Robert Jeffress - Order In The House
Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress and welcome again to "Pathway to Victory". At times, does your home feel more like a battleground than a place of rest? Today, we'll discover God's blueprint for peaceful and loving relationships. In Ephesians chapter 5, the Apostle Paul describes how biblical submission should characterize our relationships at home and in the workplace. Whether you're a spouse, parent, child, employer, or employee, today's message is for you. My message is titled "Order in the House" on today's edition of "Pathway To Victory".
A wife and husband were drifting off to sleep when the wife said to her husband of 50 years, "Honey, remember when we used to sleep and how we would hold one another's hands right before we drifted off into slumber"? A little irritated, the husband finally reached his hand across and took his wife's hand. And she said, "Honey, do you remember when we were young how we would snuggle up together as we slept"? This time, a little more slowly, he turned over his creaking body and moved over next to his wife. And she said, "Honey, remember when we were young how you used to nibble on my ear before we fell asleep"? And with this, he threw off the covers and leapt out of the bed and she was a little hurt and said, "Where are you going"? He grumbled, "To get my teeth".
You know, author John Trent says it's one thing to be snuggling and nibbling when you're young and the hormones are raging, but it's quite another thing to do that when your partner's ear contains a hearing device and your bedroom is scented with Bengay. It's altogether different. How do you keep your marriage alive and vibrant? How do you do the same with your entire family? Well, Paul answers that question in the passage we're going to look at today.
If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 5 as we discover how to have order in your house. Now remember, we're in that section of Ephesians dealing with how we ought to conduct our lives, how we ought to walk, and we're now in the section about how we're to conduct ourselves in our family. And he says, "When it comes to the family, we're to walk in humility". And in fact, the controlling verse is chapter 5, verse 21: "Submit to one another". Submit to one another. That word "submit" means simply to put the interest of other people in your family above your own.
And then Paul is gonna go down and give some applications of that in the relationship between husbands and wives, and children and their parents, and slaves and their masters. Oh, does the Bible promote slavery? Well, we'll talk about that in a few moments, but that's an employee-employer relationship. Everybody is to submit to everybody in one sense. We're all to put the interest of others above our own. But then Paul starts with the wife and the husband.
Remember what he said to the wives, "Wives submit. Be subject to your own husbands". He doesn't say obey your husbands, he says submit to your husbands. And what does it mean for a wife to submit to her husband? It means to arrange according to order. It's a military term, "to submit". It means to place yourself under the leadership of your husband. It's something you do voluntarily. It doesn't have anything to do with inferiority or superiority. You may be smarter and more spiritual than your husband, but you do so because that's the order God has created.
Wives are to follow the leadership of their husbands. Not in things that violate the word of God, not all men in general, but into your own husbands, according to those things that are according to the will of God. Now, Paul is gonna apply that same truth to the husband. Husbands are to submit to their wives. How do they do that? Through demonstrating sacrificial love. The key word is "sacrificial". Jesus Christ willingly gave up his equality and perks and privileges of heaven to come and meet, not his needs, but our needs. And husbands are to have that same attitude.
Look at verse 25: "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her". Now, this is a verse that demands application. We're not going to get into heavy theology right now, we're going to talk about how to practically apply that. Remember, Paul spends twice as much time detailing the responsibility of the husband to love his wife as he does to the wife to submit to her husband. How do you submit to your wives, men? Let me give you three suggestions. First of all, do something nice and unexpected for your wife. When's the last time you did something unexpectedly nice for your wife?
You say, "Well, I went to work last week". That doesn't count. That's expected. 1 Timothy 5:8: "You're expected to provide for your own household". No, I mean something unexpected. Maybe tomorrow night you'll say, "Honey, I'll take care of dinner". You take her and the family out to a restaurant or use DoorDash, but just take care of the meal tomorrow night. Another thing you might do is hire a cleaning service for a day to take care of some of those things nobody enjoys doing. Waxing the floor, taking care of the bathrooms. Or maybe you want to enlist your kids to do that. Better yet, you better stick with the cleaning service. But you know, do something unexpected.
Here's something you could do: Arrange for your wife, if her family is out of state, arrange for her to go and see her family. Make the reservations, make the arrangements. Benefits you too, they don't have to come see you. You can send, you know, you don't have to say that, voice that. Here's a really cheap, inexpensive thing possibly to do. Say, "Honey, this Saturday is yours. I'll do whatever you'd like me to do, including going to the mall with you".
You know, for most men entering a mall is like entering the gates of Hades. They don't enjoy it. We don't enjoy it, but maybe that's something you could do. Secondly, how do you sacrifice for your wife? Be concerned with your wife's physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Paul said to treat your wives as your own body. And he says nobody has ever hated his own body. Now, that goes against the common thinking of our day. We hear, "Oh, you have to learn to love yourself". No, you don't. Everybody loves himself whether they know it or not, and they're going to take care of their needs. Paul is saying, husbands, just as you are committed to taking care of your needs, take care of your wife's needs, and understand that her needs are probably different than yours are.
