I feel like I'm reading about the US!

Wow!  As I read Judges 10, I really feel like I'm reading about the US and the rest of the world as well right now! Even the commentary which was written in the 90's is like they've somehow read today's news headlines. I can't post all of Judges 10, but let me post a few verses and a bit of the commentary for you which will give you an idea of what I'm talking about. It's amazing and scary and it makes a lot of sense out of what's happening around the world and in the US!  This is from Wiersbe's, Be Available commentary.  Just replace the word "Israel" with "the United States" and you'll see what I mean.

 
Judges 10:11–14 —The Lord replied, “When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, *the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands? *But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. *Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!” *

A nation in decay (Jdg. 10:1–18)
There were three deficiencies in Israel that gave evidence that the nation was decaying spiritually.
 

1. Israel’s lack of gratitude to the Lord (vv. 1–5). For forty-five years, the people of Israel enjoyed peace and security, thanks to the leadership of Tola and Jair. We know little about these two judges, but the fact that they kept Israel’s enemies away for nearly half a century would suggest that they were faithful men, who served the Lord and the nation well. Tola was from the tribe of Issachar, and Jair from the Transjordan tribes, the area known as Gilead.

The people of Israel, however, didn’t take advantage of these years of peace to grow in their relationship to the Lord. After the death of Jair, the nation openly returned to idolatry and once again invited the chastening of the Lord. They enjoyed forty-five years of peace and prosperity but didn’t take time to thank the Lord for what He had done for them. The essence of idolatry is enjoying God’s gifts but not being grateful to the Giver, and Israel was guilty.

Thanksgiving glorifies God (Ps. 69:30) and is a strong defense against selfishness and idolatry.

2. Israel’s lack of submission to the Lord (vv. 6–16). If the people had only reviewed their own history and learned from it, they would never have turned from Jehovah God to worship the false gods of their neighbors. From the time of Othniel to the days of Gideon, the Jews endured over fifty painful years of oppression from the enemy. By now they should have known that God blessed them when they were obedient and chastened them when they were rebellious. (See 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1.) After all, weren’t these the terms of the covenant that God made with Israel, a covenant the nation accepted when they entered the land? (Josh. 8:30–35)

The Lord had given Israel victory over seven different nations (Jdg. 10:11–12), but now Israel was worshiping seven different varieties of pagan gods (v. 6). No wonder God’s anger “was hot against Israel” (v. 7). What foolishness to worship the gods of your defeated enemies!

For the people to abandon God was one thing, but for God to abandon His people was quite something else. The greatest judgment God can send to His people is to let them have their own way and not interfere. “Wherefore God also gave them up.… God gave them up.… God gave them over” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). This was too much for the Jews, so they repented, put away their false gods, and told God He could do to Israel whatever He wanted to do (Jdg. 10:15–16).

Their hope wasn’t in their repenting or their praying but in the character of God. “His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel” (v. 16). “In all their affliction He was afflicted” (Isa. 63:9). “Nevertheless in Your great mercy You did not utterly consume them nor forsake them; for You are God, gracious and merciful” (Neh. 9:31, NKJV). “Yet He was merciful; He atoned for their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time He restrained His anger and did not stir up His full wrath” (Ps. 78:38, NIV).

3. Israel’s lack of adequate leadership (vv. 17–18).
The people were prepared to act, but from all the tribes of Israel, there was nobody to take the lead. Whether in a nation or a local church, the absence of qualified leaders is often a judgment of God and evidence of the low spiritual level of the people. When the Spirit is at work among believers, He will equip and call servants to accomplish His will and bless His people (Acts 13:1–4).

In his book Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy wrote, “We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.” What’s true of political leadership is often true of spiritual leadership: We get what we deserve. When God’s people are submitted to Him and serving Him, He sends them gifted servants to instruct and lead them; but when their appetites turn to things of the world and the flesh, He judges them by depriving them of good and godly leaders. “The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart” (Isa. 57:1, NIV).

When I was a young Christian, I heard an evangelist preach a powerful sermon on the text, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” (2 Kings 2:14) “We know where the Lord God of Elijah is,” he said; “He’s on the throne of heaven and is just as powerful today as He was in Elijah’s day.” Then he paused. “The question is not so much ‘Where is the Lord God of Elijah?’ as ‘Where are the Elijahs?’ ”

Indeed, where are the Elijahs? Where are the spiritual leaders who can rally God’s people and confront the forces of evil?
Wiersbe, W. W. (1994). Be available. “Be” Commentary Series 

 

(originally written over two years ago) 

What the first Three and a Half years of the Trib will be like

I know some people seem to think that the first half of the Trib will be peaceful but that's simply not biblical.  People generally get that idea from movies and books, but not from the Bible. Think of it this way. I wouldn't even call the way things are now entirely "peaceful" and these things aren't going to get better, they're going to get worse! If nothing else just reading the judgements that are going to happen during this time show it's going to be far from peaceful.  Think about it...between a third and half of the worlds population are going to die during these first 3 and a half years!  And that's AFTER all the people have disappeared from the rapture!  Just realizing that one fact alone should be enough to show that the world is going to be in complete chaos.  If it wasn't, they wouldn't need a "savior"; they wouldn't think they needed the antichrist!  I think another reason that causes some people to think that the first half of the Tribulation will be relatively peaceful is because Jesus called the second half of it the "Great Tribulation". You have to realize why He did that though.  For one thing, the second half will be worse then the first half for everyone, but it will be especially worse for the Jews and that's who Jesus was talking to at that time.  He was letting them know that as bad as the first half is going to be, the second will be even worse.  

Another way you could look at it is this:  Human beings might just be able to survive as a race if we only had to go through the first half of the Tribulation.  I say, "might", because honestly, with all the devastation both supernatural as well as that done by men that the earth itself is going to go through, it's also possible that we could do enough damage even in the first half that could cause enough chain reactions for the earth to be eventually uninhabitable.  But I think it's more likely that we could survive it. But there is no way humans could survive the second half of the Tribulation. If Jesus did not return and make the earth habitable again, all life would soon die off on the earth by the end of the Tribulation.  That's one reason Jesus tells us that no one would survive if the Lord doesn't shorten it. (Matthew 24:22)

The AC will get elected because the people are so afraid, so tired of being afraid and hungry and sick etc that they'll be snatching at straws, they'll be desperate for someone to help them. Of course, we know he's not going to help them, he's only going to make promises to help. The only thing he will do that will make people "think" he's just wonderful and that he CAN help, will be to sign the treaty between Israel and her neighbors. We already know he isn't going to keep that treaty though, and we know he isn't even going to totally enforce it either, even at the beginning. Like I said, that will last only long enough to get him into power.

Let's see what the Bible says will happen during that first half of the trib.

The 7 seals will come first: keep in mind that this is occurring during the FIRST 3 years of the Trib:

Revelation 6:1-17 I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. 


During the first part of the Tribulation then, we have the AntiChrist coming on the scene promising peace but giving people war instead.  That's another thing people are often mistaken about.  They think the AC will actually bring peace during the first half, but he won't.  The bible tells us that he lies to the people making them believe that he wants peace and that it's not his fault that the wars break out all over the world.  These wars will affect the entire world, not just parts of it.  Yes, that means even here in the US! No one and no place will be exempt. 

  When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” 

Now, because of the wars and other problems, we now have famine all over the world.  This is most likely due to the economy failing as well as crops being destroyed by the wars.  The Bible says that the rich people will be OK, but the rest of the world is going to be pretty miserable and hungry.  Hungry, miserable people often start riots, loot stores, and are violent. They rob others to get what they want. (now keep in mind that a huge number of the population has recently disappeared in the rapture, and many of them are in law enforcement agencies. Plus there could be a lot of chaos left from when the rapture happened that will still be a problem.  So now we have a whole lot more crime, plus wars that are quite possibly nuclear, and a lot of hungry, scared, people all over the world, many of which will be the ones behind all the crime, with little to no police available to help stop it all.  Does that sound peaceful to you?  it sure doesn't to me!
 
When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.


Next comes disease and more death.  My guess is that due to the wars obliterating and or poisoning the crops, the animals are going to get sick, possibly rabid and begin attacking people a lot more often then ever before.  Keep in mind too that evil is on the rise.  More and more people will be giving up all restraint and doing anything that pleases them, meaning sin, no matter who it hurts. It will be a time of "anything goes" on the earth. At this point one fourth of the people who were left behind after the rapture will die.  Let's pretend there were only 100,000 people left on the earth after the rapture.  If that were true, then out of that number, 25,000 of them would die!  Now that's not taking into account the number of people who had already died from wars, famine and crime!  What do you think would be a good guess for that number on a world with little police force left?  Let's say 5% of the population which would be another 5,000 people.  So that would leave only 70,000 people left.  The reason I'm using such low numbers is because we can grasp those numbers a lot easier then the actual numbers of the population. So this allows us to at least grasp the huge number of deaths that will be happening.
 
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.



And now we come to the martyrs being killed and a huge number of them as well.  Yet more violence.  As you can easily see by now, the world has become a very violent and ugly place to live in.  It's nothing like what we know it as now. Well nothing like what most of us know it as.  Perhaps those people who currently live in places where ISIS is terrorizing and killing so many people can imagine a whole world like that, where there is no safe place to live. 
 
I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”



Finally, we know that a great earthquake will happen during the first half of the Tribulation as well, which will kill and maim a huge number of the population.  Keep in mind now that none of the other things have stopped happening.  There are still wars, famine, disease, crime, people being killed for their faith in Jesus, and wholesale sin going on constantly.  And we haven't even gotten to any of the Trumpet judgments yet! Scholars differ in just how many of them will happen during the first half of the Tribulation, and a few think they'll all happen in the second half.  So I'm not even going to count any of them, although I do believe that at least the first few of them will happen during the first half of the Tribulation.  So what I'll do is simply list them for you at the end so you can check them out for yourself.

As you can see, during the first 3 and a half years, that's just 42 months, millions of people are going to die! There will be wars, not peace, famine, disease, disasters, unemployment, etc. Food will be scarce and so will money.  People will be living in fear - fear that someone will rob them or kill them, or rape them or beat them. Domestic violence and crime will rise tremendously, as will riots and looting, in part because of all the stress.. This doesn't sound peaceful to me at all! The whole earth will be in utter chaos! I think I can honestly say that the only people on the earth who could be said to be "comfortable" would be those foolish souls who sell out to the Antichrist and work directly for him, staying near him all the time.  While they wouldn't be immune to the judgments, they'd have more money and be part of the rich who would at least still be eating and have a decent roof over their heads, if nothing else.

