Father’s Day 07

I was thinking about this Sunday and the text that I had prepared for it. The text is the first section of Mark chapter 10, which actually is about divorce and marriage. More about divorce, than marriage, at least that is what the question Jesus is answering is about. A couple people knew what I was planning to preach on and reminded me that today is Father’s day, and as such, perhaps a sermon on divorce wouldn’t help Father’s day to be the happiest that it perhaps could be. So I took their advice, and today we’re going to look at husbands/fathers in Ephesians, and we’ll get back to Mark next Sunday. The more I think about it, the more I want to take a Sunday to celebrate fathers, to take some time to be grateful for the earthly fathers we have and more importantly, the heavenly Father that loves us even more than our earthly father.

I took a Sunday away from Mark to look at Mother’s Day, so I’m hopeful that another Sunday away from Mark will be ok for today. If not, I suppose you’ll just have to get over your disappointment. Paul gives some advice to fathers and husbands in Ephesians. Actually, he gives more than just advice. He speaks with the authority of the Holy Spirit on how to live. He speaks about wives as well, but we’ll get to that another time. So our passage for today is Ephesians 5:25-32 and 6:4.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of your also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

…Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Let’s pray.

Paul wrote Ephesians to the people of Ephesus. Ephesus was a city in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey. Paul wrote First and Second Corinthians from Ephesus, as he was in the city 3 years organizing the Christians and teaching them. Eventually Paul was kicked out because an idol-maker stirred up trouble and Paul left. Paul left the church in the care of Timothy, and we have 2 letters to Timothy as Paul mentors him from far away. Scholars agree that Ephesians is one of the letters Paul wrote from prison in Rome. Ephesians tends to be a generalized letter; meaning that most of the letters Paul wrote addressed specific problems that specific churches were dealing with. But Ephesians doesn’t answer any of the questions he does in other letters; not about sexual ethics, not about circumcision or becoming Jewish before becoming a Christian, none of that sort of stuff. So Ephesians is a more general letter, generally useful to the Church. Paul likely knew that his writings were being copied and sent around to the different churches that had sprung up because of his ministry, and that of many other disciples like Timothy, like Priscilla and Aquilla.

So Paul has not heard of a specific problem that Christians had with fathers, or husbands, but he is giving a generalized commandment…submit your life to your wife as Christ laid His life down for His bride, the Church. The larger section is really on ethics and how we live as members of the body of Christ, how we live as disciples and servants of God Almighty. Paul’s big theme is ‘live as children of the light” because that’s what you are. And today’s little section is part of the working out of that larger admonition, to live as children of light, and not darkness.

How did Christ love the church? Did He order it around, force it into submission? No, Christ loved the church, He loved it to death. Christ took His life and laid it down for us. In the same way, husbands and fathers ought to do that for their families. We Christians have been accused of having the marriage concept of the males being completely dominant in everything. In reality, though, if we look at the text, we are told to act as Christ toward our wives. And wives are told the same thing. We are to lay our lives down in mutual submission, because that’s the example that we have been given in Christ’s actions. Christ did not force the Church to do anything. Instead, God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. The thought continues in John 3:17…For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

Jesus came not to be served but to serve. (Mark 10:45 that we’ll look at in the next few weeks…) We are to serve our wives, to serve our children. That is how we are to reflect Christ in our lives to them. The job of the father and husband is to serve, not to be served. So much of our society gets that wrong. I ma the king of the household, my rules go. Well, how is that serving your wife and your kids? Our human tendency is to exalt ourselves, to be little kings, and little kings need subjects—the wife and kids. But Jesus demonstrated a different sort of kingship-a king that serves, not one that is served. Even more, men are to push their wives toward holiness, toward God, rather than toward themselves. Look at what Christ did. He pushes into a relationship with God; husbands can help their wives toward Christ, just as wives help their husbands toward Christ. The bottom line is that good husbands will serve their wives just like Christ served us.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

Paul takes his argument in another direction, reinforcing what he has already said. Not only should men be willing to serve their wives, they should see serving their wives as serving themselves; in fact, if you love your wife it is like loving yourself. His illustration comes from Genesis 2:24, where God has made Eve out of Adam’s rib and says that they are good for one another. Not only are they good for one another, but because they were made for one another the married couple becomes one flesh. What brings joy to one part of the marriage covenant brings joy to the other part. When the wife does well in something, writes a well received article or gets a promotion at work, both the husband and the wife ought to rejoice. And when the husband has something good happen, both husband and wife ought to rejoice. The same is true with pain. When the husband goes through a painful time, both the husband and the wife are wounded. And when the wife is in pain, both husband and wife are in pain.

You know better than I do how this is true. And if it isn’t true for your marriage, then changes need to be made. You and your spouse ought to move and function as one entity, one being as it were. I was telling Rob and Liana a few weeks ago how before their marriage there was Rob, the individual, and there was Liana, the individual. But after their marriage, there is Rob and Liana, the couple. The marriage relationship is more important, is bigger and stronger than either of the individuals involved. This is because the two become one, and create something new. There wasn’t Rob and Liana’s marriage before; now there is. There is one thing, where there used to be two. They support each other because they are supporting themselves in the long run. A marriage is a place to serve, not be served. A marriage is a place to reflect the serving we have received from Christ.

