Why Should I?

His voice spellbound the crowd. O, it hadn’t started out that way. Frankly the leaders of the church with their official titles and “churchy” suits weren’t the kind of people to be enamored with anyone. Anyone but themselves, of course. But this was different. He was different. He was sitting their with them talking to them like an equal . . . and he most certainly wasn’t! They’d have put him in his place, too, only they couldn’t. Every question they threw at him he answered. Every question he threw at them, they couldn’t. They were helplessly torn between a hopeless desire to escape the continued embarrassment and a curious desire to keep listening. So, they stayed, question after question, hour after hour.

It might have gone on forever, had it not been for that insistent shout they kept hearing in the distance. “Jesus, Jesus; Jesus, where are you? Jesus, Jesus . . .” The shout kept growing closer till the door burst open and everyone turned to see the flustered faces of Joseph and Mary. Seeing the scribes leaning over to hear the 12 year old lad, Mary says with a little aggravation. “Jesus, we’ve been looking for you for three days. Where have you been?”

With a look of amazement he said, “Didn’t you realize that I am here to do my Father’s Business?”

Now if you didn’t know the rest of the story, at this point you might be tempted to think that Jesus declared his indepence from Mary and Joseph and started his ministry. After all, He was the Son of God; after all, He was the smartest guy in the room; after all He had all the answers that the world needed and even at 12 years of age, he could keep the scribes spell bound. That’s the way we might have written the story.

Luke 2:51 NKJV

Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart.

But not God. He wrote it like this in : Then He went down with them (that’s Mary and Joseph) and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.

Now make a mental note of that word “subject” in that verse and now let us read our text: for today.

Ephesians 5:22–24 NKJV

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is 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.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be (and you could supply “subject”) to their own husbands in everything.

The word “subject” is the same in both places. It’s the “s” word that really is in bad taste in today’s culture. Talk about biblical submission within a marriage and the press brands you a neanderthal Knuckle-dragger. Independence and self-promotion rule our day and those who dare to speak of submission are ignorant at best and dangerous at worst.

NEED

But television news anchors aren’t the only ones who have trouble with this “submission” thing. I do too! Forget the husband/wife stuff for a minute, I, simply as a disciple of Christ, have a lot of trouble submitting, even in little things.

SLIDE: Pic - Funeral

Sometime ago I was going to a graveside service, not as the minister, but simply to attend. I was planning to go and needed to be able to get out quickly after it was over because I was supposed to be somewhere else. I pulled into the drive way of the graveyard, and there was one of the funeral home guys directing traffic. When I got up to him I motioned that I wanted to go in a direction other than the one in which he was directing me because I wanted to park closer to the entrance, but he wouldn’t have it and motioned for me to keep on moving in the direction I did not want to go. I was mad. How dare that guy tell me what to do. Then the Lord convicted me. He was in a position of authority and here I was refusing to submit. I have trouble with submission.

YOU

I guess we all do, don’t we? Hey, that’s one reason your boss can’t do anything right. Now, I know he really may be inept, but isn’t part of the problem you have with him simply the fact that he is telling you what to do? That’s one reason we hate politicians. Certainly, many of them are beyond contempt, but I suspect that’s not the only reason. Part of it has to do with the fact that they are in authority and we simply don’t like to submit. That’s one reason you can’t stand highway patrolmen stopping you. Notice my emphasis? We’ll celebrate their work as long as the blue light isn’t flashing through our back windshield. When it is, it becomes an authority thing, and we find it a whole lot harder to swallow.

So ladies, understand this morning: If you have a little trouble with this submission thing, you aren’t alone. Everybody, no matter their gender and no matter what their marital status has a problem with submission. It goes with the territory of being a sinner.

And, the truth is, you may feel really justified in refusing to submit yourself as a wife to your husband. After all, wasn’t Paul writing to a culture that needed to hear that message, and aren’t things different today. How can you take these hopelessly dated words and apply them to women in today’s America. Why should a “new millenium” woman submit to her husband, even if she is a believer?

Well, let’s try to answer that question right from this passage. Wives, why should you submit to your husbands? Well, first of all

DIV 1:

YOU SUBMIT BECAUSE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT SUBMISSION MEANS

EXPLANATION

Submission is subordinate.

In the first place, this submission is subordinate. There is an element of order here. Simply put, the wife is to allow the husband to lead. Now this isn’t new with Paul. No, it goes all the way back to the beginning.

Genesis 3:16 NKJV

To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”

In , God tells Eve after her sin that “your desire will be to your husband and he shall rule over thee.” If you want to speak of a sports analogy, the husband is the captain and he is to lead.