Remember what happened when Rome fell?  The same kind of things only in smaller measure, just like what's happening now really.  What did Rome do to try to control the masses?  They provided them with "entertainment".  Entertainment that was full of death in the Colosseum. They made it easier for the people to get booze and drugs, and passed laws making it legal for homosexuals to marry.  Homosexuality became the "in" thing after awhile.  Women's lib was introduced as was abortion.  Sounds a lot like us doesn't it?  I've always believed that what happened to Rome was a picture of what was going to happen not just to the US, but ultimately to the world. .

Going back to the Judgements though, if you start at the beginning, each judgment adds to the next and is carried over; in other words, things get progressively worse. How can all of these things have happened and yet everyone is still "comfortable". It simply can't be! People are falling for fantasy rather then reality in this. I think the reason for that is that it's so hard for us to imagine the world being that bad.  We think things are horrible now, but really, compared to the way they'll be then, they're not at all.   Think for a moment about what God said about the people on earth during Noah's time.  He said that every single thought and feeling they had was evil.  Not "most of them", but ALL of them.  Not most of the people, but "all of them" except for Noah and his family.  That's how it will be after the rapture.  All of their thoughts and desires will be evil, except for those of the people who are saved or are being saved. .

The first 3 and a half years won't be as bad as the last 3 and a half but that doesn't mean that people will be comfortable. One reason it will be even worse in the last half of the trib is because the people will still be dealing with the effect all of the previous judgments have had on them as well as with the next new judgments. Plus you have to take into account how things are right this minute. Even now with the problems with the economy, and with the tension in the mid east, and the current wars, and the threats of more wars, the unemployment etc. most of the people are not as "comfortable" as they were before and we know from the financial advisers and well as from the bible that these things are going to get worse, not better. Remember, that one of the things that will happen is the economy will continue to get much worse.  The rich will get richer and the middle class will become the new poor (just like is already beginning to happen) and the poor will get even poorer.  But even the rich won't be living in peace.  They're going to need that wine and booze they can afford to buy, to calm their nerves, because they'll be in constant fear; fear for their lives and fear that their money will be stolen or lost and they'll become one of the poor. 
  
So knowing how things are now and having read some of what is going to happen in the first half of the Trib, there is simply no way that people are going to be at peace and nice and comfy during the first half of it. It's not a pretty picture and certainly not something comfortable to think about, but if we tell people the Truth about it, perhaps then it will be enough to plant some seeds about salvation, and perhaps, if we face the truth about it, it will give us the courage to actually speak up to people who need to hear about Jesus.  

Finally, here are the Trumpet judgments, some or all of which may also happen during the first half of the tribulation. 

Revelation 7:1-4 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.

Revelation 8:1 When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
 
Revelation 8:7-12 The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

Revelation 9:1-6 The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
 
Revelation 9:13-19 The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury

A Plan for Your Family: God's vs. the World's, Part 2

A Plan for Your Family: God's vs. the World's, Part 2

Let's turn to Ephesians chapter 5 and we're looking at the divine pattern for relationships. This is part two in our series on the family, on marriage, and raising children. We're going to get into a lot of wonderful things in the weeks ahead. And we're looking at a sort of a launch pad in Ephesians chapter 5, a great place to begin this study because the Word of God is so specific with regard to these matters.

I want to read to you from verses 18 through 21, Ephesians chapter 5. "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ."

Last week we said that the foundation of all Christian family success, all Christian marriage blessing is set out in that text. It's not gimmicky, it's not trivial, it's not superficial, it's not manipulative. What it says is that before we can even talk about wives in verse 22, before we can talk about husbands in verse 25, before we can talk about children in chapter 6 verse 1 and parents in chapter 6 verse 2, we have to set up some foundations for all of those relationships, namely this, you must be Spirit filled, singing, saying thanks and submissive. And we focused on those four things last time. Where you have filling of the Spirit which means you're under the control of the Holy Spirit by obedience to the Word, where you have overflowing joy that comes out in songs, where you have constant thanks for everything and where you have mutual submission, you have the foundations of happiness, success and blessing in a marriage and in a family. All of that is built on that spiritual foundation, whether we're talking about husband and wife relationship, or children and parents.

One of the most popular books on this subject over the last few years was titled, Pillars That Support A Fulfilling Marriage. At the time that it first came out it was a very popular book. And the book suggests that what is foundational to marriage, what really makes a marriage successful is five pillars. Here's what the book suggested, a Christian book, by the way. Number one is security. Number two is communication. Number three is romance. Number four is touch. And number five is intimacy of spirit.

The book says things like this, quote: "If a woman truly wants to have meaningful communication with her husband, she must cultivate the right side of his brain." It says this, "The best way we know to bond within a family is by going camping." Pretty shallow suggestions, wouldn't you say? I'm not quite sure how the right side of my brain works, I'm positive my wife has no clue...and I'm really not much for camping either, as a matter of fact.

I would expect that kind of thing in a secular book, I just am shocked to read it in a Christian book. The pillars of marriage are not security, communication, romance, touch and intimacy of spirit. The pillars of a marriage are being Spirit-filled, having an overflowing joy, being thankful for everything and mutually submissive.

The Bible says that families are built on spiritual foundations, not psychological ones, not emotional ones. The Bible says that what is most important in a good marriage is love for God overruling love for self. What is really important in a good marriage is the pursuit of the needs of others rather than your own. What really matters is having a submissive heart that cares more about the other, true spiritual joy, gratitude, devotion to God and His Kingdom and His purposes and His glory, true holiness, obedience to Scripture.

In other words, marriage is just a place where you live your Christianity. And if you live it right, it's a happy, productive, fulfilled and blessed event every day. If you don't, it is fraught with pain and disappointment and unfulfillment and sadness and anger and all the rest. It has nothing to do with some human techniques of touch, or romance, or intimacy, or communication, or even financial security, and everything to do with your relationship to God.

In fact, there is no better place, no more important place for you to live out your Christianity than in your home. And if your home isn't what God wants it to be, it is because the highest standards of Christianity are not being carried out there. It may be that one partner is making every endeavor to do that and the other is not, it may be that both are falling short. In either case, great difficulty results.

The family is the environment where your spiritual strength, your spiritual devotion, your spiritual consistency are most manifest. And not only most manifest but, listen to this, most demanded. Because of familiarity, because of being together all the time under every conceivable kind of circumstance and in every trial and difficulty, the home is the truest test, your marriage is the truest test of your spiritual life. That is why in 1 Timothy chapter 3 it says about an elder, a pastor, "He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity, but if a man doesn't know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?" Simply what Paul is saying is he manifests the character of his Christian commitment, he manifests his spiritual leadership in the home, and if it isn't showing up there, why would you ask him to lead the church?

A family is just the most significant place where you live out your faith. I'll even go so far as to say, instruction with regard to the techniques of marriage, if that's a word that's appropriate, instruction with regard to the skills of marriage, instruction with regard to all of the nuances of sensitivity toward male and female differences, when you've added all that up it is of minimal significance. It seems to be that today we would assume that it's the main theme and the main necessity because so much literature and so much effort has been devoted to it. But it is really not of grave importance if you have two Spirit-filled, joyful, thankful, submissive, godly people. It all starts with that spiritual foundation and apart from that there is major trouble and major conflict.

And the reason I'm emphasizing this is because this is where it all begins, this is where it all succeeds and this is where it all breaks down. In fact, the whole wonderful design for marriage won't work very well where there is sin. When you invade that domain of marriage and family with sin, it becomes a very oppressive, unfulfilling, miserable experience. And that's how it is for most people, certainly the unregenerate world today that has been fed a steady diet of justification for personal pride and personal fulfillment has sowed the seeds that destroy all relationships finally. They're all crushed under the weight of pride. And even this has effected the church. Those of us who know the truth have a difficult time living it because we are inundated with the world around us.

In fact, I suppose the term "conflict" is almost synonymous with marriage and family today. We hear all the time about how oppressive men are, how insensitive they are, how chauvinistic they are, how abusive and uncaring they are. And on the other hand, we hear so often about women being overbearing, seeking freedoms and the exercise of their own will and their own purposes and not wanting to submit to their husbands. And why is this? Well it's because of sin.

And maybe we could go back to the beginning and get a glimpse of this. Turn back in your Bible to the third chapter of Genesis. I want to share with you what may well be an interpretation of Genesis 3 worthy of consideration. I cannot be dogmatic and say it is absolutely unequivocally accurate. There are some who would take issue with any effort to be dogmatic in this regard but is at least an interesting possibility in understanding where the conflict comes from. We know, of course, it comes from selfishness, it comes from personal pride and personal sin. That's what makes relationships difficult, certainly in the family. But there may be another element to this conflict of very great interest. And if we look at Genesis chapter 3, let me call you to Genesis 3 verse 13. "And the Lord said to the woman, `What is this you've done?' And the woman said, `The serpent deceived me and I ate.' And the Lord God said to the serpent, `Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field, on your belly shall you go and dust shall you eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise Him on the heel.'" That being the curse of Satan.

But now the woman, verse 16, "To the woman He said," here's the penalty you're going to pay and this is for all womankind, "To the woman He said, `I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.'"

The curse obviously that came upon the human race as a result of the Fall in Eden altered significantly and dramatically the original design of God. Before sin there was perfect union. There was no conflict. Adam and Eve got along perfectly. And sin was introduced and sin brought with it chaos and conflict.

Now there were several features to this curse. There was a separation between man and God as a result of sin. And man, you remember, was thrown out of the Garden, and intimate and free and full communion with God was ended. There was also a separation between man and nature. No longer would nature yield all of its bounty to man without any effort on his part. Now he had to go out and by the sweat of his brow he had to till the soil and work very hard to make the world yield to him what once had gave him so freely.

Separation between man and God, separation between man and nature, and finally, separation between man and woman. And the key part of the curse for us, at the end of verse 16: "Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you." It is very possible that that one statement answers the question why there is such conflict between men and women...why? Looking first to the husband it says at the end of verse 16, "He shall rule over you," and the word "rule" means reign, it's a word of sovereignty.

So the curse said the man as a result of the curse is going to dominate you. And as a result of the curse you are going to desire him. What does that mean? Does it mean that she will desire him physically and sexually? I don't think that's a curse. I don't think that was a curse before the Fall. It was already true that she had a desire for him and he had desire for her physically. It is the highest form of love's fulfillment in terms of physical pleasure. It is not that she would desire him as protector, as the one who could care for her and support her and cover her. That too already existed. From the very beginning she was designed to complement him, but he was the one responsible to care for her. That already existed. She was the weaker vessel and that is a delight to the woman to have such care and protection before the Fall.

So it has to be something other than a sexual desire, it has to be something other than a desire to be cared for, protected. It is also true that the curse could not be physical or emotional desire because not all women desire that, but all are cursed. All women are cursed. But not all women desire their husbands physically. Not all women desire the emotional love and protection and care of their husbands. This has to be something...something that touches all women, just as it is something that touches all men.

