Bulletin. Let's jump right in and then I will pray. You'd look in your bulletin and you'll see Colossians 3, 18 through 19. It's pretty straightforward. You would think. Colossians 18 and 19 says, wives, submit to your husband as a sitting in the Lord. Verse 19 says, Husband, love your wives. Do not be harsh with them. Let me pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would send your spirit here that you would open the eyes of the blind and you would open the ears of the deaf and that the lane would leap for joy because they have heard and they have understood your gospel. They have understood the good news of the kingdom. Please keep our eyes from being clouded by issues but in fact let us see how the gospel applies to our issues. Father, forgive the sins of the one who preaches for their many. I pray and ask for your mercy even now as I begin to talk in your name. Amen. If you're visiting, this is your first time. You've got to be saying to yourself, why would this guy be preaching this text in the first place? Common sense would dictate, you're starting a new church, you want everyone to like you. I personally want people to like me. Why would you even touch this text? Well, the matter of integrity frankly. What I've decided to do when we started this church is that I would preach through books of the Bible and when you preach through books of the Bible, there are times when you come to parts that you don't like or you don't understand or seem pretty fishy. And yet, integrity demands at least for me that I deal with it, that I see what it is that Jesus would have us to do with these parts of the Bible as opposed to just dismissing them. So, if you've not been here, this is actually the last part of a series that I've done in the Book of Colossians. I started at Colossians 1-1 and we have preached through this book for the past three months now, maybe four or almost. And now, we are getting into some very practical areas. And you see, if you don't deal with these areas, what's very interesting to me in Christianity is in most areas when we're going to talk today about submission and headship. In most of our lives, we sort of walk through life as when it comes to dicey issues with a sort of don't ask, don't tell policy. You know, I sort of know this stuff is in the Bible. I know the Bible says some dicey things about sexuality. I know it says some dicey things about roles. I know it says some dicey things. But as long as we don't ask and don't tell, we're all fine. But I just have to tell you that if the gospel, this thing that I've been preaching on for the past four months, does not touch as deeply into your soul as your sexuality and as deeply into your soul as your roles. And as deeply into your soul as who you are, then it's no gospel at all. It's a religion. It's just something that you follow. And you might as well not follow Christianity if you're looking for something that will not probe into the depths of who you are as a human being. So all of that said, we've worked our way up. And remember Paul started this book very generally. And the book, if you've been here, remember, is really about one thing. And it's about Jesus. And Paul started out by saying, let me tell you about this one Jesus. He's the image of the invisible God. He's the first born of all creation that Jesus is not just another teacher, but in fact all teachers, oh, they're very existence to Jesus. The Jesus is the creator of all. And remember, there's something screwed up. If you look around you, there's, you know, there's something screwed up about the world. And God said, ah, the same Jesus that was the one who created everything is also the one who reconciles everything. And through the blood of his cross, he reconciles all things to himself. And if you don't know what that means, Paul says, well, let me tell you about your own lives. He said, when you were alienated from God, when you had your back turned on God, when you were running from God, Jesus reconciled you to himself. That he took all your sins and he wiped them away and he nailed them to the cross. And therefore, nothing owns you anymore. Your sin does not own you anymore. Other people do not own you anymore. The people who seek to abuse you and to manipulate you. They don't own you anymore. You're owned by no one except Jesus now. And remember, he made this great line. He says in Jesus, there's no June or Greg circumcised or uncircumcised, he makes a statement of radical egalitarianism. But there's no distinction now. No one is better than anyone else. If you're in here, you can't be superior to anyone. You're a sinner. You're broken and you're screwed up and Jesus is your only hope. But you shouldn't feel inferior to anyone either because you're in the image of God and you're being recreated into the very image of Jesus himself. So now here we come to the problem. It's how does Paul say there's this radical, radical equality on one hand and then he sort of just all of a sudden jumps in and says, all right, why? Bet your husband. Husbands, love your wives, children, obey your parents, slaves, obey your masters, masters, take care of your slaves. He all of