God's Will for the Body of Christ, Part 11

Well, we want to welcome everybody here today as we continue with this vitally important series entitled, God's Will for the Body of Christ. And of course, the script comes right out of the book of Ephesians, an epistle written by Paul nearly 2,000 years ago. Paul, who was given a vision by God Almighty. Paul, who came to understand that God was working something incredible. And he shares that will. Join me in Ephesians 1 verse 9, and let's again rehearse exactly what that will is, and then build upon it.

In Ephesians 1 and in verse 9, having made known to us the mystery of His will. Mystery there is not like in a mystery movie where you don't know who done it until the end, but this is an opening up. It's an expansion. It's a revealing to the initiated as to what God would have them to understand. But there is this will, there is this purpose, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself. It's interesting that God's will has pleasure in it. Sometimes people down on this earth, when they're writing a will, don't have pleasure in writing out that will or performing it or seeing all the different clauses come to pass.

I remember what Solomon said nearly 3,000 years ago. Oh God, there's a generation that is coming up and what will become of this earth, what will become of this world? Look at them. Solomon looked at those that were following Him and had great doubts and great reservations. But I'm here to encourage you today, brethren, that God's will not only has purpose, but He has pleasure in doing it. Because He has purposed it, not in you and not in me, but of and in Himself. That in the dispensation of the fullness of times, that He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him, in Christ, before our Father.

That is the will. That that which is in heaven above, that which is in earth below, might all come and be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ. The rest of the book of Ephesians explains the tenets of that will. The first three chapters of Ephesians basically give us a lot of concepts, gives us a lot of, shall we say, spiritual principles, somewhat ethereal.

By the time we get to Ephesians 4, it begins to where the rubber meets the road to our responsibilities as Christians, as members of this new society, with new standards, with a new walk that God has given us because He loves us and He gave His Son for us. We're going to continue in that vein today and I hope that you're prepared. I might say, ready to put your seat belts on.

Be ready to deploy those airbags because there may be some, as Robert brought out in the first message, there may be a little resistance in this message because it will become very personal. In Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 2, there's a lot of thought about how when Christ came, a part of His role was to bring the Jewish community and the Gentile community that were utterly estranged from one another to bring them together to where it was no longer them and us, but all together in Christ for God.

Now that's very not easy. Let me back up for a second. But it is easier to think of the masses rather than to deal with the one-on-ones, where it shall, we say, becomes personal. And that's what we're going to do today now because as we go through the Jews and the Gentiles all being reconciled, no longer two strains of humanity but one family for God, now we're going to come down to a, shall we say, more personal level. Today we're going to deal with men, and we're going to deal with women, and we're going to deal with marriage.

We're going right through the book of Ephesians where it takes us, and we are here for a purpose. Join me, if you would, in Ephesians 5, and let's begin the thought in Ephesians 5 and picking up the thought in verse 21.

Ephesians 5 and verse 21. Submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord. Then it says, verse 22, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. And the ladies can say, oh boy, here we go again. What happens at times is we move into the Bible, oftentimes like we move into a movie house when we've run late or there's been a traffic jam, and we come into the middle of the movie and we don't know what's going on as these scriptures hit us all at once. And we need to deal with them, but we need to deal with them in context and understand what God is saying to men and women on this day through this holy epistle that he's given by the inspiration of his Spirit. Let's understand what is going on here. We are today going to be dealing with terms that are unique in today's society. We're going to be dealing with a term of love. We say that's not too unique. A lot of people talk about love, but we're going to be talking about a different kind of love today. And then there's another term that we're going to use today. It's called submit.

And you say what? Submit. An even maybe more challenging term that is synonymous with submit comes out of the same Greek root is subject. Now let's understand something here. When we speak of marriage and or relationships in this context today, I can fully appreciate that in the world and the society that we are around, that in one sense it's not popular to use these words. But it doesn't mean that we need to discard them. We need to understand them. And do I dare say that we need to embrace them, not just as women, but as men and women together to understand God's purpose for marriage. Let's talk about this for a moment. It's very important. Why does Paul bring this to the fore in this writing of the Epistles? Again, for those of you that have not been with us to this point and may not be totally familiar with the vocabulary or the expressions that we have been using to this point, please just jot down this word. Christ is calling us to a new society, a new society. And in that new society are new standards. That new society and those new standards then call upon you and me as men and women in Christ. Because that's where God the Father has placed us to walk and to take these steps. Now today when at times we hear these words and we hear words like submit or subject or we read Ephesians 5, we go, well that might have been good for Paul's day and that might have even been good for my mother's day when she used that word in her marriage ceremony. But, you know, in 2012 that sounds archaic. It sounds Jurassic. It sounds out of place, other earthly, old school. What we need to understand something, and I hope that you'll hear me, to understand the context of what is being written here. When Ephesians 5 21 through 31 was given in the early 60s A.D., it was a revelation. It was radical. It was revolutionary. And it changed the world upside down, these words, that the Apostle Paul was inspired to write under the auspice of the Holy Spirit.

