Expounds on the practical application of the Holy Spirit's filling within everyday life, particularly in the spheres of marriage, family, and work, drawing from Ephesians 5:22-6:9. It argues that true Christian living is demonstrated not in grand public acts, but in how one navigates domestic and professional challenges, using the analogy of a locomotive staying on its tracks to illustrate the importance of functioning within God-given roles. The core lesson emphasizes that the husband's continuous, Christ-like 'agape' love is the catalyst for sanctifying and cleansing the wife, enabling her to become a 'glorious bride' and reflecting the relationship between Christ and the Church. The message concludes by urging men to fulfill their primary responsibility in the marriage and family by embodying this sacrificial love, thereby turning the tide against the pervasive issues of divorce and family breakdown.
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Cue Felt. I was sitting behind a singer one time up in Picton, Ontario, and I was as close as I was to Brother Cue Felt when I was humming the bass to a song she was singing. She stopped in the middle of the song and turned around and said, shut up. So I did. You can't keep still, you know, when you're singing a pretty song. Somehow, rather, I can't get out of my spirit. I want to talk to you this morning about the Gospel of John. You never notice a horse in a pasture. It takes a bite here and then over here it takes a bite.
It could stand in the same place for a long time and get plenty of grass. But it doesn't do that. It wanders all over the place, taking a bite here and a bite there. So I want to do that in the Gospel of John for a few minutes with you. In the first place, There are two freedoms mentioned in the eighth chapter of John at verse thirty-two. You read a very interesting thing. If the truth shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. But in verse thirty-three. Well, something happened between last night and this morning, and it's just about gone. So you listen carefully or fall asleep.
I don't think there's going to be much choice between it because I'm not going to be able to do much in the way of projection, but I don't know what happened. Maybe it's too much shouting during the tug of war yesterday when we beat that other team. Of course, I don't know how we could have lost. We outweighed them by about a thousand pounds. Who said that? Less than Kate Gerardo. But anyway, so that was fun. And I did not leave a crater that was not already there. I understand Luke Clarkson hit about the same place a few years ago. And so I just deepened it. And at least there was no comment about me looking like a beached whale.
One small plug for the seminar this afternoon. It's on humanism. I know you're all getting tired and things like that. But if you can get back from the baptism and you got the time before supper, I would encourage you to come. And it's not going to be just totally a lecture time. I'd like us to have a little bit of conversation back and forth that I am deeply, deeply concerned about humanism in our country. And it seems like Christians are just starting... to wake up to what's going on, and this is not brand new stuff. It's stuff that's been going on, and the problem is we just have wake up.
And, you know, that this appeal in the end that we saw here in the book of Ephesians, the wake up sleeper, you know, that I think that we have seen the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ have been very, very sleepy. And I encourage you, if you've got time, come and be with us this afternoon at Now, I have a subject here that we're going to try to cover, and we're just going to be able to run right across the top of it. You ever heard of the North Platte Theory of Studying the Bible? The North Platte River, I understand, is about a mile wide and about six inches deep. And I think that's what we're going to be doing today, that we're going to go about a mile wide and about six inches deep, because there's so much more to what we're going to be discussing.
that we want to be able to come close to studying. But this passage that we're going to have in the Word of God is, you know, a passage I turn to more often, it seems like than any other passage in the Word of God in counseling both premaritaly and maritaly and not just for young couples. I'm talking about with retired couples, you know, people that, you know, are still married after thirty and forty years and they're still working on their marriage and this passage on the Word of God. So let's begin reading. And why don't we do me a favor? Okay. Would you all do me a favor here? Let's read it out loud together.
Let's begin Ephesians chapter five, verse twenty-two, and we'll go down to Ephesians chapter six, verse nine. Ephesians five, twenty-two through Ephesians six, nine. And let me get you started. And then would you just kind of keep it going? Okay? And somebody speak nice and loud so they can follow you. That way I can save my voice a little bit. Let's get started. Ephesians five, twenty-two. Wives. Abuse yourself unto your own heaven, and come unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the life, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of life. Therefore, like the Church's fellowship on Christ, just so that their wives, each of their own husbands, can get everything.