First, the woman was cursed with pain in childbearing. Right at the very life-giving point, the very...really the very high point of womanhood, to bring life into the world, she is cursed. But additionally she is cursed with this desire for her husband. What is it? What does it mean? Well the only other time that word "desire" is used, it is used over in chapter 4 and we learn something when we find how a specific word is used in a given context, it's the only other time it's used in the whole book of Genesis. In fact, the only time in the whole Pentateuch, the first five books. And you'll notice in chapter 4 how it's used in verse 7. The middle of the verse, "Sin is crouching at the door and its desire," exactly the same word, "is for you, but you must master it." The construction here in the Hebrew is exactly parallel, it is an exact parallel construction using the very same word.

What's he talking about? Talking about Cain. You remember Cain. Cain offered a sacrifice that God did not accept because it was not what God had asked. And then out of anger, you remember, he killed his brother. And it says here, "The word comes to Cain, the Lord says to Cain, `Sin is crouching at the door, Cain, and its desire is for you but you must rule over it.'" Now what did sin want to do to Cain? It wanted to crush him. It wanted to dominate him. It wanted to take over his mind and his action. Sin wanted to rule him. Sin wanted to force him to do certain things. Sin wanted to control him. And that, I think, that is the parallel to what you have in verse 16. When it says "your desire shall be for your husband," it is the same construction, the same term as the desire that sin has to control you. Part of the curse is the woman no longer willingly, eagerly welcomes submission, but there is something in her that wants to control the man. She wants to usurp authority over her husband. That's precisely what Eve did originally, right? She should have gone to her husband, sought his wisdom when tempted, Satan knew that, Satan isolated her, Satan deceived her, she acted independently out from under the loving submission that should have been a part of her commitment to her husband and led the whole human race into sin. As she had done in the original sin when listening to Satan and never consulting Adam, she exercised authority over the man, took things into her own hands and that was in essence the curse. And since that time the sin of a woman, the innate depravity in women seeks to control.

Man then is left with a curse as well. He seeks to dominate. Why is there always a Woman's Liberation movement? And if not a movement, it's still there in the heart of women. And why is there male chauvinism and has been and always will be? Because that's how the depravity of the human heart reveals itself in women seeking to rule and men desiring to suppress. And therein is one very possible explanation for the intensity and the ubiquitous character, that means all the time everywhere, of conflict in marriage. Woman by the Fall, in her fallenness is not willing to submit but desires to control, to exert her individualism. Man by the Fall wants to stay king of the mountain and his rule can be oppressive and insensitive. Thus the battle of the sexes began with the Fall in Genesis chapter 3. And children who come into the family just enter into the ring during the boxing match. Not a good place for children to be.

So there is male chauvinism in the world. And you can find it in cultures throughout human history. There is women's liberation in the world, and the same thing, you can find it throughout history as each one expresses the effect of the curse. Everyone selfishly fighting for his or her own turf.

And the question then comes...how can a marriage survive this kind of conflict? How can a marriage work and how can children find any peace in this kind of environment? And even the more important question...how can it be ended? How can it be ended? We've already answered that question--by two people who have come to know Christ, whose lives have been transformed, who are characterized by being Spirit-filled, joyful, thankful and submissive to one another. And that is a spiritual transformation.

In other eras, in other cultures marriages have done better than in our contemporary world. Not too many years ago, 25 years ago or so, people stayed together. That was the standard way of conduct. That's what society expected out of people and that's what happened. That does not mean that there was any less conflict. Because of fallenness, there will be conflict.

You have to go back to the spiritual dimension to end it. And that's what's so wonderful about this passage that we're looking at, and you can go back to Ephesians now. That the solution to the conflict in marriage is spiritual. And it starts with letting the Holy Spirit control your life, letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, obeying the Spirit of God as He reveals His will through the Word of God. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can reverse the curse in a home. Where you have a Spirit-filled person in the home, you have hope. Ever try to pick a fight with a Spirit-controlled person? Ever try to pick a fight with a totally joyful person that just has rising joy in their heart? Ever try to pick a fight with somebody who is thankful for everything, even the conflict? Ever try to pick a fight with somebody who is totally submissive? Very difficult. Where that exists, there's hope and it's a spiritual issue. Conflict goes where the Holy Spirit dominates.

Now as we look at the text before us, we've already kind of talked about this foundation. And Paul in verse 22 is going to launch into the specific conduct of a wife, a husband, children and parents. And we're going to look at that in detail in the next few weeks.

But before we do that, it wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't do justice to the apostle Paul if we didn't at least for a few moments consider the kind of world that he was writing to because certainly the argument comes up...Well, you know, this stuff is ancient history, this stuff is way back, it really doesn't comprehend the kind of world that we lived in, that we live in, they lived in a different time with different perspectives. And I think you need to understand what was going on, so I want to give you a little bit of history on it. I know that I may indulge myself on this from time to time, I happen to love history. When I went to college I decided that I couldn't...I couldn't make up my mind about what I wanted to minor in, I wanted to major in religious studies and so forth, and I did that. But I couldn't decide what I wanted to minor in, so I doubled minored in history and Greek. And I've always had a fascination for history, and I think through the years if I'm ever very interesting to listen to, it's probably because I have gone back into history and reconstructed some of the backgrounds that make the Bible live. And that's very, very important so that the Bible speaks for itself. And it was written in a time and in a context which demands our comprehension. So let's set a little of the scene to which the apostle Paul was writing, and you'll see some amazing parallels.

Let's talk about the Jews, first of all. Obviously there were Jews in the church in Ephesus and this was a circular letter and got around to all the churches, and eventually not only all the churches in Asia Minor, but all the churches everywhere and still getting around to all the churches everywhere. But there were many Jews in the early church and they too needed to understand the biblical view of marriage.

The Jews themselves had a low view of women. It did not come from the Bible, but then a lot of their religion by the time of Paul and Jesus did not come from the Bible. They had developed their own apostate religion. And part of it was a very low view of women. In fact, there are Jewish prayers used by Jewish men every morning of their lives. And in one of these prayers there was one line that illustrates their attitude. This is what it was, "God, I thank You that You have not made me a Gentile, a slave or a woman."

Now they perceived a woman as lower on the human level than a man. A woman was an object, not a person. A woman had no legal rights. She was in the absolute power of her husband to do with her whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. In New Testament times then, among the Jews, divorce had become tragically easy ad tragically common. And they supported it with a passage from the Old Testament, you know, wanting to be fastidious about their devotion to the Mosaic Law, they quoted from Deuteronomy chapter 24 and verse 1, "When a man takes a wife and marries her and it happens that...and I'll give you what the old translation is...she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her...NAS translates it indecency...some uncleanness and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house..." Stop right there. Now you'll notice that that's really an appotisis(?), or merely an introductory statement to something else, but they took it as if it was a command, basically, or certainly an allowance. And they simply said if you find...if your wife loses favor in your eyes because you find some uncleanness in her, then you can write her a divorce and send her out of the house.

There's a lot more to that passage than that. It was not intended to permit that, it was intended to forbid the fact that if that happens and she remarries, she can never come back and marry you. That was really the issue. But they didn't get that far, they just said...There it is, if you find some indecency, some uncleanness, ship her out, give her a bill of divorce.

Now the question became...what is the uncleanness, what is the indecency? Strict rabbis, most familiarly represented by a rabbi named Shimmei(?), strict rabbis said it refers to adultery, and that's all it refers to. If she commits adultery, you can divorce her. But liberal rabbis said it refers to absolutely anything and that its vagueness is intended by God to allow you to fill in the blank. This is represented by a famous rabbi named Hillel. So throughout sort of rabbinic history, even till today, Jews argue over the view of Shimmei and Hillel.

Hillel said that a man could divorce his wife if she spoiled his dinner. It meant that she could divorce...he could divorce his wife, get this, if she spilled his dinner because, of course, a spilled dinner is a spoiled dinner. He could divorce her if she put too much salt on it. He could divorce her if she walked in public with her head uncovered. He could divorce her if she talked with men in the streets. I like this one, he could divorce her if she spoke disparagingly of her mother-in-law. And this is really good, he could divorce her if she ever argued with him.

Rabbi Achaba(?) even went further. He interpreted the phrase to mean that a husband could divorce his wife if she became unclean in his eyes because he found somebody prettier.

Now take a guess which was the most popular view among men. Shimmai had very few followers. Hillel had many. So divorce became rampant in the time of Jesus. Women were discarded all over the place. And they were victims of such discarding, left with nothing. All a man had to do at the time of Jesus, at the time of Paul, was simply to hand her a bill of divorce. And all it took to get one of those was to have a rabbi write it in the presence of two witnesses and it was done, that was it. You go to the rabbi, he writes it, there might be a little cash involved, two witnesses were there, it's done. The only alimony or support that was required was the return of the dowry and it was a done deal.

The Jews were fastidious, by the way, about following the technical side, making sure you get to a rabbi and get the documentation, but their hearts were full of cruelty and wickedness.

In Matthew 5:31 Jesus refers to this common custom. "It was said, `Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of dismissal.'" That's the way you operate, you want to divorce your wife, just make sure you do the paperwork. That's all. Just do the paperwork. And I think, just in fairness, to Jewish history, in different eras of Jewish history there were different views. But at the time of Jesus, this was the prevailing view. So divorce was the solution to any conflict, short term or long term.

And consequently the whole institution of marriage was threatened. And by the way, prostitution was rampant in Jesus time even among the Jews.

Now let's look at the Greeks. The Greeks had a very similar approach to this. They didn't have to worry about any Old Testament technicalities. They didn't have to worry about finding a verse to misinterpret, to justify what they did. They just lived in blatant disregard for any marital fidelity. Prostitution was an absolutely essential part of Greek life. Their religions were just loaded with prostitutes and it was believed, as we saw last time, not only did you commune with the gods by drunkenness, but you communed with the gods by having sexual relationships with a priestess-slash-prostitute. Demosthenes, not less than that famous orator, said, "We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure, we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation, and we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately and having a faithful caretaker for our household affairs." You have the babies and you pay the bills, and that was it.

The Greek man found his pleasure and even his friendship outside his marriage. His wife was a housekeeper and a baby maker. His pleasure, outside his marriage sexually. His friends, outside his marriage. Home and family life were almost extinct and fidelity was non-existent. There was no legal procedure for divorce. You just put them out.

