Sunday Sermon: Marriage as Christ Loves the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33)

Marriage as a Picture of Christ and the Church

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Ephesians.

Here's Pastor Gabe.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ loves the church, because we are members of his body.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come to this word again today, this instruction, this divine counsel that has been given to us in how the family is to be, that a husband should love his wife, that a wife should love her husband.

We have all been made equal in the eyes of God. Every one of us, man or woman, is guaranteed the same inheritance by faith in Jesus Christ. We are all inheritors of this eternal kingdom. But while we live here on this earth, there are respective roles that you have appointed us for, different giftings that we have received, and so may we be humble to recognize that you have called us all to different things, and we are obedient to that according to the will and the command and the design of God.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. There was a man in Hawaii who was walking along the beach, and he stumbled across a magic lamp. And so he pulled the lamp out of the sand, and he's looking at this thing, and he's like, I've seen this in the movies before.

I can rub it and get three wishes. So he rubs the lamp. A genie pops out, and the guy says, I knew it. I'm ready for my three wishes. The genie says, ah, you watch too many movies. I don't do three wishes.

It's only one. You only get one wish. So what is the wish that you want? The man looks around him. He says, well, I love this paradise. I love Hawaii, but it's so expensive to get here. So why don't you build me a bridge from North America to Hawaii?

That way I can drive here whenever I want and not have to worry about the cost of flying and whatnot. And the genie said, that's an impossible wish. There's no way I can give you that much steel and concrete, and we're putting gas stations along the way, all the way through this thruway that goes through the Pacific Ocean.

It isn't practical. Think of something else. So the man said, all right, and he thought for a moment, and he said, you know, I'd really like to be able to understand my wife. I wish that I could understand my wife.

And the genie said, do you want that bridge in two lanes or four? God has created marriage, but he put two people in a marriage that are sinners. Both of us are. The husband and the wife are both sinners.

More than just being sinners, we're two completely different people. A man is a man, a woman is a woman. In case you haven't noticed, they're different. That's counter-cultural. What we're reading here in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 and 33, these things are counter-cultural, where the culture wants to tell you there's no difference between a man and a woman, but it doesn't take a scientific mind to look at a man and woman and can tell these two people are very and quite different.

You don't have to be in a marriage to know that a man and woman are different. God has created us different, and that's actually a beautiful thing. The differences that we see that exist between men and women are created in such a way so that we might give glory to God, even despite our differences, but in fact through those differences.

And so we look today at these instructions that we have in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 through 33. Instructions that are specifically given to wives and instructions that are specifically given to husbands.

But in both of these instructions is a call to honor and glorify God. A wife has been called to glorify God in her marriage a certain way, and a husband has been called to glorify God in his marriage in a certain way.

So I hope that as we come to this passage today, what we're going to find ourselves equipped with is an understanding of what God has appointed for us in our marriages so that we might live in our marriages in an honoring way to one another and ultimately to God.

Now though we're going to be talking about wives and husbands today, we're entering a section of Ephesians as we've been studying through Ephesians the last few months. We're entering a section of Ephesians where we're looking at practical application to earthly relationships.

Here we're talking about wives and husbands. Next week we're going to be talking about parents and children. And then the week after that, we're talking about relationships we have between like an employee and an employer.

And then even the instruction that we have for all Christians to put on the full armor of God, which is how we will come close to closing out our study of the book of Ephesians. But today focusing on the dynamic that exists in marriage, the relationship between wives and husbands.

There are singles that we have here in the service today, but that doesn't mean that you get permission to tune out to this particular sermon. Sonia's going, ah, man. First of all, the Lord may still have for you an intention and a desire for you to be married.

That's number one. But number two, we've all been given the instruction to honor marriage, whether we're married or not. In Hebrews chapter 13, we are told, let the marriage bed be held in honor by all.

So all of us here in this service have an obligation to one another to help each other in our marriages. You have a marriage of your own. You are instructed to nurture and care for that marriage. But then you as a Christian, as a fellow brother and sister in the faith, you also have an obligation to be looking out for your fellow brothers and sisters and helping them in their marriages also, whether you're single or married yourself.

So these are instructions that exist not just for husbands and wives, but even for the entire church. For remember that this was a church that the apostle Paul was writing to, the church in Ephesus. Let's begin on a very grassroots, very basic level by asking this question, what is marriage?

