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

➡ This Bible study focuses on the roles within a family according to the book of Ephesians. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and fulfilling these roles, which include the wife’s submission and the husband’s leadership. The study also highlights the necessity of being filled with the Spirit, expressing joy, gratitude, and mutual submission to Jesus Christ. It concludes that these principles are the foundation for a successful and blessed family and marriage.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of spirituality in maintaining a healthy marriage and family life. It suggests that worldly techniques and advice often fall short, and that a strong relationship with God is the key to a successful marriage. The text also highlights the importance of selflessness, obedience to scripture, and living out one’s faith in everyday life. It warns against the dangers of pride and self-centeredness, and encourages individuals to focus on their spiritual lives rather than worldly concerns.
➡ The text discusses the conflict between men and women, attributing it to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. It suggests that the original sin led to a curse causing men to dominate women, and women to desire men, leading to ongoing tension. The text also explores the idea that this curse resulted in separations between man and God, man and nature, and man and woman, causing further conflict and hardship.
➡ The text discusses the biblical interpretation of the relationship between men and women, focusing on the concept of the ‘curse’ from Genesis. It suggests that women’s desire to control and men’s desire to dominate stem from this curse, leading to conflict in relationships. The text also implies that this conflict can be resolved through spiritual transformation, specifically by following Christ’s teachings. It concludes by stating that societal expectations have changed over time, affecting the stability of marriages.
➡ The text discusses the spiritual solution to conflict, particularly in marriage, as outlined in the book of Ephesians in the Bible. It emphasizes the importance of letting the Holy Spirit guide your life and actions. The text also discusses the author’s personal experiences with education and his fascination with history, particularly how it relates to the Bible. Lastly, it touches on the low regard for women in Jewish culture during the time of the New Testament, and how this has influenced societal attitudes towards women.
➡ The text discusses the historical interpretations of divorce in Jewish and Greek societies. It explains how some Jewish interpretations allowed men to divorce their wives for minor reasons, leading to a high divorce rate. In Greek society, marital fidelity was disregarded, and wives were often seen only as housekeepers and child bearers. The text suggests that these historical attitudes towards marriage and divorce have influenced modern societal issues.
➡ The text discusses the rampant sexual immorality and societal decay in ancient Greece and Rome, including prostitution, divorce, and sexual perversions. It highlights how these issues were prevalent in society and even supported by the church. The text then transitions to discussing the principles of marriage, emphasizing the importance of a spiritual foundation, mutual respect, and understanding of roles. It concludes by stating that successful relationships stem from a spirit-filled life.
➡ The speaker is expressing gratitude for the wisdom and guidance they receive from studying religious texts, specifically the Bible. They highlight the importance of understanding history, particularly the Roman Empire, to comprehend our current society. The speaker also prays for protection and discernment to understand the truth about the world. They look forward to future gatherings where they can continue to learn and study.

Okay, welcome. This is our Thursday night Bible study. We’re into the continuation of Ephesians and we’re in to a critical point of understanding this application process. We’re into what the family ought to be, how it should operate. We started off, and women will probably kill me because I did it first, but I wanted to do that because the majority of the family is a point of hierarchy and really the only person in a hierarchy form in the family is the wife. So I started that way. I, I, I’ll probably go back and touch on it briefly as we get into the husband’s part.

But we went right from looking at the wife’s role inside of the God’s family to looking at the family at a whole. We looked at and we’re looking at this from last week and tonight is foundational. All right. Because when we shift next week we’re going to shift to the husband and then we’re going to retouch on the wife and then we’re going to get to the children and from there we should be out of the home into and back into you individually in the church. So but it’s very important because in the application of God’s creation before the foundation of the world, remember reasons 1, 2 and 3 before everything is done before the foundational world, everything was pre programmed before the foundation world.

And we’re living into a physical simulation of what those events took place. That’s the reason why God says, I know the beginning from the end, because he already knows the end. He already knows what you’re going to do. He already knows where you’re going to live your eternal life. And he, he knows the decisions you’re going to make along the way. And he’s giving you free will to influence those decisions as you go. But the end result of all of this, he already knows why. Because your name was either written in the Lamb’s book of Life prior to the foundation of the world or it was not.

And if it’s not written in the Lamb’s book of Life before the foundation of the world, you are not going to what? You are not going to have salvation in your life, therefore be able to go home. So this is a two part series, if you will, on the family, on marriage and on raising the children. Okay. We looked at a portion of this last week. We’re going to complete that portion again, as I said tonight. And we’re going to get into a lot of wonderful things in the weeks ahead as we close out Ephesians I.

If, if I If I look at the whole Bible and if I were to select one chance chapter to devote a very, very detailed study on, that would be Ephesians 6. But you can’t get to Ephesians 6 and understand everything in Ephesians 6 unless you have four chapters, four and five already in the deck. Okay, so we’re going to. We’re going to sort of launch a pad again in Ephesians 5 tonight, which is. Is a great place to begin continuing setting this foundation out because the word of God is so specific with regards to the matters of the home.

Now I’m going to read to you again out of Ephesians 5, verses 18 to 21. We’ve read it so many times. You ought to be completely familiar with this because it has so many principles in it that we’ve already talked about, but we’re going to highlight them again. Repetition is how we learn. So here’s what the Bible says. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is this dissipation. Okay? Define the word dissipation, because that is, that is throughout the book of Ezekiel. But be filled with the Spirit. And remember Ezekiel’s book was, was a prophet that had been chosen by God to go to the Israelites to teach them about what their sin was and request repentance.

And he called sin dissipation. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, in spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things. Always giving thanks. That is a commandment. That is not a subjective thing that you can do. Giving thanks for all things, good or bad, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Subject one to another is accountability and the fear of Christ. Why? Because if you are told of your sin as Ezekiel, the prophet was also a watchman for Israel told them the truth, then you are going to have to.

You’re going to fear Christ because you have a greater accountability level because now you know the truth. So last week we said that the foundation of all Christian family success, all Christian marriage blessing is set out in that text that we just read. It’s not gimmicky, it’s not trivial, it’s not superficial, it’s not manipulative. What it says it before we can even talk about wives in verse 22. And whatever what it says is what it means. Let’s go back over it. Let’s decipher this out. And do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation. Dissipation is sin.

