Ephesians 5: 21 thru 6: 4(NIV): Submit to one another out ...



Our Command Structure

Ephesians 5: 21 - 33(NIV): Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.  25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. These passages have to do with spiritual warfare. Now at first glance it may not seem to you that what we just read has any bearing whatsoever on our war with the devil and the dark powers and principalities of this world, but trust me it does. Now just in case there are some who are unaware that we are involved in a struggle with dark powers and principalities let me present Ephesians 6: 12(NIV) to you; it says: our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. So then what has the biblical family structure of a husband, a wife, and children to do with this spiritual warfare against the devil and his brigade? Well the family is God’s creation; it is how God wants procreation to proceed in the earth. The devil wants stop or severely cripple this process and so he has attacked God’s Family Plan. These attacks are spiritual attacks and even though they appear in the natural, nevertheless they are still spiritual in nature. In other words we shouldn’t war against one another because flesh and blood is not the enemy; spiritual forces that promote wickedness in the earth is the enemy that we all fight against. If we are to be victorious in this spiritual battle then we must be filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words to fight a supernatural battle you are going to need supernatural power and super natural enablement; that Power and enablement is availed to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Again, I tell you that your enemy is not your sister nor is it your brother; it’s not your wife, nor is your husband your enemy. The enemy is not a flesh and blood enemy – he is an invisible spiritual being who wars against us using spiritual wickedness as a means to stir up trouble at every opportunity. This enemy wants to set us against one another and he is particularly interested in undermining the family; he wants husbands against wives and wives against husbands thus producing wayward children, but we have been endued with Divine Power so that we might overcome this enemy and all of his spiritual wickedness. But while we fight, some of us getting anxious and disturbed by the things that we go through; we are disturbed because we haven’t connected the things that we are going through to the necessity of having spiritual power to overcome those things. In other words we don’t see how we are going to get out of a problem or how this mess or that mess will be cleaned up because we are not living in the spirit; many of us are still living in the flesh and walking by sight, and not by faith thus hindering the work of the Holy Spirit. We need to better understand that the Holy Spirit has been given as an Enabler and a Helper. He is the Means by which we overcome the trials and tribulations of this world. He helps us to be all that God says we are; He enables us to do all that God said that we should do. So since the Holy Spirit is necessary for victory then how can one know whether or not he or she is filled with the Holy Spirit? Well to begin with if you have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior you have been endued with Power – which is the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit you now live a lot wiser than you used to live because you know the Lord’s Will concerning how you should live; also when you are filled with the Holy Spirit - you worship. Ephesians 5: 15 – 20(NIV) explains it; it says: Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those having the Spirit of the Lord do these things mentioned in the above scriptures. Now, another grace that is found in those who have the Holy Spirit is the ability to submit. The natural man is not willing to submit to anything or anybody; he only submits when forced to do so, or when force is threatened, but this is not so for the man or woman who is controlled by the Spirit. The person controlled by the Holy Spirit has within them the grace to submit; that is to say through an act of our will we make ourselves subject to one another. We choose to submit to whatever or whoever God has said that we should submit to. We do not have to have a bit put in our mouth or be forced into submission; we do not have to be threatened with force, but we willingly submit to the Will and the Way of God. We submit willingly because we understand what the Lord’s Will is and we want to submit to His over arching Will. Ephesians 5: 21: says: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Why do we choose to submit to one another? We choose to submit out of reverence for Christ. Spiritual Believers filled with the Holy Spirit know when to submit – they know what is the Lord’s Will and they submit to it especially within their own family relationships. Submitting as referred to by Paul in verse 21 where he says: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ goes back and forth – submit one to another he says. So then submitting is not a one- person job, it is a one another job. I’m sure that the ladies in the house are delighted to hear that submitting is not their job alone. In other words this passage does not say that one person is to do all the submitting; everybody involved is to submit. So then there is a litmus test to determine whether you are filled with the Holy Spirit and the results of that test can be measured by how you are at home, how well you submit. Let me say it again – there is a test, there is a bottom line that lets us know whether or not we are under the control of the Holy Spirit because the Spirit