a sudden jumps into these roles. And the question we have to ask is how, why does he do that? How come particularly this husband and wife role just Paul jump into this? How can this be reconciled with the equality that he also preaches? And you either got to do two things. You either got to deal with it. You've got to figure out and see what Paul is doing here or you've got to say Paul is wrong. Or you've got to say Paul is just being cultural here. There was just a cultural thing for Paul to tell wives to do this or slaves to do this or children obey their parents. That was just a cultural thing. So what we've got to deal with today is sort of all of those things and frankly I've got to try and make it palatable. You would think. So anyhow, all of that stuff, we need to be reminded as well. Just by, I feel like I have to make several caveats here. The first one is that we all view the world from a very subjective position. There's no such thing practically as objectivity. None of us come to a text of the Bible or some situation objectively. We all come subjectively. And maybe you grew up in a household where you were abused by men. You're a woman and you've been abused by men and you've been raised to think that my life must be defined by taking care of myself. When you come read the Bible, you bring that with you. Now say you were raised in a household, maybe you're a man and you say well in my house, mom always stayed home. Mom always cooked dinner. Mom always did everything and dad brought home the paycheck and he didn't talk to anybody. That's the kind of life I want. When you come to the Bible with that kind of viewpoint. Now, so we all, if you understand that we all come with our sort of subjective views of the Bible, here's the point. If you understand the gospel, if you have become a Christian, what you are saying now is Jesus changed my subjectivity. Instead of coming at it from where I used to come through, the things that used to own me. Now I come at the Bible with whose eyes. Now I come at the Bible with the eyes of Jesus. You see because if you're a Christian, what you're saying is Jesus make me more into your image. So when you look at these passages, you're not saying well how has men treated me badly in the past and since men have treated me badly, there's no way this could have any relevance for my life. Or how have I seen things happen with women? So I need to totally dominate women. With the gospel, you say all of that is gone. Jesus, you teach me. You show me, recreate me, change my heart, make me into who you want me to be. And so all of that, that's caveat one. The second caveat is there's basically two views here. If you look at Ephesians on the back of your insert that has your scripture reference, there is a supplemental text. It's the same text basically, but Paul sort of fills in the blanks for us. And there's basically two views of this Colossians text. Out there, wife submits your husband, husband loves your wife. There are two views basically. And they both basically revolve around this from Ephesians, the 5, 21 and 22, and you can see where they come from when I read them. The first view is egalitarianism, just radical egalitarianism that there's no difference between men and women when it comes to Jesus. Now, what are people get that? Look at 5, 21. Paul says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And what people do is the egalitarian view says, I've got to err on one side or the other of this equation. And I'm going to err on the side that says we just all need to submit to one another. There are no roles here. There are no, the submission or subordination and equality cannot coexist together. That those are two radically different ideas that to be submissive or to be equal. And they justify that generally with a few different places in the Bible, but one of the big ones that always comes up is Ephesians 5, 21. Submit yourselves to one another. Now, the other view. The other side of that coin is what I will call, and I got this from Michael Kelly up the street, the legalitarian view. You've got egalitarianism, which says we're all equal and nothing matters, and you've got the legalitarian view, which I also call the Ralph Cramson view, which says, I'm the boss and you're nothing. Okay, remember that from the honeymooners? That wife, wives, you have no rights. You are nothing. You're just there for no reason. But to submit and to serve your husband, whatever he wants you to do, no matter how he treats you, that's what you're there for. That's the legalitarian view. And how do they justify that? It's a very next verse. Now you see how bizarre this is getting. You see because you have some people who form a whole camp, a whole movement based on Ephesians 5, 21, then you have another group that are based on Ephesians 5, 22, and they're put right next to each other. What does Ephesians 5, 22 say? If his husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up to her, to make her holy and cleansing her with the wife, sorry I'm reading 25, 22, wives submit to your husband, says to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, this Christ is head over the