Ephesians 5:1–6:9

0:00 Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome. I don't often get to say this to you on Sunday mornings, but not just welcome, but congratulations on being here this morning. I know it was kind of a Herculean effort, maybe even a brave effort for you to get out onto the roads this morning, but congratulations on being here. We are a little bit low this morning, as you would expect, so I almost want to pull a Shakespeare on you and say, ah, you few, you happy few. You get to hear me preach now. You know, thank you. I was expecting a lot heartier amen, but one is good enough for me. No. You know, when you're a pastor, if you've been in this for a while, one of the things that often congregants don't think about with a pastor is that when you get to a Sunday like this, when you know everything is going to kind of be low and people had to make an effort to get here and folks are going to be trickling in late, there is a big temptation for pastors to treat a service like this as kind of like

1:05 a JV game. You can sort of take it easy, right? You can ditch the coat and tie that you normally wear. You can take it easy a little bit on the hard exegesis and treat the passages more of a personal reflection on your own thoughts about it. What's the Greek for no? You can blitz through the sermon. Get it done in about 15 minutes and everybody can just go home. But friends, the snow has stopped and the plows are out, which creates an interesting and yet dangerous situation where the longer I preach this morning, the safer the roads get for you to get home.

2:05 Most importantly though, for all of that, I just personally don't see the point of you making all the effort to get here this morning just for me to stand up here and say you know what we're just going to kind of functionally cancel this thing anyway I'm going to give you some quick little thoughts about Ephesians 5 and we're all going to go home the fact is you didn't come here as a Christian and as a member of Third Avenue Baptist Church to check a box you came here to hear the word of God preached and so that's what we're going to do this morning turn if you will to Ephesians chapter 5 that's where we're going to be chapter 5 and a little bit of chapter 6 if you want to use one of these Red Pew Bibles in front of you, you can find Ephesians chapter 5 on page 978. Let me give you just a little bit of background, especially if for some reason you got out in the snow this morning, and this is your first time with us at Third Avenue. This is actually not a book at all. It's a letter that was written by the Apostle Paul, a Christian missionary, a Christian apostle in the early days of the church. It was written in about the year AD 62. So you're talking 1970 years, 1900 something like that years. It's a very old

3:11 letter and it was written by this apostle probably to a number of churches in what we now know as Western Turkey. So it wasn't written like a lot of Paul's letters to one church that was having one problem or one situation that he wanted to fix. It was more of a general letter. He wanted to say some general things to Christians and churches in several different cities in Western Turkey. And the reason it took the book, the name Ephesians, is because the largest of those cities, the most prominent of those cities that he was writing to, was the city of Ephesus on the coast of Turkey. What Paul writes about in this book, as you've been seeing, if you've been with us the last few weeks, is that he's trying to create in some Gentile Christians, so these are brand new Christians and they don't even sort of have the roots in the background of Jewish Christians.

3:57 He's trying to create in these Gentile Christians a Christian identity. He wants them to think of themselves first and foremost as Christians. Not Romans, not Ephesians, not whatever their particular profession is. He wants them to think of themselves as Christians. And so that's what he's been doing for the last few chapters. Last week we began the second major section of the book. So starting in chapter 4 where Paul turns, it happens right at the end of chapter 3 and beginning of chapter 4. He turns from laying out theological truth, that's the whole of chapters 1 to 3, it's just this is true, and this is true, and you are this, and God is this, and Jesus has done this.

4:37 It's just one truth after another. In chapter 4, he turns and says, therefore, because all those things are true, you ought now to live like this. Your life ought to take on this character. It ought to be different from your pagan neighbors in all of these kinds of ways. In other words, he turns from indicatives or true statements in 1 to 3, chapters 1 to 3, to imperatives in chapters 4 to 6, largely. Because these things are true, you therefore ought to live like this. And what we saw as we looked at chapter 4 last week is that Paul said the church, the people who are the people of Jesus, those who put their faith in Jesus and pulled together in a covenant of a church like we have done, the church ought to live in unity and purity because God is one and holy. So you can see the logic there, right? You as a church are to live in unity because God is one. He is undivided, therefore you ought to be undivided. And because God is pure and holy, you too as a church,

5:42 as his people ought to live in purity and holiness. But if you look at it, if you look at what's going on in these chapters, it's not just pure exhortation that Paul is doing there in chapter 4. And you can see it in the logic, right? It's not just do this because I say so. It's do this because God is like this. You see that logic? Live in holiness because God is pure. Live in unity because God is one.