What is that? Anyway, I looked up a few of those teachers that I like to learn from to see what they had to say about marriage. R .C. Sproul said, marriage is God's answer to the problem of human loneliness.

Sproul goes back to Genesis chapter one, where God created marriage. And all throughout Genesis one is God is bringing about creation by a word. He is speaking it into existence and it comes to be. He looks at everything and he says, it is good.

Behold, it is very good. This is what we call a benediction. We have it listed in your bulletin. Well, sometimes it's mentioned in the bulletin, but that ending sort of exhortation that pastor Dwight comes up and gives before we're all dismissed from here.

That's called a benediction. He comes up and gives a good word. That's what benediction means. Bene, good, diction is word. So he comes and gives a good word. The Lord is giving that all throughout creation as he's bringing it into existence.

He creates it. He looks at it and behold, it is very good. But we also have in Genesis one, what's called a malediction. Mala, which means bad. It's a bad word. The Lord looks at something. He sees that something is not good.

He looks at the man that he has created and he says, that guy's not good. No, that's not what he says. Not giving wives ammunition for that. See, the Lord gave a malediction. The guy's not good. He needed to bring me about to make you good.

So that's not the intention there, but rather that the Lord looks at the man that he has created and he says, it is not good for man to be alone. And so he creates the woman out of a rib from the man's side.

And I love the way that Matthew Henry decorates an understanding of this passage with the rib being taken out of Adam's side and creating for him a woman of whom he says, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

A man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Matthew Henry explains it this way. God took the rib from the man's side so that he would know he is to be side by side with his wife until death parts them.

He didn't take the bone out of his head, lest the man thinks that he lords himself over his body. He didn't take the bone out of his arm, lest the man thinks I am stronger than the woman and abuses his wife, but took the rib from his side so that they would be side by side.

This is the Lord looking at his creation and saying it is not good for man to be alone and creates for him the woman to which R .C. Sproul responded, marriage is God's answer to the problem of human loneliness.

John MacArthur described marriage this way, marriage is the one and only human relationship that includes sexual activity. And it is designed by God to be full of love. It is designed by God to be fulfilling.

It is designed by God for procreation, for partnership, and for pleasure. William Tyndale, we're gonna go back a few centuries now. He said, marriage was ordained for a remedy and to increase the world and for the man to help the woman and the woman, the man, with all love and kindness.

Dr. Albert Moeller, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I just happened to catch a couple of weeks ago that he is gonna be the next nominee for President of the Southern Baptist Convention, in case you didn't know.

But Albert Moeller has said this, marriage is rooted in the glory of God, made evident in creation itself. The man and the woman are made for each other. And the institution of marriage is given to humanity as both opportunity and obligation.

Jesus Christ, he probably has a pretty important word on marriage, right? Jesus Christ, who was there at the beginning, who is the creator of marriage himself, he said the following. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

And said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has joined together, let man not separate.

Matthew 19, 4 through 6. So if we come at this through these various definitions that we have, and most especially the definition that we are given from scripture, we have Jesus saying, the two shall become one flesh.

Paul is saying here in Ephesians 5, the two shall become one flesh. That's quoted from Genesis. So what is our working definition of marriage? Marriage is a man and a woman in a one flesh union, joined by God, committed for life, which no one may divide.

Here we've read in Ephesians 5, 29, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. And so we should be such in our marriages. So what is the reason why we get married?

Well, first, let me give you five reasons why you shouldn't get married. And I'm turning to Vodie Bauckham here. He gives five bad reasons for marriage. These are the things that should not be the cause for us to get married.

Number one, lust. You shouldn't get married just because you lust for this other person. I'm really attracted to that person. They really get my engine going. So that must be the reason why we should get married.

That must be a sure sign, a good indication that we should get married. If you're only getting married because of attraction, I'm telling you, that's eventually gonna change. That will fade, because like it or not, your body ages.

And in case you haven't noticed, it changes when that happens. What was attractive to you ten years ago may not be attractive to you ten years down the road. And so you cannot expect that attraction or lust of the flesh in particular is going to be the thing that is a good reason to get married.

It's actually a very bad reason to get married. And you are dooming yourself for disaster if that's the reason you get married. A second reason you should not get married, desperation. The clock is ticking.