church's body of which he has now saved you. What the legalitarian view says is that headship inequality cannot coexist. Do you see what I'm saying? One side says that subordination inequality cannot coexist, but there's no way I can be equal to someone but also submit myself to them. And the other side says there's no way I can be equal to someone and also lead them. I can't be the head if you will. And so now the question is which one of these two is right? And if you've been around long enough, you're going to hear me say neither one of them in my opinion is right. Neither one of the positions is right. Why? Because there's a third way. Neither both of these positions have merit, but what they both tend to leave out is one thing and it is the most important thing of all and it is the person and work of Jesus. That Jesus brings a third way to this whole submission thing. Jesus brings a third way to this whole headship thing. That Jesus sort of takes you outside of the box, if you will, and gives you a different way of looking at all these things. So unless you understand Jesus, unless you understand the work of Jesus, my opinion is you really can't understand these texts and you can't understand how to reconcile radically quality with submission and subordination. And as you can guess by my preaching through Colossians, that Jesus is the only one who can reconcile these things. Jesus reconciles a quality and subordination. So that said, I want to simply look at this morning's the submission of Jesus. Here that's the submission of Jesus and the love of Jesus. You can't understand these texts unless you understand Jesus. You can't apply them to your life unless you understand Jesus. Jesus is the only thing that matters here in my opinion when you're coming at these texts to try and make sense of them. So all that said from here on out, I mean, to be referring to the Ephesians passage, which is on the back of your sheep. Let me read it. First as we look at the submission of Jesus, Paul says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Why submit to your husbands as to the Lord? For the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is head of the church, His body of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands and everything. 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 with holy but holy and blameless. In the 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 feeds and cares for it 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 in the church. However, each one of you must also love His wife as He loves Himself and the wife must respect her husband. The key down here, one of the keys here, is the word mystery. You see, we as human beings don't like mystery. We have this compulsion which makes us attracted to mystery but we also have this repulsion which makes us not want mystery. We want to live black and white worlds. Whether you are a Christian or not, you sort of want some default mode that is always black and white. You will hear me say very often that the Bible is very often black and white but its application almost never is. The application is almost never black and white but then you run into problems in which you have to make black and white decisions. You have to do something. You just can't stand there and say, that's all gray. And the reason I think God does that is because that means you have to trust Jesus. You have to trust Jesus when you make decisions because if everything was black and white you wouldn't need God. You would be God. And so this whole issue, keep in mind, is not black and white. What does Paul mean when he talks about the submission of Jesus and the submission of the wife here? It's simply this that marriage. Paul does not notice what Paul does not do. Paul does not root any of this stuff in his culture. He doesn't do it. He doesn't say this is just a cultural thing to have husband and wife relationships like this. He says here's why because of Jesus, because of Christ in the church. So what Paul does is he roots his teaching on marriage in the Trinity. Now there's another caveat. I feel like I have to keep making all these qualifiers and maybe some of you think I'm a sissy for this. To remind you that we're talking about marriage here, that nowhere in the Bible does the Bible ever talk about women generally submitting to men generally. Never. The Bible never talks about women being lower, women being less, women being anything but equal to men, especially outside of marriage. So when you're looking at what you've got to remind yourself here, why is he talking about marriage in particular and why is he talking about these things in particular? And it's simply this is because marriage is simply a picture of the gospel. That's it. That marriage is a picture of the gospel. Think about a wedding. If you've ever been to a wedding, many of you have. Many of you have been to weddings that I've done. I've married you. You've walked down the aisle and who comes down the aisle? It's a bride dressed in white, gorgeous, beautifully adorned, and she's walked down the aisle by her father and who she presented to. The son. That should sound familiar to