What it says drunk with wine is what you go to worship. But be filled with the Spirit. It didn’t say be filled sometimes and not other times. It says be filled with the spirit, which is a commandment. Which says what? You have to be filled with the Spirit on a continual basis. And in order for you to do that, you must be what? Sanctified. Speaking to one another in psalms and praise and hymns and spiritual songs means that you’re humble, you’re meek, you’re. You have an attitude of loneliness. This is about chapter four. Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.

Okay? Always giving thanks. What you’re supposed to do is always gives thanks for both good and bad. That is obedience to his command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of God, even the Father separate there to the Lord Jesus Christ, to God, God is the intercessor. Jesus Christ is the intercessory to God. So you need to understand the pecking order. He’s giving you a pecking order here of hierarchy in heaven as it is in the family, even the Father. And be subject to one another, accountable in the fear of Christ, because accountability identifies your sin.

And if you do not repent, then the fear of Christ, you’re going to live in the fear of Christ because you will be judged. Okay, now we’re going to get to husbands in 25, in verse 25. But before we talk about children in chapter 6, verse 1, and parents in 6, verse 2, we have to set some additional foundation for all of those relationships, namely this. You must be filled with the Spirit, singing, praising, being joyful for everything, saying thanks for everything good and bad. And you have to be submissive. I didn’t single out the women that says they had to be submissive.

I what this scripture says is we all have to be submissive. Submissive to who? Jesus Christ. Now, we focused on four things last week where you have filling of the Spirit, which means you are under the control of the Holy Spirit by what obedience to the word of God. You can’t be obedient unless you understand what the word of God is. You can’t understand what the word of God is unless you’re reading it. And you can’t understand what the word of God is unless you are more than reading it. You’re study yourself to be approved. To show you being approved means that you’re into a word dissecting study.

Christ says you can’t live by bread alone, but every word out of the Mouth of God. If you’re not studying every word in scripture, you are not studying as Christ had told you how to study. Where you have overflowing joy that comes out of songs, where you have constant thanks for everything and where you have mutual submission. You have the foundations of happiness, success and the blessings that God gives you in a marriage and in a family. You’re not going to be blessed in a family or in a marriage if you do not obey these words.

All of it is built on on that spiritual foundation, whether we are talking about a husband, a wife relationship, or children and parents relationship. One of the most popular books on this subject over the last few years was titled Pillars that Support a Fulfilling Marriage. When it came out, it was a very popular book. And the book suggests that what is foundational to marriage, what really makes a marriage successful, is five pillars. Here’s what the book suggested. Now, it’s a Christian book, okay? But it was written by man. So number one is security. Number two is communication.

Number three is romance. Number four is touch. Number five is intimacy of spirit. Not intimacy of between the couple, a man or woman, but intimacy of the spirit. The book says things like this. If a woman wants to truly have meaningful communication with her husband, she must cultivate the right side of the brain. Physical anatomy. Women near the left brain. Men are the right brain. If you want to have communication with your husband effectively, you need to move the stings from thinking left brain all the time to a right brain scenario. Man needed to go back to do the other side.

It says this. The best way we know to bond with a family is by going camping. Oh, now that’s really interesting. I could probably see a lot of you women in tents. No, that. No, I can’t. Okay. So pretty. The what the suggestion in the book are pretty shallow suggestions. And I’m not quite sure how the right side of my brain works. And I’m positive that Misty has no clue. Okay. And I’m really not much for camping because she doesn’t like camping much. And I would expect that kind of thing in a secular book to come up with these weird ideas that basically try to place the physical realm.

I want you to think about this. Try to place the physical realm into the situation of creating a healthy marriage and family. Now, the pillars of marriage are being spirit filled, having an overflowing joy, being thankful for everything, and mutually submissive. We just went over that. But that’s not what the world teaches, okay? That’s not what psychologists teach. Are psychiatric people teach. All right? They teach what they have been taught and what they have experienced. And if they’re not coming from a biblical background, you are not getting biblical sound advice. The Bible says that families are built on spiritual foundations, not psychology.

Psychological ones, not emotional ones. Remember, Christ had emotions but was not emotional. If you are emotional, you are reacting to your emotions and you’re, by doing that, you’re bringing the physical realm into that situation. The Bible says that what is most important in a good marriage is love for God, overruling love for self. You guys hearing me? What is really important in a good marriage is the pursuit of the needs of others rather than your own self assessment. Self assessment. Guys ever written down on a piece of paper what you do for yourself versus what you do for your husband or vice versa and see how that weighs out.

Not do that as part of your self assessment activity. True holiness, obedience to the scripture. In other words, marriage is just a place where you live Christianity. It is a side benefit of what Christ gave you in this life of Christianity. And if your life is right, it’s a happy, productive, fulfilled and blessed event every day. One because the Spirit’s in control and the Spirit’s going to lead you to do all the right things. And you know you shouldn’t question it. If you don’t do that, your life is fraught with pain and disappointment and unfulfillment and sadness and anger and all of the rest of the world’s side of viewing what your life needs to be.

It has nothing to do with some human techniques of touch or REM or intimacy or communication or even financial security and everything to do with your relationship to God. Once you get that relationship to God done, everything else flows. What you working on in trying to get your marriage to work or your relationship to work, if you, if you haven’t built that part of the relationship with God, that relationship will never work. Your spiritual being first living a physical life experience, a simulation of your spiritual being. We need to get it out of our heads that we can do in this physical life what we can do do to make it what we want.

And what we want is to have one foot into the spiritual side by saying, oh, I want to just be saved. And another side that says I want to control everything on, on this world in my life. Now there’s no better place, no more important place for you to live out your Christianity than in your home. Why? Because the home is the example of the church. And if your home isn’t what God wants it to be, it is because the highest standards of Christianity are not being carried out there. It may be that one partner is making every endeavor to do that and the other is not.

It may be that both are falling short. In either case, it really doesn’t matter. Why? Because you’re living in complete difficulty. The family is the environment where your spiritual strength, your spiritual devotion, your spiritual consistency are most manifest. Why? Because there’s nobody watching you. It should be the place that you are the most intimate with God himself. And not only most manifest, but, but listen to this. It’s the most demanded by scripture because of familiality, because of being together all the time, under every conceivable kind of circumstance, in every trial and difficulty. The home is the truest test.