So when Paul lays down the principles that he's laying down here, he is really running head on into the culture. This is why Paul writing to the early churches emphasizes the sin of fornication so strongly. As you read the Pauline letters, the sin of fornication comes up again and again. He talks about porneiaor the verb form porneuo, to engage in sexual sin. References to prostitution, harlotry, sexual perversions of all kind because the world was dominated by those things, the Gentile world. It's not hard to remember that when you read his epistles how common that kind of stuff was. It's just a part of life. The word porneuoor porneia, the root means to prostitute. Porne is a woman for sale. Pornosis a man who lies with a prostitute or a male prostitute, a gigolo, or a homosexual. It was just everywhere and porneiais a common word in Pauline vocabulary.

According to citizenship law of 451 B.C., for example, how we're going four and a half centuries before Christ, inhabitants of Athens, for example didn't have any citizenship rights if their parents were not both Athenians. For many this meant material disadvantages so that non-Athenian women had no hope of getting married. If you weren't an Athenian woman, you didn't get married because you couldn't produce children who would be citizens and no man wanted to have children who couldn't be citizens of Athens so non-Athenian women became prostitutes. In fact, they were a professional class called Heteri which in Greek means "of a different kind."

So the ancient world, for example in Athens was just loaded with prostitutes. Married women were uneducated. They were regarded as eukoraima(??), chattel, used for keeping the house and having children. Slavery which was rampant in that Greek world allowed men to take slave girls basically for no other purposes than sexual fulfillment, mistresses. Wide-spread prostitution, harlotry, sexual sin of all kinds was all over the place in Greek culture. They encouraged the Athenian women to fulfill their sexual needs with slaves and indulge in lesbian love. By the way, also spreading all over the ancient Greek world, long before Paul and still there during Paul's time, was pedophilia, men having sex with young children. Prostitution existed in the form of worship in the fertility cults. That was Athens.

Move to Rome for a moment. The degeneracy in Rome, if anything, was worse. William Barclay who has done a lot of background history writes, "For the first 500 years of Rome there had not been one single case of divorce on record. The first recorded divorce was that of Spurious Canelius Ruga(?) 234 B.C. But at the time of Paul, Roman family life was wrecked." Athens was way ahead of the game, 451. It was another couple hundred years before Rome indulged. By Paul's time Seneca says, "Women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married." The Romans did not commonly date their years by numbers, they dated their years by two things...men dated their years by the name of the Roman consuls who ruled and the women by the number of husbands.

Jerome tells of one woman who married, the records we have found on this, who married her twenty-third husband and she was his twenty-first wife. That's kind of how it was.

Emperor Augustus demanded that one woman should divorce his wife...or one man should divorce his wife, this is Emperor Augustus, while she was pregnant so he could have her.

Jerome Carcopeno(?) has written a little book called Daily Life in Ancient Romeand in the book he says there was rampant feminism in early Rome that led to continual demoralization. Some women, he writes, avoided having children for fear of losing their good looks. Sounds familiar. Some took pride in being behind their husbands in nothing and even vied with them in tests of strength. So you had women involved in building up their physical strength so that they could compete with their husbands. Some women carried on lives apart from their husbands and never blushed to charge into a male world to compete. By the end of the second century, Carcopeno writes, many Roman marriages were childless. He writes, "If the Roman women showed reluctance to perform their maternal functions, they devoted themselves on the other hand with a zeal that smacked of defiance to all sorts of pursuits which in the days of the republic men had jealously reserved for themselves."

Women didn't want to be in the home. Again this is the curse working itself out. They wanted to dominate. They wanted to be defiant. And they started charging in to areas where only men up to that time had been allowed to go. They quit their embroidery, he writes, their reading, their songs, their playing of instruments and they put their enthusiasm into an attempt to rival men if not to outclass them in every sphere. Does that sound familiar? Some plunged passionately into the study of legal suits, or current politics, eager for news of the entire world, greedy for the gossip of the town and the intrigues of the court, well informed about the latest happenings in Thrace or in China, weighing the gravity of the dangers, threatening the king of Armenia or of Parthea with noisy effrontery. They expound their theories and their plans to generals clad in field uniform while their husbands silently look on.

Juvenal, another writer, criticized the women, listen to this, "Who joined in men's hunts, with spear in hand and breasts exposed, they took to pig sticking, especially those who engaged in fencing and some...would you even believe?...in female wrestling." I don't know if they did it in the mud or not, but they did it. He writes, "What modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet and delights in feats of strength? These woman took to gluttony and they took to drunkenness."

"Before long," writes Carcopeno, "women began to betray the pledge which they should have made to their husbands and which many of them in marrying had had the cynicism to refuse to make. `To live your own life' became the formula which women had already brought into fashion by the second century B.C. `We agreed long ago...says one lady...that you were to go your way and I mine. You may confound sea and sky with your

bellowing...she said to her husband...but I am a human being after all.'"

It sounds familiar, doesn't it? Equal rights, equal everything. Unhappy marriages were innumerable. Divorce was epidemic. Juvenal again writes, this is an ancient Roman writer, "Thus does she lord it over her husband but before long she vacates her kingdom, she flits from one home to another wearing out her bridal veil."

Marriage literally became a form of prolonged prostitution. Divorces were so common from Roman jurists that a series of them not infrequently led to the lady returning after many intermediate stages to her original bridal bed...he writes.

Well, you get the picture. It is against this kind of background which is basically because of the fallenness of the human race, it is against this kind of background so similar to ours today, a background of infidelity, a background of divorce, a background of incest, homosexuality, adultery, prostitution, pedophilia, all of that stuff, it is against that background that Paul writes. He is not here saying what everybody believed. He's not reciting the common view. He is calling men and women to a kind of life that was the absolute opposite of what they were involved in.

It reminds me of when I went to Northridge, Cal State Northridge to speak in a philosophy class. And the professor was a former rabbi with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He asked me to speak to the class on biblical...Christian biblical sex ethics...knowing that that's a great way to get your head chopped off in a secular university. It was a very challenging opportunity. After having laid out what the Bible says, I said, "Of course, none of you will agree with this because you don't have the internal commitment by virtue of knowing God, having a transformed heart, and loving Christ to be interested in maintaining these standards."

But just as they are counter cultural today, they were counter cultural in Paul's time. It's important to realize that what we've got going on today is a whole bunch of individuals demanding to do whatever they want living out the Fall, listen carefully, without any cultural restraint, in some cultures, even in ours years back, there were some cultural restraints, no more. So now you're seeing the reality. Marriage is just a fight for rights but not by God's definition. God has a completely different plan and that plan unfolds here. And just to give you the basic principle of that plan, all I need to say is it is an authority and submission plan. Somebody is responsible to lead, the other to follow. It has nothing to do with inferiority at all. It only has to do with harmony.

The woman is not to seek to usurp the authority and dominate the husband. And the husband is not to unkindly and insensitively rule over her. Whenever this is allowed it creates massive chaos, as we are living to attest in our own day.

When the divine pattern is followed, the whole relationship is right. There's one beautiful picture of this that I...I want to take a few moments to show you and then we'll close. Turn to that most favorite book that is so often read and little preached, Song of Solomon. And some time early in their Christian experience young people always wander through this book and wonder...how in the world this girl ever believed all this flowery talk?

Song of Solomon is an incredible and marvelous book, a beautiful picture of a right relationship between a man and a woman. And there is authority and submission here but you don't feel it because it's lost in the beauty of love and it's so natural. For example, chapter 2, notice the love of this man for this woman, like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men...she's speaking for him--of him now. "In his shade I took great delight and sat down." Now that's the kind of authority we're talking about. He's like an apple tree among the trees of the forest. What's the difference between an apple tree and a pine tree? I'll tell you, fruit. He provides. So is my beloved among the young men. I mean, he has so much more to offer. And she looks at him for all that he brings to her. "In his shade I took great delight and sat down and his fruit was sweet to my taste." That is what delights the heart of a woman, nothing oppressive about that, that's just productive, that's just providing. And I'll tell you, he's lavish, "He brought me to his banquet hall and his banner over me is love." I mean, he just pours it on, he just pours it on. "Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh me with apples because I am love sick."

I mean, she is so in love with this guy. "His left hand let it be under my head, his right hand embrace me." I want him to hold me. She's talking about physically. I want him to put his arms around me. Here is a woman who is so...so fulfilled to come under his protection, his strength, his care and his love because of what he provides for her. And then she calls to the daughters of Jerusalem, you know, sort of the bridesmaids. "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field that you will not arouse or awaken my love until she pleases." Now the husband is responding, or the husband to be, the one who loves her. "Listen, my beloved, behold he is coming, climbing on the mountains, leaping on the hills." The guy's athletic, can't be it. "My beloved is like a gazelle, or a young stag. Behold, he's standing behind our wall, he's looking through the windows, he's peering through the lattice." Now you know, this woman is really in love because every single move the guy makes enthralls her.

"And my beloved responded to me and said, `Arise, my darling, my beautiful one and come along.'" And I know what you're saying...Boy, they haven't been married very long. "Behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have already appeared in the land. The time is arrived for pruning the vines. And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land. The fig tree has ripened its figs, the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance. Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along. O my dove, the clefts of the rocks, in the secret place of the steep pathway, let me see your form, let me hear your voice for your voice is sweet and your form is lovely."

See, this bride just can't say enough about this...you don't hear any of this, "Boy, you know, I want to control this relationship, I've got to get this guy in line." You don't hear any of that.

Verse 16 really sums it up. "My beloved is mine and I am his." That's the issue. It's a mutual thing. But his part is to care for me and to provide for me and to embrace me and protect me and to hold me.

Chapter 4 verse 16, "Awake, O north wind, and come wind of the south, make my garden breathe out fragrance, let its spices be wafted abroad, may my beloved come into his garden and eat its choice fruits." You know what she wishes for him? She wishes the best. She's glad to submit. He belongs to her and what she possesses is absolutely thrilling to her. She wishes only the best. This is a model of relationships.

Chapter 7 verse 10, just picking some highlights. Again, "I am my beloved's and his desire is for me." In this case this desire is a right desire. His desire is for her. He wants her. He longs for her.

Go back to chapter 5 verse 10, "My beloved is dazzling," I like that translation, "and ruddy." Outstand...this is the handsomest guy among ten thousand, "His head is like gold, pure gold, his locks are like clusters of dates and black as a raven." I mean, he's just bronze, you know, with black hair. "His eyes are like doves; gentle, soft. Doves beside streams of water bathed in milk." She's getting a little carried away here. And then "reposed in their setting." I mean, it's a dove, it's not just a dove, it's a dove beside a stream, it's a dove bathed in milk, it's a dove reposed. "His cheeks are like a bed of balsam, banks of sweet scented herbs, his lips are lilies dripping with liquid myrrh." Try it, guys, who knows what might happen. "His hands are rods of gold set with beryl, his abdomen is carved ivory inlaid with sapphires. His legs are pillars of alabaster set on pedestals of pure gold, his appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars." Lebanon was high and snowcapped and tall. "His mouth is full of sweetness, he is wholly desirable. This is my beloved...I like this...and this is my...what?...my friend."

