God's Created Order

Welcome to our Women's Bible Study on the Book of Ephesians called Finding Purpose. Today, we get to cover Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 through chapter 6 verse 9 and every week I've been reminding us that the first half of the Book of Ephesians is what we believe and the second half is how then should we behave. And I got really excited because it occurred to me that the entire second half can really be put into an essay form as well and I want to show you this. I'm going to put it on the screen. How a Christian should behave toward, first of all, toward God. We learned last week that we are to imitate God. Then how a Christian should behave toward people, toward human beings. We are to submit and walk in humility and next week the third part is going to be how a Christian should behave toward Satan, toward the enemy. We are to stand against and look at what Paul did. These are the three entities in our lives as Christians. There's God and his host, there's people and then there's Satan and Paul just said, told us how we are to relate to these people. I thought that was interesting. So we are actually in this middle part, how we are to behave toward people in our world and so I want to show you that this also has three parts to it. So let's take a look at this. The thesis statement is just where we left off last week. We are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And here is our lesson for this week. Three supporting subjects, first of all, order in marriage, order in the family and what I called occupational order because I was just reaching for something to identify that last part. But this sums up your lesson for this week. Now we already said last week that submitting is a first cousin to humility and we already identified humility as understanding our place in the larger order of things. That's the word humility. But the word submit is actually used in verse 21 and in verse 22. So I want to go and take a look really quickly as a foundation of what that word truly means. So I put these on the screen for you as well. In verse 21, the word submitting is the Greek word hupa tasso. If we split that apart, the first part hupa means under and the second part tasso means to arrange, under to arrange or in English we would say to arrange under. It is a word that means rank. It can be a military term, but look, there's all kinds of relationships in our world that we have rank. We have rank in classrooms. We have rank in airplanes. There's pilots and co-pilots. We have rank all over the place in every business. But then in verse 22, the word submit is hupa aiko again. The first part means under, but look at this, under to yield. That's an interesting additional element there. Under to yield. Okay. So now we all know what's coming up. You know that the verse why submit to your husbands is coming up. Before we get to that, I feel like I want to do a really, really long warmup to this to help us understand what a first century Christian living in Ephesians would have heard when they read this. So I hope you find it interesting. First of all, our perspective of marriage in this room, our perspective of marriage comes from the ideals of Western civilization. We've had 2000 years since this is written. We live in North America, Western civilization, Judeo-Christian ideals have pretty much permeated our understanding. And so that is our understanding of it. Their perspective in reading this was colored by a highly influential and profitable cult featuring a virgin goddess, very different place that they're coming from. So what I want to do is return back to where we started in the opening of this book. And I want to encourage us to look at some questions. How did the Ephesians think about life? How did they think about life? Do you remember what we say? Before the Bible was written to us, it was written to someone else. How did they view life? How had their culture programmed them? And what changes in thought would someone need to make when they became a Christian in their culture? So I want to talk again about Diana, the goddess Diana, the Diana cult. I have four points I want to make about this. First I want to talk about who she was. You remember that we started here, right? Remember we went back to Acts 19 and filled up the stadium, great as Diana of the Ephesians for two hours. They wanted to hold on, you know, to this when there was confrontation. So I want to talk a little bit about this. Who was she? She was the Greek Artemis whose name and persona sort of morphed into the Roman Diana. Now, she was not a real person. Don't think of this like in Roman Catholicism where you have a patron saint, like there was a real person and now they sort of watch over you. You know, that's not like that. She wasn't real. She was a myth. She was considered a virgin, not associated with any male consort. And if you look up an image, I was going to put some images for you, but then when I tell you what they're like, you'll understand. I thought, I don't know what YouTube is going to do with this. So I'll just tell you. If you look up the Greek Artemis, you'll find a kind of an athletic, wiry sort of a woodland girl who looks really great. But by the time we get to the Roman Diana, the images of actual figures that have been found are sort of a short, squatty woman with multiple rows of breasts. Very disturbing. So she was worshipped as the goddess of both fertility and childbirth. She was sort of a mother goddess who was never a mother. Because you can do that with myth. You can do those things. So what were her beginnings? Where did she come from? Why did they bring this into their culture? Well, legend has it that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto. And that she actually has a twin. Her twin was Apollo. But Artemis was born first. Now when I say that, I want you to be thinking created first. Okay? Because she was born first. Apparently she gave her mother no pain during childbirth. And then it took nine days to deliver her twin brother, which she assisted with that delivery. Because, again, you can do things like this with a myth. And so she was apparently so traumatized by her mother's great pain in delivering her twin that she decided she would remain a virgin her life, never marry, and never bear children. So we have some biblical problems, obviously, with someone who is first indoctrinated with this kind of thinking. Since Diana was born first, she sort of gained this association as being preeminent. The woman came first. See, this is how they were thinking. Because this is what was all around them. So now it makes a lot of sense when we see that to Timothy, Paul wrote in 1 Timothy chapter 2, but I tell you, Adam was formed first, and then Eve, because he was confronting this cult thinking. Also, Diana's perceived help in childbirth led her to have preeminence, to be the protector of women and children. And so specifically in childbirth, everyone had one of those little shrines. Do you remember what we talked about, about the silversmiths? They made all of these shrines. And then when Paul came along, leading people to Christianity, they said, hey, we're going to lose our business. Why was it such a big business? Well, there was tourism that were coming and buying them, but every woman who was going to face childbirth probably wanted one of these in her home, because this is what her culture and her cult taught her, was that leaning on Diana was going to get her through childbirth. Well, now this also makes sense when Paul writes to Timothy again in 1 Timothy chapter 2, and he talks about women being saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, not idolatry. on the Lord, not on this cult figure. So her fourth thing about this, I told you it was gonna be a long wind-up, was her glorification. We usually, 2,000 years later, assume that men dominated in every ancient culture, and that's not a bad assumption. That's usually somewhat correct, except by the time we get to Roman times, there were some adjustments, and there were some, especially in a place like Ephesus. And so the goddesses like Diana created a religious environment with the feminine principle, which was very much at odds with the biblical text that people were now accepting and believing as they turned to Christ. Because the Bible teaches us that God created man and woman in his own image, that they were distinct from one another and yet equal to one another, complementary toward one another, even their physical bodies showed you that they were complementary toward each other, and each one had a valuable part for the flourishing of the human race. In creation, man did not have dominion over woman, nor did woman have dominion over man, but they were intended together to have dominion over the earth. So that's the biblical text. So now you can begin to imagine someone in the first century, in Ephesus, who had been influenced, perhaps even worshipped to the cult of Diana, now had denied that and become and worshipped Jesus Christ as Savior and Messiah, now you can begin to understand how their thinking needed to be transformed. And these relationships that we're about to talk about is part of that transformation. Marriage, Paul is going to tell us here, is more than a sexual construct for the purpose of fertility and childbearing. God ordained marriage to promote this self-giving and self-sacrificing, not to exercise authority or dominance, and that God's intention for marriage would tell a bigger story. So husbands and wives would both now, in Ephesus, need to understand better how to relate to one another. All right, the wind-up is wound-up. Now let's get into the text, okay? Order in marriage, verse 22.

