The Woman's Role in Marriage (11/12/2023)

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Pastor David Mitchell

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Hello, everybody, so good to be back. You all seem like you survived, and I know you must have had some spiritual battles while we were gone.
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I know Israel certainly did. Can you believe that? We were just maybe three or four days into our trip, and the world comes unglued, right?
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You know, I've seen, I've seen, I miss the war that happened the day they became a nation.
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I wasn't quite born yet, but it was only, I don't know, maybe eight years before I was born when that happened, but I've read about it.
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But I lived through the other three, and I remember the one, there was one in 1973 called the
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Yom Kippur War, and I was a freshman at college, and I wasn't saved yet, but I didn't know
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I wasn't saved because everybody called me a Christian because I'd been baptized, but I wasn't saved yet.
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But I knew enough about the Bible because my parents would talk to me about the
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Lord, and my grandmother was in the word, and had a big Sunday school class. She would always talk to me about the
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Lord. But when that war started, I can vividly remember the class
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I was sitting in. It was a speech class. Made a C in speech, by the way. But I hated it.
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I was scared to death to get up in front of people. It was horrifying, and scariest class
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I ever took. But I was sitting in that class when that war broke out, and I thought the end of the world might come.
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And I didn't even know the Bible yet, but I just was scared. And I remember that, and I remember that, let's see, who would have been the president in 73?
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Nixon? He sent,
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I don't know how many hundreds of airplanes full of ammunition, and guns, and bombs, and even jets to Israel to help them to not be defeated in that war, because they were almost defeated.
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And they won miraculously. Every time they've ever won the war to remain a nation, it's been a miracle.
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If you read about them, there's a few movies about them. There's one called Golda, which is about the four prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, which was a grandma who ran that country during that particular war
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I was telling you about. And that's a great movie. It's an older movie, but it's pretty factual. So you can get that on,
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I don't know if it's Netflix or where we found it, but you might want to watch it. You'd find interest in it.
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But anyway, we're in the midst of yet another one. And this is the first one in my lifetime where in the
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United States of America, we have people marching in the streets for the wrong side of the war, for the
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Islamics who slaughtered 1 ,400 Israeli women, children, men, babies.
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I can't even tell you what all they did, but they know what they did. Even some of it was on film and it was horrifying.
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And, but they've been that way through the years. Their whole goal is to kill every
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Jew on the face of the earth and to drive them into the Mediterranean Sea.
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If you ever see on TV, if you see them right, I mean, marching, and they got these signs that say from the river to the sea, that means they want to push all the
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Jews from the Jordan River across the land into the ocean and drown them. That's what that means. It's a slogan.
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And yet all these thousands of people in colleges, that's one reason we don't advocate college so much anymore, because the professors are communists in many cases.
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But they're holding those signs up and marching all over the streets by the tens of thousands in all the major East Coast universities.
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And not all of them, but many of them in West Coast universities. And I don't hear it happening too much in Texas with Governor Abbott, no telling what he would do.
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He wouldn't allow it probably. But it's ridiculous. I've never seen it before. And that is a huge change in this country in my lifetime.
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We've always supported Israel. And of course the vast majority of Americans do support Israel. But we, like so many of the
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European nations, we have allowed so many Islamic people to come across the border in Texas and other places and get into our country that now they're marching in the streets and we allow it because we have freedom of speech.
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But we don't have freedom of hate speech anymore in this country. You're not allowed to commit hate crimes and talk about killing whole sections of humanity.
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You're not allowed to do that in this country, but they're doing it. And it needs to be stopped with a strong hand.
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It was kind of interesting. The president of France is a young man.
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And we would consider him a rank liberal, which he is.
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And just a few days ago, he was talking about how Israel needed to pause their war and let them get some humanitarian aid in there for the enemy, which you don't do that in war.
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But anyway, they want Israel to do that. But today he announced that he wants people in the nation of France by the thousands to come out and march in favor of Israel, which
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I thought, well, that's interesting. That's a good thing because he said there's been over a thousand anti -Semitic acts this year in France in one year where they're attacking
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Jews just because they're a Jew. And so he's against that. And it's good that he took a stand and wants them to march for Israel.
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So if he of all people can take a stand, why can't President Biden or anybody over here?
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But I'm sure our governor is. Anyway, that's the politics that happened while I was gone.
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You see what happens when I leave? It's terrible. You just never know what's gonna happen. Spiritual warfare and real warfare and all this stuff.
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But I'm glad you guys held down the fort. And I appreciate Dave and Ben and John. And of course,
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Paul and every one of you for praying for the safety and spiritual safety and physical safety of our school and all that.
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We were praying while we were gone as well, but it's glad to have troops on the ground here and know that everything will be okay.
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So thank you for that. Let's pray and we'll get started this morning. Father, thank you for our Sunday school classes already and for blessing there.
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And we ask you to bless the preaching of your word now in Jesus name, amen. And good, welcome to our internet friends out there.
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Our camera has changed a little bit temporarily because our camera went out. So now we're using a laptop, but we will get a new camera this week and get it put up.
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Eventually we're gonna get a good one, aren't we Dave? You know, like a TV camera type thing. And that'll be nice.
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But until then, glad to have you guys with us. Well, we were in the midst of talking about marriage and family when
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I left. And I'm glad that I marked where I stopped because I bet I wouldn't remember that far back and you probably wouldn't either.
