The sermon titled 'The Central Marriage Text in the Bible' by Scott Brown explores the concept of marriage as an imitation of Christ in the church. It emphasizes the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit and the role of wives submitting to their husbands. The sermon also discusses husbands' responsibility to love their wives as Christ loved the church. The overall message revolves around making Jesus Christ the center of a marriage.

Ephesians 5, we're going to read verse 1 and then we're going to jump. We're going to jump to verse 22, because verse one is critical. Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and has given himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. We talked last night about the fact that marriage is an imitation of Christ in the church and Ephesians 5 begins with that exact same concept and then works through various practical manifestations of that but then when you get to verse 18, he says, and do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. That's a command.

This is a verse. This is an imperative, and it's about action. It's a verbal proposition. It's something that you do. You are filled with the Spirit, verse 19, then you start speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

That's what happens to you. You start talking differently and then you start submitting to one another in the fear of God and then in verse 22 wives. Wives submit to their husbands. Husbands love their wives. Chapter 6, children obey their parents.

So the logic of Ephesians 5 really hinges on this matter of the imitation of love and the filling of the Holy Spirit. And so that's where we begin. And this morning, in the few minutes that I have, I want to talk about this matter of the filling of the Holy Spirit, the aroma of your home, not just the rules, but the aroma of the Holy Spirit. I want to talk about wives submitting. We're going to work through these words in the text, and husbands loving their wives, we're gonna talk about authority and submission, and then I'd like to wrap up with what it looks like to make Jesus Christ the center of your marriage.

So that's what we wanna try to do in the next half hour here. Let's read beginning in verse 22 in Ephesians 5. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.

That He might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own 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 the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. It's so wonderful, it's so beautiful, it's so helpful.

I pray that you would implant it even more deeply into our hearts, even for so many of this being so familiar, let it not be so familiar that it doesn't continue to change us. Amen. Okay, so as I mentioned, Ephesians, this matter of the family life codes begins with being filled with the Holy Spirit and why. You know you have all kinds of sort of rules really in Ephesians 5 rules for a wife, rules for a husband, but all of them are really meant to be operating by the by the Holy Spirit. Operating by the fruit of the Spirit.

Operating by the filling of the Spirit of God. In other words, you're not just woodenly carrying these things out. These are things that flow from the work of the Spirit in your life. They're not just dead works. You know, Jesus said the Spirit gives life and the flesh profits nothing.

And so it's critical that a husband and a wife, they understand how all of this can happen. It only happens by the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, these things are going to always escape your grasp to some degree. But when the Spirit of God enlivens you, these things put you into action toward the things that that God has defined. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 2, he said, we are the fragrance of Christ.

And I think that the fragrance of Christ is the fragrance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. And your home sets off an aura. Your home sets off an aroma. Every home has an aroma of some kind. And you know, what's the aroma of your home?

Is it the aroma of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, it's joy, it's peace, it's patience, it's kindness, it's goodness, it's faithfulness, it's self-control? That's the aroma that God designs for a home. Isn't that wonderful? Can you imagine a more wonderful place to live than a place that has an aroma like that? And it's so beautiful.

So without the spirit, obedience is just lifeless rule-keeping and that's not what God is designing for the church and for the family. Now the first thing that the apostle addresses is wives. He addresses wives and then husbands and then in chapter 6 he addresses children, but he begins with wives. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. So we were introduced to perhaps one of the most culturally contrary ideas in the Bible and that is that wives are to submit to their husbands.

And the language is so clear. You can't really get around it. Don't try to dance around it, because there it is. And wives are commanded to submit to their own husbands. Here's the reality for me.

The happiest, the most stately women I've ever known, the most confident women I've ever known, the most secure women, The most fearless women I've ever known are the ones who understand the power of submission and humbling themselves really before the mighty hand of God. They're the most unflappable. They don't fear any man. They don't fear their husbands. They don't submit out of fear.

They submit because they realize God has established every authority, you know, by his own power. You know, I was reading something recently by Rosaria Butterfield. She was a former lesbian activist and she during when God was changing her heart she starts encountering Christian women in a pastor's house who was practicing hospitality. And she was invited one night to go be with these women. You know, they were from the church.

And she says it was shocking to her how they conducted themselves. She writes this, the calmness of the women was serene and strange. No grandstanding, no holding court, no gossip. These were old friends with deep connections and they knew how to belly laugh. So she's just talking about women that are different, they're not frustrated, they're not in a pickle in life because they know who's in authority.

