Wives and Husbands

SERMON INTRO:

“We've been working our way through the book of Ephesians, seeing what God has for us there, and we've encountered probably one of the top three most controversial passages in all the New Testament, both outside the church and inside the church. We're jumping into the turbulent waters of the husband-wife relationship this morning.

This is part one of this passage. Next week we do part two. We will dig even deeper into some things we're not going to talk about much today.

I want to start this morning with some foundational assumptions with which we come to what we do on Sunday morning, opening the Bible and exegeting passages here. Our number one assumption is that God is Creator and Savior. He knows more than us. We assume God knows more than us and He has authority to tell us how to live.

Secondly, and connected to it, God has spoken, and these are His words. And we assume that's why we open the Bible. God does speak now through His words, and therefore, we are accountable to them, and therefore accountable to Him.

And then third, and this is important, God is good and we can trust Him. What He tells us is for our benefit and will bring satisfaction to our souls if we believe these things, and if we walk in faith according to His word. Every Sunday we come and hopefully, you come to your Bible reading and everything you do with these foundational assumptions and that's what we're doing this morning.

Now these things apply to this passage this morning, every bit as they apply to any passage of scripture.

We're called to walk in the wisdom of the Spirit, that those who are filled by the Spirit are those who sing and those who give thanks and those who live in proper submission to Christ and then to the God-given earthly order. God meant for his people to actually walk in these ways. These things are not just theoretical or merely aspirational. God meant them to be actual in our lives and God has empowered us to do these things.

Today we'll see that God's order for the marriage relationship is a blessed good. It is a blessed good and yet it's very countercultural though. This is a very difficult thing to practice. It is all part of following Jesus and what you do and how you act within a marriage relationship and all relationships, but especially in the marriage relationship, is a part of discipleship, it is a part of following Jesus.

I urge all of us to seek to put aside our preconceived notions this morning, which we all have them, about this passage or about relationships or whatever. And some of us have emotional triggers that will come to bear here this morning as well, and I pray and ask that we try to put those things aside so we can receive the goodness, the goodness of what God actually says in His Word.”

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