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I could have just preached last time sermon. You've forgotten it already. It's been a month, right? But we were in the middle of talking about section of scripture, mostly in the book of Ephesians about how it talks about how we ought to treat one another as Christians here at church, right?
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You remember that? And I told you that many years ago in a paper that I wrote for young couples before they get married, for them to read,
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I said, well, if that's true of the church, it's 10 times true of the family. We should treat our spouses this way and our children and so forth.
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So we've been talking about those things listed mostly in the book of Ephesians chapter four predominantly such as be kind one to another, forgiving one another and things like that.
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And the last two we talked about the last Sunday I was here was to be spirit filled and to always be thankful.
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And those were found in Ephesians chapter five verses 18 through 20. All right, so we almost finished that.
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I'm just gonna finish it up. So turn with me to Ephesians chapter five, verse 18.
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And we'll start there and we'll finish that little section up and hopefully start the next major section in this study.
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If you remember, I kind of got the study out of order because on Father's Day is when we started. So I talked about the role of the fathers first in the family.
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So we've already covered that. And actually this section we're teaching through now is number one.
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It's really the first part of the study but I got them out of order a little bit. So when we finish this, we'll be back in order.
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And the next one will be the role of the wife in the home. And hopefully I'll get started on that today.
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So let's pick it up here, Ephesians chapter five, verse 18 and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the
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Holy Spirit. And I think last time a month ago, I mentioned that pretty much true that if you find a family that's in poverty, you can go back one, two or three generations, you're gonna find an alcoholic.
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And that is so common so often and it ruins families.
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And so we talked about that a little bit last time but the positive side of verse 18, be filled with the
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Spirit is certainly something that we have to do in a marriage if we want the marriage to last through the sands of time.
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Verse 19 says, speaking to yourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the
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Lord. That is predominantly talking about the church at large as we meet together, but it's also talking about the church, which really you do know the church is not the building, right?
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It's the people, it's the saved people, the true born again people in the building. And as they go about their day, even on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, not just on Sunday, they should be living this way.
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And so certainly it applies in the home. And I'm sure in many of our homes, we'll have people from time to time, we'll hear them going around the house, humming a hymn or singing a hymn.
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I certainly do in my home. I hear lots of different people besides myself doing that. Oh, I can hum the hymns.
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I'm pretty good at the humming part or whistle them. You won't catch me singing them around the house too much, but I can make melody in my heart.
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And I do that every day. Now verse 20 says, giving thanks always for all things unto
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God and the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Being thankful is so key to everything.
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In Romans chapter one, there are 21 sins listed that are all caused by unthankfulness.
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And that's something. So that's where we finished last time. Today, let's just look at verse 21. It says, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
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Now, verse 21 is very important and where we're starting out today. I'm still going to use it today to finish up last several
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Sunday study where we're talking about how to treat one another in the home. But this verse is also going to come into play in a few moments when we talk about the role of the wife in the home and you'll see why.
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Because really what you're going to see folks is as we study the role of the wife in the home, it's really quite a bit of it is a lesson for the fathers.
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And you'll see what I'm talking about here in a minute. But anyway, this verse 21 will be key in that study as well.
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So these principles for relationships, even though they're usually applied to one member of a church toward another, they should be 10 times that applied to one another in the home.
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And that's kind of what this whole idea was about. Now, what's interesting, you might say, well, you shouldn't just take stuff out of context if you know it's talking about how to treat each other in church and try to apply that to the home.
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Isn't that taking something out of context? Well, what's interesting is we've been in Ephesians chapter four, Ephesians chapter five.
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Let's look at the context. Look at Ephesians chapter five and just drop down a few verses to verse 33 with me and take a look at that.
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All right, it says, nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
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And as you keep taking a look at this, you see that it's going to relate that to Jesus Christ's relationship with the church.
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So it is in context. Now, there's another couple of points I wanna make before we finish this part about how to treat one another in the home.
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And in Ephesians chapter six, you go from chapter four, chapter five, chapter six, still all talking about how to treat one another in our relationships.
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When you get into Ephesians chapter six, verse 10, it starts to talk about spiritual warfare. And in this church, we're pretty familiar with this passage.
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We talk about it from time to time. It's very important to get familiar with it in your personal lives, especially as I spoke to the role of the man in the church back starting on Father's Day.
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He is the primary responsible party in the home if there is a father in the home, otherwise the mother has to take this role to fight the spiritual warfare battle over himself, his wife and his children in the home.
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But Ephesians 6 .10 says, finally brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
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Now, do you think the Lord would tell all of us that if it weren't true that in our lives, there are gonna be times when we have spiritual warfare in our homes and the church certainly as it relates to church, but in our homes.
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And so if we're going to have spiritual warfare, we need to know how to have the armor on. And that's what this whole passage deals with that in Ephesians chapter six.
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Verse 18 says, after it goes through and tells all the different parts of the armor, which we discussed that with the men, the part on the role of the men, we discussed it already, but look at verse 18, how it ends.
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Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit. Who knows what supplication means? What's the difference between that and prayer?
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Big word, isn't it? We don't use supplication much anymore. It's an old English word, but what does it mean? Asking. Asking, it's even a stronger word.
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It's almost like begging. So praying in prayer and beseeching
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God heavily, let's put it that way. It's a good way to put it. In the Holy Spirit. So we cannot pray without praying in the spirit.