They know that God is the authority over their husbands, and they know that every authority has been established by God. That's Romans 13. Now, of course, that authority is not absolute authority. And the same language of authority is used in Romans 13 for submitting to the civil government. It's not an unqualified obedience.

You don't obey the government to disobey God. All These churches shut down three years ago because they thought they were obeying Romans 13. But Romans 13 doesn't demand unqualified obedience to the church. And neither does Ephesians 5 demand unqualified obedience to a husband. If a husband's asking his wife to do something immoral or illegal or unbiblical, then she doesn't really have to obey that because God is the ultimate authority in all these things.

And those are the kind of the parameters of biblical submission. The word that the Apostle uses is unequivocal. It's a military term that indicates order and it indicates authority. And it has nothing to do with superiority. It has nothing to do with intellectual prowess.

It doesn't have to do with logical acumen. It doesn't have to do with anything like that. It's a word of order and authority and God designs his institutions with order and authority, all of them. And that's why your whole life is full of authorities. Everybody is under multiple authorities.

And of course Romans 13 tells us that every authority is set in place by God. It is strange though, we get the weirdest authorities, don't we? You know, nobody gets a perfect father or mother, nobody gets a perfect husband or a wife, and you know, I guess our president's probably not perfect, you know, and so that's the the world that we live in, And it says that she submits as to the Lord. How does she do it? As to the Lord.

This is a really critical matter. A wife submits to her husband with the same spirit that she does with the Lord. In other words, it's an open spirit. It's a soft-hearted spirit. It's a submissive spirit.

That's the idea that's here. And then it says, in everything, and of course, not in absolutely everything, but in everything that is right. And so a wife has to decide whether something is unbiblical or not. And if it is unbiblical, then she is the helper of her husband. And she can help her husband understand that maybe it's unbiblical or Maybe it's against her conscience.

One of the most difficult things is dealing with a husband or a wife's conscience. That's a very tender matter. If you want to learn about the conscience, Jeff Pollard preached 32 messages on the conscience. It's just really amazing. I haven't listened to all of them.

I've only listened to a few of them. But it's a difficult subject. So I want to establish biblical proofs for the authority of a husband in a marriage. It's not inconsequential. It's actually very important that there is authority in a marriage.

And I'm gonna give you five reasons. Number one, it's God who appoints authorities, all authorities. That's Romans 13, one. Second, the titles of the husband place him in a place of authority. In 1 Peter 3.6, he's called Lord.

In 1 Corinthians 11.3, He's called the head. In 1 Corinthians 11 7 he's called the image and glory of God. So his titles actually place him in authority. Thirdly, the position that the husband holds represents Christ and the wife's position represents a submissive church. That's Ephesians 5 23.

Number four in in Genesis 2 18 and in 1st Corinthians 11 8 the woman was created for man. That's a symbol of some matter of authority. Number five, in 1 Timothy 2.13, We learned that Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Eve was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. The woman does not have authority over man because there is a susceptibility, a particular susceptibility to temptation. That's obviously not saying that husbands don't have a susceptibility to temptation and some women may have more or less and some men may have more or less.

But These are biblical reasons why there is the reality, undeniable, unequivocal authority of a husband over a wife. Let that be put down deep in, plunged deep into the ground. That's the way that God designed it. And, you know, my experience too as a pastor is that When you have a man who really believes he is the head of his wife like Christ is the church, when that's his heart of hearts, you do a lot less counseling of couples because you have a husband and wife that are operating according to God's design and according to the balance of authority and submission. William Goosch talks about that in his book.

It's a book that I republished with Joe Beeke. William Gooch wrote the most popular book on family life, and I've republished it in three volumes. Here's what he says. Though the man be as the head, yet the woman is as the heart, which is the most excellent part of the body besides the head, far more excellent than any other member under the head, and almost equal to the head in many respects and as necessary as the head, as an evidence that a wife is to the man the heart to the head. So you have these two operational roles in a marriage.

But still, and everybody, this is obvious to everybody, somebody has to make a final decision to go forward. That's the way God ordered the world. And a husband may make a wrong decision. That happens all the time. I've done that and I'm sure most husbands here have done that.

But a husband also has to recognize, and this is really important, that God gave a wife to be a helper. What does that mean? A man needs help. That's what that means. A man needs help.

And he's given a helper from God who might see things, feel things differently. And every husband needs help. And so husbands should be listening to their wives. And so you have this charge toward wives to submit to their husbands. And the wife is a picture of the church.

