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Father, we thank you that the Gospel is true and good news and of such power that it affects, impacts, changes, our deepest relationships. Father, we long to be shaped in your love. For Jesus sake, we pray. Amen. Well, sometimes on Mothering Sunday, our habit is to pick a particular passage, one that perhaps speaks of mothers or wives.

And you might think, oh, he's done that today. And I just want to reassure you, as we approach a tricky passage, that this was not selected for today. Rolf's waving. I don't think I'm on. I am on here.

I'm going to keep going loudly and hopefully we can adjust. Maybe the loop's not on, but I want to reassure you that we're not just parachuting into this text today, but rather over recent weeks, we have been studying Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and we just happen to find ourselves here today in Ephesians, chapter five. And that's important to know, because we are, as I say in the context of that letter. Over different weeks, we've been hearing about the Gospel and the impact it makes in different situations. Now, if you've been with us over recent weeks, you'll remember what we've been learning.

In fact, Paul's letter to the Ephesians began with a bit of a history lesson, God's plan for all of human history. So, for example, in chapter 1, verse 10, he told us that God's aim is to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. Or chapter 1:22, he says, and God placed all things under his under Jesus feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church. Even better than that, we're told in chapter two that he's raised us up with Him. Not only is Christ the head, but we have been raised with him in the heavenly realm.

So. So God's plan for all of human history is to make Jesus the King of all things for the sake of his church, for the love of his people, and that we, his church, might live a new life to reflect God's glory and the deep love of the Lord Jesus. So how do we do that? Well, we began seeing last week at the beginning of chapter five, chapter five, verse one. What are we called to do to follow God's example, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us.

And we saw last week what that meant. It meant renewed thinking, a new attitude, kindness in our speech, compassion, forgiveness, purity, generosity, living and walking in the light. And now he's going to talk specifically about what it looks like in the Home across three. Three different relationships. You could picture the scene, can't you, as this letter is first being read to this church in Ephesus, how it might have gone down.

We've had all this great stuff. Oh, now, wives, this might be the book where the husbands start nudging the wife. But don't worry, before too long, we're going to get to the husbands and then to the children and to the slaves and the masters. He wants to address whole households because he knows that the Gospel is. Is good news for everyone and he wants to see it worked out in each sphere of life.

Now, here's the first thing we need to know, and it's the first verse of our reading, verse 21. What does it say? Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. The first thing we read is that submission is for everyone. And it's good.

It's good. The word submit here means simply to obey, but I think more broadly than that, it means to order your life under someone else. Now, we see most of all that submission first involves submission to Christ. That's what it means to become a Christian, doesn't it? To submit ourselves to God, to come under the lordship of Christ, to order our lives under Him.

It's what the Church is. Any further talk of submission comes in this context, out of reverence, our worship for Christ. Now, we see in verse 21 that submission here is mutual. It's something for everyone. But as we look through the rest of this letter, we're going to see that it's what you might call asymmetric.

It looks different for different people, it's not flat so often because these verses are a little bit challenging. People read verse 21, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, and then just flatten everything out, say, well, let's just keep the simple bit. But no, Paul gives us details. He wants us to read it specifically and individually, and also to say, submission here is volitional. It's a decision of the will.

It's your choice. No one should compel another person to submit. It's your decision. Now, I think we also need to recognise here that submission is countercultural. We might wince at these words a little bit when we first read them, but Paul's prayer and his prayer for us and for the Ephesians is that the Gospel might shape our thinking as well.

He's already told us that in the previous chapter, chapter 4, verse 23. He wants us to be made new in the attitude of your mind. So if you read this and Think, oh, this is out of date. This doesn't make sense. This doesn't fit with today's world.

I think his prayer would be, well, let's let the Gospel shape our attitude, not our preconceptions, either about this text or about the world in which we live in. Now, what we're going to do, we're going to do we do the hard bits first and then come back to the easy bit, if that's okay. So we're going to go backwards. So first we're going to look at slaves and masters because I hope as we see these patterns of relationships, it's going to help us to understand the whole. So let's look at slaves and masters.

