A Wife's Submission - Col 3:18

Col 3:18 KJV - 18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
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Full Transcript

​The cough is mostly gone. We'll see how we do today. Good morning again, dear saints. I'd like to invite you to open with me into the next section of our progress through the book of Colossians. We're in Colossians chapter 3. We'll be taking up verse 18. We'll read all the way down to verse 25. Colossians chapter 3. verse 18 through 25. You found your place if you would please stand for the reading of the Word of God. Colossians chapter 3 verse 18 through 25, hear the word of the Lord.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong, shall receive for the wrong which he hath done. And there is no respecter of persons.

Amen. Please remain standing for prayer. Precious Father in heaven, our Lord and God, Lord, we do come now to this choice portion of your holy word, the ancient scriptures long since written down that have come from your heart and mind. And I pray that you give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying, Lord, and that you would cut through all that has become too familiar to us in the culture, Lord, and that you would change our mind and heart, and Lord, that we would see heaven's pattern for the family, for the world, for our life, and that we with Gladness of heart would know we do not serve this present evil age, we serve the Lord Christ. In Christ's name we pray, amen. You may be seated. Praise God for the gospel. that sinners can be saved is a wonder we ought never to get over.

See, Apostle Paul's ministry speaks so continuously to all through the book of Acts, even in his writings all throughout Galatians, elsewhere, even in his final letters to Timothy. What's amazing is when you follow the life of the Apostle Paul, no matter how many churches, By the grace of the Holy Spirit he was enabled to plant. No matter how many men he was enabled to train and to raise up and descend into the Lord's harvest. No matter how much experience he gained or how old he got until the day he could say Paul the aged. He never got over being saved. He was telling kings, he was telling the Praetorian Guard, he was telling the churches, he was reminding those who knew his story best, young Timothy, to the very end.

Everything Paul did, he did out of an abundant outflow of the reality that Christ saved his undeserving soul. And what brings us all together, young and old, men and women, but that Christ saves sinners. And praise God, not only does He save us, but He doesn't leave us the way He found us. But He not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but He saves us from its reigning power with a promise that He will save us one day, even from its very presence altogether.

We come into this new section and it is gonna be very important that you remember freshly where we left off last week. The title of that sermon was All for Christ. And if you could just sum up a few key points that we are gonna immediately import into this next section as we deal with the families, as we deal with the homes, as we deal with biblical manhood and womanhood in various aspects of lives and husbands and children and authority in general altogether. Keep in mind, what did we just cover in verse 17?

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Paul has set before us by the Spirit the reality that we who are of the redeemed, we who are of the outflowing current and fruit of the redeeming love of Jesus Christ who died to save his people, we have been called to walk worthy of the gospel to which we've been called. We have been called to walk worthy of the God who called us.

We have been called into an attitude, into a mindset, and into a spirit with which we as Christians, we as saints, sanctums, are to think, speak, and act daily, hourly, moment by moment. That there is to be with us an overarching attitude and outlook and atmosphere to our heart and mind and thought process. That everything is in the context. Every part of life is in the context. That whatsoever we do, we do all. in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's no part of our life that's not touched or that's now just considered common or arbitrary or insignificant, but it's all brought into the jurisdiction of the domain of the king who gave his life to ransom us. Paul conceives of our whole life as a thank offering, and therefore, all of life is to be an ongoing act of worship. Not just a few hours out of the week, but every hour He gives you to breathe. It's all His. and how you spend it, and how you take that breath in, and what you choose to say with that breath, how you take the beating of your heart, and the strength in your muscles, and you exercise your body, and you move yourself forward, and you take action, and you do work, however it is, in the home or outside the home, it is all to be categorized as a king and priest unto God, as an act of worship.

And that comes right into our marriages, right into our roles as men and women, that we are doing these things in the name of Christ, and in so doing it in the name of Christ, we are always bearing in mind His character in the way we do what we do, His mind about these things, His commands to us, and His reputation before a watching world. And at the end of the day, we must ask ourselves, are we truly doing these things in the name of Christ, or are we doing it in the name of modern secularism? Whose cause are we advancing by the way we choose to live our lives? The remaining section of this chapter, of chapter three, moving on from verse 17 and to the rest, It concludes with exhortations to very real and felt practical realities and duties of the life you and I live.

Matthew Henry says, he notes, he finds it interesting because if you remember, it was not very long ago in Colossians, we were soaring into the stratosphere of heaven's air. We were taking in the glories of Christ. We were considering angelic realities over which Christ was supreme and highly exalted over. And don't think it's strange that we go from such high and lofty and glorious realities and we come down into the most mundane aspects of how you speak and talk in your home.

Matthew Henry says, the epistles which are most taken up in displaying the glory of divine grace and magnifying the Lord Jesus. are the most particular and distinct in pressing the duties of our several relations. We must never separate the privileges and the duties of the gospel religion. Amen? See, because what have we said thus far?