There is no conflict here. But there's no question about authority and submission. I suppose they could have problems. Go back to chapter 5 to verse 2. "I was asleep but my heart was awake. A voice, my beloved was knocking. `Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the damp of night," which is another way to say...Let me in, it's wet out here. "I have taken off my clothes, how can I put them on again?" I've washed my feet, I've had my shower, I don't want to get dirty again.

"My beloved extended his hand through the opening and my feelings were aroused for him. I arose to open to my beloved and my hands dripped with myrrh and my fingers with liquid myrrh on the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved."

You know what the implication is? For some reason she shut him out, what's he doing out there? Getting wet after he's already cleaned up. They must have had an argument, right? And she said, as women will say sometimes when all the preparations have been made for a conjugal time, something bothered her and all of a sudden he's outside in the rain. But the conflict can't last. "I opened to my beloved but my beloved had turned away and gone."

Too late...too late. "My heart went out to him as he spoke, I searched for him. I didn't find him. I called him, he didn't answer me." That's the way to resolve conflict when the heart grieves over whatever caused it. She apparently got everybody involved. "The watchmen who make the rounds in the city found me, struck me and wounded me. The guardsmen of the walls took away my shawl from me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved as to what will you tell him? For I am lovesick."

She is so lovesick that she actually goes to find him. Chapter 6, "Where has your beloved gone, O most beautiful among women? Where has your beloved turned that we may seek him with you?" She wants to resolve this as quickly as possible. She says, "My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of balsam to pasture his flock in the gardens and gather lilies. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine, he who pastures his flock among the lilies." I know where he had to go.

Verse 4 follows it up. And finally in verse 7...chapter 7 rather, we find them making love together.

I guess the reason I wanted to take you through that little scenario is to point up that there are going to be times when there is a moment of conflict, but when the heart is pure it gets resolved so fast...so fast. And she goes to him and she finds him.

Chapter 6 verse 4, "You are as beautiful as Tirzah, my darling, as lovely as Jerusalem, as awesome as an army with banners. Turn your eyes away from me for they have confused me. Your hair is like a flock of goats, you've descended from...that have descended from Gilead." You can see that, goats coming down the mountain, white against the dark background. "Your teeth," or I should say...yes, "Your teeth..." black goats, rather, black against the snow coming down from Mount Gilead, reverse that imagery. "Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, white which have come up from their washing, glistening white. Your temples are like a slice of pome..." I mean, she's laying it on, she finds him and she tells him all this. And in chapter 7 they're found making love.

That's the kind of spirit, the kind of attitude...Song of Solomon is not an allegory, it's just a picture of marital love. In fact, a very important one. And you see in this marvelous example of resolution in conflict and a beautiful picture of how authority and submission works together where two people love each other with such an amazing devotion.

Well, we don't have any more time. It's important to understand the simple principle in marriage that the spiritual foundation determines everything. Secondly, there is an authority/submission relationship but it is not burdensome, it is not difficult, it is not abusive.

Finally, it is best illustrated, and I'll close with this, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, by the relationship between Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Father. First Corinthians 11:3, "I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of a woman and God is the head of Christ." There's no inequality between God and Christ, they're equal. There's no inequality between the man and the woman. One is in authority and one is in submission. And when it is carried out properly, it is magnificently beautiful. The woman pursues it, she runs for the protection, she runs for the affection, she runs under the leadership, the shade the provision of her husband. And he leads her with such tenderness and such sensitivity and such care and such gentleness and such strength and such consistently and such fidelity and such faithfulness that she just relishes his presence. There's no fear on her part. There's no abuse. And thus there's a willing, eager submission...a magnificent picture in Song of Solomon, absolutely magnificent. All she can do is complement, all he can do is complement her, they both understand their roles perfectly. When conflict comes it is easily resolved because they adore each other.

You say, "Well, how can a person love like that?" It comes from a transformed heart, doesn't it?

Father, we thank You tonight for some time to think about these important things, so foundational. We want, Lord, in our marriages that the Spirit of God would be in charge of everything. Authority, yes...submission, yes, but an eager devotion to each of those roles that is absolutely contrary to the curse where a man doesn't seek to dominate but to tenderly provide, lead, sustain, cherish...where a woman doesn't seek to rise, take charge, but lovingly, willingly longs to follow. And we know that this can only happen through Your power, only in the Spirit of God can the curse be set aside and replaced with this magnificent picture. Father, may we know that the most important thing in our marriage is not the behavior of our partner, but our relationship to You, and if it's right we'll be what You want us to be in that marriage and that's the only way the ideal can ever be met. I pray for every person here, every partner. Lord, lead us to the place where we take complete responsibility for the quality of our marriage and bring ourselves before You to be the men and women You want us to be. And we thank You, Lord, for such clear instruction in our Savior's name. Amen.

posted with permission
http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/1943B/a-plan-for-your-family-gods-vs-the-worlds-part-2  

A Plan for Your Family- God's vs. the World's Part 1

A Plan for Your Family- God's vs. the World's, Part 1

By John MacArthur

No one needs to prove to us that we may be watching the death of the germ-cell of civilization, the family. All the signs are abundantly clear all around us. We could drag out all kinds of statistics to indicate the dire situation in the families in our culture. We are all constantly looking at the parade in the media of divorce, sexual rebellion, abortion, sterilization, delinquency, infidelity, homosexuality, women's liberation, children's rights and so on. That has been continually paraded before us for the last ten or twenty years. We are watching the formation of the rope that strangles the family to death.

And many, frankly, are gladly carving out the tombstone for the family, and really doing it happily. In a book entitled, The Death of the Family, a British physician suggests "doing away with the family completely...he says...because it is a primary conditioning device for a western imperialistic world view." Kate Millet(?) who is a very prominent feminist wrote a book called Sexual Politicsand in it she writes that the family must go because it oppresses and enslaves women.

The people who hold these perspectives are aggressive, forceful, forthright, domineering and they find their most fertile ground for the propagation of their viewpoints in the universities and the colleges of our society, and consequently they are in the process of significantly reeducating the youth who eventually fall into the category of the leaders and movers and shakers of our society. Mrs. T. Grace Atkinson(?) of The National Organization of Women, seeks to eliminate all sex, all marriage, all motherhood and all love. I'd say that's fairly fatal. She says, "Marriage is legalized servitude and family relations are the basis for all human oppression." What a warped sad view. But in many cases it is the reigning view among the thinkers, the professors, the teachers in our society.

On the other hand, others who are watching the death of the family see it as a disaster, a virulent disease. If the family cannot function, who will raise, who will socialize, who will moralize the next generation?

Dr. Armand Nicolai II (?) of Harvard Medical School sees the trend to destroy the family as a devastating trend. He points to married women with children working outside the home, the tendency for families to move frequently, almost constantly, the dominance of television in the home, the lack of controls in society, the chaos of moral confusion, the lack of communication among families and divorce, and all of those things, he says, are threatening the very life which we live. Let me quote from him. He says, "These trends will incapacitate the family, destroy its integrity and cause its members to suffer such crippling emotional conflict that they will become an intolerable burden to society. What about the future? First, the quality of family life will continue to deteriorate producing a society with a higher incidence of mental illness than ever before. Ninety-five percent of our hospital beds may be taken up by mentally ill patients. This illness will be characterized by a lack of self- control. We can expect the assassination of people in authority to be frequent occurrences. Crimes of violence will increase, even those within the family. The suicide rate will rise. As sexuality becomes more and more unlimited and separated from family and emotional commitment, the deadening effect will cause more bizarre experimentation and wide-spread perversion," end quote. A frankly frightening picture and we are watching it being painted right before our very eyes.

There is no question about the fact that the family is under a major assault, that people want to redefine family in absolutely any terms they want. There's no question that we are watching a generation of young people rising up who have no socialization skills and no moral sense at all. There is chaos. There is murder. There is crime at a rampant level. There is even pleasure in shooting people incidental to you, just for the sheer thrill of killing.

Sociologists, psychologists, analysts and so-called marriage and family experts, psychiatrists and all the rest are scrambling all over the place to try to come up with some kind of solution, and they've been doing that now for a couple of decades with absolutely no impact on the slide. Nothing that they are doing seems to slow down the process of the disintegration of human relationships at the very core of life which is the family. You can tamper with society in a lot of places, but if you destroy the family you destroy society.

It's a fascinating, in a sense, to be alive right in the middle of this. The family is certainly at the head of the endangered species list, much more dangerous than the elimination of some species that occupy people's attention.

And at that point we interject...can the family be saved? And I suppose for the sake of some people we should ask...should the family be saved? Is it worth fighting for? And if so, how? I would add that the church has made some efforts, certainly in the last ten years, the last twenty years there has been a great preoccupation on this subject. Christian bookstores are literally filled with books on marriage and the family. There have been endless sermons and messages and tapes and seminars and conferences going on to deal with the issues of the family. But that, too, doesn't seem to make much difference.

God has an answer to...should the family be saved?...and God has an answer to...can the family be saved?...in fact, the Bible makes it very clear when it says marriage is the grace of life and children are a blessed heritage from the Lord that we must understand the blessedness, the bliss and the purpose of God that unfolds in the matter of marriage and raising children. Family is still the heart and soul of human society and family as it is defined by God. It is the place of intimacy. It is the place of joy. It is the place of memories that build the foundation of life. It is the place of love. It is the place of socialization. It is the place of morality. It is the place of security. It is where you build confidence.

I was talking to one of our professors out at the Master's College the other day who graduated with a Ph.D. from USC particularly emphasizing the field of working with children in education. And he said all of the literature, all of the existing literature today done on the study of children indicates that there is a period of time between the ages of six and twelve when everything foundational is either put down or not put down and those are the determinative years in what that child will become. You can look at the pattern of life in those years and predict almost perfectly whether they will be anti-social in their behavior or whether they will socialize in a normal way. We can see all of the roots of criminal behavior in that period of time in the life of a child.

That makes a lot of sense that the secular world would pick out that time because even in the case of Jesus there is an illustration of the fact that when a Jewish child reached the age of twelve, he was ready on his own to be a son of the Law. I talked about the fact that God has designed parents to strengthen and build up children between the ages of six and twelve so that they can cope with puberty that starts at about that time. And if they don't have the foundations of morality and they don't have the affirmation and self-discipline and self-control that is built in during those years of six to twelve, then they run amuck when their passions take over during that period of time. There is a divine pattern for how a family is to deal with that, for how a marriage is to set a model to be followed, for how a marriage is to be fulfilled and happy and rewarded.

