Why Should a Wife Submit if Her Husband is Wrong?

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and farmer. Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for over 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say, time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Les Feldick, Professor of Bible Teaching at the University of Iowa, is the author of the book, Ephesians, Chapter 5. In Ephesians chapter 5, we will pick right up where we left off, and for those of you in our television audience, I've been asked to explain something, and I better do it while I'm thinking about it, because everybody here in the studio knows how absent minded I am. So I'll have to do this first, and that is our numbering system on the board. Now for those of you out in television, 38 is the number of the book or the video, this six program format that we're always talking about, and then this means it's the third set of two hour programs. This one means it's the third program in that particular set. So it's book 38, it's the third part, and now we are in the third half hour program. The next half hour program, Jerry will put up number 4. This of course is mostly for the broadcast people, that's their number. But for those of you out in television, if you've liked the program today for example, you can say, well I just saw the program book 38 part 3, and number 1, 2 or 3 or 4, or whatever it happens to be. So maybe that will help, because we've had so many people write, and several in here have said they've met people even here in Tulsa who say, well what are those numbers for? Well now you know, it's the book number and the number of the, see we put in three sets of four, four programs, four programs, and four programs for a total of twelve. So we are now in the third set of four, and we are in the third half hour today. Remember then that all these books and videos are available all the way back to Genesis where we started with number 1, and I don't know where we are going to end up. The Obert asked me a long time ago how many we were going to have, and I said, I don't know, 50, 60, who knows. We hope to just keep going until the Lord comes. But if you are interested in any of the materials, you call us on the 800 number or drop us a note and we'll get the information to you. I think that's all of our announcements, we are ready to get right back into our study, and that would be in Ephesians chapter 5. The last verse we looked at was verses 19-20, but I think I'm going to go back up a minute and take another run at verse 21, beginning with verse 18, because this all really ties together. After seeing what He tells us, how to walk and so forth in those verses up in 10, 11, and 12, then He comes to verse 18, and we just sort of touched on it briefly. Be not drunk with wine, in other words don't respond to the spirits of alcohol to mind bend your thinking, but the flip side, the better side is to be filled with the Spirit of the Holy Spirit, and of course that goes along with my concept, and I'm sure quite a few others, that at salvation we get the fullness of the Holy Spirit, we just get a whole fresh start, but just like anything else it kind of wears down, and then periodically we've got to be refilled, and so one baptism of the Holy Spirit when we're first saved, but many fillings, and I think it behooves us then to continue to be filled, which comes of course by the soaking up of the Scriptures, the study, prayer time, fellowship, and so forth. But we need that constant filling of the Holy Spirit. Now then when we're filled with the Holy Spirit, then the next verse as we looked at last half hour, it's going to have an effect on our whole lifestyle. It's going to be a life of speaking in Psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, we're going to have a life of singing. Now that doesn't mean we aren't ever going to have bad times. Christians have just as many problems as the world does. The difference is we have the Lord to take us through. Don't ever accuse me of teaching that when you become a believer, you're going to have a rose petaled pathway. It's not going to happen. We're going to have just as many pitfalls, and disappointments, and sorrows as anybody else. But we have the Lord to carry us through, and you've all seen that little, it's a lot of times on cards and so forth, that the individual said, Now Lord, whenever I was going through tough times, it looked to me like there was only one set of tracks. Where were you? And you know what the answer was, well I was carrying you. Well that's so true, you see when we need the Lord the most, He is, He's carrying us. Then as we saw in verse 20 in our closing remarks in the last program, that along with our rejoicing, and our happiness, and our singing, we are constantly in an attitude of thanksgiving, and it's all to be given to God through the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which of course is a point, I've had people a lot of times ask me, Are we still supposed to pray in Christ's Name? Well what does Paul say? Absolutely, because he is the one that is interceding at the right hand of the Father, and so we do, we pray to God the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now in this same line of joyful Christian living, of all things, what does Paul bring in? The marriage relationship, isn't that amazing? In other words, at the heart of a Christian community is the family and the home. And of course there's a lot of talk