10-2-25 Ephesians Chapter 5:1822 25; 6:12 A Plan for Your Family: Gods vs. the Worlds Part 1

➡ This Bible study discusses the importance of marriage and family from a religious perspective. It emphasizes that unless one is called to be single, they should be married to avoid living in sin. The study also criticizes modern societal trends such as feminism and the breakdown of traditional family structures, arguing that these trends are damaging to society. It concludes by urging individuals to reassess their lifestyles and align them with religious teachings on marriage and family.
➡ The article discusses the decline of family values and its impact on society. It suggests that societal issues like increased mental illness, violence, and lack of self-control are due to the breakdown of the family unit. The author emphasizes the importance of the family in shaping a child’s character and behavior, particularly between the ages of 6 and 12. The article concludes by urging parents to focus on their children’s upbringing and to model good behavior for them to follow.
➡ The text discusses the importance of following the teachings of the Bible, specifically the book of Ephesians, for guidance in marriage and family life. The author shares a story of a woman who found direction in her marriage through these teachings. The text also delves into the contrast between being filled with the Holy Spirit and being drunk, using the example of Dionysus from Greek mythology. The author emphasizes that the wisdom from the Bible is the ultimate guide for life, not human opinions or other sources.
➡ The text discusses the importance of being guided by the Holy Spirit, rather than indulging in harmful behaviors like excessive drinking, as was common in ancient pagan worship. It emphasizes that true worship and communion with God comes from being filled with the Spirit, obeying God’s word, and living a life of gratitude and joy. The text also criticizes superficial attempts to improve relationships, arguing that genuine improvement comes from a heart filled with the Spirit, overflowing with praise and gratitude. It concludes by stating that a person filled with the Spirit is a joy to live with, and contributes positively to any relationship.
➡ A successful marriage is built on the foundation of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. It’s not about material gifts or personal desires, but about mutual respect and submission to each other. This means putting the other person’s needs and desires above your own. It’s a spiritual commitment that requires humility, thankfulness, and a willingness to submit to each other in devotion to Christ.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of living a Christian life, being obedient to God’s word, and being thankful for everything in life. It discusses the issues in society such as selfishness, lack of joy, and disregard for God’s word. The text also highlights the importance of submission in relationships, using the example of Christ’s submission to God’s will. It concludes by stating that before discussing the roles of individuals in a family, we must first understand the role of everyone, with Christ as the ultimate example of submission and selflessness.
➡ The text discusses spiritual equality in relationships, emphasizing that everyone is equal in faith regardless of their gender, race, or status. It also highlights the roles and responsibilities within a family and a church, where authority is given to certain individuals not to create disparity, but to ensure the smooth functioning of the unit. The text also discusses the concept of marriage, stating that it’s okay to be single, but marriage can help avoid immorality. It concludes by emphasizing the mutual duties and responsibilities of a husband and wife in a marriage.
➡ The text discusses the importance of mutual respect and submission in a marriage, emphasizing that both partners have obligations to each other. It also highlights the role of parents in teaching their children, rather than relying on the community or schools. The text ends with a prayer, thanking God for guidance and asking for continued understanding and protection.

Welcome. This is our Thursday night Bible study. We are dealing with the book of Ephesians we started last week in a particular shift in focus, transitioning from chapter five into chapter six by looking at the elements of the family. Okay. And right, wrong or indifferent. I chose to look at the female first and for a whole series of reasons. I’m just going to go into some of those and I’m migrating through the family tonight and through next week. And then I’m going to come back and I ch. I’m going to change this. I am now going to look at the responsibilities of every individual in the family as sort of like a closure to looking at the family.

So there was, there was one point that I hit on last week that there was a question after going through the session about what I meant. And then Misty had a conversation with me and thought that I needed to clarify this a lot better, which I’m going to do. My comment was is it’s God’s design for everybody to be married unless you’re called to be single. And the question came up, well, okay, I’ve been married for 60 something years. If my wife died, I don’t want to get remarried. Well, my point in all of this is to say this.

God’s plan for you is to be married if you’re not called to be single. Because if you’re called to be single, you’re going to abstain from sexual activities, because that’s the calling. If you’re not sustained. Sustained from sexual activities and you are not married, you’re living in sin and therefore your prayers are not going to go answered at all. That’s the reason why God said, unless you’re called to be single, you need to be married. Okay? So women, which I focused on last week, you lead the pack. I don’t care if men go out looking for a female companion.

You’re the bait and you’re also the hook. You’re the one that this whole thing has been designed around from the time of the garden. Remember, Eve’s whole name was harlot and prostitute. Why? Because she needed to get Lucifer with her to create this host body system and in doing so created this sexual activity in this world. So women, you’re at the center of this. And if you are the, you know, one doing the activity of hooking guys to your bedroom, you need to stop and you need to get married because you’re not going to live a single life.

You’re not called to be single, you’re called to be married, but you don’t want to be married. You want to live in sin because you don’t want the commitment, man. Same thing goes with you. It doesn’t matter. Don’t take this wrong. It does not matter if you’ve been married a hundred years. If you’re still alive and you’re going to go out and chase women, you need to get married. That’s the whole crust of the conversation last week that caused a little bit of, I don’t know, consternation because everybody said I don’t want to get married. Well, okay, then change your lifestyle.

Because if you’re not called, operative word, called to be single, you’re automatically called to be married. That’s how it works. So as you look at your self assessment and apply all of this to your life, you need to understand the basis of what is meant by marriage and what is meant by being single again. You’re called to be single. That’s a calling. Just like to salvation. Remember I said every calling after salvation is a process of being called over and over and over again using the same process. You’re called to be single. If you’re not called to be single, you are de facto being called into marriage and waiting upon God to sing you that companion.