We've said Christ is supreme over creation. He's supreme over the new creation. He's supreme over the church and over the kingdom. He's supreme over everything that is, everything that has been, everything that ever will be. Jesus Christ is supreme over the things visible. He's supreme over the things invisible. Jesus Christ is supreme over our ability to give thanks unto the Father, as we looked at last week. Jesus Christ is supreme over all.

And that being the case, we must remember that He is supreme over the creation of a new humanity fashioned after His image. And that new creation, that new work, that new thing Christ has done It comes and it touches and it transforms every element of our social relationships. as they are now consciously being lived out underneath the awesome lordship and supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Being a wife in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Being a husband in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Being a son in relation to your parents in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Going to your employer not in the name of a company but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every element of life. All of it, it's him, it's his, it belongs to him. And you do what you do as his priest, ultimately and firstly. And everything takes shape out from there. And it's with that in view that we come and we settle on this first verse, verse 18. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Now at this point, wives, you're gonna have your own sermon. Husbands, you're gonna have your own sermon. Children, you're gonna have your own sermon. I think this is a right use of time.

But you should know something about my conviction and approach when we come to the scripture. When I deal with a positive command or a positive affirmation in the text, I will spend the duration of the sermon not apologizing for what it says. or by somehow having a sermon for wives and spending the entire sermon telling husbands what they ought to be in order for wives to submit. Nor am I gonna take the sermon for their husbands and spend the entire sermon talking about wives, here's what you ought to do if you want your husband to love you. That's not how it's laid out in the text. So without apology, I do say, as I said to my wife, honey, this is one of those sermons that'll get you kicked out of a church. to which she responded, then make it count.

So this one's for you, my love. Not at you, but with you. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands. Does your heart say amen, sisters, when you hear that? What's your reaction? Is it ooh? Or do you go, yes, praise. Wives, this is the breathed out word of almighty God who made you. You're thinking about judgment, right? You're thinking about the coming of the Lord Jesus, powers, angelic, demonic beings being thrust down, the saints being exalted, that one, that Christ, the one who's coming in with flaming fire and power, that one. He's looking at you and he's saying, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.

How do you take that? As it is fit in the Lord. Precious wives, tender, delicate flowers, and fellow heirs of the grace of God, the Lord Jesus and his supremacy in the book of Colossians has sought fit that we should begin with you this morning. Praise God. Amen.

Wives, according to this text, you are graciously called. to a voluntary, willful, choosing, active, purposeful, decided submission to put yourself under the authority and the direction of something or someone else other than yourself. Namely, as the Lord has decreed it, your own husband.

Now, Scripture emphasizes that biblical submission for wives is not about inferiority. It is not about some sort of patriarchal, maintained cultural suppression and oppression, or just merely a kind of mere tool that has blind obedience to just any man. But rather, this is a good, holy, and heavenly decree of a good king that is about order. It's about right and wrong. It's about function and design within the marriage covenant. And it ultimately points way beyond you and way beyond your husband, beyond your personality, beyond his, beyond your strengths and his weaknesses and vice versa. It points to the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. Before we dive off into the concepts of submission, I want us to remember one of our main points, again, in Colossians.

Christ is supreme over creation. If you want to set the backdrop in its proper colors, you must go all the way to the beginning when God made the heavens and the earth and there was no sin and there was no destruction, there was no pain, there was no war, there was no bitterness, there was no fighting, there was no slander, there was no famine, there was no cancer, there was no death, but everything, as God said, was very good. Genesis 1, 27, so God created man in his own image, the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." We see that of all the things that the Lord made in creation, the light, the dark, the seas, the dry ground, the herb yielding seed after its kind, the creatures after their kind, the creeping things, the beasts of the field, the days, the morning and the evening, all of this, there is something uniquely importantly, carefully, and intimately designed, man and woman, and designed in none other than the image of God Himself who made it. Nothing, no other part of creation, it boasts that. Not of the cherubim, the highest angelic beings, it says, of man. They're made in His image.

As the Lord makes man, and we find in Genesis 2.18, And the Lord God said, it's not good that man should be alone. Fact, it is not good that man should be alone. Husbands, we'll deal more with you later. Lord, in his infinite wisdom, in his infinite kindness, in his infinite goodness, in the superiority of his perfect divine intellect and omniscience, says, I will make him and help meet for him.

Genesis 2 verse 20 through 25, and Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and every beast of the field. It's a remarkable thing to behold if you thought Noah's Ark and two of every animal from all over the world coming to load itself on the Ark. Imagine before there was any loss of life of any kind in any way all the animal kingdom without names is being paraded by God himself before Adam one by one and there he is obviously not in English but going that's That looks like an elephant. That's an elephant. The Lord says, so it is. That's an elephant. What about this? Long neck spots. The word giraffe comes to mind. That's a giraffe.

And on and on he goes through not just the large majestic animals, but to the creeping things, to the foul of the air, I want you to think for a moment, there's something of the brilliance of God's design already in display in the capacity that He's given Adam. I can't figure out how to name my sermons half the time, and I have to probe one of the more spiritual men than myself. What did I just preach? What should we call that sermon before it goes out? And here's Adam naming a whole animal kingdom just by the grace and the wisdom God gave him. And in this, he's exercising authority over the animal kingdom. And as we see, that that was by design. They were to subdue the world in this way.