gives us the ability to submit. With that in mind understand then that most conflicts at home generally happen because one or more of the people there have to have their way. When nobody in a family is submitting then chaos, confusion, rejection, and finally divorce will be the result. With the number of divorces that take place in America these days it is clear that the family is under siege from the enemy. The traditional family as God has defined it is a marriage between a man and a woman and that union produces children, but we have an enemy whose agenda is to re-define what a family is. States are legalizing homosexual unions; they are calling them marriages and giving them the same rights and privileges that they give a marriage between a man and a woman. Even religion has become anti-family by performing these unholy unions between same sex individuals. Satan is out to destroy the family as God has defined it and understand that this is not a new strategy on his part. You see he was on the scene when Adam and Eve got married. Satan never bothered Adam while Adam was single, but as soon as Adam and Eve said “I do” Satan showed up. Now the reason why the Apostle Paul wants talk to us about the family is because he understand one of the fundamental rules of warfare, and that rule is that you should do everything in your power to destroy your opponent’s chain of command, because if you can destroy your opponent’s chain of command, then you not only cut off the head that gives the commands, but you also destroy the soldiers in the field because if the soldiers in the field don’t know what is happening – if they don’t know which direction is the right direction to travel; if they don’t know what the mission is; if they are confused about who the enemy is and what the enemy looks like because the command structure has being disabled then it is just a matter of time before they no longer function as a unit; it’s just a matter of time before they become disorganized, demoralized, fearful, and then they are easily cutoff and defeated. Ephesians 5: 21 which says: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ is tied to this chain of command that God has established in the earth. God uses this chain of command that he established a long time ago to disseminate spiritual truth. Now notice that Paul’s main concern here relative to the family is not how much in love you are with your mate, it’s not how happy you are or how stimulated you feel – all of those are good benefits and by-products of a marriage and a family, but notice that Paul’s foremost concern in these scriptures that talk about husbands and wives and submitting is found in Ephesians 5: 32 where the Apostle suddenly shift gears and says something seemingly unrelated to family and the command structure that we have been talking about in the preceding verses. He says: This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. In Ephesians 5: 21 – 6:4, the Apostle is talking to us about family, but he pauses in the middle of that discourse about family to explain that his foremost care and his biggest concern is bigger than our individual families. Put another way Paul is saying that I am concerned about your families, but I am much more concerned about the mother of all families “The Church.” First let us understand that there is no marriage in heaven; and the reason that there is no marriage in heaven is because once you get the real thing – you don’t need the illustration anymore. What I am saying is that “human family” is in the earth to illustrate divine family, and divine family is “Jesus Christ and His Bride the Church.” To understand this passage of scripture that says: This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church one must see that while Paul is speaking about family, the “profound mystery” is that he is really talking about Christ and the Church. Folks tend to pull out of the scriptures the portion having only to do with husbands and wives and their respective roles in the family structure, but I tell you this passage is so much weightier than that – in that Paul is really talking about Christ and the Church. Paul breaks down for us the command structure in the home – he says in Ephesians 5: 22-24: Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Now these are three of the most hated verses in the Bible. The reason why these verses are hated is because when you first read them they appear to be so one-sided, but as we shall soon see this is not the case. Now in addressing the role of wives, Paul picks up a word out of verse Ephesians 5: 21, which says “to submit.” The wife is to voluntarily place herself under the authority of her husband and she does this because it reflects her submission to Christ. In other words Christ says that she should be subject to her husband and so she out of reverence and obedience to Christ submits to her husband. To submit is to be subject to – to willingly and voluntarily recognize the headship of the husband and place yourself under that headship. The reason a wife needs to do this is because of God’s chain of command. In the Garden of Eden we see that Adam was first formed and it was Adam who was given the responsibility to keep the Garden together in the fashion that God had commanded. Genesis 2: 15 -17(KJV) says that: the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. So when sin was found in the Garden, God came looking for the one that He had left in charge of the Garden, He comes to the garden wanting to talk to Adam about the sin in the garden because Adam’s charge from God was to dress and keep the Garden. Even though Eve was the one manipulated and beguiled by the devil and even though Eve was at the very heart of the transgression, still God comes and he wants to know from Adam what has happened in the Garden that He gave Him to dress and to keep. Men, God will want to know from you what has happened in the house that He gave you to dress and to keep. Genesis 3: 8 -11(KJV) says: And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.  