So yep first reading is from 1 Peter 2:13-3:7. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honour everyone.
Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust for this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.
For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return.
When He suffered, He did not threaten but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds, you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. Likewise, wives be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives. When they see your respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adorning be external.
The braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewellery or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honour to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. The next reading is from Ephesians 5:21-6:9.
Wives, submit to your 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 Saviour. 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 splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands 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 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 am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour 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. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves 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 and that there is no partiality with Him. And our text for this morning is found in Ephesians 5:21, which in the ESV that I'm using is part of a very long sentence, but ours says submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. But in many Bibles, it's given as a separate sentence.
We know that we must submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now the status of women varies a lot from country to country. If you've travelled abroad, you may be aware that there are places where women are, well, way down in society when it comes to privileges and status and so on. We lived for many years in Africa. Among the Kambari where we lived, the women were not even allowed to attend to religion.
They just had to stay at home, do the work, fetch the water, cook, and so on. And, yeah, you would find that it's probably the norm for a large, very large part of the world. The status of women in our own society was different in the past and maybe, yeah, a bit like that, where women were seen as second rate at times. And I want to ask the question, is this the kind of attitude that the Bible encourages? Because many people will say, oh, that's from our Christian past when we used to treat women in that way.
As if the bible teaches us that women are inferior, that men are superior. And my question is, is that really the case? Because remember, I think we said it last time, Satan often takes an issue, and he takes it to one extreme so that we will react and go to the other extreme. So here, he will say, oh, you Christians, you you treat women as worthless vessels. Oh, no.
No. In fact, we think and and then you're before you know it, you're saying there's no difference at all between men and women as we hear so many say in society today. I think we have to recognise that the reason why women have a privileged place in our society is in fact part of our Christian heritage. It didn't come right away. The gospel had to work itself through.
But we see that where the bible speaks, reform will come in, and we see it not only in the way women were not treated as vessels, but also in the way in which, well, Christianity opposed slavery. The word servants, which we read earlier, servants and masters, actually talking about slaves, although it can also apply to paid servants. And here we see that Christianity again brought a new insight into society. But where that happens, we so often see then that society goes to the other extreme, and this brings in problems. And so today, we have many who reject any difference between genders or that there's any room for authority where one person can tell another what to do.
And I believe this has also made its influence into Christian circles, and we find that in the way that they have reinterpreted the scripture to suit that new insight. And so they interpret the text before us that we must be submissive to one another, that this indicates a mutual submission. I submit to you, you submit to me. Husband submits to the wife, wife submits to the husband. Is that really what it means here when it says you should submit to one another?
Now the Bible also says you must love one another, and we believe that this is indeed mutual. So I must love you and you must love me. To love one another, you find expressed at least six times in the writings of John alone. And it has been suggested that in the same way that we are to love one another, we are to be submissive to one another. That submission here means that we give in to one another's wishes, that we have a humility of mind.
Now let me say a humility of mind is certainly a Christian ideal. In 1 Peter 5:5, we read, clothe yourself with humility towards one another. That's good. But if you look at the whole text, it begins this way. Young men, be submissive to those who are older and clothe yourself in humility.
You see, it's not talking about a mutual submission. The young man had to submit to the older man, not the other way around. And the word submission is used in that sense consistently in the bible. And so we have it of when it speaks of children submitting to their parents, they must obey them, do what they say. It talks about servants obeying their masters.
They don't tell the masters what to do. It says that we must be submissive to God, and I hope you don't think we can turn that around. And we must obey his law. Demons are submissive to Christ when he speaks to them. It says that we have to be submissive to governing authorities, and we have to be submissive to those who rule Christ's church, pastors and elders.
Now none of these are talking of a mutual submission. It means that we obey those whom God has put in charge. Now such obedience is even required where the people in charge are unreasonable. We read that in 1 Peter 2:18, although your boss may be unreasonable because he's the boss, you do what he says. He's the master.
