to be a Christian wife. 

The Spirit-Filled Life

And now we come to verse 18. Ephesians 5:18, "Be being filled with the Spirit." And it's directly applicable to the Christian marriage. It's dramatically applicable to the Christian marriage. What do I mean? Well, He gives this command, "Be being filled with the Spirit." Be filled with the Spirit. The Spirit-filled life is a life controlled and empowered by the Spirit of God to live out these biblical principles I've been giving you. The scripture that the Holy Spirit Himself inspired. And so, to be filled with the Spirit means to be very scriptural, to be very biblical in how you live. It means to be super saturated with the third person in the Trinity, where He is just controlling your heart's and your thought's affections, and your actions. Filled with the Spirit.

The Spirit indwells every Christian, but He doesn't fill every Christian at every moment. You know that's true. And all of your marital problems come because one, or both of you is not filled with the Spirit at that moment. That's where it comes from. You will not have sorrow, and grief, and sins, and all that if you're each filled with the Spirit, for the Spirit drives out sin. So be filled with the Spirit, and as we're filled with the Spirit, we're able to do what we're called to do.

So, I want you to follow along. NIV kind of breaks it up and makes it smoother and easier to understand, but it doesn't keep the grammatical construction the way it does. "Be being filled with the Spirit," and then come a bunch of participles, what we call -ing words. -ing, -ing, -ing, -ing, -ing. So it's like, this is what I mean by the Spirit-filled life. "Be being filled with the Spirit, speaking," I'm in verse 19, "speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Singing, making music to the Lord in your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." See, it flows from the Spirit-filled life. Just like the worship does and all the other things.

So, the submitting flows from the power of the Spirit. The Spirit-filled life is one characterized by joyful worship within your own heart. Thankfulness, flowing out horizontally to joyful worship with others. But then we get to verse 21, and we get to this idea of submitting to one another. So, if I could just pause right now in the Spirit-filled life, and just say this. Do you want a flourishing, fruitful happy marriage. Christian men, Christian women, Christian husbands and wives? What I'm going to say is to be filled with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is not magic. It involves taking the truth of God that you already know, repenting of known sin, asking for forgiveness, and praying, and by faith receiving the gift of the Spirit. The filling of the Spirit. 

A Moment for Self-Evaluation

So here's just a check for you. Okay, just a check. You're in a conversation. One of those conversations with your spouse. Husband or wife, freeze-frame, just a moment. Strobe light. Bang. Right now. Are you at this moment characterized by the fruit of the Spirit? “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.” If you're not, you've sinned. It doesn't matter what your spouse is doing. Take responsibility for your own demeanor. Take responsibility for your being filled with the Spirit. And if you're not, then you need to ask the Lord to forgive you. You need to find out what you've done. Maybe you've already said some harsh things, some unkind things, some prideful things. Maybe you've done some other things. The reason we need to constantly be being filled, we're so leaky. Herbert said that this morning. Leaky. We're leaky. All right, you've leaked through sin, each of you. Don't blame your spouse.

"Lord, if you knew what my spouse was like. You wouldn't hold me accountable. It's totally his fault." Or her fault. No, it isn't. You have to give up your filling with the Spirit, ever. It's a choice you make. So if you're not at this moment filled with the Spirit in that, it's your responsibility. So ask forgiveness, and then ask forgiveness of your spouse.

To Our Non-Christian Friends

And now let me make a direct appeal to non-Christians. Could very well be there are some unbelievers here. The joy of a Christian marriage is for Christians, but it's nothing compared to the joy of Heaven. And I just to appeal to you, if you've come here today and you're on the outside, you're not a believer in Christ. You might even be in a troubled marriage, you might be in counseling, you might be contemplating divorce. There might be some abuse going on. You may be doing it, or receiving it. All I'm saying is that I have heard so many stories of how individuals coming to faith in Christ changes everything in the marriage. Changes everything. So in the name of the marriage, I'm going to go beyond that to appeal to you for the sake of your souls. Trust in Christ. God sent his Son, who lived a sinless life, died on the cross, that we might have forgiveness of sins.

An Overview of Marital Roles: Submission and Love

Not Mutual Submission

So now, I want to say a few more things. I'll give you an overview of where we're going, and then we'll be done for the day. Okay, so an overview of marital roles. The first thing I want to set aside is something that many godly men teach, but I don't agree with. And that is the idea of mutual submission. I do not think that Ephesians 5:21 is teaching mutual submission. It may seem like it is, because it says, "Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ [Or, “in the fear of Christ]”. I don't think that that's right.

They'll bring in a verse, a passage like Philippians 2:3-4, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility. Consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also the interests of others." Well, that's a great passage, and it's great for marriage, but that is not what submission is. I would call on mutual self-denial. Mutual service. Mutual foot-washing. Mutual love, yes. But the only way we can get at mutual submission is to redefine the word ‘submission’, or ‘submit’ biblically. And that's the problem I have with those that teach it. They're emphasizing too much the one another part, and they're not studying more carefully enough the submit or submission part.

Submission biblically always has to do with God-ordained authority. Always. Every time the word is used in the New Testament, there is an authority and someone else yielding to that authority. Biblical submission then, would be cheerful yielding to a God-ordained authority, because you're mindful of God. It's in service to God. So, there's many examples of this word ‘submit.’ We see it again and again. Like, for example, in Luke 2:51, "Jesus submitted," same Greek root, "to his parents, Joseph and Mary, because he was a minor in their home. He obeyed his parents and submitted to them." He wasn't saying they were intrinsically higher or better than him. They were just parents and he obeyed the Law of Moses, and submitted to them. Their authority. In Luke 10:17, the demons submitted to the 72 missionaries that were sent out. They obeyed them, they left the people they were demonizing. Romans 8:7 says, "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." So that, again, is not just God-ordained authority, it's God's authority in the word, and they won't submit. That's the essence of rebellion. Romans 13:1 says, "Everyone should submit himself to the God-ordained authorities, for there is no authority except what God has established." Same Greek word, submit. You're not going to find any example, at all, of submission meaning loving service or self-denial of any of that anywhere at all. And the examples that are used, like where there's a scripture reference, there's only one. It's always Ephesians 5:21. I think there's a better way to understand this. Instead, what Paul's saying to the mixed Christian assembly is, "Okay, all you Christians, submitting to one another is part of the Spirit-filled life."

How We Should Relate with Regard to Authority

Category A to Category B, in the way I'm about to give you. “Wives to your husbands. Now, meanwhile, husbands, this is how you should carry yourself. Children to your parents. Now meanwhile, parents, this is how you should carry yourselves. Slaves to your masters. Now meanwhile, masters, this is how you should carry yourselves.” I think it's just a better way of looking at it, that way you're not redefining the word submit. Frankly, I think mutual submission makes as much sense as mutual obedience. Like imagine that in parenting, sometimes we obey them and sometimes they obey us. They'd love that. Let's have Parent Obedient Day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Child Obedient Day the rest of the week. What would you kids do with that day? It'd be an interesting day, wouldn't it? What would you eat for dinner? It'd be kind of interesting. It's like, today you have to obey me, tomorrow I have to obey you.

 Well, that would be the idea of mutual submission equal to mutual obedience. I think, instead, we're talking about arranging yourself under God-ordained authority, and that is the command given to the wives. “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, of which He is the savior. Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also, wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” So, I'm going to give a whole sermon to that next week, and we'll talk about more about that. And then the command to the husband is love. To love like Christ does.

Husbands, Love Your Wives

Look at verses 25-30 and following, actually, go through verse 33. "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her to make her holy. Cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant Church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the Church, for we're members of His body.” And then these words that we've looked at, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the Church. However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”And as I said, God willing, we'll go over these the next two weeks.

Two Clear Implications

Embrace these God-Given Roles

Let me give you two clear implications as we finish. First, embrace your corresponding roles. I would think there are very few, especially older folks, among us, anyone of adult age that's not heard Ephesians 5 before. It's not a new thought here, it's not a radically new teaching on headship and submission, not that. Instead what this is is again, for all of us, for me, for me, it's a call from God through Paul, through the Spirit, to embrace the role that God's given you. Husbands and wives should constantly copy the relationship God intended for Christ and the Church. So wives are to take their unique cue from the Church's relationship to Christ, that's how they're to think of their relationship with their husband. And husbands are to take their unique cue from the way Christ relates to the Church, as defined here. 

And this is going to be incredibly helpful for us going forward in this age of weird gender confusion. We're having a harder and harder time defining masculinity and femininity. It's like we really don't even know what they are. And I think that for me, if you get a 10-year-old, 12-year-old boy that says to his dad, "What does it mean for me to be a man, and not a woman?" Or you could see a 10-or-12-year-old daughter saying the same kind of thing to her mom, "Mom, what does it mean for me to be a woman, and not a man?" I would urge parents, moms and dads, bring them to Ephesians 5. That's going to be your homebase for answering that question, because frankly any other attribute that you put. Like courage, or self-sacrifice, or dedication, or thoughtfulness, or any of those things are true of both men and woman equally in the Bible.

What's the difference, then? It's going to be this issue of Christ-like leadership, taking initiative to serve the Church, and lay yourself down for the Church for its benefit. That's the masculine role. And then the feminine role of responding to that kind of Godly initiative with delighted, Spirit-filled submission. That's, I think, what biblical masculinity and femininity means. So, we're going to unfold those more in the future. 

Find Delight in the Joy of Your Spouse

And then secondly, and this comes right from my mentor on these things, John Piper. Desiring God has done more for my marriage than any Christian book that I've ever read. In that, he talks about Christian hedonism, the idea is finding pleasure. What he would say to non-Christian marriages that are floundering because they're seeking pleasure and all that, and they're selfish, and the self-actualization and all that. He'd say, "Your problem is you're not seeking enough pleasure. You're setting your sights too low. There is a kind of pleasure that soars above that kind of scrabbling in the mud after selfish lust, and patterns, and all that, that just goes so far beyond that that you don't even know about. But I wish I could tell it to you. It's the idea of learning to find your joy, first and foremost, in pleasing God and being satisfied in Him vertically. But then finding your joy and your blessing in another person's joy and blessedness. 

It's like, "I am here. I'm delighted to bring the light to you. I am pleased to bless you." That's what I want. I find my pleasure wrapped up in yours. So both husbands and wives can do this, that we would find our blessedness, our highest joy in bringing joy to our spouse. That's where we're going, and we're going to find it directly in the command of the husband, very plainly. “He who loves his wife... What? Loves himself.” It's a beautiful statement. In other words, you want to be a happy man? Have a biblical marriage. Invest in your wife. Love her. Feed her. Cleanse her. Strengthen her, and she will bless you. So those are two clear implications. One application I would give is married couples, just take Ephesians 5 home today, and just read it together. And pray together. And if you need to give and receive some forgivenesses, and almost undoubtedly you will, then give it and receive it.

Don't be too prideful to ask forgiveness. Don't be too prideful to give it. Let the Lord heal your marriage. You don't have to earn your way back to obedience. Just obey. You can just step right up into a biblical marriage today. Just give and receive forgiveness, and by the power of the Spirit, may He bless you. Close with me in prayer.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the initial thoughts we've had today on marriage in Ephesians. Thank you for the way it just flows from the whole Book of Ephesians, and how the work of redemptions just, for us as Christian couples, just flows right into our marriages. Father, we are mindful of the fact that not everyone here is married. Some would like to be married. We know that others have been bereaved. Father, we pray a special measure of blessing for each of them, that they would know that their fullness is Christ. Christ is their lives, and that they don't need a spouse to be full and complete people. For those of us that are married, oh Lord, I pray that you would help us to live up to the Ephesians 5 pattern that you've given us here, by the power of the Spirit. Help us to put the Gospel on display for our watching children, that they would see what a Christ-like husband and a Church-like wife looks like. And that they would live that out. And Lord, all of us, I pray that you would fill us with your Spirit, and help us to do the good works you have for us to do the rest of the day. In Jesus name, Amen.

Introduction

Amen. Well, this journey in Ephesians has been for me amazing and marvelous. It's been very rich. It's really been a journey of worship for me to see the greatness of the salvation that God has been working and continues to work in our hearts, and in the world. Now, we've been learning for many, many weeks of the life of magnificent, new life of holiness and righteousness to which God calls us now that we have been born again, now that we are Christians. As Christians we were chosen, we're instructed in the book of Ephesians, “from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in God's sight.” We're taught right there in Ephesians 1 that “in love, God predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” And what this means is that we were to be conformed to the family image and likeness, we're to be conformed to Christ. And so, this life of holiness is a life of conformity to Christ's likeness, and it's a beautiful thing. And we're told from the very beginning of our Christian life that all of our sins past, present and future have been atoned for by the blood of Christ. “In Him,” [in Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” and how lavish a gift that is I think all of us infinitely underestimates. But we'll know on Judgment Day just how rich, and fully our sins have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and we'll spend eternity thanking Him for it. And we're also instructed in Ephesians 1 that “when we heard the word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation, having believed, we were marked in Christ with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. And that that Holy Spirit that sealing of the Spirit is a deposit, guaranteeing our full inheritance until the day of redemption, until the end of all things.” Now we know without a doubt as Christians that we are going to Heaven when we die. And how at the end of Ephesians 1, Paul prays for the ministry of God to be on the Ephesian Christians, and then through them we can read for us that we would have a sense of the power, the sovereign power of God at work in us to bring us to that rich inheritance we have in Christ. And that we would have absolute certainty that Jesus reigns over heaven and earth, over all powers, visible and invisible to complete our salvation, and what a rich thing that is.

Imitate God in Love

Now, we're in a section in Ephesians where we're told practically how we are to live out this faith that we have. How we are to live out this salvation. And I just, again and again, want to lay that foundation, which I've just been doing for you over the last few minutes, of “justification by faith in Christ apart from works of the Law.” That we are forgiven by faith not by works. We are redeemed by faith in Christ not by works. And we just need to go back to that again and again because the life of holiness is a challenging life. It's a searching life, it's an infinite journey in which we can ever increasingly see sin and weakness in our lives and we know how far we are from perfect conformity to Christ, and we need the power of the Holy Spirit. And so in Ephesians 4:1, he begins that ethical section, "As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." These things I've been talking about since I began. This is the life of holiness in imitation of God. A life of love Ephesians 5:1 it says, "Be imitators of God therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love."

And so we're called to walk in love, to “walk in the light as He is in the light,” to walk in holiness. We're told in Ephesians 5:8-10, "For you were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light, for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And find out what pleases the Lord." So this is a life, this life of holiness is a life, a daily walk of wisdom. Not of foolishness. As we saw last week in verse 15 of chapter 5. Be very careful then, be meticulous, be rigorous in how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. This is a life of redeeming the time, of not wasting resources that have been given us, precious days, and money, and energy squandered on sin. That we would not live that kind of a life. This is a beautiful new life of holiness that is ours and it's both negative and positive. We've been seeing that rhythm again and again in Ephesians 4 and 5. There are some things that we must put off, that must not be part of our lives, and there are some things that we must put on. And so, we are actually putting even the negative part very positively, we have been set free from soul killing sins. We've been set free from things that are destroying the world, and ruining families. We've been set free from these sin patterns. It says in Romans 6:21-22, "What benefit, [what fruit, what harvest] did you reap at that time from those things of which you are now ashamed? Those things result in death, but now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves to God the benefit you reap, [the harvest you reap] leads to holiness and the result is eternal life." So Paul teaches the new life in Christ, both negatively and positively. Things we must not do that must never be part of the Christian life, and then those things that we must do. We are taught in verse 19-21 of Ephesians 4, “that we are to put off the old self to be made new in the spirit of our minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” And so, that is the life that leads to Heaven and no other. Do not be deceived. That life of putting off being made new in the heart and putting on, that's the life that leads to Heaven, the other life is a life of deception, self deception.

So we've seen again and again, specific aspects of this putting off putting on. So we're told to put off lying, and then put on speaking the truth. And so there's this one-to-one correspondence of what we're told put off, put on. We're to put off stealing, and instead work hard with our own hands, so we may have something to share with those in need. And put off anger and instead put on compassion and mercy and forgiveness like God's been merciful to you. Put off sexual immorality, and put on the beauty of a Christian marriage which we're going to be talking about in a few weeks. Put off, as last week, foolish squandering of time, and instead redeem the time by wisdom and finding out what pleases the Lord.

Clear Prohibition: Do Not Get Drunk on Wine

Personal Context

Now we come to the topic of drunkenness, and we are commanded here, clearly, to put off drunkenness. And again, in that corresponding way that he's been speaking instead “be being filled with the Spirit.” And so we're looking at this clear commandment, this prohibition, "Do not get drunk on wine," verse 18, "which leads to debauchery but instead be filled with the Spirit." Now, let me just speak personally, just to lay my cards on the table. I have not had an alcoholic drink since I became a Christian. I haven't drunk any. My wife occasionally uses wine in cooking, but I've been told the alcohol is gone within a few moments of that. I've had some interesting moments buying single cans of beer for a recipe she had for barbecue once. Felt like I was smuggling drugs across the state line, that was kind of my feeling, I was glad that was in Louisville, glad to get out of there before anyone saw me. Conscience was clear but I wasn't acting like my conscience was clear, so that was kind of interesting.

Actually, I gave up drinking any alcoholic beverage a couple of years before I became a Christian. You may ask, "why?" Well, some of it had to do with just my own family upbringing, and I'm not going to go into detail about that, just for my own reasons. But I've seen personally the effect that alcohol can have in destroying a family, and I'm not going to go into any more detail on that. So my heart here is the heart of a pastor. I'm very concerned about assuming that none of you, that there is no one here listening to me now that needs to hear a warning about alcohol, that may be a couple of negatives. Let me say it again. I think it would be foolish for me to assume that all of you are fine with wine or alcohol. That would be foolish for me as a pastor. And it's not just a matter of now but in the future as well, that there may be habits and patterns that are being laid now that can lead some of you into trouble. And so I think about 1 Corinthians 10:12 where it says, "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall."

So I want to issue from the text and in faithfulness to the text, a warning to any of you who feel that it's well within your Christian freedoms to drink alcohol, which I will say that it is, but half of this sermon is going to be exactly what I think Paul wanted when he penned this command years ago, and that is a clear warning or prohibition against drunkenness. A warning that this sin has the power to blow up your family, blow up your marriage, blow up everything you care about if you are not careful, if you don't heed the warning. I'm willing as I preach this sermon to risk being labeled as legalistic. I'm going to talk about legalism and license in the sermon, but I'm willing to risk that. I hope you'll hear a pastor's heart in this sermon, as I seek to teach accurately what the Bible says about wine and be faithful to Paul's warning here. I also want to very positively contrast the drunkenness caused by wine with the overwhelmingly pure and free and clear joy caused by being filled with the Spirit. Now I'm intending to preach, God willing, a full sermon on what it means to be being filled with the Spirit next week. So the only thing I'm going to say this week will be in contrast to the wine just fitting into the verse itself. Next week, I'm going to give more of a kind of a big picture New Covenant view of what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

Long History of Christians Battling Over This Issue

Now, when we come to the issue of fermented beverages: alcohol, wine, or whatever you want to say, you must know we step into a long history of Christians battling on this issue. Christians have been battling this from the beginning of the Church. There have been movements of both very strong prohibition and even bordering or even crossing the line into legalism, some would argue. And then issues of license as well, this is the kind of thing that is going on. Modern Christians are often surprised to learn that Martin Luther brewed beer in his own basement, and apparently it was very good for those that like that kind of beer. I don't know, what would I know. I feel a little bit like a lifelong celibate speaking about marriage here, but the Bible says that wine and beer are a blessing, and we'll talk about all that. And then people that bought it said he brewed good beer. The pilgrims drank beer when they crossed the Atlantic, and that John Calvin was paid by the city of Geneva, with I think 250 bottles or casks of wine, which he either used or sold for his own benefit. Jonathan Edwards drank wine regularly without any record of him ever getting drunk.

But then on the other side, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, John Wesley and his Methodist movement in England identified gin houses as one of the major corrupting influences of London and indeed of the entire nation of England, and they led a major crusade against drunkenness, and against gin in their country. Denominations and mission agencies, seminaries, local churches, have had heated debates and have instituted policies that have offended the convictions of Christians, and as some have believed violated their freedoms. Many church covenants in our denomination, Baptistic Church covenants, had battles over the language, the actual verbiage of alcohol. So church covenants were saying a bunch of things we're pledging to do and be for each other. And originally, the covenant would read something like this, "To combat the use of alcohol." And then you have war and debate, war and debate, war and debate and it gets moved over and they just add two little letters A, B, "To combat the abuse of alcohol." there's a world of difference between fighting the use of alcohol and the abuse of alcohol, but lots of debates on them. 

South Eastern Seminary, where I am an adjunct professor, has a policy of complete abstinence from alcohol, which has engendered a great deal of debate and discussion. Of course in our nation's history, there's the era of prohibition, and maybe you don't know how powerfully active evangelicals were in getting prohibition to be ratified and passed. The temperance movements were led by Evangelical Christians, many of them women, who saw the devastation in their family lives caused by drunk husbands, who were abandoning their responsibility to their wives and children. And so it led to the 18th amendment which made illegal the production, sale, importation and transportation of all alcoholic beverages, that one from 1920-1933.

Well, as I mentioned the battle, this battle always seems to come down to two opposite extremes of legalism on the one side and license on the other. And I think Tim Keller wisely said, "If you really think that one of those two is the biggest danger in the church, you're almost certainly involved in the opposite." So if you really think the pastor has to be really, really careful about legalism, I would say be aware of license, and then the opposite would be true. So it's just that we have to drive a wise road between these two extremes.

Understanding the Prohibition

Well, let's dig in and try to understand what Paul's warning here or commanding. He says simply, "Do not get drunk on wine." Now for us, for law enforcement officials, etcetera, drunkenness is pretty scientific at this point. We have actual detection devices that can tell if you're legally drunk. There's a billboard right there in North Durham that shows some young guy blowing into a breathalyzer and said, "You just blew." just humorous, I guess, "$10,000". Like if your blood alcohol level is over a certain level on the breathalyzer, it's a $10,000 fine. So they would define the blood alcohol concentration, BAC is that's a percentage of alcohol in the blood compared to the volume of blood, 0.1% is legally drunk. So that means for every 1,000 milliliters of blood the body would contain 1 milliliter of alcohol. Also most states practice a zero tolerance policy when it comes to underage drinking. So if you have any evidence of alcohol and you're below the age of 21, it's against the law. More specifics, apparently the faster you drink alcohol in a given occasion, the higher the BAC is. It's probably just physiological, it's hard to process the alcohol, and the more dangerous the drinking becomes.

A BAC of 0.37% to 0.40% can be fatal. Along with that comes the journey and here's where it gets interesting even for the purpose of this text. At 0.02%, that's like one-fifth of the way to legally drunk, drinkers can begin to feel moderate effects. At 0.04%, that's two-fifths of the way to legally drunk, drinkers can begin to feel relaxed, mildly euphoric, sociable and talkative. At 0.05%, that's halfway to legally drunk, judgment, attention and control are somewhat impaired. The ability to drive safely begins to be limited. Sensory, motor and finer performance issues are impaired. People are less able to make wise decisions about their capabilities, for example, about driving itself, they can think that they're able to do it when they really aren't. Then at 0.08% which actually is legally drunk in many states though not all, a clear deterioration of reaction time and control occurs. By 0.12 to 0.15% vomiting usually occurs. Drinkers are drowsy, emotionally unstable, have lost critical judgment, perception, memory, motor coordination all severely impaired. So that's all technical scientific. Somewhere long before that level, Christians will have violated Paul's command here.

Now, of course, people's body weight and other biological factors significantly impact this. But I think for us in terms of the issue of wisdom, the question is not how close to the line can I skirt and not go over it. And therein lies some of the problem with alcohol, is it becomes somewhat of a slippery slope. And it's hard to know, “Have I crossed the line? Am I sinning now based on Ephesians 5:18?” So biblically, then drunkenness in that they didn't have breathalyzers and BAC reading devices, etcetera, it would be the drinking of fermented beverages to the point of impairment of judgment and motor skills, so that outside observers note, and can tell that you've been drinking wine, because it affects your behavior and your speech. Now, the Bible consistently condemns drunkenness. Obviously, the first example is right after the flood, Noah planted a vineyard and he got drunk on the wine and lay shamefully exposed. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we have the story of Lot in a cave with his daughters and they got their father drunk, and had children by their own father which led to the Ammonites and the Moabites.