But other than love your wives, even if Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that he would be represented through himself from the glorious Church. not any spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and is about to unto be seen. So are all men who love their wives and their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself. For the one man never yet made his own flesh, but he worships and cherishes it if he even has the Lord's church.
O we are members of his body, of his flesh, of whom he was born. For this is God shall man be his father and his mother, and shall he be gone unto his wife, and they who shall be one fresh. It is his greatest mystery, that I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every one of you implicate each other, who have loved his wife, even as he fell, and the right to be that you reference your husband. and obey your parents in the Lord, for it is your right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment of this promise, that they may be well with thee, and that way as good as the law on the earth.
And ye father it, for those not give children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Serve them to be obedient to them that are your ancestors, or glory to the flesh, with fear and trembling, entanglement of your heart as one to Christ. Not with my service as man's leavers, but as the servant of Christ, doing the will of God upon our heart, with the good will of his service as to the Lord, and not to men. No one in our life or other faith may be any man do it. The same shall even be with the Lord, whether he be bombed or bereaved.
And he masters do the same thing unto them, for they are in threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven. Neither is there respect a person who is in him. Thank you. And while you were reading there, I couldn't help but hearing our brother Strachman. And I want you to know that not all of us from up north talk like we're from Jersey or from the Bronx. Some of those are from Strasbourg. Chicago. And we got different Midwestern twangs and things like that. You know, the statistics on marriage are absolutely distressing.
Approaching one out of two marriages in the world today are ending up in divorce. But the thing that distresses me even more than the one out of two in the world is the fact that in the evangelical community, divorce has hit the proportion of what it was in the world ten years ago. One out of four. What also distresses me is the fact that in the evangelical community, between the high school and college years, eighty percent of our children chuck the face. Turn it over. and quit.
They drop out. Maybe not necessarily by their lip, but at least by their light. The home is under attack. And I would think that we're on the downside that we're in a tug of war and the first three men are in the mud pit. We're slipping quick and it looks like we almost have lost it altogether. But you know, I am confident of this, that when you get like Eleazar in the Old Testament, the whole nation of Israel ran and tucked their tails, but he stood all by himself in the barley field with the king, all by himself, one man with the king, and they won the battle.
And I am confident that one man with the Lord Jesus Christ, one woman with the Lord Jesus Christ, can be the one that can turn the tide of the battle. And you know what, that battle was won not only for Eliezer and David, but that battle was won for the entire nation of Israel. The whole Philistine army was set in route. And I think we're desperately in need of Christian men and women who will take a stand for the standards of God's word concerning the marriage, concerning the family, concerning employment, and that we live according to God's word. And I believe there is a possibility with God that this can be turned around And we can go back towards God's standards in our country on marriage and the family.
Now, isn't it interesting here that the first thing that, after we've talked about the filling of the Spirit, he describes it with four participles. Here, as we read in verses nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one. These four different participles that are descriptions of the filling of the Holy Spirit. But now, the first thing he talks about where the filling of the Holy Spirit is to be made manifest is in the places where we spend time. and our families, husband and wife. In fact, it's interesting. It starts with the one who is under the authority first, and then he picks up the one who's in authority. Wife, husband, child, fathers. And it's interesting that he says, fathers there, and not parents.
And then servants to masters. But he doesn't sit there and ask, well, be filled with the Spirit when you preach the words. He doesn't say be filled with the Spirit when you go out and witness on the street corner. Be filled with the Spirit when you go down the veil of prophets there in St. Louis and hand out tracks. Be filled with the Spirit when you're at a Christian campground like this. Be filled with the Spirit when you go to heaven be with the Lord Jesus. I mean, he doesn't talk about those situations in the being filled with the Holy Spirit where he talks and start off right away is in the home with the husband-wife relationship. with the parent-child relationship and at your place of employment. Where do you spend your time? We spend the bulk of our time not in the Assembly of the Christians, but we spend the bulk of our time in our home and where we work.