you. That the father presenting this bride to the son. Now the only thing is the difference in the gospel is the reason the bride is white and spotless and clean and blameless is because the son has made her that way. The son has died for the bride. The son has given everything for the bride. So your marriage is a picture when you actually walk down the aisle, whether you're a Christian or not, if your marriage was that way, you are living out a picture of this. You are showing the world what it means for Jesus to be in relationship with sinners. Now what Paul also says is that you walk down the aisle, that is your marriage ought to look like the gospel, but your wedding looks like the gospel, but also your marriage looks like the gospel. And only in Jesus, only in the gospel do we see where radical subordination and radical submission join to radical equality and that is in the Trinity. Think about the Trinity. Father, son, Holy Spirit, same in substance, equal in power and glory. Well guess what? One of them had to submit to the will of the others in order for you to be saved. Do you hear that? That you have the father and the son and the Holy Spirit figuratively speaking, sitting in heaven saying, man has fallen. Who will go down? Who will go down and save them? Who will go down and become one of them in order to bear all of their sins? And imagine if they had a fight. You know, the father looks at the son and the son you go down and you deliver man from their sins and the son says, I'm just as equal as you are here. I'm God. I'm omnipotent. I'm omniscient. I know everything. See everything. Why don't you go down, father? And then there's a huge fight in heaven. And meanwhile the while they're bickering, men and women are perishing. Listen to how it works at all. How it works is what theologians call the Covenant of Redemption. The father looked down and he had passion and pity on a group of people and he said, son, I want that you would go down and deliver this people from their sins. And what does the son say? Yes, he willingly yields himself to the father all the way to the cross. If you remember in the Garden of Geseminate, what does Jesus do? He goes off by himself so that no one can hear him. You see because he's the leader of this group of disciples and he's all by himself and he is so burdened and he is so afraid that he sweats blood. And he says, father, if there's any way, any way that this can pass from my hands, this crucifixion gig, please take it from me. If there's some other way we can work it out, would you please do that? And then he gave the great submissive subordinate caveat. He says, not my will, however, but you will be God. And notice, it's very interesting to me that that's one of the places in the Gospels where you don't have God speaking from heaven. Every now and then you've got God speaking from heaven saying, this is my beloved son, this is him, listen to him. Jesus prays and he says, is there any other way that I can get around this? It is not. It's silent. Imagine Jesus sitting there waiting. God you've spoken from heaven before and eventually people started to come and he stood up and he said, you know, guys, the time has come. I ask God if that I would not have to submit, but you know what? I'm going to. And the only reason I'm going to submit is because I love you. That's it. Jesus had a reason for submitting. And if you're wetting your marriage in the picture of the Gospel, you submit not because your husband is the boss, not because he's better than you, not because he's bigger than you, but you submit for a purpose. If you believe the Gospel, you submit for the sake of the Gospel. You submit so that other people can see when people say, what is Jesus like? Husband and wife should say, you got to check out my wife. You want to know what Jesus is like? Jesus is like my wife because I'm the most screwed up person in the world. And nonetheless, she follows me. She lids with me. You know, my wife, it's amazing. My wife is smarter than me in every way. She's more organized. She's got everything more together than me. And I come with some hair brain idea that we ought to plan a church in Seattle. What does it mean for her to submit today? Did I go to her and say, Judy, we're moving to Seattle and you don't have a thing to say. I went and I said, what do you think about this? This seems to be what God is telling me. And she came back with, basically, you have two reasons. One is, Tommy, no matter how screwed up you are, Jesus is not going to let me go, you see. You've got to believe the Gospel in order to even consider the fact that you might submit yourself to one another, let alone a wife submit herself to a husband. Because the only way you can submit to a husband, women, is if you believe that Jesus is never going to let you go and Jesus is never going to do you wrong because the guy is sometimes. And the other reason is for the sake of the Gospel. My wife said, Tommy, I will go with you to Seattle. Why? Frankly, so that many of you can come into a relationship with Jesus and you already have, you see in some sense, submission in the Gospels is almost like a tie breaking