But interestingly, there's a purpose here that goes back to verse 18, for it says, for Adam there was not found a helpmate for him. Meaning that there was a secondary function in what's taking place here, that as the animals are receiving names, something more than just the nomenclature of the ancient animal world is being accomplished. But the Lord is in the midst of a teaching moment for Adam, and it is becoming very clear, none of these things is like me. And as many times as he saw a male elephant go by, and then a female elephant go by, a male giraffe go by, and then a female giraffe go by, at some point there would be, to whatever degree we don't know, Scripture doesn't give us the deep detail on this point, but there is no suitable helpmate like that for Adam. Adam's without whatever this constantly reoccurring counterpart mechanism God seems to have put into his creation. There's nothing there for him. What do you think about the elephant? No thank you. What do you think about the giraffe? No thank you. None of those match, and this is by God's wise design. For the Lord is preparing to do something wonderful and beautiful. The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept. That kept him out of a lot of trouble when looking for a wife.

And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman. Out of Esh came Eshah and brought her unto the man. Remarkable moment here. From the dust of the earth, God made Adam. From the rib of Adam, God made Eve. And woman was brought forth from the man for the man.

And as Adam looks upon woman, as he awakes from sleep, it's like the first surgery, perfect. He awakes and what he sees is not an elephant, it's not a giraffe, it's not anything of the animal kingdom. He sees something so stunning, so wonderful, so beautiful. All he's left to say is this. is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man." And he names her. And he's quite taken up with and delighted with this new thing the Lord has done. And here, before the fall, before the fall, the most ancient of institutions is established by God himself.

Verse 24, therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. And scripture gives us the data and accounts that they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. The two perfectly vulnerable and exposed to one another, no longer two different flesh, but one flesh brought near without any sin, without any shame, without any wrongdoing. Perfect and good.

And to this day, if you will receive it and understand it, Though the world has been cast in the great darkness of the fall, and we are surrounded by the ruin and the pain and the death of it all around us, and the world is lying in the wicked one, if you will receive it and understand it, marriage is one of the very few things we got to keep and take with us from the garden. And so later, husbands, when you're commanded to enjoy the wife of your youth, remember From this lofty, beautiful picture, we find disfigurement from the fall. The fall, sin entered into the world. The image marred and corrupted and twisted and perverted. So much of it is ruined.

And we see in Genesis chapter 3 after the serpent had deceived Eve and Eve partake of the fruit and she offered to her husband and the husband consented unto this and participated in it and at that point hearkened unto the voice of his wife and sinned in rebellion against God. The whole of the human race is cast into the deathly mire of sin and death. And the word of our Lord haunts and overrules and terrorizes justly and rightfully after the manner in which He promised, the day you eat of it you shall surely die. And man spiritually died on that day. Men and women spiritually died there.

And there is A word that comes forth at this moment as we particularly look at the woman for a moment in Genesis chapter 3 verse 16. And the Lord speaks as the curse begins to fall upon the serpent and upon the woman and upon the man. Just look for a moment at the curse that comes forth. It says unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Now keep in mind the great overwhelming aspect besides pain and sorrow.

And every time a child is brought forth into this world, it is most commonly signaled with the cries of the child and of the mother, as though a reminder of every son of Adam and Eve brought into the world. This is a world of tears and pain because of the effects of sin against a good and a holy God. But here, Adam has already named his wife. He's already in this place exercised authority.

What should stand out to you as the statement beyond the sorrow is that thy desire shall be to thy husband. And something about the desire of the woman is in view here, but it is juxtaposed about the fact that his rule is over her or still over her in the sense of verses that speak to this natural order, but also a desire that is not good.

Remember when Cain was warned of the Lord that sin was crouching at the door and its desire was for him. Sin didn't desire anything good for Cain. Sin desired to master Cain. And it's in that same construction. The desire here is not, oh, I just want to love and to be near my husband and just to smell his breath and get as close as I can all the time, but rather a desire that the enemy uses in a sin-stricken world full of sorrow to be in control and to lead. And yet, he is still called to rule. This becomes the setup and the backdrop of the whole of the human race.

Adam was first formed, then Eve. Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Eve's sin was in that she was deceived. She was genuinely deceived by the subtlety of the serpent. But according to Scripture, Adam's sin honestly was greater here. He was not deceived. He knew, but he hearkened unto the voice of his wife. And in Adam, we all died.

Here, the disfigurement of the fall has disfigured so much of the precious image that was made by the Lord. And as you look upon creation and you look upon its sorrows and you look upon its woes, you look upon its pains, you look upon broken homes, you look upon men and women whose attitudes are not conformed to Christ nor the design of the maker of heaven and earth. We see all manner of wickedness, unfaithfulness, adultery, bitterness, murder, hatred, strife, variance. And then we turn from the fact that God is supreme over creation. We turn from the fact that in mercy, Adam and Eve were not immediately both destroyed in that garden, but a Savior is promised. We see the effects of the fall.

