All right, Sunday after Easter, new series we start today called Homegrown Faith. We always do a series on giving during the year, a series on the family and some other topics that the church needs to be reminded of frequently. And we'll do that around. Normally, I'm teaching through Book of the Bible, verse by verse. The next book of the Bible I'll be preaching through on Sunday mornings is the Book of James.

And we start that at the end of this series will be on Sunday, June 1st. But until then, we're going to talk about God's plan and design for marriage and family. And I want you to know that this series is not going to be like others that you may have heard elsewhere or unfortunately, maybe even here. And where the gist of the teaching on the family is, men are worthless and women are fragile flowers. And we should celebrate the women and we should correct all the men.

We're not going to do that because in the Bible, men and women are equal and God equally reproves and rebukes women as he does men. Yes. And so what you don't need, ladies, is to come in here every Sunday and go, you know what? You're perfect. Let me talk to the men.

You actually need what the Bible says. And so it's going to be pretty balanced. And I don't really expect to step on many toes over the next several weeks. I'm going to come from a winsome position and be more encouraging. Today is God's Design for Marriage Part one.

What would that suggest? Next week's message is God's Design for Marriage Part two. But today it's a wife's strength in submission. And our key verse is Ephesians 5:22. Today we're going to consider what the Bible says about the role of the wife in the marriage.

Let me ask you, would it be an understatement to say that a wife submitting to her husband is a controversial topic? Would it be an understatement to say that that's not usually well received? Let's be real. The word submission feels like a grenade with a pin already pulled. And you say it in church.

People adjust in their seats. They fold their arms, their smiles go from smiling to frowning, and they're like, just try me, buddy. Right? And then so everybody feels the tension. And why is that?

Because for many women, submission sounds like a loss, a loss of voice, a loss of power, even a loss of identity. I'll give you six examples. Some hear the word submit and immediately think one of these six things. Number One, he doesn't deserve it. It's number one, pushback.

Why should I submit to someone who doesn't act like a leader and who isn't even following Jesus? Number two, he might take advantage of me. This fear is real, especially in unhealthy marriages and immature relationships. Number three, I'm more capable than he is. I'm the stronger leader in every area of life.

Why follow someone when I'm more qualified to lead? Number four, Aren't we supposed to be equals, Pastor? Doesn't submission mean that I'm the less important one in the marriage? Well, this confuses value with roles. Number five, I'm afraid I'll lose myself.

This says, whoever submits gets silenced. Whoever submits gets erased. And number six, I've already tried. Nothing changed. I've been burned by this already.

Can I be honest with you? These are real questions. They are real concerns. And if you've thought any of those, you're not alone. And I want to be very clear.

You're not wrong for asking. But what if we've misunderstood it? What if God meant something different by submission than what you've been taught or what you've seen lived out? Because here's the truth. Biblical submission is not a curse.

It's a calling. And it's one of the most misunderstood. It's one of the most misapplied. It's one of the most misrepresented teachings in all the Bible. According to Scripture, submission requires strength, not weakness.

It takes strength to trust in God's design. It takes strength to let go of control. It takes strength to submit when the culture tells you fight for dominance. In fact, I preached to a room filled with people that have been indoctrinated with the imbalance of feminism and all of the curriculum you ever studied from first grade on into college or. The other flip side of that is you've been indoctrinated with ridiculous male chauvinism, and we're way out of balance on this.

So what I hope to do is bring you the Scriptures and get you back into balance. This is not about a power struggle. It's about trusting God. It's not about keeping your husband happy, ladies. It's about pleasing the Lord.

So I think what I'm going to be teaching today is going to help you breathe some sighs of relief. I just wouldn't make those sides very loud. Can we do that? All right, let's do that. Here's our key verse.

Ephesians 5, 22. Wives, submit to your husbands, your own husbands as to the Lord, very short verse, very simple instruction to early Christians in Ephesus. Everybody repeat after me. As.