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Romans chapter eight talks about that. One of my favorite passages on prayer in the whole Bible. You can't really pray for real without being spirit filled when you pray and watching there into with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
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Now that is an interesting verse there because of course
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I'm relating this to the home, but it's true of the church too. We should be watching over one another. And if you see someone, you think they're down a little bit and you just see they're a little different in their eyes and their body language, you should get them off by themselves and ask them everything okay.
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You need to talk to them because it says watching there into with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
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That means watching over all the brothers and sisters and make sure everybody's okay.
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Because what's interesting is when Satan attacks, he doesn't just attack one person.
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I like to say it this way. He doesn't attack with a rifle, which shoots one bullet. He attacks with a shotgun, which shoots a whole bunch of little
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BB like things, right? You know how a shotgun works. So he'll hit you and the people in your circle of life at the same time to stir up trouble and division and make it where you can't help each other because you're all sort of hit at once.
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That's what he likes to do. But in a church, he can't hit everybody at once usually. So when you're down, possibly
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I'm not and I can help you. And then when I'm being attacked by the enemy, maybe you're not and you can help me.
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And that's the principle. But if that's true in a church, think about it in the home, watch over your spouse. Listen, don't just assume that your spouse is always okay.
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They may even say they're okay, but watch their body language, watch their eyes, because sometimes they're not okay because they can be attacked in a minor way or a major way by the enemy.
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And you'd better be there to help them when that happens or he might hurt the entire family along with your spouse.
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And so that's how this applies in the home. Now, in 1 Peter 3, verse eight, there's kind of a beautiful summary to this whole study on how we should treat one another in the home.
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1 Peter 3, eight says, "'Finally, be ye all of one mind, "'having compassion one of another, "'love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous.'"
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Now, in the old use of the word pitiful, it's changed in meaning. Now it doesn't mean this anymore, but what it used to mean is have pity on the other person.
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When you're pitiful, now that's a bad thing, right? You don't wanna be a pitiful person, right? But what it used to mean is if you're pitiful, it means you're having pity on the other person.
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Maybe they're treating you badly, but you have pity on them, which actually, if you wanna look at the
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Greek word, it means a well -compassioned person. Like when you're a pitiful person, you're a well -compassioned person.
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You have a lot of compassion for the other person, even if they're treating you wrong. That's a big word in the
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Bible. And in English, Satan has destroyed the meaning of it. He changes languages when he can to confuse, bring confusion.
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But that's what it means when it says, "'Be pitiful, be courteous.'" Imagine how that would help in our homes, because whoever we're the closest to, we're sometimes not as careful how we say what we say because we're so familiar with each other.
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Would you agree with that? We might not be courteous in the home, but of all places, that's where we should be.
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People don't forget what you say. Doesn't matter what you mean by it. They remember how you say it and all of it, and they don't forget it.
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And your spouse doesn't either. And we're gonna talk more about that after we finish the role of the husband, the role of the wife.
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We're even talking about the role of the children. I've even got a passage on the role of the pastor, which I will probably skip for purposes of this.
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But it's interesting. It's a very interesting part of this study. But there is a part in there about the different types of love, the three different types of love between the husband and wife in particular.
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And on that particular study, one of the three types of love is greatly affected by this that we're talking about here is how you treat the other person and how courteous you are or how much you're not.
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And that sort of thing can really affect that one of the three types of love. So we'll talk about that when we get to it.
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But I love that verse. And look how it not only applies to church, but to the home. Finally be all of one mind.
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That means have unity. Don't allow Satan to bring division into the home. He will do it. He will try.
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And just fight it off. Fight it off through prayer, scripture, reading and all the armor of God.
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If you wanna go back and review that in Ephesians 6, go read it. It tells you exactly the whole armor for your whole self.
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And you need every family member to have it. And when Satan tries to bring unity, you just, here's the key.
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If you wanna know the key to destroying Satan, as Jesus has already done that, by the way, he slew him when he was on the cross.
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Jesus slew him. He thought he was slaying Jesus, but the opposite happened. But honest, loving communication between born -again people will make
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Satan flee every time. So if you have division, it's because you're thinking in your mind something about the other person that's probably not even completely true.
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You're getting bitter over something, maybe something they said or did, or something you thought they meant by it. And you're letting that go for a day or two or three or four.
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You should never let it go more than one day. Don't let the sun go down on it, the Bible says. But if you do, bitterness comes in.
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And then all of a sudden you have, Satan will use that to create division where you really feel badly toward that person.
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And you can't let that happen in a family. So what you have to do is sit down together and talk and say, well, here's what
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I meant by that. I know I said that. I'm sorry I shouldn't have said it that way, but I didn't mean that. Here's what I meant.
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And if you talk like that and love, Satan can't handle it. All right, so that's how you get rid of division in the family.
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Now, if you've already had a problem with it, then you need to also add an apology with that.
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Apologize and say, let's start over, let's start over. And that's how we do it. Even with our children, we can do that.
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Children love it when parents apologize and admit they're not always right. All right, so the other thing it says is be courteous one to another.
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And the Greek word is really two or three little small words all put together into one word.
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It means to be friendly of mind, to be friendly of mind. So courteousness starts in the heart and comes out and people can see it.
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It's not just saying nice things or doing nice things. It starts in the heart and in the mind. And then verse nine there in 1
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Peter 3 says, not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing.
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So someone hollers at you or treats you badly, what's the flesh wanna do?
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It doesn't wanna turn the other cheek. It wants to smite them on the cheek, right? That's right.
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Well, not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing. Railing is when you're hollering at each other.