There's some evidence in the text that Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons, were drunk when they offered the illegal offerings by fire that the Lord killed them for, because in the same chapter a few verses later, he warns priests never to be drunk in approaching the altar. And it seems that some of the Corinthians were drunk at the Lord's Supper. In 1 Corinthians 11:21, it says clearly that some were drunk. And in verse 30, it says because of just the way they were dealing with the Lord's Supper, a number had fallen asleep. In other words, had died. So we could imagine wouldn't be surprising that if you came drunk to the Lord's Supper in Corinth that the Lord might strike you dead. Now, the book of Proverbs has many warnings about wine and Proverbs 20:1 it says, "Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler, whoever is led astray by them is not wise." Proverbs 23:19-21 says, "Listen my son and be wise and keep your heart on the right path. Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor and drowsiness clothes them in rags." 

Later in that exact same chapter, in Proverbs 23:29-35, the proverb says this, "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? Those who linger over wine. Who go to sample bowls of mixed wine. Do not gaze at wine when it is red. When it's sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly, in the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind will imagine confusing things. You'll be like one sleeping on the high seas, lying on the top of rigging. ‘They hit me, you'll say, but I'm not hurt. They beat me but I don't feel it. When will I wake up so I can find another drink?’" That's a pretty clear warning against the dangers of alcohol, in the end it bites like a viper. Interestingly, in between those two clear warnings in Proverbs 23, is a very strong warning against sexual immorality with prostitutes. It's almost as though the life of wine is linked in some way to a life of sexual immorality. Many of you that are involved in college ministry know how often this happens, there can be parties and whatever and because of alcohol or drugs, you can do things that you would ordinarily never do with people you don't even know, and it can really lead to a terrible level of shame. God makes it clear that those who are unrepentant drunks will not inherit the kingdom of God, as it says in 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, "Do not be deceived, drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God."

The Pagan Background: Drunken Worship

Now, there is a pagan background concerning worship that becomes relevant even for the verse we're looking at here. All around the pagan world drunkenness was part of idolatrous polytheistic worship. And the idea went that as you would drink the gods and goddesses, would kind of take over your body, and make you do things or act out things that they wanted you to act out, including immorality, gross immorality, and other things like that. I think for this reason, alcohol has frequently been called ‘spirits.’ Like back in the Colonial days, you knew that spirits meant fermented beverages, and so there was a link to the pagan or that world of the gods and goddesses. So pagan worship frequently involved drunkenness combined with alluring music, wild dancing, revelry, and sexual immorality.

I think this is part of what Paul means when he talks about debauchery, he says in verse 18, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be being filled with the Spirit." So pagan worship like this would have been very familiar to the people of Ephesus, they would have seen it regularly in connection with the temple of Artemis. Paul is presenting a different kind of worship here. An infinitely better kind of worship and an infinitely better kind of life. Look again at the text, verses 18 through 20. Let's look at that, it says, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." It's a whole different kind of worship. An infinitely better kind of worship than that of the pagans.

Some Thoughtful Questions About Wine

So what I want to do now is stop and just ask some questions, I think, I hope will be thoughtful and helpful for you concerning wine.

Question 1: Is Wine Use Universally Forbidden?

Question number one; is wine use universally forbidden? Well, the answer obviously, biblically, must be no. There's no universal prohibition against the drinking of wine in the Bible, actually quite the opposite. Wine is often presented as a blessing from God in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 7, the Lord talking about the blessings of the Promised Land and all of the rich blessings He would give them, He said this, "The Lord will love you and bless you and increase your numbers, He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land, your grain, new wine and oil, the calves of your herds, the lambs of your flocks in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you." Again, Psalm 104:15, it says that “God gives wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread that sustains his heart.” Amos 9:13 speaks about the glories of the restoration of Israel, the post-exilic and ultimately eschatological restoration of the people of God. And it says this in Amos 9:13, "Lavish blessings will come on you. The days are coming when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills."

The book of Proverbs itself has many passages that speak of the blessings of wine. In Proverbs 3:10, "Then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine." And then in Proverbs 9 Lady Wisdom is personified, and so Lady Wisdom is going to spread a banquet and a feast for any that will partake. And it says this, Proverbs 9:1-2, "Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn out its seven pillars, she has prepared her meat, mixed her wine, she has also set her table." Wine is among the things that God commanded to be offered on the altar to Him. Of course most famously you're saying when is the pastor going to mention Jesus changing water into wine. Well there you go, I have now mentioned it. Jesus changed water into wine, and said, "None of you are to drink it now. No one drink it, but isn't it beautiful to look at." Well, you know that didn't happen. It was sampled and said to be high quality wine. A sense of instant aging that came on it, but no permission toward drunkenness, not at all. You shouldn't think because there's a large quantity of it he would have counseled drunkenness.

Frankly, Jesus Himself is the key on this question, is wine drinking universally forbidden? We have the example of John the Baptist contrasted with that of Jesus, and here I think there are two godly responses to alcohol. The Angel Gabriel when he came to Zechariah, spoke to Zechariah saying that John the Baptist, He didn't say his name at that point, but this boy would be effectively a Nazirite from birth, he was not to drink any alcoholic beverage or anything, any fermented or strong drink. For he will be filled with the Spirit from birth. So there's a strong link to even the text we're looking at here. But then Jesus in teaching about John the Baptist, he said this amazing thing, He said, "John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they said he had a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, but wisdom is proved right [or justified] by her actions." Jesus was no drunkard and He was no glutton, but He drank wine. And I don't know how you could come to any other conclusion from a simple exegesis “of the Son of Man came drinking” in context. 

So here we have, I think, two godly examples of what to do about wine. Some are just going to say, it's not for me for my whole life. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to drink, I have my own reasons. Could be that you think physiologically in terms of family heritage, whatever you might be prone to alcoholism, for whatever reason, you don't need to give a reason. You can just say, "I'm just not going to drink." and that's fine. We'll talk about judgmentalism, we'll talk about that, but I'm just saying on the issue itself, you're free to decide to never drink wine, and no one should judge you for that. But conversely in Jesus' case, you're free to also drink wine just as long as you're as holy about it as Jesus and never get drunk. So that's the first question.

Question 2: Is Today’s Wine the Same as the Wine in the Bible?

Secondly, is today's wine the same as the wine of the days of the Bible? Now that's a question I don't think we can finally answer. We need a baseline on which to compare it with. We don't really have any accurate measurement of the alcohol level of the wine that was served at banquets back then. John McArthur has done a careful study of it. He says it's much lower, especially because of dilution. There was a lot of dilution with water that would happen, etcetera. And you can read what he wrote and I find it somewhat compelling. In any case, we're not really sure there is some evidence, however that it was of a much lower alcohol content. If it was much lower alcohol content, you had a lot longer run up to drunkenness. It became much more of a willful decision on the part of the drinker to get drunk. And I think there's some evidence in the text in Acts 2. You remember how they having been filled with the spirit had just been exuberantly preaching the Gospel and ministering and joyful and all that? And they said “they must be drunk.” You remember what Peter said? "It's impossible." He didn't say that, but in effect he said, "It's only nine in the morning. There's not been enough time. We were just up a few hours ago and there just isn't enough time.” It implies then low alcohol content at least.

Now modern wines, McArthur says probably ancient wine alcohol at 3% or less content, modern wines much higher and apparently growing ever higher. I want you to notice, if I can just borrow a verb and just bring it out to just in general, the distillation principle of pleasure going on in front of us. There's a law of diminishing returns, since you have to have more and more of the thing that brings you pleasure in order to get the same kick, and it just keeps going higher and higher and higher all the time. You look at any area of pleasure, you're going to see that that's what's happening. There's more and more concentration. An in-flight movie is not enough, now we need 50 of them. And we need to be able to choose. Is that a sin? No, but just watch what's happening, it's like more and more of the thing you love. Same thing with music, you can just zero in and make your own playlist and just drown yourself in your own favorite songs, until they're not your favorite songs any more, because you've heard them into the ground. It's happened to me. I used to like that song. I've heard it 10,000 times now I don't like it anymore. But there's that distillation thing. Well, same thing with alcohol. The content is very high. 10-21% in wines, gin would be 35-40%, vodka 35-46%, whiskey 40-60%. For me, I must assume to drink a small glass of whiskey would be a decision to get drunk. I just look at it that way, sides on the fact I have no desire to do it. I don't know if that's true, but I just think the alcohol is extremely high.

Question 3: Is Wine Drinking Required?

Third question, is wine drinking required? Are there any commands that say that you must drink wine? Well, clearly there aren't, because we have Nazirites that take vows and they don't drink, we have the Rechabites in Jeremiah who swore off alcohol and drank nothing. We have the case of John the Baptist as I already mentioned. We also have the statement made in 1 Timothy 5:23, "Stop drinking only water and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses." So that implies that one of the reasons for drinking wine would be just the sanitary nature of it. So wells of water back then were dirty things. Animals used them, and there are other issues as well. Now, we're very aware, post Louis Pasteur, of the microbes and the dangers. And so beverage bottling companies are meticulous in their cleanliness with an amazingly wide array of safe, non-alcoholic beverages that are available. Fruit drinks galore. How many are there? I don't know if anybody's geeky enough to do this, but go into an average, well stocked convenience store, and count the different number of non-alcoholic products there are available and come back and tell me that number. Jenny thought it might have been in the 300 range. I think it's somewhere in the 150 range. You're like, "Well, how do we know?" are there like seven or eight refrigerator doors. Maybe you could go per refrigerator door how many non-alcoholic beverages are there. My point is, you have a wide array of choices that they didn't have back then.

Beyond that, drinking is not necessary to being a witness. Just because you're at an office party, a Christmas party and everyone's drinking, you don't have to do it, especially post AA. Most people are aware that some just swear off alcohol their whole lives, it's not even a religious commitment, it's just something they've done themselves, and generally it won't pressure them. Even the alcohol bottling companies are making the designated driver a hero, man or woman, this guy's a hero or girl's a hero, because they're not drinking anything at all. They would like them to drink next time and be it on a rotating basis I think, but I don't know that for sure. So I think you have the ability in this day and age to say, "No, I'm not drinking." You don't have to preach about it at that moment but you can say it. So it's not required to be a witness. Now, some may ask, yes it's not required, but is it permitted? Well, I already covered that. Yes, it's permitted but it's not required either.

Question 4: Is Wine Habit-Forming?

Fourthly, is wine habit forming? Is it addictive? It is the devastating testimony of many, not of all but of many, how addictive alcohol can be. People become enslaved to the bottle, unable to get through a single day without drinking. Alcohol clouds the brain and it affects bodily functions chemically. Beyond that, just the mental habit of turning to alcohol to solve problems, the saying "drown your troubles." Well they actually don't get drowned. You actually end up having a bigger overriding trouble that has conquered all the others, and that's alcohol, for those that get addicted. There are an estimated 18 million alcoholics in the United States today, 18 million, estimated, one out of every 12 adults. That includes, tragically, between three to four million teenagers. Ministries that work with people, so enslaved, say plainly that the hardest day for them is they have broken away from this enslavement is the first day, just getting through the first 24 hours of not drinking. So yes, for some people, not for everybody, but for some people wine is habit-forming, it is enslaving. Either way, even if it's a matter of Christian freedom for you and something that you do just beware, beware. Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 6:12, "Everything is permissible for me but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything."

Question 5: Is Wine Drinking Potentially Destructive?

Fifthly, is wine drinking potentially destructive? Well, Paul mentions the word debauchery here, debauchery means literally, “that which is incapable of being saved.” That's what the Greek word means, it speaks of a person who is dying of an illness that can't be cured. It also the word implies wild living profligates, like the prodigal son. Debauchery is a form of self-destruction. Now medically, alcohol has a long track record of killing people who drink it unrestrained. It leads to cirrhosis of the liver, long-term damage, it destroys brain cells, causes multiple other diseases. Then alcohol is directly involved in over 40% of all violent crimes in our country, and over 50% of all traffic fatalities. It's the number one killer of teenagers, alcohol connected traffic fatalities. Beyond that it's just the damage done to families. And I don't know how you can even talk about this. Most of this is just anecdotal, but just what happens, even if the individual manages his or her drinking and they can hold down a job, there's still damage done everyday to the relationships.

 Story of Spurgeon

Some time ago I read this account and it never left me, Charles Spurgeon talked about this of a man he led to Christ, he was addicted to gin, this man destroyed his family by his addiction, he spent every available coin on drink, he stole money to feed his habit. He worked, but spent all of his wages on his own alcohol addiction. His family was slowly starving to death, his wife was begging in London to have enough money to feed their children. His daughter had a dangerous, but curable illness, and this man drank away the money that would have been used for her medicine and she died. It's one of the saddest stories I've ever read in my life. Well, the neighbors basically passed the hat to buy a coffin and a dress, a beautiful dress for this little girl to be buried in. This wretch broke into the undertaker's shop the night before the funeral, opened the casket, stole the dress off the dead girl, closed the casket, sold the dress, drank the money. Confessed all of this Spurgeon after he was converted, conscience ripped to shreds. Can I be forgiven? Is it even possible? Well, thanks be to God. The grace of God is infinitely greater than any wretchedness, any alcohol or drug has ever produced in any life. Yes, he can be forgiven so can you. But I'm just wanting you to note the danger that comes from this debauchery that Paul mentions here.

Question 6: Is Wine Drinking Potentially Offensive to Other Christians?

Is wine drinking potentially offensive to other Christians? Can it cause other Christians to stumble? Yes, it can. First Corinthians 8, Paul talks about a weak brother for whom Christ died is offended by your eating of meat sacrificed to idols. “He said when you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I'll never eat meat again so I'll not cause him to fall.” Well, he takes the same argument and applies it to alcohol in Romans 14:21. He says it's better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.

Question 7: Is Wine Drinking Potentially Harmful to my Witness?

Next question, is wine drinking potentially harmful to my witness as a Christian? A moment ago I was asking is it offensive to other Christians, now I'm asking, could it affect other non-Christians who are watching you drink? And the answer is it could. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31-33, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews or Greeks or the Church of God. Even as I try to please everyone in every way, for I'm not seeking my own good but the good of many so that they may be saved." So yes, you can impair your witness by what you do with alcohol if you sin with it. So then the question comes, is it wise to drink wine at all? And that's where I just want to give you those examples of John the Baptist and Jesus. You have to make your own decision. If you want to celebrate as many passages do the gift of wine and drink it, just be sure that you are not violating Paul's clear prohibition here. Be clear that you can drink wine in as holy a manner as Jesus did, or be like John the Baptist.

Question 8: Is It Right to Judge Other Christians?

Now, the final question, is it right to judge other Christians on what they do with this? The answer must be no. It is not right. As long as they're not getting drunk, they've not sinned. Romans 14:4, "Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand." So churches I think are wrong to set up legalistic covenants or rules saying that none of their members may drink any alcohol at all. But having said that let me ask a corollary question, is it right to give counsel or advice to other Christians? Yes, and that's different than judging. I think you should come to your own convictions about this, and then talk about them with each other, and give and receive grace and mercy to each other. But my desire is to just protect this church from sin, that's my desire, and the sin here is drunkenness.

A Clear Contrast: Be Filled with the Spirit

The Joy and Celebration the Spirit

Now, for the few minutes that we have left, I want to give you the clear contrast with being filled with the Spirit. Like I said, we're going to do this much more fully next week. Look again at the text, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." So like I said, next week we're going to talk much more about the Spirit-filled life and what that means. But here, I just want to focus on the joy, and the elation, and the celebration in these verses. Just the sheer happiness of being a Christian.

The fact that it just flows out in worship. Our hearts are just so elevated and so saturated with the good news of the Gospel that we can't help speaking about what we've seen and heard, and we can't help singing about it, and speaking to one another about it, we can't stop talking about it, because the good news about Jesus is so joyous that it just must take over the whole world as it's already taken over our whole hearts. You think about how when Jesus was born the angels were just celebrating, a great choir of angels just celebrating and praising God from the heavens, Luke 2:13. And then how much more Jesus' resurrection victory. Where it says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" It says, "Thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The Joy of the Spirit is Supernatural

So it's just so much joy and celebration, this joy is supernatural. It does come from the outside in. Like wine, it's similar in that way. It comes from the outside in, and we can drink the Holy Spirit, it says that in  Corinthians 12:13, it says, “we have all been given the one Spirit to drink.” So drink up of the Spirit. The Spirit in the Old Testament is often linked to or likened to a liquid, boy that was hard to say. Likened to a liquid. But we can drink in like the earth drinking in the rain and producing fruit, so it is the ministry of the Spirit. The Spirit is poured out like a liquid and we can just drink in, and He fills our hearts with joy. You look again at Ephesians 3:17-19. Just listen, I don't have time to look there now, but remember the prayer there, I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, listen to this, so that you will be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Super saturated with God.

Now, that's something the world will sit up and take notice of. They did on the Day of Pentecost, they thought they were drunk. There's no other explanation for this joyful behavior, and this joy just bubbles out to others. Look at verse 19, "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." You may say it said, speak to one another I'm not really good at singing. So maybe for you, you should just speak the psalms. Others like I've said before, I sing best corporately with really loud people singing around me. I actually don't have a bad voice. You can talk to Rick Lesh afterwards, because I was singing right in your ear so just ask him how I sounded. But we can just enjoy singing psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. And just include one another, O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt His name together. But it comes from hearts filled with joy, with singing in our hearts, and giving thanks from our heart. So it's coming from inside out, and it's just so contagious and so beautiful, and it's something that we just want to do by the power of the Spirit.

Let the Joy Flow Out of You

Now, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. I don't really know the difference between them. Maybe some people would have to be meticulous, and I don't know that we can differentiate to some degree, but I think all of them involve a meticulous high level of intellectual endeavor. Where individuals are capturing deep theological themes in poetic language. And when you write poetry, you're constraining yourself in rhythm and verse. And so you have to be really efficient and sharp, you think about every word. And so these brothers and sister hymn writers have served the whole Body of Christ, by writing magnificent psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and then we come together and sing them, and it's so intelligent and so thoughtful and so theological, it's so different from the debauchery of drunkenness, when somebody's drooling and stammering. We are singing truth and it just makes us joyful. That's better than drinking. There's no hangover, there's no sin, there's no financial cost. There's just the joy of the Holy Spirit.

Application

Repent and Believe

So briefly, application. First and foremost, I just want to appeal to any of you who are enslaved right now to sin. Any that there might be, it might be alcohol, it might be drugs, it might be any sin at all might have nothing to do with alcohol or drugs, but you know you're a slave to sin, you know you're not a Christian. And you came here today, maybe somebody invited you here I just want to point you to the cross. I want to point you to Jesus who is crucified on the cross and shed his blood for sinners like you and me. And all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and if you will just trust in Him, all of your sins, no matter how dire and how repulsive can be, will be, forgiven. And then if you are genuinely converted, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit will come in and show you that your chains are broken. And He'll teach you that you're already free from sin. And that you never need to sin again, and He'll begin to lead you in new habits of holiness and righteousness. So come to Christ.

Evaluate Your Heart

Secondly, to my Christian brothers and sisters, concerning wine, just start with this, just simply obey the command here. Don't ever, ever get drunk on wine because it leads to debauchery. Start with that. But then secondly, if you believe that wine is going to continue to be part of your Christian freedom in your life, you're certainly free to do that. I think I've made that case, in the pattern of Jesus. I'm just saying beware, the slippery slope. How do you know when you've gone too far? How do you know? How do you know when alcohol, wine has too great a grip on your life? I think, ask people around you? Are they worried about your drinking? Look in your own heart, if you can't live without it, it's gone too far. Any created thing you can't live without is an idol. If you turn to it more and more when you're having problems, it's probably too great in your life already. Turn to the Holy Spirit to solve your problem, if you need wine to feel friendly, outgoing, and loving at a gathering, can I commend the fruit of the Spirit instead, be filled with the Spirit and go reach out to people. Stop thinking about yourself and how you look and all that, don't worry about nobody cares about you. Well they do, but just move out and be friendly and minister and forget what people are thinking about you. You don't need alcohol to do that. If you've ever been drunk before, and especially if you've been drunk recently, then clearly wine is a dangerous place for you. Does that mean you should turn to total abstinence? Maybe, maybe, maybe not. But I'm just saying beware. If wine dominates you're thinking, you just can't imagine life without it then that's how you know.

Drink in the Spirit

And then finally, and we'll talk much more about this next week. Just drink the Spirit, be being filled with the Spirit. Sing to one another, speak to one another, speak God's word to each other, be happy, be evidently happy and joyful and hopeful in this sad world that we live in. People might wonder if you're drunk, you'll be able to speak very rationally that you're not. But you're filled with the Spirit. Close with me in prayer. 

Prayer

Lord, thank you for the time we've had to study today. We thank you for the word of God and how it speaks the truth to us. Father, I want to pray right now for any brother or sister in Christ, who needed to hear this sermon, perhaps they have been hiding drinking patterns, hiding addictions. Oh God, I pray that you would give them help, the help that they need. Set them free. And Lord, I pray for others who have already openly identified these things, and are in various programs, and are making progress. Lord, give them strength for the journey help them to know the good work that they've already done by putting distance between them and the last time that they were sinfully drunk. And God, I pray for any that are addicted to drugs in a similar way, though they're not mentioned in the text, they're implied, Oh Lord set them free. Lord give us the wisdom to know what to do about this, help us not to judge another servant, but to be wise. And God fill us oh Lord, all of us with the Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus name, amen.

Introduction

Well, as we come this morning to Ephesians 3:14 through 21, the text that you just heard Chris read for us, we're coming to, I think, the loftiest theme that can ever occupy the human mind. Here, we are truly walking on the highest of high places in the experience that we can have with Almighty God through faith in Christ. In 2011, I went on an unforgettable mission trip. We were trekking in the mountains of Nepal and we hiked through some of the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayan Mountain range, and we landed in the capital city of Kathmandu, and I had Mark put a slide up there, a picture of the city of Kathmandu, and I want you to fix this picture in your mind. Nepal ranks as the second most polluted nation on Earth with Kathmandu leading the way in air pollution. Kathmandu is situated in a bowl-shaped valley, surrounded by stunning mountains, which you can see in that picture there, but because of the smog of the increasing population, of industry, and of automobiles and because of various other things, that people can hardly see those peaks at certain seasons of the year. So you can see in that picture, there's like a three-fold layer. There's the city of Kathmandu, and then there's this layer of fog, and smog, and darkness, and then above it, these majestic mountains. And I want to use that picture and kind of fix it in your mind, to create somewhat of a parable of Christian experience based on Ephesians 3:14-21.

Picture a city, a Christian city, inhabited by Christians, lying in a low, low lying flat valley area covered by smog and low gloomy clouds, and the people who live in that city scarcely ever see anything other than the pale filtered light of the sun through that layer of smog, and fog, and drizzle. I know, you think I'm describing Seattle, but I'm not, but you picture that and you can see that middle layer there, and just picture it as a parable. It's overcast most of the time, and there's a drizzle most of the time, and the people just have their heads down and just live their daily lives under this cloud cover, under this drizzle. That's their constant experience. Now, they have heard that beyond the city limits, there is a lofty mountain, it's towering over the city, but it's barely visible from the city because of the cloud cover. Occasionally, there are breaks in the cloud cover, and they can see the mountain from afar but it scarcely has anything to do with their daily lives. As a matter of fact, some people don't look up at those key times enough so that they actually wonder, if such a place even exists. They never get out of the city, they never are able to look up beyond the smog, and they actually wonder if a mountain like that ever even exists.

But one day a Sherpa, a mountain guide comes, breathless, to tell the citizens of that Christian city that there is a mountain, and he's climbed it, does exist, and he's breathed the sweet mountain air, and he's seen sights that are almost beyond the ability to capture in words. He's so filled with joy, and peace, and power, and energy, and he's trying to persuade citizens of that city to leave the low-lying area, and to go on a rigorous climb with him. And if they do, though it may be arduous, and though it may be a time before they break above the cloud cover, they will be rewarded with some of the sweetest mountain air they can imagine, and some of the most scenic vistas beyond their wildest dreams. If they will exert themselves and leave their daily experience in that head down, drizzle-covered Christian existence, they will be rewarded with fresh mountain air and scenic vistas. It's well worth the climb. So this is a parable. You can turn the slide off now.