As to the Lord. Submission is not about how great your husband is. It's a statement about how great Jesus is. So today we're going to walk through two questions that are big questions. The first one is going to be, what is submission?

And the second one is going to be, what is submission? Not. And going to let some of you off the hook. Going to put some of you on it. Don't know who, though.

So in the next few minutes, let's set aside the baggage. Let's go back to the Bible.

Baptized, no Christian background, no Sunday school, no nothing. She approached me after the sermon, and here's what she said. She said, pastor, if I had known what the Bible actually taught about this subject. Look, she had just gotten remarried, both of them second marriages. If I had actually known what the Bible taught about this subject, I would have gladly included in my wedding vows the following.

To my new husband, I can't wait to submit to you as to the Lord. Let's bow for prayer. God help us today to hear your word. With joy begin to give us healthy homes in Jesus name. Amen.

Question number one. What is submission? I'm going to give you three answers to that. Number one. Submission is an act of worship.

Wives, submit to your own husbands. As to the Lord. As to the Lord is important. You're not bowing to your husband. You're bowing to Jesus.

And it's not about your husband's perfection. He doesn't have any. It's about trusting the perfect Christ. Now, Elizabeth Elliot, I'm going to give you two truth bombs from her today. Here's the first one she wrote.

The fact that I'm a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian. But the fact that I'm a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. So I'm preaching today to believing women. If you don't know the Lord, you don't have the Holy Spirit to help you do what the world would consider to be a very difficult thing. And that's to be a submissive wife.

But I want you to know something, ladies. In the Lord, it takes more courage to trust God with your marriage than it does to try to control it yourself. Let me give you a biblical example. We learn in the New Testament that the Old Testament stories are types and shadows and therefore are examples to look at. And so from beginning to end in your Bible, God begins to plant people in it that show you how to Live by faith and how to be a husband by faith and how to be a wife by faith.

The example I'll give us now is Abraham's wife, named Sarah. First Peter, chapter three, verses five and six, talks about her. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughter?

When you hear a sermon like this at church and you haven't been balanced and taught well by the Scriptures, ladies, this is going to be a scary one for you. But it need not be. Sarah calls her husband Lord, but that doesn't mean she's calling him Master. That's like, sir, yes, sir. And he says to her, ma'am, yes, ma'am.

It's. What we know about Abraham and Sarah's marriage is there was mutual respect in a partnership.

In fact, the text, the context of those scriptures are. Here's the kind of makeup and clothing you ought to wear. You ought to adorn yourselves with a quiet spirit like Sarah of old, and show your beauty that way. Sarah followed Abraham not because he was perfect, but because she trusted in God. So let's be Sarah's ladies.

Let's be women who trust in the Lord. It's an act of worship. Number two, submission is an act of grace. Nobody's husband deserves to have the place of leadership, except for the grace of God who set the roles for us. So I'm not talking about, hey, look, we got to get your husband ready, and then you can easily submit to him.

You can have the godliest husband on earth, and you still have Eve's blood in you, and you still have the curse of sin flowing through your veins. And so it's not about, how good is my husband doing. Submission is grace in action. It's giving to someone what's undeserved, but it's doing it because it's the right thing to do, because God said it. Now, my favorite verse to demonstrate this comes from the Lord Jesus.

On the night he was arrested, before he was crucified, Jesus in his humanity considered the cross he was about to bear. And his flesh cried out to God, if there's another way, take the cup of wrath from me. Do you remember this verse? He prayed it in the garden of Gethsemane. Luke 22:42.

Father, he says to his father, if it's your will, take this cup away from me. Take this via dolorosa, this way of suffering, away. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. You ought to circle that in your Bible, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Homes that are under the lordship of Jesus, Christian households begin to win when wives go, I'm going to be the nevertheless.

I'm going to follow the path of my Lord and say, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. After I've said to that same leader, here's what's in my heart, ladies, when your husband fails, submission says, I choose grace over control. I choose to give him not what he's earned, and I choose not to take back what I really want. I choose grace over control. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you enable his irresponsibility.