I don't have too many more years left. I'm gonna have to do this now. Let's see, I've been friends with this person for a long time. Maybe we should get married. It might add convenience into that as well.

Probably not a good reason to get married. Again, you're setting yourself up for failure. You don't have a good foundation on which that marriage is being built. A third reason you should not get married is time invested.

Like I've spent a lot of time with this person. So perhaps now that's the reason why we should get married. You could be in a very bad relationship and some of the bad things are showing up. And you think, well, to solve this bad stuff, maybe we should get married and that'll solve all the problems.

Nope, that probably is just creating more problems. So time invested is not a good reason to get married. Votie Bauckham said, it's like shopping without money. You either leave frustrated or you leave with something that isn't yours.

A fourth reason why you shouldn't get married, materialism. Well, he'll provide for me or she'll provide for me. Hey, we've got two incomes now. We're doing better than we were when we were by ourselves.

Not a good reason to get married. You will run into financial difficulty in your marriages. And now what are you gonna do? When that was the reason you got married in the first place, was to handle those financial problems.

A fifth reason not to get married, mysticism. What does that mean? Well, I prayed about it and God brought me this person along and so that must be the person that I'm supposed to get married. Don't do that.

That's using God as a fortune cookie. It's not truly understanding marriage or the foundation for our marriage. The foundation for marriage is Christ. Any relationship, it doesn't matter whether it is a friendship or whether you're related to somebody by blood or whether it's a marriage.

All relationships should be founded on the rock of Christ Jesus. You know the song Friends by Michael W Smith? That goes back to 1983, in case you didn't know how old that song was now. But in the chorus of that song, Smitty sings friends are friends forever if the Lord's the Lord of them.

And if we have that foundation of Christ in our relationships, there is nothing that will separate us. As the Lord Christ had even instructed for a marriage, what therefore God has joined together. Let man not separate.

So given that these are five reasons why we shouldn't get married, what are reasons why we should get married? What are the good reasons for marriage? Well, I go back to the definition that John MacArthur gave.

It is designed by God for procreation, for partnership, and for pleasure. There's three good reasons to get married right there. Procreation, partnership, and pleasure. There's nothing wrong with thinking that a marriage should be pleasurable.

I hope your marriage is pleasurable. It's gonna be a very miserable road unless your marriage is pleasurable. It should be that way. And so those can be the reasons why you get married. But I'm gonna add one more here.

I'm gonna add one more reason to get married on top of these reasons that John MacArthur has given. Worship, you get married to worship God. And worship him and honor God with your marriage. Now to go with his alliteration here, because you notice that all three of John MacArthur's reasons start with P, procreation, partnership, pleasure.

And now I'm disrupting the train by throwing in a W, worship. But let's change that to praise, praising God with your marriage. And ultimately today, that's what I hope that you're gonna come away with as we exegete this passage, as we understand what is instructed of us here in Ephesians chapter 5, that you understand better how to honor God with your marriage through procreation, partnership, pleasure, and praise.

Now maybe when you got married, that's not the way you started out. Maybe when I was listing those things of reasons why you shouldn't get married, you're listening to that going, yeah, I'm guilty of one or two of those.

But it's not too late to change your marriage around for the better, and make it something that honors the Lord. And something that you delight to wake up to each and every day. I can tell you as a very satisfied and happy man, I love waking up to my wife every morning.

Well, to be honest with you, she wakes up before me. But then when I do get up, it's a delight for me to see her. And I hope it will be the same for you as well with your spouse. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22, like I said, we're coming at this in a rather countercultural definition here.

But we are told, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. Now this is one of those commands, those instructions that the culture loves to push back on.

Wives, submit to your own husbands. But before we even get to it, I wanna say don't neglect the instruction that's given to husbands here. Husbands, die to yourself and love your wife as Christ loves the church.

So we have a very heavy weighty instruction on the husbands as well. Don't miss that as we come first to this instruction for wives. But we actually have a bit of a problem here when we're looking at verse 22.

It says, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. What's the problem with that verse? It doesn't have a verb in it. Some of you might be looking at it going, well, wait, yeah, it does, submit.

Submit is a verb. No, in the Greek, there's no verb there. You're actually borrowing the word from the previous verse. If you have an NASB, the New American Standard Bible, that word submit, wives, submit to your own husbands, it's gonna be italicized.