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Now, when we were raising our five kids, we did not allow them to fight physically, which most families think it's a norm or it's natural.
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No, it's not. Yeah, it is natural. It's not spiritual. So we didn't allow it.
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And we didn't even let them call each other names like stupid. Even what little names you think are meaningless, they're not meaningless.
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Because year after year, if you keep saying that to a person, they start believing it. It's harmful. It's called verbal abuse.
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You don't allow that in your home. Children, you cannot talk bad about your brothers and sisters.
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And if you're doing it, stop, apologize for it and stop doing it. It's not godly. So that's what this means.
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Railing for railing. Like your brother or your sister rails at you, you don't come back at them. You pray for them.
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You say, look, I'm just gonna pray for you and smile at them real big. That'll get them. Try it. They'll freak out and run the other way probably if you did that.
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So railing for railing. But contrary wise, bless them, the
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Lord says. Bless them when they treat you badly. Don't you think that's just Jesus telling you to be like himself, right?
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Knowing that you are there unto called. So when God called you to save you, he called you to be like this also.
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To be merciful rather than railing for railing. That you should inherit a blessing, it says.
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So you get blessed when you live like Jesus rather than like the world lives. So there is that.
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Now, that's the end of that part of our study. And it sort of brings us to now the role of the husband.
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I mean, of the wife. Now, before I get on that, I gotta take a drink. Everybody pray for me.
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Last time I did this, we lost two families. And had a few of you in the room kind of hated me for about a week, but you got over it.
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So that was good. So anytime a preacher talks about women and what the
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Bible says about it, they think he's being too harsh. But the preacher didn't write the
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Bible. Who wrote it? And I was way hard on the men, but you've forgotten that already on Father's Day.
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Because the main responsibility in the home, if anything goes wrong, lies on the man, not the woman.
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And so I've already said that. So now I am going to talk about the role of women. And let me be quick to say this though, because I don't like to not be loved, especially by the women.
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Mostly I'm gonna be talking to the men, but I gotta get there and it's not quite yet. So first I'm just gonna give you some scripture.
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And what's interesting about it, I'll just pull some verses out of context to read them and show you what the
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Bible says about the role of the woman in the home. But it's just a verse. So remember, every verse that I read has context all around it.
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Where the context shows you what it really means, what it's really talking about and the depth of it and the width of it and so forth.
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And so what happens when I'm gonna start out just reading the verses, they're gonna feel a little bit hard, especially in today's society where the world is teaching women incorrectly what their role is.
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And sometimes it's hard to divide that from what God says it is. And so then you compare what
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God says it is with what the world says it is. And it seems a little backwards or old or something or different.
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God's way is different than what the world teaches. So you go, wow, really? And you feel like that.
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But when I'm able to come back and add the context around it, then I'm gonna be talking to the men and you're gonna like that ladies, okay?
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Just trust me, you'll like that. But it all has to go together in the home, in a marriage. And so here
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I go, I'm gonna jump off into it. Are you ready? Dave, you wanna pray for me first or?
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Okay, all right. Okay, I would let one of the women but they're not allowed to speak in the church.
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So, all right, Genesis 2, verse 18. Oh, Sharon didn't like that one, but you are allowed to pray.
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Okay, I'm teasing. She's just listening intently over there. All right, Genesis 2, verse 18.
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Let's go all the way back in the good book to the first book of the
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Bible, when men and women were created by God and see what
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God said the role of the woman was to start with. And this is like, this just starts out like, if a modern woman, fortunately we don't have visitors here today, but like if a modern woman came in off the street and they heard this, they would go, well,
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I'll never go back to that church again. They believe blah, blah, blah. And yet I'm just telling you what God said, but that's how it would feel, okay?
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So look at this. And besides that, there's an old English word here that is difficult to understand what it even means, but let's read it.
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And now I'm gonna tell you what it means. I'm gonna show you the Hebrew here in a minute, but Genesis 2, 18. And the
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Lord God said, didn't say David Mitchell said, keep that in mind. The Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.
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Well, how many of you men would say amen to that? Amen to that. The huge majority of men need a wife.
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And there is a gift of celibacy. There are certain men who can live their whole life single and be happy, but even the great apostle
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Paul said, but for most men, that's not the case. And God said when he made
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Adam, now you gotta remember the context of this. How long do you think it was?
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Take a shot at this. How long do you think it was between when Adam was created and began to walk with God in the coolness of the evening of each day, between that and when
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Eve was created? How long do you think it was? Any other thoughts?
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Or you might say a verse or two. Somebody said too long.
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Who said that? Dave, Dave said too long. No, that's what Adam said, Dave. So how long do you think it was?
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Well, let me ask you this. How many of you have studied biology, at least in high school? Raise your hand.
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Let's see. If you went here, you better raise your hand. Certainly by the time you get out, you will. Okay, well,
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I studied in high school. I had a great teacher in Mahea High School in biology.
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But then I went to Baylor, I was pre -med. So I took botany and I took zoology. Zoology is the study of animal kingdom.
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Botany is the study of the plant kingdom. So what the Bible says is God told
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Adam to name every animal that God created. And there's some that have gone extinct since then, right?
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So it's way more than what we think there are now. It doesn't say name the plants, but I would think he probably named them as well.
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So how long do you think that would take to make up the name and to catalog the names of every animal that exists on the face of the earth?
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So it was at least that long before Eve was made, was created. So it was a space of time when he was alone.