And it’s all based upon how you live your life. You can’t say I’m called to be single and go out and have your one night stands. However often you want to do that, that’s not called to be single. And if you’re doing that, you’re living in a sinful life that is going that you are just completely into the world. Okay? And we’ve already gone through the conditions of what all of that happens when you do that. All right? Sin, unforgiven sin leads to what? Inequities. Inequities lead into death. In whatever area of your life you’re sinful and you’re not willing to get receive true forgiveness.

Okay, now what’s true forgiveness? You can’t go out on a one night stand and then come home and says, oh my gosh, I screwed up, God forgive me. And then three days later go do the same thing. Oh God forgive me. And then three days later go do the same thing. That is not repentance. Repentance is 180° opposite direction from where you’re at. So I just wanted to go through that for clarification purposes because I did not want to have anybody misunderstand exactly what the scripture was meant to say in last week’s discussion. So let’s get going in this week’s and our focus is going to be this week and next again on the planet for the family.

And it, it is, it’s the. We’re going to look at the family from the view of God versus the view of the world. And after next week, before we get into the children, I am going to throw a session in for us men, okay. Which should be very revealing as well. So no one needs to prove to us that we may be watching the death of really the germ cell of civilization called the family. All of the signs that you see around you are abundantly clear as to what is going on. We could drag out all kinds of statistics.

I almost did that to indicate the dire situation of the families in our culture. We are constantly looking at the parade, in the media of divorce, sexual rebellion, abortion, sterilization, delinquency, infidelity, homosexuality, women’s liberation, child’s rights. And you can go on and on and on for about a hundred others. All of that destroys the family. Now, women, you that are seeking women’s lead, you’re out of line. You’re out of line. You need to get find a way to get back into your lane because the cycle of raising the awareness of feminism to the point of equality is not scriptural.

That is a world’s proposition for you to tear you and your family apart. Now, that has been continually persuaded for us for at least, oh, 20 years. More than that, let’s go back to the 60s, 40 years. We’re watching today the formation of the rope that strangles the family to complete death. Remember, we can’t change this society unless you first change your home. And you can’t change your home unless you first change your family. Many basically are doing this process very happily. In a book titled the Death of the Family, a British physician suggests doing away with the family completely because he says it is a primary conditioning device for a Western imperialistic worldview.

Kate Millet, who is a very prominent feminist, wrote a book called Sexual Politics. And in it she writes that the family must go because it oppresses and enslaves women. The people who hold these perspectives or real aggressive, forceful, forthright, domineering, and they find their most fertile ground for the propagation of their viewpoints in the universities and colleges of our society. And consequently, they are in the process of significantly re educating your children who eventually fall into the category of the leaders and movers and shakers of the society to come. Indoctrination. They’ve been doing it since the 60s or before the 60s.

I want to go back to the 50s. I’m. I’m selected the next subject on the Bridge of Truth coming out probably in three weeks, because I need the writing time on McCarthyism. Why is that important? Because that set the stage of a governmental official bringing forth to the people what was happening. And it’s going to be very enlightening to see how all of this was put together, was diverted, who did what all this stuff. Because that is exactly how, if we don’t get a handle on it, it’s going to happen again. Now, Mrs. T. Grace Atkinson of the National Organization of Women seeks to eliminate all sex, all marriage, all motherhood, and all love.

I would say that’s pretty fatal. She said marriages legalize servitude and family relations are the basic for all human oppression. What a warped view. But in many cases, it is the reigning view among the thinkers, the professors, the teachers in our society, and in some cases, you. Why? Because you. I get all kinds of comments about how you’re struggling with feminism. On the other hand, others who are watching the death of the family see it as a disaster, a virulent disease. In fact, if the family cannot function, who will raise, who will socialize, and who will moralize the next generation? That happens to be your children or your grandchildren.

Dr. Aman Nicolai II of Harvard Medical School sees the trend to destroy the family as a devastating trend. He points to married women, we children working outside the home, the tendency for families to move frequently, almost consistently, 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 those things he says, are threatening the very life in which we live. Now, I’m going to quote him. He says this. These trends will incapacitate the family. It will destroy its integrity and cause its members to suffer such crippling emotion, emotional conflicts that they will become an intolerable burden to society.

Oh, my gosh, couch potatoes. Welfare eats. Oh, they want to go out and cause all kinds of havoc in your cities. They want to draw all their paychecks from the government. And then they want to make their voices known in society of how all of this is taking place. So what about the future? First, the quality of the family life will continue to deteriorate. That’s going to be a fact. Things are going to get worse before they get better. It’s going to produce a society with a higher incidence of mental illness than ever before. 95% of our hospital beds may be taken up by mental ill patients.

Remember sin unforgiveness does what cause illness leads to inequities to death. That is what’s going on here, guys. This illness will be characterized by a lack of self control. We can expect that the assassination of people and 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 widespread perversion. Frankly frightening picture. And we are watching it being painted right before our eyes. There’s no question about the fact that the family is under a major assault and that people want to redefine the family in absolutely any terms they want but what God has defined it as.

There’s no question that we are watching a generation of young people re rising up who have no socialization skills and no moral sense at all. They sit in front of a computer. How in the world are they going to be able to become social citizens of this world? They’re not. That was another input to society is to get the people hooked on games which gets them out of books, gets them out of the Bible, puts things in their head by the games that they’re playing which destroys them individually. Destroying their childhood destroys the family. There’s even pleasure in shooting people incidental to you just for the sheer thrill of killing.

Just go look at Antifa. It’s in your streets. Social ologists, psychiatrists, analysts and so called marriage and family experts. Psychiatrists and the rest are scrambling all over the place to try to come up with some kind of solution. Oh my grace. And they have been doing that now for a couple of decades with absolutely no impact on the slide. They’re running around telling you the same thing that’s going on. You’re paying them five, six hundred dollars an hour and you’re not getting better. Why? Because you’re not understanding the truth. Now you know what I know? Some parents got their kids in therapy and their grandkids in therapy or whatever.

