“Christ and the Church as Seen in the Family” By Kirk Orelup October 29th,
2017
I
am the first victim this
morning. I like this rotation of people speaking; you’re not really
sure, you
don't know who to expect. Even sometimes the speakers themselves don't
know. This
morning, I got a text from Malcom, saying, “Who is supposed to be
delivering
the message this morning? I sure hope it's not me.” I said, “Don't
worry
Malcom. You've already had your delivery.” So, I'm supposed to be
giving a
message. At
my dad's house there's this
book, it’s titled, "Everything Men Know About Women.” I thought, "Who
could write a book saying that they know everything, about any topic,
let alone
a topic about women?” I had to go look at this book, and I opened it
up, and it
took about two seconds to read it cover to cover, and the reason why is
because
all the pages were blank. Obviously, men know nothing about women. But,
I
assume that women know very little to nothing about men, also. I assume
that
just for the sake of argument. Let's just say that men are a mystery to
women,
and women are a mystery to men. And, what happens when you put one
mystery with
another mystery in what they call marriage? What do you get? A great
mystery. Let's
look at Ephesians, five, because the Bible actually calls marriage a
great
mystery, five, verses thirty-one and thirty-two: Ephesians 5:31-32
For this
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto
his
wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: [Now,
right from here we go, okay, he identifies this. And, the very next few
words
are going to open up the door for us of understanding, because, he's
going to
tell us that marriage is a type of Christ and the church. And, so, it
says,] but I speak concerning Christ and the
church. So, from this we know that marriage is a type of
Christ in the church. And, thus we know what the purpose of marriage
is, which
is to be this type, to be this example, of Christ and the church. And,
from
this we can also understand what is the role, or the job description,
if you
will, of the wife, and what is the job description of the husband. So,
let's
look at this, and Ephesians chapter five goes on, if you read it, but,
it tells
us that in general terms that the wife's role throughout Scripture is
to submit
to her husband. I see a lot of men nodding about how right this is,
it’s going
where it needs to go, and, they're thankful for this message, yes. And,
the
women are thinking to themselves, "Man, this is about to be the longest
fifteen
minutes of my life.” Well, if you take this and read it in the full
verse,
which is verse twenty-two, it says: Ephesians 5:22
Wives,
submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Now,
women, do you have any
problems submitting yourselves unto the Lord? I would expect no. You
say,
"No, why would I? He's loving, He's good, He's righteous, He's kind,
He's
forgiving, He's everything that He should be. He's everything that my
husband
is not.” And, that's the truth, because, if we compare our
righteousness to
God's righteousness, we have nothing. We really are nothing. And, so,
when the
wives are told to submit themselves unto their husbands as unto the
Lord, they are
supposed to submit themselves on the merit, not on the merit of the
husband,
but the merit of the Lord, on His righteousness, on His goodness, and
that’s
why they do this. And, when they do this, then the world then sees the
church
in their life. That’s her part, she portrays the church. Now,
submission is a
bad word in our society, and it has images of oppression, and slavery,
and all
these things that are negative. So, we'll take it in the context of
what we
see. What's the application of submission in terms of Christ and the
church?
And, then we'll see it a little more of the way it's really supposed to
be,
instead of the way the world would portray it. Okay, we could do the
same thing
with love or anything. If we look at it, in terms of how the Bible
describes it,
illustrates it, submission is being the receiver. Okay, now it sounds a
lot
easier than this way, but being the receiver is still a difficult task.
When we
live for God, we are the receiver of God's grace, of His love, of His
mercy, of
His salvation. We are able to do this only
because we are able to do this by faith, it's always a challenge
for us, in
our fleshly bodies, to accept all the things that God has for us. But,
it’s
still a challenge to live by faith. So, wives, when they do this, when
they're
submitting themselves to their husbands, they are doing it by faith in
Christ, who
is the head of the husband. So, what is the opposite of receiving? You
would
say giving, right? In the application of this, the opposite of
receiving is not
giving; in terms of the wife receiving from the husband, the opposite
would be
to be self-sufficient, to be independent. Okay? And this is the
temptation of
women. They want to be their own selves, they want to have their own
identity.
They want to have their own name. A lot of people—You see this
happening more
and more now in society. Retain their own name, have their own job,
career,
have their own bank account, have their own whatever it is, that is the
big
temptation, okay? An example of this, when you think about this, it's
something
I think everybody can identify with, whether you're married or not.