Submission is dependent.

Ephesians 5:24 NKJV

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

But this submission is also dependent. V. 24 ends by restating this principle of submission, then adds something: “So let the wives be to their husbands, notice in everything. Now I don’t believe that you should become extreme here but there is a definite idea that the wife is to be dependent. There is the idea that the decisions of the wife are to be surrendered to the leadership of her husband. The wife is to refuse to act independently. Or you could say it like this: The husband is the captain, he is to lead and the wife is to follow his leadership.

ARGUMENTATION

Is it just me, or does that sound, well, a little weird? Does that strike you as just a little strange? Feel like you’re waking up in Oz and hearing strange little voices singing “We belong to the lollipop guild?” Isn’t it interesting how, in just one generation, our whole perspective of the home has changed, so that now, even in a church like ours, speaking of submission sounds positively unrealistic. John MacArthur writes:

I recognize that the issue of authority and submission in the home is not popular. But do you know why? Because we’ve been brainwashed. If you have trouble accepting these principles, it’s because you are a part of a society that has been victimized by a godless, Christless, non-biblical philosophy of living perpetrated through the centuries.

What we’re seeing in our society today was also true of the philosophy behind the French Revolution, which was a humanistic, egalitarian approach to life. The French believed they could have a society with absolute equality—a classless, godless type of humanistic existence. That idea has been brewing for years. It is now coming to full brew, and our age is drinking it in: no classes, no sexes, no distinctions, no authority, no submission, and no humility. Our society has become victimized by this atheistic approach to life. And the church, instead of rejecting it, falls right into it by supporting equal rights for homosexuals, advocating women elders and woman preachers, and functioning on philosophical, godless hermeneutics that would rather reinterpret the Bible in terms of our present time than accept the authority of the Word of God.

As strange as it may sound to our ears, and as difficult as it may be for you to accept, the Bible is clear: Wives are to be under the authority of their husbands.

But, let me give you the positive side of this equation. This submission thing isn’t about knuckling under to an overbearing husband. To think that is to miss what’s really being said here.

EXPLANATION

Submission is mutual.

Not only is submission subordinate and dependent, it is also mutual. That idea carries over into this verse from v. 21. There Paul speaks to all believers and tells them to submit to one another. Interestingly, the verb “submit” in v 22 is supplied by the translaters.

Literally 5:21 and 22 read, “submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord, wives to your own husbands. The “submission” of v. 21 speaks of a relationship in which there is a give and take, a teamwork founded on humility and it is this verb “submitting” that is carried over into verse 22.

MacArthur, again, writes

In verse 22, wives are to submit to their husbands; but in verse 25, husbands are to submit to their wives. You may ask, “In what way?” Verse 25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” I don’t know of any greater act of submission than to die for someone—and that’s the way husbands are to treat their wives. A husband is to submit to his wife, not in the sense of abdicating his responsibility of leadership, but in the sense of getting under her to bear her burdens, carry her cares, meet her needs, and sacrifice his own desires to fulfill her needs.

The principle of mutuality simply means that the husband and wife are a team. It isn’t that the husband gets to call all of the shots and the wife just has to sit there like a mind-numbed robot and never have an opinion. There is a mutuality in this relationship that forbids the husband to take advantage of his wife or to treat her like a slave. They are a team. The submission that is called for here is simply a recognition on the part of the wife of who the captain of the team is.

When you understand biblical submission in the home, you come to see that it really has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with order. The husband is not placed in the position of leader because he is better in quality. No, when it come to quality the husband and the wife are equal. The husband is simply placed in the position of leader. This is the order that the family is to follow. And, on any team, order is important. On any team, the ability to lead and the willingness to follow is crucial.

ILLUSTRATION

SLIDE: Pic - Abraham Lincoln

On february 12, 1959, the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the distinguished poet and historian Carl Sandburg spoke of Abraham Lincoln before a joint session of Congress. H called his speech, “Man of Steel and Velvet,” and it is a great reminder of what a real leader is like, and why a real leader is needed. He said:

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.…While the war winds howled, he insisted that the Mississippi was one river meant to belong to one country.…

While the luck of war wavered and broke and came again, as generals failed and campaigns were lost, he held enough forces … together to raise new armies and supply them, until generals were found who made war as victorious war has always been made, with terror, frightfulness, destruction … valor and sacrifice past words of man to tell.

In the mixed shame and blame of the immense wrongs of two crashing civilizations, often with nothing to say, he said nothing, slept not at all, and on occasions he was seen to weep in a way that made weeping appropriate, decent, majestic.