It's a parable I think, of what Ephesians 3:14 through 21 is all about. A mountain of Christian experience, of the love of Christ for you. Christian brother and sister, do you understand how much Christ loves you? Do you have a sense of it? Can you savor it? Do you have a sense of it? Say, "Well, I know Christ loves... " No, no. Do you understand how much Christ loves you? That's what's happening in this prayer. It's like the apostle Paul is gripping us by the shoulders and looking us in the eye and saying, "I yearn for you to know how great is the love of Christ for each one of you.” And my prayer for you has been simple. I don't think you can do any better than the actual words of Paul's prayer. “I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, so that you could be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Has that ever happened to you? Be honest. Have you ever been able to say, "I mean there was a day, there was a time, I was filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." I think that many Christians go through their whole lives, never having had anything like that experience. I think you can do that. I think most Christians do that, actually, but I don't think it's necessary. Paul is praying for all Christians, and because it's in the scripture, God intends for all Christians of every nation, every generation, every realm, every phase of church history, every individual Christian, could have this kind of mountain top experience of Christ's love for them. And that it goes so far beyond language is the challenge of my preaching today. Paul says in verse 20 and 21, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine," it says in NIV, "Ask or think," in other translations, "He can go infinitely beyond anything you can possibly think. To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus both now and forever more, Amen."

So I have been staring at this text for seven weeks, eight weeks, more really since 1986. This is my favorite part of Ephesians right here. So we're going to be looking at it for 40 weeks. No, I'm just kidding. We're going to go letter by letter. No, we're not going to do that, but we're sure not going to do it in just one week. There is too much here. This is a glorious, a majestic payer. And what I want to do today is give you a brief overview of it, I want you to get a sense of the lay of the land and I want to just begin to move through it, and little by little, I'm going to kind of unfold what I think is happening here over the next few weeks.

A Glorious and Majestic Prayer

Context: Paul’s Greatest Prayer

So let's get a little bit of a context. This is Paul's greatest prayer. He prays a lot of prayers in the New Testament. We have a record of many in his epistles. Even in this epistle there's two different prayers. One in chapter 1, one in chapter 3, so there's a number of them, but I think this is the greatest of all of Paul's prayers. Second greatest prayer in the Bible behind only Jesus is high priestly prayer. And he begins with these words in verse 14, "For this reason," you see that? He also began the whole chapter with the same words. Verse 1, "For this reason." So I preach verses 1 through 13 as an interruption. Paul interrupts himself, very gloriously and explains his own ministry as apostle to the Gentiles. Who he is, who's praying these things, and why he's praying them. And so, we've had that, but let's get a sense of the lay of the land of the whole Book of Ephesians and where we've been.

Ephesians soars so far above the low-lying areas of everyday Christian life. It's almost like you're looking at it down from 35,000 feet or maybe even from the satellite looking down, you can see the whole thing. And then he's come down now and inviting us to climb this mountain of Christian experience, laying aside wickedness, and sin, and idolatry, and worldly desires, so that we can find ourselves fully satisfied with God. That's the nature of the climb. But before we even got there, he's given us an eternal perspective on the saving work of God in Christ. So in Ephesians Chapter 1, he says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." The lavish blessings of the Gospel, “for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in His sight.” “Before the foundation of the world He chose us” “in love He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” So through faith in Christ, we have now having heard the Gospel in Ephesians 1, “having heard the Gospel of Christ shedding his blood for the forgiveness of our sins, we have been included in Christ, we have been marked by Him with the Holy Spirit, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our full inheritance.” And so that's what he talks about, he gives us a sense of that and then he prays at the end of Ephesians 1, that the “eyes of their heart would be enlightened” so that they would have a sense of the power that's at work in their lives, and the riches that are waiting for them in Christ, in Heaven, and all of these things, and he prays for them. And he says, "That power is like the working of God's power on Christ when He raised Him from the dead, physically, and He's now seated Him in the heavenly realms, far above all things." That's Ephesians 1. And the same thing that happened to Christ physically, oh Christian brother and sister, has happened to you spiritually. “You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of the flesh following it to the desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” That's who we were. We were enslaved by Satan to sin into the worldly ways, and we couldn't have saved ourselves. But God in his infinite mercy, and kindness, and grace, to us in Christ, God “made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ, spiritually, and He seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms,” spiritually. And forever, “He's going to be showing us how kind and generous He was to all of us in Christ forever." Ephesians 2:7, "For it is by grace, each one of us has been saved through faith and this is not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by works so that no one could boast." So that's how we were included in the Gospel.

And then he stops and says, "Now I want you Gentiles to know you were at one point aliens, strangers, you were outsiders. There was a “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” between you and the Jews that was set up in the Old Covenant, but now in Christ by His death on the cross, that barrier has been removed. Circumcision, dietary regulations, Old Covenant regulations. It's been removed. And now, God is doing a new work here. He's making one “new man” out of the two Jew and Gentile. The one “new man” is a Christian person, a believer in Christ. And He's joining us together in a vast building project. This majestic, glorious temple of God, temple of the living God, that's rising and getting bigger, and more ornate, and more glorious with every generation. It's getting bigger and more glorious with every new person who comes to faith in Christ, the spread of the Gospel, and it is a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”

Borrowing Peter's language, in 1 Peter 2, we were “living stones,” quarried out of Satan's dark kingdom and brought over and put in the walls of this rising spiritual temple. “For this reason," Paul says, "I pray." For the reason of this glorious building project, this glorious temple that's rising. Now, what does he mean by, "For this reason?" He's praying because there's more to be done. There's still more to be done. Even in your lives. He's not praying here for evangelism, that more lost people will be saved. He's talking about existing Christians. There's more to be done in your hearts. There's more to be done in your lives. So the image I have here is of translucent, kind of opaque bricks, like glass bricks, living stones. And they're dark, and they shouldn't be. They should be radiantly shining with this glowing glory from inside. Shining radiantly brightly as this temple is rising, and he's praying that they would be. That these living stones would be shining radiantly with a sense of the love of God for them, in Christ. That just is a light shining in a dark place, and it just radiates to the glory of God. So that's what, "For this reason," means. "For this reason I pray for you."

Looking Up to the Summit: Where We Are Going

So that's context. You're like, "Pastor if that's just the context, and we haven't even started, how far are we going to get?" I don't know, but we're going to have a glorious journey as we travel. The idea is, you know, how James says, in James 2, "As the body without the spirit is dead." Let me just take that and say, "So, this rising temple is dark and unattractive, until the Christians glow with the Spirit of God," and so we need to radiate from inside, with the Spirit of God. That's what he's praying for. Let's look up to the summit, and let's try to see where we're going in this prayer. Let's just kind of trace out the contours. I was watching a documentary recently on a team that went up to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world in that same country of Nepal, and what they did was they traveled for a long time, and moved a lot of equipment and supplies to something called the base camp. 17,000 feet up and they stayed there for like, three days, and they just hung out and just breathe the air. It's called getting “acclimatized.” Because if they just go right up they might end up having altitude sickness, they might have problems, because the air is so thin up there, so they just have to get used to the rarefied atmosphere of Mount Everest.

And so that's kind of like today, for us in this sermon series. We're going to get acclimatized to the rarefied air of Ephesians 3:14 through 21. We're going to just go over the words, briefly and get a sense of how lofty and glorious this prayer is, and then the time will be up and then, God willing, next week will come back and look at it more in detail and start to ask the question, how can something like this happened to me? I mean, how could God do something like this in my life? So we're going to get acclimatized. So just look, Paul begins in verse 14, he kneels and prays for the Ephesian Christians. And that's a key insight, I'm going to make it every week, Paul is praying for Christians not for non-Christians. He's praying for people who are already believers, in Christ, and not just for some of them, or a special category of them, but for all of them. "Together with all the saints," he says. He's got everyone in mind. And he's praying for these Ephesian Christians to have power, strength. Where does that power come from? It comes through the Holy Spirit, that they would have power through the Holy Spirit. And what is the measure of that? It's according to the riches of God's glory, or His glorious riches. That's how much he wants this power to be filling through the Holy Spirit. And what is the locus or the focus of this power? It is the “inner being,” or the “inner man.” Some translations give us, the “inner being,” the “heart,” “inner person,” and to what end does he pray? That Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith. And what does that mean, you say? "Well, I'm already Christian. Isn't Christ already in my heart," and we're going to talk about that, not today, but a sense of settling down. Christ, settling down in the heart by faith. A sense of the presence of ongoing, consistent fellowship with God, with Christ, from the inside out, that you're glowing with that. And Paul goes beyond that. He prays that, "We having been rooted and established in love," there's a sense of rootedness here. We'll talk about a little bit today. So that this tree has a vast root system, this building has a solid foundation, “rooted and established in love, may have power," there's that word again, "power together with all the saints to grasp” or comprehend.

He wants you stable, strong, strengthened inside to think about something. To comprehend it. To understand. To understand what? The dimensions. How “wide and long and high and deep,” he says. And it doesn't say what, but it's very clear he's talking about the love of Christ. How wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ. NIV just puts it in there, others don't, other translations, but that's what he's talking about. Couldn't be anything else, a sense of the dimensions, the greatness of Christ's love for you. That's the fundamental goal. I'm praying for you Ephesian Christians, that you be strengthened so that you would know how much Christ loves you. And for you to just say, "Paul, don't waste your time. I'm good, I'm a believer. I know Jesus loves me." No, you don't. Not like I mean. I want to take you on a cosmic tour of the dimensions of infinity. That's what I want to do. The language's source. To know something that's beyond knowledge. And then it kind of caps off for me. The peak or the summit moment is that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That you would have a sense that you are as full as God is. Not that you are gods, and goddesses. I'm not saying that, and we'll get to all of that but you are completely filled as God is filled. Unless we think that this is something we should not ask, this is too extreme, it's too excessive, it's ridiculous, nobody ever has this, so why should we even be thinking about that? Paul says, "Wherever you think that peak is. However high the level of Christian experience you think I'm talking about, wherever you set that bar, God is able to do immeasurably more than that, in Christian experience."

He's actually able to do immeasurably more than anything you could ever ask Him to do in your life and He's actually able to do immeasurably more than anything you could even think He would do in your life. That's what this prayer is like. I'm thinking, do you pray like this? Do you have an experience like this? Do you even know what Paul's talking about here? Now, if I can just be honest with you, it's a dangerous thing for a pastor to preach an experience, or an activity, or behavior, and enjoin it on the people that he has not experienced. Now, I've started the climb, and slid back down a few times, but the kind of things, the testimonies from church history, that we're going to see over the next few weeks, it's not happened to me. And if I can say this honestly, it's not the kind of thing that you have to take by faith. Okay, if I can just share with you? This is not something that we take by faith. What do I mean by that? Well, in the Campus Crusade for Christ, four spiritual laws. They've got this little booklet at the back after you pray the sinner’s prayer they want you to know, “don't trust your feelings.” I get all that, I understand that.

It's like, what if somebody prays the prayer and says, “I don't feel any different”? Well, then you give them the train diagram, least you used to, I don't know, they still use the train diagram. You have fact, biblical fact, faith and feeling. So you've got the engine, you're driven by facts, you've got the coal car of faith, and then you've got the caboose of feelings that's trailed on behind. It's like the feelings are not really that important. Don't trust them, they'll come along in time, but you've got the biblical facts and you've trusted. Friends, this experience that I'm preaching here is not something you take by faith. If you're not sure whether this has ever happened to you. It hasn't. We're like, "Well, if it's so rare and unusual aren't you leading us astray to say, pursue it?'" Not at all. I'm urging you to pursue it and I'm pursuing it too. I'm going to pursue it with you, and I'm going to talk about how we pursue it, and what benefits there are to pursuing it, and what dangers there are from not pursuing it. That's where we're going in the next few weeks.

Now this is an incredible prayer. I want you to have a sense of Christ's love for you. It says in Song of Solomon 8:6, "Love is as strong as death." Isn't that a strong statement? “Love is as strong as death.” Christ's love for you is stronger. Stronger than death. Stronger than His own death, stronger than your death. It is an infinitely strong thing that Jesus loves you, and I want you to have a sense of that. That's what we're talking about here.

The Humility and Boldness of Prayer

The Vital Role of Prayer

So let's look at it and let's start at verse 14. We're going to start with the vital role of prayer itself. Paul was fundamentally a teacher and a preacher of the Gospel. The Word of God. He poured out the Word of God faithfully. He had full confidence in the Gospel message to be, “the power of God for salvation to anyone who believed its words.” He believed in these words, and he preached them, and taught them, but he wasn't merely a preacher and teacher of the words of God. He also prayed them into the people he taught and preached to. So it was a combination of prayer, and the ministry of the word that's being commended here. And what's amazing is, this is Paul's prayer, but there's so much doctrine in it. It's a teaching prayer. Have you ever been in the presence of an incredible saint to brother-sister in Christ, and they're just pouring out prayer, and you're just learning by listening? Well, how much more than the Apostle Paul, and as we just listen to him pray, we're learning things. So there's a combination here of doctrine and of prayer.

Prayer Cannot Be Chained

And now, prayer is essential to the spread of the Gospel, it's essential to the work of the Kingdom, and prayer cannot be chained. Paul's in chains. He said, "I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you gentiles," verse 1. So he's in chains, but his spirit isn't chained. Here's a brother who's like if you were to go to him that day and say, "So what's your day look like? It's Tuesday, I like Tuesdays. What's your Tuesday like?” “I'm going to be here, I'm going to stay here in prison. I'll be here in person, I'll eat whatever it is they serve me." But here, his spirit is soaring like an eagle higher than yours ever has. He is just a free man though incarcerated. His prayer is not chained. Are we being faithful in prayer? Are we praying? Are you giving yourselves to prayer? What's your prayer life like? Let's take the words of this magnificent prayer, and start praying them for ourselves and for each other. It's not that hard. Just say, "Alright, I'm going to pray this prayer every day this week for myself, and for one other Christian brother or sister. I'm going to choose somebody and pray for them.” By the way, not limited to one, but let it be at least one other person. Because it's just beautiful to pray this for someone else, “I pray oh Lord that you would strengthen so-and-so with power through his or her spirit and their inner being so that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith,” and do that for yourself too, just do this. It's an application right in the middle of the sermon. We see also here the boldness of prayer and also the humility of prayer. We have astonishing access to God. Look at verse 12. Ephesians 3:12. He says, "In Him,” Christ, “and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence” or “boldness and access." It's another translation. Because of our relationship with Christ, because we are Christians, we may approach God with “boldness and access.” It's just amazing.

The Boldness of Prayer

I came across a verse recently that struck me powerfully. Jeremiah 30:21. You can look it up later. There are different translations, but this is a good translation. Just toward the end of the verse, it says, "Who would... " This is God speaking to us, "Who would dare of himself to approach me, declares the Lord." Ponder that. “Who would dare of himself to approach me.”  You remember the story of Queen Esther? Remember she was a Jewish woman, who was the queen of the Persian empire, and she found out through her caretaker, kind of adoptive father, uncle or cousin, I think, Mordecai, what edict had gone forth for the genocide of the Jews, and he was urging her to use her position of influence to influence King Xerxes, to save the Jews. And she said, "Do you understand that in the Persian empire, if anyone ever approaches the throne room of the king uninvited there is only one penalty. Death. The only exception is if he extends the golden scepter." Well, whatever you think about the might of the Persian emperor, God is infinitely more powerful and infinitely holier, and we are infinitely less welcome than God, apart from Christ’s atoning work. We were at one point, aliens and strangers. “We were by nature vessels or objects of wrath.”

Who of ourselves, would ever dare to approach such a God? But now, in Christ, in Him, and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. There has been open for us, a new and living way through the body of Christ, by His death on the cross. We have that. And so we have not only an invitation, but actually a command to come into the “throne room of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16. So, we are commanded to come into this throne room. Now, Paul's actual requests here are stunningly bold. You look at the prayer, we've been over already, but just what is he asking for? He's asking for just astonishing things culminating in that the Ephesian Christians would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. So he's asking for bold things, but God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or think, it's not too bold. You can't out-ask God.

The Humility of Prayer

So there, we see the boldness of prayer, but we see also the humility. “For this reason, I kneel” or bow the knee, “before the Father.” And so he kneels before God. Now there is no one set physical posture for prayer. Actually in the Bible of the most common physical posture, mentioned is standing, with arms uplifted. Standing in prayer. You see that again, again, New Testament, Old Testament alike. But here we see in, have a glimpse into Paul's prayer life and and his humility. Why does he kneel? He kneels before his loving tender-hearted Father, out of honor and respect, and a sense of fear and trembling and awe at the greatness of this person that he's about to address. So we need some balance here in our prayer life. We need a sense of freedom and confidence, and access, so we're not too formal, or distant or mechanical in our prayers, but we need not to be flippant as though we forget who it is we're talking to. So the idea of kneeling is attractive to me. I kneel in my quiet times every day. That's what I do. And you don't have to kneel, you can stand, you can sit, you can lie down in prayer, all of these things, but there's something powerful about the physical body. And as Kyle was talking about before, you know, the sense of with my body, I'm saying "You are my Almighty God." And I was very convicted, I was just reading one book written by Martin Lloyd Jones about this, how quickly I blunder into God's presence, all the time and just go right in with a request. Don't do that, don't do that. Guard your steps before you go into God, Ecclesiastes 5 says, "Go near to listen, rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart, to utter anything before God. God is in Heaven and you are on Earth." So that we have a sense of the awe and wonder and majesty of God before you say anything to Him. So it's made me not just blunder into God's presence but to pause and think, "Who am I about to talk to?"

The Fatherly Love of God

God’s Fatherly Love for His Children

And he zeroes in here on the fatherly love of God. "For this reason. I kneel before the Father," NIV says, “from whom His whole family in Heaven and Earth derives His name.” So I want to start with the fatherly love of God, this Almighty God that you're addressing. He is, if you're a Christian, He is your adoptive Father. He has rescued you from Satan's dominion and has actually adopted you as a son or daughter of his family, and He's put the Holy Spirit inside your heart, “the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” And so we have been born again, we have been rescued out of Satan's kingdom, and we have a loving Father and that Father is saying, "Pray to me and ask me for big things, and I'll give them to you ask me for more than you thought I could possibly ever do and I can actually do more than that. Jesus said in Luke 11, “What father among you, if his son asks for fish will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” It's fascinating. Matthew's Gospel, says “give good gifts.” That's true as well, But that you as a Christian already, have the Father, you actually can get on your knees and say, "God give me of your Holy Spirit. Pour out your Spirit on me pour out the love of God into my heart by the Holy Spirit, whom you have given me. And He'll tell do it. “If you fathers know how to give good gifts to your children, and you’re evil,” God knows how to do that. So he's speaking to his Heavenly Father, and He says the “whole family,” and I think the NIV has actually has it right, His “whole family derives His name.” I think it's the unity of the Fatherhood of God over the entire vast complicated family of God. It's not so much that the whole idea of fatherhood came from this one Father, that's one translation some take that, but no. The family of God, worldwide, has one Father, That's what I think he's getting at. So look at Ephesians 4:4-6. Next page probably. It says, “there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is overall, and through all and in all.” So, that's who we're addressing.

The Resources: God’s Glory, God’s Spirit

God’s Glory in His Perfections

Well what are we paying for? Well, “ pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” So these are the resources. He speaks of the glorious riches of God or the riches of God's glory. That's the collection of all of God's perfection, His Holiness, His power, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, His self-existence, His sovereignty, all of these things. This is the glory of God. I pray that according to how glorious God is, He would strengthen you. So the idea here is of a radiant sun shining emanating just power and light, and heat, and it's just burning up there in space and the light comes across 93 million miles and comes and just warms the whole earth and it gives strength, and there's nothing that He can do to in any way diminish His own strength, He's not tired out by helping us, so when he prays for God according to His glorious riches, to strengthen you, God isn't dimmed by that. There's not a sagging of it. You think about a house with inadequate wiring, and you turn on the microwave and all the lights dim, have you ever seen that?  God's not like that God isn't going to dimmed when he helps us. I love what it says in Isaiah 40, "Do you not know, have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, He will not grow tired or weary, His understanding no one can fathom He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” He's not burdened by helping us or strengthening us, it's according to the riches of His glory, that He strengthens us, and that's what he's praying for, he's praying for power for strength.

Strengthened So Christ Can Dwell in Us

Now, why does he ask for strength for this? Well, this strength mediated by the Holy Spirit, according to the “Spirit in the inner being,” the Holy Spirit of God in your inner man, strengthens, strengthening you to the end that Christ would dwell in your hearts you face. So we have a picture here of the ministry of the third person of the Trinity, the Spirit of God, He who in Genesis 1:2 was “hovering over the waters,” is hovering over your inner being, your heart. And He has the power to mediate Christ to you. As Jesus said of the Counselor, “when He comes, He will take from what is mine and make it known to you, He will witness to you concerning me.” That's what the Holy Spirit does. He mediates Christ to the human heart Paul's praying that that would happen, that you would have strength in your inner man through the Spirit.

God is a Jealous God

So, why all this need for power? Well, there's two different things I would want to give you a picture of. One is that's going to be an arduous climb to get there. Now, Paul doesn't talk about that much here, but I believe it's true, God is jealous. And if we set our affections, and go after things to make us happy and give us exhilaration and give us ecstasy and excitement that He meant to give us directly here through spiritual means and we go after material physical things, He is jealous over that. And until we put those things to death and lay aside all the weights and the hindrances, it's not likely you're going to have any different experience Christian experience than you ever had before. And so, it's a climb. That's why I gave you the picture at the beginning of the Sermon of an arduous mountain climb. And you actually will end up spending the first section of that climb still under the cloud cover wondering if anything's going to come of it. And you're going to need strength to persevere and believe that there's a good outcome if you only continue to fast and pray, and seek and be diligent, and make sacrifices, and pursue, pursue, pursue to seek the face of God you're going to be tempted to give up. So that's one reason you need strength. 

We Need His Help to Bear His Love

Another is because the thing that God's going to give you will be so massive that it will crush you from the inside out, unless He sustains and strengthens you. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God,” and if He gives you a massive upgrade of your experience of Heaven now, you'll need to be strengthened so you can handle it. So think about Fort Knox, think about gold, think about gold bars, and a third of the treasure at Fort Knox They're going to move into your dining room, okay? They're going to move it, alright back it in the boys, you know the whistle. It's like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” if you do that, my house will be crushed. Well, He knows that better than you do. So, He sends an advanced team of structural engineers to start putting I-beams under the floor and do some stuff with the walls in your inner man to sustain and strengthen you so you can handle what He's about to do in your life. Again and again, men and women of God have had encounters with God, and then left on the ground as though dead when it happened. You know what I'm talking about.

Biblical Encounters: Man and God

Think about when Daniel, in the Book of Daniel, was praying, and God gives them a revelation of a far lesser theme than the one we're looking at here today, the future of Israel under the Greek overlords. Kings of the north, kings of the south, back and forth warfare between them. It's an important detail in redemptive history. God sent an angel to give the message of Daniel 11, to Daniel in Daniel 10. So He sends this angel. And He is so glorious. The angel now, not the second person of the Trinity, the angel, is so glorious that Daniel is knocked to the ground and can't breathe. Daniel 10:17-19. “How can I,” he's talking to the angel, “‘How can I, your servant, talk with you, my Lord? My strength is gone and I can hardly breathe.’ Again, the one who looked like a man touched me and gave me strength.” Do you hear that? “Touched me and gave me strength.” “Do not be afraid, O man highly esteemed. He said, ‘Peace, be strong now,’be strong.’ And when he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, “Speak my Lord since you have given me strength.’” It's all about strength in the inner man, to handle the revelation of what God's about to lay on him.

Ezekiel had a similar vision of God, the glory of God. Ezekiel 3:15 after it was over, Ezekiel 1 is the vision, after it was over, he was transported to where the exiles were and it says, “And there, where they were living. I sat among them for seven days, overwhelmed.” He's like in some kind of a catatonic state for a week unable to even talk just there. Or the three apostles who went with Jesus up on the Mount of Transfiguration, and He was transformed before them, transfigured, Jesus, and his face was shining like the sun and His clothes became as white as the light. And then Peter spoke up, you remember that? He said, “Lord, it's good to be here, tell you what, why don't we build some booths and all that, and this bright cloud suddenly enveloped them and God was in the cloud, and he said, ‘This is my beloved Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased, listen to him.’" The implication is stop talking and listen to Him. But when all that happened, the three of them that were on their faces as though dead, and Jesus had to go have touched them and lift them up and give them energy. Or then the apostle John in Revelation, chapter one, had a vision of the resurrected Christ in all of his glory. And it says in Revelation 1:17, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. So that's why you need strength in your inner person, to endure this level of revelation of the love of God.”