Your marriage is the truest test of your spiritual life. Self assessment. That is why in first Timothy, chapter three it says about an under control with all dignity. But if a man doesn’t know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God? Simply what Paul was saying is he manifests the character of his Christian commitment. He manifests his spiritual leadership in the home. And if it isn’t showing up there, men. Why would anyone, especially God, want to ask him to lead anything or God called you for anything? Your test is your home.

Family is just the most significant place where your life out your faith, you live out your faith. Now I’ll even go so far as to say instruction with regard to the techniques of marriage, if that’s a word that’s appropriate here. Instruction with regard to the skills of marriage. Instruction with regard to all of the nuances of sensitivity toward male and female differences. When you have added all of that up is a minimal significance you paying attention. It seems to be that in today’s world we assume that it’s the main thing and the main necessity. Because so much literature and so much effort has been devoted to to teaching you the ways of this world.

But it’s really not in great importance at all. If you have two spirit filled, joyful, thankful, submissive, godly people, God takes care of the rest. It all starts with that spiritual foundation. And apart from from that, there is major trouble and major conflict. And the reason why I have been emphasizing this is because this is where it all begins. If you go into a marriage and you have not done the correct validation of God’s purpose of those two people being enjoined together, you’re outside of the will of God. If you’re in a marriage and you didn’t do that, okay, Scripture says you pray to the Lord, and you get yourself right with him in your relationship and allow God to work through you for your mate.

In fact, the whole wonderful design of marriage won’t work very well where there is sin, see? And you open that door if you’re not obedient to God in all things. When you invade that domain of marriage and family with sin, it becomes a very oppressive, unfulfilling, miserable experience. You hate to go home. You, when you get home, you hate to have conversations. Many of you don’t even have dinner together because you can’t stand sitting across each other and trying to talk. And that’s how it is for the majority of this world, some of you maybe. So certainly the unregenerated world, that’s another term that is prevalent throughout the Bible.

And Ezekiel talks a lot about regeneration. And remember, Israel couldn’t be regenerated because Christ hadn’t come and died and resurrected to produce that process of salvation in the first place. They couldn’t be regenerated. And if one thing you can learn about reading Old Testament history is understanding their struggles in all of the sin that existed in the world. Because they either obeyed the law totally or they were engulfed in sin and nobody could go bay the law. They didn’t have ability to stand in that process and be successful. But that process that they have gone through in a historical frame of reference for the family today shows you that the agony that they went through not only as, excuse me, as a people, the nation, not only as a church, Jewish church, not only as the family, their families were torn apart constantly.

See, all of this stuff has been already.fed steady diet of justification for the personal pride. And personal fulfillment has sowed the very seeds that destroy all relationships. Finally, you will not win, you will not succeed. You will be in complete turmoil trying to do this yourself. History shows they’ve all crashed. Why? Under the weight of their own pride. Pride. We’ve already studied that in Ephesians 4 and 5 and even this has affected the church. I wonder why. Those of us who know the truth have a difficult time living it. Because we are inundated with the world around us.

We’re not thinking on the things above, we’re thinking on the things on this earth. And we forget that we’re spiritual beings. In fact, I suppose the term conflict is almost synonymous with marriage today. And most fellows now we hear all the time how oppressive men are or how incentives insensitive they are. Women say that all the time. My husband’s so insensitive, he doesn’t care for anything about what goes on in my life, how chauvinistic they are, how abusive and uncaring they are. And on the other hand, we hear so often about women being overbearing, my mother, seeking freedoms in the exercise of their own will and their own purpose, and not wanting to submit to their own husbands.

And why is that? Feminism. You were raised in feminist education, and some of you had feministic mothers. See, it’s all because of sin. And maybe if we just go back to the beginning and get a glimpse of all of this, like going back to the third chapter of Genesis, I want to share with you what may well be an interpretation of Genesis worthy of consideration. Now, I cannot be dogmatic about this and say it’s absolutely, unequivocally accurate. But there are some who would take any issue with any effort to be dogmatic in this regard. But it’s at least an interesting possibility of understanding where the conflict comes from.

We know, of course, it comes from selfishness. That’s the first place it comes from. But how did selfishness get here? It comes from personal pride and personal sin. That’s what makes relationships difficult and certainly in the family. But there may be another element to this conflict of very great interest. And if we look at Genesis chapter three, which we’ve talked about, but I want to call it. I want to call it out to you, it’s Genesis 3:13. And the Lord said to the woman, what is this you have done? Now we know why God did what he did, with Adam being the first first Adam and Christ being the second Adam, they were brothers in a incarnation of God himself.

One was to create the. The vehicle system for us to go home. And the other one was to give us the ability to take that vehicle and have the regenerative process that gives us the access to home. But let’s go through this anyway. And the woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. Well, the reason why this scripture goes this way is because after this system was set up, this was exactly what happened with men and women after Adam and Eve. Listen to this. So. And the Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast on the field.

On your belly crawl like a snake you shall go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life. Oh, that’s all of this earthly time. He doesn’t eat dust. He just gets burned alive continuously when everything’s taken care of. But while he’s here, and, oh, by the way, he’s here. Okay, that’s another myth that a lot of you need to come to grips with, that you’ve been taught, oh, there’s really no Satan. There’s no spiritual side, there’s no demons, there’s no. Satan is here. He said, I want to put him enemy enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seat.

He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the hill, that being the curse of Satan. But now the woman in verse 18 to the woman, he said, this here’s your pilt. You’re going to pay. And this is for all womankind remain. Eve is the mother of all mankind. So, woman, why don’t you do this? Well, I didn’t do it. T made me do it. Now that’s an excuse that goes on today. The devil made me do it to the woman. He said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. I’m going to stop right here and interpret this a little bit for you.

I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. I want you to think about those words. How can he multiply your pain in childbirth unless you were going at the proper time? If you, if you maintain this spiritual system of God and not create this host body system, have children, think about it. I’m going to greatly manipulate. Multiply your pain and chobber. Well, that’s one side of the story. The other side is, is because he knew that this host body system had to exist and there would be children. Because that’s the only way to allow the, the, the spirits that were lured by Satan to be in his marketplace, to be able to have a choice as predetermined before the foundation world to go home.