And we already covered the meaning of the word submit there, which means under to yield. And so why is this so? Why is the wife to yield under? Well, the answer is given in the very next verse.

So Paul made a comparison here between the husband is to Christ as the wife is to the church. But even the church is new information to them. That's why Paul spent so much time in chapter 2 and 3 talking about the church. So he goes on to explain,

And that's the end. That's all the information that's given to wives in this section. But I want to make a couple of observations from what we just read. Two observations. One is, I want you to note that the wives are to arrange themselves under their own husband. You know, I've taught these passages for a few decades, and I, especially in a group with young women, I will often throw out the question before we start, does the Bible teach that women are supposed to submit to men? And the young women will say, oh yeah, yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, women are supposed to submit to men. And I'll say, no, false. That is incorrect. And they're like, what? And then I point out that here it says, submit to your own husband. This is a marriage thing. This is not a society thing. This is a marriage thing here. The Bible does not teach that women are to submit to men in general. I am to submit to my own husband, and we'll find out the reason for that. Number two, to what degree should a wife submit? The question is answered here, because there are boundaries to submission. Since a wife is to submit as to the Lord, then the husband's authority has to be as to the Lord as well. Which means that our submission stops on the doorstep of illegal, immoral, unbiblical. Because that is not as unto the Lord. It is impossible for us to submit as unto the Lord if something is unbiblical or illegal. And so there are boundaries there. Now let's investigate the instructions given to the husbands.