Husband is a picture of Christ. The wife is a picture of the church, but let me just confuse you for a minute. She's also a picture of Christ, okay? The metaphors get all mixed up. That's okay.

That's God's wisdom. But She is a submissive church. She is a picture of an obedient church. A wife needs to know that's what she is to become. A picture of an obedient church.

In 1 John 5.3, for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments in our burdensome. A wife is a picture of a commandment-keeping wife. You know, a faithful church is a humble church in Colossians 3.12. A faithful church is a dependent church in John 15 5. Apart from me you can do nothing.

A faithful church is an adoring church. Go to Revelation 5 verse 9 for a stunning description of an adoring church. A faithful church is a careful church, Titus 3, 8. A faithful church is full of the Spirit, Ephesians 5, 18. A faithful church is without blemish.

A faithful church walks in the likeness of Jesus Christ. So a wife, in becoming a faithful church, has lots of handles by which she can understand what it means to be the church, to be a faithful, respectful church toward her husband. And so in that sense a wife's submission is a living picture of the gospel because when somebody's truly embraced the gospel, they want to be obedient. They become obedient. If they don't desire the obedience of their master, they're not Christians.

And so a faithful church is an obedient church. When you have an unsubmissive wife, you have a wife who's actually preaching a false gospel, that obedience doesn't matter. And so, you know, on the other hand, you know, you have a husband who's ordering his wife around, forcing her to submit. You also have another unfaithful picture of the gospel. And this text makes it very clear.

And we have to be very careful with the language in Ephesians 5. The language... Paul doesn't tell husbands, make your wives submit. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says wives submit.

That means it's a voluntary submission. It's not a forced submission. There may be really unusual moments where you're just going to have to say as a husband, honey you're just going to need to do it. You're just going to need to do, you're just going to need to follow me because I'm what I'm asking you to do is good. I would just suggest those are, those should be probably really rare times.

I'd have to, I don't know if there's a time where I force my wife to do anything. We work together. We try to work it out together. Again, I'm not saying that you might never have to, but that's not... It's a voluntary submission where a wife, she submits herself.

She's not forced to submit. So you have this order of the family that really begins with a wife. Why did he mention the wife first? Wouldn't you think he would mention the husband first? Why didn't he talk about the authority?

You know, establishing the authority. William Gooch makes a speculation, it is speculation. He says, he says, perhaps the reason the Apostle Paul speaks to the wife first is that without a wife's submission and respect, the whole family falls apart. All authority is destroyed. All leadership is destroyed.

All Christ-likeness is destroyed. If the wife does not come under the authority of God, everything falls apart. That may or may not be why the Apostle Paul wrote it this way. That's William Goosje's suggestion. So we turn to the husband.

Way more about the husband here. The wife is under headship, she's submit to her husband, and she's to respect her husband. Three things, maybe you might even call them two things. The husband gets a big laundry list, big list. A big list with a really, really big category of obedience.

To love as Christ loved the church. Nothing bigger than that. It's impossible to love your wife exactly like Christ loved the church. But it is possible to love her like Christ loved the church. And this is really the heavenly vision.

How did he love the church? There are so many ways that Jesus Christ loved the church. He is present with her. He said, I will never leave you or forsake you. He comforts her.

He says, let your heart be troubled. He draws her with loving kindness. He says, therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you. In Jeremiah 31 3, He prays for her in John 17, 9. He is her good shepherd in John 10, verse 11.

He illuminates her way, John 8, 12. He nourishes her, Colossians 2-18. He feeds her with living bread, John 15. He gives her living water, John 4-14. He eagerly desires to dine with her, Luke 22, 15.

He came to seek her, Luke 19, 10. He came to serve her, Matthew 20, verse 28. He finds joy in sacrificing for her. Hebrews 12 2. He came that she might have life more abundantly.

John 10 10. She is the apple of his eye. Deuteronomy 32 10. Now these are explicit ways that Jesus Christ loves his church. I believe that we should study the way that Jesus Christ loved his church and see how we might do the same at least in the same kind of way.

Nobody can love the church exactly the way Jesus does with the same level of perfect faithfulness, But all husbands can learn from Jesus Christ in the way that he loved his church. And that's really what this kind of love is. In the same way that a wife proclaims a false gospel by being an unsubmissive wife, a husband proclaims a false gospel by not loving his wife, like Christ loves the church. So you have this huge laundry list and Steve is going to elaborate on the washing of water and the word I'll stay away from that so that he can elaborate on that in a few minutes. But the Lord has given such a rich and beautiful description of how marriage is designed to operate.