He’s saying, oh, in that course you’re going to have great pain in bringing children into this world. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Okay, now that is also an added tidbit to that. We looked at the ability of multiplying pain in your childbirth as one. One view that if, if he’s going to multiply the pain, it means that there would be some level of pain that would already exist. And if they were in the spirit form before this transgression and he made that statement, then at some point in time down the spiritual road, God would have allowed Adam and Eve to have children.

Maybe. But see, that was not what Adam and Eve were created for. Because we get that in this next statement, he says to the woman, I’m going to give you great pain in bringing children into this world. Why? Because it is through that pain that you shall bring children forth. So you can see another point here, that there was no intention of Adam and Eve in the spirit form to maintain the spirit formness because they were here to create a host body system to give us the ability to get to the point of being regenerated. So yet your desire shall be for your husband.

Here’s the point that your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. That’s the curse. The curse obviously that came upon the human race as a result of the fall of Eden, altered significantly and dramatically by the original design of God. But he’s telling the woman and he’s telling womankind. He’s, he’s. These scriptures are for all women throughout history to understand what their curse was. Because that’s what Adam and Eve had to go through to get this host body system set up. And that is punishment for us being lured into Satan’s kind.

Getting the point. Before sin, there was perfect union. There was no conflict. Adam and Eve got along perfectly well. Yes. And sin was introduced and sin brought with it chaos and conflict. Now, there was several features to this curse. There was a separation between man and God as a result of this sin in man, as you remember, they were thrown out of the garden and intimate and free and full communion with God had ended. There was also a separation between man and nature. Now this is not nature as Gaia, okay, that we worship today. In some religions, this was the nature of the Garden of Eden, of the trees, of what knowledge.

You’re separated from God, from his divine knowledge. And now you have to seek that knowledge through a different means. You’re no longer. Would, would nature yield all of its bounty to man without any effort on his part wasn’t a gift anymore. You had to work for it. Now he had to go out and by the sweat of his brow he had to till the soil and work very hard to make the world yield to him. What once had gave him so freely? Well, number one, they didn’t eat. They didn’t have to eat in the garden. Everything they had in the garden was based upon knowledge trees, Google trees.

They were getting the knowledge of God in all trees. That they were able to freely eat from, learn from one tree was not only the understanding of all of that knowledge they were learning, but it was, it was the understanding of how that knowledge was opposite of evil. And that is why the tree of good and evil created such a problem, is because their mind, their mind was opened up to good and evil instead of just good. Separation between man and God, separation between man and nature, and finally separation between man and woman. And the key part of all of this curse for us is at the end of verse 16 of chapter 3, your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

And when you fill this rulership, you rebel. That’s the curse. Now, it’s very possible that one statement answers the question why there is such conflict between men and women. Why? Now, if we look to the husband first, it says at the end of verse 16, he shall rule over you. And the word rule means reign. It’s a word of sovereignty. Just as God is sovereign over the man, man is sovereign over the woman. So the curse said, the man, as a result of the curse, is going to dominate you, and as a result of that, cur, are going to desire him.

That’s a dichotomy for a woman. Why? Because the more they desire, the more the more rule they want. And yet they can’t deal with it. See, that’s the curse. You’re not going to get enough of anything. And because of that, you’re going to be in total conflict. What does all that mean? Does that mean that she’s going to desire him physically and sexually? No, that’s not what that curse said at all. I don’t think that was a curse. Before the Fall, it was already true that she had a desire for him and he had a desire for her in the physical looking area of that lens.

Because what did Adam say? She was formed from bone of my bone. Therefore I will call her a woman. And she was provided to him as a helpmate, the second marriage in all of creation. See, it’s the highest form of love’s fulfillment in terms of physical pleasure. It’s not that she would desire him as a protectorate, as one who would care for her and support her and cover her. That’s. That too already existed in spiritual form from the very beginning. She was designed to compliment him, but he was the one responsible to care for her. But because sin had not entered in the picture, there was no conflict.

See, all of that already existed. She was the weaker vessel. Why? Because that’s how God made her. And that is a delight to the woman to have such care and protection before the Fall. So it has to be something other than sexual desire. Remember, that’s what lured everybody down from heaven by Satan. It has to be something other than a desire to be cared for, protected. It also is true that the curse could not be physical or emotional desire, because not all women desire that. Hear what I’m saying if you’re called to be single, it’s, it’s a good calling.

You don’t have the desires that other women that are called to be married have. Not all women desire the emotional love and protection and care of their husbands. This has to be something that touches all women. If God is going to say this, it’s got to be something that touches all women because he can’t hold any woman in throughout history outside of this curse, just as it is something that touches all men. First, the woman is cursed with pain and childbearing right at the very life giving point. Really the very high point of womanhood is to bring life into the world.

And in doing so, she’s cursed. But additional, she’s cursed with the desire for her husband. What is that? What does it mean? Well, that world desire is used over in chapter four of Genesis. And we learn something when we find how a specific word is used in a given context. Study the Bible word by word by word. It’s only other time it’s used in the whole book of Genesis. In fact, the only time in the Pentateuch, the whole first five books is in Genesis. And if you notice in chapter four, if you want to look at it your leisure, verse number seven, in the middle of the verse, sin is crouching at the door.

And its desire, that is exactly the same word used that was done in chapter three. So you got to master it. The construction here is in the Hebrew is exactly parallel. When you understand Scripture, it is an exact parallel construction using the very same word. What he’s talking about, who he’s talking about Cain. In chapter four, Cain offered a sacrifice that God did not accept because it was not what God had asked. And then out of anger, you remember, he killed his brother. And it says here, the word comes to Cain. The Lord says to Cain, sin is couching at the door Cain.

And its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Now what did sin want to do with Cain? It wanted to crush him, it wanted to dominate him, it wanted to take over the mind and his action. Sin wanted to rule him. Sin wanted to force him to do some certain things. Sin wanted to control him. And that, I think that is the parallel to what you have in verse 16 of chapter three when it says that your desires shall be for your husband. It is the same construction, the same term that the desire that sin has to control you.

Part of the curse is that the woman no longer willingly, eagerly welcomes submission. But there is something in her that wants to Control the man. Yeah. She wants to usurp authority over her husband. Why? Because that is the nature of Satan from the very beginning of time. So you can’t have a marriage or a family where the woman is not in her lane and the man doesn’t understand how to be submissive. Submissive to who? To God. She wants to usurp the authority over her husband. That’s precisely what Eve did originally. She should have gone to her husband, sought his wisdom about what was happening.