Again, the comparison is husbands to wives like Christ is to the church. And the main directive given to the husband is to love. And it is the Greek word agape, which is the highest form of seeking another person's good. Agape love can sometimes produce injury to oneself as we are selflessly seeking the good of another. How did Christ set an example for husbands? It goes on to say,

The example of Christ was one of making an investment. Jesus gave himself to invest in his bride, which is his inheritance. We learned that previous. He is our inheritance. We are his inheritance. And so the example was that he invested in his inheritance. And it was effective.

And here is where Paul connects any remaining dots for them, by taking the reader now back to the creation story in Genesis. Because it's a reminder now, what we're to read will remind us that God had a purpose in mind for the bonds of marriage from the beginning. From the beginning he had a purpose in mind. So this section could rightly be called God's created order in marriage. Look at verse 31, which quotes Genesis 2, 24.

Hmm, where have we heard this become two become one before in Ephesians? This is how Paul was describing the Jews and the Gentiles becoming one, and the church becoming one. And Paul even calls this a mystery here, just like he did before. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. And so it's this passage that leads me to say what I often say is that marriage is a symbol of the union of the church and Christ. Even our marriages are symbolic of the union of the church and Christ. Now for people who had been influenced by culture and cult in Ephesus, this was groundbreaking information. This was a brand new information to them, and it gave them a purpose for their relationships. For people like you and me, who maybe haven't thought very deeply about this recently, but we're studying this passage, there are also significant implications for the purpose of our relationships as well. Even our marriages can dramatize God's intention, God's will, God's plan in this earth. So I want to make two observations and then one practical application from this Genesis passage that's written in verse 31. First observation is it says to leave his father and mother. And that is, we see the importance of leaving when a husband and wife become married, leaving that family unit and creating their own family unit. The importance of that cannot be overstated. This is very, very important. So parents among us, those in my generation, those who have married kids, we need to heed this, and we need to understand God's intention for... married kids. They are to leave our home. They are to leave our jurisdiction, if you will, and they are to grow together. So if you have married kids, think this through. Take it to the Lord. Am I doing anything in my suggestions, my demands, that is counterproductive to what God has called my kids to do? The young people among us who are not married or are newly married, I want to encourage you that you need to leave and cleave. I think in the Steady Guide, didn't I write about the message they know at our wedding? Leave, cleave, and weave. That's good. That was good stuff all those years ago. And you know, there's a temptation. You might want to rely on your parents. It's what you've known, especially for women. I'm talking to women here now. There's great comfort, maybe. Maybe you had a troubling, maybe you were just anxious to get away, but it could be that you had, there was great comfort. And look, when you get married, you usually go down a few rungs on your finances and on your situation in life and all those things. It's not easy, and there can be a desire to just, you know. Now in some cultures, like in our North American culture, I feel like this is pretty common. A boy and a girl get married and off they go to start a new life. But in some cultures, that is not the norm. I know that in some cultures, like the son gets married and the wife just comes right into the family. Well, that's cultural, but apparently it's not biblical. Okay? And so Paul is telling, I don't know what the what the culture was like in Ephesus, but he's saying this was God's intention. Second observation, it says the two shall become one flesh. Now clearly this is both a physical bonding reference, but also emotional and practical as well. And once a woman becomes married, or a man, doesn't matter, your spouse is now the most important relationship after God. And so this transition needs to be made now, rather than asking advice of mom or sisters or friends to be yielding under our new most important relationship after God. And I'll remind you of something, even your kids, it's very easy for a mom to make children the most important relationship, but they're supposed to get out of the house and grow up and form a new. The husband is the one that stays, and so he does need to be that most important. Now, from a practical standpoint, if you are married, first of all, I want to talk to those among us who are not married. Either you've never been married, you're widowed, you're divorced. This is still relevant, because for us to understand God's created order is important. We're influencers. We are influencing others, even if we're not walking it ourselves. But second of all, if we are walking this path, and some of us could sit here and say, I've heard this, I've heard this for decades, I know that a wife is intended to rank under her husband. I know the listen under, I know the rank under, I've heard this all. I just struggle. I've just struggled with this. Hey, and that's legitimate, because sometimes we know things. See, that's what we're talking about here. What do you believe, and then how do you behave? And so I would say to the woman who says, I just struggle, rather than saying, so that's me, I just struggle, let's move on to something else. I would say, no, we're in this Bible study, we're in this chapter, and so if this is a struggle for you, what I would say is sit with this for a while, and go to the Lord, and say to him, why do I struggle? I'm just gonna be an open book, Lord. Would you show me why I struggle with this? Is it my pride? Is it my stubbornness? Is it, and just take that to the Lord. Now, we need sometimes to sit with things for days, weeks, or months, and let the Lord, and genuinely and sincerely let the Lord show us, what is my problem? So I would encourage us, don't give up, but ask the Lord, what's the struggle? Verse 33, the last statement,