6:12 Well, the same kind of thing is going to happen today as we look at our text for today. We're going to be looking at chapter five and on a little bit down into six where essentially Paul is continuing this argument that the church ought to live in purity. And he does exactly the same thing. It's not just a list of bare do's and don'ts, which is what Christianity gets accused of all the time. All you guys have, they say, is this Christian ethic that says do this and don't do that. And it's always because some priest told you to don't do that and do do that, right? but it's not that at all. There's a logic that undergirds it. Sure, you've got the do's and the don'ts on top like an iceberg, right? And sometimes they loom very large, but underneath that is 90% of what the do's and don'ts mean and where they come from, and it has to do with who we are as the people of the king and who God is. So as we study this passage this morning, you're going to see that same logic at work. Look down with me at Ephesians chapter 5. We're actually not going to read the whole thing at once. I'm going to read sections of it to you as we go along, but I do want

7:13 to look at it and kind of show you the structure of it, how the whole thing works. If you read this in advance, that's great. It's an excellent thing to do, is just look in your bulletin, figure out what's going to be preached next, and then read ahead, because it'll prime your mind to start understanding and thinking about what we're going to be talking about on Sunday morning. It's just way better than coming to it in a kind of cold call, right? You know, you need a little bit of warm-up for any workout, and reading in advance is the warm-up. But let me show you to it. Let me show it to you. At first glance, as you look down through here, it seems like there's a lot going on, right? If you look at chapter 5, verse 1, down through 6, 9, that's what we're going to be looking at. I mean, even in just the headings, you can tell that there's a lot going on. Walk in love, wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters. It just looks like Paul is jumping from one unrelated thing to another but I think if you look at it a little more carefully you can see what Paul is doing really there are two big sections here you've got chapter 5 1 to 21 that's

8:18 the first big section and that's where Paul describes how Christians ought to live as people of love and light and purity so he's continuing that that argument and then you've got 5 22 all the way down through 6.9, where he's bringing that teaching about purity to bear on really three of the most fundamental relationships that make up our experience as human beings. That of husbands and wives, children and parents, and masters and servants, or maybe the better way to think about it for us is employers and employees. We'll talk about that in a little while. In all of those, what he says is the main idea that I'm going to try to get across to you, because I think it's what Paul's trying to get across to us. As a Christian, you are now a brand new person.

9:03 And that ought to affect everything about your life. As a Christian, you are now a brand new person. And that ought to affect everything about your life, including and especially your relationships. So we're going to look at this passage and just, we're just going to break it down into those two big main sections that I gave you. And the points of the sermon are these. Number one, live in the light of God, not in the darkness. Live in the light of God, not in the darkness. That's verses 1 to 21 of chapter 5. Number two, live in love for others. And that would be everything else. 522 all the way through 6-9. All right, let's break it open and see what we can see in this text. Number one, live in the light of God, not in darkness. First thing to notice about this first big section chapter 5 1 to 21 is that there's really not intended to be a hard break between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5. Now you know that occasionally I'll stand up here and just really argue hard against the chapter divisions in the

10:04 Bible right that have stood there for a thousand years or more. I'm not going to argue hard against this one because I think it's a fine place to sort of break the book up to keep it from becoming one big, you know, swamp of words, so to speak. But there's no hard break between the end of chapter four and the end of chapter five. In fact, if you look at 5.1, the therefore at the beginning of that verse flags you to the fact that this is really a continuation of everything he's been saying in chapter four. He said, you know, be kind to one another, be pure, all the rest of this stuff.

10:36 And now in chapter 5.1, he's going to start to kind of wrap that up in a kind of new thought that then carries on so he says be kind if you just look at the last verse of chapter 4 be kind to one another be tender-hearted forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you therefore now do all of this other stuff right so it's a sort of wrap-up and yet it's launching into this new thought well what is the new thought he says there verse 5 or chapter 5 verse 1 therefore be imitators of God because all this stuff is true about you because God is one and you're supposed to live in unity because God is holy and you're supposed to live in purity because you're supposed to be kind to one another because you've been forgiven by Christ. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. Children imitate their fathers. Children do what their fathers do.

11:28 And Paul is saying that's the relationship that you ought to have to God. Be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. All right, now those two verses are critical because they form the context or the atmosphere for everything that's going to come in the rest of this text. You got that? They form the atmosphere or the context of everything that's going to come for the rest of this text. So if you're, it's really hard to do in this particular passage, but if you are ever, if you are ever tempted to think that some command Paul gives you in this text is just sort of out of nowhere or sort of non-Christian or ah-Christian in some way, this verse is what ought to bring you back to your senses. All of these things are Christian things that Paul is about to say. Now like I said, it's very hard to forget that because Paul keeps reminding you even in the text itself. But Paul wants you to know that the context in which we're talking here, the reason

12:30 all this is important, in fact the reason that it all works at all, is because you are Christians. you are beloved children of God, whom Christ has loved and given himself up for as a fragrant offering to God. Now, from chapter 5, verse 2, the main line of thought actually picks up again way down in verse 15. Paul's going to, he kind of moves from 2, and then there's this big section from 3 to 14, and then the main line picks up again in verse 15. And he just continues these kinds of general statements about how Christians should live they get they get more general right they get higher in that section but from 3 to 14 you have this it's not quite a parenthesis because it works perfectly logically it's not it's not like a total aside it works logically but you do have this passage where Paul turns to a very specific problem that would have been staring these Ephesian Christians in the face every single day, and that is the sin of rank sexual immorality

13:34 and the almost necessary social temptation to not care about that. You got that? It's a problem that would have been staring these Ephesian Christians, not just the Ephesians, it's literally everyone in western Turkey. Colossae, you see some of the same themes in the book, or the letter to the Colossians, the Laodiceans are right there in that same geographical area, several different Hierapolis, there's several different cities that Paul's probably writing to, and every single one of them would have been faced with the temptation of rank sexual immorality and the necessary social pressure to say you don't care about that sort of thing. Now why was that social pressure there? Well, by Paul's time, sexual immorality of every kind you could imagine and probably some ways you can't even imagine, was rife throughout the Roman Empire. There's one historian who said that of all the great empires of world history, you can throw the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, all of them, of all the great empires of world history, he said, Rome was the city