It's not a matter of obeying the law when we agree or when we like it. Now the only time we can disobey is when it's contrary to God's will. But otherwise, as we read in Romans, everyone must submit himself to governing authorities. For there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
You notice here it says the same thing twice. God established the authorities. The authorities that exist have been established by God. It's repeated because it is important. Now if you think that Paul here in Romans 13 was talking about some wonderful ruler whom, yeah, of course, we must obey him, think again.
He was talking about Caesar. And Caesar at that time was not exactly a model ruler. He was somebody who was selfish, who was brutish, and in every way, something you wouldn't want to rule you because he was a miserable guy to be under, and yet they were to obey him. Now the bible then tells us in a number of places in Ephesians and in Peter how we are to be submissive. It talks about husband, wives.
It talks about parents, children, talks about bosses and servants. And you find four sorry, three more of those lists in Paul's writings. And these lists of how everybody must behave are called house tables. It's because in those days, slaves and masters were all part of one household, and this is how you behave in a household. And it's interesting.
We have a lot of these households also in other literature of the first century, Roman authors, Greek authors. But there's a big difference, and we will come to that in a moment. But these house tables then show how people are to behave. Now in our passage here, it's it's speaking then of husbands and wives and children and parents and masters and servants. And I think most people today would still agree that children should obey their parents, although it isn't always happening, that's for sure, and certainly not enforced very much.
And I think most would still agree that you must do what the boss says and not go your own way. But when it comes to husbands, wives, a lot of people say, no. That should be a mutual thing. Now I put it to you that when it speaks here of these different settings of parents, of, well, of of married couple, of parents, or of a boss, it's talking here about different spheres. And it's so important that we recognise that each sphere has its own authority structure.
So in our everyday life in society, we have to be obedient to the government because that is the sphere of our our government to direct life there. It tells us which side of the road we drive on. If you wanna be disobedient there, you'll bear the consequences very soon. It's just wise to follow these directives and be obedient there and not go your own way. We don't tell the government what to do.
They tell us what to do. But, there are other spheres of the household and that the government shouldn't tell us what to do. I firmly believe that the government should not tell us how to educate our children because that's not the domain God has given to government. That's the domain that God has given to parents. And that's why as Christians, we often, support things like parent controlled schools because that's a different sphere, a different domain.
And what you can find sometimes that a person who is obedient to another person in one sphere has that turned around in another sphere. And perhaps I can illustrate that this way. When we still had a queen, Queen Elizabeth, and, her husband was Prince Philip in the household who had to be obedient to who? Well, Prince Philip was the husband, The queen was the wife. In that sphere, Queen Elizabeth was obedient to her husband.
Oh, that's what God required. But when it came to government, the queen was the queen and Prince Philip was a subject. And here, Prince Philip had to be obedient to the queen. Let me give another example. When I was teaching at the RTC in class, I expected my students to do what I said.
But one of my students was an elder in our church, and in the church, he had authority over me as one of the elders there. So in that sense, yeah, you can say be obedient to one another, but it counts in different spheres, not a mutual obedience. And the Christian message is not intended to remove authority. On the contrary, the Christian authority, Christian message affirms authority. As we said, it was repeated twice by Paul.
This is from God. Yes. God instituted it. And, we have to note that Christ did not come to introduce some kind of democracy where everybody can do where he likes. No.
Christ came to set up a kingdom. And in a kingdom, there is authority from the king where those who were under the king obey. So how does the kingdom model then differ from what we see so often today or what we see in the past? Well, the house tables tell us several things here. Our text begins with the question of husband and wife.
And notice, first of all, that she is to be submissive to her own husband. The passage we read in Peter said exactly the same. Let her be submissive to her own husband, not to other people's husbands, not to other men. Alright? Women are not to be obedient to men because men are superior or something like that.
It says nothing like that in the bible. But in the sphere of the family, the wife is to be obedient to her own husband. So we're not talking about women as a class inferior to to men. Now the second thing we notice here is this this counts then only within the family structure, not in other spheres of authority.