9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? So we see here that God is looking to Adam for answers as to what went wrong in the garden that he was supposed to dress and keep. Another important observation is this: even though Adam had total responsibility for the garden, Eve his wife was not made completely and absolutely subject to Adam until after the fall, until after God explained to each the consequences of their sin. In Genesis 3: 13 -19(KJV): the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;  19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. So given the events that take place in Genesis, we see why the Apostle Paul lays out his exposition in Ephesians 5: 21 – 33 the way that he does. The Apostle takes into account what has already happened in Genesis and what God’s Decree is based on what has happened; and so Paul says that: the husband is the head of the wife, and since God set it up this way – then in verse 24 the Apostle says of wives: wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Now what we have seen in all this is that Satan attacked the first family – which was Adam and Eve. What Satan did was to go and talk to Eve about what God had said and what God had not said and he did this apart from Adam. While Adam was away Satan would come and talk with Eve about God’s Word and what that Word actually meant as opposed to what Adam was saying that it meant. Understand that Satan was not just talking to Eve because she was the only one hanging out in the garden – he was talking to her because there was a strategy being employed, and that strategy was to overturn the family’s adherence to the Word of God thus allowing Satan to wrest control away from the head which was Adam. Satan wanted to produce a breakdown in the chain of command established by God. He went about it through the woman. The woman entertained the devil’s conversation; she kept on listening to the devil and not telling Adam about any of it. Soon, what the devil had been saying began to take root in Eve and so when Eve did decide to talk to her husband - her agenda was not to seek the truth of the matter, but it was to convince her husband to join her in her conclusion. The devil’s strategy was to get Eve to flip roles. God had disseminated to Adam the rules of the Garden and Adam had told Eve all that God had said, but the devil wanted Eve to be the one telling Adam what God had said and in this way he could confuse them relative to what had been commanded. The devil wanted Adam and Eve’s roles reversed because he had found a way to talk to Eve; to lie to Eve and have Eve believe him instead of what Adam was saying about that which God had commanded. To put it another way the devil’s strategy was to turn Adam into a passive male and turn Eve into an aggressive woman. The devil wanted to turn the leadership of the home over to Eve so that she became the decision maker; he wanted to turn Adam into a passive male so that he becomes the responder thereby flipping the order and agenda of God. If he could pull it off – then he was in – he would not only subvert God’s Word but he would also now have access to the children of Adam and Eve and so later on we read that Cain killed his brother Abel. Through the parents, the devil was after Cain and Abel long before either of them was ever born. You see the devil was after more than a short term victory over a husband and wife, he wanted long term repercussions. He wanted to be able to look all the way down the line to you and to me and be able to see the results of his handiwork. So then what we have tried to do here is explain how and why this chain of command that we deal with today is what it is. The big problem that today’s wives have with verse 24, which says: wives should submit to their husbands in everything is the two words at the end of the sentence which say: “in everything.” Ladies will often counter with this: “you mean to tell me that I have to do whatever this man says to do? The answer is “absolutely not”. I’ll explain this as we go further into the study. But first let me say that you cannot understand the “in everything” part of verse 24 without first understanding verse 22, which says: Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. All men have limited authority, all parents have limited authority; the only absolute authority is absolute divine authority. In 1 Corinthians 11: 3 Paul says: Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. So here we have the chain of command. It says that the head of Christ is God and that every Christian Man is under Christ; and every Christian Woman is under the Christian Man. Paul is explaining to us that God has established this chain of command; Paul wants us to understand that the way things get worked out in history is through God’s Plan. God controls that Plan and He sent Jesus Christ to implement the Plan and that is why if you want to see God in history you have to deal with Christ because Christ is the next part of the Chain of Command. You can’t get to God and bypass Christ. Christ says I am the way the truth and the life. Acts 4: 12 says: Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." That only name by which men can be saved is the name Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is after God in the Chain of Command. Now looking further into this we see that the preferred way