Ladies, if your family is to stay together and be the kind of family that honors God and raises godly children, you must follow the right kind of leadership.

ARGUMENTATION

You might say, “Well, if I was married to Abraham Lincoln, I could! But I’m married to a wus!” In fact, American men received a stinging insult from British psychologist Dr. Joshua Bierer, who described them as a “bunch of weak-kneed, lily-livered sissies.” In a previous survey made in 1964, he had judged women to be at fault and declared American women to be domineering. But after further study, he changed his opinion. Here is what he said:

Before, I thought that the women wanted to rule the country. I changed that opinion. Women are compelled to take over, not fighting to take over. I thought the men who attended with their wives some seminars I spoke at would shoot me for my remarks—but instead they all agreed with me. It’s still the fatherless society. The husbands are not husbands. All the women are crying out for a strong man and he’s just not there. [Cited by Aubrey P. Andelin, Man of Steel and Velvet [Naperville, Ill: Caroline Hse., 1982],p. 12.]

APPLICATION:

And all this just leads me to two very crucial applications. First of all, if you are a husband here today and you are a believer in Jesus Christ, I urge you: Be a leader! Not a tyrant; not a slave-driver; not a prima-donna; not an ego-maniac. Be a leader. The symbol of the U.S. Army infantry (who are the footsoldiers who do most of the front-line fighting) The symbol of the infantry is a soldier with a rifle in one hand, helmet cocked, and head looking back behind him. The rifle is pointing forward, the other arm is giving a “Come on ahead” motion, and the leader is shouting back, “Follow me.” This symbol illustrates leadership-by-example, as this soldier calls his men to follow him into the heart of the battle.

Fathers, we are not to bark orders from the easy chair, we are to lead. We are to lead in the cleaning; We are to lead in the loving; We are to lead in the discussions;We are to lead in the devotions; We are to lead in the reconciliations; We are to lead in the discipline. Your wife can’t follow where you’re not leading. Her submission begins with your leadership!

But wives, sometimes husbands have backed away from leadership because whenever they try to stand up and lead, you cut them off at the knees. You veto their discipline with your own; you criticize their decisions to the children; you emasculate their manhood with your ridicule.

You say, but what if my husband is wrong, Rusty? What if he’s wrong? Am I supposed to follow him then? As long as he is not violating a clear command of Scripture, you are to submit yourself to your husband, even when you don’t agree. You say, Why? Well, the reason is very simple. The reason you are told to submit here is precisely for those times when you disagree. You see, when you agree, submission isn’t even an issue. You agree and just go ahead. It is when you disagree; it is when you have to swallow hard; it is when you feel as if he’s an idiot that you learn what it means to follow the Holy Spirit instead of your own emotion and learn to be subject to your husband.

That’s why this command immediately follows the command to be filled with the Spirit. It is impossible for you to do this if you’re not receiving power from the Holy Spirit to do it. So, ladies, are you submitted to your husband. Are you? The only way to reallly have the kind of home God wants you to have is for you to understand what biblical submission is and put it into practice.

Why? Why does it matter if you submit or not. Frankly, you’ve been kind of limping through and getting along ok. Why should you change your way of doing things and submit to your husband. Well in the first place, you submit to your husband because you understand what it means and then you submit to him:

DIVISION 2:

YOU SUBMIT BECAUSE YOU UNDERSTAND WHY SUBMISSION MATTERS.

EXPLANATION:

God only blessed Kathy and I with one child: a daughter. Quite honestly, as she was growing up, I began to wrestle with this “submission” thing in my own mind. As a student of the Bible, I realized that there were some passages of Scripture that had been misinterpreted down through the years because those reading it had failed to understand the context in which it had been written. After all first century culture was quite different from our own and there are some passages which must be viewed through the culture of that day if they are to be properly interpreted.

AS my daughter grew up I began to wonder whether the biblical instruction on male headship might just be something that should be left in the first century where it legitimately belonged. I felt that way till I studied more carefully. Then I began to understand. The whole idea of submission and headship is not cultural! It is spiritual! It is even found in the Trinity, itself. Time and again we see that Jesus subjected Himself to the Father. Even though He was equal, He does not exert that equality to refuse the divine order in which He has been placed.

Ephesians 5:23 NKJV

For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.