And when we look for that model we need to go no further than the Word of God. It's all laid out there. It's not that complicated and it's not that difficult. When I was preaching this week after I left Illinois I went over to Ohio and I was preaching and after I had preached a lady came up, a sweet young lady, I suppose about 35 years old and she had a whole bunch of little kids, a couple in her arms and some hanging on to her. And she wanted to tell me that she was struggling ten years ago to find some direction in her marriage and she wanted to thank me for some messages she heard that I preached on this particular subject that led she and her husband, led her and her husband to determine the direction based upon the Word of God which in the ten years intervening God had so blessed that she came on a long trip in very difficult weather to express her gratitude to me for the joy that she's experienced both in her marriage and in her family. It's not me, it's the truth of the Word of God that makes the difference. And until people get in line with that truth, they will continue the devastating drift downward that's going to be far worse in the future than it is even now. One can only guess what the next generation is going to be like. Frightening thing to think about.

Now for us to get a grip on what God says about the family, we really find ourselves best served by looking in Ephesians chapter 5. Paul's letter to the Ephesians sort of gives us a place where all of the pertinent material is pulled together and it's a great launching point for us. Around 60 A.D. the apostle Paul wrote this letter and sent it off to the saints who are at Ephesus. It may well be too that the original manuscript didn't say Ephesus and it could have been a circular letter gone through all the churches in the area of Asia Minor of which Ephesus was the first of those churches. But Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in that part of the world and one of the things that was on his heart was the matter of marriage. And when you come down to chapter 5 and verse 18 you begin to get in the flow that leads you to verse 22 and following where the issues of family and marriage are addressed. We're going to talk about a lot of things in this series over the next number of weeks. We're going to touch on a number of subjects and interact with the divine revelation from God, but we'll constantly come back to Ephesians 5 as home base because it's a perfect launching pad for us. And keep in mind, this is not human opinion. I'm not here to give you my opinion. I really don't value my opinion at all. All I want to do is show you what the Word of God says and the applicable wisdom that comes from that. This is the last word on the issue. We don't need experts and psychiatrists and psychologists and analysts and marriage and family people, we can go right to the Word of God. We're not looking for tricks and gimmicks, we're looking for truth that can become part of our lives.

Now in this wonderful epistle that we are familiar with, the epistle of Ephesians, as Paul begins to launch into this subject he starts, at least for us, in verse 18 with a very key premise. And let's begin there. He says, "And do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit." That really is the key that unlocks all the rest. From that great principle flows the instruction to the wife in verse 22, the instruction to the husband in verse 25, the instruction to the children in 6:1 and the instruction to the parents in 6:2. All of that marriage and family teaching flows out of this principle in chapter 5 and verse 18. In fact, it is the first of several necessary prerequisites for any successful marriage or any successful relationship.

And the contrast in that verse, as you see it there, "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit," it's quite dramatic and remarkable contrast. If you just pick up the book of Ephesians and read that, you might stop and say, "Well why in the world would he contrast drunkenness with being filled with the Spirit? What is the point here? When a person is drunk, they've lost control of themselves and they wander around in an out of control kind of behavior. Is he saying I want you to be out of control but not by wine but by the Holy Spirit? What is he saying here? I want you to yield up the control of your faculties to the Holy Spirit rather than to wine? Why make such a comparison?

Well the answer is found in a bit of the historical context. Let me give you a little bit of background. Ephesus, of course, was in Asia Minor and was dominated by Hellenistic or Greek culture called Hellenistic from the Greek word hellene which means Gentiles. But the Greeks believed that the great god Zeus, they, of course, had a pantheon of gods and Zeus was one of the formidable ones, they believed that the great god Zeus had given birth to a son. And that it had occurred in a very unusual way. And I'll give you a little of the background. They believed that the child was snatched from the womb of its mother, and its mother's name in Greek mythology is Semele. And the child was snatched from the womb of Semele while Semele was being incinerated because she got too close to the burning glory of Zeus. I don't know how Zeus produced this child in her in the mythology but in some way he did it without destroying her but when she sought to get too close to him, she became incinerated and in order to preserve the child of Zeus, the child was snatched out of her womb during her incineration. The child-god who had not yet come to full term was then sown into the thigh of Zeus and kept there until time to be born. That stretches your imagination.

So here is Zeus with this fetus in some point of formation sewn into his thigh. The infant god destined by Zeus to be the world ruler was born eventually out of the thigh of Zeus and then kidnapped by the envious Titans. Titans were called in Greek mythology sons of earth. They took the child, the Titans did, this child of Zeus, tore the child limb from limb, cooked it and ate it. But Zeus found the heart, according to the mythology, revived it and it was reborn as Dionysius. Now if you ever study Greek mythology you come across the name Dionysius quite frequently. Zeus found the heart, swallowed it and eventually the heart formed into the personality of Dionysius and was reborn.

Zeus then blasted the Titans with lightning, incinerating all of them from whom...whose ashes all of humanity came. So that's their creation story. Dionysius was then really someone beyond humanity because all of humanity just rose out of the ashes of the Titans and Dionysius along with Zeus was a god.

Dionysius then, according to Greek mythology, spawned a religion, a religion of ecstasy, ectasia(?) and emotionalism. And the Dionysian cult, this religion of ecstasy and emotionalism, this frenzied kind of religion, saturated the Greek and Roman world. The Dionysian cult was a debauched form of worship and a popular, a dominant form.

The worshipers committed atrocities with human organs. They engaged in orgies of sexual perversion, along with music and dancing and feasting. But there was one common element to all of the Dionysian debacle and that was drunkenness...drunkenness. In fact, if you ever circulate in the Middle East or in the ancient Roman world, you will see Dionysius associated with grapes. When there is a statue or a tribute to Dionysius, some monument to Dionysius, it is always marked out by clusters of grapes because he became known as the god of wine.

The Greek name of Dionysius became in the Roman language, Latin, Bacchus. And Bacchus is the Roman god of wine. When people engaged in these unbelievable drunken brawls, they were called Bacchanalian feasts. And if you've studied any of that, that's a familiar term even today. Take your dictionary out and look up Bacchanalia and it will say a drunken orgy.

The key element then, the key element in pagan worship was drunkenness. That's how...that's how they got their inhibitions out. That's how they dealt with their normal restraint. That's how they dealt with normal feelings of guilt. That's how they dulled their senses sufficiently to quiet their conscience. That's how they dispelled their anxiety and fear and guilt over such vile behavior as they engaged in. That's how they induced a kind of giddiness that substituted for real joy and just catapulted them in to this kind of horrible behavior. They did it by getting drunk and losing all their inhibitions.

So they believed that drunkenness was simply the door into ecstasy, the door into religious expression. And at such drunkenness elevated the believer, the worshiper, to total communion with the deities. So drunkenness was the key to worship, to communion to the deities. The more inebriated they were the more likely they were to get in to the ectasia(?) and enthusiasmos(?), two Greek words, ecstasy and enthusiasm, that spoke about these horrifying often demonic kind of activities.

A number of years ago when I made a trip to Israel, I had the privilege of taking a special trek up through Lebanon, up through Beirut, back east of there in a fascinating journey to the city of Damascus. Damascus is pretty deep into the Middle East at this particular point. And when we went into Damascus, a fascinating opportunity on the way to Damascus, we went to the city of Baalbek which was the easternmost point of the Roman Empire, the great Roman Empire extended way to the Middle East, east of Israel. And we went to the city of Baalbek because there are some of the most marvelous ruins that have been preserved there and restored. And they have some obelisks that are almost impossible to understand, to understand how they made them and how they moved them is an ongoing dilemma...massive, massive pieces of stones.

There also has been reconstructed there an incredible temple. And all across this temple, it was devoted to Jupiter, but all across this temple there are grape vines hanging on the columns and across the colonnades at the top. And you are told by the guides who take you through there that this is representative of Bacchus, that the Romans erected at the most eastern point of their empire a temple to Bacchus and there they carried on their orgies. What is fascinating about it, for example, is that in the very center of this large place where they did this, there's a decorated area and then a hole, a deep hole and that was in order that the people might vomit in the process and go back and indulge themselves even more. An unbelievable kind of conduct in which they believed and they did it in temples that they were ascending to communion with the gods. That's what Paul has in mind.

Now go back to verse 18, it takes on different meaning in the light of that context. He is saying to them do not get drunk with wine, all that does is produce dissipation. All that does is take you down. If you want to commune with God, be filled with the Spirit. Our religion is not brought about in its fullness and its richness and its reality by drunkenness but rather by the filling of the Spirit. Don't be filled with alcohol, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Literally, be being kept continuously filled by the Spirit.

If you want true religion, if you want true communion with God, if you want true worship to take place, if you want godly living, if you want to please God, then you must be filled with the Spirit...not controlled by alcohol but controlled by the Holy Spirit. The parallel to this is in Colossians 3:16 where instead of saying be filled with the Spirit, Paul says let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly because that's really the same thing. When the Word of Christ dominates your life and you respond in obedience to it, it's the same as being controlled by the Holy Spirit, of course, who is the author of Scripture. Obedience to the Word is being filled with the Spirit. It's not some kind of mystical experience. It's not some kind of ecstatic thing. It's not something that comes over you and catapults you into some unconscious behavior. It's not being knocked over into a dead faint, as you see so often on television. It's not launching off into some ecstatic speech. It's not going out of yourself or being beyond control. It simply is to be continuously controlled by the Spirit who does it through the Word and that means we are obeying the truth.

So we have to start at that point. Whatever we're going to do in terms of our Christian life, whether it's our marriage or our family, it has to flow out of a life controlled by the Holy Spirit. And that's why the society really has no chance, no hope. They're not regenerate. They don't know God. They have no more hope of getting it right than the people at the Bacchanalian feasts did. It's not going to happen. A right kind of marriage relationship and a right kind of family relationship is built on a redeemed life, empowered and energized by the Holy Spirit in obedience to the Word of God.

Now look at verses 19 and 20. "Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord." Let me tell you something. Where the Spirit of God controls a life, where there's a life devoted to the Word of God and obedience to the Word of God, there is praise...that's the first thing. There is praise. And I suppose obviously we could conclude that a worshiping life, a praising life comes from a heart that is filled with joy. It's this simple. You give me an obedient person, obedient to the Word of God, I'll show you a positive, happy, praising, worshiping person whose heart is filled with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, who is singing and making melody in his heart to the Lord, and I'll show you a person who can get along with anybody because they're lost in wonder, love and praise because they're worshiping the Lord.