We see so much of the history of Israel and God inevitably. calling up Abraham and then the promises to the patriarchs and then the twelve tribes and here comes David and all these promises and then inevitably Israel and the chastening and Babylon and back to the land and still looking and then finally Messiah and in him we see Christ supreme over the new covenant in the new creation and in what was originally designed in the garden. There is, by grace, a designed recovery of the original image, not just in the individuals that are redeemed, but in the covenant of marriage as they are brought together. As it says in Ephesians 5, 23 through 29, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the wife is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

So there you go. The backdrop of this verse. is that we had something, something was lost, it was perverted, it was twisted. With it comes in sorrow, pain, and death. And now we have Christ and something's being recovered. And that needs to be your mindset. God made that which was very good, sin entered in, and now there is death and all manner of the outflowing death of ongoing sin.

And now Christ is, by grace, recovering something in the image of man and woman. And it is being recovered particularly in these verses in marriage. And that recovery is beautified, typified, restored, carried out, actively participated in on the wife's part by way of this submission that she is called into in the scriptures.

This word, I don't always stop to give the exact Greek word, but I think it's helpful this time. The word submit there, hupotasso, whenever you get the prefix hupo, it usually means under. Tasso has a lot to do with the idea of arrangement or order. And so it's an old, when put together, it becomes, it was an old Greek military term actually, meaning to arrange like the divisions or the vanguard of soldiers and troops into a kind of military fashion of like you would put a squad underneath a squad leader or you would put a platoon underneath a platoon commander. So you were fashioning an order under the command of a leader. And then when that term comes to be used in the non-military sense, it deals very often in the original Greek as something that is done on the part of the one submitting. The submission act is done by the soldier in this part, not the commander.

This is a voluntary, willful, act of one who is cooperating, assuming responsibility, giving voluntarily to this attitude, and carrying, willing to carry, choosing to carry the burden that is assigned. The definition here literally means to subordinate, to obey, to be under obedience, to subdue self unto, or to be subject unto, or to be put in subjection, and subjection of self into. There's not a special other more culturally sensitive definition than that. That's what it means.

The word occurs 32 times in your New Testament. 30, excuse me, incorrect, 38. 38 times in your New Testament this word occurs. Of those 38 times, Paul uses it 23 times. Now take into account the kind of array in which the word is used because you'll see it is used in this as its biblical usage appears, you see it within the individual context in which the word appears, because context is what ultimately determines meaning.

You see it exactly as it's expressed, to arrange under, to subordinate. You see it to subject or to be put into subjection. You see it in places where it means to subject oneself or to literally obey. You see it in other places, it's being used to submit to one's control. or to yield to one's admonition or advice or words.

In each of these cases, this deals with way more than just wives, way more than just women in general. As a matter of fact, when you begin to chase down all those different occurrences of this word in the New Testament and close words like unto it, you will see very clearly that in the Christian life, every one of us is called to submit to someone somewhere at some time. No one, no one gets to be without accountability or responsibility to this command to submit and to subject oneself and to heed and to yield.

You see in Hebrews 12, nine and James 4, seven and many other places, obviously all saints are subject unto God, right? Is there a true saint that is not subject unto God? We're all to be subject to His laws, as it says all throughout. The church submits to Christ, right? Don't we as the church submit to our bridegroom, the Christ, the King, over the kingdom?

Ephesians 5, 24. Many places, the words used, all humans. Even if you're not a Christian, you're commanded to submit to governing authorities. Romans 13, Titus 3, 1 Peter 2. Christians, all Christians, you are to submit to your Christian leaders. In Hebrews 13, 17, it says, obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls and so on. Slaves, you're commanded to submit to your masters. Immediate application. Employees, you are commanded to submit to the lawful authorities of your employers and your bosses.

Titus 2, 1 Peter chapter 2, commanded by God. You are under subjection to the authority that God ordained for you and over you in your workplace. He said, well, I chose to work while I was at. Yes, and insofar as you have chosen to work there under the sovereignty of God, He has hand-selected that leader for you to obey insofar as they don't command you to sin.

Younger men are called to honor, reverence, even obey, 1 Peter 5, older men. Children, you are commanded to obey and to subject yourself to your parents. I can even go so far as to say, even when we grow as offspring, we're still commanded even to honor them. And what better picture, if I could choose all the verses that speak of children submitting to their parents, I'm gonna pick an appearance of this hupotasso word of a child submitting to his parents. Here you go. Luke chapter two, verses 51. And He, who's He? It's the young Christ child at 12 years of age. And He, our Lord Jesus, went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them. Wow.

The Lord of Glory, honoring His own order and His own design, subjected Himself, as the Son, not only to His Father in heaven, subjected Himself, came not to do His own will, but the will of His Father who sent Him. That which He speaks, He did not receive of Himself, but of His Father who gave it to Him. He did only that which He saw His Father doing. Subjection, but look at this. Perfect Christ, Lord of glory, submitting to imperfect parents, imperfect men and women who don't fully understand even His mission or His calling yet, subjecting Himself to them.