D.L. Moody’s Experience

D.L. Moody, the 19th century evangelist 19th, early 20th century evangelist had been a Christian serving God, doing a ministry, then in charge of a mission was seeing people converted, but he wanted more. This is his testimony:

“I began to cry, as never before, for a greater blessing from God. The hunger increased, I felt I really did not want to live any longer. I kept on crying all the time, that God would fill me with His Holy Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York. Oh, what a day. I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for 14 years. I can only say God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love, that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”

What's going on there, what happened to you, God started pouring out His love through the Holy Spirit inside of me, that finally I said, stop, I can't take anymore. That's why strength is needed for this power is needed for this, for the journey, for the climb, but then even more for the experience.

 Application

Now, we're going to talk more over the next few weeks about this, we're going to talk more about the verses. I just want to stop and ask, first and foremost, do you know Christ as your Lord and Savior? I mean the things I'm talking about here are for Christians, but I'm aware that God in His providence, every week, brings us people who are outside of the love of God in Christ. I believe God brought you here. If you're like that, you know yourself to be lost, I'm pleading with you, to come into faith in Christ, and to know for the first time the assurance from the Holy Spirit that your sins are forgiven, and that you're going to Heaven when you die. God sent Jesus as a substitutionary atonement. He shed His blood on the cross, that sinners like you and me might have full forgiveness from God, not by works, as we already said, but simply by faith. Trust in Christ.

Now, if you are a Christian, you've already been a Christian, this prayer is for you. There's more work still to be done in your soul. If you can honestly say I've never had anything like what you're talking about here. I've never had something like, "Oh, what a day I can't even talk about it! It's like what Paul experienced, and didn't talk about for 14 years and it was so overwhelming. I had to ask God to stop because I thought I might die. No, actually that's never happened to me Pastor. Never.” Well then what I'm going to do with you over the next three, four, weeks is encourage you to seek that experience of God's love in Christ. I'm going to do it unashamed, I'm going to say seek it, seek it by holiness seek it by laying aside things you're conscious of that are offending God. Seek it by prayer, either alone or with others.

Seek it by meditation on this passage and other passages that talk about the greatness of God in Christ, meditate on those kind of passages. Say, “God I want you to do something in my life that I'll never forget the rest of my life, I want you to work in me an experience of your love that goes so far beyond anything I thought you could do, anything I could ask or imagine. I want you to do that in my life and I want you to do it in this brother, or this sister's life.” So I don't want you to just pray for yourself, I do want you to pray for yourself, but I want you to pray for others that God would do this for you. We'll continue this next week. 

Prayer

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for Ephesians 3:14-21, we thank you for what Paul's praying for here and I pray that you'll do it to FBC. I pray that you would call together a group of people who will pray for these things in extraordinary ways. We don't even have to know about it, but maybe in someone's living room, or maybe here at the church, or in some other quiet place individuals can gather together with other brothers and sisters and pray that God would pour out His Holy Spirit on First Baptist Church in Durham to the end that we would be holy and to the end that we would be powerfully fruitful in evangelism and missions. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Series Introduction

As I begin this series in Ephesians, I want to share with you a special moment in my life. I was on a mission trip in Kenya in June 1986, ministering on a 10-week mission trip.  This was one of the turning points in my life. I was sitting on a bench waiting for a bus to come take me back to Nairobi. I asked a Kenyan brother who was also there when the bus would come. He said simply, “In the afternoon.” I remember thinking, “In the afternoon? What does that mean?” Being a typical, time-driven, Type-A American, I was there at 11:49 a.m., ready for the afternoon bus, which rolled in at 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon.

I had nothing except my little pocket Bible with me. After a while I got the sense that it was going to be a long wait. I didn’t know what to do. I had dabbled with scripture memorization but that day, I opened up to Ephesians and, beginning with Ephesians 1:1, memorized that book. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.” That day, I began a journey of scripture memorization that has continued for 29 years. I have memorized many entire books and portions of books in those 29 years, but this one is special for me, being the first one. I have recited this book to myself more than any other — hundreds and hundreds of times, with some portions of it approaching 1000 times. This is a precious book to me. 

I want to commend the practice of Scripture memorization to all of you. The book of Ephesians is a great place to start. Those 155 verses address many deep doctrines that will take you a long time to ponder, as well as very practical issues of the Christian life. Today we begin a journey in one of the most astonishing books ever written in human history. If you think about it — 6 chapters, 155 verses — you may wonder, “How much could be in there?” It takes less than 15 minutes to recite the whole book but it covers the scope and magnitude of God’s working in this world in ways that no other book does. It has a high view over all of these things. Paul doesn’t write to specific situations in the Ephesian churches. He doesn’t address people by name or situations that he wants to try to solve. He is giving an amazing view of God’s overall plan and how it is lived out in life. Today I will give a grand overview of Ephesians 1-6.

A number of years ago, my son and I took a trip to the Grand Canyon. We had a breathtaking view of the whole thing from the South Rim.  I have never forgotten my first sight of it, after driving along higher and higher, parking and walking through some trees — and suddenly, there it was. We walked along the South Rim, on the foot path, taking in the expanse of this thing, The Grand Canyon. It was hard to imagine the scope and magnitude of it. Since we spent a few days there, we wanted to get more of an experience with the Grand Canyon.

We had a number of options. We chose a white water raft ride along the Colorado River. We spent 2/3 of the day looking at the walls of the canyon, stopping for lunch and then coming back. It was a great time, but there were other options available to us if we wanted to get to know the canyon a little better. For example, there was a hot air balloon ride for $300.00 per person per hour. We weren’t going to do that, but we could imagine coasting very slowly and silently at 400 feet up, with breathtaking views. Then there was the possibility of a small plane ride, 5000 feet up, at $450 per person per hour, but covering a much more vast area. There was a helicopter ride, 1000 feet lower than the small plane, able to hover and study certain aspects and different parts from that altitude. The price was not listed for the helicopter ride; we were call for quotes, so I figured that was not going to happen. Then there was the donkey ride down to the Colorado River with overnight camping.

This morning we will take the airplane ride. We are going to fly over the book of Ephesians at 5000 feet to look at some of the grand and glorious themes in this book. Next week we will begin our donkey ride, going verse by verse to look more carefully at aspects of this incredible book.

Quick Overview of the Epistle

Let me begin with a quick overview of all of the book of Ephesians. I am going to break it into two main sections: Ephesians 1-3 and Ephesians 4-6. Ephesians 1-3 could be titled, “What God Has Done in Christ”. It is a picture of the saving work of God in Christ. Ephesians 4-6 could be titled, “What We Must Do in Christ”. It is more a picture of the Christian life and answers the question “How, then, shall we live?” given this great salvation.

The epistle begins with Paul’s standard greeting, Ephesians 1:1-2, which I’ve already quoted to you. He emphasizes his call as an apostle “by the will of God” and he writes to give God’s people grace through the epistle. 

God’s Eternal Purpose in Redemption: 1:3-14

In Ephesians 1:3-14, we have God’s eternal purpose in redemption. Paul, in these incredible 12 verses, traces out in astonishing terms God’s eternal salvation plan, beginning with election and predestination —“before the foundation of the world”; carried out by the redeeming work of Christ on the cross, the redemption by His blood; and then applied to the sealing work of the Holy Spirit. We see the Trinity at work, Father, Son and Spirit, which we will come back to later in this message.

In Ephesians 1:4-7, it says,“For He [God the Father] chose us in Him [that is, in Christ] before the creation of the world that we should be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one He loves.” [Ephesians 1:7] “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”

I can’t help but stop there and make an appeal to any that are here, outside of Christ, who are lost. Perhaps you have been invited by someone and this is your first or second week here, and you know that you are not a Christian. Ephesians 1:7 speaks to you. It speaks of redemption through the blood of Christ. Christ shed His blood. Christ is God’s eternal Son who became incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit, who lived a sinless life and who died on the cross in the place of sinners like you and me. He has worked a redemption through His shed blood. Ephesians 1:7: “…redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin”. Oh, how we yearn for that, don’t we? We need forgiveness of sins, and it is available for us through faith in Christ.

Paul’s First Prayer for the Ephesians: To Know God’s Power: 1:15-23

Then Paul, having traced out the work of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, prays for the Ephesian Christians in Ephesians 1:15-23. This is the first of many prayers you see in Paul’s epistles and the first of two incredible prayers here in Ephesians.

Paul reveals his prayer life for them. He prays in verses 18-19 for them to know God better, that they would have a deeper knowledge of God and that they would also “know the hope to which he has called [them], the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for those who believe” so that they would know God better. This is my prayer for this sermon as well, that, as a result of this study in Ephesians, you will know God better, that you will have a deeper sense of the knowledge of God. Beyond that, for you who are Christians, that you would know the hope to which you are called, your heavenly hope, and how rich you are as Christians. You are infinitely wealthy in Christ. Also that you would have a sense of the immeasurable power that is at work in your life and in the world around you to get you to your heavenly inheritance. 

Paul is praying for you to know these things, and he says the power that is at work in your life is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. That power raised Christ from the dead out of that tomb and ascended Him through the clouds, through the heavenly realms, up to the very highest place at the right hand of God. There He sits at the right hand of God. He is “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion and every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the Church which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.” That is Ephesians 1. Paul wants you to have a sense of that same power that raised Jesus to that lofty place, and a sense that Christ is ruling over heaven and earth for you, for your benefit. That power is at work in your life. It is breathtaking.

The Ephesians’ Journey from Dead in Sin to Raised in Christ: 2:1-10

In Chapter 2, Paul transitions to say, “Do you understand what your condition was? You also were dead.” “You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.” He wants us to realize just how desperate the condition was. We were the living dead. We were biologically alive, but apart from Christ, we were spiritually dead. God has taken every Christian and raised him or her from the dead by the power of the gospel, by the power of the Spirit, by His grace. God has raised us up from the dead and now we are alive and we will live forever and ever by the sovereign power of God. We need to understand this grace. Paul celebrates grace in very familiar verses, probably the most famous in the epistle, Ephesians 2:8-9 (the first that I memorized a few years before I memorized the whole book): “For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.” We have this incredible grace at work in our lives, and God has raised us up that He might put that grace on display.

Now in Ephesians 2:10, we see that we have a glorious life of good works to live, and those good works are worth doing. Our good works, which God has “prepared in advance that we should walk in them”, are not done in vain. All of these good works are tending toward the end of God’s glory and the building of His Church. We have a role to play. Life is worth living for the Christian. How beautiful is that?

God’s Purpose in Jew-Gentile Unity: 2:11-22

Paul then talks about the mystery of God’s purpose in making Jew and Gentile Christians one in Christ. In Ephesians 2:11-22, Paul reveals this mysterious purpose, that Jewish believers in Christ and Gentile believers in Christ are now one in Him and that God has created in Christ one new humanity —“one new man out of the two” — no longer Jew or Gentile, but now Christian. We have an amazing unity in Christ. God has taken the barrier,“the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile, and destroyed it, eradicated, it through the death of Jesus on the cross. Circumcision, dietary regulations and other laws that separated Jew from Gentile have been removed in Jesus. He has made Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians perfectly one. He is building us together into a structure, a kind of spiritual building. There is an architecture, a foundation that has been laid. There is this rising building, rising up through the workings of the body of Christ, rising up through the power of the Spirit, rising to become a holy temple in which God will dwell by His Spirit, eternally. This, the gospel of Jesus Christ, really is the only answer to racism and racial divisions and disharmony in the world.

Paul’s Ministry for the Gentiles: 3:1-13

In Ephesians 3:1-13, Paul talks about his own ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. He is in prison for the Gospel, as he frequently was, and he writes to them about the administration of his ministry and what a special and unique individual he is. He says this not because he is arrogant or boastful, but because God has set him apart as apostle to the Gentiles. God has sent him to show His saving purpose to the Gentiles by revealing at last this mystery which, in ages past, stayed hidden in God, but has now been made known, as God intends Jews and Gentiles together in Christ to be one.

This is an incredible mystery but it has now come into time. There is a lavish bumper crop of Gentiles coming to faith in Jesus, and Paul, as an apostle to the Gentiles, is there at the dawning of that age to do ministry to bring them in, that they might have a sense of the magnitude of this work. Ephesians 3:6-7: “This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” He says in verse 13, “Don’t be discouraged because of my sufferings. Don’t be discouraged because I am in prison. It is not a shameful thing for me. I am not ashamed of this work. This is a glorious, mysterious thing that God is doing. My sufferings really are your glory. Because of my sufferings, this is how the gospel advances.” Ephesians 3:1-13.

Paul’s Second Prayer for the Ephesians: To Know Christ’s Love: 3:14-21

Now we come to what, for me, is the best part of whole book. I love the prayer that Paul prays in Ephesians 3:14-21. It is the kind of thing that moves me emotionally. It is the kind of thing that I pray for myself, for my family, for our church, frequently. In it, God speaks through the apostle Paul of a yearning and a desire that Paul has of a special work of grace in the heart of the Ephesian Christians. Look at verses 16-19. It says,“I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” — I can’t hear those words without thinking about the Grand Canyon — “[that you would have a sense of the magnitude, the dimensions of Christ’s love for you. That you would have] power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, [and that you would] know this love that surpasses knowledge.” It goes beyond cognitive knowledge. It goes into a whole different level of knowledge — that you would have an ever-expanding sense of Christ’s love for you so that you would “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” 

Wow!  It is breathtaking — that you would “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” I would say that this is not the common experience of most Christians. As a matter of fact, I would say that many Christians go their whole lives without really approaching the dimensions which Paul prays for here. My desire is that the ministry of the word and a regular beseeching on your part will lead to an incredible expansion of the work of the Spirit in your heart, that you would have a sense of just how much Jesus loves you — how dearly and deeply loved you are — and that you would be empowered by the Spirit to do those good works that He has for you to do (Ephesians 2:10). “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we [could] ask or imagine, [to Him that is at work in you and in the church around the world], to Him be glory in the church … throughout all generations [now and forever].” Ephesians 1-3: that is the scope and magnitude of what God has done for us in Christ.

Living Out Our Unity in Christ by the Spirit: 4:1-6

Then Paul turns the corner in Ephesians 4-6, and says in effect, as Francis Schaeffer said, “How, then, shall we live?” “How shall we live in light of these incredible teachings?” He wants us to live out our unity in Christ. Ephesians 4:1-6 is how he starts. He talks about unity, the oneness that we have. Not merely Jew/Gentile, but every individual Christian with every other individual Christian and every individual local congregation with other local congregations and the worldwide work of unity of the Spirit. This unity is under constant assault. It is constantly barraged by the world, the flesh and the devil. We’ll get to that in a moment. But this unity is something that we have to defend and so he says in Ephesians 4, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit — just as you were called to one hope when you were called — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” One, one, one, one, this work of unity which we have to defend and fight for. 

Working for Our Unity by the Gifts of the Spirit: 4:7-16

Then in verses 7-16, he talks about diversity. He has gone from unity to diversity. Verse 7 begins with the word “but”: “We have been talking about unity and I’m going to go in a different direction.” “But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.” We have a sense of the special working of the Spirit in each individual Christian’s life, and so we come to the doctrine of spiritual gifts. The concept of spiritual gifts is clearly taught in Ephesians 4:7-16, that we have different gifts that God has given to us by the Spirit according to the measurement of Christ by the power of the Spirit — different gifts.“He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service.”

There are those works again (as in Ephesians 2:10) — “to prepare God’s people for works of service,” so that by those works of service, the body of Christ might be built up into full maturity in Christ. That means we have a role to play to get the body of Christ to the level of full maturity. You might be an evangelist, or a missionary. You might be a pastor or a teacher. You might be an administrator.  You might have the gift of giving or the gift of serving. You might have the gift of prayer or the gift of faith. You might have a variety of gifts. Those gifts are given to you by Christ through the Spirit for the building up of the body so that (verse 13) “we [will] all reach unity in the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” [Verses 15 and 16] “Speaking the truth in love we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From Him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.” We have a role to play in the body of Christ; everyone does. We have a spiritual gift ministry that God has given to us to get the body of Christ to full maturity.

Protecting Our Unity by Fighting Sin by the Spirit: 4:17-5:21

Now we come back to what I mentioned before: We must protect our unity because it is under constant assault. In 4:17-5:21, Paul addresses the issues of the assault of the unity and what it is that divides Christians. The root of the issue is sin, and if we are going to be one as the Father and the Son intend, if we’re going to be one as the Father and the Son are themselves one, we are going to have to fight sin in every way. Paul begins by focusing on the mind: it all starts in how you think. He says in verses 17-24, “I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” [Do you hear all of those mental/mind words?] “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” That is the overarching battle we must have against sin. We must be a holy people, and it begins with how we think and what we love with our hearts and our minds. We must be pure.

In the next section, Paul goes back and forth between what we’ll call negative sanctification and positive sanctification. What we must not do or be and what we must do or be, back and forth; both of those are valid aspects of sanctification, of growth and of maturity. So he says that we must not lie; we must put off falsehood, but rather we must speak truth. Thieves must stop their stealing, but instead they “must work, doing something useful with [their] own hands so that [they] may have something to share with those in need. [We should not say unwholesome things, but rather we should speak what is useful for] building others up according to their needs. [We should not be sexually impure, but instead we should be holy with our bodies and our minds. We should not speak obscenity, but rather, we should speak words of thanksgiving. We should not live as children of darkness, but rather we should live as children of the light. We should not live a foolish life, but rather we should] find out what pleases the Lord [and do it. We should] not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery, [but] instead [we should] be filled with the Spirit.” This is going to be a big theme in Ephesians, the Spirit-filled life: to be being filled with the Holy Spirit, to be empowered with the Spirit. Only by the Spirit can we defeat the world, the flesh and the devil.

Displaying Unity in Christian Marriage: 5:22-33

Beyond that Paul talks about significant roles in the body of Christ and how submission works in those roles. He says in verse 21, as a subset of the Spirit-filled life, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” When I get to that, God willing, I will talk about how I believe that this is not teaching a universal mutual submission of every Christian to every other Christian, which would vacate the word submission of its meaning. Submission always has to do with recognition of God ordained authority. He is saying, “Category 1 is going to submit to Category 2 in the way I am about to describe to you. So this group is going to submit to this group, but this group — the one submitted to — should carry themselves in a certain way as Christians who have that authority.”

Paul goes through the marriage relationship, husband and wife. He goes through the parenting relationship, child and father, and he goes through the master and slave relationship, slave and master. It is always the one who is commanded to submit first (the wife, the children, the slave), and then the one who is receiving the submission, how they should carry themselves (the husband, the father, the master). Then immediately, Paul goes into the most important and most significant human relationship on earth, which is marriage. Christian marriages should be putting the unity of the gospel on display. So he says, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which He is the Savior.” [The husband is then told,] “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” We get this beautiful picture of Christian marriage. If husbands and wives were living that out, what an incredible effect it would have on our church and on the nation.

Displaying Unity in Godly Submission: 6:1-9

Then Paul goes to the parenting relationship. Children are to submit to their parents, to obey them in everything. But fathers are not to “exasperate [their] children, [but rather] bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”. The same thing with the master and slave relationship: first slaves are to submit to their masters, to obey them as if they were obeying Christ, not only when the master’s eye is on them, but all the time. Then, for their part, the masters should not dominate and be tyrannical and evil toward their slaves, but realize that they have a master too, and they are going to have to give him an account on judgement day.

Protecting Our Unity by Standing Firm Against the Devil: 6:10-18

Having presented the issues of unity, and struggling with sin, and key relationships, Paul then talks about the main, central attack on the church and on our unity. This is the work of Satan and his minions. Ephesians 6 is probably the clearest, most detailed teaching on spiritual warfare in the Bible. We are told to stand firm in the Lord because we have enemies. We have, as Peter called it, “an adversary, the devil.” Paul says in Ephesians 6 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.” “So, stand firm and put on your spiritual armor.” He goes through the articles of spiritual armor; they are impenetrable, they are powerful: “the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, which is able to extinguish 100% of Satan’s flaming arrows. So we are thoroughly equipped. We have in our hand the sword of the Spirit with which we can make advances for the kingdom of God.” We can call down God’s sovereign power in prayer — some liken it to a walkie-talkie, calling down artillery fire on our enemies. We are going to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests … and keep on praying for all the saints.” 

Standing Together in Prayer: 6:19-24

Paul ends up by saying, “Stand together with me in prayer. Pray for my mission, pray for my work, pray that I would declare the gospel” “fearlessly, as I should. … Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.”

Major Themes

So that is Ephesians 1-6. Now I want to draw out some main, significant themes. Pretend that we are not in the airplane anymore; we are now in the helicopter. We are going to hover for awhile to look at these main ideas, these themes.

I. God’s Ultimate End: “The Praise of His Glory”

The first is God’s ultimate end in all of this. Why is God doing all this? What is His purpose? I would say few, if any, books in the Bible, are so clear on what God’s ultimate end and purpose is, as is the book of Ephesians. God does everything “for the praise of His glory.” It is a simple answer coming to us three different times in Ephesians 1:3-14. Again and again we have this. God does everything for the praise of His glory or the praise of His glorious grace. Look at Ephesians 1:4-6: “In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will, [here is this phrase, verse 6] to the praise of His glorious grace.” Or perhaps, to the praise of the glory of His grace. In other words, God predestined us for salvation before the world began, so that after world history had ended, we “might be for the praise of His glory” as revealed in His grace.

He says it again in Ephesians 1:11-12: “In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory.”

We have it again in verse 14.  In verses 13-14, Paul says of the Ephesians,“Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession [here is that phrase again] to the praise of His glory.”

What is God’s Glory? How Will His Glory Be Praised?

What does that mean? What is God’s glory? God’s glory, I believe, is the radiant display of His attributes, of His nature, the shining brightness of His wisdom, His power, His love, His patience, His kindness, His wrath, His justice; there are various attributes. 

God wanted to put His own glory on display and He has done that in creation, but He does it even more in redemption. He does it even more in the salvation of the elect from every tribe and language and people and nation.  He shines through us and He will do so for all eternity.  He does everything for “the praise of His glory.”

II. God’s Eternal Plan: “To Bring All Things Together into One in Christ”

Secondly, in order to achieve this end of the praise of His glory, God has worked out a meticulous plan. He has actually planned out everything, and I mean everything. Not just grand overarching themes, like in this sermon, but details — down to the tiniest detail. We will get a chance to look at that when we get to verses 11 and 12, but God has worked out His plan in great detail. He had a plan, clearly, in these verses that I just read: “He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless.” That is purpose language. He has a plan, and this plan is mentioned plainly in verse 11. It speaks of us having been “predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will.”  

The Final End of this Plan: Unity

Now what is the final end of this plan? What is He getting to? What is happening in history? Verses 9 and 10 answer the question very powerfully and well. Verse 9 says, “And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, [verse 10] to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” I picture God in perfect unity before He created the universe, before He created anything — perfect unity. Then He willed to create heaven and earth and he created them, saying, “Let there be light.” He did all this work in Genesis 1, and God pronounced everything “very good.” Creation and Creator were in perfect unity, perfect harmony.

But then sin entered the universe —  wickedness and evil entered the universe — and it behaved like a fragmentation grenade. It blew everything apart into bits, hurtling away from the true center. The disunity between the human race and God, vertically, has led to a disunity between human beings, one with another. From individual to individual, group to group, nation to nation, we see this every day on CNN or MSN or wherever you go. You see the evidence of this fragmentation and this brokenness. God is willing to reverse this and to bring everything back together under one head, Christ. This is His purpose in all of these things. He is going to bring together the elect and make them one. One new man, one new people, together, with no disunity at all. Central to that is the redemptive work of Christ. 

III. God’s Plan Effected: By Christ, by the Spirit, by the Gospel, by the Gifts

The third theme is how God’s plan is effected: by Christ, by the Spirit, by the gospel and by the gifts. These things are given to bring the plan about, so it will happen. He sent His Son, and in Christ we have redemption through His blood. God the Father made the plan. God the Son worked it out, paid for it in His blood. God the Spirit moves throughout all of the world, throughout all of history to apply the plan, the saving work of Jesus Christ to individual people and to groups. By Christ, by the Spirit, by the gospel message, as it says, “In Him you were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything, conforming to the purpose of His will. … You heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were then marked with a seal.”  

The gospel is out there, the word of truth is out there, powerful. People are hearing it. By the Spirit, they are believing and they are marked, sealed with the Spirit. That is the unfolding of God’s plan that is applied by the Spirit. Spiritual gifts — given to and used by gifted individuals, human beings, Christians — are instrumental to that plan. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers take the work of God out to the ends of the earth. They settle in and they shepherd churches. They prepare the body of Christ to do those works of service and then the gifted Christians use their gifts and the whole building of Ephesians 2 or body of Ephesians 4 grows up to perfection and finality. That is what is happening. That is what is going on in the world today. 