Let's talk about the world that Paul was familiar with. A man who was a Roman citizen, a man who spoke the Greek tongue, and a man who happened to be ethnically a Jew. What was the state of marriage or matrimony circa 60 A.D.? Let's understand what was occurring at that time. Let's talk about these three peoples that Paul was familiar with. Let's first of all talk about the people of the book, the Jewish community. You might have said the church and or the church members up to that time in that day. It's very interesting that one of the first prayers that a Jewish man gave in the morning was simply this, thank you God that I am not a Gentile. Thank you that I am not a slave. And thank you that I am not a woman.

What was occurring in that day and age was divorce was rampant amongst the Jewish community. That may be a shock to many of you. But there was a term that was used out of the book of the law out of Deuteronomy 24 and verse 1, speaking of the term uncleanliness. And in other translations, it is defined as indecency. But by that time, by the time of Paul, it had a wide usage. It had a wide margin of definition, so much so that the definition had come that if a man chose to divorce his wife and thought that she had been indecent, it could range from everything that she put too much salt on a piece of meat, don't try that, guys, tonight, to where he had more attraction to another lady than his wife. This is what the Jewish community had come to, to a great degree.

Broadly speaking, a Jewish man could divorce his wife for almost any cause. Because you had this word, this terminology of uncleanliness or indecency that had all sorts of mental and emotional loopholes. But a Jewish, a lady of that time, hardly had any cause or any reason for divorce, other than perhaps her husband was a leper. By the time Paul was writing this, Jewesses were refraining from marriage as their future was very uncertain with any man. Let's talk about the Greek world. In the Greek world, there were three things that were happening to most Greek men, and that they were exposed to. In the Greek world, a world that Paul was familiar with, being from Tarsus and his travels, in the Greek world, there was temple prostitution. That was a way of life in the Greek world. Temple prostitution.

Sex mixed with the sacred. Beyond that, people in that Mediterranean culture had concubines, of which they had many illegitimate children. Beyond that, they had a wife at home.

But that wife at home was not to be seen, was not to be heard, was not to really come out in public.

That wife at home was to care for the duties of the house, behind the scenes, and to take care of the legitimate children of the husband. That was the Greek world. Then there was the Roman world. That at first, being more of a hearty, agrarian society, at first had been dutiful in marriage, but then exposed to the Hellenistic world, divorce became rampant in Roman society. Romans did not number their years, per se, as a matter of record. Normally, what they did is they numbered their years by the two councils that were in charge of Rome at any time. So it might be in the year of Aurelius or in the year of Marcus. But it is said by the time of Seneca, Seneca was in the first century AD, Seneca said that at that time women numbered the year by the name of their husband. Thus, you begin to understand a little bit of the context of this new society and these new standards and this new walk that Paul is going to introduce in the book of Ephesians, which is to bring man and woman together in reconciliation in history that had been unreconciled from the time of the Garden of Eden. From the very time that God made man and woman, He had offered them that tree of life. He had offered them a relationship with Him and a relationship with one another that could have been wholesome, that could have been wonderful, that could have borne fruit.

In the very beginning, God said, be fruitful and multiply. Historically, that was looked upon as repopulating and having descendants. But I dare say that what God really had in mind was to multiply spiritually, to bear spiritual fruit, to have a harvest of relationship with Him and with one another in Him. But man rejected that. Woman rejected that. And from the very beginning, when God came and found them in the Garden, what did the woman say? The woman said, the devil made me do it.

The man said, she made me do it. And all the fingers were pointing all the different directions. And then God said, I'll tell you what I'll do. Serpent, you're cursed. And then He took it in order. And woman, there will be a curse upon you. And man, there will also be a curse upon you. The book of Ephesians comes along and tells us that God is beginning to call citizens to a new society, to a society that they can be citizens of heaven, they can be family members here on earth in Him, and they can be living and walking members of a temple that He desires to reside in down here on earth. And He says, I'm going to give you everything. I've already given you my son.