Verse 20 adds, "Always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God even the Father." I'll tell you what, it's very hard to argue with somebody who is thankful for everything...everything. You find a person who is filled with the Spirit, I'll show you a happy person, I'll show you a thankful person. A person obeying the Word of God, a person filled with joy and praise and worship, a person who has nothing but thanks for everything God has done is going to be wonderful to live with. That's the bottom line. We're really talking here not about some kind of gimmicks to make your marriage work. We're not talking about, you know, the kind of things that I read about all the time. And you remember some years ago I told you about a book I read about marriage and said if you really want to have a great relationship with your wife, here's a good suggestion. Go buy her a Teddy bear...a nice little Teddy bear, one of those real soft ones. And bring it home. Wrap it in tin foil and stick it in the back of the freezer. This is in a book. Stick it in the back of the freezer. On the Teddy bear before you wrap it in the tin foil and stick it in the back of the freezer write words of romance and love and then just stick it back there...you know, behind the old lasagna. And some day, and you don't know when, when she is looking for the old lasagna, and she pulls that thing out and unwraps it and finds a frozen Teddy bear with a romance note, the book says when you get home from work it's going to be bliss. Are you kidding me? If you have a bad marriage, it's better to get hit with one that's not frozen. My suggestion would be, leave it thawed, just in case. Stick it in the closet.

Look, we're not talking about that. You're not going to be able to prepare a marriage like that. You're not going to be able to make a meaningful relationship like that. I hear suggestions all the time, take your wife on a date, take her out to dinner. That's all fine. That's not going to repair a marriage that isn't right. There's only one way to cultivate a right relationship with anybody and that's to be filled with the Spirit of God, filled with praise and gratitude to God so that your heart is overflowing with joy. And that's what makes a person someone that you can live with, someone who is a blessing to you. It should be, frankly, almost impossible to start a fight with you because you're just too blessed, too full of praise, too full of thanks, too full of the overflowing grace of God, too controlled by the Holy Spirit. You're so filled with love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self- control that your spouse may just get upset at their inability to cause conflict. It has to start there.

Now out of those things flows yet another element, verse 21. "And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." It doesn't mean you're afraid of Christ. It just says be subject to one another. Now look here, we're not talking about who this...this isn't talking about wives to their husbands, this isn't talking about children to their parents, it's talking about everybody. But this is the ground work, folks, this is what makes meaningful marriages. It's a spiritual issue here. It's not a matter of cleverness, it's not a matter of ideas, it's not a matter of scheduling events, it's not a matter of buying her gifts or whatever, or reverse, buying him gifts or cooking his favorite meal. Those are nice little things to do. But with two people who live according to the standards that we've just read, it wouldn't matter whether you did those or didn't do them. That's not the stuff that makes for lifelong joy in a relationship.

Submission does though, and we're talking here about a generic kind of submission, without regard for any specific relationship within the context of a family. The word "submit," by the way, is very graphic, hupotasso, it means to...well it means to rank under, to rank under, it's a military term. We're called on to place ourselves under each other. Here is what makes for meaningful relationships. Someone controlled by the Spirit of God, obedient to the Word of God, filled with joy and praise and thanksgiving to God for every single thing in their life and eager to submit their will to everybody else. That's what we're after here.

We're called on to place ourselves under each other. This principle is dominant in Scripture, by the way, expressing the idea of humility, expressing the idea of meekness that is so basic to Christian character. Now lest you think this is sort of a wandering verse here that just got dropped in, it's all over the New Testament. First Corinthians 16:16, "Submit yourselves to everyone." Hebrews 13:17, "Submit yourselves to the leaders of the church." First Peter 2:15...2:13 rather, "Submit yourselves to the laws of the land." First Peter 5:5, "Submit yourselves to those older than you are." James 4:7, "Submit yourselves to God." And here, "Submit yourselves to each other." This is the idea of humility.

If you want to go back to John 13 you can look at that marvelous illustration of this where Jesus washed the disciples' feet. And then said to them, "I want you to love each other just as I have loved you." And how had He loved them? Enough to humble Himself though He was the incarnate God and wash the dirty, filthy feet of a bunch of proud, self-centered disciples who were arguing about who was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom while the Lord was on the brink of giving His life for them.

You can look at Philippians chapter 2 and see the same thing. "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself." That's just standard fare. Whoever you live with is more important than you are...their longings, their desires, their needs, their life is more important than your life. And so you set your life aside for them. That's a spiritual issue.

Verse 4, "Do not merely look out for your own personal interest but also for the interest of others." And that is precisely the attitude of Christ who didn't grasp being equal with God but gave it up and humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.

Now listen, if marriages and families are to fulfill the divine purpose, these are the issues at stake here. And it becomes a matter of spiritual commitment. If we are willing to be obedient to the Word of God, thus allowing the Spirit of God to control our lives, if our hearts are filled with such overwhelming joy that we sing songs about God, spiritual songs about our own conversion, hymns about the gospel, our hearts are constantly filled with melody. If we are ever thankful for every single thing that comes into our life, if we are willing to submit ourselves to one another in the fear of Christ, that is out of devotion to Jesus Christ, then...then we're going to have meaningful relationships. But apart from unselfish devotion to God and unselfish devotion to each other, it isn't going to happen.

And you look at our society today and you can see that's exactly why it won't happen. Because the mind set today, the current trend today is self-centered pride, isn't it? I'm going to stay with you as long as you give me what I want. And when you don't give me what I want, I'm out of here. Today the emphasis is on individualism, rights, freedoms, liberties, self- esteem. All of that individualistic thinking is absolutely deadly to any meaningful marriage and family relationships. In gaining the rights that the humanists have sold us and gaining the rights of individual freedom, we have lost the privileges of meaningful relationships. The price for our sought after freedom in the end is going to be isolation and loneliness. People become like objects to be used and discarded. They become like strangers and families are more like a bunch of disconnected people living in a boarding house, more interested in self- fulfillment than giving, more desirous of material goods than relationships, more longing to be independent than dependent, more concerned about themselves than anyone else, in fact almost exclusively concerned about themselves...seeing wives or husbands as a burden, an obstacle in their path toward personal freedom and fulfillment, seeing children as a barrier to the fulfillment of their overwhelming selfishness. The Bible is saying if that's the way you choose to live, you can kiss meaningful relationships goodbye.

Families, meaningful marriages which are so essential to society and its preservation...listen...which are so essential to real fulfillment in life are only possible where you have unselfish attitudes, where personal desires are constantly sacrificed for others. And if that's not happening, there cannot be meaningful relationships. You cannot have the collision of two independently selfish individuals and build a relationship. It is a battle of people struggling to humble themselves. That's essential. That's the key to all relationships, to be Spirit filled, to be speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, to be saying thanks and to be submissive. Just those four things, that's the foundation. That is where you have to start this whole thing. Where you have people who walk in the Spirit fulfilling the Word of God in obedience to the truth, where you have people with a song in their heart and a song on their lips, where you have people who say thanks for everything that comes into their life and where you have people who are eager, in fact they're in a hurry to take every occasion to humble themselves and submit themselves to those around them, you have meaningful relationships. That's how you build relationships.

You know, people will ask me...what's the key to your marriage, or what's the key to your family? How is it that your family is so close? Or you're close to your wife and you have such a wonderful relationship...and I can just go back to this. There's no magic. There's no formula. There's no gimmicks. It's not a question of how many times did we do this, or how many times did we do that, or who was in charge of this, or what kind of processes or methods did we use. It's simply a question and it has to start in my heart, am I committed to obedience to the Spirit of God? Am I committed to the controlling influences of the Word of God? Am I going to live out a Christian life? Because that has to be there. Am I filled with joy and happiness or am I ugly and cantankerous and unkind and ungracious and...or is my heart so filled with joy that it touches everybody around me and makes me attractive and makes everything that I believe and love attractive to them? Am I thankful for everything in life, every difficulty, every misunderstanding, every mistreatment that occurs in my life, in family, in marriage? Am I going to be thankful for that and accept all of that with joy in my heart? Am I going to submit myself to them? Am I going to get into their life and do what pleases them? Those are the kinds of issues that we have to have addressed.

And if we don't start there, the rest is just hopeless. Now if you look at that and look at our society, you can see that there's just no way...no way. You have people consumed with iniquity, they're not interested in a Word of God, consumed with doing whatever their driving lust tells them to do, fulfilling their own desires all over the place...infidelity, sexual perversion, whatever it might be. You have people who basically have no joy or very little of it and occasionally find it in a bottle, or because they get a raise at work, or because they're going on a fishing trip, or because they had some great experience somewhere. But generally they don't...their hearts aren't filled with overwhelming joy bursting out all the time. I don't read our society like that. It's a very depressed society. They're not thankful. They never have enough. And they aren't willing to submit anything to anybody else, they want to run their own agenda. There's just no chance.

And you add on top of that the ideological lies, the fortresses of human speculation that are being erected against the Word of God, as Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 10, these ideologies that have to do with humanism and sexual freedom and lesbianism and homosexuality and all the things that destroy family, the ideology that you don't need to get married, you can just have sex until you're tired of sex and then you can go find somebody you're not tired of and have some more of it. The idea that you can pregnate women all of the place and just leave them with children in every direction and that's fine, that's fine, that's wonderful, we accept that.

All of those ideologies compounded with this personal selfishness leave nothing but disaster, absolute disaster. This whole idea of submission I want to address a little further. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and we'll get in to this a little more when we talk about husbands. Somebody at this point might misunderstand and say, "Well wait a minute, if everybody is submitting, nobody's in charge." And I just want to defer to that query for a moment.

God has designed authority into a family. And in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 3 Paul says, "I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of a woman and God is the head of Christ." We aren't saying that there's no authority in the family, there is. There is authority at the father level and there is authority over children at the parent level, we understand that. We're not talking about the responsibility of leadership. We're not talking about the responsibility of caring and protecting which is what that authority is. We're not talking about the authority of teaching them and raising them and nurturing them in the Lord when it comes to children.

What we are talking about here is this kind of mutual submission that says, "Though I may be your leader and protector and your provider, your longings and your heart desires and your needs compel me more than my own." That's what creates the balance that is necessary. I'm not abdicating my responsibility as a husband to lead, preserve, protect, care for my wife. I'm not abdicating my responsibility as a father to provide for my children, to protect my children, to give them direction in leadership and discipline and build self-control into them, but I do that with the passion of my heart being the recognition that this best serves their needs. And whatever other needs they would have, I would eagerly desire to meet to the sacrifice of my own, if my heart is right, and I'm speaking that as anyone would.

And the perfect picture of that right there in verse 3 is that Christ is the head of every man and God is the head of Christ. Is God superior to Christ? No. Is God of a different essence than Christ? No. Are God and Christ one? Yes. It simply means that in the economy of redemption Christ submitted Himself to the purposes and plan and power of the Father. In every sense He was equal and yet submissive. And the Father was completely sensitive to the heart of the Son.