14:39 cesspool. And that's true if you start studying the history of Rome. I know that the history books often hold Rome up as this glorious empire, the fountain of everything that Western civilization came from and you see the columns and the marble and the forum in Rome and Colosseum and all the rest of it but you scratch the surface just a little bit you scratch the surface of that marble and what you're going to find underneath is every kind of debauchery and immorality that you can imagine and the thing was that debauchery and immorality was not just practiced it was celebrated and in some cases, most cases in fact, even kind of socially mandated. So if you wanted to be a part of polite society, you sort of had to participate in these kinds of activities because these kinds of activities were how you worship the gods that were thought to hold society together and make it rain and bring the money in and keep your family fed. You want those gods to be happy, you have to

15:41 participate in the stuff that those gods want. And what do those gods want? Immorality and debauchery. That's how it was kind of in spades in Ephesus in a very special way because the great goddess of the city, Artemis, remember from Acts, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. The great goddess of the city, Artemis, was a fertility goddess. And so the very rhythm of the city was based around what they would call these religious orgies that were held in her temple. And if you wanted to be a part of polite society, if you didn't want to be looked down on in the restaurants or whatever they had, then you had to go to these things and participate in them. Because that's how you keep Artemis happy. That's how you keep the ships and the merchants and the commerce flowing into the city. So that's the world that Paul writes into when he says, verse 3, but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among saints let

16:42 there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of place but instead let there be thanksgiving for you may be sure of this that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous that is an idolater has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience therefore do not associate with them now when the people you're writing to live in the kind of world that i just described that is bold stuff to say to them and in just about every point of it is calculated to challenge what they were being told from the world verse 4 let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of place i mean that that was that That was so far from what the world around these Ephesians was telling them.

17:36 Because filthiness and crude joking and jesting and coarse talking were the currency of the day at the restaurants, in the forum, at the synod house. If you wanted to fit in, that's what you do. Those things aren't out of place in Ephesian society. They're the only place there is. And yet Paul says, you, you have to be different from that. I mean, on the surface, if you look at it, it's, I think, pretty easy to see what Paul's saying.

18:10 Christians are not to be involved in sexual immorality, even if it's expected of you. Even if it means you're completely out of place, that you're shut out of polite society, you are not to do it. And then he gives several reasons for why that's the case. But I want you to see a couple of things here. I want you to notice first that what Paul prohibits here is not just participating in sexual immorality, but also joking about it. Do you see that? That's actually the main thing.

18:41 That's the thing that's on the top of the command. This is not one of those places in the Bible, though there are many. This is not one of those places where it just says Christians should not participate in sexual immorality. This one says something slightly different. Look at what it says. Sexual immorality and impurity and covetousness must, so far are they from being able to be done among you that they must not even be named among you. That's what's proper among saints. So let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking.

19:12 Those things are out of place. But what ought to be there instead is thanksgiving. Now, I wonder how that strikes you. that paul would say that and probably not much happens in our hearts when paul writes in other places that christians should not be involved in sexual immorality our hearts kind of nod along with that yeah yeah that's right but here here it's a little bit different because he says you guys as christians shouldn't even be joking about those things i wonder how that strikes you and when you read that does that does that seem a little bit prudish to you maybe maybe a little bit too far Paul maybe maybe you're trying to be a little bit too pure Paul because I mean come on I mean it just seems like right that there's there's no harm no foul in making a little joke no harm no foul and a little comment with a little double entendre that your friends are going to pick up on and and snicker about that some you know harmless insult to somebody that's

20:16 got a little just a little bit of a sexual barb in it to make it funnier come on Paul there's nothing wrong with that like literally we do that every every every time we get together with our friends to hang out we do that kind of thing and surely Paul there's nothing wrong with that kind of thing now why does Paul say that those things are not fitting for Christians see I think our hearts don't catch when he says don't be involved in sexual immorality They would say, yes, of course not.

20:46 And also don't joke about it. Wait a second. Why does he say it? Well, here's what Paul would say. The things that we joke about in our conversation are the things that we think lightly of. The things that we joke about are the things that we think lightly of. They're things that we, in our own minds and hearts, that we have judged in some way not to have much weight or importance, not to matter, that they don't matter that much.

21:24 They're things that are ridiculous and worthy of ridicule. What Paul wants these Ephesian Christians and us to do is not to think that way about sexual immorality. He wants us to know that it matters. It is not a light thing and it is not to be joked about. In fact, that's exactly what verse 5 is doing. It's really setting the stakes in this. Yeah, yeah. It's true in itself that a person given over to sexual immorality is proving every day that they're a slave to sin.

21:59 That the life of the Spirit isn't in them. That they're not a Christian. That's true on its face. But what Paul wants you to see in verse 5 is that it's also true that because that's the case, because sexual immorality is a poison that kills souls, it's not something that Christians ought to make light of. It's not something that Christians ought to joke about. And friends, this is exactly the same logic that causes it to be socially inappropriate for you to make jokes at work about the Holocaust.