You know what? That did not happen in the Bible. That happened by man. Nothing 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’re going to destroy the total society. Now I can believe in some cases it’s a fascinating time in one sense to be alive right in the middle of this and other things. I can Say it’s going to be a total hell for those that don’t understand where they need to get their truth from.

The family is. Is certainly at the head of the endangered species list. Much more dangerous of the elimination of some species that occupy people’s attention. And at that point we inter, interject, can the family be saved? Now, I suppose for the sake of some people we should ask, should the family even be saved? Is it worth fighting for? And if so, how do we do it? I would add something to that. The church has made some efforts certainly in the last 10 years. Certain churches have. The last 20 years, there has been a great preoccupation on this subject.

Why? Because the church was losing members. They had to focus on something. And the only thing they could focus on at the heart of all the church is the family. If they could have done anything else, they probably would have because they’ve not been very, very successful at the family over this period of time. You could go to Christian bookstores today and literally see aisles and aisles and aisles of books on marriage and a family. There have been endless sermons preached at churches and messages and teaching tapes and seminars and conferences. And you could go on to any deal out there were the issues of the family.

But that too doesn’t seem to make much difference. Why? It’s not the truth. God has an answer to should the family be safe? And God has an answer to can the family? You say, in fact, the Bible makes it very clear that when it says marriage is the grace of life and children are 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. You see, family is still the heart and soul of all of human existence. And family as it is defined by God 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 where love exists. It is the place of socialization, it is the place of morality, it is the place of security. It is where you build your confidence. Yeah. Some time ago I was talking with a Ph.D. and he, he graduated from USC, particularly emphasizing in 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 ages 6 and 12 when everything from foundational is either put down or not put down.

And those are the determinative years in what that child will become. Why should mothers stay at Home. Because it’s in these affirming years that the mother teaches the child what it needs to formulate its character of life. Now you can look at the pattern of life in all of those years and predict almost perfectly where, wherever they will be antisocial in their behavior or whether they will socialize in a normal way. When you leave to go to work, you have no idea what your children are doing. You come home, there’s no interaction with your children. You say, did you do your homework? Yeah, I did my homework.

Okay, thanks. You don’t get them out to socialize at the family dinner or whatever you might do. I remember growing up that we, even though I came from a very estranged family, the one thing that we did do is we had dinner together. Might not have been a good dinner, might not have been a good conversation, but we had dinner at one time at home, around 8am Parents, you buy fast food for your children and just give it to them and say, go eat. Here’s your food. You’re more concerned about you than you are about your children.

Now we can all see the roots of criminal behavior in that period of time as well. Criminal behavior is, is put into a child’s psyche before the age of 10. And parents, what are you doing? Now that makes a lot of sense that the secular world would pick out that time, because even in the case of Jesus, there was an illustration of the fact that when a Jewish child reached the age of 12, what he was ready on his own to be a son of the law. Matter of fact, by age 12 or 13, in the ancient, ancient world, they were married.

Now I’ve talked many times about the fact that God has basically designed parents to strengthen and build up children between the ages of 6 and 12 so they can cope with puberty that starts about that time. And if they, if they don’t have the foundations of morality and they don’t have the affirmations and self discipline and self control that is builing during those years ages 6 to 12, then they run amok. When their passions take over during that period of time, their parents are not even real. There’s a divine pattern for how the family is to deal with this, how a marriage is to set a model to be followed.

Guys, listen to this self assessment. A marriage is to be the bottle for the children to follow. What is your marriage like? Or what is your single life like where you’re trying to raise kids singly and you’re never concerned about what they do, only about what you can engage in. You Know what? Marriage is also to be fulfilled and happy and rewarded. And when we look for that model, we need to go on no further than the word of God. It’s that laid out all for you in scripture. It’s not that complicated and it’s not that difficult.

I’ve had many conversations and I have seen many families and I have seen women with kids just hanging off of them. And particularly one lady, she wanted to tell me she was struggling 10 years ago to find some direction in her marriage. And she wanted to thank me for some of the teachings that she had listened to and the books that she had read on this subject. And she said that she was that the teachings 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 very long trip in very difficult weather to express her gratitude to me at a seminar that I held in Phoenix, Arizona.

And I say this all the time, it’s not me, it’s the truth of the Word of God that makes the difference. 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 now. It’s 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 at 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 AD the Apostle Paul wrote the letter and sent it off to the saints who were at the church of Ephesus. It may well be too that the original manuscript didn’t say Ephesus, because one letter sent out to one of the churches in that area was circulated through all churches. So the, the addressing of the letter might not have even been to Ephesus in the first place. 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 five and verse 18, you begin to get the flow that leads you to verse 22 and following where the issues of family and marriage area needs address. And we’re going to talk about a lot of things tonight. Next week we’re going to touch on a number of subjects and interact with the divine revelation from God. But we’ll consistently come Back to Ephesians 5 as our home base because it’s a perfect launching pad for what we’re going to look at. And you got to keep in mind, this is not a human opinion.

This is not my opinion. I am not here to give you my opinion. I really don’t value my opinion at all. You. I don’t give you my opinion on various subjects anyway. All I want to do is show you what the word of God says and the applicable wisdom that comes from it. I won’t let the word of God speak to you. This is the last word on the issue. We don’t need experts and psychiatrists and philosophers and analysts and marriage counselors and family people. We don’t need any of that. Why? Because we can go right to the word of God and get the truth.

We’re not looking for tricks or gimbals. We’re looking for truth that can become. Become part of our married lives. Now, in this epistle, 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 prom primus. And let’s begin there. Okay, we’ve done this for the last four weeks. Be not drunken with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. That really is the key that unlocks all of the rest of the conditions of understanding what marriages.