It doesn't mean that you excuse his sin. Neither does it mean that you celebrate his repeated failures. It is giving him grace because Jesus gave you grace. It is giving your husband what he doesn't deserve because your Lord did the same for you. You don't need to hear how God made women better than men and fuss, fuss, fuss at the men at church and kind of let you off the hook because that will take away sometimes the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life.

You are in Christ today for no other reason than than that God was merciful and compassionate to you and showed you Jesus. You didn't earn it. You didn't perform well enough to get it. You didn't deserve it. He gave it to you by grace.

And we receive grace as believers and we dole it out. And you need more grace in marriage than you need in any other relationship. By the way, maybe this will help you. It's not about pretending that your husband's always right. That's not what submission is.

Barbara Hughes wrote, a wise woman builds her home not by demanding authority, but by exercising godly influence. You can take the rudder of the boat that is your life and your marriage and your household. And ladies, you can move that rudder pretty easily in the direction of Jesus. Not by what you say, but by. But by how you interact with your husband.

That's what godly influence is. When you entrust your husband's leadership to the Lord, you're not losing your power. You're demonstrating your faith. And let me just give you this disclaimer in all candor today, ladies, God has given you agency. You're a real person.

You have a will, and you get to exercise your will. You get to make your own choices. Your husband doesn't make them for you. Your pastors, your leaders, your friends. You get to exercise your will.

And the truth is, you can choose not to do this. You can say, look, that's an old antiquated patriarchy from the Bible. We got rid of that with the women's movement in the last 70 years. And this stuff doesn't work. And it's just about Christian men trying to.

Trying to keep their wives under their thumb. You can say all the party lines, you can let go of all the talking points, and you can say, this is not for me. I'm not doing it. You can do that.

But it's grace and wisdom if you respond to God the way his Son did. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. It's an easy verse to read. It's a very difficult verse to do. It's an act of grace.

Submission is an act of worship. It's an act of grace. And number three, it's practice for following Jesus. The essence of this point is simply we deceive ourselves into thinking that it's easier to follow God than it is to follow people. It's easier to obey God than it is to obey authority figures in our lives.

And nothing could be further from the truth. Submission in marriage is like training wheels for discipleship. It's like kindergarten or first grade. It's just kind of where you start when you're learning how to do it. It's easy to say, I'll follow God.

And everybody that's ever been baptized has made that public declaration. That's what your baptism meant. It said, look, treat me as one who believes in Jesus. And when you baptize me, I'm saying, I'm going to follow Jesus. It is easy to say, I'll follow God.

But God often tests that claim by placing imperfect people in our lives in. In positions of authority like husbands and police and judiciary and school teachers and professors, and you name it, the authorities that you feel and you live under. Every day. God brings those in as tests to lead us. And if we struggle to yield to human authority, we're gonna wrestle even more with God when he calls us to trust him in something very difficult.

You think it's easier with God? It's not easier. You need practice. So he's given us real life humans to practice on. And ladies, God uses your submission not just to shape your marriage, but primarily to shape your heart.

Colossians, chapter three, verses 23 and 24. And whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ. I'm a bond servant to Jesus Christ.

I Submit to him in all things. Here's that second Elizabeth Elliot truth bomb for you. She wrote, you cannot give God your heart. Keep your will to yourself.

Well, that's how I'm answering today in this short teaching time. What is submission? Second final question. What is submission not? Here's the relief valve.

I'm getting ready to turn it. For some of you, number one, submission is not a wife's silence. Let me tell you, a home where the wife is silenced is a home at risk. It's one that's about to implode in on itself. It was built on sand and not on the rock.

Submission is not a mute button. It doesn't mean, ladies, that you lose your voice. It means that you use your voice wisely. You need to practice this. Let me ask you this question.

It's a yes or no. You say out loud. The answer is a godly wife, a passive spectator in her home? No, of course not. She brings insight.