22:32 It's something that is evil. It's something that killed and therefore you don't make jokes about it. It's why it would be wholly inappropriate and people would look at you in a very strange way if you started making jokes among Christians about abortion. We just don't do that because it's something that kills and therefore we don't make light of it. So you see Paul's point here, I'd put it in two ways. First of all, sexual sin is a deadly serious matter because it kills souls.

23:06 Sexual immorality is a deadly serious matter because it kills souls. That is from start to finish the unbroken teaching of the Bible, and you need to hear that clearly. If you're sunk in sexual sin, pornography on the computer, pornography in books that you read, whether they have pictures or not, sex outside of marriage, adultery, You need to know that these things kill souls. And you're no exception. Now, does that mean that immediately falling into those things, that immediately that means you're not a Christian?

23:39 No, certainly not. James will say this later. We all stumble. We all will be engaged in a battle against sin until we stand before Christ. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. If that sin has become so familiar and friendly to you that there is no battle, that there is no longer any smoke on the battlefield, then yeah. Yeah, it may be that it's time to start fearing that your soul is dead and always has been.

24:11 And then what do you need to do? What do you need to do? Listen to me. It's not some three-year program. It's not some 12-step thing. It's not identifying yourself as a sexual, immoral person. No, what it is is actually doing exactly what the gospel calls you to do. Repent of your sins, turn away from it, declare war on it, and put your faith in Christ to save you. That's what it is. It's the gospel.

24:43 Sexual sin is a deadly serious matter because it kills souls. That's the first thing that Paul is saying here. Second thing he's saying is because that's true, because sexual sin kills souls, Christians should take it deadly seriously. Even in the way we talk about it. So does that seem prudish to you? Does that seem unnecessarily harsh? I kind of want to say, Paul, why you got to go that far? Why does the Bible have to go that far?

25:14 It's just a joke. Well, friend, if it strikes you as prudish, well, I'd suggest that maybe that feeling doesn't tell you much at all about the character of Scripture. Maybe it tells you a whole lot about where you are in relation to it. And you need to come back home. Well, in 7 through 14, Paul widens the camera to give a larger context for why these things are not fitting for Christians.

25:50 Look what he says there. You can be in 7, therefore don't associate with them. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. The fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it's shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light. And therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

26:23 You see what he's doing there with those words? All that stuff about light in the darkness. What he's doing is painting a picture in which Christians are beings of light in a dark and fallen world. And notice, it's not just that Christians, look down at verse, I believe it's 8. Yep, look down at 8. It's not just that Christians have light. It's not just that Christians give light. And despite me even kind of reading it wrongly there, I don't know if you caught up with it when I had to go back and correct myself in the reading.

26:56 It doesn't even say that we Christians are in the light. It says that we are light. And we were darkness. Same thing he says in another place, in Corinthians. If anyone is in Christ, behold, new creation. In other words, the minute you come to faith, behold, look, see it. Because there's a spark that's coming to life. There's darkness that's becoming light. Now that's what's happened to you if you're a Christian.

27:27 When the miracle of regeneration happened in your heart, when you became a born again Christian. When the Holy Spirit spoke your name and brought you from death to life and you breathed spiritually for the first time, Jesus, I'm coming to you. When that happens, you exploded into this dark universe as a little spark of light from the new heavens and the new earth. And the upshot of that, Paul says, is that if you're a little spark of light from the new heavens and new earth living in this dark world, then it's entirely inappropriate.

27:58 It's entirely unthinkable. It's stupid. for you to be in partnership with those who are still darkness. But look at 13 and 14, because it turns out this isn't just a matter of avoiding darkness. Look at 13 and 14. When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. And anything that becomes visible is light.

28:30 So follow that logic. follow that logic. When anything dark is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. That's no problem, right? We got that. That logically makes sense. But then he makes this theological point that it is when a dark thing is exposed to light, and this may not be true in physics, but it's true spiritually, it can itself become light. So what this is saying is your job isn't just to run away from the darkness as this little spark of light from the new heavens and new earth. Your job is to go and expose the dark to the light of the gospel so that by the Spirit's work, the darkness might become light itself. So that he might do that work of regeneration in other people as well.

29:15 That's why we tell you. That's why the Bible tells you. That's why the apostles tell you that you're supposed to do evangelism in the world around you. It's because you've got the only light that the world is ever going to see and it turns out that there's something special about the light that you are. The Holy Spirit uses you to bring more light and life into the world. Look at this little hymn that he quotes here in 14. Therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

29:50 We don't exactly know where that comes from. It may be a kind of reworking of a prophecy from Isaiah where God, Yahweh, is said to be shining on his people. And Paul is just taking Yahweh and changing it to Christ, which would be an amazing thing. But it's not word for word enough to be able to say that. So it may be a reworking of Isaiah. It may just be a Christian hymn, right? You can imagine putting that to music. Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. You know, even in English, it has a little bit of a rhythm, doesn't it? It has a little bit of a lilt. But it's also a beautiful invitation, isn't it?