From the great principal flows. The instruction to the wife in verse 22 went over that last week. The instruction to the husband in verse 25, we’re going to go over that in two weeks. The instruction to the children in 6:1, it’ll be after going over what the man’s responsibility is and the instruction as to the parents as a collective whole in Ephesians 6, verse 2. All that marriage and family teaching flows out of the principle in chapter 5, 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 is, as you see it there, do not get drunk with one, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Do not get drunk, but be filled. Okay, that’s the opposite. 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 of being filled with the spirit? Well, what is the point here? When a person is drunk and they don’t have to Be drunk on wine, they get drunk on whatever it is of an attitudinal basis.

They have lost control of themselves and they wander around in and out of control kind of behavior. Is he saying, I want you to be out of control, but not with wine, but with the Holy Spirit? What is he really saying here? What he’s saying is I want you to yield up the control of your faculties, all of them, to the Holy Spirit rather than to one makes such a comparison. The answer is found a bit of the historical context. And let me begin by giving you some background. Ephesus, of course, was an Asian minor and was dominated by Hellenistic or Greek culture, called Hellenistic from the Greek word Helen, which means Gentiles.

But the Greeks believe that the great God Zeus, of course, had a patheon of gods and Zeus was one of the formidable ones. They believe that the great God Zeus had given birth to a son and that it occurred in a very unusual way. They believe that the child was snatched from the womb of its mother. And the mother’s name in Greek mythology is Simeo S E M E L E And the child was snatched from the womb of Simeon while Simeon was being incinerated because she got too close to the burning glory of Zeus. Now, I don’t know how Zeus produced this child in her in 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. Guys, this is what they teach in philosophy in college. The child God who had not come to the full term was then sewn into the thigh of Zeus and kept there until time to be born. Now does that make sense that stretches your imagination? I better. 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 titanium 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 and cooked it and ate it. But Zeus found the heart, according to mythology, revived it, and it was reborn as Dionysus. Now, if you’ve ever studied Greek mythology, you come across the name Dionysus quite frequently. So Zeus found the heart, he swallowed it, and eventually the heart formed into the personality of Dionysus and was reborn. Zeus then blasted the Titans with lightning, incinerating all of Them whom? Ashes all and strong ashes all over humanity. So that is their creation story like this.

Dionysus was then really someone’s beyond humanity because all of humanity just rose out of the ashes and of the Titans. And Dionysus along with Zeus was a God. Now Dionysus then, according to Greek mythology, spawned a religion, a religion of ecstasy, of emotionalism and the diocesanian cult. This religion of ecstasy and emotionalism, then frenzied kind of religion saturated the Greek and Roman worlds. The Dia, the Dan cult was a debauched form of worship and a popular and dominant form during the Roman Empire. It’s existing today. Why? Because the Roman Empire is just now being taken out of power.

The whisperers, I mean, I’m sorry, 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 Dbacco and that was drunkenness. In fact, if. If you ever circulate in the Middle east or in the ancient Roman world, you will see Dionysus associated with grapes. And where there is a statue of a tribute of Dionysus, some monument to Dionysus is always marked out by clusters of grapes because he became known as the God of light. The Greek name of Dionysus became the Roman language, Latin Bacchus.

And Bacchus in the Roman is the Roman God of wine. When people engaged in these unbelievable drunken brawls, they were called Baccararians feast. And if you have studied any of that, that’s a familiar term even today. Take your dictionary out and look up the term bacchanali. I’m sorry, let me spell this because it’s a different, different pronunciation and I’m going to screw it up. B, A, C, C, H, A, N, A, L, I, A. And it will say a drunken origin. The key element then in pagan worship was drunkenness. That’s how they got their inhabitations 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 conscious. That’s how they dispelled their anxiety and fear and guilt over such vile behavior as they engaged in it. That’s how they induced a kind of godly godliness that substituted for real joy and just catapulted them into their kind of horrible behavior. They did it by getting drunk and losing all of their inhibitions. So they believe that drunkenness was simple, simply the door into ecstasy, the door into religious expression, and that such drunkenness elevated the believer, the worshipper, to total communion with the deities.

So drunkenness was the key to worship, to communion with the deities. The more inebriated they were, the more likely they were to get into the ecstasy and emotional state that spoke about these horrifying, often demonic kind of activities. 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, or not controlled by a drunkenness of any other state of mind, but controlled by the Holy Spirit.

The parallel to this is in Colossians 3:16, where in saying be filled with the Spirit, Paul says, let the Word of Christ dwelling you richly. Because that’s really the same thing. When the Word of Christ dominates your life and you respond in obedience to it. There’s that word again, guys. It’s the same as being controlled by the Holy Spirit. Well, you gotta say, well, who’s the author of the Holy Spirit? The scripture? Well, that happens to be the guy. That’s the Holy Spirit himself. Obedience to the Word is being filled with the Spirit. It’s not some kind of mystical experience.

It’s not some kind of static thing. It’s not something that comes over you and catapults you into some unconscious behavior. Remember all of these religions out there that think that you can just make your own state of mind and go berserk. That is not this. 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 blubber. It’s not going out of yourself or being beyond control. It’s simply to be continually controlled by the Spirit who does it through the Word. And that means we are obeying the truth.

Now, this is the point we have to start at whatever we are 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 society really has no chance and no hope of success. They are not regenerated. They don’t know God. They have no hope of getting it right than the people at the feast in Rome did. It’s not going to happen. A right kind of marriage relationship and a right kind of family relationship is built in on a redeemed, regenerated, transformed life, empowered and event, and energized by the Holy Spirit in what obedience to the Word of God.

It doesn’t happen. You can’t have your demon sitting there on your self assessment list saying, oh, this, I’ve got to check this. I’ll check. I gotta, I gotta take care of these things. If you don’t take care of those things, you’re not going to achieve anything else. Now look at verse 19 and 20. Speaking to one another in psalms and in hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. Now, the spirit of God controls life. Where there is a life devoted to the Word of God and obedience to the word of God, there is praise.