You've
heard the scenario: if a man and wife get into a fight who winds up on
the sofa?
the man does, right? He ends up in the proverbial dog house because the
wife's
temptation is to refuse affection when she's upset. When she's
dissatisfied,
she would then reject the husband, right?
That's the role, that’s the thing. She's the
one that would do that, rather than the husband. He doesn't say, “Okay,
you're
going in the doghouse today.” It's the other way around. So, the reason
though,
why marriage is a beautiful and even functional arrangement is because
the wife
wasn't sold, she wasn't conquered, she wasn't a slave, she wasn't any
of those
things; she chose him. The man extended the invitation, he did the
proposal,
and she accepted it, she received it. See, it’s totally different from
the way
the world sees it. This is the way we see it play out in Christ and the
church.
So, ladies when you submit to your husbands as unto the Lord, you're
submitting
to Christ. And, the world sees the church in you. So, then, the wife
preaches
the Gospel. Now, husbands, it's your turn. Ephesians, five,
twenty-three says: Ephesians 5:23
For
the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the
church:
and he is the saviour of the body. Now,
when we talk about being the
head, it seems like the glamorous position; Hey, we want to have the
power, we
want to have the authority. Actually, if you look again in application:
He is
the head, but, he’s also, in application, he is in the role of the
giver. And
that's why it says in Ephesians, five, twenty-five: Ephesians 5:25
Husbands,
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself
for it; If
you look at the word, ‘gave,’
in this application, I've heard from people who speak Greek, or write
Greek, or
read Greek; you know, they understand it that this really translates
well as, ‘He
gave up himself.’ So, Christ gave up himself for the church. So,
husbands, then,
are charged to love. If you notice, it says, “Husbands, Love your
wives.” “Wives
submit,” so wives, actually, are never told to love. It may seem like
an odd
thing in a marriage, you have two people married, but only one person
is
supposed to love the other is not. I'm just breaking it down. That
doesn't mean
that she doesn't, in terms of the word, and one, if you understand in
the sense
of giving, the one is told to be the one who gives of himself. He is
told to
love in the sense of, as Christ loved, which is to sacrifice, it’s
sacrificial
love, that's his job primarily. Nothing defines love more divinely than
Christ
sacrificing Himself for the church. To define submission, divinely,
then is the
church's dependence on Christ. So, when the husband sacrifices himself,
when he
loves by giving of himself to his wife, his wife, then, is to receive
the
offering, his offering, as sufficient for her. And, we see again, this
is
definitely portraying Christ and the church; Christ, our offering; He
gave Himself
so that we could receive that offering as being sufficient for us. Now,
if you
know something about the offerings of the Old Testament, and I'm sure
some of
you do, anyone that was a sinner would just be anybody who was part of
the
children of Israel, they were all sinners, they would bring their
offering and,
when they would bring their offering, the priest, through reverence to
God, would
examine the offering, and if the offering was accepted, then the sinner
was
accepted on the merit of the offering. So, the sinner was still a
sinner, but
then he became accepted before God’s eyes because of the merit of the
offering.
The offering was considered good for an offering, it was acceptable. It
had to
be without spot, wrinkle, or blemish. In the same sense, the wife is
accepted
in God's eyes. That’s why it goes on, if you read the rest of Ephesians
five,
it says that he, the man, can present her, the wife, without spot,
wrinkle, or
blemish. It says the church is presented without spot, wrinkle, or
blemish. So,
what's the number one
complaint of a wife of her husband? Usually, people say, “Because he
doesn't do
enough,” Okay? He doesn't do enough. The number one complaint of a
husband of
his wife is, “She complains too much.” So, the daily struggle is for
the
husband to withhold, and for the wife to murmur and complain, okay?
It’s the
husband who should be giving of himself, sacrificing himself; the wife
should
be receiving. Now, talking about the husband as giving, what's the
opposite of
giving? Taking, think about it, taking. We look at Ezekiel, it talks
about the role
of a shepherd, if the shepherd isn't doing his job, it's because he's
eating of
the flock. He's now looking at the flock as a resource for himself, to
feed to himself,
okay? But that is not the role of the husband. When you talk about
being the
head, that's not the proper application.