She brings emotions and feelings that men aren't typically wired with that are important that lower the temperature in the room. She brings a perspective that her husband needs and he won't see it without her. In fact, the wife should be the husband's most trusted counselor. The wife should also be the husband's first and loudest encourager. And sometimes the wife is his most loving challenger.

Let me review those for you, counselor. Encourager, challenger. If you pick counseling and challenging more than you encourage, you're going to stop his ears to you. If when your husband and you interact and you choose at whatever moment to tell him where he's falling short, how he messed it all up, how he's not listening to you, how he's doing it wrong. If you constantly challenge and you constantly counsel and you hardly ever encourage.

But when you do encourage, it doesn't feel or sound right and it takes lots of effort for you to do it. This is where some of you ladies, God's calling you to repent. I mean, encourage. And if you got to pick one, if you go, I don't like that list, I can't do three. If you pick one, be an encourager.

Because you can influence him more by cheering him on than you can by cutting him down. In fact, wives, if you insist on winning every argument with your husband, then by definition you'll be married to a loser. If you have to win every time now, he'll fail less if you'll encourage more. And if you get 2/3 encouraging all the time, he will gladly allow you to counsel him and challenge him. Just Be waited on the encourager side.

Now, how many of you are aware that Proverbs 31, there's a section in it directed to females, raise your hand. You know this, what's it called, the Proverbs 31. Everybody that just said woman is false. It doesn't say woman at all in there. It is the virtuous wife.

Proverbs 31. The last part of that chapter is for married women. Now, this is where I get off my notes a little bit and get to meddling. And I did it and I apologize for the first service. And they came into me in the lobby and they said, you better say that in a second.

It's like, okay, I'll do it. It's the Proverbs 31, wife. And before I leave that, I've just made a decision what I'm going to do with this pulpit for the rest of my ministry here. I am going to champion marriage for the next generation. Because they're hearing it nowhere else.

At school, on the Internet, on the apps, on social media. It's all, don't get married. Marriage is bad. You just lose half your stuff in the divorce and you won't marry someone you're compatible with. And our culture has gone thumbs down to marriage.

But the Bible hasn't changed, and God invented marriage. And so what I want the next generation in here to hear from me is your best life is to find you a godly mate and marry her. Marry him, do it earlier rather than later and follow Jesus in a Christian home. And you're like, well, Pastor, I can't find any. Yeah, because you're looking for him at the club, you went to, the bar, you're looking for at the sorority house.

And at the fraternity house, if you're looking in worldly places expecting to find that godly boy or that godly girl, that's going to be worth marrying. Give you go look at church, go to the Baptist Student Union, go to the. Whatever the Methodists and the Presbyterians have on college campuses. What's that called?

If you want to find somebody that's going to help you live for God in your marriage, go look in Christian spaces and change your criteria. Guys, you're not all going to get perfect tens. And I want to ask you, have you seen yourself pick you a number commensurate with the face in your mirror? Now, that's just a little bit of humor, but I'm telling you that your criteria for beauty ought to be a girl that worships Jesus first and couldn't care Less about you until Jesus gets what's his. Does that make sense?

And they're everywhere. You're just looking in the wrong place, by the way. It's not good for the man to be alone. That's not some New Testament invention. That's back in Genesis chapters one and two at the beginning.

And so let me be very sensitive but very direct here. If you're an unmarried adult in your local church and your singleness is by design, that is. Look, I don't intend to get married. And so you're basically accepting the gift of celibacy as a lifestyle. You need to tell some people about it.

You need to tell your church leaders, hey, pray for me. I've decided to live my life as an adult committed to Jesus first. I don't think I need a spouse. I'm committing to celibacy, which the Apostle Paul said, only if you get that gift, make that official with the leaders of your church. That way all the women at church will stop trying to fix you up with their girlfriends.