authority. And if Judy and I were still bickering in Atlanta about whether or not we should come here, guess where you would not be. You would be here. So submission is this voluntary yielding up because of the Gospel. And so if you're a woman here, you've got to ask yourself, one, do I believe the Gospel? And the second, what does it mean for my marriage? What does it mean? If I'm single, what does it mean for me? If I'm dating a guy? You know, frankly, I can't tell you. And you know, frankly, I can't tell you what submission looks like in your marriage. Because in many marriages, the wife is much more decisive, much smarter, much more hard driving than the man. And so what does it mean in this marriage? I don't know. But what I do know is that its core, what it is about, is about the Gospel. And women, if you think about it, would you marry someone who is not equal to you? Would you marry someone who you looked at as an inferior? My guess is you wouldn't do it. Common sense practicality says you wouldn't do it. Now what's very interesting to me, and all of this, is that people get offended when you hear about submission. Now, if you're a person that's easily offended, now you should sort of get your seat belt on. Now you should get ready because now you should really be offended. You should be offended at my next statement. Much more than you should be offended at God's command or suggestion, however you want to phrase it to be submissive. And then what should offend you is that when God tells husbands and tells us all to love one another. See, that's the next point. The love of Jesus. You see, people get uptight when you talk about submission, but they don't get uptight when you talk about love. Well, why is that? Because they don't understand love, frankly, nor submission in my opinion, but they really don't understand love. You see, submission is this sort of voluntary yielding up. It's a voluntary sort of saying, okay, I'll go along with the program. But you know what love says? When Paul says, husbands love your wife. What he tells the husband is husband, you are to give up everything for the wife. There's no voluntary yielding of anything, husband. He says husband is to command love your wife. He also says in the Bible just as he says submit to one another. He says love one another. And what does love mean? Love says you give up everything for that person, including your right. Now, you see where the gospel sort of makes things more gray because he says wives submit to your husband, husbands love your wives. What does it mean to submit to someone who has just commanded to take a much lower position than you? What does it mean to submit to someone who has told to give up everything for you? To give up even his rights for you? You see, that's the gospel. Because that's exactly what Jesus did. You see, it all comes back to Jesus. You know, the Bible says for God, so love the world that Jesus can down. He saved us. What did Jesus do? Jesus who sat in perfect power and glory who did not need anything came down and he gave up everything so that you might have a relationship with God. He gave up glory. He gave up his rights. You remember when Jesus was being accused at the cross and they said, you know, are you the king of the Jews? Are you really the Messiah? Are you the one? And they said, if you're the one, you know, you save yourself and Jesus, what did He say? He said, you know what, if I wanted to, I'd call down 12 leasons of angel to destroy you. But I'm not. Why? I think it's because of you. It's because I love them. You see, it's because I love my people. What love says is I will give up everything. I will give away everything. I will get rid of everything. And how does Jesus redo that? Jesus manifests his love to the church in at least three ways. And that this prophet is priest in his king. And it's the prophet. What does Jesus do to love his church? He comes and he tells them the gospel. He comes and tells them that you are lost without me. That you're running from me and what you need to do is you need to turn from me and trust in the fact that I've forgiven all of your sins. That's what a prophet does. A prophet preaches the gospel by word and by deed. So what deeds did Jesus do? He served. So Paul is calling the husband to love the wife like Jesus, love the church. What is he telling the husband to do? To tell her the gospel, but he's also telling to live the gospel. And what is the gospel? But to serve that person. And it's not it's not like it's a kind of serve that sort of means get on your knees and wash my feet kind of serving. It's not a very clean kind of service. It's a serve that person. And he also loved the church. Christ loved the churches. It's priest. What is the priest? A priest reconciled that Jesus is responsible for 100% of your reconciliation with God that Jesus the priest pursues you so that you can be reconciled to God. So what do you think Jesus means when he says husbands you be the priest. Love your wives is priest. What does he mean? He says husbands you owe you who are prone to pout. You who are prone to sit back in your office or sit watch television waiting for your