Eph

Which just leads me to the first reason that submission matters. Submission in the home matters because of the order it reflects. Notice in v 23 it says, “For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church”. This verse reflects that divine order. Completely stated it looks like this: Jesus submits to the Father; The Husband submits to Christ; The wife submits to the Husband. There is an order of leadership that is reflected in the home and which must be maintained in order for things to go as they should. In fact, the interruption of this order doomed you and I to become sinners, because it was in the Garden of Eden, the Bible says in -16, that the wife stepped out of her place and led her husband in partaking of the forbidden fruit and the whole human race was doomed. Now understand, I am not saying that she was more responsible for her bad choice than Adam was. No! He chose wrongly on his own just like she did. What I am saying is that when the order is interrupted and someone assumes authority they do not have, bad things happen! Submission matters because of the order it reflects.

Submission matters because of the order it reflects.

Submission matters because of the person it protects.

But it also matters because of the person it protects. V. 23 goes on to say of Christ, “and he is the Savior of the Body.” Christ not only saves us from a terrible fate in eternity, He nourishes and cherishes His Church, His Bride, in the difficult here and now. And that is the role, and it is the duty of the husband who is leading a submissive wife. He is to provide for her; he is to protect her; he is to cherish her. That’s the beautiful thing about this “submission” thing ladies: it comes with a whole lot of responsibility for that man you married. It is his job to do his best to protect you and care for you like Christ does the church. Submission matters because of the person it protects, wives. That person is you!

Submission matters because of the difference it projects.

But there’s one more reason submission matters. Not only because of the order it reflects and the person it protects. It matters because of the difference it projects.

Ephesians 5:22 NKJV

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

Notice back up in v. 22 that wives are told to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord.” Far from being a command that reflected the culture of their day, actually this passage on the home that Paul is writing was quite counter-cultural.

In the Jewish home, women were lightly regarded. To them, women were servants. In fact, when a Jewish man would get up in the morning, he would pray, “God, I thank You that I’m not a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.

In the Greek home, it was even worse. There was not a legal procedure for divorce in the Greek home because it wasn’t necessary. Wives only cleaned the house and had legitimate children. Demosthenes, an Athenian orator and statesman, 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 being faithful guardians for our household affairs.”

In the Roman home it was even worse. Divorce was not the exception but the norm. Jerome, an ancient writer, tells of one Roman woman who married her twenty-third husband—and she was his twenty-first wife! Marriage in Rome became nothing more than legalized prostitution. In other words, you could get married when you found someone you wanted, stay until you got tired of her, dump her, and then marry someone else. Sounds about like the U.S. doesn’t it?

But that was the condition to which Paul was writing. He wasn’t saying, “I want to remind you of what you already know when it comes to marriage.” He was saying, “Let me show you something radically different. Let me show you a situation where a Husband cares to much for his wife that he puts her needs ahead of his own. Let me show you a situation where a wife is so secure in that love that she is willing to serve with a glad heart!”

ILLUSTRATION

“A tyrannical husband demanded that his wife knuckle under to his ridiculous orders. She had to obey no matter how she felt or disagreed. Dissent was squelched; disagreement suppressed. In time that wife came to hate her husband as much as she hated his list of rules and regulations. But then, one day de died—mercifully as far as she was concerned.

SLIDE: Pic - Lady with paper

Some time later, she fell in love with another man and married him. She and her new husband lived on a perpetual honeymoon. Joyfully, she devoted herself to his happiness and welfare. One day she ran across one of the sheets of dos and don’ts her first husband had written for her. To her amazement she found that she was doing for her second husband all the things her first husband had demanded of her, even though her new husband had never once suggested them. She did them as an expression of her love for him and her desire to please him.”

That is the picture of the godly, Spirit-filled home: A godly home is a place where a submitted wife is served by a leading husband.

ARGUMENTATION:

But that’s the problem, Rusty: I don’t have one of those kinds of husbands! I mean if my husband was like Jesus, I could submit to him like I do to Jesus! But he’s not, so I’m not.

Well, it is interesting to me that you don’t apply the same standard to your boss at work. After all, he’s not like Jesus either, yet you submit to his leadership and you show him respect.

Hey, you don’t apply the same standard to the Patrolman who pulls you over for speeding. At least you don’t if you know what’s good for you. I mean, even though you might be angry at him for pulling you over, you don’t get out and give him a piece of your mind . . . at least I hope you don’t.

Why not? Well, I suspect there are a couple of reasons: In the first place, you’re afraid of the consequences, after all, getting fired and going to jail probably do not appeal to you. But I think it goes a bit beyond that. I think for most of you, there is a respect in your heart for the position that your boss holds and the position that the patrolman holds. Even though both of them may not treat you well, you still show them respect because their position deserves it.

Ladies, your husband has been placed in the position of leader by God. You are to respect the position regardless of how your husband treats you. Why? Because when you submit to your husband, you are submitting to God, because God has placed him in a position of authority in your home.