 IV. God’s Plan on Display: Unity in the Heart, in the Church, in Marriage

Now God’s plan is put on display. It is a unity in the heart through holiness, it is a unity in the church, Jew and Gentile, together one. It is made one through the Spirit. It is a unity in marriage, in parenting and in the master/slave relationship as each group does what it needs to do. This unity is put on display perfectly and beautifully. That is God’s purpose of all of this. 

 V. God’s Plan Opposed: By Satan, by the World, by Sin

God’s plan is going to be opposed, as I’ve said, by the world, the flesh and the devil. We should not expect an easy ride.  It is going to be hard, but we are going to win. Isn’t that awesome? The church, the elect, will be saved and glorified and radiant with God’s glory for all eternity in heaven.

 Applications

This is Ephesians 1-6. This is the book of Ephesians. Now, God willing, if He gives us time, we will get a chance to go through it verse by verse. If He doesn’t, we will get to see it with  our own eyes, the glory of God in heaven. Amen?

What applications can we take from this? 

Salvation History

Get a sense of the scope of salvation history through this. We will have a chance again next week and in subsequent weeks to see how meticulously God has put history together. This is not thrown together, but this has been meticulously planned. Get a sense of that and feel secure in that. Don’t feel like every time you watch the news or go onto a website which tells you some of the things that are happening like we are going off the rails or the wheels are falling off. No, this is exactly what we would expect to happen. This is the disunity and fragmentation that Satan has worked, but there is a secret power at work in the world called the Gospel, the power of the Spirit, that is changing everything. Be confident as you look at world history. Be confident that God knows exactly what He is doing. 

How God’s Commitment to His Own Glory Affects Us

And how should God’s commitment to His own glory affect us? Live for God’s glory. Away with your selfish plans. Away with living for your own glory. Away with living for you own purposes. Say, “God, what is your plan for me? What is your purpose for my life? How have you gifted me? How have You prepared me? What am I to do? How can I live for your glory?” It is such a powerful idea, isn’t it? Husbands and wives, say, “I want our marriage to be for the praise of God’s glory. How can we do that?” “I want our parenting to be for the praise of God’s glory. How can we have a household that will be for the praise of God’s glory? How can I do my employment? How can I be an employer or an employee for the praise of God’s glory and putting God on display?  How can I do that?” 

The Greatness of Christ

Thirdly, how can we see in Ephesians the greatness of Christ? I want to zero in on one thing. There are so many things about the greatness of Christ, but as Paul prays at the end of Ephesians 3, I will be praying for you every day, through this series, that “you would have power together will all the saints” to get the sense of the scope and magnitude of Christ’s love for you. You are greatly underestimating it right now. You are greatly underestimating, and I am too, how much Christ loves you and me. It will be unbelievably empowering and liberating for you to improve even by 10% the sense of the magnitude of Christ’s love for you. So I am going to be praying that you would have a sense together with all the saints of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. 

Unity

And what about unity? Pray for the unity of our church. Pray that our church would put on display supernatural unity. First of all, just two sinners getting along in Christ is supernatural. Amen? We are so selfish, wicked and carnal — that we could actually genuinely love each other from the heart is supernatural. I want to see racial reconciliation on display through this church. I want to see surprising unity. I want to see a unity that makes people, like in John 17, sit up and say, “What could have caused this? Only the Gospel.” Let’s see what God can do in a supernatural work of unity in FBC Durham, right here in this city. 

Satan’s Work vs. Our Work

Finally, how can you be exhorted to be about the Master’s business, covered with the armor of God, aware that Satan is opposing you? How can you be exhorted to be active in evangelism and missions? Satan is going to be attacking, especially the more we get fruitful here, but God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5). Ephesians makes very plain that only by putting on the spiritual armor of God with our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace will we be able to make progress in the external journey of evangelism and missions. I would ask that you present yourself to God as ready to serve Him. Invite people to church. Talk to lost people about their faith and about the Gospel. Be instrumental. Then internally, within the walls of the church, use your spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ until it reaches full maturity in Christ. 

Close with me in prayer, if you would. Father, we thank you for this very quick fly over we’ve had in Ephesians.  It has been rich.  I look forward, almost can’t wait, to get into the section next week in Ephesians 1. I pray that you would teach us, instruct us and prepare us, oh Lord, for that.  I pray that the things we’ve already learned now from Ephesians would be so ingrained in our hearts and our minds that we would want to live them out. Oh, God, I pray for your Christians that are here now. Fill us with the Holy Spirit of God. I pray that we would be Spirit-filled. And Lord, for lost people, one more time, I pray that they would not leave this place lost, but that they would see, by faith, Christ crucified for their sins, risen from the dead by the power of God, and that full forgiveness could be theirs if they will just trust in Him. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Galatians 5:22-26 and how we can distinguish between sinful acts of the flesh and holy acts of the Spirit.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT  - 

Some time ago, my family and I had the opportunity to go to Monticello which is Thomas Jefferson's home, it's up on a small mountain in Central Virginia. And we had the chance to walk through the amazing grounds there, the gardens that are there. And he was many things, of course: A politician, a philosopher, inventor, but I think he would say above all things he was a farmer, and I would say, a scientist farmer. And he liked to study how things grew in the soil there on top of that mountain in Monticello. And if you walk through the ground, some other grounds keepers have come in the spirit of that same desire to have the most lavish display of flowers, and fruits and vegetables, and trees you could have. Only thing that could be improved is if it will all be done to the glory of God. Amen? Out of faith in Jesus Christ.

But I was there in that spirit, and I was so delighted to see these flowers and just to smell the fragrant air of all of these flowering things, to see the rare wildflowers, and to smell the roses, and to see the tulips, and to see all of that. I was especially mindful of the fact (speaking just for myself, not for my wife), that I can't grow anything. I tend to kill things. I don't mean to, but we have no green thumb. I guess, we have a brown thumb. I don't know, maybe that's the opposite of a green thumb. But he apparently was just exceptionally skillful at growing things, and then fruits, incredible fruits, 150 different varieties of 31 temperate species of fruits. All different kinds of things: Plums, and pears, and grapes, and apricots, and Spanish almonds, and all of it there for the picking. And then vegetables, amazing vegetables; 250 varieties of more than 70 different species of vegetables. And he studied how they would flourish, and what they were, and what different combinations of fertilizers, and watering and all of that.

What Kind of Fruit is on Display in Your Life?

Monticello is a rich treasure of growing things, but it made me think about my soul and the passage that we're looking at today, the Fruit of the Spirit. What kind of fruit is there in my life? If you could take a walk through my life as we go through that kind of circuitous path there at Monticello and you look around. If you were to do that in my life, what would you see? What is the fruit of your Christianity? What is going on in your life? In John chapter 15, Jesus used an agricultural analogy saying, "I am the true vine and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." And then he said, "Abide [or dwell or remain, live] in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. And neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. [said Jesus] "I am the vine, you were the branches. If someone remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing."

Jesus taught the same thing in The Sermon on the Mount. He said that we will most certainly in him bear fruit, and the kind of fruit we bear shows who we are and what we are like. He said in the Sermon on the Mountain, (Matthew 7:16-20)"By their fruit you will recognize them. Every good tree bears good fruit but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire thus by their fruit, you will recognize them." And many such passages, as well. I ask you this, I'm asking myself, what kind of fruit is there in your life?

Now, the problem for us is that the answer must be inconsistent. There is, in every Christian, good fruit but also bad fruit. James talks about this in James 3:9-12. He says, "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse men who have been made in his likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives or a grape vine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water." And yet we acknowledge, as divided beings, as those who struggle with the flesh, but we are also indwelt by the Spirit that we see out of the same life come both things that we give glory to God for in praise and for in those things that we are ashamed of and wish we would never do.

Now in Galatians 5, we see a very clear description of this whole problem, the war between the flesh and the Spirit that goes on inside each one of us. Galatians 5 gives a lengthy list of the works of the flesh and contrasts it with the fruit of the Spirit. The ongoing work of the indwelling Holy Spirit of Christ is to conform us from the inside out to Jesus Christ, so that we would actually be like Christ in every respect. The Fruit of the Spirit that I'm going to look at today is one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. In the book of Galatians, it is the goal of sanctification. It is what God is working in us. It is the goal of the Spirit-filled life at every moment. I believe the Fruit of the Spirit is a good checklist for yourself at every moment. Just take a snapshot of yourself at any moment throughout this upcoming week. Could be Tuesday morning, it could be Wednesday afternoon, it could be Thursday night, doesn't matter, just snapshot.

When I was a student in college, there was this incredible exhibit done by this guy named Harold Edgerton, and he was a pioneer in Strobe Photography. And he took high-speed photographs of instance and time. They hadn't been able to be captured before his research in strobe photography, so there'd be pictures of like an apple with a bullet going through it. I don't know why you'd want to shoot an apple. But there it is, there's the bullet going through and you see the entry and the exit, and just the tip of the bullet coming out, he's able to capture that. Or a drop of milk dropping and it looks like this incredible crown coming all these amazing strobe photography. The picture of a pin going in a big balloon, in just an instant, after it begins to pop and you see the rip in the balloon and it's curt but you can still see the rest of the balloon's still there. Amazing pictures.

Take a snapshot of yourself this week and ask yourself this question, "Am I, right now, characterized by the fruit of the Spirit?" Would my wife, would my husband, would my good friend, would my roommate say, "Yeah, I would say, that you are right now characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, that's who you are. And if our content of the answer honestly is no, then you need to repent. And don't blame your spouse, don't blame your roommate, don't blame the circumstances, understand that the Holy Spirit can and does produce this fruit in you, irrespective of your circumstances. This should characterize you every moment of your life. That's what we going to talk about today.

I. What Kind of Life Leads to Heaven?

We're looking right here in the middle of Galatians 5. We've been asking this question, what kind of life leads to heaven? Let's just step back and look at the book of Galatians as a whole. Galatians was a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a group of churches that he planted in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, and he was there and he preached the gospel of faith in Jesus Christ. He did a good job preaching the gospel. Some people repented and believed, and some churches were planted. And after he worked with them for a while, he left. And soon after he left, some other false teachers came in, who we called Judaizers. They're not called that in the book of Galatians but that's who they were. They were Jewish people who professed to faith in Christ but said, faith in Christ is not enough. You need to add to it the works of the law. You've got to add to it Jewish law, the laws of Moses. The combination of faith in Christ plus the law of Moses equals salvation.

Well, Paul heard about this and said, this is devastating, this is no gospel at all, this is false teaching. And he wrote the book of Galatians back to these churches to teach them. As he says in Galatians 2:16, "A person is not justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. We too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified." Justification is the beginning of the Christian life. When you hear the gospel, you hear about Almighty God sending his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, did signs and wonders but especially died as a substitute on the cross for our sins. We were guilty under the law of God. God knew we deserved condemnation, he knew we deserve wrath but instead of pouring it on us, he poured it out on his son Jesus as our substitute. But God raised him from the dead on the third day, showing that that sacrifice have been accepted. And if you repent and believe, you can have forgiveness of sins and eternal life; that's the gospel. If you hear that and believe it, believe it to be true, the instant that you hear and believe, you are justified. What does that mean? Forgiven of all your sins. The righteousness of Christ is credited to your account, you're infinitely perfectly wealthy in righteousness. God sees you as having been perfectly obedient to his law, and in that righteousness, you will stand on judgement day, forgiven, blameless, and unafraid. And in that righteousness, he will welcome you into heaven. That's justification. That happens instantaneously at the beginning of the Christian life and nothing can change it.

But the Christian life doesn't end at justification. After that comes the process, the journey of sanctification. And the rules of the game are a little bit different on sanctification. Whereas, our works are not welcome in justification, we must work out our salvation day by day in sanctification. Little by little, we have to fight the good fight of faith, we have to put sin to death by the power of the Spirit. We have to learn to grow in certain areas, and that's sanctification. It's hard. And that's a big part of why we do church, it's a big part of why you come and listen to preaching; to help yourself grow in Christ, become more like Christ, that's sanctification.

And then at the end, and I've been talking to some people recently who are yearning for that day of glorification. Amen. At last, you'll be free from the struggle, you'll be delivered from all pain, you'll be delivered from all sin, and you will go and be in the presence of Almighty God forever. This happens generally in two stages. First, at death, if the Lord hasn't returned yet. If you're not part of that final generation, you will be separated from the body and you'll be ushered right into the presence of God, and you'll go worship him and you'll be free forever from sin. But you won't have your resurrection body yet, not yet. You'll be absent from the body, present with the Lord. And then, at the end of all things, the second coming of Christ, then He will raise the righteous and the wicked, and you will receive the gift of a resurrection body, and there in that body, you will praise God forever.

That's the whole salvation plan. Now you, if you're a believer in Christ, you're in the middle of the sanctification journey. The book of Galatians is written to help you. Now, one of the most common accusations about the grace, the salvation by grace message that you are justified apart from your work, has nothing to do with your works. Like the thief on the cross, his hands and feet nailed, he can't do anything, go anywhere but he can still go to heaven. What did he do to earn his salvation? Nothing. It was given to him as a gift. People say, "Well then, that means you can live however you want." It's complete lawlessness and then because you're saved, you can go to heaven? Well, people who talk like that don't really understand salvation. They don't understand what the Holy Spirit does in a believer when he comes into your life.

The moment that you're justified by faith, you receive the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Then he, Almighty God, God the Spirit, begins to take over, and begins to change things in your life. If you look at the immediate context, he's talking about the Spirit-filled life. Look at verse 16. He said, "So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the lust of the flesh." That's the Spirit-filled life, the command, "walk by the Spirit" is there, that is, live your daily life in constant dependence, active dependence by faith on the Spirit's power. Walk step by step through your day by the power of the Spirit, and if so you will not gratify the lust of the flesh. Then he explains the warfare in verse 17, "For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They're at enmity or at odds or in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want." We are divided beings, as we've talked about, schizophrenic, somewhat insane, if we can use that language, somewhat crazy. The very thing we hate, we do. The very thing we yearn to do, we do not do; that's the nature of the battle. The Holy Spirit is in us causing us to put to death the deeds of the flesh. He says in verse 18, "If you were led by the Spirit, you are not under law." The Christian life is a life of being led by the Spirit not dominated by the law. And so, we then wage war, God's way by the power of the Spirit. In Romans 8:13-14, it says, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God." What I get out of that is that every day, the Holy Spirit rouses us and gets us ready, dresses us for battle; battle against the world of flesh and the devil, and that's the nature of our sanctification battle.

"The Christian life is a life of being led by the Spirit not dominated by the law."

Now, we come to the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is the best possible life that you can live on earth. If you have these qualities constantly, consistently, I assert, you cannot live a better life than this, no matter how devastatingly bad your circumstances may be. There are many examples of this. In the book of Acts, take for example Stephen. Stephen was being stoned to death. His enemies were raging at him, blocking their ears, foaming at the mouth, clearly were going to kill him, were in the process of killing him. But do you remember how Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit? And he looked up to heaven and he saw Jesus, standing at the right hand of God, ready to welcome him. And he said, "Father, don't lay this sin against their charge." He's so filled with joy, filled... I think, he was already in heaven while he's still dying on earth. And he was just living a supernatural life in the midst of really terrible circumstances.

Or take, of course, Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail preaching the gospel after driving a demon out of a girl. The Philippians/Romans arrest them. They beat them publicly, bloodying them, shaming them, and throwing them in jail, and their feet are fastened in the stocks. They have had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, they're wounded, they're hurting, and they might even be executed the next day, and there they're praising and singing songs to Jesus. And all the other prisoners are listening to them. Or consider Paul on the deck of a heaving ship in the midst of a hurricane goes on for days and days. And they don't see any... They don't even know if it's night or day, it's so dark. And they haven't eaten anything in days. And Paul is so filled with courage and boldness, and concern for others, and trust in God, he's just characterized by the fruit of the Spirit. That's the best possible life you can live. And I would say, this is the life the world wants but it can never get. It's trying to get these things by the wrong means, circumventing God, turning away from Christ, not looking at any of the spiritual things, going after material possessions, going after worldly success. They think they're going to find the fruit of the Spirit. They wouldn't call it that but they're looking for love, they're looking for joy and peace, they're looking for satisfaction in this world. By these worldly means, they're not going to find it.

I know an individual. I don't know him personally but I know of him, who is incredibly successful in his... He was an athlete and incredibly successful. Everything he was doing, he was living at seemed the perfect life, had a mansion in which he could see the sunrise and the sunset over water. He had his own private island, an astonishing mansion, a beautiful wife, cute kids, success in everything he endeavored to do. But the whole thing was a facade because inside, he was seething with the lust of the flesh, seething with discontent, prone to fits of rage, and threw it all away. And now, his life is a shell of what it used to be. I would contend that individual needs Christ. Amen. He needs to repent and believe in Jesus. But how many non-Christians would look before all of those events and say, "Now, there's the life I want to live."

And I can imagine anyone, if they really believe this offer, the devil is here offering you that kind of life, all the wealth you could want, all the success you could want in the world, the house you could want, the family life you want. All of that but you can't have the following things: You cannot have love, you can have no joy, and no peace, and would you do it? I can't imagine anyone saying, "Yeah, I'm willing to trade away all of my happiness, and all of my love, everything, so I could have these physical things." But they don't believe it's true and they think that I can have both. I can have that worldly life and I can have all that and skip God but I can still be happy, and that's not possible. I would contend, if you have all of the wealth in the world and do not have the fruit of the Spirit, you have nothing. Conversely, if you have the fruit of the Spirit and you're being beaten, or persecuted, or rejected, you have everything.

"If you have all of the wealth in the world and do not have the fruit of the Spirit, you have nothing. Conversely, if you have the fruit of the Spirit and you're being beaten, or persecuted, or rejected, you have everything"

Friends, this is the best life there is. There is no utopia, there's no perfect society that will ever be in this world. But an individual can be so captivated by Christ, so captivated by the gospel, and so filled with the Spirit that they're living their own private paradise in the midst of very trying circumstances. And that's what the Spirit is offering to you. Now, we're right in the middle of a section, the passage we began today, began with the word "But", so you should always be suspicious of verses that begin with 'therefore', or 'but' and say, we are parachuting right in the middle, what are we looking at?

II. Review:  The Works of the Flesh (verses 19-21)

We're in the middle of a section which is contrasting the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. And we did the works of the flesh last week. Verse 19, it says, "The acts or works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, adultery and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the likes." We talked about that in detail last week, I'm not going to go over it in detail but just by way of reminder. The sin list is a diagnosis of the human heart, it's a diagnosis of the human life. We saw four groupings last week: Sins of sensuality, sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery. Sins of religion, such as sorcery and idolatry. Sins of relationships, such as enmity, strife, jealously, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissension, factions, and envy; eight of them. And then, sins of dissipated living or lack of self-control, so that's drunkenness and orgies. We said last time this list is not exhaustive, he said, "and such like" or "things like that." There are many other things besides these 15 that are listed but this is the life of the flesh. And he then gives verse 21 a terrifying warning. He said, "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

The bottom line is that the life of the Spirit kills the acts of the flesh; that's what the Spirit does. Negatively, in sanctification, these are the very things the Holy Spirit is putting to death. Now, we get to the positive aspect of the life of the Spirit or sanctification, that is what positive things does the Spirit produce, and that's this list in verse 22-23, "But by contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." These things laid side by side are in clear contrast with each other. The flesh loves those evil works and hates the fruit of the Spirit. Conversely, the Spirit hates the works of the flesh and loves to produce the fruit of the Spirit; these are the dichotomy of the Christian life versus the life of the flesh.

III. The Fruit of the Spirit (verses 22-23)

Notice also the plural versus the singular. We have the works of the flesh; plural. See that? “works.” Versus the fruit of the Spirit; singular. That's a subtle difference but I think it's worth talking about. First, the works of the flesh are spoken of as plural. They are varied and this is what I said last week, not every sinner does all of these things. It is quite possible for some sinners outside of Christ, living lives of wicked rebellion against God but avoiding certain patterns of sin that they would never do. Some extremely prideful, ambitious, vindictive power mongers in the world never touch a drop of alcohol, they never get drunk. Hitler in particular was noteworthy for being exceptionally prudish about sexual things, and extremely disciplined in his eating and drinking habits. But he was clearly prone to fits of violent rage. The works of the flesh are varied and you're not necessarily going to have all of them.

Conversely, the Spirit produces all of these things in every Christian, seeking to produce them all the time. To some degree, it's just one work of the Spirit flowering out in all of these character traits. All of these things are unfolding. It's almost like white light hitting a prism and then just going out into the spectrum, the rainbow of colors, but it's the same one white light that's coming in. The fruit of the Spirit flowers out in all of these beautiful attributes. The Spirit would never say, "Okay, tell you what, let's look at this list and we're going to divide it up. And in 2014, we're going to work on the first two, forget the rest. And then next year, every year, we're going to add two more until we get the whole list." Look, it's not a coin collection, alright? We're not trying to assemble these things. This is something that the Lord is wanting to produce in us all the time. It's a beautiful flowering of the Spirit's work. Spirit is working to conform us at every moment to Jesus Christ in every area. Furthermore, the works of the flesh…The person who does them can say “these are mine, I did them.” But the fruit of the Spirit is something we really honestly could give all glory to God for producing in us. Amen. You can look at that and say, "I am right now surprisingly characterized by love, joy, peace, and patience. I know, in other times, I would be very frustrated right now, and very irritable, and very impatient, and very mean, but instead, the Lord has got a hold of me and he is working this and to God be the glory." And so, we really can give the Holy Spirit full glory for these attributes when we see them in us.

Now, non-Christians can ape or imitate some of the fruit of the Spirit from time of time but they're intrinsically radically different between a Christian and non-Christians. Some people may have a natural disposition toward gentleness and quietness, but that doesn't mean it's the fruit of the Spirit, they may lack boldness to confront evil. Maybe, they're just quiet, mousy, sheep-like people but they're not Christians. Okay. Others may naturally be happy people, always whistling a tune, but their happiness is based on earthly circumstances and sometimes they might not be genuinely happy but just only appearing happy. Christian joy goes infinitely deeper. The Spirit works all of these attributes in Christians to the depth of our being and increases them gradually more and more over a period of time. Be patient and yearn for them. Set this list in front of you and pray over it and say, "Lord produce this in me. I yearn 10 years from now to be more characterized by this list than I am right now. Ten years from now, oh Lord, I want to be more patient than I am now." Someone once said that you never want to pray for God to work patience in you. You know how He works patience in you, right? He's going to bring afflictions and troubles in your life and say, "Okay, see how impatient you are?" That's the journey on working patience but you should yearn for them. You should say, "I want 10 years from now to be much more characterized by all of these things than I am now."

What I want to do is go through them just word by word and just talk about them briefly. Obviously, each one of these, we can preach a full sermon on. But I want to just give some descriptions, so we can understand them, and of course, it begins with love. The fruit of the Spirit is love. This is the greatest of all human attributes or character traits. Says in 1 Corinthians 13:13, "And now, these three remain: Faith, hope, and love but the greatest of these is love." Says in Colossians 3:14, "Over all of these virtues, put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity." Love as we know is the perfect summation of God's law. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Love sums up God's law. In one sense, we could say, love is all you really need. But God has still, through the Apostle Paul, given us the other words too. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, general self-control, those things describe and unfold what that love is like. I think the whole list is needed.

Fruit of the Spirit: Love

What is love? Love is a disposition of the soul, a heart attraction towards something. You are attracted. The heart, the human heart has the ability like a magnet to be attracted to or repulsed from anything in the universe. When we are converted, we are suddenly, supernaturally, by the power of God, transformed, rearranged, so that we are now attracted to God above all things, and to Christ, and to the word of God, and all of these things. And now, we hate sin, and evil, and darkness. That's been the re-orientation that has happened in us. It's the attraction of the heart toward something or someone. Now, I would say, biblical love, just practically ethically, biblical love is heart attraction for a person leading to sacrificial action. Attraction leading to action, those two together, that's what love is. Without the one or the other, it isn't Biblical love. Our hearts are drawn toward an individual. We want what's best for them, we are yearning for them to know the joy of salvation even if they're prosecuting us like Stephen. We are yearning that they not be condemned for that sin but we want them to be in heaven, so we're drawn out to the person even if they're our enemies. We want what's right for them and then we're willing to make sacrificial actions for them. Without the heart attraction, it isn't love. If you give all you possess to the poor and you surrender your body to the flames but do it in an unloving manner, if you don't have a heart attraction toward the person, you gain nothing. But conversely, it says in 1 John 3, "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." Biblical love work by the Spirit is my heart is knit together with another person, and then I am moved to sacrifice time, or energy, or money, or something to help them. That's what Biblical love is.