Shawnee yesterday recommended Howard Hendricks. Well, Kevin helped the home. And one year down the seminary, he came back from the Los Angeles Sunday School Convention. He said you go out there and go to the Los Angeles Sunday School Convention. And they got something like sixteen thousand people at the convention. He said, when you get standing up behind a pulpit and you speak to sixteen thousand people, he said, you're filled with the spirit. You don't have any choice. You've got to be filled with the spirit. You know what I mean? And he came back and he's come back from the convention. He gets off the airplane and his beautiful wife, Jeannie, meets him there. And as they're walking back to the car, she says, oh, by the way, honey, we got a problem with the sewer, the house. They said, oh, fine. We'll call the plumber.
And she said, I did. And it cost about five or six hundred dollars to do it. He said, oh, we'll do it. So they got home and he and his son got out the shovels. And if you've ever dug dirt in Texas, you know, it's like digging rock any place else. It's Texas gumbo. It is something else. And they got down about six foot into the ground. They found the sewer line. And by this time, you know, the sweats running freely and you're hot and tired and all different kinds of things. And they find the sewer line. And his son looked at his dad and said, Dad, that sewer line is going downhill, isn't it? And it's getting deeper all the way.
Is that right? He said, right. So they sat there and they kept digging along this line and throwing this dirt up in these huge piles of dirt up on either side. You don't need to worry about shoring up the walls down in Texas. They just stay there. They're rock hard. And so they go down there and they finally find the break in the line. And so they get the dirt cleared away from the break in the line. And it's too high to climb back up over the hole right now. So they're sitting there in the middle of this trench with this broken sewer. They're mapping their brow. And all of a sudden, somebody inside the house, watch the toilet. And the question he posed to us, he says, you know how to be filled with the Spirit when you're speaking to sixteen thousand people at the Los Angeles Sunday School Convention.
You know what it's like to be filled with the Spirit when you're eight foot underground and somebody flushes their toilet in a broken sewer. And see, that's where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? I mean, that's where life is made up of. We've got those kind of situations. You get out and the car doesn't start. How do you do? Somebody drops your china on the floor. How do you do? That your children don't want to get up and go to school. How do you do? That your husband comes home and he's tired and cranky. How do you do? You come home and dinner's not quite ready and you're starved. How do you do? How does the filling of the Holy Spirit affect your marriage? How does the filling of the Holy Spirit affect your family? And how does the filling of the Holy Spirit affect you where you work day in and day out, forty hours or more per week?
And that's what he's talking about here. He talks about the first thing he says, the filling of the Holy Spirit is practical. It's meaningful. It brings the power that's necessary for living the everyday life. That Christianity, if it's not real in the home, I don't believe it's real in the church. And I believe Christianity has all the potential and power to be real in the home as we wish it to be. as we're willing to be yielded and controlled and filled right out to our fingertips with the Spirit of God in our lives. So he goes and he talks about these relationships.
Now, I find it very interesting here that the King James text that they took a liberty here that you don't know about. Liberty is that they put the word submit there in verse twenty-two in regular words. It's not in italics. And they should have put it in italic because the word is not there. It just says, wife to your husband. You know, it just says, wife to your husband. But what it is, it's an outgrowth of verse twenty-one. In fact, this whole section, it's the new man. The new man is to be filled by the Holy Spirit. The new man who is filled by the Holy Spirit, the last part of simple says, submitting yourselves one to another.
Now, the submitting yourselves one to another is to submit in terms of your God-given role, your God-given design, the way God made you as a man, the way God made you as a woman, that that is the way you submit to yourselves one to another. Now, there is a doctrine today called the doctrine of mutual submission. Now, if we were to have a freedom of defining that in our own terms, it would be a good doctrine. But the problem is that mutual submission is taught in the terms of what they call an egalitarian marriage. where there's no real difference between male and female except physical. And everything else, role definition, function definition, is something that ups the couple to determine. Now, that kind of mutual submission is non-biblical.
It's wrong. And it's an outgrowth of women's liberation, which has crept into a thing called a Christian women's liberation. And that is not a biblical definition. But if we're willing to find that mutual submission is on the basis of a man is a function according to the design that God made him. And woman is a function according to the design that God made her. And it's not just a physical difference. But there's a role definition. There's a functional definition given by God. And that liberty within the marriage is not doing your own thing, but functioning according to design. Functioning according to the definition the way God has defined it. And the illustration, of course, that some people use, you know, when is a locomotive free?