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And then after, while he was naming the animals, he was seeing which ones could be pets and which ones couldn't, you know?
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Like probably tried to make a cow his pet and it didn't work because they're too stupid for one thing.
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Tried the horse and it kind of worked, but then turned around and kicked him when he tried to feed him. I've had that happen.
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So they're not always nice. So he finally found dogs and cats and stuff like that, right? But all of these things he did, nothing really satisfied
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Adam as a thing that could just satisfy his soul where he was just happy not being by himself.
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Not one thing out of all the entire animal kingdom. So it gets to that place. And this is kind of where the
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Lord said, it's not good that the man should be alone. And he says, I will make for him a help meat for him.
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So that is what the wife is. It names it, it's called first mention. The principle of first mention in the
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Bible, the first time any concept that exists in the world is mentioned in the Bible. That context tells us every other usage of the principle throughout the whole
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Bible. So if you wanna talk about the role of women in church, you wanna talk about the role of women in the home, you wanna talk about why a woman was created, the purpose for women in the world.
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The first mention is she was to be a help meat for the man. Now that old
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English word is not quite one we use much anymore.
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How many of you ever said, help meat, would you come here a moment? You know, we wouldn't advise that because who knows what would happen.
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But we'll get to what the Hebrew means, but let's finish this little passage.
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So he makes him a help meat for him. So she was made for him.
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You get that? Not the other way around. God did not make Adam for her.
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He made her for Adam. So there's a lot you could preach about just what that means.
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What does it mean for him? Well, we know in the context of this, for one thing, he was lonely, right?
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So for company, for friendship, for communication, right?
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I mean, we could write a book about it, but it says that it's not good for the man to be alone.
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I will make a help meat for him. Now verse 21 says, and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and Adam slept and he took one of Adam's ribs and closed up the flesh.
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So this was the first surgical procedure that was ever done on a human being, done by God himself.
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I mean, it was Jesus doing it, not the father. It was Jesus doing it. No one had called him
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Jesus yet. He was called Yahweh, but it was who we now know is named Jesus that performed this surgery.
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And he closed up the flesh of Adam and verse 22, and the rib which the
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Lord God had taken from the man, from that he made a woman and he brought her to the man.
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Now you can just imagine gentlemen, what he thought the first time he saw her, what do you think? You think that's better than a cow?
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You think it was better than a puppy? I think he went, wow. I think he thought, well,
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I've seen a lot of God's creation. You know, I've had time to look around at the garden of Eden and everything and all the animals and the plants
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God made and it's phenomenal, but wow, here's this greatest creation is exactly what
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I think that he felt. And so where was I in the flesh and the
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Lord God, and he brought her to the man, look at verse 23. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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Why do you say that? Because she was made from him. She came out from him, right?
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now there's a lot in the
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New Testament that relates to this, this principle that the woman came from the man, not the other way around.
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The woman came from the man, the man was made first by God and then the woman and things like that.
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And then later on, she was the one that was deceived by Satan, not the man. The woman was deceived by Satan and the man was not deceived, but he sinned on purpose with her when he ate the fruit, didn't he?
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So a lot is made of that in the New Testament, but here we just see that his help meat is made by God and given to him, she is made for him.
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And his first response is, well, she's part of me. Isn't that interesting?
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She's part of me. And I have a theory and I've heard other preachers that have the same theory that Adam, before she was taken out, had all of the attributes of male and female.
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He could sew as well as he could chop the wood, so to speak. He could do, my father was kind of like that.
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He was like a man's man. He was in the FBI and he knew karate and judo and could whip just about anybody that I ever saw.
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And yet he could make dresses with a sewing machine. He could decorate a house.
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He could do all kinds of things like that. So I called, I joked about it, called it his feminine side, right?
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But Adam had all of that, but when God took Eve out of Adam, some of those attributes were removed and she had them.
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So at that point without her, he could not be whole. Do you understand what I'm saying? He could not be whole without her.
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And that's why it's good for most men to be married because they need the better half, so to speak.
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They need a wife to be a whole person. And to them together, they're a whole person.
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And when you really think about that unity in a marriage, that's what Satan wants to destroy. And you just simply don't allow him to destroy it.
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You don't even allow your own children to come between you and your spouse ever. The wife, I'm gonna speak as a man here, but the wife is far more important than the children.
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The wife comes first. The children are, everyone knows how important the children are, but they don't come first.
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The wife comes first. And you never let a child come to the mom and say, well, dad's not treating me right.
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And the first thing you tell him is, you know what? You're not allowed to say that. Let's go talk to dad together.
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And you never let a child bring anything between the husband and the wife because they're one.
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So here is the first unity. And Adam is the one who proclaimed it.
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She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and the two shall be one.
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Isn't that something? The two shall be one. And they were both naked, the man and the wife, and they were not ashamed.
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You know why? Because they had not sinned yet. They were pure and innocent as little babies.
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And that's the state they were in at this point. Well, what does help meet mean?
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It's interesting because it comes from a Hebrew word, neged, which means opposite.
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So the root meaning, it can be translated toward. So it's almost like you see
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Adam standing here and Eve standing here and they're opposite one another, meaning standing across from one another, but they're facing each other.
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So she is opposite Adam, but toward him. That's the first root picture of the meaning help meet.
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It comes from another Hebrew word, neged, which means front or the counterpart, or it sometimes is translated in the
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Bible, mate. It literally means something that's over and against something else.
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It can mean something that is before something else and not in time, but in importance.