And the main point in here is that, in general, the wife's greatest need is for her husband to love her, and that love takes the form of providing, protecting, and all those things. And in general, the husband's greatest need is for the wife to respect him. You might think his greatest need is in the bedroom, and that's a close second, but the wife's, the husband's greatest need is for the wife to respect him as the husband. Now, neither one of those are easy. What I want to point out to us, lest we get told by society, I can't believe that the Bible would say this to women, does anybody ever say, I can't believe that the Bible would say this to men, that they're supposed to love their wives as Christ loved the church? Do you remember Christ loved us when we were yet enemies of God? They don't have an out, okay? Christ demonstrated that while we were still enemies, he loved us. And so, they're both hard, whether it is submitting or sacrificing. They are both a challenge to our sinful nature. So, I just see it as even there. Now, there's so much more about this. I just want to throw up a slide and remind you that Paul actually did a new series called God's Design for Marriage this spring. If you want a six-week session on all of this information, this is on our website, this is on our YouTube channel. But we're gonna move on to our second point here, which is order in the family. We're gonna turn to chapter 6, and it says,

How many of you can remember teaching your children that verse, right? It's one of the first verses you teach your children to memorize. And it says,

This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land, which is a reference to Deuteronomy chapter 516. And once again, we see God's created order in play. Who came first? The parents came first. Who is to obey? The children are to obey that which came first. And so we see, we notice in here two words, obey and honor. So let's take a look at these words and see what they really mean. In both verse 1 and 5, the word obey is the Greek word, that Greek word. Again, the first part, hupo, means under, under to listen or under to attend to. This is what the children are supposed to be doing. But the second word, to honor your father and mother, is temeo, which means to prize, to fix a value upon, to value something. So those are the two words that were given here as a child toward the parents. So first of all, I would say to the younger children that the difference between obedience and honor is wrapped up in attitude. You can obey a command with a bad attitude. And if you've been a mother, everyone knows what that looks like. Your kids did something, but their shoulders were all shrugged, and they were, you know, doing a bad attitude in the obedience. And so children need to be trained both to obey, but also to honor in the midst of obeying, to obey with a good attitude. Now for the adult child, the adult who is out of the house, who's already married, this doesn't go away, but there is a transition now from the word obey to the word honor. It transitions. Children will age out of obeying their parents, but they age into simply honoring their parents. We never age out of honoring our parents. Now marriage accelerates this transition because what we've learned, when a girl especially gets married, then now her husband is the main voice in her life, but she is yet to honor her parents. Now we actually get this question posed to us a lot. How does an adult child honor their parents? So it's really tricky. Even in this room, some of you were raised in a situation of neglect or a situation of abuse. Some of you have resolved that. Some of you have not. Does that negate the this command to honor your father and mother. No, it just makes it very tricky. Actually, randomly, Paul and I kind of collaborated on a blog post this week answering this very question about honoring your parents. But what I wanna say is kind of the same thing I said about if you find submitting difficult, sit with the Lord and say, why is this? If you have a relationship with your parents that is challenging, it requires prayer. It requires you to say, Lord, what am I gonna do with this dysfunction that I grew up in? Don't wash your hands of it and say, I have an excuse because of what happened, but rather take it to the Lord and say, how do you want me, what do you want me to do with this mess? You know, he'll tell us. He will tell us what to do with the mess. We are to submit to one another out of reverence to Christ. So can I just say, honor one another out of reverence to Christ. How you do that, that's what God is gonna show each one of us how to do that. But there's a message to the fathers.