We have no excuse. So, take it to heart. This is not, do not lie to yourself, don't let other people lie to you. This is not a wife-only issue. It's not something that's particular to one person. We all must submit. We all have places we are called to submit. And it's by God's design.

The submission here being the particular duty of wives in this regard to their husbands. You should really view that as equally from God as the duty to submit to the magistrates of government, to the the different expressions of this as it is applied elsewhere, it doesn't take on special or new meaning because we're talking about wives now. This is a redeemed design, this is a redeemed purpose, this is a biblical definition, this is biblical wisdom on display in action. When God says, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord, the submission there is, in English, submission. You could say obey in various places. Now just to go over a few texts of Scripture so that you hear the symphony in the New Testament.

Obviously, Colossians 3, which we've just read here about wives, submit unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Ephesians 5, verse 22 through 24, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Titus chapter 2 verse 4 through 5. Speaking of the Titus 2 women, the older women that teach the younger women what it is that they're missing or that they don't know or that they don't have experience in to put into practice. Here's what is the substance of the Titus 2 teaching ministry. That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. That's what's at stake, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Now note this, in each of these you will notice perhaps the emphasis of my voice.

Are wives or women in general called to be in subjection to all men or all husbands in general? Absolutely not. This is something to the marriage covenant. It is particular as particular as love can be. Here we see it's not submission to the world of men. There is an agreeableness in scripture to the order of nature and the reason of things, but particularly here we are dealing with this manner of submission. And what that means is there's no man on earth whose voice and words and counsel you are summoned to regard and to esteem and to reverence more than that of your husband. Because that unique summons to submission belongs to him in Scripture alone in the covenant relationship of marriage, husband and wife. where these two are a picture of Christ in the church, and they're signifying something that is truly beautiful. I saved this one other verse, this other appearance here, perhaps, A, because it's the strongest, because it deals with the inevitable, well, what if they're not a great husband, right? There's lots of those. No, that's not some boogeyman under the bed and it's, non-existent. There are many husbands who are failing at being a husband, just as there are many wives that are failing at being a wife.

But here in this text, God summons you to consider something and displays a kind of beauty that perhaps you have not deeply thought about. In 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 1 through 6, listen to this. Like wives, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word." Okay? You're a wife, you're trying to submit to your own husband, and you look at that man and you go, he is not obedient to the word. How am I going to follow after this situation and this man? Well, it says, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation or the behavior or the life or the character of the wives.

While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear, whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plating the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart. Let Christ in you be seen, even by your unbelieving or backwards or disobedient husband. Let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit.

Now, why does Scripture go so far as to tell us exactly the behavior and the attitude and the volume of the character and the attitude of the wife? because all of that's in view in God's restoration of the design. The ornament, literally that which sparkles and bejewels the reality to which it testifies to when we're called to adorn the doctrine of God in all things. Wife, how do you adorn the gospel in your life? It's with the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit which is in the sight of God a great price.

See, if your faith is more precious than gold that is tried in the fire, listen, your meek and quiet spirit in the sight of God is of great price also. 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, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters are ye, as long as ye do well and are not afraid with any amazement. Now before you run and go down on one knee and say my liege every time your husband runs into the room, You need to keep in mind the heart attitude of what's being accomplished here. Lord, in the ancient vernacular, would carry as a reverential term like unto the way, sir, yes sir, would today.

And what is being summoned here is not so much a copy this litany, but rather look at the adorning that's taking place in Sarah. Now when you look at the Old Testament, Sarah was particularly noted in scripture as being a very beautiful woman. and even for her great age. She was a very beautiful woman and God doesn't hide that data from us. But what's amazing in the New Testament when God accentuates and clarifies and brings out her beauty, God doesn't denote her physical appearance but her spiritual internal appearance as one who was in a place of obeying Abraham and whose daughters you are as well, as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement.

Now, here's a question, because we could look back and think on Sarah and go, yeah, she didn't do that perfectly all the time. Wasn't there a Hagar situation there? Yeah, wasn't there a laughter situation there? Weren't there a few places where we saw Sarah as something other than the typeset, right, of the example for women to follow? And what you need to look at as, okay, yes, some of those places did occur, but look at the overarching trajectory of her life.

Do we even wanna get into Abraham's lives with Abimelech? And she's, okay, went along with it, not once, but twice. And even after all that had taken place with Hagar and everything else, here is Sarah, following her husband, she does not leave him. And any of this stripped away from the land of the Ur of the Chaldees, stripped away from the family, even Haran, going up and down and all throughout, Sarah was with him and we see a reverence to him that plays out as a very, ooh, caught it.