That’s the first thing that happens. There is praise. And I suppose we could conclude that a worshiping life, a praising life, comes from a heart that is filled with joy. It this simple. You, you give an obedient person, obedient to the word of God, to me, and I’ll show you a positive, happy, praising, worshiping person whose heart is filled with songs and hymns and spiritual songs, who are singing and making melody in his heart to the Lord. And I’ll show you a person who can get along with anybody. I remember growing up, we had a black lady who was close to our family, take care of us.

Not just me and my sister, but all of the Pew clan who live close by. Children of grade school age. She took care of us. And oh my gosh, when we came into the house, not only was she singing, but she was singing at the top of her lungs and she was dancing away doing whatever she’s doing, cooking, cleaning, whatever. And it was very. It was just something you just wanted to jump in and enjoy yourself until you made a man an old guys. She’s worse than a tiger. I don’t know how many times I got my mouth washed out with soap.

I can still taste it today. Because you know, see, they are a lust and wonder, love, praise because they are worshiping the Lord all the time. Verse 20 adds, Always giving thanks for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father. Now it’s very hard to argue with somebody who is thankful for everything. Think about it. You find a person who is filled with the spirit. That person is going to be a happy person. That person is going to be a thankful person, a per. A person who is being the word of God.

A person filled with joy, praise and worship. A person who has nothing but thanks for everything God has done is going to be wonderful to live with. Why? Because that’s the bottom line. We’re really talking here. Not about some Kind of gimmicks to make your marriage work. Oh, psychiatrist. Oh, let’s. Let’s go. Let’s. You guys need to develop some cards and write what you think about or the questions you want. And then you shuffle them and you have card read night and answer night. Oh, my gosh. We are not talking about the kind of things that I read about all the time.

And you remember some times, you know, throughout your life, you run across these. These things. You might say, well, you know what? Here’s a good suggestion. If you really want to have a great relationship in life, go buy her a teddy bear. A nice little soft teddy bear and bring it home. Rack it up in tin foil and stick it in the back of the freezer. On the teddy bear, before you wrap it in the tin foil, stick and stick it in the back of the freezer, Write words of romance and love, and then just stick it in the back there, you know, behind that old lasagna.

And Sunday, you really don’t know when that day might be when she’s looking for the olagna and she pulls that thing out and unwraps it and finds a frozen teddy bear with a romance note. Well, I tell you, that story is a story out of a psychology book. Are you kidding? If you have a bad marriage, it’s better to get hit with one that’s not frozen. My suggestion would be to leave it thawed just in case. Stick it in the closet. You can’t repair an age like that. You’re not going to be able to make a meaningful relationship like that.

You know what? I hear suggestions. All that said, take your wife on a date. Have a date night. You guys need to get together, take her out to dinner. You know what? That’s all well and good, but the act of doing that is not going to repair a marriage. There’s only one way to cultivate a right relationship with anybody. Think about work, think about your children, think about your siblings, think about your whoever. There’s only one way to repair, and that’s to cultivate a right relationship with anybody. That’s to be filled with the spirit of God, filled with praise and gratitude to God, so that our 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. I’ll be frank with you. It should be almost impossible to start a fight with you because you’re just so blessed, so full of praise, so full of thanks to full overflowing grace of God, to Be 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. But that’s where it needs to start. See, out of those things flows another element that’s identified in verse 21.

And be subject to the. 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 isn’t talking about wives to their husbands, by the way, it’s talking to both of you. And I hear, I’ve heard throughout my marriage, oh, you know, whatever. This isn’t talking about children to the parents. It’s talking about everybody. But this is the groundwork, the foundation of what makes a marriage work. This is what makes meaningful marriages happen. It’s a spiritual issue.

It’s not a matter of cleverness. You can’t think your way through a marriage problem because it won’t go away. It’s not a matter of scheduling events. It’s not a matter of buying him or her gifts or cooking their favorite meal. Those might be nice little things to do time to time, but with two people who live according to the standards that we just read, it wouldn’t matter if you did those or didn’t do them. See, that’s not the stuff that makes for a lifelong joy in a relationship, but submission does. And see, we’re talking about a genetic kind of submission.

Oh wow, genetic. Where did that, what does that apply to? A change in DNA. A regenerated self self assessment without regard for any specific relationship within the context of a family. The word submit, by the very, by the way is very graphic. It’s hypotes in Greek it means to rank under. To rank under. It’s a military term we’re called on to place ourselves under each other. Mel’s the head of the house as Christ is the head of the church. The church is the woman and they are together as one. Here’s what makes for meaningful relationships. Someone controlled by the Holy Spirit of God, obedient to his Word, filled with joy and praise and thanksgiving to God for every single thing in their life and eager to submit to their will to everybody else now.

So thanksgiving to God for every single thing in their life, meaning good or bad, and eager to submit their will to everybody else. That’s what we’re after here. Say we’re called into a marriage. Okay? You just don’t go get married because you want to. Which is the majority of the cases that we all did. We are called on to a place ourselves under each other. The principle is dominant in scripture by the way, expressing the idea of humility, expressing the idea of meekness. Go back to Ephesians 4 that just got dropped in. It’s all over the New Testament.

First Corinthians 16:16. Submit yourselves to everybod. Hebrews 13:70. Submit yourselves to the leaders of the church. First Peter 2:15, 2:13. Rather, submit yourselves to the, to the laws of the land. 1st Peter 5:5. Submit yourself to those older than you are. James 4:7. Submit yourself to God in here. Submit yourselves to each other. This is the idea family of what humility is. See? And you can’t have salvation without humility. If you want to go back to John 13, you can look at that sometime. But it’s a marvelous illustration where Jesus washed the disciples feet and then he said to them, I want you to love each other just as I have loved you.