And now I ask something of you, that in response, that you will become one in me.

So often what we have, friends, as many of us have heard messages over the years, sermons about marriage, where you dive right into Ephesians 5 without warming up. And understanding the context now of why Ephesians 5 is so important. Because basically what we're going to come to understand, I know all of us have read books, all of us read psychobooks, not about psycho, but psychology books, we've read marriage books, we've all come to understand that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. I'm here today to tell you that men are from God. Brace yourself, women. And men, women are from God. They're neither from Mars and they're not from Venus. And all that is happening in our relationships is for a divine purpose that you and I need to come to understand. Now, Paul changes his mind over the years. You might say he evolves. Times will do that and God's revelation will do that. Ten years before this, he'd written the book of Corinthians. And in Corinthians, he basically said it would be better not to marry. It would be better, perhaps, that you be single, as I am at that time, or as he was at that time. And or he says that it would be better than, if you can't, if you can't handle it, it'd be better than to marry than to burn. But Paul now comes into the book of Ephesians and it is no longer addressed Corinth and in an emergency situation and in a time of distress. But now God has filled him with a new understanding that marriage is much more than just simply the physical, but that it depicts the body of Christ and it is a mystery for each and every one of us to understand. Therefore, now with that stated, let's go to Ephesians 5 again in verse 21 and we're going to be covering verses 21 through verse 33 today. And hopefully we can get through it.

It says, notice first and foremost, submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord. Now, verse 21 is given in chapter 5 after we've already been told in 5 and verse 1. Join me if you would for a moment in Ephesians 5 and verse 1. Therefore, with all that God is saying to Paul, what I am bequeathing unto you, therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in agape, walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. What I'm sharing with you, dear friends, here in Los Angeles is simply this. As we take on these roles that are assigned to us through the writings of God through Paul, you and I have the privilege and the opportunity as members of the new society with the new standards and in the new walk to practice being like God.

Is that how you woke up this morning beside your mate? Saying, I am waking up this morning and I have the opportunity and I have the privilege of practicing of being like God to the one that He has given me. This is the context. This is the fullness of what Ephesians is telling us. And in verse 21 it says, submitting to one another notice in the fear of the Lord. And or as the new life application Bible says, and further you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, out of the deepest respect for Jesus Christ and what God is doing through Him for us, back to God. We will do this. It's very interesting that in the revised standard version, the R as of A, I believe that they have it right, that it heads the paragraph. What we notice, men and women, is that we are to mutually, mutually submit to one another in respect, in reverence, and in deep awe of God coming to understand His will, that through Jesus Christ He wants to bring all together before Him. It's very interesting that that word submit, the word submit comes from a Greek word. I'll write it down here for a second.

If I can find my...

It comes from a Greek word.

It comes from a Greek word that is hupo teso hupo teso hupo teso hupo teso simply means this. It comes from a term which is basically military in origin.

It means to rank under.

hupo means under. teso means to arrange. In other words, to arrange under, to submit, and or to subject. And the first thing that Paul brings out in all of this is that all of us, as men and women, are to be arranged under. Notice, verse 21, the respect and the reverence of the Lord.

New standards, new society demand nothing less than being framed by the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of the living Christ.

Now, verse 22, with that stated understanding that all of us now are to be under subjection.

All of us are to be submissive in that sense to one another. In Christ, notice what it says in verse 22, wives submit to your own husband as to the Lord. As to the Lord.

Understand this is the arrangement. This is the hupo teso that God has ordained. Wives hupo teso to your own husbands as to the Lord. This is going to be very important as we move through this subject to recognize that you and I grow up with a very common phrase when it concerns marriage or relationships. It takes two to tango. We've all heard that. And some of you that are dancers have tangoed. But spiritually, it takes three to tango in the new society. It takes a man, it takes a woman, and it takes Jesus Christ literally framing that relationship. And ultimately, being the spiritual head of that relationship with everything arranged under him. And in him, him. That's a pronoun. What does that mean? Let's add flesh to it. In him, it means in him would be how would you define him being Christ? You would define him by a perfect life. You would define him by a death of humility. You would define him by a glorious resurrection with hope and with light at the end of the tunnel for each and every one of us.

So we are to submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body.