How do you sacrificially love your wife? Learn to forgive your spouse instantly. In Colossians 3:19, this is a parallel passage to Ephesians 5. Paul adds this word, "And do not be embittered against your wives". Bitterness will destroy a marriage more quickly than anything. You know, it can be something as traumatic as an affair or as trivial as a missed anniversary, but all of us in a marriage relationship are gonna be hurt. We can't control what other people do to us.
Have you noticed that? You can't control anybody, including your spouse. But what you do control is your response to those major or minor offenses. You can choose to hold on to them, remembering them, turning them over and over in your heart until those offenses metastasize into a tumor of bitterness and destroy everything, including your marriage, or you can choose to let go of it. And that's what Paul says in Ephesians 4:32. Remember, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you". Don't forget, Paul said, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger and don't give the devil an opportunity".
If your mate has wronged you, let it go. Get it settled before you drift off to sleep at night. Forgive your mate. That's the responsibility of husbands and their wives. Now, the relationship between parents and children. First of all, the child's responsibility. They are to honor and obey their parents. Look at verse 1 of chapter 6, remember there were no chapter divisions in the original language. This is all one section. "Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it will be well with you and that you may live long on the earth".
Remember this is a different word, "obey". Wives are not told to obey their husbands. Nowhere does the Bible say, "Wives, obey your husbands". Wives are to submit themselves, that is, to voluntarily place themselves under the leadership of their husband. They're equals, a husband and wife, but she voluntarily places herself under the leadership of her husband. For children, they are told to obey their parents. Now, I want to point out two things about this command. First of all, the command is to children, not to adults. There is no verse in scripture that says adult children are to obey their parents.
The pattern is Genesis 2 verse 24: "A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and the two will become one flesh". There comes a time when a young man or a young woman leaves their parents' home and begins a new family. And as long as they're living at the house or they're in college, students, and taking financial assistance from their parents, they are still a part of that household and their responsibility is to obey their parents. When they begin a new home, then they certainly ought to seek the counsel of their parents.
Proverbs is filled with the wisdom of listening and considering the advice of older people who have been around the block a few times. But if you're a young adult or an adult child, you don't have to obey your parents, but children do. The command is to children, not to adults. And secondly, the command is limited in scope. Obey your parents in the Lord. In other words, if your parents ask you to do something illegal or immoral, you don't have to do that. You're not to do it. "We ought to obey God rather than men," Acts 5:29 says. But if they ask us to do something that is specifically a violation of scripture, we have to respectfully say no.
Now, teenagers, how we just mention children here this morning, don't misuse that verse. If your parents tell you to clean up your room, you can't say, "Well, God told me to have my quiet time right now". You can have your quiet time some other time, but you're to obey your parents. That's the child's responsibility. But interestingly, the parents have a responsibility to their children as well, and that is to encourage and instruct their child. Look at verse 4: "Fathers," and this refers to mothers as well, but "Fathers, as the leader of the home, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord".
Now, just like it was a revolutionary idea that husbands would have a responsibility, husbands in the Greek and Roman culture were free to go and come in a marriage as they wanted to. Paul said, "No. Husbands, you have a responsibility to your wives". It was the same idea with parents. The idea that parents have a responsibility to their child was a foreign concept. In fact, William Barclay, the commentator, said, quote, "A Roman father had absolute power over his family. He could sell them as slaves. He could work them in his fields, even in chains. He could take the law into his own hands, for the law was his own hands, and he could punish his children as he liked. He could even inflict the death penalty.
Parents, don't exasperate your children, bring them up in the instruction and discipline of the Lord". And then finally, Paul deals with the relationship in the home between employers and employees. You say, "In the home? That's in business". Well, again, in Paul's day, slaves and their masters all lived under the same roof. And what does Paul say? Verse 5: "Slaves, be obedient to your masters". Now, this causes a lot of consternation among people. Slaves? Does the Bible condone slavery? Well, truthfully, the Bible neither condones nor condemns slavery. Remember, when Paul wrote this passage, a third to half of the world were slaves. And in that Ephesian church, there were a lot of slaves.
Some of them were Christian slaves serving a non-Christian master. Some of them were Christian masters with non-Christian slaves. Well, why does the Bible not condemn slavery outrightly? My old Greek Professor, Harold Hoehner, had a good insight into that. He said, "Certainly Paul and the early Christian church did not advocate the abolition of slavery as an institution. Christianity's emphasis has always been on the transformation of individuals who will in turn influence society, not the transformation of society, which will then transform individuals".