And how did he love them enough to humble himself, although he was the incarnate God and washed 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 two, say 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 themselves. Oh guys, that’s just the standard. And now since you know the standard and you’re doing your self assessment, if you don’t achieve that standard, then you’re held at a higher accountability.

Because now you know what you got to do. See the standard is fair. Whoever your life with is more important than you are their belongings, their desires, their needs, their life is more important than your own. You’re to set your life aside for them. Oh feminism. Yeah right. You want to be equal? That doesn’t work man. You want to use your wife as a doormat. That doesn’t work. See 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, became obedient unto death on the cross.

Now listen, experiences and families are to fulfill the divine purpose. Not your purpose, not your sexual desires, not your lust of the time that you’re in the bedroom. Not like that does not constitute marriage. Marriages and families are to fulfill the divine purpose. These are the issues at stake. And it becomes a matter of your spiritual commitment. Say if you’re willing to be obedient to the word of God, thus allowing the spirit of God to control your life. If your hearts are filled with such overwhelming joy that you sing songs about God, spiritual songs about our own conversion, hymns about the gospel, our hearts are consistently filled with melody.

If we’re thankful for everything, if we’re willing to submit ourselves to one another in the fear of Christ that is our, that is out of devotion to Jesus Christ by the way, then we are going to have meaningful relationships. But apart from unselfish devotion to God, an 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 in this lifetime. So you see, because the mindset today, the current trend today is self centered pride. I’ll 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 total individualism. Your rights, your freedoms, your liberties, your self esteem. All of that individualistical thinking is absolutely deadly to any meaningful marriage and family relationships. In getting the rights that the humanist has sold us, in gaining the rights of individual freedom, we have lost the privileges, privileges, access, abilities of any meaningful relationships. Say the price for your sought out freedom in the end is going to be isolationist and loneliness. People become like objects, they’re 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. When you see your wife or your husband as a burden, an obstacle is in their path towards personal freedom and fulfillment. Seeing children as a barrier to the fulfillment of their overwhelming selfishness. The Bible is saying this. If that is the way you choose to live, you can kiss meaningful relationships goodbye.

Families, meaningful marriages, home so essential to society and its preservation. Listen guys, we are so essential to real fulfillment in life and only possible where you have unselfish attitudes, where personal desires are consistently sacrificed for others. And if that is not happening, self assessment. There cannot be any meaningful relationships. You cannot have the collision of two independently selfish individuals. It ain’t gonna happen. And try to build a relationship. It will be a total struggle to get that done. And it is a battle of people struggling to humble themselves. But see, that is the essential foundational point in this process.

That’s the key to all relationships. To be filled and to be speaking to one another in psalms, in hymns, with spiritual songs, to be saying thanks and to be submissive. Just those four things. That is the foundation. That is where you have to start this whole thing on. Building a family, a marriage, a home. Where you have people who walk in the spirit, fulfilling the word of God in obedience to the truth. Will you have people with a song in their heart and a song on their lips? Where you have people who. Who say thanks for everything that comes into their life, both good and bad? Where you have people who are eager, in fact they are in a hurry to take every occasion to humble themselves and submit themselves to those around them.

Only then will you have meaningful relationships. See, that’s how you build them. I look at my marriage to Misty much, much different than I ever did in the previous ones. We have our differences, we have our arguments. 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 do we do that, or who was in charge of this, or what kind of processes and methods did we use. Say, I look at this totally different. It’s simple, simply a question that has to start in my heart.

Am I committed to. To obedience to the Holy Spirit of God? Am I committed to the controlling influences of the word of God? And am I going to be faithful in living out a Christian life? Because if that’s not there, we’re not going to have a good man. You see, you can’t have it both ways. You’re either filled with joy and happiness or you’re filled with ugly and cantankerous and unkind and ungracious? Or do you look upon your heart and see that it’s filled with joy, that it touches everybody around you and it makes you attractive and makes everything that your husband, spouse, believe and love attraction to them? Ask a question.

Are you thankful for everything in life? Every difficulty, every misunderstanding, every mistreatment that occurs in a marriage are with your family? Are you going to be thankful for that and accept all of that with joy in your heart? Are you going to submit yourself to that? Are you going to get into their lives and do what pleases them and not yourself? See, those are the kind of issues that have to be addressed in any relationship. And if you don’t start there, the rest is just hopeless endeavor. Now if you look at that and you look at our society, you can see that there is just no way, no way that this society is going to achieve that end result.

See you. We have people consumed with inequity. They’re not interested in the word of God. They’re 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. Yeah, people who have basically no joy are 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 their hearts aren’t filled with overwhelming joy bursting out all the time. Now I don’t see society like this.

I see it as a very depressed society. I see it as one that basically cannot ever in this current environment without going through generation after generation after generation getting released from what has been allowed to be pre programmed into us by our own admission. Society’s never thankful. They never had enough. They have enough. They aren’t willing to submit anything to anybody else. Selfish, focused on individualism. They want to run their own agenda. There’s just no chance that the society is going to make it. And you have on top of that the ideological lies, the fortresses of human speculation that are being erected against the word of God as Paul described it in Second Corinthians 10.

And we think, we, that we live in a separate world from what the Bible truths are. I’m just living in another chapter of that. See these ideologies that have to do with humanism and sexual freedom and lesbianism and homosexuality and all the things that destroy a family. This ideology that you don’t need, if, if you got this ideology, you don’t need to get married. Say this is what I was talking about at the first of this. You can just have sex till you’re tired of sex and then you can go find somebody you are not tired of and have some more of it and you continue that process in living in sin which is going to what, become iniquity and lead to death.