30:23 If all this stuff is true, if all this stuff is true that we're talking about, And if you're not a Christian, then the great and wonderful thing is that you can be, by the end of this sermon today, by the time you go home out in the snow today, you can be a Christian. That little spark kind of erupted in your heart so that you go from being darkness to light. Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. You know how you awake? You know what you do when you realize, oh, I'm awake?

30:55 You know what you do? You put your faith in Christ. You all of a sudden realize I'm a sinner and I can't save myself, but I know that he can and so I'm going to put my faith in Christ. You can't wake yourself up. The Spirit's got to do that. You can't anymore wake yourself up from the spiritual dead than you can out of your grave. But the Spirit can and when he does, when he does, all of a sudden you see your need of Christ, you see his ability to save, and you go to him with everything you've got. I pray that that would happen to you like right now, like this morning.

31:30 That the Holy Spirit himself would look into your heart and breathe into your nostrils and say, awake, oh sleeper, and rise from the dead. If that happens, run to Christ in faith. You won't be able to help it if it does. Well, in that last part there, 15 to 21, Paul sort of wraps up this ethical section that he's been working on since the beginning of chapter 4. Look what he says here. He kind of returns to the main sort of general argument. So look carefully, therefore, how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of your time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not get drunk with wine, for that's debauchery, but be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. He makes a couple of points here, right? In 15 to 17, he kind of crams a bunch of stuff together.

32:33 15 to 17, he just kind of says, recognize what time it is. Time is short, right? You don't have a ton of time. Sometimes life seems very long, right? But when you really think about it, the 70 or 80 years that we get on this earth is not very long at all. It often occurs to me, especially as I get older and hit these various milestone birthdays, that we're all burning time at exactly the same rate. You get 24 hours a day, right? That's it. Everybody gets the same 24 hours a day.

33:05 Some people get more of those days or less of those days, but we're all burning time at exactly the same rate. You will hit 70 years old at the exact same time of your life that everyone else has hit 70 years old, exactly 70 years after you're born. That's how it works. And Paul is saying, make the most of that. Be cognizant of that. Don't just let the minutes roll by. Don't just let the days roll by like sands through an hourglass that you're not even paying attention to.

33:37 Make the most of the time. That word make the most of actually means buy up the time. That's what it means. In other words, invest something in the time so that you gain it back. Buy up the time. Don't just let it slip away. 18 to 21 says that we shouldn't be drunk with wine like the world, but rather filled with the spirit, which will lead to a heart that's full of joy. So in other words, don't let the thing that you go to for comfort in this life be the sort of baseless, cloudy joy of being buzzed with alcohol.

34:12 But let the thing that gives you comfort in this life be gratitude and thanksgiving to God for what he's done. You see the point in all of this from chapter 4. We've been talking about it for, you know, two weeks now. From chapter 4 all the way down to here, Paul has been saying the same thing really over and over and over. You Christians are something brand new in this world. You are little sparks of the new heavens and new earth. And therefore, because you're something new, your lives ought to look like something that's new. They ought to be different from the dark, sinful world around you.

34:45 So, instead of breaking apart into factions along the same fault lines that always divide humans, he said back in chapter 4, you need to realize that you're a new nation and you're to be united around your King Jesus. Instead of living in drunkenness and sexual immorality, letting the moments of your life slip away without realizing that they're slipping, you ought to be living your life with a heart that every single moment is full of thanksgiving as you remember what God has made you in Christ and as you look forward to what he's got in store for you at the end. And every step of the way along that road, every single step of the way, you ought to be shining the light of the gospel on others, right?

35:23 Taking that light that's been born and erupted in your heart and shining it on others and praying that God would do in their hearts what he's done in yours. You get that vision on board the ship of your life and it will change everything about the way you live. Pray that God would give you that kind of Christian understanding. Here's number two. Live in love for others. Live in love for others. That's really the point of everything from 5.22 down through 6.9.

35:58 From 5.22 down through 6.9. Now, before we look at some of the details of what's said in all of that, we need to say a couple of preliminary things about exactly what we're looking at here. So if you take a look at the headings, you can see that Paul speaks to three different relationships that tend to shape human life. Husbands and wives, children and parents, and then masters and bond servants, or employers and employees. And the thing is, this isn't unusual in ancient literature. There's nothing uniquely Christian about talking about human relationships, nor is there anything uniquely Christian about talking about those three particular relationships.

36:31 Because basically everyone, pagan philosophers and politicians and all political philosophers, they all realize that these are the three main relationships that we as humans find ourselves kind of inescapably meshed into, right? This is what shapes us as human beings. And so it was a very common thing for even pagans to make comments about, here's the best way to handle these relationships. What sets this apart, though, that Paul writes from all the other pagan stuff, is the motivation that Paul gives for how each of these relationships are supposed to play out.

37:05 So what Paul tells you to do in those relationships, he says, you ought to do these things that I'm telling you precisely because you are a Christian. Same logic, right? you're a new creation therefore you need to act like this and it's exactly the same logic that exists here I mean I mean one just really high level lesson that you can take from this is that look your Christian faith is not just something that comes into play sometimes in your life or occasionally in your life you're not a perforated Christian on again off again on again off again That's not how it works.