And if you look at the history of slavery and Christianity, you'll find exactly that's what happened. Eventually, it was Christians who led the way for the abolition of slavery. William Wilberforce, "Others were great Christians who said slavery is inconsistent with scripture. But the goal of Christianity is to transform the hearts of individuals who will in turn transform society". So, since so many people were involved in slavery, Paul just took it as it was. He says, "Because you're in this relationship, which I'm neither condoning nor condemning, but because this is the way it is, here is how you are to respond".
Now, the natural corresponding relationship in our society would be between employees and employers. Paul says to employees, "We work for God, not for people". That's the controlling principle. Look at verses 5 and 6: "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ. And not by way of eyeservice as men pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart".
In other words, he's saying to these slaves, or today's employees, don't just work for the sake of your employer. Don't just work while they're looking, work hard when they're not looking, because God is always looking and you are ultimately serving God. "It is the Lord Jesus whom you serve," Paul told the Colossians.
You know, when I read this verse, I think of my first job in high school. I worked for a Christian bookstore here in Dallas and it was owned by a very godly woman, wonderful person, but she was a hard taskmaster, and she was always insisting that if we weren't dealing with a customer, we were to be straightening books on the shelf or sweeping or mopping the floor. Her motto was, "If you've got time to lean, you got time to clean". And so we had to stay busy, and that's why we loved Thursdays, because Thursdays were her day off. And we had a little plan, the employees, we would put one person on the cash register and the rest of us would go into the back room and eat and drink and have a big time and so forth. But our boss had a pesky irritating habit of showing up unexpectedly on her day off.
So we had it figured out. We had somebody on the cash register. If they saw her car pull in the parking place, she sounded the alarm and let us know and we got busy real quick, so that when she walked in, we were busy doing whatever and whatever. Now, that's the kind of behavior Paul is condemning. He's saying again, don't just do your job for eye service, not just to look good in the boss's eye, but do it for God's approval. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. And he has a word for employers as well. He said, "You are to treat your employees like you want God to treat you".
Look at verse 9: "And masters, do the same thing to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him". Translation: treat your employees like you want God to treat you. Again in Colossians 3, he says, "Treat them equitably, fairly, and graciously". We're to do that with our employees. Doesn't mean we don't discipline our employees. Sometimes you have to discipline them. Sometimes you may have to terminate them, but do it in a spirit of grace.
Do you remember the name Norman Schwarzkopf? Storming Norman, they called him. The leader of the Desert Storm Operation. I reread this story from his career that speaks so well to what we were talking about this morning. Some of the companies in Schwarzkopf's battalion were suffering from low morale. So he decided on Christmas day to throw a feast, a Christmas feast for all the different companies under his control. He served turkey, mashed potatoes, apple pie. And then Schwarzkopf would get in a helicopter and fly to each camp to deliver the feast to the troops in person and shake their hands and say, "Merry Christmas".
When he arrived at Company D, the men couldn't believe the general would make such an effort on their behalf. Schwarzkopf asked where the company commander was, and he was told that he had gone back to headquarters to visit some of the men in the hospital. After a grueling day, Schwarzkopf returned to the headquarters late that night and he asked if anybody had seen the commander from Company D. They said that he had visited in the hospital a few people, and then hung out in the company mess hall for a few hours and had Christmas dinner.
Schwarzkopf found the commander and asked why he hadn't returned to his company. "Well," he said, "I wanted to have Christmas dinner. And then as long as I was there, I wanted to take a shower and put on some plain clothes". "What about your troops"? Schwartzkopf said. "Didn't you realize, as their leader, it was your responsibility to see they were taken care of first? Don't you realize what you've said to them? If you're not willing to go through the discomfort of spending Christmas with them in the field, how do you expect them to believe you'll be with them in the heat of battle"?
The commander said, "Well, frankly, sir, I don't like this company command business. I don't like being responsible for the troops all the time. So sometimes I just take care of my own needs first". Schwarzkopf ordered him and another captain, Captain Trujillo, who had the marks of leadership, to the helicopter and they flew back to Company D. The men in that company were assembled together, and in front of those men, Schwarzkopf said this to the negligent commander, "I'm relieving you of your command of this company immediately because you don't care about your troops. You do not deserve to be a company commander in this battalion. Go over and get in the helicopter".
He then turned to the new captain and said, "You are now in command. Take care of these men". And as Schwarzkopf turned and walked to the helicopter, the men broke out into cheers. Men, let me say it again to you. Your place of leadership is not a position to exploit for its perks and privileges. It's a position to reflect the attitude of Jesus Christ to those you lead. An attitude that Jesus himself said in the Gospels, "For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many". That's what it means to truly be a leader.