Now, men, please understand we begin to see an ideal that is awesome, and a scope of opportunity that is incredible that can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit. Because probably the last time your wife or my wife looked at me, she probably didn't see the full visage of Jesus Christ being in this human tent. But this is the ideal. This is the goal. Will there be resistance as Robert brought out by women, by men? Absolutely. But notice the key here where it says, wives submit to your own husband as to the Lord. We've already established that we are to reverence one another in the Lord as the Lord comes out. Notice what it says, for the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Now, men, if the woman is in that sense, in this arrangement ordained of God, to come under the auspices of us as husbands, it says, as unto the Lord who is, notice the Savior of the body, not the destroyer of the body, not the insulter of the body, not as the enemy of the body. What did Jesus do as Savior of the body? Number one, He offered the body of Christ dignity when we had no dignity. He offered us light when we were in darkness of our sins. He offered us life when we were dead to those sins. So, the one thing that Jesus gives us, and thus we are accepted to the Father, is dignity, and is through His sacrifice as Savior, that we have acceptance. He also, at His death and at the cross, and at the foot of that cross, offers both men and women spiritual equality before the Father, that we all share space in that common pool of blood underneath that stake, underneath that staros. And we stand stripped bare, naked in our sins. And yet, that Savior of the body grants us that equality. Thus, we recognize of and by ourselves we are nothing. And thus, in marriage, as we see our woman and she sees her man, we recognize that we come from an imperfect background, and yet God, through Christ, allows us dignity, allows us equality, and allows us, thirdly, unity in Him and with one another. These must be understood to proceed to the next verses. And when we speak of these words, that can be misunderstood of submission or subjection to where it is foreign in certain years, is when we talk about Jesus being the Savior of the body. Allow me to share one other thing. Women, please hear me, and men, please take note. Who was more beautiful and more wonderful? And more accepting of women and femininity, and God's investment in that part of humanity other than Jesus Christ. He broke the mold, guys. He broke the mold. He totally understood the value of women. He loved being with women. Women flocked to Him, not because He was outwardly handsome. The Bible says He was common. But because of the beauty that was in Him, the beauty of His heart, the relationship that He could share with a Mary Magdalene, or a Mary, or a Martha, and or the many others. Women that had the privilege of seeing Him first, even before the disciples. And then later on in the book of Acts, you see the incredible contribution of those early ladies in the early church. Christ honored and gave women dignity. That was alien, alien in that world. Again, allow me to bring to your mind how alien this concept was in the Roman and the Greek world. You know, the smart people, the conquering people. They shut their wives up.

A woman was not to be seen, not to be heard.

How many of you have ever seen the movie Jane Eyre? I see what you're watching. Okay. Read the book.

You know, the woman's up in the tower and she's never let out. There were good reasons why she wasn't let out, but that's how the Roman world was. I've got to ask you a question. How many have never heard of Jane Eyre? Can I see the show? No, just don't worry about it. Okay. I might be dating myself. Okay. Rewind. But that's the world that Paul was speaking about. Notice what it says. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Now, does that mean everything goes? Because hubby wants it that way. No, we've already outlined that she is to be in hupotasso to her husband as he references Christ, who is the living Word and the written Word is before us to reflect who he is. So that if it is against God's Word, you do not submit to something that is against God's Word, because your first reverence is to the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is in him that the new society and the new standards and the new walk exist. So we look at this. Let the wives be. Now, that's very important. You might want to circle that word, be, ladies, for a moment. We'll get to the minute again in a moment. We're going to go back and forth. That means present. That means be is not well. You know, I kind of did that when I was first married, been there, done that.

Didn't really work.

Be means in a constant state of being under the arrangement and the order that God has ordained in everything.

But let's go further now to see what the husband is to be like. Let's go further, because I think when we do, we will clearly see, rather than kingship, we will see a companionship that is so incredibly attractive. Might even dare say, seeing Robert brought it up, Song of Solomon, spiritually romantic, that women would want to be with this kind of man. Men. Because it says, husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.

Now, let's understand something here. If I can find my eraser. There it is. There's five key verbs that Paul is going to share with us here.

We all might want to write these down. He loved, he gave, he sanctified, he cleansed, and he presented.

Remember, we are to mutually submit to one another in the fear and the reference of the Lord.