that God expresses His Will through Christ is through the man; it is the job of the man to be the next link in God’s Chain of Command for the purpose of expressing God’s Will in history; and the way that God’s Will gets disseminated further is through the woman; it goes from the parents to the children. Now Satan sees this chain and understands it better than we do; he knows that if he can reverse the chain; if he can turn the chain upside down then he can bring chaos to not just one family, but to all the generations of families that will follow; so that through the broken family all of society is affected. In other words the devil wants to produce millions of other Cain and Abel scenarios by messing with the Chain. Today Satan is producing chaos and creating havoc in our families by reversing roles. Wives, you are obligated to be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. This means that everything that your husband gives leadership on, that is in concert and in keeping with the Lord, you are obligated to follow. Hear me well – the husband’s leadership must be in concert and in keeping with the Lord’s Way. Once he leaves “The Lord,” he has stepped out of bounds and since he is out of bounds your marriage to Christ precedes your marriage to your husband; and this is what submit to your husbands as to the Lord means. So if the husband calls on his wife to rebel against her greater husband “the Lord “ then she is to reject her lesser husband “the man.” But as long as the husband is within the playing field of the Lord, which is to say that he us living according to the Word of God and scripture is his guide, then the wife is obligated to submit to his authority; if she does not submit to that authority, then she cuts herself off from communication with God because she skipped the chain. She can pray till she is blue in the face, but she skipped the chain and is therefore acting out of disobedience. There are many women today who do not get their prayers answered because they are in rebellion against their legitimate chain of authority. Now most of you work and so you know how it is in an employment agency – you are told to raise all your concerns up through the proper chain of command – this means your immediate supervisor first; you may have a legitimate complaint, but if you try to bypass the chain and take your complaint to your bosses boss you are asking for trouble. The first question your bosses boss will ask you – is did you take this complaint to your immediate supervisor, and if your answer is no, then he will send you back down to talk to your first line supervisor who by now is somewhat irritated at your disregard for the chain of command and disrespect for him in that you didn’t think he could handle the situation properly. So you see even in the world there is a chain of command so why would anyone think that there is not one for the home and for the members of the family. This is no small thing – it is a spiritual thing. Even the devil has established a chain of command; the Bible says in Ephesians 6: 12(NIV): that we wrestle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Rulers, authorities, and powers, these are all symbols of a command structure, so then understand that our enemy is organized and in many cases we are trying to drive him and his organized force out of our homes and we try to do it while we ourselves are in a disorganized state. The devil won’t leave; He won’t go and you can’t make him go because he thrives on chaos and when we have flipped roles and skipped the chain, then chaos is the result. When the chain of command is broken then there is not going to be any Power Flow coming from on High down through the chain because the chain is not the way it was ordained to be. Now lest we be misunderstood, let me say that what we are talking about here is related to function not essence and this is an important distinction. What I am saying is that women are equal – they are co-heirs –they are joint heirs in Christ so their humanity is equal to the humanity of men, but equality of humanity does not equal equality of function. Let me illustrate: you have a supervisor at work and when he or she gets on your nerves – you say: who does he think he is? He ain’t no better than me, and you are absolutely right, your flesh and blood supervisor is no better than you in essence, but his function is different than your function; his function has him in a position of authority over you. Just think about it for a second; If we all had the same function – nothing would ever get done because everybody would want to be in charge. Jesus Christ was not less than God, the Bible says in John 1: 1(NIV) that: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning then we see in John1: 14: that: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. So Jesus is as much God as you are ever going to need, but somebody had to be in charge and somebody had to perform a function on the Cross. Ladies make sure Satan is not using you to keep the blessings from your home because you have broken the chain of authority. You say, but I don’t like my husband; well, I looked, but I never did find the word “like” in these scriptures; it says to be subject to. You may say that you can’t be subject to someone you don’t like – well you probably shouldn’t go to work tomorrow because there are plenty of people there that have rule over you that you don’t like, but you submit to them so that you can keep the paychecks coming. Well if you want the blessing to keep coming then” submit to your husband.” It’s not about liking; and you have to understand the limitations – no husband can demand of a wife anything that breaks her commitment to the Lord.