Sorry, very normal practice in her life and scripture remembers her in that way. Now, if you think it's hard to follow your husband, Imagine waking up Monday morning after this sermon, and your husband says, I think we're going to Iraq. And I think I'm just gonna sell everything that we own, and we're gonna do some missionary work, and we're gonna stay out there until the Lord makes it clear what we need to be doing. Even if it takes years and years and years, let's go. Now, if you struggle with the fear of going to Iraq, but if I submit to him, what's that gonna look like if he does something that I'm really, I don't agree with? Well, just imagine that for a minute. Imagine going and leaving behind everything you know, your entire family, going out into the land of Canaan and wandering around, not for one or two years, but for decades, under a promise that God spoke to him, and that inevitably, you in your great, great, great age will have a child. And nothing about it seems practical or realistic to you. But his conscience is bound. He's chasing after what he believes is the word of the Lord. And there you go in tow.

And you've got a couple ideas and maybe eventually the Hagar idea comes up and then that becomes regretful later on. But can you imagine the fear that would be associated if you were in Sarah's place to say, yes, I'm going. Yes, I'm staying. Yes, I'm with you. even after years and years and years.

Dear sisters, the Lord of all the examples He could have put forth in Scripture for you to say, don't be amazed, don't be afraid. He gives you Sarah as an example to look at as one who is demonstrating a supernatural heavenly beauty of a design element that God designed from the beginning. we see not only did the Christ child, the Lord Jesus as a child, honor the authority of his parents and submit it unto them, but take note of the fact that even when Mary was the chosen vessel of God's particular fulfillment of all the prophets, all the law and all the prophets to bring forth the Christ, And Mary was an honored vessel. She was a chosen vessel. She was a special vessel of God's particular blessing and glory.

And what do we see in the young, toddling life of the Messiah in the flesh as the family is going from one place to the next and out to Egypt and back from Egypt for the consensus, not here to Bethlehem, but now we're gonna go to Nazareth and so on. Who is the angel of the Lord appearing to to guide the family and the Christ? Meaning even when God brings the flesh himself into the world. He still honors the leadership of the design he made in the home through Joseph.

Do you ever really think about that? That's remarkable. Here, there is a beauty, there is an ornament, there is a power, there is a glory, there is a true beauty that is found in this heart attitude. of meekness and quietness, willing to put oneself under the authority or directing of another.

This is that place which you're called to when we talk about a spirit in which Christians are to think and act, that whatsoever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there's to be an atmosphere about your mind in particular and that Paul is conceiving of all of your life by the Spirit as being a thank offering, that all of your life is to be lived in response to amazing, redeeming grace, that all of your life is to be an act of ongoing worship, which is your reasonable service, it is found particularly in your subjection to your husband, to your own husband, who stands in your life as your nearest relation to which God has called you to live with, to dwell with, and to spend the rest of your days with until you die. And this is fit in the Lord.

Now, much of the scriptures are constantly under attack today, and it's one of the reasons why I just want to be objectively clear on what the scripture actually says. Because there are a lot who will take every line of every verse, they'll change head to mean something else, they'll take even this end portion here, as it is fit in the Lord, to mean, yeah, you only have to do it if you believe it's fit in the Lord to do it. That's not what it says. It's not a clause that limits how far the submission of the wife can go, but it's an explanation of why it's necessary. Why do you submit yourself unto your husband?

Because it's fit in the Lord for you to do so. That's his design. That's his call. That's his decision. That's his command. That's his judgment. That is his rule. That's him. Your husband did not decide that you were supposed to submit to him. The Lord Jesus Christ, God did. That's his command.

And even your husband does not have the authority to say, no, I'm scared you lead. Not allowed. The husband has zero permission to say, you know what? I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm just gonna sit back and you take the lead on everything and whatever you do is fine with me, I'm done.

Now this isn't to say a man can't say, hey, in this particular area, you and me are unified here and I just want you to be able to oversee this particular area, like the Proverbs 31 woman who is industrious and can even buy and sell and trade in her husband's name and in her husband's estate and be greatly used for the economy of the home and such. But there's no place for the husband to retreat away from his ultimate responsibility for everything that happens in his home. He can't forfeit it because he's scared. He can't forfeit it because he's never been trained. He can't forfeit it because it's not his command in the first place.

It was God's command. And in this, dear saints, we are all to walk worthy of the gospel and our marriages are to be a powerful witness for Christ. Let me very quickly just run through a few defensive yeah, but what ifs. One. Doesn't Ephesians 5, verse 21, before he gets into the marriage, say that we are to submit ourselves to one another in the fear of God? Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God? So aren't we just supposed to be mutually submitting to one another? Isn't that what that means? He says, well, A, it does say that, but no, if that's what you think it means, that's not what it means. Paul's moving from the general to the specific because the very next verse after that begins to talk about submission in the home in Ephesians 5. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.

And so, as you look, you see generally, as we've already said, all of us are called to submit. All of us are called to be under authority. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone has the same equal authority over each other as everybody else. As we will see later, that's not mutual submission, that's anarchy.

Because, I tell you what, you get a whole bunch of people with strong opinions and say, you all need to submit to one another equally. No one submits to anyone. Why? Because one person and a second person disagree. You need to do this. No, you need to do this. You need to submit to what I say. No, you need to submit to what I say. Who's submitting? Nobody. That creates anarchy. And that's not God's design. So not only is the church to have everything done decently and in order, the Lord has ordered all of life. And this is part of his order.