And There's nothing like it in the world. There's nothing better than what's here. Rest your whole soul on it. I want to just finally speak about making Christ the center of your marriage. I, You know, it's easy to say, yes, we want Christ to be the center of our marriage, but it's just kind of a nebulous intellectual category.

But what does it mean to make Him the center? And that's what I want to talk about here in the last few minutes. And I want to find our coordinates in Colossians 1 verses 17 and 18. I'll just read it. And he is before all things and in him all things consist.

And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. And this is the phrase I want us to dial in on, that in all things he may have the preeminence. That Jesus Christ might have the preeminence in everything. In your thought life, in your work life, in the raising of your children, that he might have the preeminence in your marriage. Christ designs to be preeminent in your marriage.

And what does that mean that Jesus Christ is the center? Well, it means that he has the preeminence in everything. So you can just name everything in your life that you do. Just write it down. We do this, we do that, we do this, we do that.

As a husband and wife, we are this, we are that. And put the preeminence of Jesus Christ in the place of all of those categories. And in other words, that everything in a marriage is designed to be pleasing, to please him in all respects, in all of our words, all of our heart meditations, all of our attitudes, everything is to be under the authority of Jesus Christ. And really in some way, I mean this is really just generic Christianity. We become disciples.

Disciples are followers of Jesus Christ. That's what a disciple is, he's a follower. A disciple is someone, a disciple of Christ is a person who stopped being discipled by the world and follows Jesus Christ. And so let me just try to explain it like this. To make Jesus Christ the center of your marriage, then he would be the most important person in your marriage.

In other words, for anything you look toward him, not inwardly, but you look outwardly to him. That he's the curator of your life together. That he's the greatest influence in your life, that he's the dominating presence in your life, that he's the supreme authority, that he is the prism through which you see everything. This whole idea of Christ as the prism is an idea that I borrowed from Paul Washer. He just wrote a book recently called The Preeminence of Christ.

It's such a good book. It's a short book. You can just read it in a few hours. But he says that Christ, to make him preeminent, is that he's the prism, he's the glasses, he's the magnifier, he's the clarifier of everything in your marriage. It means that he's the fountainhead of your wisdom.

It means that he's your nourishment. He's like living bread. He's like your refreshment, like living water. He's the first place in everything. He has the final word because he's the final authority.

That's what it means to make Jesus Christ the center of your marriage. It actually has to do with absolutely everything, everything that you do. Jesus Christ told his disciples, If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man that if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

He says in John 12, 25, he who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, let him follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, him my father will honor." So to make Jesus Christ preeminent, first of all devote yourselves to his preeminence explicitly together. Make a covenant with one another that you will make him preeminent.

Secondly, count all things lost. If you want to make Christ preeminent, then you would have to be a person who is beholding the glory of Jesus Christ, like we read about in 2 Corinthians 3, 18. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. And so when Christ is preeminent, though, blessings flow in a marriage. God always blesses his own ways.

I'm going to close with one of my favorite texts regarding the preeminence of Jesus Christ. It's written by J.R. Miller, The Secrets of a Happy Home. What are some of the secrets of a happy home life? The answer might be given in one word, Christ.

Christ at the altar, Christ on the bridal journey, Christ when the new home is set up, Christ when the baby is born, Christ when a child dies, Christ in the pinching times, Christ in the days aplenty, Christ in the nursery, Christ in the kitchen, in the parlor, Christ in the toil and in the rest, Christ along all the years, Christ when the wedded pair walk toward the sunset gates, Christ in the sad hour when farewells are spoken, and one goes on before and the other stays bearing the unshared grief. Christ is the secret of a happy home." So to get the picture right, Christ is the center of everything. And the big question really goes back to Ephesians 5 18, be filled with this Holy Spirit. The most important question is have you been born again? Have you received the Holy Spirit because you believed and you become a disciple of Jesus Christ?

Do you love Him? Do you want to follow Him? You know if that's not true of your life, maybe you've been in a church and you want to kind of fix your marriage and everything like that, but you don't know if you know Christ. Steve and Jason and I are here to talk to you about that. We'd love to talk to you about that.

We'd love to talk to you about that. If you doubt whether you even know the Lord, because that's got to get settled first, and the Holy Spirit flows from that. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for these marvelous ways. Your ways are pleasant ways.

All your paths are peace. We're just so delighted to have read the words that were designed for us. And I pray, Lord, that you give these couples victory in everything that we've just said. Amen.