Because the word doesn't actually exist there, it's borrowed from the previous verse. So you have to understand Greek to understand why that would be the case. It's not that the Bible translators have erred here.

They're not saying wives must submit. So we're gonna grab that word from the previous verse. If you read the Greek and you understand the Greek, then you would know why that's done that way. But for us to understand it in English, we actually have to understand something about the context in which we're reading.

So what we have looked at up to this point in Ephesians 5 .22, we've looked at three contrasts. Then we've seen three commands. And now we're in, we're at the start of three contexts. Three contrasts, three commands, three contexts.

Where are these contrasts? We'll go back a little bit further in Ephesians chapter five. Last week we were reading about discerning what is pleasing to the Lord. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

Therefore do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit. There was our contrast right there. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise.

There's the first contrast, making the best use of the time because the days are evil, verse 17. Therefore do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is. There's the second contrast, verse 18.

Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit. There's the third contrast. Then we get into a series of commands, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in your heart.

That's the first command. The second one, verse 20, giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the second command. The third one is verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Then we get to the three contexts, which begins with wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. See, the three contexts carry over from the command that we had in verse 21 to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

And then it's as if Paul is going, now here, let me show you. Wives, submit to your husbands. And then you get to children, obey your parents, Ephesians 6 .1. And then you get to bond servants, obey your earthly masters, that's in 6 .5.

So you have these commands that are given, these contexts that are given in light of the command, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Let me tell you this. Understanding that we are to be filled with the Spirit and we are to be thankful.

You show me a person who is thankful, I will show you a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit of God. You show me a person who is not thankful, who's bickering and arguing and complaining and quarreling all the time, and I will show you a person who is not filled with the Spirit of God.

You show me a person who submits to the spiritual authorities in their life, and I will show you a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit of God. God. You show me a person who rebels against the spiritual authorities in their life and I will show you a person who is not filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

That's what we understand here as we come then to verse 22. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord because the husband is the spiritual authority in his household. Now that is nothing against the woman.

That is nothing against the wife. That is not reducing her to a lesser role and please do not think that that's what that means. But it places the responsibility firmly in the hands of the husband to be the provider and caregiver and most especially the spiritual guide for his family.

That primarily comes on the husband. That doesn't mean that the wife doesn't lead spiritually in her home. My wife leads spiritually in our home but it is my responsibility to make sure my wife is being fed with the word and that my children are being raised up in the training and the instruction of the word.

She is going to play a part in that as well but to make sure that's being done, that falls most primarily upon me. My wife helps our kids with their Juana verses and as you saw her today do the catechism with the kids.

She does that for our children as well. But last night before she came to bringing there, I guess it was yesterday afternoon, before bringing the catechism for our kids this morning, she and I were talking these things through and I took her through the scriptures to help her understand what this means, that the Bible is the word of God.

By the way, husbands, I've told you that this is where the women are at in our women's study that we have the second and fourth Saturday morning of the month. The women have expressed a desire to know how to read the Bible.

So if you want to know how can I start leading my wife in our home, there you go. The women have expressed how can I read my Bible. It's a good place for you to start, husbands. And it just so happens by the providence of God this was not planned.

But on Tuesday evening, the men's study that meets here at the church, our after work study that starts at five o 'clock, but you can trickle in a little bit late, that's fine. In the book that we're going through, we just happened to fall at the exact same time on the section where Joel Beek, you wrote this book is taking us through understanding God's word, how to decipher it and how to teach it.

We didn't plan that. It just happened that way by the divine ordination of God. And so husbands, this is our responsibility to lead our wives as the instruction comes here. I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but it's in the context of what we're talking about, that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

Husbands, you are helping your wives to become more holy, to grow in godliness, to grow in righteousness. And we all need that. This is that theological word sanctification that we use to describe this.

We are being sanctified. When you first came to Christ, when you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, you were immediately justified, but you were not yet fully sanctified. We sang about that justification this morning.

Grace and peace. Oh, how can this be? The matchless king of all paid the blood price for me. That's justification. Sanctification then is growing in that holiness. You have put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And now with your whole life, you desire to grow in Christ and know him more. For wives, that means submission to your husband as to the Lord. You need to give him that opportunity. Give him the chance as one who has been instructed to lead his family in those spiritual things.