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So I think that the man should think of his woman as before himself, don't you gentlemen?
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He should think of his wife before he thinks of himself. That's kind of implied in the root meaning of the
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Hebrew word. But even that word comes from another Hebrew word, nagad, they all look pretty similar and sound somewhat similar, but it means to stand opposite, but it can mean to manifest.
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It can mean to announce something. So the wife can be someone who announces her husband to the community.
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She should be a person who's praising her husband in front of others. She should be a person who is making him be a better man and then telling people about how good a man he is.
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And that's sort of found in the root meaning. Someone who manifests the other person is sort of found in this meaning.
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Someone who explains this person. Ladies, have you ever had to explain your husband to someone else?
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That's part of it as well. To praise the other person and to expound fully, to show forth.
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Isn't that interesting that all of that is sort of found in the root meanings of this word help meet. And so now it's fleshed out a little bit better.
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It's not just a helper. I had to get to that quickly. Don't you think ladies? It's not just a helper as the old
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English word makes it sound, but in the Hebrew, it never meant that. It meant all these things I just said. So there we have it.
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Now there is one more Hebrew word that these words are all related to.
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And all of these are, the spelling of them is just almost identical. It may have a little one extra dot in the
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Hebrew because Hebrew letters are like pictures, aren't they? And this other word is nagad.
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And it means to flow through the idea of clearing the way or to issue out from something.
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So the woman issued out from the man because she came from his rib. It has that meaning too. Isn't that interesting?
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So you get a lot of meanings for what help meet means, but that was her role and this was her purpose and she was made for the man.
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So that's the first thought as we start to study the role of the wife in the home.
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Now, secondly, Ephesians. Now remember, I'm taking just the verse to get the words that God says about the women, but we're gonna go back and see the context.
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And conveniently for me and all the men, it'd probably be not today, but later we'll talk about the men in this because they're in the context.
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I don't know if I get to that or not today, but anyway, look at Ephesians 5 .22. So the first thing is the wife is a help meet and it means all the things we just discussed.
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Secondly, Ephesians 5 .22, wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto
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Jesus, unto the Lord Jesus. So we see this word submit.
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Now, back in Genesis, if you go back to after sin took place, we were discussing before sin, right?
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But if you go back and you look at chapter three of Genesis after Adam and Eve had both fallen into sin,
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Genesis 3 .16 says that God came when he was pronouncing the curses on Satan and on the man and on the woman and on the universe, everything was cursed because of man's sin, even the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, all of it.
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And one thing Jesus did when he died on the cross was he died for the cosmos, which means the
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Bible says for God so loved the world, that word in Greek is cosmos. He died to put all of that back in order because when man fell into sin, everything went into disorder.
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Jesus died to put it back, the entire universe back into order. He didn't just die for men and women and for sins.
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He died because of the sins, but it puts everything back into order. But it says here that part of the curse, when
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God looked at the woman, he said, he pointing at God's pointing over here at Adam and said, he will rule over you.
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Now, how does the modern woman like that one? You see, that's rough.
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That's hard to take that the man actually will rule over you like a king rules over someone in his kingdom.
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He will rule over you. And I don't have any help from the Greek word on that.
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I mean, the Hebrew word on that, it means rule over you. Now that remember is a result of sin.
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And the principle behind it, as you study this whole concept, is that because of sin that the man and the wife in the marriage are both sinners.
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Now they need to be saved by grace, right? Saved sinners, but they're still sinners and their flesh is still sinful.
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So when they're in the flesh, which is quite a bit of the time, I mean, we're not spirit filled every moment of every day, even though that should be what we try to be.
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We need to be more moments of every day, but we're not. So when we're not, when we're in the flesh, then sin is there.
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So that's why you cannot ever say that marriage is a 50 -50 proposition. Now you can say that as long as you know that the man is the tiebreaker.
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Like what if one votes to do this, the other says, no, I think we should do this. Well, if it's a 50 -50 marriage, it's gonna end in divorce.
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And that's why the world and the counselors in the world like to say, oh, marriage has to be 50 -50 because Satan wants you to think that because it will end in divorce because two sinful people cannot get along for a whole lifetime and agree on everything.
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And you got some important things that have to be decided like which house are we gonna buy? What kind of car are we gonna buy?
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How many children are we gonna have? You have got some really important decisions to make.
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And what if you disagree and it's 50 -50? Well, how can the men walk together unless they be agreed, the
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Bible says. So you just split up. But if the man and the woman are taught from the time they're little children, that, okay, you both have a say in these major decisions, but if you disagree, the man has to be the tiebreaker.
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He gets the tiebreaking vote. And the woman has to fall in line and go with that even when she sees he's wrong, which has that ever happened?
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Don't raise your hands, ladies. But I mean, we do make wrong decisions.
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And sometimes you will even see it. But if the man just is turning purple in the face, he's not gonna back away from it.
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You just got to pray for him. That's what you have to do is you just pray for him, say, Lord, probably not gonna work out great because I've given him my counsel.
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He won't listen to me. And I think he's wrong, but Lord bless him and help him and help him at least learn from this and help our family to survive this.
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But you can't both be the tiebreaker. So the
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Bible says the man is, and that's what this means when it says, submit to the husband and New Testament and Old Testament says he rules over you.
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It does not have the connotation of like a king ruling over a kingdom.
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It's not that kind of rule. It simply means that he's the tiebreaker in all the decisions in the home.