There is a New Testament spirit of equity. There is a realization the husband needs to deal with you not as anything other than a sister in Christ and a fellow heir of the grace of life. It's a man who is gonna give an account for every word that he says and everything that he does to you forever. There is to be a mutually seeking how to please one another. There is a reality to which there is authority over one another's body in the conjugal marital sense. There is a place to where both are called to humility and mutual conscientiousness and sacrifice.

But the order that is here displayed of what Ephesians 5 talks about, if you read the whole chapter, is explicitly clear. We're all called to submit. Here's where you do it. Yes, in the spirit of equity, but this is real actual submission. This is real order.

And again, the absurdity of universal application. If you take Ephesians 5, 21 to say, submit yourselves to another in fear of God, that that means your husband needs to submit to you in the authority sense, then you also need to be willing to say, you as parents need to submit to your children. The governments of the world need to submit to you, the kings, they need to do what you want. When the police officer pulls you over, give him a ticket. A little absurd. Some of you would like to do it. It's a little absurd. But what's the end result? Chaos, anarchy, and disorder. And a whole lot of empowered flesh that doesn't want to submit to anyone.

What if you say, well, and we've already touched on this in 1 Peter 3, but what if he's not living what he should, or if he's not loving me properly first? He's the leader, he needs to love me first, and then I'll submit, right? There's a major problem with that way of thinking.

Firstly, firstly, your husband may not command you to sin. You may not break Christ's explicit commands as a Christian in favor of your husband's commands when those two things contradict. And I have seen wives who were otherwise very rebellious against their husbands. The moment the husband told her, you know, it's actually fine if you wanna go out and get drunk and go out and do this and do this for the weekend, you have my authority. And all of a sudden, she's all about submitting to her husband. But what is she doing? She's not submitting to Christ. The husband has no authority to command his wife to sin, and that means two different things.

One, his authority stops, and he can't summon you to disobey Christ. And on the other side, that means even if you want Him to give you permission to do that thing you know that Scripture says you're not allowed to do, you still can't. It's neither an acceptable hindrance nor an acceptable permission slip. But here's what you need to know. His obedience is not what qualifies your obedience.

1 Peter 3 directly addresses and contradicts that way of thinking because you have one that's not even obedient to the Scriptures and Scripture commands subjection and submission, meek, gentle, and quiet spirit. And if anything, you have even more of a clear context going right to Sarah as someone who is submitting without any fear, without any amazement. Another thing you need to realize, a major problem with that way of thinking is you don't know yourself as well as you ought. When you start thinking that way, you need to remember, A, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things, and you've forgotten what happened at the fall.

What does your heart want to do? Rule over him. So, if your desire is to rule over your husband, and he's doing something not the way you would do it, not the way you like, that doesn't match your opinion, what's an easy out? I disagree, that's wrong, and you're not doing things right anyway. As a matter of fact, I think you're a little bit of a hypocrite, and I'm gonna tell you why.

And then so now, control begins to be wrestled to the more righteous wife because the husband is not living up to her standards and expectations. Well, now who's head of the home? The wife's emotions. The wife gets to decide whether the husband is qualified to head or not. The wife gets to decide whether the husband appointed as the authority in the home or not.

And what she has seized from him, she's actually seized from God and taken under herself. While he may not summon her to sin, even in a husband that has much to work on, much to grow in, is still placed in a place of responsibility that he will give an account for, and you're not helping him by taking his authority under yourself and using his disobedience as a reason to now justify your disobedience. If you're trusting yourself to decide what commands you determine you're qualified to submit to or not, then your heart is the ultimate authority, not God, not his word. You're trusting yourself to be wise enough, good enough, that if your husband is loving enough and meets your needs enough and makes you happy enough, none of those you'll find in Scripture.

Our obedience is never predicated on someone else's obedience first. We revenge all disobedience when our obedience is fulfilled. And last but one more but, don't you notice that, well no, actually, We find that the wife's duty to submission is listed out here first. As we will see later, husbands, none of your obedience is predicated on her either. You are both called to obey first. Whichever one doesn't is the first to disobey, and that's it. That's it. Submission, He's not ultimately about how qualified or unqualified your husband is. That husband that, for the most part, you picked.

But about, your submission is about God restoring the image of God to fallen men and particularly conforming you into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Your marriage is to be a picture and to illustrate Christ and the church, and just as it would be untoward for Christ to go around submitting to the authority of his local church, which is basically what Rome practices, we see in the scripture the church submits to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as her head. Christ submitted to imperfect parents. He went down with them and was subject unto them.

The Lord who loves you and knows you is not calling you to do anything that he did not demonstrate and do first. The question is, will you do all in the name of the Lord Jesus? Will you think, will you speak, and you act in the name of Christ and bear in mind his character, his will, his command, and his reputation before a watching, critical-eyed world? marriages as roles of men and women? Are we doing them in the name of modern secularism or are we advancing the cause of Christ?