If he’s starting to do that, taking advantage, if he's
starting to exploit,
subjugate his wife, if he's objectifying her; all of those things are
totally outside
of what the husband should be doing. When the husband does that, you
start to
see, or even when a man does that for any reason, we start to see why
women
want to find their own independence, and, obviously, these things
happen a lot
of times. We have the Harvey Weinstein’s and so forth of this world.
Then, if
we examine Christ in His will, does He ever force… As we lead our life,
in our
walk, day to day, you know, we do wrong, we do right, but, you know,
we're
always sinners saved by grace, does Christ ever force himself on us?
Does He
abuse us? Does He manipulate us to get His will? Does He steal from us
to get
what He wants? None of those things. You know He loves us. Oh, how He
loves us.
So, ‘husband,’ that’s related to the word husbandman. If you look in
the
verses, you see that a husbandman is someone who is charged with caring
for a
field, or a vineyard, or a plot of land for the owner. So, a husband,
he is a
caregiver, he is a shepherd, he is a steward. He is not an ogre, or a
miser, or
a dictator. Talking about Noah, he became a husbandman, because he
planted a
field. Zechariah, it said he was a husbandman, because he was taught to
keep
cattle from his youth. So, men, husbandry, we live it as Christ loved
the
church, and your husbandry will preach Christ to the world. So, what
does this
look like from day to day? When we were contrary to God, when we were
His
enemies, when we opposed him, He loved us. First John, four, nineteen
says: 1 John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us. So,
husbands are first charged to
love in any situation that lacks love. No matter how contrary our wives
become,
hypothetically speaking, of course, love as Christ loved us, while we
were yet
sinners. If your wife hides your golf clubs, when she hides the remote,
when
she throws out the golf clubs, you can't retaliate, you can't throw her
whites
in with the darks, you can't Saran-wrap the toilet seat, you can't do
any of
those things. You cannot retaliate. You must love her. You must pour in
grace, an
abundant grace, even mercy. I'll talk about forgiveness just for a
moment. The
disciples asked, how many times should we forgive? Should we forgive
seventy
times? And, as we know, seven is the number of completion or
perfection, so seventy
times would be like, is this every time? Every time?
Is that how many times we forgive? And
He said, “Not seventy times, but seventy
times seven.” So, yes, you forgive them every time. But you also
forgive them
completely every time. And that’s the way we forgive. Now,
one of the greatest sources
of pain in any relationship is division. You are one body. Try severing
your
arm from your body. You can pick the arm; just take the one that your
least
favorite, cut it off. The entire idea is contrary to our nature. It
opposes our
very thinking, it hurts to think about it. And, this is because
division is
very painful. A man, a friend of mine, asked me one time, “How is it
that this love
of my life can become this monster from hell?” because they were
divorced, and
that was what he asked, and I said, “Well, it's division. Division
hurts. Division
causes pain. Pain causes us to retaliate against that which we perceive
as the
source of our pain, and that creates greater animosity, which creates
greater
division, which creates greater pain, and it keeps cycling, cycling and
division is brought greater and greater. And pretty soon, the love of
our life,
now is the image of all of our pain. We see this person, and we think
that they
are the reason that we have this pain. But, that really isn’t that the
case.
The enemy isn't the person. The enemy is our inability to love, or our
inability to communicate well. This will continue on until somebody
says, “You know
what? Christ loved me, and therefore I will love them.” And that
responsibility
falls first to the husband. So, it's his job to first give up himself
in that
situation. And, that's why, you know, you talk about the head as being
something that we look at as, “Oh, yes, I want to be the head,” but
it's
actually very demanding. It really requires a lot, and it puts a lot of
responsibility on the husband in a way that the world just doesn't
perceive.
And, when the husband loves first, what's the response to that begotten
love?
She loves him because he first loved her. That’s what it says in John,
four, nineteen.
In this God is glorified. Others may see the loving, the husband
loving, the
wife receiving; seeing Christ and the church played out day after day
after
day. And, this is the purpose of marriage. So, what a blessing it would
be if
our children saw our marriage, and said, “You know, I want to accept
Christ as
my Savior.” If others saw it, and said, “I want to have that kind of
love.” And
that's the challenge, that we can live up to, that we can really
fulfill it
because we have God in us, that our marriage would preach Christ and
the church
to others, so that a family or friends or neighbors would look at us
and say,
“I want to make a covenant with Christ. I want to put on His name. I
want to be
buried in the likeness of His death, raised to walk in newness of life.
I want
to be married to Jesus Christ.”
|
|
|
|