And we're reminded that it is a parent's job to train the child. It is not a husband's job to train the wife to submit, but it is the parent's job to train the children to obey. They will not obey if they are not trained. And how we do this, well, that's a whole nother, you know, six-week session on how to do it. I can't even come close to, you know, giving tips on all of the nuances of strong-willed children and teen years and all those sorts of things. But I will just say two things. As a mother, and we have the primary time given, even though this is addressed to fathers, that's good, but in most homes, the mother has more time invested in the training than does the father just by nature of work schedules and that sort of thing. But I will say two things that are gonna get you a long way in child training, and that is humility on your part. So coming at every situation with a humble attitude and admitting our own faults and asking our kids for forgiveness. As I look back on all the years, and you know, our kids are at 14 years apart from top to bottom, so we just had kids at home forever. And I feel like, as I look back, one of the most important things the Lord showed us is knowing to say, I was wrong. Would you forgive me? Man, that just sends you down the road a long way with those kids listening to you when you're able to admit, I made a bad decision. Okay, the third point is what I call occupational order. It starts with verse five.

And I wanna stop right there. Some of your Bibles may have translated that word to slaves instead of bond servants. It is the Greek word doulos. I really like that the ESV translates it into bond servant because it sort of mitigates this idea that what we're talking about is our perspective of slavery that we experienced in the 16th through the 19th century in North America and in England, many other parts of the world throughout history. So I just need to say, if your Bible says slaves, I feel like we need this understanding in case someone comes to you and says, so I guess the Bible condones slavery then, right? Well, actually it doesn't. Take a look at this from Exodus 21, 16, which elevates the punishment for slavery to that of murder.

And then there's many, many other scriptures that often were reminded Israel that they need to be kind to slaves because they themselves knew what it was to be in slavery in Egypt. So this isn't a condoning. This word bond servant or doulos, this referred to the person in this particular time who was out of resources. He was at the end of his financial resources in debt. There's no government social net to get you through to the next month. And so a person would sell the very last possession that they had, which was their time. And they would sell themselves and their time for so that they could eat and or pay off debts and or have a place to live. Now there was protection in the word even against this. The Hebrew law taught that someone can only be a bond servant for six years and then they have to go free. Okay, so there was protection in this situation. But I want you to think about that. Someone selling their time in order to pay their mortgage, buy food, pay for health insurance. What does that sound like? I think we do the same thing, right? Unless you're independently wealthy and you've never had to sell even one little piece of your time to have a job to get a paycheck, it really is the same thing. The first century in Ephesus that bond servants were a reality in their world. In our world, employment is a reality, probably for everyone in this room. Either you and or your husband has needed to be employed throughout chunks of your life so that you would have money because you're not independently wealthy. So how are we to relate to each other in those situations? Verse five says you are to obey, under to listen. So I used to give a speech to, when we had young adults in our home, you know how that is when you have young adults, you collect other young adults in your home? And so you often become a mama mentor toward others. And when young people are maybe getting their first jobs, it's like, oh, I have to go to work, it's so hard, blah, blah. And I had this little speech and I said, honey, you are a slave when you go there. Now, listen, you have sold your time for their benefit. They're paying you for your time. That means you do a good job, you be happy, you do what they ask you to do. Even if you think, well, that's not in my job description, I would say, no, I was harsh. But you know, I got a couple people whipped into shape through my little tirades about how employment really is. And so I would say, obey your boss with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ. And Paul goes on to say,