Dear sisters, wives, you will provide a very powerful and real example to your children on what it looks like to submit to authority and how to submit to authority with the right attitude and right spirit. Do not expect your children to submit to you if you give them an example of being unsubmissive to the authority over you, and they see it. More is caught than taught. You can teach them one thing and adorn it with something else, and they will imitate you more than they listen to you. If you won't hearken to your husband, don't expect your children to hearken to you, or him for that matter.

It's amazing, just in ministry I've found women who are able to dominate their husband in a relationship inevitably despise the man that they're able to dominate. And the thinking of the man is, if I just shut down, quiet down, and give her what she wants, she'll be happy. He's in for a roller coaster of pain, not him only, but she is too, because the both of them, you hear me, will be utterly and completely miserable. How can a man protect you from the evils of this world when he can't even protect his own authority from you? If you can dominate him, is he really the safe place you're gonna run into?

Why is it that women who think they want their husbands to do what they want are actually very blind to the fact, no, you don't want that. You don't want your husband to simply be a response of, John, how high? Do this. Okay, I'm gonna do it. We are not talking about a non-sacrificial husband. We're not talking about a husband that does not have a conscientiousness of how to please you. A husband is called to live with you according to knowledge. We'll get more into that next week.

But there is a lie in the mind of the modern feminist today. All you need to do is go look at the statistics and the absolute insane metrics of the anger, the divorce, the misery, the suicide, the depression, the mental illness. There has never been a generation of mental illness among our women like the numbers that are just out there today. They have absolutely, as a society, collectively got together, convinced ourselves of an alternate reality, and lost our minds. Women given to rebellion, actually, you follow them around long enough, they do lose their mind.

Why? Because they often cannot cope with reality because they're learning to interpret the world primarily through their emotions rather than the Word of God. And that has a short shelf life. If you don't deal with reality, if you don't deal with the scripture as it's written, if you don't deal with God's commands, if you don't deal with truth, you will eventually get so used to relying on the way you feel in the moment to justify what you think ought to happen or should have happened or would have happened.

And if you're not careful, you will spiral down into the black of satanic deceptions You'll follow after Eve, who was deceived by the subtlety of the serpent. You'll take something for yourself that wasn't meant for you, and what you thought would raise you higher, you'll realize too late you've been bamboozled. It'll plummet you into sorrow once again. Your Savior is recovering you, not only from the penalty of sin, but from its reigning power.

I pray that you would know the joy the joy of a heart free to submit to Christ, submit to his authority, and to know the joy that comes with having a clear conscience before God and your family, and to be able to walk into the liberty of the grace of the New Testament life, and in the beauty of a meek and a gentle and a quiet spirit.

And you will find how much more influence you will actually be able to exercise in your home. Because I'll give you a hint, a soft word will break a bone. And when men are used to fighting all day long with other men, and you just do what other men do, so it's just business as usual, you will realize the force God has given you to look your husband in the eye and say, you know, I love you. You know I'm gonna do what you believe is right before God and his word.

I wanna help you however I can. but if there's a place where I could express a difference, I would like to. And watch a godly man's heart break. I had a man that I counseled years ago say, the first time his wife, you know, cried, rather than just fought him, it broke him. He said, I've been in the military, I was used to fighting, I wasn't ready for that. We're not talking about a manipulative crying to get what you want, right? Teenage girls do that a lot, don't they?

We'd be sanctified out of that. But we're talking about a genuine heart of love for God, for your husband, an attitude of submission that is meek and gentle and lowly and humble, and you will find the Lord will beautify your life and your marriage wonderfully. Now, do you do that? Do you do these things because? You want like an ATM to put the card in and get the good receipt out? No. It is a Proverbs-like wisdom benefit of reality. For you, you need to say, come what may, whether I get to enjoy all the benefits of that this side of eternity or not, Christ is Lord now, and I will submit to my Lord now.

Amen? May God give you, precious sisters and fellow heirs of the grace of life, the power to do what the world cannot do, and to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Precious Father in heaven, O Lord, you called your Son, and he hearkened unto you, He did not turn his ear, he was not rebellious. He did and said what you called him to do and say in the flesh.

Lord, we have our type, we have our pattern. Lord, all of us are called to submit somewhere. All of us are called to obey. All of us are called into the Christian reality. of order and to order ourselves underneath whatever authority you've placed in our lives.

Help us, Lord, to be examples of submission ourselves so that we can give others a good example. Lord, help us not to expect anyone to take our word seriously if we don't heed the authority of those you put over us. Lord, help us to see our sin causes more misery and everything we aim or attempt to gain in this world and in this life through disobedience will only multiply our sorrow more. Lord, help us to see your ways are right, your ways are good.

We have been redeemed, and you're restoring the image of Christ in the church, in the marriage union of man and wife. And may it be clear, and may it be so, in all the true churches of the Lord Jesus. I pray all the marriages in the homes in Mount Sinai Bible Church, we take heed to your words, Lord, and by the power of your Holy Spirit, enabled more and more to walk in them by beginning firstly to think rightly about them in Christ Jesus name we pray amen now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Lord bless you, dear saints. Go in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.