And when tempted, Satan knew that. Oh yeah, Satan knew that if she would have gone to Adam first, he and her would not have hooked up. She should have gone to her husband, sought his wisdom when tempted. And see, Satan told her that. If you go through the story of her and Satan. Satan isolated her. Women, hear me out. Satan isolated her. Satan deceived her. She acted independently out from under the loving submission that should have been a part of her commitment to her husband and led the whole human race into sin. Stop here, women. I’m not.

I don’t want you to take this wrong, but I want to be very start. You’re manipulated in all things. You’re manipulative and you do so for selfishness. I don’t care it’s with your husband. I don’t care if it’s in your work. I don’t care if it’s with your children. Your base nature from the beginning of time is that you want your way. And that mindset consistent from the this very verse in chapter three, verse 16, that your mindset is on what you desire being sin and not following the solented control over what God gave the family and the home to be successful.

Now she had done it in the original sin when listening to Satan and never consulting Adam and exercised authority over the man, took things in her own hands. And that was in essence the curse. And since that time, sin of a woman, the innate control, feminism at its best, beginning at the very first time in scripture, in Genesis 3. See, this is not a new thing. We just don’t understand history and we don’t understand our spirituality enough. To understand when things like this come along, we need to have a major degree of discernment. Man then is left with a curse as well.

See, man seeks to dominate. Doormat. Why is there always a woman’s liberation movement? And if not a movement, it’s still there in the heart of women and why there are males chauvinism and has been there since beginning of time. See, because that’s how the depravity of the Human heart reveals itself in women seeking to rule and men desiring to suppress. And there’s one very possible explanation for the intensity and the ubiquitous character, which means all the time, everywhere, of conflict in the marriage. Women by the fall, in her fallenness fallen state, is not willing to submit, but desires to control, to exert her individualism.

Man by the fall wants to stay king of the mountain, and his rule can be oppressive and insensitive. Thus the battle of the sexes begin with the fall in Genesis, chapter three. And children who come into the family just enter into the ring during the boxing match. Now, I’m telling you, that is not a good place for children to be, but you do it anyway. So there’s a male chauvinism in the world. And you can find it in cultures throughout human history, all the way back to Genesis. There is women’s liberation in the world and the same thing.

You can find it throughout history going back to the beginning, as each one expresses the effect of the curse. See, everybody is selfish, fighting for his or her own turf. And the question then comes, how can a marriage survive this kind of conflict? How can a marriage work? And how can children find any peace in the home and understanding and learning as they’re supposed to be? Because we’re supposed to teach ourselves what the way of the Lord. So when they get older, they. They shall, now they will, they’ll come back and conform to it. They see your fruit.

Now, the more important question is this. How can all that be ended? We’ve already answered that question by two people who have come to know Christ, whose lives have been transformed, who are characterized by being what? Spirit filled, joyful, thankful and submissive to one another. And that is a spiritual transformation. That’s the only way. Without doing that, things aren’t going to get better. See, in other areas and other cultures, marriages have done better than in our contemporary world. See, not too many years ago, 20, about 25 or 30 years ago, people stayed together. That was a standard way of conduct.

That’s why society expected out of people, and that’s what happened. That does not mean that there was not any less conflict. By the way, some of your testimonies has revealed that because of fallenness, there is conflict. You have to go back to the spiritual dimensions to end it. And that’s what’s so wonderful about this passage in Ephesians that we are looking at now. And you can go back to Ephesians and study it, that the solution to the conflict in marriage is spiritual. And it starts with allowing the Holy Spirit to control your life, letting of the word of Christ dwell inside of you, richly obeying the spirit of God as he reveals his will through the will of God.

Oh, we’re not talking about will like my self will or yourself. We’re talking about a will that was given by God to Christ. Just like any will given from a, from a family to the children. That is what kind of will. We’re talking about God’s will to his son was to give him all of the the glorious nature of the blessings coming from the church. Christ will was the blessings that God gave to him to you see, only the power of the Holy Spirit can reverse the curse. In a home where you have a spirit filled person, in a home, you have hope.

If you’ve ever tried to pick a fight with a spirit control person. Ever try to pick a fight with a totally joyful person that just has rising joy in their heart, can’t do it. Situations diffused almost immediately. Ever try to pick a fight with somebody who is thankful for everything, even the conflict that is going on? Ever try to pick fight with somebody who is totally submissive? That’s very difficult tasks where that exists. Guys, there’s hope for you, your family and your marriage. See, it’s a spiritual issue, it’s not a physical issue. Conflict goes where the Holy Spirit dominates.

Now as we look at the text which we’ve already kind of talked about in last week’s foundation and this foundation and Paul in verse 22 is going to launch into the specific conduct of a wife, a husband, children and parents. And we’re going to look at that in detail over the next several weeks. But it wouldn’t be fair and it wouldn’t do justice to the Apostle Paul if we didn’t at least for a few moments consider the kind of world that he was writing to. Because that’s important. Got to have an understanding of the basis of the scripture that Paul is writing to to understand the context in which he’s writing.

Because certainly the argument comes up, this stuff is ancient history. Oh yeah, that’s what you were told in your education. This stuff is way back there. It doesn’t apply to the world today. They lived in a complete different time with different perspectives. And I think you need to understand what is going on. So we’re going to talk a little bit about history. Now you guys know that I indulge myself on this all the time. Why? Because you’ve got to understand history and you got to love history because it tells you what you need to Know, say when I went to college I, well number one, I didn’t have to study in high school so I didn’t even know how to study.

I made A’s in all the subjects that I liked, made Bs and season subjects that I didn’t like and tried to make not take any classes that I didn’t like. But in my senior year after sports season had ended, I was only, I, well I got to the point where I was only required to take my last half of English. So I went in at class at 8 o’. Clock. By 9 o’ clock I was out and I was headed to work. So when I went to college I couldn’t really. I, I, I had decided what I wanted to major in, but I didn’t decide the outcome of what I was going to do with it.