And if the wife happens to be in charge of something in society, then the husband would have to submit to her in that particular sphere. But in the family, we have very specific guidelines that were set down at the time of creation. In Genesis 2:24, we read, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So they're a sphere on their own. And then in Genesis 3, God says to Eve, your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
Now this is the original authority structure set up at the time of creation. Later, we get chiefs and chieftains and kings and so on. But the family structure is the original and basic structure God set up. And I believe that's the very reason why we see Satan attacking it again and again. He doesn't want that kind of structure that God set up.
He wants to destroy it. And, yeah, and then the family is very much under attack today. How our husbands relate to wives, how children relate to parents, I think that's really, well, an area where we have to stand firm on god's word or we will go the way of the world. Now the third thing I want to point out that, as I mentioned, house tables were not unique to the bible. You can find them among many first century authors, Cicero and so on.
But the interesting thing is in Cicero and other authors outside the bible, it only gives one direction. You be submissive to him or her. Whereas in the bible, it goes in two directions. It says, wives be submissive to your husbands, and husbands, you have to love your wives. Children, be submissive to your parents.
Parents, do not exasperate your children, but deal with them lovingly. Servants, you have to obey your masters, but masters, you must look after your servants and do what's right by them. And that's what made Christianity different. It was two ways. There was a mutual relationship, although the authority went only one way.
But husbands then are to love their wives with a willingness to sacrifice themselves if necessary like Christ did for us because we, the church, are the bride of Christ. And we, in our husband, wife relationship, are to picture to the world the kind of relationship that Christ has with His church, where the church obeys Christ and where Christ sacrifices Himself out of love for His church. And that's why we find it so necessary that we follow the biblical model here where relations to one another are as unto the Lord. And, it's this biblical model, I believe, that has brought many blessings that we see in our western society. Why in our western society, women and children were treated better than before Christianity came, why we see people like Wilberforce opposing slavery, and why there was prison reform, and why children were not allowed to work in factories and so on.
All of that came, if you look through history, through Christian influence. Now the problem is that where Christianity then begins and the world takes it on, the world often goes too far, and that's what we got to watch out for. We see that too in in government. Originally, the government that we call democracy is based on the church government. And this idea of representation first was introduced into the churches.
It became strong in the church in Switzerland, in Scotland, in Holland, and so on where people would choose their church leaders instead of them being appointed by a pope or a bishop. No. People would look at whom god had gifted. And on the basis of these gifts, they would say, I would like this person to lead us because I believe God has given them the gift. And our society took that over in democratic government where we could choose our leaders according to how god had gifted them to lead people even in decisions that we might not find to our liking.
But we realised God had gifted them, put them in authority, and we were to obey. Today, however, I believe that giftedness has gone out of the window. You now elect somebody who makes the biggest promises. Oh, will lower your taxes. Oh, I'm going to allow abortion for for all stages.
I'm going to, well, relax rules in this area and that area. And people say, yes. That's what I want. Unfortunately, they don't ask, is this really their gift? Are these people the best to lead us?
Has God gifted them in this area? And what we see then is where people ignore God's authority structures and start to more or less rule themselves that things go awry. The attack on society and the family comes under many names. Critical race theory, some of you will be familiar with it. Woke, the great reset.
We used to call all that communism in the past where and we see that where the world has tried this to set up the so called proletariat democracy. I don't know if those words are familiar, but we saw it in Russia, for example, where supposedly the people, reigned themselves, but we all know that it ended in a tyrannical dictatorship where people had very little to say. Now even in those situations, as Christians, we must follow the authority structures that exist because they come from God, and we observe them out of reverence for Christ. Let me just add that no government is worse than a bad government. You're better off having bad government than having no government at all.
Now the bible has many examples about people who obeyed authority, and I think one of the helpful ones for us is a king, David. You remember David was chosen to be the next king, but Saul, the existing king, was persecuting him. And one time, David was hiding from Saul in a cave, and I said Paul, I think, but Saul. And Saul had to relieve himself and came into that very cave, and David's friend said, here's your chance. Kill him, and you'll be king.