37:46 If you're a Christian, then that new identity is supposed to suffuse and transform everything in your life. Nothing's off limits, including these relationships that enmesh you in human society. So let's look at it. The whole section really grows out of what Paul says at the end of 521 there, that Christians ought to submit to one another. Now, we should take care to try to figure out what that phrase means, because it's really caused all kinds of confusion. In fact, in a really strange way, people have used that phrase, submit to one another, basically to undo everything else Paul says in 5.22 to 6.9.

38:28 You ever seen that happen? So they'll say things like, sure. Paul says, of course, he does, there's no denying it, that wives are to submit to their husbands. And he says that children are to obey their parents and servants are to submit to their masters. That's fine. But let's all just notice that in 21, he says that we are all, husbands and wives, children and parents, slaves and masters, we are all supposed to submit to one another. So really, when you get down to it, husbands are supposed to submit to wives just as much as wives are supposed to submit to husbands.

38:59 And the same thing with parents and children, and the same thing with employers and employees. That's the way the argument works. 21 just kind of bombs and dismantles everything else that Paul is saying so that it all becomes, you know, equal. Mutual submission, one to another. But is that what that means? I mean, is Paul really so, frankly, dumb that he would take the time to write all this stuff about varying people, submitting to other people and having authority over others and then just blow it all up with this one little phrase in 21 and yet you're all supposed to submit to each other. So never mind. No, that can't be it. So it's important to figure out what he really means by that. Now, the word submit is exactly what it sounds like. There's nothing unusual about that word. It means to subordinate yourself to someone who has rightful authority over you.

39:58 To subordinate yourself to someone, that's what it means to submit. I subordinate myself to someone whom I recognize has rightful authority over me. So you and I, we all live in this web, right, of these kinds of relationships. Sometimes we're the one in authority in a particular relationship. Sometimes we are under authority. But one of the most fundamental teachings of the Bible, right from Genesis 1 to 3, if you remember us talking about that, is that rightful authority is good. And we are to submit ourselves to it when it comes to bear in our lives.

40:32 All right, now here's the kicker. Here's an important thing to say immediately on the heels of that. That does not mean that a person who holds authority is somehow better than the person who does not hold the authority in that relationship. It does not mean that that person with authority is better. Let me read you a quote from Martin Luther. Here's how he talked about it. He said, I've often said that we must sharply distinguish between these two, the office and the person.

41:04 The man who is called Hans or Martin is a man quite different from the one who is called Elector Hans or Dr. Martin or Preacher Martin. Here we have two different persons represented in one man. The one, Hans or Martin, is that man in which we're created and born and in which we are all alike, man or woman or child, young or old. But once we are so born as a Hans or a Martin, God adorns and dresses us up as another person.

41:46 He makes at various times in life you a child and me a father, one a master and another a servant. one a king and another a citizen. Do you see what he's saying there? He's saying that the authority that God clothes a person in throughout the course of their life says nothing about their intrinsic dignity. It says nothing about their intrinsic worth vis-a-vis a person that they have authority over. It's a part that they play given to them by God.

42:18 It's an office that they hold as long as God allows them to hold it. So I think that's not too difficult to understand. And in fact, it's not the word submit that causes the problem in verse 21. It's the next word. What causes the problem in verse 21 is that next word, to one another. So what does that mean? Well, some people look at that word, submit to one another, and they say, well, it means everyone submits to everyone at the same time.

42:49 It's mutual submission, one to another, all the time. But is that really what that word means? That everyone does the same thing all at the same time? Well, sometimes it does, yeah. Sometimes in the Bible it very much does. It's the same word that Jesus uses when he says, love one another, right? You are all to love each other at exactly the same time and exactly the same way, right? It's not that you love sometimes and you don't love other times. is you are to love one another.

43:20 That's what it means. But there are other times when it doesn't mean that. So for example, the same word is used in 1 Corinthians 11 when Paul's talking about the church coming together for the Lord's Supper. And he says, when you come together for the Lord's Supper, you are to wait for one another. Wait for one another. Now think about that. Waiting on someone is not exactly perfectly mutual, right? everyone is not waiting for everyone at the same time it's just the ones who get there early who have to wait for the people who get there late but generally what it means wait for one another is not everyone waiting all at the same time nothing would ever get done in that sense but what it means is that generally there ought to be a lot of waiting going on in this community sometimes these waiting sometimes those waiting but there ought to be a lot of waiting in this community when it's appropriate and when it's called for. When you're in the position of getting there early, you'll wait. Otherwise, you don't. Same thing in Revelation chapter 6, verse 4,

44:26 when John writes that men will slay each other. Men will slay one another. Now, again, that doesn't mean that everyone is slaying everyone all at the same time. It's not that they're getting into sword fights and sticking each other at exactly the same moment, right, and slaying each other. That's not what that means. What it means is that in this community of this worldwide earth, which has been being judged in Revelation, there's a whole lot of slaying going on. Sometimes this one is slaying, and then that one is slaying, and then that one slays that one, right? There's just a lot of slaying going on, depending on who gets the upper hand in a fight. So my argument is that it's that sense of to one another that Paul is using there. It's not that everyone is submitting to everyone at all times. What it means is that there's a lot of submitting going on in the community of the church when it's appropriate. There's a lot of submitting going on. When you find yourself relating to someone in a situation where they have authority, you submit. When it's