wife to get her act together. You you are responsible 100% of the time for pursuing reconciliation with your wife. Even if she won't submit you see Paul doesn't qualify them. He says you know she's a submissive good wife. Then you love her. Then you pursue her. If he's the worst wife in the world or if the worst husband in the world, but things still apply. And he says so now you are responsible for reconciliation. And you know why he says that because that's the gospel. Because the gospel says if you and I waited around or Jesus waited around and he said you know what I'm going to be in relationship with Tommy when he gets his act together. When Tommy decides to quit being a baby when he decides to quit being a jerk then we can sit down at the table and have a talk. What Jesus says is because Tommy is a jerk because he is an idiot because he is so simple I need to pursue him I must. And that's what the gospel says. The last thing he says about Jesus is that he loves the church as prophet is priest and as king. Now what does a king do? If it was anywhere but the gospel you would think a king sort of rules with an iron scepter and he's really mean. What does a king do in the gospel? What does a king do in the Bible? From the Old Testament on that says I'm going to give you a king and here's what the king will do. He'll believe you look he did around me 17. Here's what a king is supposed to do. Serve his people. He protects and he defends and he rules and he does all these things by serving them. He does all these things by taking the lowest position. You see that's backwards. All of these things that we tend to think about marriage and submission about love and about headship and about all relationships together they're backwards. All of our thinking is backwards because you know what the gospel finally says about this passage. Wipes the bitch your husband's husband's love your wife is what a marriage ought to be is two people that are constantly fighting for the lowest position. A marriage should consist of two people who are constantly fighting for the lowest position. Two people who are constantly fighting to outdo each other in service. Two people who are constantly fighting to love the other one. If you have a struggling marriage my guess is you can you can tell anyone here that that's not what happens in your marriage. If you're divorced my guess is you can say that is what happened in your marriage. Instead of fighting to see who the serve each other we fought to see who can have our own right. You see in the gospel says there's none of that. What it means to become a Christian is to completely give up everything to the other person. Why? It's because you've completely given up to Jesus. It means to completely submit to the other person. Why? It means because you've completely submitted to Jesus. It means to love the other person. Why? Because you loved Jesus. I've told you many of you have heard me say this that I love wedding bells and I love wedding bells simply because of the irony of them. Here's this beautiful couple who comes walking down the aisle. You know I do this wedding and you know I've got my arms up and I'm preaching it. And then they stand up and make promises to one another that they have no ability whatsoever to keep. Many times no intention of keeping them. What are the promises? I will be your faithful husband. I covenant before God in these witness to be your faithful husband and plenty and I want joy and sorrow and sickness and health all these things. I'm always going to be here for you from now until we die. What does the gospel say? The gospel says that you will have the ability to have that kind of marriage to obey those promises only of one thing is prerequisite. And that is if you understand that Jesus has made those promises to you first. That you whether you're a man or a woman come to the marriage table saying Jesus has already made bells to me. Jesus has made bells to me. Jesus came to me and he said you know Tommy I am going to be your faithful husband. In sickness and in health and joy and sorrow and plenty and want all these things and I will be here. Guess how long forever. Not only do I promise these things but I Jesus have the ability to keep my promises Tommy. And as much as you rely on me as much as you believe that I keep my promises you'll be able to keep your promises to your wife. You'll be able to keep your promise to your husband. So you sell the gospel and forms all of this stuff. I don't know if any of this has been a satisfactory explanation of wives submit to your husband or husbands love your wives. But the bottom line is it's a great situation unless you look at Jesus you can't understand it in my opinion. To do anything else but look at Jesus means to default into one of these black and white modes. That I'm never going to be married if that's the case. Or I'm going to have a marriage in which we're constantly fighting against each other. Or to say you know what I don't have any rights anyway I'm just going to get married and let someone stomp all over me. That's not the gospel either. The gospel says both of you guys are looking at Jesus. Let me pray.