which is like only when they're watching. If their eye is on you, then I'm a heart and I'm a good worker. And he says, not as people pleasers. If you're old enough like me to remember, leave it to Beaver and remember Beaver's older brother's friend, Eddie Haskell, whose persona would change the minute he came in. Oh, Mrs. Cleaver, that is a lovely cake that you've baked. And then he'd walk out the other door and become the same punk that he always was. That's always what I think of here. We're not to have two personas in that situation, but as bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,

So let's make two observations from these phrases. First, rendering service with goodwill as to the Lord. So we can ask the same question, to what degree should a worker submit themselves to their boss because there are boundaries. Since a worker is to render service as to the Lord, the boss's authority has to be as to the Lord, which means our obedience stops on the doorstep of illegal, immoral, unbiblical, because we can't do something illegal as to the Lord, right? We can't do something unbiblical as to the Lord. So we have the same boundaries that we talked about previously. And then another observation that Paul says, he will receive back from the Lord. There's a promise there, which we associate with sowing and reaping. If we sow diligence and hard work and seeking one another's good and welfare, which is what you do when you are an employee, then we can expect to receive that back as well, which I love that promise. Now, the boss has a responsibility as well.

So I would say that a good summary of this third point, occupational order, would be this. If your boss is a Christian, then don't take advantage of their mercy, but instead be an even more diligent employee, knowing that you will benefit a brother in Christ. If your employee is a Christian, then don't take advantage of their humility as a Christian, but instead make their life as pleasant as possible, knowing that as they render service to you. If your boss is not a Christian, then your attitude and behavior at work should be a testimony for all to see, for that person to see, for her to see, and not repulse them. And if your employee is not a Christian, your attitude and behavior toward them should be a testimony to them and not repulse them. Now these are all talking about work situations, but we relate to people in commerce as well. It might not be a boss and an employee. We might be, we might have hired somebody to do a service for us and to do this and that, so these are very, very good things for us to consider in all of our relationships with people. So let's just do a summary here. Paul gave three examples in this middle section of the second half of our letter of how we should behave toward other human beings in our life, and the summary is submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. And if we can only remember two things from this lesson, I would say they should be these two things. Number one, walk in humility. Walking in humility is understanding our place in the larger order of things, arranging ourselves in our place in the larger order of things, because God has an intended order for marriage, for family, and even in the workplace. And the second thing I would say about this is what is required is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which means to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. We're all going to fail on some of these points. We're all going to want a do-over. There's a lot of things on here that if I had another hour, I could detail all the do-overs in my history of what I wish I had done differently, wish I had said differently, wish I had had a different attitude. That's going to happen to all of us, but as we approach this and say, Lord, what I need today is a fresh filling of your Holy Spirit so that I can walk in the control of your Spirit. I can walk in the self-control. I can walk in the love. I can walk in the peace and the gentleness and the kindness. So, seeking a fresh filling of the Spirit is going to fill in all the gaps we have here, all the nuances that we couldn't talk about, all the distinctions of how you were raised, what your family dynamic is, and whether you had to raise kids alone or, you know, all these things get tied up nicely when we just lean into the Lord and ask him to fill us. So, Lord, that is how we end this morning. We do ask you to fill us with your Spirit. Lord, we want to be good representatives of you, and we want other people to see that our behavior matches what we say that we believe. And so, in these areas, we ask just really sincerely for your help. And I pray, too, that you would help make our mind sturdy. Well, that's what we're going to talk about next week is standing against the enemy. But just for right now, Lord, help our minds to be sturdy against the voice of the enemy that would just want to bring up regrets and want to bring up, you know, all these things or accuse us, Lord. But help us rather to look to the future knowing that you are the one that gives us everything that we need to behave in the way that you have designed us to. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.