45:27 the reverse, they submit. But when it's appropriate, there's a lot of submitting going on. I don't think that's too hard to understand. I mean, you can come up with all kinds of examples of this. I mean, you imagine a son and a father, for instance, who happened to be in the military, active duty at the same time, and the son just gets promoted above the father, right? Well, there are going to be times when the father in his military capacity needs to submit to the son because the son holds authority. There are going to be other times, like in the home, where the son needs to honor the father and submit to his authority as the father, right? So it's just, it depends on where you are in the web of relationships, whether your job is to submit or not I often have this thought with uh uh flight attendants on flights that I'm on because these people come down that aisle and they give me coke and peanuts and they take care of you and they they do all kinds of nice things for you they serve you as you're sitting in that seat and I've often thought you know what I've even said to to a few of them when I realize they're posted in Louisville or based in Louisville I'll say something like thank you for thank you for

46:29 serving me so well on this flight. How about you come, I'm a pastor, well how about you come to church on Sunday and we'll turn the tables and I will serve you instead. We all live in this kind of web of relationships and we submit to one another when it's appropriate. Okay, so with that in mind, let's look at these three relationships and particularly how Paul makes the motivation for them a Christian motivation. So first husbands and wives. Look what he says here. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands

47:29 should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ in the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. So you see what Paul does here? He uses the truths of Christianity, the relationship between Christ and his church to define the relationship that ought to exist between wives and husbands.

48:08 Okay, so what does Paul say to wives? Well, he says that they are to submit to their husbands and to do so in the same way that Christ, that the church submits to Christ. Well, what does that mean? Well, in the practice of everyday life, it works out in all kinds of different ways as you make your way through the years of a marriage. And Paul doesn't really get into the details. He doesn't tell us a whole lot of details. But what it means is that in the home, God has clothed the husband with authority to leave.

48:38 He's appointed him to an office of spiritual leadership in the home to set agendas to set the tone to make decisions and in that relationship the wife's proper response is to recognize and respect that authority now is there nuance that could be given to that sure are there details that have to be worked out about that or there's particular questions about this situation or that situation yes yes yes yes yes but we want to be very careful when we're studying the Bible, not to kill the principle with a thousand cuts of nuance. The principle is that God has clothed husbands with spiritual authority and leadership in the home. And a wife's proper response is to recognize and respect that authority. Okay, how? How should you respect that authority? Well, I think it's interesting that what Paul says is that you should respect that authority as the church submits to Christ, which means that it ought to be a joyful and

49:40 life-giving submission. Let me ask you a question. When you come here as the church that is submitting to Christ, right, worshiping Christ, do you come here with a kind of grudging, I can't believe God demands this of me. No, you don't. You come here because it's a privilege. You submit to Christ as the church, as Christians, because it's a privilege. Because it's great and because it's good for you and life-giving. Wives, that's how you ought to relate to your husband's authority.

50:14 Not as if it's some grudging thing that God requires of you, but as if it is as life-giving and wonderful as the church submitting to Christ. So, ladies, are you doing that? Are you doing the kinds of things that will show beyond a shadow of a doubt that you recognize the authority that God has appointed your husband to in your home? And are you helping him to carry out that good authority for the good of your family? Is that what you're doing? When you disagree with him, which is allowed, Paul doesn't say that's not allowed, but when you do, do you do so with respect for authority or with dismissal and contempt?

50:55 is the bent of your heart to recognize and respect the authority that God has given to your husband or is the bent of your heart more to just take over, to set the agenda yourself, to push your husband aside and just take over? Well, sister, if that's you, if you can see yourself reflected in those words, you really do need to consider you do need to consider that that attitude is exactly the thing we talked about back in genesis three that the paradigmatic sin of women in this fallen world is going to be to try to usurp authority that god has not given it's going to be to claw at the good structures of authority that god has put in place and insofar as you are doing that in your home you are joining the work of the serpent.

51:57 Dear sisters, don't let that be your heart. Make sure that's not you, and if you see that in yourself, pray that the Lord would bring you to repentance. And husbands, what about you? What kind of authority is it that you've been clothed with? What's its purpose? All you've got to do is look at what Paul says in 26. You have this authority, husband, so that you might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word. so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

52:31 Now, Paul moves into talking about the church there, but he's also talking about your wife. Same thing he was talking about in chapter four, that we're all striving to grow up into maturity and wholeness of mankind into Christ our head. That should be your goal with your wife. Look at 29 also. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. That's how you're to relate to your wife. That's the reason God gave you this authority in the first place. It's to do your wife good.

53:04 It's to help her mature into Christ just as he intends. It is not to get you out of doing the dishes just because you can assert your ungodly authority in that way. It's to do good to your wife and help her to grow into Christ. And the atmosphere that all of this takes place in is love, just as Christ loved the church. It's the self-giving, self-sacrificial love that Christ has for his people. I mean, you put it all together, it's a beautiful picture, isn't it?