Marriage is to be in Christ. Let's look at what this says. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. Let's understand something very, very important as we look at this. This always basically goes to one concept, and that is the cross. That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. He gave that begotten Son on the altar of Golgotha and on a cross, nailed to a piece of wood. And so what Paul is instructing we that are men that are married is simply this. Our love towards our wife is to always be sacrificial.

Sacrificial. And the term that is used here is love. And the love term that is used here out of the Greek language is different than the language that was being used at the time of Paul. The language that was being used by the Stoic philosophers regarding men and women relationships was filio. Filio. Love your wife kind of like a brother. Doesn't sound real exciting, does it, ladies? But that was where marriage was in the Roman Empire. Paul says men in the new society, in the body of Christ that Christ heads, that body that reflects that head is to love your mate in that sense in a cross-focused life with a sacrificial love. Let me share what agape means. I share this out of Vines' commentary. Agape is a form of love without any previous background in the Greek language. The word had to be invented. Did you realize that? Sometimes when you use the word filia or stoag or you can use arrows, you can go back into extra-biblical literature and find terminology about that to kind of get an idea of definitions, precedents of how it was used.

Agape was unknown in the world of antiquity. Agape, a form of love without any previous background, revealed with little precedence in Greek literature, first and foremost expressed in God's ultimate gift of Christ. Vines' commentary. In other words, you might want to jot this down, Christ is agape. Think of what Paul said. How do we then know the love of God?

Romans 5, 8, 9, and 10. And it's Christ that makes the equation. When associated with God, it expresses his deep and constant love and constant interest, even as a perfect being towards unworthy objects. That's you, that's me. That in turn produces responding love towards him.

And practical love towards others, like mates. This is the love that is being talked about.

A sacrificial love. A godly love. Remember how does Ephesians 5 and verse 1 begin? Hey, by the way, you there are members of the new society. Don't forget, practice being like God. Now men, and you ladies already know this about we men, we're not there yet.

You don't have to tell us. But this is the standard.

I didn't see anybody's hand go up saying, I am there yet. Okay, that's good. But that's the ideal. That's the standard. That's the walk that is set before us. Will there be resistance, Robert? You can nod. Yes. Because the ideal, the goal, is there. And there will be resistance.

There will be our own human nature. There will be society around us. There will be a woman that wakes up in the morning, and she already knows we're not Christ. She already knows that we're not God, even though some of us might think we are. And that's good. She's there for a purpose. Men, God has given us our ladies to pop our bubble. And that's okay with me. I've got a lot of bubble to pop. And so there'll be that natural inclination. But you and I, as men, given this opportunity in the arrangement, not appointed by evolution, but by God Almighty, not by accident, but by design, that all things might to come together to Him through Christ. God has given us men. God has given us women. God has given us the institution of marriage. It's a covenant. It's not a contract. Today, people don't even get married. If they do get married, they look at it as a contract, looking for a loophole, looking for a way out, looking to define whatever it might be to define as much as the Jewish community in the first century, defined in decency by a hundred different standards, so that they could get out rather than get in. Do you remember what God told Adam in the garden, gentlemen? He said, cleave. He didn't say leave. Today, we have a plastic society that when we think it is broken, we want to just jettison, just leave, rather than go by the biblical command, and that is to cleave unto our wife. Let's go a little bit further. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water by the Word. These two kind of come together where we see the sanctification and the cleansing, and that sanctification or that setting apart comes at baptism by a washing, by the words of the Bible that are not just simply the washing that is in the blood of Jesus Christ for our sins and to be covered by them, but also that we are initiated into this new society called the body of Christ by baptism. By baptism. By taking that initiative, that step of initiation of where many of you have been baptized in this font behind me, to where that when we go down in that water, there's something that is asked of you, and that is simply this. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? And have you accepted Jesus and have you repented of all of your sins, not only what you have done, but what you are apart from God? Yes, sir. That is our initiation of recognizing where we were, of recognizing who God is, and accepting His grace, asking for His forgiveness, accepting that sacrifice that redeems us and gives us acceptance of that life, that death, that resurrection, and recognizing that He's not only been resurrected as other human beings have been resurrected, but that He ascended. And now is at the right hand of God, and in seeing that we are emulating His example. So we see then that we might be set apart, cleansed her with the washing of the water of the Word, that we live in, we respect that living Word of Jesus Christ, and we live in the Word, the written Word of Christ, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