Is a locomotive free like what is that little tootor, whatever it is, you know, that goes running around the curb and sees all the flowers out there, so it decides to jump the track and go out and pick and smell the flowers? Well, you know, a locomotive can't do that. As soon as it jumps the track, like they do regularly in the Missouri Pacific Railroad around St. Louis, it bogs down. It's got real problems. And getting it back on the track is the whole thing. You've got to get it back on the track. You get that thing in between those tracks, and man, it's free. I mean, crank that throttle down, and off you go. But you jump the tracks, get outside of the definition, and that locomotive has got all kinds of problems. And the same way with male and female, it's not a question of inferiority or superiority, even though the word head here is used in verse twenty-three.
But if we sit there and go back to First Corinthians chapter eleven and show that this is not a question of inferiority or superiority where it says here in First Corinthians eleven three. But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God. Now if we're to take this word kephale, the word head and say that therefore the man is superior to the woman, then we would be by inference saying that therefore God is superior to Christ. That's heresy. It's not a question of inferiority superiority. It's a question of function. It's a question of design. It's a question of role.
And I want you to know that there is absolutely no superiority in heaven because of male or female. And there is no superiority in the body of Christ today because of male or female. But I want to tell you that God holds the man primarily responsible for the functioning of the marriage and in the family. Because the command, this word submit, is not there in the Greek text. If you don't believe me, our brother who gives out beautiful songs, he's got his Greek testimonial that he's checking me out to. That word hypotasso is not there. It is there in verse twenty-four, but it's not given there as a command.
So, since the women... They seem to have a natural heart toward God. And they've heard sermons from the men all the time, be in submission. And by the way, I can remember when I first heard this verse. I used to go on to my wife. As lovingly as she was being submissive to me anyway, I said, be submissive. And I always kind of got discouraged. I never seemed to have the exact response that I was anticipating. until all of a sudden I began, even in the English text, it says, submit yourself. Or, you know, the command is the wife that is something that she does voluntarily.
And I found out the more that I'm like Jesus Christ, and I've got a long, long way to go. The less problem she has being submissive for me. So I'd like to talk to men. In fact, that's what the Apostle Paul does anyway. There's three verses here for the wives and nine for the men. Mm-hmm. Who do you think he's laying the bigger axon? Okay, nine verses on the men. And he does come up with command, and let's see how you're doing here. Now, we got here in verse twenty-five, husband's love, present active imperative, not passive, present active imperative. Present, what does that mean? What? Continuous.
Okay, active. Remember, we did talk about yesterday, even though yesterday, play Rao was a present passive imperative. Active. Subject does the action. That means, who does the action here? Cosmos, okay. And he does it continuously. Imperative is the command. You don't have an option on this, guys. Okay, now think back in the Ephesian context, okay. Here you are, you reach the ripe old age of seventeen or eighteen. and you show up at the marriage ceremony and you wonder who has mom and dad picked out for me to marry you know and you get there and she's back there in her nice white gown about six foot wide and they say I hope that's all petticoats and and she looks down there and She sees something up there.
But anyway, and she comes walking down the aisle and you say, oh, no. And then the veil lifts up her husband, to love her husband. It's the word, the only command is in the book of Titus, and it's a different word. It's the word filet, which is the emotional family type love. But of course, all the commands to agape one another in the Testament would certainly be applicable to wife. But it isn't interesting. that that command is not given to the wife. And you want to know why? I think here's the reason why. And the reason why is because God has made the woman to respond. If the man loves his wife with Christ-like agape love, she's going to respond with the same thing. Because the biblical principle is, as you sow, you reap.
You sow agape love, and you're going to get agape love reflected back to you from your life. Now, the sad thing is, is that women are having to go to, and they're not responding to husbands' agape love. They respond to agape love of God, and they love their husbands who are not loving them like Christ loved the church. But that puts tremendous pressure on the marriage. Husbands have agape love continuously. And you do it. No options for your wives. And you do that by giving. Now, this is purposeful giving. And there's three purpose clauses here that we can see. The first one is in verse twenty-six. That.