53:37 Husband and wife both recognizing the roles and offices that God has clothed them in. The man leading and loving his wife, the wife respecting and submitting to the authority God's given to her husband in the home. And both of them, in their own way, appropriate to the offices that God has given them, helping the other to be and accomplish all that God intends for them. That's how it ought to work. In the next few verses, 6, 1 to 4, Paul gives similar instructions to children and parents.

54:09 Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. And fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord or admonition. It's really the word there. It's got the same sort of structure as the others. Children, he speaks to them first. Obey your parents. And he gives a couple of reasons for that. For this is right. Obey your parents and the Lord. For this is right. This is the thing that is done among Christians.

54:42 Honor your father and mother, he says, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. And it's not necessarily a promise for every individual Christian that they'll have a long life if they just obey their parents. What it means is that obeying parents is generally a wise thing that will work out well in general for most people. Rebellion doesn't work. That's what he means there. Look what he says in verse 4. Fathers or parents. Fathers works the same way for mothers that brothers does, right?

55:13 It's not just fathers alone. It's fathers and mothers, just like brothers should be understood as brothers and sisters. Fathers and mothers, do not provoke your children to anger. But then look what he says. Bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. I think we read that phrase sometimes and we think that what all that means is that we should bring them up in the general ways of the Lord. Right? But that's not what it says. That's not what it means. What does admonition mean? Instruction is probably the wrong word. What does admonition mean? An admonition is a warning.

55:44 And it's sometimes a rebuke. It's a kind of subset of discipline, right? Discipline is to bring things together, to pull things that are falling apart back together. And sometimes you have to listen, you have to discipline your children. You have to admonish them, warn them, even rebuke them. In parents speak, we call that fussing at them. Sometimes you got to let them have it. But it says there, as you're doing that, don't provoke them to anger, which you will never accomplish if you yourself are angry as you're doing it.

56:21 I mean, I love what Martin Lloyd-Jones says about this. He said, when you are disciplining a child, you should have first controlled yourself. What right have you to say to your child that he needs discipline when you obviously need it yourself? Self-control. The control of the temper is an essential prerequisite in the discipline of others. It's true.

56:54 Well, finally, in the last few verses there, 5 to 9, he talks to what he calls bondservants and masters. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with a sincere heart, as you would Christ. Not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man. Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening. Knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven.

57:25 And that there is no partiality with him. And there's a lot we can say here about slavery in the ancient world, right? There's a lot of history to trace. But I think probably the most important thing to say for now is that this kind of master-bond-servant, master-slave relationship was literally the structure of the Roman economy, and basically everyone was enmeshed in that structure. Everybody, with very few exceptions, was either a slave, a bond servant, or a master, or even both, and if you weren't, then there wasn't much place for you in society, and you would have tried very hard to get back into that enmeshment. So when Paul writes this, he's not talking to just a little tiny subset of people here. He's not talking to just a particularly evil subset of people who practice slavery, right? He's talking to the whole stinking Roman economy as the only economy they had or knew of. They couldn't have reinvented it if they wanted to.

58:20 And what does he say? He says, I mean, what that means is that the best analog to our own day is employees and employers. Most everybody is one of those things. And if you're not, then you're sort of cut out of society in some very important ways. It's a very strange thing. And what does Paul say, though? He says, employees, serve your employers as you serve the Lord. When you go to work, don't think that you're doing this just to make money for the guy that you don't like who happens to sit in the bigger office than yours. That's not why you're doing what you do. You're doing it because you're a Christian.

58:54 You're working as to the Lord. It's true whether you like your job or not. Maybe you love it. You're still doing it for the Lord. Maybe you hate your job. Well, friend, if you're in the job and you believe in a sovereign God, then you've got to believe that God has put you in that job for a purpose. He has a reason for leaving you in that job. And you ought to do it with everything you've got as if you're doing it for him until he moves you out of it. And he says, employers, treat your employees as fellow citizens in the heavenly kingdom.

59:28 That was revolutionary. The heat-seeking missile aimed right at the heart of the whole Roman economy that was based on this idea of slavery. And the Romans thought of slaves as not being people, not being human. Aristotle said that a slave is like an inanimate hammer, right? That's what a slave is. But Paul's idea here ultimately destroyed slavery in Rome. It's that you, even as a master, even as an employer, ought to know that the people who work for you are people with their own struggles, with their own temptations, with their own pains and hardships, and you ought to treat them as such.

1:00:13 I mean, step back and just think about it for a second. I mean, this is the kind of society that Paul wants to exist in churches all over the world. Where people's hearts are full of gratitude because God has brought them into this community in the first place. And then taught by the scriptures and taught by the traditions of the apostles and the prophets, we understand deeply who we are in Christ and who God has made us to be in society. We are sometimes in authority and we are sometimes under authority. And yet no matter where we find ourselves enmeshed, in everything we do, we are seeking to honor the Lord.

1:00:53 That's the kind of witness, that's the kind of witness that an embassy of the high king of heaven can have to a fallen world. Let's make sure that we are living it. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you and honor you and praise you that you are a God who has brought us out of darkness and into your marvelous light. We thank you that you've showed us what it means to live as people of your kingdom. Lord, help us to do that as individual Christians and even as Third Avenue Baptist Church. Help us to live in a manner that is worthy of the great calling that you've given us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

1:01:28 It's in his name that we pray. Amen.