When you think about this, let's jot this down. You might want to jot this word down. We're kind of in class today. You notice something here that Paul utilizes. He's not just simply thinking of the past. He's not only in the present, but he's looking to the future, that he might present her to God Almighty. Gentlemen, in considering our mates, do we only think of their past? Do we only see where we are in the present? Or are we storing up for the future by how we treat our wives as Jesus Christ treated the church? Let's consider this for a moment. The church's head is the church's bridegroom. Those words are often used in the Bible, often used in John. It speaks in the Old Testament about a covenant between God and Israel, later on God and the church through Christ in the New Testament. What we understand is that God, and when we look at the example of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, He does not crush the church, but rather gives Himself for her, that she can be all that she can be. When God picked us up along the road of life, He said, I want you to be a part of my family. And He did not look at our baggage, but He looked at our ticket and the destination that He had set before us. He didn't want to crush us. He knew where we already were in our sins. He gave Himself for us. Christ gave Himself for the church, again, that we can be all that we can be. Thus, husbands are not to frustrate, stifle, or crush their wife, their personality, their hopes, their dreams. But His love will have the opposite effect, the love of Agape, in order that she can develop to her full, incredible potential that God has put in her. So ought husbands to love their own wives, not their concubines, not their temple prostitutes, not by what they see when they go to the movies, or see on the internet, or in magazines. But they are to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it. What we've seen here, we've gone from sacrificial love to purifying love to caring love. Paul is basically saying that nobody hates their own flesh.

You've never seen anybody try to tear themselves apart, not at all. We are to love one another as ourselves. But now he takes it up to a higher level at the end of verse 21. Just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, and of his flesh, and of his bones. And for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Now, please stay with me. We have a few minutes to go, but this is utterly profound. This is a part of the will of the body of Christ, and especially where the rubber meets the road when it comes to man and woman relationships and holy matrimony. Notice what happens here. Remember what I told you earlier? It does not take two to tango, but it takes three to tango. What we have here in verse 30 and 31, which you see so often throughout the book of Ephesians, you see the merging of the old creation with the new creation. What do I mean by that? Thank you for asking. The old creation was that it had eaten, and it was out of the dust of the ground and out of the rib of man. Thus we have man and woman. But the book of Ephesians tells us that God is now in the midst of a new creation, not simply something that is new and improved, like something that Proctor and Gamble would bring out, but something new in the sense of the order that has never been accomplished before.

And thus you see the melting of the old creation with the new creation here. And it is telling us that Christ is to be the head of our marriage, gentlemen and women, and that his involvement in marriage within those that are in the new society is inextricable. You cannot surgically remove it. Notice what it says here. Join me and let's focus on these words. For we, that's you, that's me, husband and wife, man and woman, we are members of his body, of his flesh, of his bones.

If we are, then we go back to Ephesians 5 and verse 1, and follow the Holy Commandment.

Practice being like God. For if he is the head of the body, then our arms reach out to do his bidding, our feet walk to do his walking, and our heart is to feel like his.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, not as concubine or concubine's plural, or the temple prostitute, or the woman at the office, or the woman at the gym, or the woman on the internet.

Have I covered it at all? Everybody in the net?

Sacred devotion, the arrangement that is under Christ, given by God, that he might have the glory.

When it says one flesh, this does not mean loss of identity as a man and or as a woman.

It's not about a loss of personality, but caring for our spouse as much as ourselves, anticipating their needs, anticipating their cares, and meeting them.

Notice what it says here. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Paul no longer speaks as he did in Corinth to the Corinthians in the early 50s A.D. that, you know, I'd really rather you be single as I am, or you know, in all of that. It's now evolved. It's now moved up. The revelation has come to the full. He now brings marriage, not just simply to get married so that you don't burn with lust, but that you marry and you grow in marriage.

And some of you have never heard this message before. Some of you, we get caught up in this culture of pitting men against women. Well, I've got my rights!

Or the men in my family have always been the king of the castle. The woman says, what castle? Oh, just teasing.

That's why the book of Ephesians says, as members of this new society, that is granted citizenship in heaven, that is granted to be a family with God as the head, as being the living timber of His holy temple that He resides in.

That we understand this mystery concerning Christ and the church. Marriage is not...

Marriage is not... And kids, listen to me. Some of you that are in high school and junior high, you get this stuff in there about evolution.