APPLICATION

And again, you may feel like you’re in a time warp right about now being asked to step back to a culture that you don’t understand and certainly don’t respect. The truth is, I am not asking you to adopt the values of the 1950’s; I am asking you to adopt the values of God’s Word.

I realize that, in our day, truly implementing this kind of a message seems difficult, so let me give you three simple suggestions.

Stop listening to the world and start listening to God.

First, if you want to become the submissive wife God called you to be, stop listening to the world and start listening to God. The messages you hear from the constant drumbeat of our media will contradict what God’s word tells you. Ladies, if you are to be biblical, you’re going to have to choose to listen to the right voice. You’ll have to choose to stop listening to the world and start listening to God.

Stop valuing independence and start depending on God.

In the second place, stop valuing independence, start depending upon God. The world tells you to be your own woman, to make your own way, to stop looking to your husband to define who you are. God’s word says that independence is another name for self-dependence and it was self-dependence that caused us to rebel against God in the first place. Ladies, don’t trust your own wisdom here. Don’t depend on yourself, depend on God.

Stop submitting to your husband and start submitting to God.

And then, you can stop submitting to your husband and start submitting to God. Now, I know that it may sound like I just contradicted myself, but please stay with me. The reason you struggle to submit to your husband is because you view him in isolation. You see him as he climbs out of bed in the morning and stumbles to the shower and you think, “Why should I submit to that?” What you must understand is that you are not submitting to him really. No, when you humble yourself and become subject to your husband, you are truly humbling yourself and becoming subject to God because it is God who has placed him in the position of authority.

So, ladies, I want to challenge you to try it. What if, for the next week, you truly treated your husband with biblical respect and submitted to him? I’m not saying don’t express your opinion and I’m not saying that you do anything unbiblical. I’m just saying that, when it was time to make a decision, and all opionions have been reasonably expressed, you just paused in your own heart and simply said to God, “Lord, I will submit to him because I want to submit to you.” What if just for the next week you were willing to so walk in the Spirit and as He gave you the power, you were willing to just pause in the middle of that heated discussion and simply say, “Lord, I don’t think he’s right, but I am willing to submit to his leadership, because I want to give you room to work on him and cause him to follow you.” What if you were willing to trust God that much?

VISUALIZATION

SLIDE: Pic - Radio Studio

One day I was interviewed on a secular radio station about my book on submission. Bob, the talk show host, informed me they had advertised the program heavily. There were a lot of people waiting for the phone lines to open up.

Once Bob introduced me, he immediately jumped in with the statement, “So, Bunny, you’ve come on the air today to teach wives they must submit to their husbands.”

Amused, I replied, “No, Bob, I’m here today to share that you’re a submitted man.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Well, Webster’s dictionary defines the word submit as ‘to yield,’ which is voluntary. Do you own this radio station?”

“No.”

“Do you have a general manager?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always agree with the programming assigned to you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then the very fact I’m speaking to you today means you are a submitted man.”

Bob burst into laughter and replied, “I guess you’re right!”

After we had conversed for a short time on the subject, he opened up the telephone lines. The first caller, Harriet, who had obviously been waiting for this moment, announced emphatically, “Hello, Bunny Bimbo! They need to take your book and burn it in a fire!”

Refusing to be disturbed by her outburst, I asked her how she defined submission. She equated it with subservience, physical abuse, and being asked to do something immoral. I explained that submission has gotten a bad name because it has been defined incorrectly and applied improperly.

Then I inquired, “Did you know feminists are submitted women?”

Harriet sounded as if she was gnawing on the telephone, but I continued, “Many feminist groups have an organizational flowchart. When the board meets to make decisions for their organization, they may disagree, but everyone knows the president has the right to make the final decision. Before they leave that room, those in disagreement must graciously submit because they know a ‘house divided against itself cannot stand.’ ”

The reality is, everyone submits to something. It’s never a question of, “Do you submit?” but rather, “To what or whom are you submitted?” As believers, it is imperative that we accept God’s Word as our organizational flowchart, whether we are male or female, single or married. As you learn more about the liberating principle of submission and apply it to your life, you’ll discover that submission really means “God intervenes.”

And the reason that so many marriages are in trouble today is because they have husbands who are not submitted to Christ and wives that are not submitted to husbands and God has no room to work in their marriages.

In the final analysis, that’s the point! The Holy Spirit moves in submissive hearts. Until, ladies, we learn to obey God’s Word and submit to the Holy Spirit and to the order He has established, He will not intervene in our homes!

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