And David says, no. Saul is the Lord's anointed. I can't take that away from him. God gave that to him. We must obey him.
Even though he's persecuting us, he is still God's anointed king. And I think that is a great example for us of what it means to be submissive to authority. And our paradigm model for authority, of course, is Jesus Christ Himself. He submitted Himself to the law, showing what it's like to be submissive, but He also rules over us as Lord with great authority. And all that's described by Paul in Philippians 2 where he talks about Christ's humiliation and then exaltation.
He says, Christ humbled Himself and became obedient unto death. Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And this text then helps us know how we as husbands and wives can model that obedience and that authority of Christ, that obedience that came with a giving of Himself and the authority that was given Him by God. The husband is the head of the family and the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.
And there's no getting around this. Have their place because of what we call their principle. Doesn't mean the men are better or smarter. They may be stronger, I guess, but not in every case either. But God has simply placed men in charge because that was the way He wanted authority set up.
Now this doesn't mean that women now have no place in society or in the church. We see that God has often used women in important positions. Philip, the evangelist, had four daughters that prophesied. They were, of course, Dorcas and Priscilla. Yeah.
There's other women mentioned in the Bible. There are books written about it. And like me, you've probably seen a great example of women in leadership. I think, for example, of the mission in the South of Nigeria, an area called Calabar, where Mary Slessor set up the work. There weren't any Christian men there, and she was used by God to set up the Presbyterian church, very strong church there now in the South of Nigeria.
And, also, we read that in persecuted churches like in China where men are put in jail, God's often using women to give the leadership that is needed. And like in the Old Testament, Deborah stepped in when there were no men ready to judge Israel and to lead them into war. But that doesn't mean this is the norm. The norm is that God has appointed the male to be the head of the house and to model this after the headship of Christ over His church. As I said, this has nothing to do with superiority, because when God created mankind, it says male and female, He created them in His image.
We're image bearers of God. We are just as important to God whether we are male or female, husband or wife. Whether you're a husband or a wife, it is your privilege to model that relationship of Christ to His church. Now not everybody here is married, and I want to point out this doesn't mean that singles have no place here. Very much the opposite.
Paul himself, of course, was single. And it was his prayer that many more would follow in his path and use their singleness in a special way to minister to the church. Now it does it doesn't mean that you have to be single to minister to the church as, well, the Roman church teaches that priests can't be married, and that's again going further than God's word requires. But it certainly means that God has a place for singles, and you can serve God in the unique position and gifts that God has given you. You have just as much a place in society and in the kingdom of God as those who are married or not yet married.
Makes no difference. Again, this is an outcome that the gospel value of Christianity that has an outcome in society today. And you can compare that to other societies where often the unmarried have no place at all. Now Christ gave Himself for His bride, and we know that is the heart of the gospel message, isn't it? That Christ died for us.
And isn't it wonderful that we can then, in a much weaker way, reflect that as husbands to be sacrificial towards our wives. And even as we as a church love Christ, so you ladies have that privilege to be able to show that love in your love for husband and family. Let us accept that obedience is ultimately obedience to God. And we do that. We obey God.
We obey Christ so that He may be all in all. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord God and our Father, we thank You that You made men and women, that You gave them both a place in the society that You have given us. And, Father, we realise that we have so often strayed from the guidelines that You give in Your word.
We see, Lord, that where Christianity has brought renewal and reform that so often, yeah, things have gone the other way. And, Father, we pray that we may not follow in that, but always be centred on Your word and find there the directions for how You would have us live in society, in family, and in any other grouping. We pray, Lord, that those You placed in authority may do their task with integrity and be ready to sacrifice where necessary. And we pray that those who are under authority and that all of us may do so by showing love and care for those who rule over us. Help us to pray for them, Lord, and to obey them.
And we do pray that You will give us good leaders both in society and in the church and in the home. Lord, we pray all this in the name of the one who is our Lord and King, who came to serve us so that we may worship Him. In Jesus' name. Amen.