And then verse twenty-seven, that. Down toward the end of verse twenty-seven, that. So those are three what they call in the Greek language purpose clauses to give the purposes for this giving love, this self-sacrificing, unconditional love that we've talked about. First purpose is that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word. Now, the it does not refer to the wife. The it refers to the church. But, of course, the church to Christ is an illustration of wife to husband. And the marriage relationship is not just a self-fulfilling type thing. But the Christian marriage is to give an illustration of the world of the relationship of Christ to the church.
Now, the wife's relationship to the husband is an illustration of the life of Christ. But the husband's relationship to the life is an illustration of the death of Christ. So as the husband loves his wife, as Christ loves the church, he illustrates the death of Christ. And as the wife responds to the death of her husband in the self-sacrificing, giving love, that she demonstrates the life that he has given to her by responding back in a loving way. So here we see that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word. Now those are some big words there, but you get the idea here that sanctifies, that he sets her apart.
And you know what that we men have to be very careful of is we don't set our wives apart sometimes very well. We can go walking down the hallway of a shopping mall and you have this roving eye. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? You're not looking at the plant on the side. Here, are you? And when your wife sees that, in fact, there's another thing that's very interesting. You're sitting at a restaurant across from your wife. And all of a sudden, she turns around and looks at what you were just looking at. And how did she know what you were looking at that was coming in the restaurant door?
It's because she is very sensitive to the pupils of your eye. And all of a sudden, the pupil of your eye has gotten wider. And she sees the pupil of your eye getting wider and she turns around and she's caught you. I mean, you didn't think that she'd see that girl that was walking behind her going down there like that, you know, and she saw. See, that kind of stuff, we're letting our wives know that we've got a roving eye. And that roving eye is not setting apart your wife, your mind. There is nobody who can replace you. You belong to me. Forever, forever, forever, forever, and you're setting their wife apart, and you belong to me. That's sanctifying her. And cleansing her by the washing of the water of the Word.
You know, Billy Graham quoted some statistics a few years ago, and I don't know how they've changed, but he was back in his quoting one, one out of four marriages, now it's one out of two marriages, you know, end in divorce in the world. He says, but one out of every one hundred, where they go to church regularly, end in divorce. And one out of every one thousand where they go to church regularly and pray and read the Word of God together regularly and in divorce. Well, I mean, if you believe in using gimmicks, I mean, hey, listen, let's go to church and let's read the Bible and pray together because that's a pretty good gimmick, one out of every thousand. Well, it's not a gimmick for those who are really into praying and reading the Word of God together.
But don't depend upon, you know, your wife being fed the Word of God at the local church. or from the Christian radio station, or from Christian books that you read. But there is an interaction over the Word of God together, that you sanctify her and cleanse her through the washing of the Word. Secondly, that he might have presented to himself a glorious church. Not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And the idea here is that you've got this wife and she comes walking down the aisle. She's got this brand new white wedding dress on it. Except it's got a big rip up the side. It's got a big muddy spot over here. And it's got a shoulder torn here. And the veil is kind of a few here. And you say, hey, now just a minute. Hey, that wedding dress has got a few problems. And you say, okay, I see the wedding dress has got problems.
That you maybe have some scars, some pain, some hurts that have come out of your past life. but I'm going to build into your life. I am going to love you so that you are going to become a glorious bride. And you know what? It's a sad thing for me to look even at the marriages of Christians and you see the wife coming into church and meeting with the Christians and you can tell she's defeated. She's down. She's depressed. She's hurt. And you know, now if they've only been married five days, you know, then I can say, well, honeymoon's over quick and or something like that. But You know, when you start getting married for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, and you've been married longer than she was in the home she grew up in, and she's still defeated, and she's still unhappy, and she's still sad, she's not a glorious bride.
You know what that's saying? Husbands, you failed. You've blown it. Because it's your responsibility to make her into a glorious bride. You know, I've heard stories of a number of men where I heard... of an old documentary, but I remember reading of General Booth. General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. And one man was