Getting Ready for My Next NJ Trip! (Part 4 conclusion)

This is my last post on my upcoming preaching trip to Cedarcroft Bible Chapel in New Jersey(from March 31st to April 7th). I will also get to lead two Sunday School classes on Ephesians 5:1-21. Here is that passage with a few notes from me:
Please notice the following in this text:

1. The believer is to walk in the way of love which has been modeled for us by God’s example, the Lord Jesus (vv. 1-2)!
2. The idea of Christ’s sacrificial, atoning death for us is described as “a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (v. 2).
3.The standards for the Christian life are high: We are not to have “even a hint” of sexual immorality, or impurity, or greed (v. 3).
4.These high standards also include how we use our speech! We are not to be marked by obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking (these are “out of place”) (v. 4). The alternative to those verbal sins is . . . thanksgiving!
5. Some may use “empty words” to deceive us about God’s standards, but they are forgetting His wrath (v. 6)!
6. We who once “were darkness” have now become “light in the Lord” (v. 8)! What are our duties? To live as children of light, producing the fruit of goodness, righteousness and truth and to expose the fruitless deeds of darkness (v. 11).
7.Wise living involves being careful in our choices, taking advantage of opportunities, and not being foolish (vv. 15-17). We are to be filled with the Spirit, not with spirits!
8. And we are to serenade each other. Really! With psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. This music is to be mixed with an attitude of thanksgiving and a reverent attitude of mutual submission.

Wow! Lofty expectations! But by God’s grace we can live out the challenges of Ephesians 5:1-21 to the glory of God!

 

 

 

Getting Ready for a Wedding!

In preparing to share in Kristi and Greg’s wedding this coming Saturday, I’ve been thinking a lot about

Kristi and my lovely wife Linda!

Ephesians 5.  There we read:

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Just a few observations:

1.  There is to be a mutual submission to each other (v. 21).

2.  In her submission to her husband, the wife is actually submitting to the Lord! (v. 22).

3.  The loving husband is to be the head of the home as Christ is the head of the Church (v. 23).

4.  The majority of these verses challenge the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the church, that is, sacrificially.  He is to love encourage her in her walk with Christ.  He is to love her as he does his own body.  He is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.

5.  As a summary statement, Paul says, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”  Loving and respecting — these are attitudes and responses that are best developed in a living relationship with Christ! (to be continued)