And that somehow, two lovesick Amoeba got it on, got it together in a slimy pond back in the Pliestosian era when the photosynthesis was just right. And that's where a boy met girl. And then they crawled out of the pond. And then there were dinosaurs. And then those dinosaurs, one day they said, you know, it's kind of getting cold. I think the the the north cap of the pole is coming down our way. We better start growing hair. So all of a sudden, after so many million years, we got hair. All of a sudden, you're a monkey's uncle. You think hair long enough, and you grow hair.

I know God gave me, but making me bald for some reason, so you get a laugh. No.

That's evolution. You think about it long enough, it's going to happen.

You pass it down to the kids, you keep on saying hair, hair, hair. And finally, one day you have hair, or one day you have wings. That's what they're teaching you in school. A world apart from God, a world that is by accident, a world where a socioeconomic compact was made in the cave between the man and the woman. I'll carry the club, and you take care of the kids. Ugg. Mitarzan. No. That's not the world that the new society, the new walk exists in.

Your world, that Christ gave himself for, and that the Father offered his son for, that ultimate gift of agape, was so that you and your wife, yes, human beings, yes, sometimes from Mars, yes, sometimes from Venus, yes, sometimes passing one other, like ships in the night, not because of how we look on the outside, but by the makeup on the inside.

Nonetheless, nonetheless, are given this ideal to surrender ourselves to, to give ourselves to as imperfect as we might be as human beings, and recognize that marriage is much more than just simply a primitive socioeconomic compact that is now going out of style in the 21st century, but was ordained of God for a reason to show the relationship of Christ to the church, and that in Him, as the Jew and the Gentile, that the man and the woman might come together. For how can the household of God exist and be vibrant if the households within that body are not vibrant? Our personal households, our personal manhood, our personal femininity, our personal marriage is to reflect and grow in that reflection of Christ and the church. This is a great mystery. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. As we conclude some thoughts, three times the man is reminded to love his wife, underlined with agape, sacrificial love, to be willing in that sense to take the cross and to give himself as Jesus Christ gave himself for the church. Three times women are reminded to submit themselves to their husband.

When you see what God lays before here and the responsibility that is laid upon the man to offer a giving love, a purifying love, a sacrificial love, a future-thinking love, what woman would not want to be a part of a marriage with that man? And as always, all of this, all of this, whether it be the instructions, the arrangement regarding man or woman, regarding man or woman, let's shut this down, is always in the context of in Christ, to be willing to sacrifice everything, to make a woman's well-being of prime importance and care for her like a care for us. As we conclude this section, consider this. I want to go back to a second for a moment.

That phraseology where it takes three to tango. Let me sum it up this way. Let's shut this down together, maybe think about it. The head of every marriage is Jesus Christ, Christ who divorced himself from divinity and humbled himself. Christ himself divorced himself from all that he could have had and humbled himself. Therefore, it says, submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord and with that knowledge. Number two, men, man, who is to give himself to somebody. To give himself to somebody. Number three, a woman who is to give one's self up to somebody.

Now, it's very interesting. You have two verbs that are going on here. One is to love, and the other is to submit. Two verbs with very similar outcomes. Selflessness and self-giving. The man is to be selfless through and through in practicing being like God. You say, well, how can I practice being like God? Read the Gospels. Jesus was God in the flesh.

Notice how he treated women with dignity, with respect, with honor, with inclusion. What an incredible, incredible blessing and honor that God has given us.

The reason why I mention this, and I'm glad that we went through this today and study, and hopefully in exhortation, dear friends here in Los Angeles, is to recognize that the resistance level is rising in the world around us. The world that you and I have been called to, to be light, and to be salt, and to be a witness more and more, does not treasure the institution of marriage, does not understand the revelation that God has given us. I really appreciate what Robert brought to us today in the first message. I think it's really gone today because I want to share something with you. There's a goal that God has set before us, and it is so high that we cannot do it without His Spirit. And the resistance is out there. The resistance, I see a lot of young people here today, a lot of you that are out here, and I know the messages, I know the sirens song that goes out in the universities, and in the colleges, and the high schools. It's a world where God is no longer mentioned in the classroom, where His ways are no longer on the tongues of our nation.

And that's why it's ever more important to be speaking about these things and showing you that bright light of what can be. This is an incredibly spiritually dynamic relationship that is being shared with you and me by God's Word, spiritual and yes, romantic, agape, philia, eros, all before God in Him that it might be to His glory.

Dear friends, here in Los Angeles, we have some homework, we have some heart work.

Let's talk about it. Let's pray about it. Let's set the goal. Let's understand the resistance. Let's do it and give God glory.