Christ totally and willingly submitted to the needs of man, submitted Himself to the purposes of the Father. Came and committed really what was the greatest act of unselfish love ever, dying on a cross to satisfy the Father and to satisfy us. He was Lord over mankind, He was the sovereign who submitted. He was the King who became a servant. He was the rich man who became poor. He was the sinless one who bore sin. He was the author of life who accepted death. He was God dying for man. That's the heart attitude.

There's no question that He's the head of man and yet He's the servant of man. The picture there in verse 3 is a marvelous one. He was equal with God and yet He submitted to God. He was over man and yet He submitted to man and to the need of man. He stooped to meet man at the deepest point of His need. On both counts we see the illustration of the submissiveness of Jesus, to the Father's will, to the need of man. Even through great anguish and drops of blood He said, "Not My will but Thine be done." Do you remember that the Scripture says, "Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love," the book of Romans, "in honor preferring one another." That's the idea. That's the idea.

Before we can talk about the role of the wife or the role of the husband or the role of the parents or the role of the children, we have to talk about the role of everybody. With Christ you have equality with God and yet submission. And in all of our relationships there will be a spiritual equality, there will be spiritual authority and there will still be a spirit of submission. In Galatians, just to kind of wrap this thought up, in Galatians 3:26, it's important to note this, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were immersed into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. Now there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman," and then this, "there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

When it comes to the spiritual, we're all one. My wife is a believer, my children are believers, we're all one in Christ. None of us is superior spiritually to one another and we are all equal on the spiritual level. And yet there is authority in that family given to the father and given to the parents. That does not preclude spiritual equality, it's simply a duty, it's simply a role, it's simply an assignment for the wisest care of that unit which God has ordained. You have the same thing in the church. We are all one in Christ. There's neither male nor female, bond nor slave, Jew nor Greek in the church, whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're an employee or an employer, whether you're rich or poor, whatever culture you might have come from, we are all one in Christ. And yet though we are all equally...we are all equally spiritually, 1 Timothy 5:17 says the elders that rule well are worthy of double honor. And 1 Thessalonians 5:12 and 13 says, "We beseech you, brethren, know those who labor among you who are over you in the Lord." Acts 20 verse 28 tells the elders to take the oversight over the flock. First Peter 5, your shepherds over the flock. Hebrews chapter 13, the elders live a life of faith and the people are called to follow that. The people are told that those elders are over them in the Lord and have to give an account to God. Spiritual equality but differing responsibilities. But even in those responsibilities we operate with an attitude of submission.

I suppose to bring it into a very vivid illustration, just because it's so obvious tonight. Here I stand in a position of authority by virtue of teaching you the Word of God. You sit in a position of submission. And somebody might conclude that I am a sort of a demigod, I am some kind of an autocrat who stands up here and all of you just sit there and do what you do and there's some kind of disparity between us spiritually. That's not true. We are spiritual equals. I simply have a responsibility and a duty that gives me this task.

Not only that, I have to render this task with a greater concern for you than for me. What drives me to do what I do is not me but you. You understand that? And that's how it works in a family. I already know this stuff. I'm not here telling me this, I'm here telling you this because my concern is for you. And that's how it has to work in a marriage. We all submit in the marriage even though we have different roles.

One other passage comes to mind as we just kind of lay this foundation tonight. First Corinthians chapter 7, this is a very interesting section on the mutual submission in marriage, just to sort of drive the point home. Verse 1, "Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman." Now what he's saying here is celibacy is good. There were some questions among the Corinthians about should you get married, shouldn't you get married and so forth. He's saying celibacy is good, it's not bad, it's okay. "Touching a woman" is a euphemism for intercourse, for the union in a marriage. So what he is saying is concerning the things about which you wrote, they obviously had a question about it...it is good for a man never to have that relationship, it's good, it's okay, it's fine. Later on, by the way, he makes this really clear in verse 26, "I think then that this is good in view of the present distress that it is good for a man to remain as he is," meaning he's single, stay that way, it's good. Verse 29, "This I say, brethren, the time has been shortened so that from now on those who have wives should be as though they had none, those who weep as though they didn't weep, those who rejoice as though they didn't rejoice, those who buy as though they didn't possess, those who use the world as though they didn't make full use of it, for the form of this world is passing away." He's saying you're living in troubling times, you ought not to get too attached to those. Verse 32, "I want you to be free from concern, one who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord how he may please the Lord. But one who is married is concerned about the things of the world how he may please his wife."

Listen, folks, marriage brings complications. You can't be single minded for the Lord, you have to be concerned about your wife. Verse 34, "Thus your interests are divided. But the woman who is unmarried and the virgin," unmarried referring to someone divorced, "and the virgin never married is concerned about the things of the Lord that she may be holy both in body and spirit. One who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Oh you, if you want to stay single, it's great to stay single, it's...it's much more focused. It isn't necessary but it certainly isn't bad, it is good. Some of the orthodox Jews of Paul's day believed marriage was an obligation. If a man didn't marry and produce children, the Jews said he has slain his posterity and he has therefore lessened the image of God in the world. The idea was you want to proliferate the image of God and since the image of God is in every person, you want to proliferate persons. If you don't marry, you slay your posterity and lesson the image of God in the world.

The Jews even went so far as to say seven kinds of people are excluded from heaven. And the first one on the list, the Jew who has no wife. And the second one, a wife who has no children. Pretty serious to say you couldn't get into heaven under those conditions. And that's probably what brought rise to these questions and Paul is saying being single is good, not wrong.

But verse 2, "But because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband." What are you saying here? It's good to be single but because single persons might be tempted into immorality, it's better to marry. That's the general rule, for the sake of purity, and, of course, Genesis 1:28, for the sake of procreation, and Genesis 2:18, for the sake of partnership, a help meet, and Song of Solomon, Hebrews 13:4, for the sake of pleasure. It's good for the sake of purity, procreation, partnership, pleasure. So it's better if you have those longings and those desires for everybody to have his own wife or husband.

And then we come to verses 3 to 5, and that's what I'm driving at here. "Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife and likewise also the wife to her husband." In this context it's talking about a conjugal duty, the marriage obligation, to give yourself physically to one another as well as in love. But the idea is now that you're married you don't withhold that kind of thing because you're preserving yourself from impurity by getting married on the assumption that you can enjoy the richness of that relationship which God has wonderfully designed. And so, let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. And then this wonderful thing, "The wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband does. And likewise, the husband doesn't have authority over his own body but the wife does." Stop depriving one another.

In other words, you have to mutually submit to one another. You've got to dispense with "I have a headache" argument. Verse 5, "Stop depriving one another, except by mutual agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer and then when that time is over come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control."

Marriage carries a mutual obligation. And the language here indicates that you have a debt to your husband, ladies. And, gentlemen, you have a debt to your wife. Pay that debt. At the very basic level of sexual desire, this mutual submission can be seen. Marriage then becomes a permanent surrender of all you are to your partner. She is what you are to one another, it's an equality. I belong to you, and you belong to me. Mutual agreement is necessary, by the way, for withholding. It's not fair to say, "Don't bother me, I'm praying." It's mutual, only for a set time.

And yet, even in this mutual submission in marriage, obviously we're not negating authority. In 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 11, "Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet, for it was Adam who was first created, then Eve. It was not Adam who first was deceived but the woman being quite deceived fell into transgression," and so forth. There's still authority in submission but the heart of it is mutual, humble service.

When we've said all of this, we've laid all the ground work, really. Our authority is soft, gentle, tender, caring. It's the authority of one who provides. It's the authority of one who protects, who cares, who meets needs, who by strength and wisdom insulates, preserves, secures. It's illustrated so wonderfully in the teaching about how you deal with your children, you don't provoke them by your harsh leadership. You nurture them.

And I'll tell you, if you don't start with this, there's not much hope, in fact there's not any. Oh I suppose you could grit your teeth and decide to stay together for the sake of whatever. But apart from this kind of pattern laid out in Ephesians chapter 5, marriage and family becomes an incredibly difficult struggle, very unfulfilling. It becomes a battle for individual rights. It becomes a terrible conflict. And we watch the conflicts blow up. Every year millions of hopeful couples pledge themselves in marriage or live together with a view to building a life, and half of them end in a fight that splits the marriage. And those who have that one split to on to marry again, two thirds of them will split. Ministers are even designing divorce services, like running the film backwards, I suppose. Divorce is epidemic and where you don't have divorce you often have conflict or you have ongoing infidelity. Men are often oppressive and insensitive. And women, as well, can be disloyal, unresponsive and seeking liberation. Children have no real examples. The chaos is absolutely tragic...absolutely tragic.

So when we think about this whole subject of family, we have to start with these spiritual issues. And from there we can start to talk about specifics. If you have a Spirit-filled, obedient, praising, worshiping, thankful, submissive heart, you've got the stuff that's going to make a wonderful family, a wonderful marriage and a wonderful life. Anything else is a battle for your own way, it's that simple. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can overrule this and produce joy.

D.L. Moody, the evangelist, once asked his audience a simple question. He said, "I want you to tell me how to remove the air out of a glass," and he held it up in his hand.

One man yelled, "Suck it out with a pump."

Moody replied, "That would create a vacuum and shatter the glass."

And several other impossible answers were called out, such as, you can hardly believe this, "Turn the glass upside down." Finally, Moody reached over on the side of the pulpit where the water and the glass stood, picked up the pitcher, filled up the glass. "There," he said, "all the air is out now."

It's perfectly simple, in that sense. You can eliminate the stale air of marriage but not with the pumps of human psychology. Only when you fill your life with the living water, the Spirit of God and divine truth. And that's the key. That's where we have to start. You have to make that commitment. If you do, I can promise you all the bliss of the grace of life and the joy of marriage and family will be yours. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You for the foundations which You've given to us in Scripture. Lord, we know these things start deep down in the heart, spiritual matters have to be dealt with. I pray, Lord, for each person here that You would lead them to the place of devotion to the Spirit of God to be filled with the Spirit so that they might have a rejoicing, happy heart, thankful and submissive and thus be so easily to live with. Lord, we want happy marriages, we want fulfilled families and You've showed us how. And when it doesn't happen, we need to get off the superficial issues and get back on our knees and get our heart right with You. You want us unselfish, more concerned about others than ourselves, filled with thanksgiving for everything in our lives, no matter how difficult. And we know how much conflict comes into marriages and families where we don't think things are going the way we'd like them to go. But where there is incessant thankfulness, constant praise, constant obedience, humility, there will be joy and fulfillment. May it be so in all of our lives. That's Your plan for our joy and Your glory. We thank You for it in Christ's name. Amen.

posted with permission
http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/1943A/a-plan-for-your-family-gods-vs-the-worlds-part-1