"When we are converted, we are suddenly,..., transformed, rearranged, so that we are now attracted to God above all things, and to Christ, and to the word of God, and all of these things. And now, we hate sin, and evil, and darkness."

Love is the chief work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the Christian, and that's what distinguishes us from demons, alright? Demons know all kinds of things about God but they don't love God, right? They've got all the theology down, they know the Bible, they've got it memorized, but they shudder. Demons shudder, and they hate God. We don't shudder. We love God, we delight in him, we yearn for him, and in the same way, delight in other Christians. It says in 1 John 4:21, "Whoever loves God must also love his brother." And we love also righteousness and hate wickedness. We love God's word, we love the truth. We love to hear about people being converted. Amen. We love to hear stories of gospel success. This is the fruit of the Spirit, love.

Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

Secondly, joy. Joy is an emotion, a feeling of happiness. Now, some of you are going to come and say, "Now, pastor, there's a big difference between joy and happiness." We've been through this before, joy and happiness, the difference between the two. I don't know how you can feel the difference in the feelings between joy and happiness. What I want to say is, the whole thing is, what's the basis of the happy feeling? If the basis of the happy feeling is something worldly and temporal, then it's just a temporary joy, like all non-Christians feel, and there's nothing wrong with it. The happiness that comes from eating food that you like or seeing beautiful scenery, or something that happens in your life that you're happy about, etcetera, those things are valid feelings. Now, we as Christians can give thanks to God for them and then they become acts of worship. For us, we have infinite and eternal reasons to be happy. We have eternal reasons for joy and that's something that the Holy Spirit works in us. Joy is a deep-seated happiness in God and in the things of God, the promises of God, the achievements of God, the truth of God. It makes us happy. It's an experience of pleasure, experience of delight. And I think it's mixed in with peace and no anxiety. It's just a peaceful happiness.

Christian joy is infinitely better than worldly joy because it's focused on better things, on better promises. We feel joy in God's reign over the earth, and over Christ's resurrection victory. We feel joy over the salvation of other people through the Gospel. Jesus is the ultimate joy giver, isn't he? I traced through the Gospel of Luke and just saw all the different ways that I could find that Jesus produced joy in people. It started when Jesus had first been conceived. Just six months after his cousin John was conceived in his mother Elizabeth, and Jesus' mother Mary went to Elizabeth, you remember? And Mary greeted Elizabeth, and John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother's womb just to be in the presence of the recently conceived Jesus. Jesus is the joy giver. And then, Mary herself cries out at that time, "My soul glorifies the Lord and my Spirit, what, rejoices in God my Savior." Jesus is the joy giver.

And then, the angel comes the night Jesus is born and he announces to the shepherds out in the dark in hillside. He says, the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the City of David, a savior has been born for you, he is Christ the Lord." Great joy for all the people. Jesus' teaching on persecution even he said, "When they persecute you, rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way, they persecuted the prophets before you." You should leap for joy. And then, the 72 get sent out on mission and they come back after they've done all the supernatural work. And the 72 returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." They're just so happy at what God is doing by the name of Jesus. And Jesus replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." And then he said, "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and overcome all the power of the enemy, nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Rejoice that your name is written in heaven.

And then, at that time, Jesus full of joy through the Holy Spirit said, "I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth." Jesus was teaching in John 15 about how God the Father rejoices over the salvation of a single sinner. He talked about how the shepherd found one sheep that wandered off and brought it back and he was filled with joy at that. And He said, "I tell you, in the same way, there's more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent." But no joy was like the joy that Jesus gave at the resurrection. How sweet was that? Remember when Jesus was raised from the dead and they had heard stories about the empty tomb, stories that the women had brought back and all of that, and then finally, he appears before them. And they can't understand what's happening. And it says, "When they still did not believe it," listen, "because of joy and amazement," that's the ultimate example in the Bible of something too good to be true but is too good not to be true. I mean, He has risen from the dead. And he said, "Do you have anything to eat here?" And he eats some and he said, "Look, a Spirit or a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you see I have." And then, when he was ascended into heaven at the end of the gospel, while he is blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven, then they rejoiced and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, says one gospel. You can go through the other 65 books of the Bible and find how God brings joy. But how sweet is that Jesus, the Holy Spirit draws your heart close to a contemplation of Christ and fills you with joy.

Joy is a celebration, a deep-seated happiness, and it's going to characterize our eternity in heaven. It's happiness. It's like when your team wins a championship, only better. It's when you graduate, only it's better than that. It's when you meet the love of your life and you actually get married but it's better than that. It's when the two of you welcome your firstborn into your family but it's better than that. It's better than any earthly thing you can ever experience but it's like it. All of those little pockets of happiness, put them all in one big pool and drink from it and you haven't touched anything yet compared to what your heavenly joy is going to be like. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Now, I think Christians should be characterized by joy. Don't say to me, "I'm joyful but I'm just not very happy today." That doesn't make any sense to me. If you can parse out the difference between joy and happiness, come and tell me, but I don't understand somebody who's telling me, they're joyful but they're just not very happy today. We can have an incredible experience of joy even in the midst of deep suffering, sorrowful sometimes, yes, but always rejoicing.

Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

Thirdly, peace. What is peace? It's the sense of peace and tranquility because we are in a right relationship with God. Having been justified with God, justified by faith, we have peace with God. God is not at war with you anymore. God's not your enemy, He's at peace with you and therefore, we can have an experience, a feeling of peacefulness in our lives. This is the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit can give you peacefulness. It says in Philippians 4, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your request to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

That's peacefulness, a feeling of tranquility based on your faith and your knowing that the God who loves you, your Father who has adopted you, is sitting on a sovereign throne over the universe, and all is well with your world. And you don't need to be afraid of anything, you don't need to be anxious, you don't need to be afraid of anything. The peace of the Holy Spirit, it's a gift, a fruit of the Spirit. And it extends to peacefulness with other people. You're just peaceful with other people. You feel a feeling of peace with them. You're not squabbling with them. Remember the acts of the flesh: Discord, jealousy, fits of Rage, those kind, that's not happening. In a healthy Christian relationship, in a healthy Church, it's characterized by peacefulness, not by strife and conflict.

Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

Fourthly, patience, also translated long-suffering. Why would I want that? Because in this world, you will have trouble, dear friends. In this world, you will have trouble. God must use afflictions to shape you and train you. You must have pain, and without that pain, you can't grow. Pain is temporary, it's not going to be in heaven, but it's useful now, and so you need long-suffering. Greek word is Macrothumia. Long-suffering, you're waiting for a long time, humble and patient, and waiting for God to bring about what you're asking him. You're praying to him and you're crying out to him for alleviation of the pain that you're going through, but you're waiting humble under his hand. You're waiting for him to answer your prayers. You're not chafing, you're not murmuring, you're not questioning him, instead you're waiting patiently. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, you're waiting on him.

Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness & Goodness

Fifthly, we have kindness. Kindness is a trait of active goodness, mingled with gentleness, there's definitely overlap in these traits. Kindness is sweet, and humble, and quiet, and loving, and good. And if you don't know what kindness is, and goodness is, my daughter was talking to me this week about goodness. What does that mean, the fruit of the Spirit is goodness? What is that? And the only way I could really answer that is say, look at Jesus, look how he was. Remember the leper that came up to him? And said, "Lord if you're willing, you can make me clean." And Jesus says with this just kindness and tenderness, says, "I am willing. Be clean." And he reaches out and touches him. That's goodness. It's just flowing from the goodness and the love of God. Remember how Moses, set up in the mountain, and said, "Now, show me your glory." And God said, "I will cause all of my goodness to pass in front of you."

That kindness and goodness, that's just of the nature, the essence of God. I think about the widow at Nain, whose only son had died. And Jesus comes while the funeral procession is carrying this now deceased young man out. And Jesus stops the procession and goes up to the woman and says, "don't cry." That's kindness. We're living in an increasingly unkind culture. Have you noticed that? It's just amazing the unkindness. The sharp words, the harsh words, the prideful things, that should not characterize us. Kindness and goodness, rather, should characterize us.

Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness

Seventh, we have faith or faithfulness. Some translators go one way, some another. The fruit of the Spirit is faith. The ability to trust in God to believe him for his promises. That's possible, but I think it's more likely. The fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness on your part, that you'll be a person who keeps his or her promises. That you are committed to what you're committed to. You're going to let your yes be yes and your no, no. You are trustworthy in the Christian life.

Fruit of the Spirit: Gentleness

Gentleness, gentleness like kindness, like goodness, the sweet attribute of meekness, and humility, and mildness, it's based on humility. There's a gentleness like a spring breeze is blowing on your face. There's a gentleness to a Spirit-filled Christian. They're not harsh and astringent. They're not angry sounding, they're gentle. There's a gentleness like Jesus said, "A bruised reed he will not break, in a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out." He's so gentle with bruised sinners, and He's able to deal gently with us. He says, "Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am [What does he say?] gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls." The Holy Spirit can make you gentle, truly gentle.

Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control

And then finally, self-control. The last two acts of the flesh were drunkenness and orgies, lack of self-control in those areas. The last fruit of the Spirit mentioned here is self-control. With self-control, a person knows when to stop, they know when to stop. They don't talk too much, they don't eat too much, they don't sleep too much, they don't get addicted to the honey of life. They eat a little honey because it's sweet, but they don't eat so much, they vomit. They know when to stop, there's self-controlled people by the power of the Spirit. They're living orderly balanced lives by the power of the Spirit.

Now, the power of the fruit of the Spirit is a cumulative effect. He's producing all of these in us. The love that is joyful and also peaceful, while at the same time patient, kind toward others, good to the core of its being, faithful to all promises, gentle like a mild summer breeze, and self-controlled in the face of a world of temptations. And these qualities, these character traits in us, grow and grow as we walk by the Spirit. So 10, 20, 30 years down the line, you are more consistently characterized by these attributes. Now, Paul says in verse 23, "Against such things, there is no law." You could say at one translation would be, these things aren't illegal. Which is really humorous, when you think about, how could these things be illegal? But you think, where Christianity is illegal and all that, there are brothers and sisters that are living out this kind of life and that's not illegal. But I think, more it's the law doesn't forbid these things. We're saying to the Galatians, you, who are trying to live by the law, guess what? The law is not against these things, but the law can't produce them. The law can't make these things happen to you, the Spirit can. Hallelujah! The Spirit has the power to produce these things in us.

IV. The Changed Status:  We Live by the Spirit, Have Crucified the Flesh (verses 24-25)

Now, we have a changed status. Look at verses 24-25, we live by the Spirit and we have crucified the flesh. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires, and we live by the Spirit. We've made a decisive break, we are done with the old nature. Sin has no mastery over us. We are in a whole new relationship with God, and we have the power now to live by the Spirit and not do these deeds of the flesh.

"We are in a whole new relationship with God, and we have the power now to live by the Spirit and not do these deeds of the flesh."

V. The Final Exhortation:  Walk by the Spirit in Community (verses 25-26)

He gives them a final exhortation, verse 25-26, "Since we lived by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited or arrogant, provoking and envying one another." The Holy Spirit is drumming out a beat in your life. And he's your drill instructor, and you need to get in behind him and march with him. And He's going to be telling you left, right, left, right. We're walking by the Spirit like it says in verse 16. Since we're walking by the Spirit, let us keep in step with what the Spirit says.

In Isaiah, it says in Isaiah 30:21, "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it." And the Spirit is going to direct you how to live this kind of life that pleases God. And at the center of this is harmonious Christian community. Let's not be arrogant. Don't ever look at another person in this church and feel boastful or arrogant toward them. Don't ever be conceited toward this other person, ever. You are a sinner saved by Grace, so don't be arrogant and don't be conceited, and don't envy another person. Don't look and say, "I wish I had what she had. I wish I have what he had". Don't do that and don't provoke each other, as they were doing. Instead, let's live a life of love together in community.

VI. Applications

Just want to finish by giving a couple of exhortation. The whole sermon really has been application. But I want to begin this final word to you in this chapter, by pleading with you to come to Christ. I don't know where you're at, I don't know all of you. All I know is, I want all of you to be in heaven with me. I want you to be in heaven celebrating God's grace in your life. And I don't know if you're a believer. If I know you well and I've seen you walk, I know you're a Christian. But there's a lot of people I don't even recognize here. Can I plead with you, don't leave this place unconverted. You've heard the Gospel from me several times this morning. Look to Christ crucified and resurrected. Trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins. You can't live this Christian life without believing in Jesus. This is all of it after justification.

But having been justified, now I am speaking to you Christians, set the fruit of the Spirit in front of you constantly as a matter for prayer. Say, "God, produce in me by the Spirit these attributes." Husbands, look at this list and say, if you have the courage to say to your wife, "Honey, would you say that this consistently characterizes me?" It may be that she'll tell you the truth. And maybe you need to grow and say, and I don't think she'd like anything better than for you to say, "I want to be a year from now much more consistently characterized by the fruit of the Spirit than I am. Would you pray for that for me?" "Oh I'd be glad to. I'd be delighted to pray for that for you." But she should humbly ask the same question of you. Would you say that these characterizes me? You are given to each other in marriage to help each other grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ, so help each other. And do that in the fellowship, brothers with brothers, sisters with sisters in Christ. Help each other. Set this in front of you and use it as a diagnostic free stream. If something is going on at work, just run through the Fruit of the Spirit, and see if it describes you. And if the answer is no, don't blame your boss. It's not your boss fault. Repent and say, "Lord, I have strayed from this, this is not who I want to be. Bring me back. Forgive me, forgive me from my anger, my pride, my irritability. Make me a godly man, make me a godly woman."

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study this incredible text. I pray that you would enrich our lives now. Empower us, help us to be characterized by the fruit of the Spirit. I pray these people walk through the winding path of our lives as we did at Monticello, that people would be able to smell the aroma of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and praise God for how we're living, in Jesus name, Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Galatians 5:16-18, and our dependency on the Holy Spirit to equip us for daily spiritual warfare.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT  - 

Turn in your Bibles to Galatians 5:16-18. We're going to be looking for a second week at Galatians 5:16-18. And I was just thinking about how we were right in the middle of the sermon last week, and just ran out of time. So we are just picking it right back up again.  I was thinking about a hero in the Bible we know very little about, and he is in the last verse in Judges chapter 3, a man named Shamgar who followed Ehud. We know nothing about but we know this, he killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad. Now I don't know what an ox goad is, but I think it's a sharpened stick. I'm thinking what kind of man do you need to be to kill 600 Philistines with a sharpened stick? And then there's another question, how do you do it? And I think the answer must be one at a time. Then I must think that these Philistines have got to be the stupidest warriors in history; seven or eight of them jump this guy, it's over. But then I picture this in my mind and always and I want to go to Christ, and I think Jesus fulfilled that image for me.

Jesus is the warrior who took on in His life every single temptation that Satan threw at him and killed them all. They laid dead at His feet. He lived a perfectly holy life, and now we by the Spirit can sit at His feet, this great champion who is Jesus, and we are asking him, "Teach us to be warriors for You, O Lord." Do you realize how many warfare images there are in the Old Testament? There are so many. And many of us, just perhaps many of you, are not all that interested in military history. Others of you very interested like myself.  But some of you may be wondering why so many battles, why so much killing? Why so much warfare?

Abraham had to fight a war to rescue his nephew Lot, you remember? Right on through the book of Joshua, it's just one battle after another, and Judges one battle after another. And then once you get into the era of the Kings it's just one invasion and one battle after another. Sometimes they went one way, sometimes another. But why so much warfare? And there's a lot of reasons for that but I think one of them is to teach us in the New Covenant we are at war and we need to fight, and teaches us how to fight.

I think that's one answer, and I think as I read the pages of these warriors in the past, how they fought, how they relied on God and won, how they did not rely on God and lost. There are so many lessons for me in the warfare I find myself in today and that all of you do as well. So as we plunge right in here into these three key verses, I want to remind you of the things we've already said. The Apostle Paul is writing in this Book of Galatians about the doctrine of salvation, how it is a sinner is made right with God, and I'm not going to go over by way of review, but these false teachers were saying that salvation from sin is a combination of faith in Jesus plus obedience to the laws of Moses, and Paul said that is no gospel at all. And he just unfolds how we are not justified by works of the Law but faith in Christ alone. We come to the Galatians five and Paul sums it all up saying, "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." And so we are to fight against anything that would enslave us. Now the immediate context was we will not be enslaved by false gospels that teach legalism; we will not be enslaved by legalism.

We will break all of those chains of legalism. We will know that our sins will never be forgiven by what we do, never. We are forgiven by what Christ did, amen? By His works of righteousness and specifically by His work on the cross we are freed from our sin, from the guilt of our sins. Now we have said again and again and I don't think I can say it too much, salvation from sin comes to us in stages. None of us who are here in the flesh now, none of us is fully saved. We're not done being saved. There's yet more salvation work to be done on us. The first stage of salvation as it comes to us, is justification. What does that mean? It means the act by which the judge of all the earth, the sovereign God of all the universe declares you a sinner, not guilty in His sight, righteous in His sight.

A simple word for it is forgiveness, that we are forgiven by faith in Christ alone. Now at the moment of justification, we become adopted sons and daughters of the living God and that will never change. And we receive the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption by which we cry out "Abba, Father." Having been justified by faith we are then launched out into a life of working out salvation, of gradual steady growth in Christ-likeness called sanctification. And the rules of the game, if we can use that language, are different than justification. Whereas our works were not welcome in justification, they are essential to sanctification. We must work or we will not grow. Now we work in a certain way, we work by the power of the Spirit, we work with the solid rock or justification under our feet. We work understanding all the time that we are forgiven, we are not guilty, but we must work. And we will battle sin and we're at war. We're going to talk about all that again today but that leads finally to glorification, the final act of the salvation drama for an individual is glorification.

"Having been justified by faith we are then launched out into a life of working out salvation, of gradual steady growth in Christ-likeness called sanctification. "

Glorification happens generally in two stages. Two stages, if we're not the final generation, it'll happen for you in two stages. First at death, when your soul is separated from your body, your body will go to corruption in the grave but your soul will be instantaneously perfected by the sovereign grace of God and you will never again sin. Isn't that awesome? I'm yearning for that more and more, I'm yearning for that moment but that's not finished because God willed for us to be in bodies, he willed for us human beings to live in physical bodies and so the final act of our salvation, is the resurrection from the dead. At the second coming of Christ, we will be raised up incorruptible and we will be in resurrection bodies as glorious as Jesus's body and that is it, that's the finish line for you. Now we're right smacked up in the middle, if you are a Christian today you're listening to me, you are in the middle of your sanctification struggle or battle or journey. There's a lot of different ways we can talk about it and these verses, I hope, will help you in that battle. I believe it's my ministry, as Jesus said to Peter "feed my sheep," I want to feed you and nourish you for your battle this week. I want you to get ready for your battle, I want you to get ready for warfare, so by way of review, last time we talked about a command in verse 16.

The Apostle Paul said to the Galatian Christians, "So I say, walk by the Spirit" or "live by the Spirit," The Holy Spirit we talked about. The Holy Spirit is the sovereign power behind your sanctification progress. He is as essential to your sanctification as Jesus to your justification, without Jesus you cannot be justified, without the Spirit you cannot be sanctified. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, we see right away in the second verse of the Bible hovering over the waters of the deep and he comes and actually dwells inside of you the moment you become a Christian and there he lives with you forever, he will never leave you.

Now we are begun by the Spirit, we are not then perfected by the flesh. We, by the Spirit, seek to make progress and sanctification. The command here in verse 16 is to walk or to live your daily life by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we came last week to the incomprehensible mystery, the difficult mystery of God's power and our effort. How do they go together? How do we understand those two? In justification they don't go together, In glorification they will not go together, you will do nothing to glorify yourself, and you did nothing to justify yourself. It is justification by faith alone apart from works. It is glorification by God's sovereign power apart from works. But in between these two, we have works and you must work.

Now they're two wrong extremes, we do everything versus we do nothing, we do everything is sheer legalism, that's the very thing that we've been against this entire epistle. You are on your own, there's the standard, now live it. But we already know we can't do that. We have seen that again and again, that is not what sanctification is all about. But on the other side, neither is it true that we do nothing. We're not going to be taken to heaven on a flowery beds of ease. It is not true that if you are striving and struggling you are out of God's will.

There might be an individual who's been struggling, let's say with internet pornography and for the first time he's convicted, and for the first time he's putting up a fight and he's struggling, that's the first indication of sanctification in that area, he's struggling. Now the Keswick theology holiness, this “let go and let God” thing that says, "Cease striving and know that I'm God," and if you're striving and working you're not doing it right. That is just completely wrong. We talked about that last time, instead we are told to make an extreme effort in a Christian life. Many verses teach this, many.

I. Obey the Command:  Walk by the Spirit (verse 16)

Just the grammatical nature of verse 16, we're being commanded by Paul to walk by the Spirit. We have a command right in front of there something we must do. We must walk by the Spirit. There are other verses that are even clearer than this. 1 Corinthians 9, “Don't you know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize, run so you may win. Now everyone who competes in those games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, [says Paul] I don't run like a man running aimlessly, I don't fight like a man beating the air, I beat my body and make it my slave, lest after I've preached to others I myself may be disqualified for the prize.” That's hard running.

You remember the movie "Chariots Of Fire"? I love that movie. There are so many great illustrations from that movie, but there this one moment which the Jewish runner Harold Abrahams, is called in to these two men, these older men who are frustrated by how diligently he's training. Remember that scene? They're having tea together and with a very aristocratic kind of feel they say to him, "You've been acting like a tradesman, you need to act like the elite. If you're going to a run, run like the elite," meaning without severe training. And Harold Abrahams says, "You know, you yearn for a victory attained with the seeming effortlessness of Gods, it's not how it's going to be, effortless." So I'm just totally ripping that off and applying it right here alright, you're not going to just coast into sanctification. You're not going to just coast into the Heaven. You've got to run this race. And it's going to take everything you have to succeed.

And as I've thought about this, it occurs me, God wants the war. He wants the struggle, he wants the valor, He wants the courage, He wants you to serve him, when it's hard. There's some things we can do here on earth that can't do in Heaven and one of them is suffer, and He wants us to suffer for His glory. He's greatly glorified when we suffer and trust Him and get through some very difficult temptation and kill it. He's glorified by that. And He wants us to glorify Him. So, you folks will have just countless, probably among all of you, thousands of opportunities this week to glorify God by putting sin to death. And He wants you to do it. It is to His glory to do it. And so you need as Paul said at the end of his life, "I've fought the good fight, I've finished the race, I've kept the faith, now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord will award to me." He wants you to do that. He wants you to run your race now, He wants you to fight your fight, He wants you finish this race and He wants you to keep the faith and continue believing in Jesus.

However, you must know that all of that is done only by the power of the Spirit, only by the Spirit, never independently. And so key harmonizing verse we looked at last time Philippians 2:12-13 says "Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose." So God by the Spirit is working inside you to will it, he wants you to will it so that you want holiness, and then to do it. But you are called on to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. There's hard work involved and it's not easy. Now I want you to take a minute and we're going to be working back and forth between these three verses, Galatians 5:16-18 and Romans 6-8, those three chapters. This is like a kind of a quick charcoal sketch on mortification, sanctification. The full treatise is unfolded in Romans 6-8. And so if you really want to understand sanctification, if you want to understand mortification, that is putting sin to death, really Romans 6-8 gives you the comprehensive teaching. This is just some quick statements that Paul makes in Galatians but the fuller treatise is in Romans.

If you want to hear how I preached through Romans 6, 7, 8 they're online. You can listen to them and I will commend some of them to you. We went through that over a long period of time and so I would urge you to go back and listen. But the key verse for me in Romans, is Romans 8:13-14. We're going to be looking at this a little bit this morning in conjunction with Galatians. But there in Romans 8:13-14 it says "For if you live according to the flesh you will die." Now, I just believe in context that means "Go to Hell." Not just that you'll die physically. I think it means you're not a Christian. If you live according to the flesh you will die, you will perish. "But if, by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." In my mind I read that, "Live eternally," go to Heaven. So this is just two different ways to live. Life of the flesh, life of the Spirit. Those are just two different ways to live. "Because," Romans 8:14, "those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." And you could again put in your mind “these and only these.” These are the only ones who are the true children of God. So genuine Christians are at war against the deeds of the flesh or the misdeeds of the body.