The idea that you can impregnate women all over the place and just leave them with children in every direction, to some men that’s just fine, that’s wonderful. And oh by the way, women, you accept it too. All of those ideologies compounded with this personal, selfless, leave nothing but disaster Absolute disaster. Now this whole idea of submission, I want to cover just a little bit further. First Corinthians, chapter 11. Yeah, we’re going to get into more of this in two weeks when we actually talk about the husbands. Well, you know, for some of you who can’t deal with this idea of being submission submissive to each other, you find it difficult because you always feel somebody needs to be in charge.

Who’s in charge? Christ is in charge. You become one in Christ is in charge. Neither of you are in charge. Matter of fact, you rent your kids for 18 years or thereabouts and they go their merry way based on whatever you taught them or didn’t teach them. And then you have heartache the rest of your life, the majority of you. So God has designed authority into the family. And in First 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 the woman and God is the head of Christ.

Now we’re not saying that there is no authority in the family. There is because it’s just said right there to us. There is authority at the father level and there is authority over the children at the parent level. We under most of us understand that. I can’t make that factual statement emphatically. We’re not talking about the responsibility of leadership, by the way. 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 and the Lord. When it comes to children, what we are talking about here is this kind of mutual submission that says, although I may be your leader and your protector and your provider, your longings and your heart desires, your needs compel me more than my own.

See, that’s what creates the balance that is necessary in building strong relationships. I would not be advocating my responsibility as a husband to lead, preserve, to protect, to care for m. I’m not advocating my responsibility as a father to provide for my children or my grandchildren now, to protect them, to give them direction and leadership and discipline and build self control into them. Because I do that. I do that with a passion in my heart being the recognition that this best serves their needs and whatever other needs they would have. I would even desire to meet to the sacrifice of my own if my heart is right.

And I am speaking that as anyone would say. The perfect picture of this is right there in verse three 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, oh, you can’t have redemption unless you have salvation, regeneration, transformation. You can’t get to redemption because redemption doesn’t happen until you die and go to heaven. See, you can’t even get there. Christ submitted himself to the purposes and plan of the power of the Father.

And ever since 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. He submitted himself to the purposes of the Father. And he came and committed really, what was the greatest act of unselfish love ever? Dying on that cross to satisfy whom? The Father. In order to provide full payment for your soul. See, Christ can also satisfy us. See, he was the Lord over mankind, and he was the silent 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 that we need to have. See, there’s no question that he’s the head of the man and yet has the servant of man. A picture there in verse three is a marvelous one. He was equal with God, and yet he submitted with God. He was over man, and yet he submitted to man and to the need of man. Go back to the feet washing of the disciples.

He stood to meet man at the deepest point of his knee. On both counts we see the illustration of the submissiveness of Jesus to the Father’s will and to the need of man. Even though great anguish and drops of blood. He said, not my will, but thine death. So you remember that the Scripture says, be kindly affectionate, one to another, with brotherly love in honor. Performing. Performing one another. See, that’s the idea. See, before we can even talk about the role of the wife or the role of a husband, or the role of parents or the role of the children, we have to talk about the role of everybody.

I just did a little backwards. I started with a woman. I’m going to everybody, and then I’m going to go back to the man. Sort of a separation in the process. With Christ, you have equality with God and yet submission. And in all of our relationships, there will be spiritual equality, there will be spiritual authority, and there will still be a spirit of submission. In Galatians, just to kind of wrap all of this up tonight. Galatians 3:26. It’s important to note this. You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Do you get that? Your son.

Little daughters, for all of you who were immersed into Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ. Oh, see, be like Christ. Put on Christ. Think like the mind of God. Now, there is neither Jew nor gentile. There is neither slave nor freeman. And then this. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. There’s no feminism in heaven, guys, and there’s no feminism in salvation. See, when it comes to the spiritual, we are all one. Misty’s a believer. Most of my children are believers. We’re all one in Christ. Not one of us is superior spiritually to one another, but yet we are all equal on the spiritual level.

And yet there’s authority in that family given to the father and given to the parent. See, 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. We’re the same thing. When we look at the church, guys, we’re all one in Christ. There’s neither male nor female, bond or slave, Jew or Greek in the church. Oh, but the other religions, oh, my gosh, look at what man’s put in place there. Oh, man, man, you need to marry what X amount of times because you’re going to get X amount of females in heaven with X amount.

Oh, my gosh, it is so screwed up. This society is so screwed up because of the religions that are out there that are teaching you the things that are not screwed. Scriptural base. See, there’s neither male or female, bond or slave, Jew or Greek in the church, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are an employer or an employee, whether you are rich or poor, whether your culture you might have come from. We are all one in Christ, and yet, although we are all equally spiritual. First Timothy 5:17 says, the elders that rule well are worthy of double honor.

First 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. It tells the elders to take the oversight over the flock. First Peter 5. You were shepherds over the flood. 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, just like a watchman my accountability is, to tell you the truth, spiritual equality.

But all of us have differing responsibilities. But see, even in those different responsibilities, we operate with an attitude of submission, or at least we should. I suppose I can use a pretty much vivid illustration just because it’s obvious here I talk in a position of authority. By virtue of teaching you the word of God, you set in a position of submission. Somebody might conclude that I am sort of a demigod. I am some kind of autocrat who stands, sits, whatever, and all of you just at times do what you do. There is some kind of disparity between us spiritually.

Well, that’s not true, guys. We’re spiritual equals. I simply have a responsibility and a deity by my calling that gives me this task. Now, not only that, I have to render this task with a greater concern and more truthful for you than for me. See, what drives me to do what I do is not me. It’s you. See, you’ve got to understand that’s how it works in a family. I already know how this stuff works. If I didn’t, I couldn’t teach it. And I’m not here telling me this. I know it. I’m here telling you this.

Because, see, my concern is for hip hop. And see, that is how it has to work in a marriage. We all submit in a marriage, even though we have different roles. One other passage comes to my mind as we kind of lay this foundation this week and get into the details next, and that’s First Corinthians, chapter seven. It’s a very interesting section on mutual submission in marriage just to sort of drive the point home in verse one. Now, concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Now, what he is saying here is celibacy is good.