What Paul wants us to hear so emphatically is we are to lay our lives down, just as Christ did. Jesus talks about this too, in fact we’ve been going over this in Mark, where Jesus talks about us laying our lives down and picking up the cross and following Him. I am not saying this is easy. We have been taught to be individuals from when we were very little. Children’s psychologists talk about individuation, where little kids begin to figure out they are autonomous individuals, not just extensions of their parents. I’m not sure how helpful or true all that is. We are individuals, but part of a whole. In marriage especially, we put down our claims to individuality and work for the good of the whole marriage, not just ourselves. Selfishness will ruin a marriage very quickly.

I think one of the toughest places to lay our lives down and follow Christ is within our marriages because it is within our marriages that we are most ourselves. We are most true to our inner selves within our marriages. When dealing with people outside our marriages we can assume a slightly different, better version of ourselves when we want to. But within our marriages we are most like our true selves, we are stripped down to our essence. And it is there, when we are stripped down, that it is hardest to lay down our lives, hardest to put aside our self-focus and lay our lives down for someone else. Strive to serve your spouse. In the best ways, helping them, and them helping you, to grow closer to God, closer to Christ.

Paul finishes with this thought.

This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of your also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

I heard a speak talking about this very verse on Focus on the Family. You’ll notice Paul uses two different verbs to describe spousal interaction. Wives are to respect husbands, and husbands are to love their wives. Some people have traditionally assigned power positions to these verbs, but this speaker saw something else, something important. You see, men need respect. Men can do without love for a lot of the time, generalizing of course, but men need respect. They need the respect of peers and of spouses. Men give respect to others, and expect respect in return. Respect is the language of love to men. Men find it, generally speaking again, harder to love. Many times their feelings of love will be expressed as feelings of respect for another person. I would never tell any of my males friends I love them. That would sound weird to them and to me. And if they told me they loved me, I’d understand, I think, but it would sound a odd to hear. Men speak the language of respect.

Women, on the other hand, hear the language of love. It is not unusual to hear women tell each other they love one another. Women find it easier to love than men do. Women give and receive love. Respect is less of a focus. Again, of course, I’m generalizing. But it seems to be true from what I have seen in life. Two different genders, two different needs and two different ways of relating. What this gentleman pointed out was that Paul calls on each person to do what is harder, men to give love and women to give respect, but which the other person needs to hear. If the wife needs love, but you give respect, you are giving what is easiest for you and what she doesn’t need. And if your husband needs respect and instead you give love, you are giving what is easiest for you, and what he needs and wants least. He tells the funny story of encouraging a group of women to tell they husbands they respect them, and why. One woman did it and her husband responded by doing the laundry, working on the house and other stuff, because she was giving him what he needed to hear. She made the funny comment that she thought if she continued to tell him how much she respected him that she might get a trip to Hawaii out of it.

So instead of a hierarchy, I see a continued call to lay down our lives for the benefit of the other person, a continued call to serve our spouses. Again, what did Christ do? He loved us, and laid His life down for us on the cross. He respects us enough to treat us as people, not robots, but people with intelligence and free will. God wants us to come to Him, but be forced to bow down. At some point in the future, everyone will bow down, but it is not now. Now we are asked to come and give our lives to Christ, rather than have them taken away. We seek to offer up our lives in response to the life Jesus laid down for us on the cross, outside of Jerusalem on a bloody Friday nearly 2000 years ago.

Paul winds up with this thought:

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Parenting seems to be more art than about precision. Being a father means constantly demonstrating, at least in part, the Father part of God that we adore and pray to. That doesn’t mean that fathers are perfect. They can’t be; but to the very best of our ability we try to demonstrate the ways that the Father in Heaven loves us, forgives us, deals with us. That’s a hard job because our humanity gets in the way. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try. Being a father isn’t easy; and being a great father is really hard. It is sometimes easier to yell at our kids until they do what we want than explaining to them why things have to happen they way we want them to. Christian fathers don’t want to chase their kids away from faith, but rather to instruct the kids in the ways of God. What a joy it is when our kids love Jesus, and follow Him. Keep on showing them the faithful ways of God. There will be times when our kids drive us crazy, but keep the faith, keep praying for them, keep loving them. It is what our Heavenly Father does with us. He keeps loving us though we drive Him crazy too.

Fathers have been given a great responsibility. And in our society there aren’t a lot of benefits for being a faithful father. Many fathers walk out because it is more fun to have a different wife, or less responsibilities. Great fathers hang in, and lay down their lives for their wives, for their children. In so many wonderful ways, it is that laying down of our lives that reflects Jesus and His love for us. I hope you have a happy and blessed Father’s day.

Let’s pray.