"These are the only ones who are the true children of God. So genuine Christians are at war against the deeds of the flesh or the misdeeds of the body."

So again, just keep your finger there or bookmark or whatever and then just go back to Galatians 5. What do we mean by this, the deeds of the flesh? They're listed for us and we'll go there, God willing, in our next few weeks, Galatians 5:19-21, "The acts of the flesh are obvious: Sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like." And then that's why I say if you're living that life, he says very plainly "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like that will not inherit the kingdom of God."

So it is not the case that if you have prayed a prayer and claim to be a Christian and then you're living however you want and these words characterize how you're living that you're fine, "Once saved always saved" and you're going to Heaven, that is not true. It is not true that justification means you can sin as much as you want and go to Heaven. That is not the Christian life. If you're truly justified, the warrior God, Holy Spirit comes within you and he starts to war against these things. He hates them and he will fight them. And if that warfare's going on and you're being led by the Spirit, you're a child of God.

So every single day what that means is, every single day the Holy Spirit gets you up, gets you dressed and sends you into battle. He doesn’t send you alone, he's with you, he never leaves you or forsakes you, but he is with you. Alright, so that's all by way of review. And it's beautiful we are not passive in this, in this warfare, neither are we abandoned in it, amen. Not passive and not abandoned. Spirit is with us and we have to fight.

II. Believe the Promise:  You Will Not Gratify the Lusts of the Flesh (verse 16)

Alright so secondly, believe the promise. You will not gratify the loss of the flesh. Look at the whole statement, "but I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." So what Paul's saying here is the direct result of walking by the Spirit is success. You won't gratify the loss of the flesh. These two are diametrically opposed, as we'll see. There is a 100% success rate for everyone filled with the Spirit in facing temptation. Every time you're filled with the Spirit and temptation comes, you will win. Okay? The Spirit is completely effective in enabling us to live holy lives. Of course he is, he's God, he's the Sovereign Spirit. Again from the Judges, think about Samson. Remember when that young lion jumped on Samson and he threw it off and ripped it apart? Says in Judges 14:6 "The Spirit of the Lord, rushed upon him in power. So that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat." We were actually joking about this the other day, how do you tear young goats?  But I think we know what he meant. I personally never torn a young goat. But you could imagine it's easier to tear apart a young goat than it is a young lion. And Samson, it was the same either way. He was able to kill this lion who came on him by the power of the Spirit, the Spirit rushed upon him and he won. So it is with us in temptation, amen? The devil is like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. You resist him standing firm in the Spirit and you will win.

That's what we're saying. So we have this promise, we have to believe it, it's a sweet promise. It's also convicting and a diagnosis after sin. Temptation comes on you, you yield, you sin, you violate your conscience, you know you have sinned. You know you weren't in the Spirit. You didn't by the Spirit put to death, it wasn't like you tried and didn't work. You were not at that moment controlled by the Spirit, that's what we know, just in after the fact.

III. Expect Constant Warfare:  Flesh vs. Spirit (verse 17)

Thirdly, expect constant warfare, flesh versus Spirit. Look at verse 17, "For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit, what it desires, is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other, so that you not do what you want." Now we come to the issue of this word, "flesh." What do we mean by the flesh? And what are the lusts of the flesh? Well, the word "flesh" is very interesting. It's not just used in this one sense, and that's what makes it a little bit difficult. The flesh sometimes refers to just a physical body like the soft tissue, your organs, your muscles, your circulatory system, your tendons, nerves as opposed to bone. So flesh and bone together makes up the body. I'm not being really technical here but this is just how the Bible uses the term in that sense.

And there's nothing intrinsically sinful or wicked about it. We're not dualists, saying that physical stuff is evil, we are not saying that. Actually it says in John 1:14, the word Jesus, became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And so Jesus became human, became physical, and there's nothing wrong with that. And not only that, but after His resurrection, He became flesh again. Now, He was in a resurrection body but he still uses the same terminology. When they didn't believe what they were seeing in Luke, they couldn't understand, they were just so amazed and filled with joy but still not sure what they were seeing. Jesus said this, "Look at my hands and my feet, it is I Myself, touch me and see. A ghost, doesn't have [listen] flesh and bones as you see I have." That's in His resurrection body, uses the same word flesh. So the word flesh generally just means that muscles... And beasts have the flesh. You can eat the flesh of this or that.

It was by Jesus's physical body, his flesh, that our sins were atoned for. In Colossians 1, Paul is writing to dualists who tended to deny the value or the benefit of things physical and to deny that Jesus even came physically. He said, no, He came physically and not only that, it was by his physical body dying on the cross that your sins were atoned for. Colossians 1:22 "He's reconciled you by his physical body." Now, what does the word flesh then mean here? What does it mean? Well, let me just give you a simple way of understanding it. Do you see lists of the acts of that flesh? Do you see that list? In Galatians 5:19-21 "The acts of the flesh are obvious, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed." That whole list. The flesh is that internal part of you that produces that. That whole list, that's what the flesh is.

I don't know what it is, but it produces that list of sins. Now, the NIV, generally translates flesh in this sense, sinful nature. Sinful nature. So that's that part of you that's inside of you, that makes you do evil rebellious things contrary to the law of God. Now, a clear description of the flesh, the clearest description is in Romans again, Romans 7. So if you're still in that region, you can look at Romans 7. And verses 14-20 in general, talk about... I don't have time to read through it all, but what Paul says is, "The very thing I want to do, I do not do, but the thing I hate, I do. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it but it is sin living in me that does it." So that's... I think that's flesh. Indwelling sin, sin living in you that does it, the internal sin nature. Now, why is the word flesh so closely related to the body? Why does Paul choose this to talk about that sinful nature? Well I think it's because the body is a seat of sin. It's also a vessel for serving God. We can't serve him without our bodies in this world. So that's why Paul says he beats his body, makes it a slave, rather than just killing his body, because if he killed his body, he's commit suicide, he'd be out of this world, couldn't serve Jesus in this world.

So the body is... It's good and bad. It's a vehicle for serving God but it has to be watched very closely. Why is that? Paul uses other terminology in Romans such as "body of sin," and "body of death." And it's linked to the bodily drives. And this is what I think happens, in Adam, in sin, the sinful nature, indwelling sin hijacks normal physical things and pushes them beyond boundaries set by God into sin. It pushes you. A normal good bodily desire pushes it into something that's evil. So, the desire to be loved becomes the drive to be worshipped and esteemed. Like the devil wanted Jesus to fall down and worship him. We are like that. We want to be worshipped. The desire to eat, becomes a drive toward gluttony. The desire to drink, a drive toward drunkenness. The desire for sexual pleasure, becomes the drive towards sexual immorality of many kinds. Fornication, adultery, homosexuality, promiscuity, pornography, all of these things are displays of the flesh. We’ll talk more about it next week.

The desire for pleasure of any type, soft clothes, comfortable living arrangements, well-crafted automobile, or wrist watch, becomes materialism and pleasure-seeking, yearning for only the best and luxury. It's what the flesh does. The desire for productive labor becomes a drive toward workaholicism, seeking the praise of others for the excellence of the work that you do. The love for any created thing, any beautiful thing, any good thing in this world can become idolatry. You can make an idol of a spouse or a child, or a friend. You can make an idol of any good thing that you experience in this world. The desire for rest and refreshment becomes a drive towards self-indulgent laziness. So, you become the sluggard of the Book of Proverbs. Just living for sleep. You can never get enough sleep. That's what the flesh does and I can go on.

The flesh takes normal bodily functions and pushes them beyond boundaries that God set up. These are therefore the lusts of the flesh. The Greek word lust has to do with an overpowering desire, magnetic pull consuming your thoughts. The lust of the flesh flow from the mind of the flesh which is described very clearly in Romans 8:5-8. "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." It's a thinking pattern. Romans chapter 8. Now, the verse says in verse 17, "The lusts of the flesh are set against the desires of the Spirit. The flesh desires or lusts for what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you do not do what you want." The same Greek word is used for desires in reference to both the flesh and the Spirit. Same one. Now, generally the drives or desires of the flesh, we use the word lust. We usually don't use that word for the Spirit. We don't say the Spirit lusts for certain things but it is the same Greek word.

Strong desire. So, where the flesh has a strong desire for these sins, the Spirit has a strong desire for the fruit of the Spirit in your life. He yearns for your holiness. He's jealous over you and yearns for your holiness. So there's this strong desire. The Spirit yearns to produce Christ likeness in us in the pattern of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generous, faithfulness, self control. He yearns to produce those in you. And the flesh hates those things and yearns that they not be in your life. Conversely, the flesh yearns for that list of sins and the Spirit hates them all and is fighting against that list in your life. So, some examples. The Spirit moves in you to pray, it's time to pray. It's time for warfare, you know what I'm talking about. Especially the longer it goes on, alright, you get down on your knees and begin your time of prayer. You start lifting up your hands, you're praying, you're interceding for others. You get the church phone list, please get the phone list, pray for other brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for each other. Please do that, not just the elders need to do that. Pray for each other. Get the phone list, take a page pray through it. Pray for five people everyday. Just pray though that list. So, you're praying and as it goes on, the flesh starts to rise. Has that ever happened to you? Happens to me all the time. Flesh starts to rise, your mind starts to wander. You start to be anxious about the things you need to get done. Financial pressures start coming in, other issues, temptations start coming in, you're at war. The Spirit wants you to keep praying, wants you to put up the shield of faith. He wants you keep staying on your knees, forget about the pain in your lower back. You older people know what I'm talking about. Not worrying about the fact that you're not getting much circulation to your lower legs. Forget it, shift around a bit, alright but you're at war.

"Where the flesh has a strong desire for these sins, the Spirit has a strong desire for the fruit of the Spirit in your life. He yearns for your holiness. He's jealous over you and yearns for your holiness."

The Spirit wants us to go on a short-term mission trip. You have the idea of it but then immediately some ideas start flooding in. And you start to be anxious about fundraising. Anxious about the travel, anxious about the weird foods you're going to... Sorry, the multicultural different foods you're going to be eating. And you don't know what is going to happen and you start being anxious and then you don't want to do it. And it's a war. The Spirit wants us to evangelize. You know what a war this is. He's leading you, prompting you to share the gospel with your boss at work. And the flesh doesn't want to do that, and there's this war back and forth. Everything's a struggle. The Spirit wants us to attend church and be active in church life. Use your spiritual gifts, have a ministry. So, simply just going to church can be a war for some people. Just going to church, and you know you want to be there but there's just that desire for maybe a day off, it won't matter... And you're at war. It's going all the time. The Spirit wants us to be generous with our money and give to the church, and give to missions, and give to the poor and needy, and he wants us to do that but the flesh wars against it and stops it.

Conversely, the flesh, as I said, has a program for you as well. Read about it in verses 19-21. That's what the flesh wants, and the Spirit hates those things and wants them all dead. So you may ask "Is bitter warfare guaranteed for the rest of my earthly life?", what is the answer? Yes. Absolutely. The only way to escape it is to be taken out of this world by Jesus, either by death or the second coming, that's the only way your warfare will end. It says it right there, "They are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want," so you've got to battle. And so as it is, while we live, we will always be deeply conflicted and deeply divided. Look what it says at the very end of verse 17, it says they are in conflict, the flesh and the Spirit are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want. So I've just taken that, I'm going to absolutize it.

Christians are never wholehearted in anything we do, ever. We don't wholeheartedly serve God, and we don't wholeheartedly sin, ever. It's true. There's something holding you back at every moment when you're serving Jesus. It's like running through waist-high water with a parachute behind you. Or like, for me yesterday on my bike ride, riding for at least 4/5th of that ride though, I was on a circular route, I know I went uphill out and uphill on the way back. And you think "How can that be?" I don't know, but it was, I'm sure of it. The wind was in my face like 80 percent of the time. And I'm very competitive with myself, not with anyone else. Don't any of you really expert riders come and want to take me on. You'll win, I'll lose, I don't care, I don't care. But, I compete against myself with this little bike computer, and I'm thinking "This is pathetic." But I know it's because of the head wind. Every stroke, left right left right is opposed by the head wind, it was a strong wind yesterday. I knew it would be too, because I saw the flag on that Free Will Baptist church at the end of the road right before I turned. Anyway, it was perpendicular, I was like "Oh Lord." So just terrible. And it's in your face.

That's what it's going to be like the rest of your life. It will never be easy to serve God, and I don't think it's meant to be. Now occasionally, the sovereign power of the Spirit will come on you and move you to do it, and that'll happen. He'll do that, but generally you're going to just feel that warfare strongly. So you're not going to wholeheartedly serve God, and neither on the other hand are you going to wholeheartedly serve sin. You may be watching a movie you shouldn't be watching, or reading a book you shouldn't be reading, you may be on the phone saying some things, disparaging things, and you know you're wrong, and you're violating your conscience, and you don't feel good about it, and you feel sick, and you want to stop it, and that's you're not whole heartedly serving sin either, ever.

So therefore, Christians are schizophrenic and weird in God's universe. We are the weirdest thing there is in the universe, and I'm not joking. Think about it, God is pure light, and in him there's no darkness at all. There's no shifting shadow of change within God, he is one, never second guess himself, he is at one with himself all the time, perfectly one. So also the holy angels, they do nothing but serve God whole heartedly all the time. They delight in anything God wants them to do, so also the glorified saints in heaven are like the angles, praising him all the time. Conversely, Satan is not deeply divided and conflicted within his nature, he hates God and fights against him all the time. He knows what he's about, so also his demons, they're just serving Satan all the time, so also the reprobates, unrepentant serving sin slaves to sin. The rocks and wind and gravity and dirt just do what God made them to do. They're not deeply conflicted. Have you ever seen a deeply conflicted rock? You're the one with the problem, it's not the rock that has the problem. So also animals. The cow chews it's cud, it's not deeply conflicted. Dogs do whatever they do. Cats, I guess squirrels are different. You know when they're crossing in front of you and go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth?  And you're just about to kill them and they don't know what direction, they're deeply conflicted. But everyone else, they just do their nature. We're weird, we are weird. We are strange.

But thank God it's only temporary, amen? Thank God someday we will be what we want to be. Someday we will be free. Free forever. James put it this way, with the tongue we praise our God and father, and with it we curse men who have been made in his likeness out of the same mouth come praise and cursing, my brothers this should not be. Yes, but it is. Can the same spring produce both fresh water and salt water? You can, in the same 10 minute span, praise God in a very beautiful way and then say something hard about some other person. Could be the next minute. So we're weird, we're schizophrenic, but praise God the deep division is temporary.

IV. Understand Your New Status:  Not Under Law (verse 18)

So therefore, what is the key? Verse 18, understand your new status, we're not under law, but under grace. If you're led by the Spirit, you're not under law. There's a whole new status, and I covered this two weeks ago in the sermon on the law, basically the law as perfect standard: FBI, District Attorney, convicting judge and executioner. Those days are over, amen? The law will not do that for you anymore. The law will not condemn you and send you to Hell. That's what it means, you're not under law. We're in a whole new status. We're now led by The Spirit in a whole new way of life, instructed by The Spirit we understand God's law. Transformed by The Spirit, we delight in God's law. Empowered by the Spirit, we obey God's law. We're not under law now. Instead, we're led by the Spirit. So how can we win? How will we wage war and win, led by the Spirit? What do we do? Look again at Romans 8:13-14. "If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death, the misdeeds of the body you will live because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." Now here when I talk about being led, I'm not talking about, I felt led to take this Job, or I felt led to marry this person, I felt led to go on this mission trip. It's not that. It's he's leading you to put sin to death that's the leadership we're talking about here, mortification.

V. Wage War God’s Way:  Led by the Spirit (verse 18)

And so I'm going to lean on John Owen here as I wrap up. You just want to know how am I going to win. John Owen was a 17th century Puritan Theologian, wrote some great things on the mortification of the flesh. Mortification, putting sin to death. He says, "You have a responsibility, if you by the Spirit…" So you have a responsibility. Own your responsibility." And he tells you how you're to do it. "If you through, or by the Spirit, put to death, the deeds of the body, you will live." The outcome is you will live. You'll have eternal life. So Owen says this, "The choices believers who are suredly free from the condemning power of sin, ought to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin." And he said this, "The vigor and power and comfort of our spiritual life depend on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh." Let me say that in simpler language. The health and power and joy and assurance that you want in your Christian life, are directly dependent on how well you put to death sin by the Spirit. Turn it around. The more poorly you put to death the misdeeds of the body, the less power you'll feel in the Christian life, the less joy you'll feel in the Christian life, the less assurance you'll have in the Christian life.

You can't sin your way out of the family of God but you can definitely sin your assurance away and you won't know if you're a child of God and you'll be struggling and wondering about it because you've just been giving into sin so much. So you must put it to death. You must mortify. You must make it your daily work. You must be constantly at it while you live and then John Owen said this, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you."

"You can't sin your way out of the family of God but you can definitely sin your assurance away and you won't know if you're a child of God and you'll be struggling and wondering about it because you've just been giving into sin so much. So you must put it to death."

Now based on a little illustration used, I've liken it before to a fight with a poisonous snake like a black mamba or something like that right? Walking through the jungle and the snake sees you, and you see the snake, and the snake comes at you and somehow you're quick enough to grab it right around the throat. And it is writhing and moving and hissing and you see its fangs there and you know he wants only one thing and that's to kill you. And you're fighting and struggling and sweat coming down and you're just at war with this snake. You cannot get to the point where you say, "Look, snake. We've had a really good fight haven't we? You and me. We've really had an awesome fight and I respect you. Alright? I don't know if you respect me but we fought well. Now, I'm pretty much done. So I would like to put you back on the path and let you go, and let you go to your snake family and snake home and do whatever you do there in your snake... I'm going to turn around and go back the other way. Okay?" What happens when you let go of that black mamba and turn and walk away. It comes and gets you, it comes to kill you. So it is with sin.

Sin wants to kill you. It wants to take everything of value from it. Now it can't kill you eternally, I've already covered that. And you know what, in this life you can't kill it either. You can never say of any sin pattern, I know this, I will never sin in that way again. No way. If any man thinks he stands, what, take heed lest he fall, you got to be on your guard. But what you can do, is you can gradually weaken sin so it doesn't trouble you as much.

I'm going to close with a key verse, Romans 6:6. Romans 6:6 says this, "we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing." That's the key idea there. Rendered increasingly powerless, so that's the strategy I'm giving you for this, for mortification, okay? You can kill temptations, like Shamgar, you can kill them all. But you can't kill the sin that's sending them. Alright? But what you can do is weaken it. The longer you put between yourself and the last time you yield to that sin, the weaker it gets in your life. The longer, the more hours, days, months, years, between you and that sin, the weaker and weaker it gets.

And so Romans 6:6 says, that our old self is crucified. The person we were in Adam is dead in order that this sinful body might be increasingly rendered powerless, so that we might no longer be slaves to sin. So here's the strategy, death by starvation, besiege the sin, okay? Cut it off, of its supplies. Cut it off of its food supplies, cut sin off of its water supplies, make it weaker and weaker. How? By resisting the temptations it sends to you. You resist one time, the next time it'll come a little weaker. Resist two times, it'll be even weaker. Resist three, four, five times, it'll be weaker still.

And little by little it will not have a grip on you like it used to. Now in order for this to happen, you have to be a Christian. You have to be a Christian. I'm not talking to non Christians. This is a family discussion. If you are here and you have never trusted in Christ, you cannot defeat sin. Your task is to repent and believe in Jesus. Trust in Christ crucified and then you can begin your warfare, but before that all you need to do is trust and repent in him. Now, we're going to go to the Lord's supper. There are so many more things I could say, but this time for us to partake. Now, here is the thing the Lord's supper is a means or avenue of grace in this battle. It is an avenue of grace. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ and you have testified to that by water baptism, you're welcome. If you have not yet been baptized to believe, or you've not testified to that, okay do not come. But if you're a believer and you've testified by water baptism, you are free to come, alright? This meal, this Lord's supper has strength in it, if you feed on it by the Spirit you'll be strengthened for your battle. I'm going to close the sermon in prayer and then I'm going to ask the deacons to come up and we'll partake in the Lord's supper.

So Father thank you for the wisdom that comes from your word and fighting this battle. Thank you for the way that you empower us. God I pray for my brothers and sisters that are here. Give them power to fight by the Spirit. And Lord I pray for any that are here that are lost, that they would trust in you and repent and believe for the forgiveness of their sins. And now as we turn to this time we pray that you would send forth your Spirit we need his ministry with us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Galatians 5:16-18, and how the Holy Spirit helps us survive the bitter spiritual warfare.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT  - 

Next month, my daughter and I, God willing, are going to be in Serbia, ministering to some folks there with the IMB. And that same month, actually, right around the time that we're there, will mark on June 28th 2014, the 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, thus beginning World War I, Which as I've said before, I think is one of the greatest tragedies in all of human history. I mean the war, in particular. Obviously, assassination is a grave crime, but all of the nations of Europe had armed themselves to the teeth and were ready to show off what they could do in the battlefields. And these mighty modern economies, these post industrial revolution economies, with all of the technological development and all their weapons, were ready to be unleashed on each other. Each nation convinced the war would be a short one and that the troops would be home by Christmas.

And so, the guns of August were unleashed in 1914 and devastating war resulted in just casualties by the tens of millions. 37 million people killed in World War 1. And perhaps, as finally, when it ended in the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 and a generation of young men lay in their graves as a result of just political insanity. And a poet said, "The lights had gone out all over Europe." The only hope for many in the world at that point, lay in the name that many gave to that war which was 'the war to end all wars'.

Well, from the perspective of the 21st century, know that was absolutely not true. World War I gave birth to an even greater conflagration in the World War II, which the death toll rose to more than double. 85 million people died as a result of that one. And so, the 20th century was really a century of warfare, of huge warfare, of world cataclysmic shaking warfare that has shaped the world as we know it today.

But as we look at the text that we're looking at today, Galatians 5:16-18. I would say as a Christian pastor, despite the fact that World War I and World War II and other subsequent wars have captured all of the headlines and given rise to countless books and documentaries, and poems, and essays, and movies and all kinds of things. Massive scale that dominates the landscape of human history and catches the eye. I think that the warfare described in our text today is infinitely more significant. And it is the warfare that goes on inside every true Christian every day.

The spiritual warfare, the warfare that goes on between the Spirit and the flesh, that's what we're going to talk about. This battle field is internal, its ebbs and flows are invisible, yet the destiny of the world lies in the balance. As Christians conquer the flesh by the Spirit they move out and do the good works that God has ordained, build the church, including evangelism and missions.

We talked much in this church about two infinite journeys, the internal journey of sanctification and the external journey of worldwide gospel advance. So those two are absolutely interconnected. Today, we're going to focus on the internal journey and understand it as a warfare, bitter warfare between the Spirit and the flesh.

Allow me to set these three very small but significant verses in context; we're in the book of Galatians. Galatians to the letter written by the Apostle Paul, he was called the Apostle to the Gentiles. He went out as a church planting, trail blazing missionary, evangelist. He went into the lands of unreached people groups, Gentiles and Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. And he went to a region called Galatia and there were some Gentiles there, and God blessed his preaching of the gospel, many came to faith in Christ. They understood the message of the gospel and they were saved and believed. He organized them into churches and then left to go work in another place. After he left, some false teachers came in who have been called Judaizers. And they preached a poisonous mixture of Christ plus Moses, or Christ plus works, faith plus works, and that believing in Jesus is not enough for the salvation of your souls, you must also obey the laws of Moses, beginning with the law of circumcision.

Paul says that is no gospel at all, it's a false gospel. I call it poisonous. Paul lifted up and made plain in Galatians 2 the center piece of the gospel, which is justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. Sinners are made right with the Holy God simply by faith in Jesus. We who are guilty, we who have violated the laws of God, we can be made right, we can be forgiven through faith in Jesus and through faith alone. Paul then says that, that their own experiences with the gospel, how they received the gift of the Holy Spirit and began the Christian life proved it out. And then, the Bible itself, the Old Testament proved it out. Abraham was justified by faith not by works, and there a number of verses he sites in Galatians 3 and 4 that show that this idea has been woven throughout the Bible. Sinners are made right by faith and not by works.