See, back then, there were some questions among the Christians about should you get married? Shouldn’t you get married? And so forth. He’s saying celibacy is good, guys. It’s not bad. It’s okay. Touching a woman is euphemism for intercourse, which is to be the union in a marriage. So what he’s saying is concerning the things about which you wrote, they obviously have a question about it. The church at Corinth did, Is it good for a man never to have that relationship? It’s good. It’s okay. It’s fine. Later on, Paul makes this really clear in verse 26. I think that this is a good view of the present distress for man to remain as he is, meaning he’s single.

Stay that way. It’s good. What did I say? You’re. You’re either called to be married or you’re called to be single. You’re not called to live a single life as someone who wants to be married or wants to live a life as marriage when it’s convenient for them. Verse 29 this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened so that from now on those who have wise should be as though they had none. Those that 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 is saying, you are living in troubling times. You ought to not 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 all types of complications. You cannot be single minded for the Lord. You have to be concerned about your wife first. 34 Thus your interests are divided. But the woman who is unmarried and a 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 and how she may please her husband or he may please his wife. So if you want to stay single, it’s great to stay single. 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 in marriage was an obligation. If a man didn’t marry and produce children, the Jews said he was he has slain his posterity and he has therefore lessened the image of God in the world. The idea then was you want to proliferate the image of God, and since the image of God is in every person, you want to proliferate.

People, if you don’t marry, you stay your you slay your prosperity and lessen the image of God in the world. The Jews even went so far to stay. 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. Verse 2. Because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband.

That’s the key, guys. Well, what’s he saying here? Is it good to be single? But because single persons might be tempted into immorality, is it better to be married? See, that’s the general rule. That’s where I was coming from last week and why I clarified it today. You do that for the sake of what? Purity. Very first thing in Ephesians 4 and of course Genesis 1:28, for the sake of procreation. And Genesis 2:18, for the sake of partnership. A help me and a 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 let’s come to verse verses three to five, and that’s what I’m driving at for this whole night tonight. Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. For this context, it’s talking about conjural duty, the marriage obligation to give yourself physically one to another as well as in love. But the idea is now that you are married, you don’t withhold that kind of thing because you are preserving yourself from impurity by getting married, or the assumption that you can enjoy the richness of that relationship, what God has wonderfully designed.

So let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. And then this wonderful thing happens. The wife doesn’t 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 need 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.

Last point, guys. Marriage carries a mutual obligation. 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, you belong to me. Mutual agreement is necessary, by the way, for withholding it causes the issue. It’s not fair to say, don’t bother me, I’m praying It’s mutually only a person.

And yet even in this mutual submission in marriage, obviously we are not negating authority in First Timothy, chapter 2, verse 11. But a woman quietly received instruction with entire submissiveness. I do not allow a woman to eat or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. Before, it was Adam who was first created and denied. It was not Adam who was first deceived, but the woman, being quite deceived, fell into the transgression and so forth. This is still the authority and submission, see, but the heart of it is it’s a mutual, humble service. Now what we’ve done is laid all of the groundwork for next time, assorting humbleness, purity, all the conditions of a great relationship, regardless of what that relationship might be, marriage or not.

See, 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 that have one split go on to what? Marry again? And two thirds of them will split again. See, if you look across the church, corporate church, today many ministers are even designing divorce services. It’s like running a film backwards. Divorce is an epidemic. And when you don’t have divorce, you often have conflict or you have ongoing infidelity. Men are often oppressive and insensitive. Women as well can be disloyal, unresponsive and seeking liberation.

See, children have no real examples. You produce nothing that they can take with them. The chaos that you produce in your children is absolutely tragic for their lives to come. And with that, I’m done tonight. Comments? Anything? So, Jim, we always hear the term it takes a village to raise a child. How does that play into this? Because I know my mother and father would not accept that the village, that is the man made price. As you can see from scripture, parents, you’re responsible for your child. You’re responsible to teach them. That doesn’t mean send them to school.

You’re responsible to teach them. Now, if a school you know is offered in the area which you live and it meets your required criteria to teach your children, you may seek that as an alternative. But if it does not meet your requirement to produce the outcome for your child, the scripture tells you, do not send them. Why? Because you’re going to be held accountable for what you put in my Mind, regardless of whether you did it or not. So it doesn’t take a village. It just takes two parents, two obedient parents. Jim. And I still see a lot of that out there from especially Roman Catholics preaching that.

That’s why I brought it up, because I just heard it here last week from another couple. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else? Sure. Let’s pray. Father, thank you as we come together again as a family, seeking the truth from your scripture, Identifying what’s important in our individual lives so that we can apply it in order to have the most meaningful relationship possible through you. Can’t have a relationship unless it’s through you. It’s just a worldly relationship that is nothing but built on chaos. Father, we want to thank you for your son. We want to thank you for the shift in this world.

There is feeling of relief. There is ability to see lights at the end of the tunnel. And we see the revealing of you as the controller of all things. I want to thank you for that. We want to give you praise for that as well, Father. We ask that you look inside of each one of us and you reveal to us that exactly what we need to do in order to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. And when that happens, the majority of life issues go away and it only happens with you. So, Father, thank you again for your Holy Spirit.

Thank you for giving us that home to house it. And thank you for giving us the ability and seeking out your word with obedience to be continually filled with that spirit. Now you got our walk. May you give us peace and joy and understanding and protecting us from ourselves in a lot of ways, especially during this time in our society. We look forward to the next time we’re together. We look forward to what you will give us in additional lessons on Scripture. And thank you, Lord, for using this vessel of nothing but clay and orchestrating through me that which you want to speak the truth.

Ask all these things in his son’s name.
[tr:tra].