There. Verses 5 to 9. So slaves, submit yourselves to your masters in obedience.

Verse 5. There, slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each of you for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. There's the command.

Verse 5. Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters. Obey them. But what's the rationale for that? Verse 7.

As if you were serving the laws. Serve them as if you were serving the lord. Why? Verse 8? Because you know that the Lord will reward you.

There's a command to submit yourselves. Do it out of worship, of reverence for Christ, as though you were serving him. And as a result you will be rewarded.

But there's also a message there to masters, isn't there? Verse 9. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven. And there is no favouritism with him.

Just treat your slaves the same way. Now, it's clearly not the same, is it? He doesn't call the masters to obey the slaves. There's a difference of relationship. But he does call them to treat them fairly.

Why?

Because you have a master in heaven. In fact, you have the same master in heaven. He says to the masters, you're a slave too. You're a slave too. Let's go back up one more.

Children and parents, chapter six, verse one. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment, with a promise, so that it may go well with you, that you may enjoy long Life in the earth. There's the command. Verse one, Children, obey your parents.

Why verse one? Well, do it in the Lord. He's saying to the children, this is part of your worship. This is right. And what are you doing?

Well, let's link it to the commandment. You're following God's command. And here as well, there is blessing. Verse 3, again linking to the Old Testament promise that it may go well with you in the land.

Again he then turns to the corresponding pair, doesn't he? Particularly to fathers. Note that fathers do not provoke, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Now, of course, there's plenty that we could learn here.

There's plenty to teach us. We could have a sermon on each section, couldn't we? But we're doing the whole today. But first I want you to notice the pattern. See what we see.

There's an encouragement, a command to submit or obey. There's a rationale that's grounded in our submission to the Lord, our reverence for Christ. And thirdly, there's a promise of blessing. It's saying, it's a good thing. This is a good command to follow.

The worker there, we see, is called to work hard, not as a people pleaser, but as though they're working for God. Even that simple command, we could see how that can be a challenge and a blessing, can't we? How would your vision for your work be transformed with that in mind? It changes everything, doesn't it? Not least if work is hard, if work is a struggle, if you, if you've got a terrible boss, they'd work hard because I'm working for the Lord.

You see how the Gospel can transform an everyday situation. Now, we might look at these instructions and we might feel they're a little bit dated. This, after all, is Paul speaking to a first century church. Perhaps he'd say something very different today. Well, he might.

But before we dismiss this too much, as that's something he said a long time ago to a particular time in a particular culture. Look at what he does here. The first thing he does is he seeks to ground what he's saying in timeless commands. Here he speaks of the Ten Commandments. Commandment four, honour your father and mother.

At the end of chapter five, he's going to quote from Genesis. He wants us to see these. Not just as here's a good instruction for Paul, but here's something that God has commanded of his people throughout all generations. It's a timeless command. Secondly, In Paul's day, only one half of the message is culturally acceptable, isn't it?

The culturally acceptable part is slaves, obey your masters. First century, of course. Why wouldn't you say that? No one's going to be shocked by that. Children, obey your parents.

Again, no one is going to question that. Come on, that's just a given, isn't it? First century, of course. Children obey their parents. So obvious.

But what's shocking is what comes next.

Masters, treat your slaves well because you have the same master in heaven. What? I've got the same master as a slave. I'm a slave too. That's radical.

That's counter cultural. Might even say that's wrong. How dare you say that. Fathers, do not provoke your children. How dare you elevate a child in that culture to have some rights?

You know, perhaps Paul's words to the Ephesians were just as shocking, just as countercultural, just as otherworldly as they might be to us today. Well, now we've seen the pattern. We see the pattern repeated through those different relationships. Let's come back to the first section, chapter 5, verse 22 onwards. Now, firstly, let me say what this isn't about, what this is not about.

This is not talking about men and women in general. This is talking about the very specific relationship of wives, husbands. It's not talking about the context of the Church in terms of women or men in ministry or leadership. These verses are not talking about that. When it talks about submission here, there is no sense that submission is enforced or coerced.