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And he has to be because of sin. If both of us were completely sinless without sin, you don't need an authority structure at all.
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You can just, everything could just be a circle and everybody could just agree. Churches could be run that way where just everybody gets to vote and we'd all be at one and we'd all vote for the same thing because we would have no sin, but we're not like that, are we?
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So we have to have an authority structure in all of life, in businesses and churches and homes, we have to have it.
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And in the home, God put the man, put Jesus first, the man, the woman, and then the children.
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And that's how that goes. And then there's a pastor in there also. It's kind of good ladies, because sometimes in some situations, a woman needs someone to go to because the man just is wrong and won't listen, but she understands that he has authority in the home and she needs help and she can go to a pastor or an elder.
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Doesn't have to be the pastor. It could be any of the elders or even a deacon in the church and a deacon and a deacon's wife together and get help.
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Sometimes that's necessary. And so that's there too. We're not really discussing that in this study, but in the home, we have this authority structure.
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Colossians 3, verse 18 says, "'Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands "'as it is fit in the
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Lord to do this.'" Fit, it's the right way to live. And so now remember,
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I'm pulling these out of context. Later, we're gonna come in and look at the context around these verses. The Greek word for submit is hupotasso.
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And so the word hupotasso means subordination and tasso means ordained.
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So this means it is ordained by God that you be subordinate to the husband. That's what the word means.
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Kind of hard to get around that because Greeks like math. It's just what it says. It's what it means. You're ordained by God to be subordinate to the husband because of sin in the world.
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Not because of your personal sin, but because every man and woman is sinful. And so we have to have an authority structure.
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Otherwise we have chaos. And unfortunately, that's what most homes are is chaos because they don't study the scripture together.
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So it means ordained to be subordinated to another person, which is the husband.
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So we see that the Bible teaches that God ordained the wife to be in subordination to, or to be submissive to the authority of the husband.
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Doesn't mean the husband's always right. That's a whole other subject, but now she is to be subject to the husband in everything the scripture says.
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Look at Ephesians 5 .24. Therefore, as the church is subject unto
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Christ. Now that's interesting. You see that little word as, that's where we're gonna start bringing the context into it here in a little bit.
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But just like the church is subject to Christ in the same manner, let the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything it says.
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Wow. Okay. Now 1 Peter 3 .1, likewise ye wives be in subjection to your own husband.
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So we see this throughout the New Testament echoed again and again. 1 Peter 3 .4, but let it be the hidden man of the heart in a quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God a great price if a woman has a quiet spirit.
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The Bible says it's a great price in the sight of God. For after this manner in the old time, the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection unto their own husbands.
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Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord, whose daughters you are as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement.
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Now, why does it put that at the end of the verse? You're not afraid with amazement. Maybe that was written by the
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Holy Spirit knowing it would be read in this century right now. That women would see these very verses and be number one, afraid that they might be true and secondly, be amazed by it.
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Isn't that funny? God's got a sense of humor, but there it is. It's what it says. And so it takes it all the way back not only to the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, but to Abraham and Sarah as an example.
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And so this is exactly this word for being subjection to is the same exact Greek word is submit to that we talked about in some of those other verses where it means ordained by God to be subordinate to the husband.
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All right, so we've got all of that. Now, we don't have much time left, but let me just give you an idea of where we're headed.
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So let's talk about this idea of the wife submitting to the husband, but let's look at it in the context of the passages we find it in.
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And now ladies, you're gonna see that predominantly we'll be speaking to the husbands and it gets very interesting.
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And I'll promise you this material we're about to cover, you're not gonna see it in a book. You're not gonna read about it anywhere.
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I think the Lord gave it to me and I wish I could live to be 99 years old and write a bunch of books.
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Doesn't look like that's gonna happen. I mean, I don't know how long I'll live, but it's getting a little bit of late for me to write very many books, but I could write this and it would be new to a lot of people.
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So maybe you can share it with your friends and we can spread the word about what God teaches on this material.
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I think you'll see what I mean as we go through it. So the first point
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I wanna make is this, number one, the idea of the wife submitting to the husband does not stand alone as an idea, but it is found in the midst of several ideas relating to at least three things.
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The first thing is the fact that they are to be continually submitting one to another because the very first verse before any of those verses that told the wife to submit to the husband, it said, and let them submit one to another and that one's always left out.
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But that's where it starts. So that's the first idea it's found in the context of submitting one to another in the fear of God.
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That's how it words it, submitting one to another in the fear of God. Now, I've never, I've done a lot of marriage counseling in my life, 40 something years of doing this.
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And the man always comes in, I always, we'll speak to them individually first and I don't know what order
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I changed that up, but I will speak to them individually by themselves. And that was a bit redundant, wasn't it?
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And then I will speak to them together. And if the stories are different, it's amazing how when you put them in the same room, they line more up because the other one's there to slightly correct each story and they get more similar.
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But I've heard so many men speak of these verses.
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Well, the Bible says I'm the authority in the home. Well, the
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Bible says she's got to submit to my authority. Well, the Bible says I rule over her. I have never ever heard one single man bring up the verse right before that in verse 21,
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Ephesians 5, 21. It says, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. I've never heard one man ever bring that verse up.
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And when I bring it up to the man, he is afraid and astounded or whatever that phrase was that I read about the woman all
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I go. So, and yet that's where it starts. That verse is found before any of the verses that talk about the woman submitting to the man.