In our chapter now, Galatians 5, he calls them to freedom. He warns these Galatian Christians, concerning these false teachers, that want to wrap chains of legalism around you and tell you that you are made right by God and made right in the sight of God and you continue in that status by your own obedience to the law. Well, that's a yoke. It's a chain of slavery. So in Galatians 5:1 he says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not allow yourself again to be burdened by a yoke of slavery." But as we've been saying in the last few weeks, this freedom is not freedom the way the world defines it. To sin with impunity and do whatever you want, doesn't matter how you live, you can pursue happiness as your own fleshly appetites define and there are no repercussions, once saved always saved, doesn't matter how you live, go to heaven when you die. <any have understood the doctrine of God's grace in Christ that way.

In Romans 6:1, Paul brings up this question. He says, "What then, shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? May it never be." And then, later in that same chapter, Romans 6:15, he says, "What then, shall we sin because we're not under law," as it says in our text here 5:18, "Not under law but under grace." Shall we sin for that reason? By no means. So the true gospel flees the opposite extremes, as we've been saying, of legalism on the one hand, that you are forgiven in the sight of God by your obedience to the law, unaided obedience to the law, or license on the other, that it doesn't matter how you live.

Now, legalism has been the focus of the letter up until now, but now Paul addresses the concerns about license. That the gospel of God's grace means that you can sin all you want, it doesn't matter how you live and you'll still go to heaven when you die. In order to understand this, this teaching, we have to stop and just step back and look at the big picture. Salvation, Christian salvation from sin, comes to us in stages. We don't get it all at once. None of you has your full salvation from sin yet.

It begins with justification, which is the declaration by God, the Almighty Judge of the universe that you are forever not guilty of all your sins. And that's on the basis of the gift of righteousness credited to your account by simple faith, the righteousness of Jesus. That's justification, the beginning of the Christian life, but it flows inevitably into sanctification. And the rules of the game on sanctification are different than that of justification. Whereas, in justification, your works are absolutely unwelcome. You must not seek to bring your works for the forgiveness of your sins. Now, in sanctification, you gradually, little by little, are called on to work out your salvation of fear and trembling [come back to that phrase], and become more and more like Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, step by step. And then finally, it ends in glorification. And glorification is the act of the sovereign God, Almighty God, instantaneously to transform you forever conform to Christ perfectly in every way. And that comes, I believe, for most Christians in two stages. At death, the Spirit is made perfectly righteous and then goes and waits for the resurrection of the body. And at the resurrection of the body then we get glorious resurrection bodies, just like Jesus and that's it. And we're heading toward that. Amen, hallelujah.

But we're not there yet. And all of you who are listening to me today who are Christians, you're right in the middle of a warfare known as sanctification. And that's what we're talking about today. And it begins in our text with a command, a clear command in verse 16. "So I say", according to the Apostle Paul, he's giving the commands of an Apostle, "So I say, walk by the Spirit." So there's this initial command that comes, walk or live by the Spirit. The word 'walk' means live your daily life. It's a meticulous kind of thing, in detail, how you walk, etcetera, day by day, walk by the Spirit.

"You who are  Christians, you're right in the middle of a warfare known as sanctification."

Now, the Holy Spirit has already been introduced to the Galatian readers. He says back in 3:2-3, he said, "Now I want to ask you, did you receive the Spirit by works or by believing what you heard?" So they received the gift of the Spirit, God did miracles among them at that time, the gift of tongues came often in the book of Acts. And there were some other miracles, they knew that the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit had come upon them.

They had received the gift of the Spirit, simply by faith. And they had begun the Christian life by the Spirit but they're not perfected by the flesh, he said this back in Galatians 3. And then in 3:14, it says that by faith they received the promise of the Spirit. So they have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then, in 4:6, "The Spirit is in our hearts crying out of a father." By that Spirit, we cry out 'Daddy', we cry out to God that He is our adoptive father. And then again, in this chapter 5:5, it says, "By faith through the Spirit we wait for righteousness." That's the essence of sanctification, I think. So the Spirit's already been introduced.

I. Obey the Command: Walk by the Spirit

Let's talk about the Holy Spirit now. The Holy Spirit is the sovereign power of God behind sanctification. The Holy Spirit is as essential to sanctification as Jesus Christ is to justification. Without the work of Christ on the cross, we would have no hope whatsoever of being made right in the side of the Holy God. You would have no hope if it weren't for Jesus. None. In the same way, without the work of the Holy Spirit within us, we would have no hope whatsoever of growing in holiness. We would have no hope whatsoever putting a single sin to death apart from the Spirit, so the Spirit's indispensable.

"The Holy Spirit is as essential to sanctification as Jesus Christ is to justification. ... Without the work of the Holy Spirit within us, we would have no hope whatsoever of growing in holiness."

Now, let's talk about a simple definition of the Christian life. Christian life is a life lived daily under the direction and by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, moment by moment, forgiven completely by the blood of Jesus, that's the Christian life. We are justified, we are forgiven, we're adopted, we are secure. Amen? You can't sin your way out of the family of God, but you have the indwelling Holy Spirit and moment by moment, the Spirit empowers you to live a holy life defined by the moral law as we've talked about before. That's the Christian life.

And so, in this paragraph, we have the power of the Holy Spirit described in the life of the Christian, enabling each Christian to live a life that's well pleasing to God. Now, who is the Holy Spirit? What do we mean by the Holy Spirit? Well, we believe that the full revelation of God in the Bible, is that of the infinite mystery of the trinity; the infinite mystery of trinity. Now, you're not going to find the word trinity in the Bible, but it's basically a summation of some doctrinal insights that do come straight from the Bible.

The first and foremost, is that there is one God and there is only one God. There is one God and there is only one God. Secondly, that this one God has eternally existed in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Eternally existing this one God in three persons. And that these three persons are in some mysterious sense, we could use a language, separates centers of existence while being still perfectly one. It's very difficult, I would say close to impossible for us to completely conceive of this mysterious unity of three persons in one God head. This is what the Bible teach us and we accept it by faith.

And in the doctrine of the trinity, the Father is fully God, and the Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God, but the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not Spirit, and the Spirit's not the father. So, they can have relationship with each other, communication, conversation with each other, that's the doctrine of the trinity. So, what we're saying is, that the trinity is directly eternally involved in human salvation, but they have different roles in that salvation. The Father before the foundation of the world, made a plan by which the elect would be saved from their sins. Before the foundation of the world, that's what the Bible teach us.

The Son became incarnate by the Virgin Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit became incarnate, became a human being, lived a sinless life, did great signs and wonders, died in atoning a substitutionary death on the cross, he died in the place of sinners, rose from the dead on the third day and ascended to heaven. The son executed the Father's plan, that part of it anyway. He achieved redemption on the cross, and then ascended to heaven. Then the Father and the Son together sent the Holy Spirit into the world to take that finished work of Christ and apply it to individual people all over the world.

And that's what the Spirit is doing right now. The sovereign Spirit is moving throughout the world and I trust even throughout this sanctuary right now, applying the work of Christ to individual hearts. If you are Christian today, you may thank the Holy Spirit for making you so. The Spirit personally brought Christ to you. And it is the Spirit who made you a Christian. Now, the Holy Spirit is almighty God, and that's awesome when you think about it. He first is mentioned in the Bible in the second verse of the entire Bible. It's amazing. There the famous verse, Genesis 1:1, it says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And then it says now, "The earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." So, the Holy Spirit of God is right there hovering over the waters. And in the same way, he is at work inside you, he's working in your soul. How awesome is it? It's really almost inconceivable that the third person of the trinity is dwelling within you if you were a genuine Christian, if you're born again. The Spirit of God is living within you, the same Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation in the ancient world is now moving in our hearts to bring about holiness, to bring about God's purposes, to bring about his changes that he wants.

This is absolute omnipotence. That's got to be redundant, but anyway, I'm going to say it anyway. Absolute omnipotence, he has all power, absolutely. And he's at work in your life, and he is perfectly wise, he's omniscient and he's inside you, fully engaged in your life to bring about holiness. Now, the indwelling Spirit, the gift of the Spirit was promised through the prophets in the Old Testament, that this gift would come to us. He is the promised Holy Spirit of the Spirit of promise. And there's one promise in particular that I never tire of reciting to you folks, and I love it because of all that it says. It's in Ezekiel 36:25-27, you've heard it before, just listen again. This is what the Spirit brings to you. It's what the Spirit does to you if you're a Christian. Listen. Ezekiel 36:25-27, "I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. And I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit within you. And I will remove from you your heart of stone, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

That is the promise of the Holy Spirit's work in applying Jesus's cleansing blood to you, transforming your nature from within and moving you to obey God's laws and keep his commandments. The Spirit's also promised in Joel 2, which the Apostle Peter referred to in the day of Pentecost, Joel 2:28-29 says, "In the last days, I'll pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I'll pour out my Spirit in those days and they will prophesy." Jesus, for his part, made also repeated promises that he would send the Holy Spirit. He said in John 14, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever. The Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."

So again, the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit Jesus made. And then, after his resurrection he reiterated the promise. He's very clear about this. He says in Luke 24:49, I'm going to send what my Father has promised but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. And so the Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit poured out by the Father and the Son. And then again, in Acts 1:4-5, Jesus commanded them, "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days," He said to them at that time, "In a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."

Then that great and awesome day came at last, the day of Pentecost came. And they were all together in the upper room and they're praying and waiting. And suddenly, there came the sound of a violent rushing wind, like the sound of a hurricane but no moving air, just the sound, and they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, it says, "And they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them." And a crowd gathered for the feast of Pentecost heard the sound of the rushing wind and they gathered, and the church flooded out into the streets and began to change the world, by the power of the Spirit, they began to change the world. And Peter began to preach this awesome Pentecost sermon, he's explaining what's going on. And this is what he says, "God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of the fact of the resurrection. Exalted to the right hand of God, He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear." So he's explaining the phenomenon they're seeing, the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then, at the end of his Pentecost message, he extends the promise to everyone. When they heard Peter's very convicting sermon, they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

Now, that may be you today I hope. If you have come in here as an unbeliever, you've come in here you've never trusted in Jesus, you've been playing the game. Maybe you're nominal and not a genuine Christian. Maybe you've just been invited today. Maybe you're here for the dedication. Maybe you're a family member or a relative, and you just want to take a nice picture of a family that you love and a cute little baby. Hey, they are cute. But can I talk to you about your soul? Someday you're going to die and you're going to stand before God in judgement. Are you ready? The only way you can be ready is by repenting and trusting in Jesus. They, on that day of Pentecost, those people were cut to the heart. They knew they were sinners and they weren't ready to die. And they said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter gave this timeless answer, he said, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off." That's us, we're far off, for all whom the Lord, our God, will call.

So the promise of the Holy Spirit has been abiding now for 20 centuries. Everyone who hears the gospel and believes, they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the theology of the Spirit. Every single Christian has the indwelling Spirit. If you don't have the indwelling Spirit, you are not born again, you're not a Christian. You're still in your transgressions and sins. Every Christian has the indwelling Spirit. The Spirit is the deposit guaranteeing that we're going to heaven, guaranteeing the full inheritance of the saints. The Spirit is that guarantee. But he is also the power for ongoing holiness, for the internal journey of holiness, of sanctification. He is also the power for the external journey of evangelism and missions. The Spirit is active and at work, the sovereign Spirit.

Now, on the internal journey having begun by the Spirit, we are now also to be perfected by the same Spirit. Paul cried out earlier against the Galatians, "Are you so foolish?", Galatians 3:3, "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh?" So what that means is, it is the Spirit who began the Christian life in you or began you in the Christian life, say both. It's the Spirit that did it. You were dead in your transgressions and sins until the Spirit came to you. You were dead. And the Holy Spirit came and raised you to life. You heard the gospel and he raised you to life. Ephesians 2:4-5, "But because of His great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we're dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved."

But now, I want to give you a picture, the Spirit has raised you to life. Now, Ezekiel 36, is that great promise of the gift of Spirit. Ezekiel 37 has the picture of a valley of dry bones. All these dead, these dry bones, everywhere, completely dry, dead, nothing. And Ezekiel was commanded, "Prophesy to the dry bones." And as he was speaking, as he was predicting, there came this terrible rattling sound, and these bones were assembled but still as yet no life. And then H\he said, "Prophesy to the wind." The same word in Hebrew for wind and Spirit. Prophesy. And then, this wind came and they were filled with the Spirit and came to life. And it says in Ezekiel 37:10, "A vast army."

Now, just pause with me. What's an army used for? Army is used for war. And as soon as those people come to life, I want to combine it with Ephesians 6, flaming arrows start coming right at them. Now, the flaming arrows can't kill and we'll never die but they can hurt us. Those flaming arrows from Satan are temptations, they're assaults on us. And we are commanded to get ready for battle and to pick up the shield of faith and put on the armor and get ready to fight. And that's what this text is about.

Now that you're alive, you are at war. Before you were alive, you were just dead. But now that you're alive, you're at war. That's what this text is all about. And the Spirit empowers you to live, and you cannot ever say to the Spirit, "Okay Spirit, I got it, you've done really well up to now, I got it from here on forward. I'll take over, I can do it now." You can't do anything now but sin, alright. That's what you can do on your own. Remember how Jesus said in John 15:5, "I am the vine, you're the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he'll bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." The Holy Spirit is in, right in there, the Spirit is the connection between the branch and the vine. By the Spirit, we stay abiding in Jesus. Apart from the Spirit you can do nothing. That's the Spirit filled life.

Now, we come to the issue of law versus grace, or flesh versus Spirit. The whole epistle has been about the contrasting themes of law versus grace. We are always tempted to revert to law, that's our tendency, we always go back to legalism, that's our tendency. God means for it to be a salvation by grace from beginning to end. So many Christians, then embattling sin, draw up a list of do's and don'ts, rules and regulations, new rules for the Christian life. And that's what it means to try to be perfected by the flesh. Arrogant, independent human effort. See the law, do the law, you're on your own.

Now, the Spirit-filled Christian life does involve distinct patterns of Bible study, prayer, church involvement, witnessing, giving, etcetera, yes. But these things are written on our hearts by the Spirit. They are lived out in our lives by the Spirit, not in some legalistic way, as though we are slaves in chains or we're somehow on probation, needing to secure a permanent place in the family, that is not true. Everything God commands you to do, He empowers you to do by His Spirit, you're not on your own. That's the essence of sanctification by the Spirit not by law. So we're commanded right here in verse 16, "Walk by the Spirit." Now, I want you to know that it is a command. What does that tell you? What does that tell you? You're commanded to do something. The Lord is telling you how to live, in order to live a life worthy of the Lord, how to please Him. Now, the command here, the verb is "walk." As I already mentioned, this has to do with daily life patterns, details. It has to do with habit patterns. What you are in the habit of doing, how you live your life, practical daily life. There are habit patterns, a habitual lifestyle of holiness that the Lord is after.

The verb "walk" also speaks of progress, doesn't it? We're going to be moving out now. When the Spirit tells you to rise and walk, you're being told to go somewhere. So we call it in journey, or an internal journey we're in. We're not staying where we started, we're going to move out now. This infinite journey, internal journey, we're going to move out. There's a clear parallel verse, in verse 25, it says, "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Do you see that? Let's keep in step with it. So, the Greek word behind that keep in step, means to walk in a line like soldiers on a parade ground. Left, right, left, right, left, right. The Spirit is the drum beat of a life of holiness. Left, right, let's move, keep in step with the Spirit, that's what he's giving us. So the Spirit is prompting us, and He's leading us, and it covers every area of life. There's no part of life that the Spirit doesn't cover. How to speak, how to eat, how to sleep, how to pray, how to spend money, how to be in church, how to be married, how to be a parent, how to resist temptation, everything is covered, everything.

"The Spirit is the drum beat of a life of holiness."

Now, we come to an incomprehensible mystery, and that is the relationship between the Spirit's power and our effort. The Spirit's power and our effort. And here, so many people go astray. So many people, so I will do the best I can to explain to you how these go together but it is very difficult to understand. We have to do the best that we can. There are two extremes when it comes to sanctification. We do everything versus we do nothing. These are extremes. We do everything versus we do nothing. Now, we do everything, we've already covered... That's legalism. You're on your own, here's the law, do it or die; that's legalism. That's we do everything. You're on your own, you got to do it, that's the essence of legalism.

Now, let's talk about we do nothing. There is a strong history of sanctification taught in this pattern. It's been going on a long time, it's got lots of different names. There are popular books still being sold that tell you in effect, you do nothing when it comes to sanctification. One of the slogans of this movement has been, 'Let go and let God.' Growth and holiness then is as easy as a twig moving down the stream, if you just get the right formula. Just let go and let God take you where he wants to take you. That sounds to me a lot like glorification. I'm going to let go from whatever I'm holding on to in the ICU and I'll be gone, goodbye. And then, God's going to take me to perfection, but that's not sanctification. 'Let go and let God.' That's not what's going on. Another language title of it is 'The Surrendered Life.' A movement around a church camp retreat center is called Keswick Holiness. Keswick Holiness.

Now, this is probably more information than you need. But Keswick Holiness taught that striving in the Christian life is evidence of the flesh. That if you're striving, you're off, you're already off. What you need to do is cease striving and know that he is God. And if you're sinning, it means that you haven't paid the price tag for holiness which is total surrender. Oh, wow. This hit me for the first time. I was telling Andy about this. I've never put this together. I see now the deadly combination of what Keswick Holiness and all of this is doing. JI Packer wrote about this. You can look up, just Google JI Packer on Keswick Holiness. Keswick is K-E-S-W-I-C-K. But I guess, Google will cover it if you misspell it, I don't know.

But JI Packer on Keswick Holiness, and he said this, he said, "It's not much of a recommendation of a pattern of Christian life when the best you can say is this teaching may help you if you don't take any of its detail seriously." Wow. It is utterly damning to such a movement to have to say, as in this case, we must say, that if you do take the detail seriously, it will tend not to help you but destroy you. He said it didn't work, and that was deeply frustrating. It was a depressing thing. "It made me feel like an outsider." And at the age of 18, that's a pretty burdensome thing. "In fact, it was straight out driving me insane," he said.

The reality of Keswick's theology, the passivity program, let go, let God, cease striving all that. And it's announced expectations plus its insistence that any failure to find complete victory is entirely your fault, that combination make it destructive. Now just look at what's being said here, cease striving and let God do it directly contradicts the warfare language in all the holiness passages in which you're told to arm yourself and put your own sin to death by the power of the Spirit. We'll talk about all that in minute, but cease striving is not what those passages tell you.

Secondly, total surrender will elude you while you live in this sinful body. You won't be totally doing anything while you live in this sinful body. You're always going to be a mixture of light and darkness; you're going to be a mixture of Spirit and flesh. That's what the text says, as long as you... So you will never be totally surrendered, and you are not just to cease striving. That's the problem with all this. Another writer, Hannah Whitall Smith wrote the 'Christian's Secret of a Happy Life' teaches the same kinds of things.

Now, Packer says and other say, many Christians have gone a long way in the Christian life and have done many good things thinking these thoughts but the essence of that type of sanctification is false, that's not what we teach. We are taught, a strong effort is required to grow in holiness. You must fight. You must run with endurance. Listen to this, First Corinthians 9:24-27, Paul says, "Don't you know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way that you may get the prize. Those who complete in the games go into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last. We do it to get a crown that will last forever. [Listen to this] Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave; lest after I preach to others, I myself may be disqualified from the prize." That doesn't sound like let go and let God to me. That doesn't sound like cease striving and know that I'm God, which is a Bible verse but misapplied when it comes to this warfare. It sounds to me like, Paul says you want to do well, you've got to go into strict training, you need to be an athlete, you need to be a warrior, you need to fight. That's what he's saying. Same thing in Hebrews 12, there it says, in verse 1, "Let us throw off everything that hinders us in the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race marked up before us."

That doesn't sound like cease striving and know that I'm God. That doesn't like let go and let God. Sounds like you've got a race to run, and it's going to take every bit of your strength and endurance to run that race. The Spirit is there to empower you to do it. But all of that fighting and all of that running... I love this, 2 Timothy 4:7, you've heard this at funerals, here at now while you live, while there's time to make it happen, "I have fought the good fight. I've finished the race. I've kept the faith. Now there is laid up in store for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord will award to me, and not only to me but also to those who have long for his appearing."

Are you fighting the good fight, right now? The good fight I think is sanctification, and also I think it's the advance the external journey; they're both good fights. But it's at least fight the good fight. Finish the race. Keep the faith. I think, I would love that to be said at my funeral, that it were true; that I fought the good fight, that I finished my race, that I kept the faith.

"Are you fighting the good fight, right now? The good fight I think is sanctification, and also I think it's the advance the external journey."

Now, all of that is done by the power of the Spirit; all of it. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "By the grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them. Yet not I, but the grace of God that was in me." Do you see that? Paul says, "God's grace worked on me, it made me work hard, really hard. And yet it wasn't me working but it was the grace of God working in me." That sounds almost confusing but that's the complexity of Spirit works and we work. Probably the best harmonizing verse on this is Philippians 2:12-13. There he says, "So now dear friends, as you have always obeyed, as you've always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose." That harmonizes everything.

But do you see, "let go and let God" in there? I don't. Do you see cease striving there? I don't. Do you see that God's waiting for you to be totally surrendered, and then he'll give it to you as a gift? I don't see that. I see that we're being told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but God's at work in us to do it. That's what I see. So we are commanded to walk by the Spirit, and if we do walk by the Spirit, we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So the Spirit is leading each one of you, who are true Christians in to war. The Spirit's leading into war. He says we're led by the Spirit in verse 18. If you're led by the Spirit, not under the law.

Romans 8:13-14 says it more plainly. It says there, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God." Okay. So, if you live according to what the flesh wants, you'll die and go to hell; that's what he is saying. If you live that kind of life, but if by the Spirit, you are in the process of putting to death the deeds of the body, killing them. If you are in the process of killing them by the Spirit, you'll live, that means you go to heaven. Because, Romans 8:14, those who are led by the Spirit, those are the children of God.

So let me say again. If you're not at this kind of warfare, you're not a Christian. If you're not at war with the deeds of the flesh, you're not born again. You're dead in your transgressions and sins. If you are born again, you're at war with the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit. Everyday, the Spirit gets you up, I mean, literally and gets you dressed, not literally, and leads you into battle, into warfare against the deeds of the flesh; that's the Christian life. You're at war and you need to fight in a way that glorifies God.

Now, what are we at war with? And we're going to close with this today. The acts of the flesh are what we're at war with. Look down at verses 19-21. This is what you're going to fight, this is what you're fighting. The acts of the flesh are obvious, sexual immorality. We're at war with sexual immorality, at war with it. We hate it, we want it dead. Impurity and debauchery, we're at war with these wicked things. We're at war with idolatry and witchcraft. We're at war with hatred. Isn't this weird? We hate hatred. And we are at war with discord. We're against jealousy. We're at war with the tendency we have to be envious of other people's blessings; we're at war with that. I don't want that in my life; it's evil. At war with jealousy and we're at war with fits of rage. We're angry about anger. I don't know how that works. But anyway, we're at war with it. We don't want it anymore. We want it out. James calls it moral filth. Its radioactive waste. I want sinful anger out of my life. We're at war with dissension, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions all of these things. We're at war against drunkenness and orgies and the like. "I warn you as I did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

So, we're at war with any motion of our heart toward those things. We want to kill them and by the Spirit, we put them to death. So this morning, as I was practicing this incredibly, ridiculously long sermon, there it is, 23 pages. There was clearly no chance, none whatsoever. So, what's the rest of this? What's the rest of this sermon which I will not be preaching today? This is how to fight. How do we put to death the deeds of the flesh? What strategy are we going to take? I'm going to try to help you with that. I don't think we should hurry through this because you guys are going to go from this sermon today into this warfare. You're at it, right now. It's going on right now. I want to help you. It's my yearning to help you. So next week, God willing, I will finish up and I'll urge how it is that living by the Spirit guarantees that you will not gratify the lust of the flesh. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the things that we've learned today. Really, the simple lesson is this, so many things that I said today but that all Christians are at war, we're at war with the flesh. And that we're at war not in the legalistic sense, as though you're standing back from us with your arms crossed across your chest saying, you better win this one or you're not going to heaven. No, no, no, you're living within us, enabling us, empowering us, guaranteeing success. Thank you, oh Lord. I pray that you'd help my brothers and sisters here to fight powerfully and courageously. And I pray one more time that if there are any here that walked in this place not born again, that they would right now trust in Jesus and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We pray this in Jesus's name, Amen.