Say I wanted to major in accounting, which I did and I did very well in county I met, I graduated with 3.98 in that subject matter. But again in college I had to take classes I didn’t like. So in my bachelor’s I came out with an overall 2.78. I barely went to other classes. So I mean that’s just who I was. That all changed in my Masters quite, quite a bit. And because at my Masters I hit the books, I finally realized that I needed to study and I came out with a 3.98 overall in my Masters.

But see, I happen to enjoy learning history during that time and I’ve always had some degree of fascination for history. You guys should know that by now by listening to the Bridge of Truth, I’ve gave you the whole history of the United States and various levels and various activities and showed you who the actual ruling class was and the individual that wrote it. Now we’re going to get into McCarthyism and a few other things because you need to understand how this system that we have still got to live in was formulated say. And I find it very interesting to listen to history and it’s probably because I’ve gone back into history and reconstructed some of the backgrounds that brought the Bible alive.

When you understand how history applies to the Bible and you can, you can put it out, you remember going back and I’ve done a study on the whole wars from beginning to now. There’s like I did say a heart and, and you can see how they’re interconnected one after another after another after another after another. And then you get into the Roman Empire and you got another and then you get into the Bolshevik and it’s all Tied together, it’s the same people. So it’s. It’s very important to understand how the Bible speaks for itself. So we’re going to set a little of that scene to which the Apostle Paul was writing.

And you’ll see some, I think, amazing parallels here. So let’s talk about the Jews first. Obviously, there were Jews in the church if Ephesus. And this was a circular letter. Remember, the letter that Paul wrote to the church of Ephesus was not labeled to the church of Ephesus because anybody that got the letter within any one of the churches, they circulated it throughout all churches. So it could have been labeled to any church. But this is all funneled in. This conversation that Paul is bringing up in Scripture is predicated that this letter somehow got to the church of Ephesus and not only the churches in Asia Minor, but all the churches everywhere.

And it’s still getting around to all churches everywhere today. We’re studying it. But see, there were many Jews in the early church and they too needed to understand the biblical view of marriage. Oh, my gosh. If you understood Jewish culture and how they. It’s amazing how they ever were, could create a family into a nation of Israel with their practices. The Jews themselves had a low view of a woman. Say now we’re getting. Didn’t come. It did not come from the Bible. All right, but then a lot of their religion by the time of Paul and Jesus did not come from the Bible.

It was traditional. It was tradition, Jewish tradition, circumcision, non circumcisions, you know, agree to marriages, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the way down. It was. It was tradition. And they developed a lot of their own apostate religion guys, as part of it was a very low view of women. Well, what happened in the most recent time that some of you even lived through was women couldn’t even vote. Where do you think our culture got its roots? In fact, there were Jewish prayers used by Jewish men every morning in their lives. And in one of these prayers, there was one line that illustrates their attitude.

This is what it was, a quote out of a Jewish text. God, I thank you that you have not made me a Gentile, a slave or a woman. Now, they perceived a woman as lower on the human level than a man. A woman was an object, not a person. A woman had no legal rights. They don’t have legal rights today if you’re in the Orthodox Jews. She was in the absolute power of her husband to do with her whatever. Put that word down, whatever he Wanted, whenever he wanted. Now, in New Testament times among the Jews, divorce had become tragically easy and tragically common.

Jewish mystery says that if a man can marry a woman today, and if he doesn’t like her what she does tomorrow, he will divorce her and marry another woman. That happened. It happens today. And they supported it with a passage from the Old Testament. Oh, you can take any scripture in the Bible and make it support whatever physical realm decision you want to make and make it seem like it’s a biblical principle. Say you don’t study wanting to be fatiguous to their devotion to the Mosaic Law. They had to have Old Testament scriptures to back up their traditions.

They quoted From Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 1. When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that. Now I’m going to give you what the old translation is. She finds no favor in his eyes because has. Had. Had. Has found some uncleanliness in hers. She was indecent, some uncleanness. And he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house. Now, you notice that that’s really an apostasy or merely an introduction statement to something else. But they took it as it was a command, basically, or certainly an allowance to the man.

Oh, man, you didn’t have any uncleanness in your past. Oh, but if a woman is found to have any uncleanness in her past, and it doesn’t mean she had a sexual relationship, it could have been anything that deep, the tradition deemed as unclean, a divorce could be granted. See, if your wife loses favor in your eyes because you find some uncleanliness in her, you can write her a divorce and send her out of the house. Now, there’s a lot more in that passage than that. Now, remember what I said. You in your manipulated positions can go to any scripture you want and take the wording of a scripture and support what your baseline of mindset is without knowing what the scripture actually says.

They’re not studying. See, the scripture was not intended for that. It was intended to forbid the fact that if that happened and she remarries, she can never come back and marry you. That was really the issue. But they didn’t get that far. They just said, there it is. If you find some indecency, some uncleanness, ship her out the door, give her a bill of divorce. Now, the question became, at that point in time, the definition. Remember, we got to study the words here. What is the definition of uncleanliness? What is the definition of indecency Strict rabbis, most from represented by a rabbi named Shamar.

Strict rabbis. And it refers to adultery. And that’s all it refers to. If she commits adultery, which means that she’s got to commit it after you’re married, then you can divorce her. Well, that’s what Paul said in scripture as well. But liberal, oh my gosh, we have two party system. There were two party systems back there. There were rabbis that were strict and rabbis that says, nah, we don’t want to live that way. We’re going to adjust it to this way more to our cultural traditions that we want. Oh, do you see how, how absolute corruption not only has history been, but it flowed all the way into today.

But liberal rabbi said it refers to absolutely anything. And that is vagueness is intended by God to allow you to fill in the blank. Rabbi said, men, she does something you find unclean, you deem it unclean, you can divorce. Strict rabbi says, no, that’s not what scripture actually says that when we study the word, it says that if she commits adultery, which means that you were already married, it was not in her past adultery, then we can divorce her. See, that viewpoint is represented by a famous rabbi named Hillel. So throughout sort of the rabbinic history and even till today, Jews argue over this view of Shemar and hello Hill said that it meant a man could divorce his wife if she spoiled his dinner.

It meant that he could divorce his wife. Get this. If she spilled his dinner. Because a course, a spilled dinner is a spoiled dinner, making it unclean. He could divorce her if she put too much salt on it. Oh my gosh. You remember those of you been married a long time when you first got together and you were trying to learn how to cook together and oh man, I can tell you some of the crucial dinners that you just had to sit down and grit your teeth and eat and say, hopefully somebody will teach my wife how to cook.