It's confusing and you don't need that. You don't need it. You need ladies. Young women, break this mold and pattern that you're seeing your ungodly friends have, which is, I'm going to go to college. I'm going to get a degree, I'm going to start a career, and about age 38 or 39, I'm going to be tired of that.

I'm going to want a man. I'm going to go home then and start having children. You just made your biological clock work against you. And God's plan, this delayed adolescence and this, go and have fun as an adult and then get serious later. That's the voice of the enemy.

It's better to marry young and stumble into godliness than draw out your adolescence up your body count, stack all these little divorces you have with all these breakups, and have a broken heart and hand that broken heart to a Christian man late in your 30s and say, Fix this for me.

Who's saying this in your culture? Well, it better be your church. Marriage is good and we should reclaim it and Christians should model it. And this is what this series is going to help us do. Here's what the virtuous wife in Proverbs 31 does with her mouth, because submission is not silence.

Proverbs 31, verse 26. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness. The only rule you should be pounding your husband with with your words is this kindness on her tongue. Is wisdom. If you will learn how to wisely use your words, you'll be amazed at how interested your husband will become in the things of God.

And let me say this to you. A husband grows in grace more because of the impact of his wife than anyone else in his life.

Your spouse is God's designed number one sanctifier for you. We all know the proverb is iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. That's for husbands and wives first. You grate and grind on each other first and knock off the rough edges.

Silence is not submission, but graceful, purposeful speech is. Now let me give you the best example in all the Bible of this. There's God and there's Abraham, who has more authority. Say it.

There's a terrible city called Sodom that God has judged and condemned. Abraham's idiot nephew Lot decided to go live in Sodom. Abraham had some compassion about him. So he approaches God and he says, can I talk to you about Sodom? And we pick it up in Genesis 18:23.

And following Abraham came near God. And he said, would you destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were 50 righteous within the city. Would you also destroy the place and not spare it for 50 righteous that were in it? And then Abraham says these words, I kid you not.

Far be it from you to do such a thing. Can you imagine entering God's presence and saying, don't you dare do that. Abraham did it to slay the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous should be as the wicked. Far be it from you shall not the judge of all the earth do right. Here's how the Lord responded to that.

If I find in Sodom 50 righteous within the city, I'll spare all the place for their sakes. 50. You know what Abraham does? He says, hey, God, what about 45? God says, for 45.

And he goes, hey, what about 40? God says, for 40, I'll spare the city. And he looks around and he ducks and he goes, what about for 30? God says, for 30. And then he says, might as well go for it.

What about 20? God says, for 20. And we pick it up in verse 32. Then he said, let not the Lord be angry. Hey, God, don't be mad one more time.

Suppose 10 should be found there. And God said, I will not destroy it for the sake of 10. Now in verse 26, I mean verse 33, this negotiation ends. Look who ends it. So the Lord went his way as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham.

And Abraham returned to his place. Who Finished the conversation. Abraham or God? Who started it? Abraham or God?

Abraham, the one without the place of authority, goes into the presence of the one he calls the Judge of all the earth. And he says, that wicked city, full of sodomy, full of sexual perversion and people that hate you. Would you spare it for 50? Would you spare it for 45? 40?

30? 20? Would you do it for 10? And every single time God says, I'll be merciful for that number. But when the negotiation ended, the one with the authority ended it.

Abraham boldly questioned the Lord about Sodom's fate. He didn't do so out of defiance. He did it with reverence. He did it with compassion. And God welcomed the dialogue.

May I say something to you? If Abraham can speak up to the Lord of all the earth, then wives can easily speak up in their homes. Because the authority that God has versus Abraham is worlds apart. And the authority that a husband shares above his wife is not hardly far apart at all.

Silence. Submission is not a wife's silence. So speak with grace, speak with respect, but don't be silent. Submission is also not number two, obedience without limits. Quickly.