Ephesians 5: 25 –29: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church. Men understand that with leadership comes absolute responsibility; you can’t pass the buck; Adam tried to pass the buck by saying to God that this woman that You gave me cause me to disobey you; we all know that that story didn’t play very well with God and it won’t work for you either men. Every Christian man who has a wife has to know that God is looking at him to make sure that he loves his wife, to make sure that he is washing his wife with the water of the Word, to make sure that he is working to get any and every spiritual issue clear in her mind, working to make sure that he feeds and cares for his wife as if he were caring for his own body. The absolute first thing to understand about your wife is that God gave her to you; so then your wife is not a rag to be used to clean up your mess; she is a special gift from God and her function is to help us to satisfy God’s requirement; that is her function, but it is not the essence of who she is in the Lord. At the renewal of all things she will stand before the Lord as a co-heir and will be judged on how she carried out her function just as men will be judged on how they carried out their assigned function. Now your wife will be to you what you make her to be; if you get all the wrinkles and the blemishes out then you will be able to present to yourself a beautiful, pure, holy and blameless wife. So in this we have the subjection of the man to the woman. The way that the man is subject to his wife is in his loving her. You say, but what’s that got to do with subjection? Well you have to understand love. When Paul talks about love here –he is not talking about sex, he is not talking about candlelight dinners or romantic cruises; but what he is talking about is confronting things that are not right, confronting things that are messed up, confronting things that are confused, confronting things that are falling apart and then making a decision of your will that you are going to conquer those things, deciding that you are going to see to it that that these things no longer trespasses on God’s Property. It was easy for us to stand before God and promise to love our wives until death do us part, but most of us didn’t realize at the time we promised just what all real love according to Christ entailed. Now understand that how a man treats his wife is a reflection of what he thinks about God because the scriptures say that a man is to love his wife the way that Christ loves the Church, but a man may say: “you don’t know my wife; if you knew my wife you wouldn’t be standing there saying what you are saying because my wife fusses all the time; my wife complains all the time; my wife won’t cook, she won’t clean-up; my wife doesn’t respect me, she won’t do any of the things that I ask of her, but yet she shops all the time, she spends our money foolishly; she doesn’t even take care of the kids the way that she should; I tell you my wife is a mess; my wife is a hopeless case and I have given up on her, but I love the Lord”. Everything that this man says about his wife may be true, but the Bible says to love her like Christ loves the Church. Don’t you know that it’s some messed up people in the Church; that messed up wife of yours is a member of the Body of Christ that is called the Church. The Church has members who are still involved in sin; there are members of the church who are lazy, members of the church who won’t left a finger to help out; there are members who won’t read their Bibles or come to the Church on Sundays; there are members of the church who still gamble, there are those who are still stealing, there are some who still can’t control their temper; there are some members who are fornicating, there are some committing adultery, there are those who have murdered; there are members of the church who are engaged in prostitution; there are members of the church using drugs and abusing alcohol, but Christ still looks down from heaven and says to His Bride the Church “I love You.” Christ loves the Church in spite of the mess that is going on in her. Christ still gave Himself for His Church despite her condition; He sacrificed His life for His Bride the Church. You see Christ wanted to purify His Bride so He gave Himself to cleanse her from all her unrighteousness and men our function is to love our wives the way that Christ loved the Church; our function is wash our wives with the thing that God says is able to make her clean and that thing is the Word of God. We are to confront things that are messed up, confront things that are not right, confront things that are falling apart, confront things that do not conform to God’s Way, and when we take on these things in our role as leaders of the home then the Power that is in the Chain of Command will flow and Satan will have to go. Men we have the authority – we have the Power to correct things in our homes that are wrong. God’s Word tells us how we are to treat wives and that Word does not presume that everything is already lovely; in fact that Word assures us that things are messed up – that is why sacrifice is required. Part of our function as leaders of the family is the work of removing spots, the work of getting rid of blemishes and seeing that the wrinkles get pressed out and the way we to do all