Well, that should have been a prerequisite of your selection. They could divorce her if she walked in public with her head uncovered. Oh, think about Muslims, guys think today. He could divorce her if she talked with men in the street. Now I like this one. He could divorce her if she spoke disparagingly of her mother in law. And this is really good. He could divorce her if she ever argued with him. Oh my gosh. See, rabid. A kabia even went further than that. His interpretation of this phrase meant that a husband could divorce his wife if she became unclean in his eyes because he found somebody prettier.

Now take A guess which was the most popular view among men? Say Shamar had very few followers. Why? Because he was a strict rabbi. Khalil had many. So divorce become rampant in the time of Jesus because of the. You wanted people in the pews. What have I said about church? Say it happened all the way back in history. Guys, this is not new. Religion is not the point of spirituality and your relationship to Jesus Christ. Women were discarded all over the place during this time. Oh, think about today the divorce rate is highest in the church than anywhere else.

And there were victims of such discarding, left with nothing. Oh, and what did we learn in ancient scripture about what? Boaz, Esther. How God set it up to make sure that women were protected and taken care for when their husband died, the brother of the husband had to take the woman and Marrier. Why? Because that was the means of providing the woman with sovereignty. Getting the picture. And so at the time of Paul was simply to hand. He was saying that that all men had to do at the time of Jesus, at that time of Paul was simply to hand her a bill of divorce.

And all it took to get one of those was to have a rabbi write it in the presence of two witnesses. And it was done. Oh my gosh. The church was the one that wrote the divorce, decided that a divorce was done and there was no, no legal rights of the woman at all. And that’s what Paul was writing about. And it was cruelty and wickedness of the church, the religion that put this into Play. In Matthew 5:31, Jesus refers to this common custom. It was said, whoever divorces his wife, oh, let him give her a certificate of dismissal.

That’s the way you operate. See, again, you’re taking all of this out of context to build your own case. You want to divorce your wife, just make sure you do the paperwork. See, that’s how you interpret that. All it does requires to do paperwork. And I think just in fairness to Jewish history, in different areas of Jewish history there were different views, of course, but at the time of Jesus there was a prevailing view. So divorce was the solution in the Jewish eyes to any conflict, short term or long term didn’t matter. And so. And consequently the whole institution of marriage was threatened.

And by the way, prostitution was rampant in Jesus time, even among the Jews. What they were even. They had rooms around the temple for that purpose. Now let’s look at the Greeks, thought the Jews are bad. Let’s look at the Greeks. The Greeks had a very similar approach to this. They didn’t want to worry about Any Old Testament technicalities. They didn’t have to worry about finding a verse to misinterpret to justify what they did. They were pagans. That was us guys, still is us. They just lived in blatant disregard for any marital fidelity. Prostitution was an absolute essential part of Greek life.

Their religions, which is where our religions came from. What Roman Catholic church tied to Rome getting this, the religions were just loaded with prostitutes. And it was believed, as we saw last week, not only did you commune with the gods by drinking this, but you consumed, I mean you communed with gods by having sexual relationship with a priestess or a prostitute. Demetheus, I’m sorry, Demothians. No less than the famous orator said this. You can find this in this oratory. In scripture. We have Cartesians for the sake of pleasure, we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation, and we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately and having a faithful caretaker for our household affairs.

Oh, you like to be defined that way. You have babies and you pay the bills. That was it. The great man found his pleasure and even his friendship outside of his marriage. His wife was the housekeeper and a baby maker. His pleasure outside his marriage sexually and his friends outside his marriage. Oh, think about some of this guys. I’m telling you your, some of your children’s issues are based right here in this ugliness. Home and family life were almost extinct and fidelity was almost non existent. There was no legal procedure for divorce. You just put them out.

So when Paul, understanding the conditions of society at that time, he lays down the principles he’s laying down here, he’s really running head on into what? The culture. Where are we today? Lbgt kid. Okay, same sex marriage, what else? Oh, you know what? Prostitutes are not being arrested for doing that. And men who deal with prostitute in certain states or it’s just common that they can get away with whatever they want. Disease is rampant. And I’m going to say this, it’s supported by the church. So what Paul is dealing with in his letters is the sin of fornication which has come up again and again.

And he talks about parnelia or the verb from Pania to engage in sexual sin. Now that word does not mean just perversion and, and basically prostitution or sex outside whatever it pornia is the gamut references to prostitution, to harlotry, sexual perversions of all kind, marriage with children, didn’t matter, the age, so forth and so on because the word was dominated by those things in the Gentile world. So Paul’s writing to the Gentiles now. It’s not hard to remember that when you read his epistles, how common that kind of stuff was. That was the baseline of the Church.

That was the fundamental basis of all religion in that time of day. It was just part of life. The word porn, the root means to prostitute. Porn is a woman for sale. Pornos is a man who lies with a prostitute or a male prostitute. See, homosexuality didn’t start in our day. It was all going back. A gigolo was a or a homosexual. It was just everywhere. And pornia is a common word in Paul’s vocabulary. Now let’s look at law. According to the citizenship law of 451 BC for example, now we’re coming and I’m going four and a half centuries before Christ.

Inhabitants of Athens, for example, didn’t have any citizenship rights if their parents weren’t both Athenians. For many this meant material disadvantages so that non Athenian women had no hope of getting married. So what happened? They turned to prostitution. If you weren’t an Athenian woman, you didn’t get married because you couldn’t produce children who would be citizens. And no man wanted to have children who couldn’t be citizens of Athens. So non Athenian women became prostitutes. In fact, there were a professional class called material H E T A I R A L which in Greek means a different kind labeling.

They set a category of people as non Athenians. Prostitutes, married women were uneducated. Slavery, which was rampant in that Greek world, allowed men to take slave girls basically for no other purpose than for sexual fulfillment. Mistresses, widespread prostitution, harlotry, sexual sin of all kinds was all over the place in Greece culture, that is your culture of today. Widespread prostitution, Harry. Sexual sin and all kinds was over the place in Greek culture, all over it. They encouraged the Athenian women to fulfill their sexual needs with slaves and indulge in lesbian love. By the way, also spreading over the ancient Greek time world, long before Paul, which is still there today, was pedophilia, man having sex with young children.