Here. I want you to know, ladies, that when the Bible says submit to your husband, it doesn't mean obey your husband. Everything he says to do. Biblical submission is not blind obedience. When the apostles were jailed in Acts, chapter four for preaching the name of Jesus in the streets of Jerusalem, when the magistrates let them out, they let them out with this instruction, never speak in this city of that name again.

Never speak about Jesus again. And In Acts, chapter 5, verse 29, the apostles reply, we ought to obey God rather than men. When husbands ask their wives to lie or to cross moral boundaries, or to be gross, or to cheat, or to ignore God's word, submission ends right there. God's authority always outranks human authority.

So let me say it this way. Submission never requires you to participate in sin. Ever.

Let me get even. Let me walk into a darker room than that. Would you listen to me very carefully? If you're in a situation where you're being harmed, where you're being manipulated, where you're being coerced in the name of God, God doesn't ask you to stay silent. He doesn't ask you to stay put.

And he certainly doesn't ask you to endure abuse. In fact, you should tell trusting Christian leaders, and if a crime is happening, you should tell the governing law enforcement authorities. God sees God cares, and he commands truth and justice. He never commands silence and suffering. Submission is not obedience without Limits.

Finally, today, submission is not surrendering your identity. Number three, ladies. Submission doesn't erase who you are. It showcases who God is making you to be. Some women fear that submitting will mean losing their voice, losing their personality, losing their purpose.

I get that. But that's not biblical submission. Biblical submission is not the end of your identity. Biblical submission is the stage on which your faith and your femininity, by the way, the stage on which your faith and your femininity shine most clearly. Look, the Bible's already settled who's more important.

We are all one in Jesus Christ. Galatians 3. 28. There's neither Jew nor Greek. There's no superior race, no superior people group.

There's neither slave nor free. There's no superior employer, no inferior employee. There's neither male nor female. There's not a superior gender and an inferior one. You are all one in Christ Jesus.

Do you believe this? Ladies, your identity is not anchored in your husband. It's not anchored in your past. Whether good or bad, your identity is not anchored in your homemaking. And if you're a homemaker, God bless that your identity is anchored in Christ.

And Jesus Christ never loses track of who you are.

Let me give you a story, and then we'll be done. This lady named Monica. You never met Monica. You never heard of Monica. You probably heard of her son, though.

Monica was married to a pagan man who mocked her faith relentlessly for most of their married life. And yet she lived with grace. She prayed every day. And she was not going to give up her family, even though they didn't believe. And then she raised her son, Augustine, in the faith and in the truth.

But Augustine was a womanizer. And every girlfriend he ever had, he moved into his home. He had no moral boundaries. He was known to be a sexually immoral young man in his community. This is Monica's husband and her son.

They're just striking out all the time. But she never gave up. After decades of prayer. First, her husband came to Christ. Nobody saw that coming.

And secondly, so did her son. And that son became one of the greatest theologians in all of church history. St. Augustine. You've heard of him as St.

Augustine. And I want you to know, through all those tough years, Monica never surrendered her identity. She fulfilled her calling. She didn't disappear. She discipled with perseverance and submitting to our Lord.

So, ladies, your voice matters, your gifts matter, and your obedience to God in your role will bear fruit that remains, fruit that lasts. And finally, today, let me say to you that submission is not a tactic to change him. It's an act of faith that pleases God even when it doesn't bring immediate results. We're the microwave generation. We want everything now.

But I want to encourage you ladies, trust God with the long game because he sees your consistent obedience in the same direction. This is not about your husband being perfect. It's about your Savior's faithfulness. So if you are a wife who belongs to God, don't submit to be controlled. Submit to him to reflect Jesus Christ.

And when you do, when you walk in God's design, your home becomes a place of peace. When you walk in God's design, your marriage becomes a picture of the gospel. When you walk in God's design, your life becomes a light that shines the beauty of Jesus. So I urge you as your pastor, trust God with the outcome and obey God in the process. It's a bow for prayer today, Lord, help every wife here today to live out her role with boldness and with faith, with the love of God.

In Jesus name, amen. Amen.