these things and more is through the Chain of Command. We go to Christ for help. So then our ability to love our wives is not predicated on whether our wives love us back; real love is love that perseveres even when the object of your love is throwing stones at you, and rebelling against you, fighting and biting the hand that feeds her. You say, well I don’t think I can do this – and you are absolutely right – you can’t do any of this on your own, that is why you have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches you what submission really is and then the Holy Spirit enables you to submit to the Will of God which is imbedded in that Word that has been delivered into the depths of your soul by the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you love your wife unconditionally which is the way that Christ loves the Church – then the Bible teaches that you can pray about the issues; you can use the chain of command to get reinforcements from heaven so that the enemy that had established a stronghold in your house will see a Standard coming that will standup against all of the mess that is not like the Lord – you have the Power men – you have the authority; the question is do you have the will? Now know this oh man, if you feel like you just can’t or won’t do these things for your wife then how can you say that you love God, but can’t stand your wife. If God’s edict says to love your neighbor and to love the stranger with whom you have had no relationship how much more do you suppose God believes that a man ought to love his own wife. If we don’t love our wives the way that the Lord says then we might as well get up from our knees because our prayers are being restricted by our inability to love our wives 1 Peter 3: 7(KJV): says: Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

Now back when I was in school and the teacher gave a hard test and I failed that test, I used to hope that everybody else failed the test also. You see if I failed, I wanted everybody else to fail also. I wanted everybody else to fail because I wanted the teacher to grade the test on a curve, but there was always this “Mr. know it all” who would come up with a 100 on the test that everybody else failed and this would prevent the teacher from being able to grade the test on a curve. I would get mad at “Mr. know it all” not because he did wrong, but I was mad because he messed up my curve. He blew the curve so I had to live with my failing grade. Don’t you know that - that’s what happened when Jesus showed up; everybody was ok until He showed up, but when He showed He broke the curve and now perfection was in the midst. Jesus broke the curve. They didn’t kill Jesus for any wrong that He did; Jesus was an innocent man; they killed him because He messed up their curve; they killed Him because when He showed up they became white washed graveyards filled with dead men’s bones. That is exactly what God wants to do in this society with His family; His family being the one that is operating under His command chain. God wants His Family to break the curve. He wants you and your family to come around just when people have concluded that marriages today just won’t work like they used to; God wants you to come up in the middle of them and break the curve. He wants you and your family to come in the middle when everybody else is saying that there is no way; He wants you and your family to be that curve buster that stands up and says oh yes where there is a will there is a way; it can surely be done, and if you are will bring your family in line with God’s Word then you can make a 100 on the test too.

Now a final thought: There is a war going on and Satan is out to destroy marriages because if he can undermine a marriage he will be able to get at the children which are the products of marriage. If Satan is able to have his way with the children, then he will set up generational Cain and Abel scenarios; he will change the whole concept of what marriage and family is according to the Word of God. He will flip the roles to where the woman is the leader and the man is the passive responder; and in doing this he overturns the chain of command and with the chain of command broken there is no power; so then the devil will promote same sex marriage, single parent homes, common law living together and many other substitutes for what God has said marriage and family is. Tonight let me encourage you to fight for your marriage, fight for your family, and use God’s Chain of Command so that it may be well with you and yours. Husbands and wives stop fighting one another; submit to one another for this is what God has decreed. God wants to make your family be to the world like a city that is set on the side of a hill whose light cannot help but be seen. God gets the Glory. In the midst of a dark and depraved world, a world where everything goes – God has a family whose light emits His Way and though the wiles of the devil, the storms of life, and the winds of time beat upon this family it shall not be moved because it is a spiritual House built by the Hands of God; it shall never be moved. Husbands and Wives cling to one another, submit to one another and your love for the Lord and your love for one another will keep you and your whole house. Amen.

 

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download