We're going to see as well that while the husband called to be like Jesus, there is no sense here that the husband replaces Jesus. Jesus is the only Saviour and there is no justification.

And at this point I want to say, I'm sure this verse has wrongly been used for abuse or coercion. I want to pause briefly and say that statistically speaking, one in four women and one in seven men experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. And research suggests that these statistics in society are reflected in the Church. Therefore, if me even raising this question has concerns for you personally, please do feel to reach out to Sue Broadstock, our safeguarding officer, and seek her advice. And we have a policy for domestic abuse in the Church.

So please do reach out if you need help or support.

That's what it isn't about. What it is about when it talks about submission is something volitional. Your choice, your decision, your will. Something for Christian households. It's not something for society in general, but something for Christians.

To work out, because it's part of our worship and it's for your household. Every household looks different. You need to apply this to your household. There isn't some traditional template, some model that you can map onto every household. But these words are here for our learning.

And as I say, it is part of our worship, it's part of our submission to Christ. So let's look at what it says. Verse 22, Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. Now, at this point, it would be far easier for me to say submit doesn't really mean obey, or that when it talks about the husband being the head of the wife, that it doesn't carry any sense of authority. But I can't do that because those words are paralleled with Christ's relationship to the church.

If I said that submit doesn't mean ordering your life under someone, then what does it mean to say I submit to Christ? Or if I say the husband isn't really the head of the wife, well, what does it mean then for Christ to be head of the church?

In sensitively treading over these words, which bring up all sorts of questions, I really don't want to minimise who Jesus Christ is in respect of the church, because that's the parallel that's drawn here. Now, of course, wives, here, you may well be smarter, older, wiser, more attractive, earn more money, be spiritually more mature than your husbands. And of course, there's lots of biblical precedent for that. Think of someone like Lydia, the merchant who started the house church. Think of the wife of Proverbs 31, who is anything, nothing like a kind of traditional wife in a kind of very formal sense.

She's an entrepreneur, she's a provider, she's a partner.

You may well be all these things, and there's plenty of examples in the Bible. And yet the encouragement here is to submit to your husbands not because he's better or more gifted or more loved by God, but rather because God says this is a good way to order life because it's a blessing and it's a reflection of the gospel. So often submission is portrayed as the wife obeys the husband, he makes the decisions. But that's not a biblical view of marriage, or indeed of leadership. Marriage is a team, a partnership.

We are co workers, and the husband is tasked with taking responsibility to lead that team as your 1. You work together for the good of each other and the blessing of family, of friends and community. Just as with every team, whether it's a business, a sports team, Homes, too, need a leader, and it's a blessing when we follow godly leadership. Now, as we've seen already, the same pattern follows. There's an encouragement to submit or obey.

There's a rationale that's grounded in our own submission, our own worship of the Lord and the promise of blessing that it's a good thing. Now we see that promise of blessing worked out in the next section at verse 25.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now again we see the countercultural message. You see, if in the first century I say, wives, submit to your husbands, no one bats an eyelid. But the husbands in Ephesus might be getting a bit twitchy at this point. What's he going to say to the husbands?

Now, just for a moment, if you switched off, because you might be thinking, well, I'm not a husband, I'm not a wife. We're going to see in a few moments what this is really all about. And just to see it there, verse 32. How does he conclude this little section? He says, this is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the Church now.

We'll come to that. But firstly, a word here for husbands. As I see it, there's three commands really, in this section to husbands. The first one there in verse 25. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

Verse 26. What's the command? Present your wife as perfect as Christ does the church. And verse 29. Treat her as your own body, as Christ does the church.

Husbands, submit to the Lord by ordering your life in loving, sacrificial service of your wife.

Love her, spoil her, set your affections on her, present her as perfect. Not because you're her saviour. Only Jesus can do that, ultimately. But you honour her, elevate her, celebrate her gifts, her beauty, her character.

But more than that, strive to help her love Jesus more. Long for her to submit her life fully to Jesus. Pray for her delight in her.