Now, there are some women I know that are even sitting in here that have very assertive personalities. And it's a little bit more difficult for you to submit than it is for some other women to submit.

Some find this very natural, very easy to do. There are others who have more type A personalities, more choleric personalities, and they want to be more domineering and taking charge in their marriage.

My wife is one of those persons. Before we met, she worked at a rock quarry. She was a woman working at a rock quarry. None of the men at the rock quarry messed with her. She drove a 60-ton haul truck, a 60-ton haul truck, one of those great big giant dump trucks with a wheel that wouldn't fit on this stage, okay?

And we'll drive by these trucks going down the interstate with those giant tires on the back, and I'll say, hey, look, babe, there's the wheels of your dump truck right there. So in the heart of this woman roars the engine of a 60-ton haul truck.

So if you want an example of a woman submitting to her husband, look at my wife, and she is a wonderful delight and treasure that encourages me and helps me each and every day that I am called to die to myself and serve my wife and my children in raising them up and the training and the instruction of the Lord.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. So women, you here in the church, you actually have a responsibility and an example that you can set that a husband cannot set. This is actually a role that God has designated for you as an example to the rest of the flock because all of us as Christians, all of us as followers of our Lord Christ, we are all supposed to submit to the Lord, but the wife in particular submits to her husband as to the Lord, serving as an example to the entire church of submission to Christ.

That's not the kind of example the husband is supposed to be. The husband is supposed to be an example of the way that Christ loves the church, but the woman becomes an example of submission unto the Lord.

Now, let me clarify here that as we're looking at these instructions, these instructions are not all women must submit to all men. That's not what it says. It says the wife submits to her husband and the husband lays down his life for his bride as Christ did for the church.

Now, there are certainly instructions that men have in the church and instructions that women have in the church. There are different instructions there. We're not going to go into that today, but for an example, you can go to Titus 2 if you want to see that later.

Older men mentoring the younger men, older women mentoring the younger women. So we do have various responsibilities and roles among men and women in the church, but this instruction is not all women must submit to all men.

This is wife submit to your husband as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Notice that the husband is being described as the head of his wife. What does the head do for the body? The head is kind of the control center of the body, right? Makes the decisions for the body. The head also nourishes and takes care of the body.

All of the food for the body enters through the mouth. All of the study that you do, it comes from your eyes and your ears. All of the thinking and the decisions that are made comes from your brain. So just as the head is this for the body, so the husband is supposed to be for his wife because Christ is this for his church.

1 Corinthians 11 .3, the head of every man is Christ. The head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Here is this hierarchy that we have in the church that is exemplified even in the earthly relationship of marriage that has been given to us by God.

Now, some of you wives are probably in some very difficult marriages. Some of you are probably thinking to yourselves as I'm talking about this, well, my husband is not worthy of my respect. What would you say to somebody like me who has a husband that is not leading in the home?

And if I were to leave it up to him, he wouldn't. There would be no leadership in our home of the husband taking care of his family if I were to leave it up to him. What do you have to say to me? Well, the apostle Peter spoke into this in 1 Peter 3, beginning in verse 1.

Likewise, wives be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives. When they see your respectful and pure conduct in obedience to the Lord, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing that you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

Let me put this to you in a more negative way. So the positive way is Peter saying, let your adorning be with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

That's the positive instruction. Here's the negative form of that instruction. Wives, do not quarrel with your husband. That goes along with this instruction in this command. You may not find it right here, but you find it in other places.

Proverbs 12, 4, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is a to his bones. Proverbs 19, 13, a foolish son is the ruin of his father and a wife's quarreling is a continued dripping of rain.

Proverbs 25, 24, it is better to live on the corner of your roof than in a house with a quarrelsome wife. Pretty harsh, is it not? But guys, don't sit there going, I'm getting to you here in just a moment.

Instead, the women are instructed to put their hope in God as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. 1 Peter 3, 7, likewise, husbands live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

My friends, if you have quarrels going on in your marriage, wife quarreling with the husband, husband quarreling with the wife, when this is the way things go in your marriage, it hinders your prayers.

Let us come to agreement with one another. As we have instructions like in Colossians 3, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.

That instruction is not just for the church, it's also for husbands and wives. That's exactly the way to conduct yourself in your marriage. If you have a disagreement or a quarrel with your spouse, forgive.