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So that's the first part of the context that I find interesting. Secondly, is these injunctions for the woman to submit to the man, they are to be the man and the woman in the home, in this home where that's supposed to happen, where the woman's supposed to submit, in that home and in the context of everywhere
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I find those verses, the man and the woman are exhorted to be in a continual state of spirit -filledness.
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Now I made that word up, but I like it. Spirit -filledness. Maybe it's real,
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I have no clue, but I'm keeping it. Spirit -filledness, okay? And the third thing in the context that I see is the context emphasizes the adverbial comparative conjunction, which is the word as, as.
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Now I've got several ases in this study, and they're in the context.
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Every time you see the woman has to submit to the husband, it will say as something else and gives an example for you to look at to see in what manner you're supposed to submit and when and how you're supposed to submit and in what context you have to submit, which implies when you don't have to, all right?
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But whoever talks about that, have you ever heard anybody talk about that? They just talk about what says I've had the authority in the home.
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So gentlemen, you'll be astounded and fearful and surprised when you see these things,
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I'm sure, I certainly was. I can't believe I'm admitting these things in public, but, oh,
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Charlotte, I think I heard somebody in the nursery. All right, so you see those three things at least in the context.
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So at the same time, they're submitting one to another. Secondly, they're supposed to be spirit -filled.
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And thirdly, this adverbial comparative conjunction, the word as, is found throughout and we're gonna have to study what those are, okay?
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So maybe I can get to one of them here now. I don't know, one or two, we'll see. So in Ephesians chapter five, verse 21, it says, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
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And I've already made the point that that comes before where it says for the woman to submit to the man.
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Now, this is interesting because the word submitting in the grammar, in the Greek here, is present passive participle.
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Now, I know it's getting time for lunch and so this has absolutely no meaning in your fuzzy brain at this place, but we all remember what passive means because we see it so much when it has to do with the
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Lord doing things in our lives. It's someone greater and bigger than you doing it to you.
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It's not you doing it. It's someone greater than you. I won't say you don't do it, but you didn't initiate it.
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Someone bigger and more powerful than you initiated this thing in your life.
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Well, in this place where it says submit to one another in the fear of God, it is present passive participle.
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Now, when you put the present in there in the Greek, that's the closest thing in English to what we would call it continual.
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So in English, we would add a ing at the end. So how you would read this verse if you wanted a real, really good translation, just like it reads in the
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Greek, well, the King James got it. You see the ing at the end of submit, submitting, but you could add the word continually and it would nail it.
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Submitting continually yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
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So that's the first thing to notice in the context of all of this is that right there. Now, men, that frankly, we have not been taught that and it's difficult to think about, don't you think?
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If you're thinking in a world where you have the authority and you're the tiebreaker, that you got to submit to the woman and she has to submit to you.
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Wow, I mean, that's an eye opener to most men and it is the context this is all found in.
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So that's a great starting place. And when you look at the fact that it's passive, who is it that's going to make that happen in your home?
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Is it the man that's gonna make that happen? Is it the man that's gonna make himself be submissive to the wife?
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I don't think so, cause it would be in the active if it's the man that's supposed to do it. It's God that has to make that happen.
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And there's nobody can make that happen but God. A pastor and deacons can help when necessary.
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They can walk right into that home and face that man and say, did you strike your wife? You can sure do that.
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It's kind of fun. Or you can say, have you been like verbally abusing your wife? We'd like to hear about that.
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And so pray before you do it though. Cause nowadays in Texas, everybody's got a pistol, right? Well, we can take ours with us too though, right brother
01:00:01
Paul so Dave, whatever, I'm jesting. But my point is, you know, it's
01:00:09
God really. Inside that home, if that man is gonna be ever submissive to that woman,
01:00:14
I will promise you it's passive. It's God that has to do work in his heart. So women, a lot of prayer can go into that.
01:00:22
Praying for that man. Look, let him know he's not always right. Sometimes I give pretty good counsel.
01:00:29
And men, we just need to begin to learn that we should make zero decisions without her counsel and a lot of prayer after hearing it and so forth.
01:00:41
So first of all, before we see the scripture, exhort the wife even one time to be submissive to the husband, we see that the husband and the wife are to submit to one another.
01:00:52
Present, passive, participle. It's in an ongoing continual fashion. It's a state we should be in in a marriage.
01:01:00
This implies a continuing walk with the Lord and once again, a state of spirit filledness.
01:01:11
So if you just look right up above that in the context in Ephesians chapter five, just a few verses up, it says this, be not drunk with wine, where in his excess be filled with the
01:01:21
Holy Spirit. So in the home, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that each can submit to the other.
01:01:29
And I think we'll stop right there and what we'll pick up next Sunday, the Lord willing, is
01:01:34
I wanna start going into this adverbial comparative conjunction, this little word as, and let's look at all the different examples the
01:01:45
Holy Spirit gives us that shows how the woman is supposed to submit and when and why, and it's pretty fascinating study.
01:01:54
So we'll see you on that next time. Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you for your word.
01:02:00
We ask you to always bless it in our hearts and help us to be blessings to other people as we share these thoughts that they might not have heard before.
01:02:08
In some cases and or in many cases need to be reminded of and so help us to be salt and light out in the community as we go to obey you and your purpose for our lives.
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And Lord, we ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship. Thank you for bringing Charlotte and myself back home safely and keeping all of our brothers and sisters and family and friends safe while we were gone.
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And we ask you to bless our fellowship time and our meal in Jesus name, amen. You're dismissed.