I bought some flowers for my wife this week. I don't normally do that. It was for Mothering Sunday. I thought, well, I should do that, shouldn't I? And I walked past the Co op.

They had flowers. If you bought flowers from the Co op, that's okay. But I thought, no, there's a flower shop in Linfield High street, isn't there? I'm going to go to the flower shop because they sell flowers. And if I'm completely honest, the flowers were more expensive than I really wanted to pay.

But you Know what I thought to myself? I thought, I'm preaching on Ephesians 5 on Sunday. I thought, that's okay because she's my wife and I've called to sacrifice for her.

I don't get to buy flowers for anyone else. I don't get to spoil anyone else. I don't get to delight in anyone else in quite this way. I've got no one else that I'm called to die for. Just one, yes, it was ten pounds more than I wanted to pay.

But that's okay because being called to sacrifice for her, she's my wife.

If the wife is called to order her life in submission to her husband, then the husband is called to order his life in sacrificial service.

Husbands, I wonder, well, if it's not too personal question to ask where you sleep. In the bed.

I sleep closest to the door. Now, I used to think that was because of the burglars. If there's ever a burglar in the night, well, I'll be close to the door and I've got my bass cricket bat or something by the door. But then I realised we've got a lock for that. That's what locks are for.

And then I realised, why do I sleep closest to the door? Well, it's also closest to the light switch. It's closest to the draught. It's closest to the walk down to the kettle. It's closest to the child who's sick in the night, you see where you sleep in the bed.

It might sound trivial, but actually are you ordering your life to be in the position of. To sacrificially serve your wife? Because that's what this passage is calling as husbands. The abusive, domineering, my way or the highway. Husband is antithetical to the gospel.

So too is the passive, withdrawn, unwilling to lead, holding back in love. Husband.

So too for wives, some wives might be desperate to control and lack the humility to submit. But say to a wife might simply abandon all sense of partnership. Say, well, my husband's in charge. You're a partnership. You're a team.

You've been called to be one.

So, friends, what's the point of marriage? What's the point of marriage? Well, here we see the point of marriage is to declare the gospel to preach.

Do you know there's no marriage in the new creation? There's no husbands and wives in the new creation, except one. Except one. The marriage of Christ to his church. So all marriages here and now, all relationships here and now are about proclaiming another marriage.

The marriage of Jesus and his church friends. You may not experience here and now the beauty of this husband and wife relationship that's portrayed here, whether through singleness or death or divorce or sin. But that's why Paul is so keen that we might look beyond ourselves, look beyond human relationships and institutions, to see Jesus.

Now there's all sorts of questions that might follow from this, but more big picture. We might want to start asking, well, how do I apply the gospel to my relationships?

These words might be hard, but we want Jesus and his gospel to shape us in our relationships, don't we? We might say, well, what difference would the gospel mate to your relationships? In what ways might these words shape me?

If I want to submit my life to Jesus? That might mean doing more of this and less of this. In my relationships is your marriage, your parenting, your work, your friendships, pointing others to the wonder that you found in the Lord Jesus. Pray that it might, not only for you and your sake, but because as we read here, it's a blessing to others, it's a blessing to the world. And you know, this, this picture of marriage, Christ and his church comes up again in the Bible.

We see at the very end, Revelation 21, a marriage supper, the marriage of the lamb Jesus to his bride, the church. The Bible's full of this kind of language. And let me just close with some words from Isaiah 62, which I think bring out the beauty of this relationship that's on portrayed here, the relationship that is ours in Christ. Isaiah 62, verse 4.

He says, no longer will they call you deserted or name your land desolate, but you'll be called Hepzibah, which means my delight is in her. And your land, Beulah, which means married. For the Lord will take delight in you and your land will be married. As a young man marries a young woman, so will your builder marry you. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will God rejoice over you.

Let's pray.

This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church.

Father, thank you that you have appointed Jesus as head of the church.

And we want to submit our lives to him.

And thank you that the way in which Jesus loves us, loves his church, is through sacrificial service, loving kindness, even death on a cross. Jesus, we thank you. Amen.