Prostitution existed as a form of worship in the fertility cults and that was Athens. Now let’s move on to Rome. The degeneracy in Rome, if anything, was worse. William Barkley, who had done a lot of background history, writes, for the first 500 years of Rome, there had not been one single case of divorce on record. The first recorded divorce was that of Sparius corvilius ruga in 234 BC. But at the time of Paul Roman family life was wrecked. Athens was way ahead of the game in 451 BC. It was another couple hundred years before Rome indulged by Paul’s time.

Seneca says women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married. The Romans did not commonly date their year by numbers, by the way. We have no clue really what year this is. They dated their years by two things, mandated their years by the name of the Roman consoles who ruled and the women by the number of husbands. Jerome tells us of one woman who married. The records we have, we have found on this, by the way, who married her 23rd husband. And she was his 21st wife. That’s kind of how it was married. If you don’t like it done, marry again, whatever.

See, Imperial Augustus demanded that one woman should divorce his wife. Wife. His wife. And one man should divorce one woman. Divorce her. Her husband. And one man should divorce his wife. This is Emperor Augustus while she, while she. She was. She was part of that. While she was pregnant so she could have her child. Jerome Copeno has written a book called Daily Life in Ancient Rome. Now in this book, he says there was rampant feminism in early Rome that led to continual demoralization. Some women, he writes, avoided having children, but for fear of losing their good looks.

Sounds familiar today. Some took pride in being behind their husbands in nothing and even viewed with them in test of strength. In other words, they went to combat with them. So you had women involved in building up their physical strength so that they could compete with their husbands. Where in the world has our. You realize we are the Roman Empire. I don’t know how many times I’ve taught this too. Even our laws are built on the 12 Laws of 12 Tables of the Roman law. Some women carried on lives apart from their husbands and never blushed to charge into a male world to compete.

By the end of the second century, Pono writes, many Roman marriages were childless. I can go on and on and on. Guys, I’m just giving you history and we’re running out of time. I’m gonna skip to the. To the end and I’m gonna wrap it up. I could go on and on about history a lot. Why? Because it tells you why we’re where we are today. Here’s what we’re gonna it’s important to understand the sinful principle in marriage, that the spiritual foundation determines everything. Secondly, there is an authority submission relationship. But it’s not burdensome, it’s not difficult, and it’s not abusive.

And finally, it is best to illustrate this by first Corinthians chapter 11 by the relationship between the Lord Jesus Christ and the God the Father in First Corinthians 11. 3 I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of every woman and God is the head of Christ. There is no inequity between God and Christ. They are equal. There is no inequity between the man and the woman. One is in authority and one is in submission. And when it is carried out properly, it is magnificent, magnificently beautiful.

The woman pursues it. She runs for the protection, she runs for the affection, she runs under the leadership, the shade, the provision of her husband. And he leads her with such tenderness and such sensitivity and such care and faithfulness that she just relishes his presence. Self assessment. There’s no fear on her part, there’s no abuse. And thus there is a willing, eager submission. This is a magnificent picture in the Song of Solomon. Absolutely magnificent when you apply it to your life. All she can do is compliment the man. All she can do is compliment her. They both understand their roles perfectly.

When conflict comes, it is easily resolved because they adore each other. You say, well, how can a person love like that? It comes from a transformed heart. It comes from a spirit fill life. And with that I’ll stop. That’s foundation of a marriage, foundation of a family, understanding history, how we get to the same place today as they did back then. No different. And yet for 2000 years we still struggle with the understanding of who we really are. You’re not going to have any success in life with any relationship. Oh, let’s just put you with a relationship with you.

You’re not going to have any successful relationship unless you’re living a spirit filled life. That’s where it starts. Comments? What? Yeah, one thing Jim. So didn’t they create the brothels and then tokenized it to keep track of what church the money was going to over time they did, but at the time that Christ was walking there, it was at every synagogue, in wherever any synagogue exists. There were rooms on the side of the synagogue for men to partake in prostitution before they went into what? The synagogue, which is what the church. No different than today, blah blah, blah blah.

I mean, so don’t get me started on prostitution in the current church. All right, thank you, David. Long time ago, Jim, I went to Pompeii and one of the first places the guide took us to, we walked into this room and he said, what do you see on the walls? Holy mackerel. It left no no idea. Nothing to your imagination. That’s what I was meaning to say. Just. And I thought this was going on when Vesuvius exploded. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Can I just say, Pam and I have been married happily for 53 years. There you go.

And yep. I wish Misty when I was younger, but she was too young. I would had to marry her out of the crater. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work, so. But I can tell you that when you understand and you apply it, you can’t get any better. Home, family, relationship, just can’t. And that’s what your love shows, guys. That’s truly where your love shows is in that relationship. And that’s where it grows, by the way. It doesn’t grow without that. Anything else, guys? Sure. Well, I hope I’ve given you more than what you asked for. That’s the outcome.

You need to study welts and see how it applies to you. Trey says this is our 31st anniversary. Congratulations. I wish I could say that n gonna happen. Probably not live long enough to have anyone. Generosity of women will never cease to amaze me. Yep. Y. All right, let’s pray. Father, thank you for the night. Thank you for getting into your word. And not only getting into your word for the truth, getting into your word that produces the history that it provides the complete foundation of today’s society. We can’t get any better picture of today without understanding scripture.

And all we need to do is just look back. Not any long time in ancient history, just Roman Empire because it’s not been dissolved, wasn’t taken over, just distributed, disbanded. It just flourished throughout the world. And that’s the society by which we live in. And Father, we just want to thank you for the church. I want to thank you for giving us guidance and wisdom and understanding and revelation when we seek your word in. In our studies. Father, a lot of things going on in this world. You know, the chessboard, it’s your chessboard, by the way.

And we just want to say thanks. Thanks for allowing us living at a time like this. And thanks for giving us the ability of discernment to understand the truth as to what is really going on. And Father, we just look for your guidance, protect us. Do not get us into harm’s way. Do not not you’re not going to let us. But do not allow ourselves to get into harm’s way. That basically we’re presence of you is not there to get full protection. So Father, we just want to give you all the praise and thanks glory and look forward to the next time that this family can get together to study more about you, ask all these things and your sons.
[tr:tra].