about family lately in politics, but unfortunately they are not using Paul's approach to it, they're using the secular world and the worldview, but we're going to look at what the Scripture says. Now I think it was a year ago, maybe two times goes fast, where one of our major denominations made a statement concerning this very part, that the husband was to be the head of the wife, and you remember the liberal press just about went into orbit, and all the feminists about had a fit, well I remember one lady wrote that they had set equal rights back 30 years. No, we're not setting anything back, we're just exemplifying what the Scripture says about the husband and wife relationship, and I've said it as long as I've been teaching. There has never been anything so instrumental in giving women their freedom and their rights as Christianity. You want to remember that all back in human history, not just Israel, but in all of human history, the women were nothing. They couldn't get an education, they couldn't read, they couldn't work mathematics, they were kept ignorant purposely. Christianity is what opened the door for you, and so I've said it over and over, don't ever accuse Paul of being anti-feminist. He did more for the female gender than any other man of the human race, and I've told people I get good calls. I had one lady call, and she said, "...I used to hate the Apostle Paul, I wouldn't read his stuff, I didn't think it even should be in the Bible." She said, "...it was such a strong feeling, I passed it on to my two married daughters, but thanks to you, I've now seen it completely differently. I see now that Paul is our Apostle, and I've got both my daughters convinced." Praise the Lord for that, because here is where the Apostle simply goes back to the format that God intended. Not what the sociologists think, not what the psychologists say, not what the advice columns say, but what does God say? Verse 21. Ephesians 2. In the whole picture, in this whole format of being filled with the Spirit, speaking and singing in songs and making melody, giving thanks to God for everything, submitting yourselves another in the fear of God. Now you see, we're in a time when people don't like to submit to anybody. We're in the period of the big ego, the number one. But Scripture says that we are still to be submissive first and foremost to God. That's an attitude of the Christian life, is that we are submissive. In fact the verse just comes to mind, I wasn't intending to use this, but go back with me I just referred someone to this a few days ago, who was going through some trying times, and they almost were despairing that God was even aware of them. Psalms 37, verse 5, and I can pass this verse on to anybody that's going through trying times, whatever the case may be. Because even though it's Old Testament, and even though it's David speaking it, yet God hasn't changed. You know that's another thing, I told someone early this morning that call, and I said, look, you're putting too much of your doctrine on the Old Testament, that's law. Well what am I supposed to do, throw it away? No, you don't throw the Old Testament away, it's the same God, the only thing is He's operating differently under law, than He does with us under grace. But many of the things that David says are appropriate for us, and this is one of them. Verse 5 of Psalms 37, and it's almost in the same category as submit. Now those of you who have been in my class here in Oklahoma, you know there are three words that all mean the same thing, trust, faith, and believe. Use any one of the three words in here, and it still means the same thing. Have faith in Him, believe in Him, trust in Him. And He, what's the next word? Shall, will, bring it to pass. Now we don't know when, we won't have to, we just rest in the fact that it's in God's hands, and we submit it into His care and keeping. And then you come down to verse 7, and what's the first word? Rest. See? Rest. Once you've committed something to God, we can rest. I've used the illustration more than once. Some of you fly even a lot more than we do, but my, you find your seat on the airliner and you get all squared away and you take off, do you start fretting and sweating? Is this plane going in the wrong direction? Maybe some people do, but I think the average passenger sits down, picks up a book or a magazine, you have totally committed your life and your direction to the airline, and you just absolutely trust that they're going to take you where you intended to go. Halfway to London you don't start walking the aisle and ask the stewardesses and so forth, are we going to Tokyo or are we going to London? What a stupid question. Well it's the same way in the spiritual. Once we have committed to the Lord, we know what direction we're going, and we don't have to wonder, we don't have to worry. Verse 7, so we rest in the Lord, and we wait patiently, but see we're not patient. We're living in a time of instant gratification, I want it now. But the Lord doesn't move as fast as we think He should. But rest assured that if we wait patiently, He's going to bring it to pass. And then the rest of verse 7, fret not thyself because of him who prospers in his way, and repeat the subject again, or the verb rather, don't fret yourself because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. And isn't that always a temptation? We see the ungodly prosper, they're driving their big cars, and they're living in their huge homes, and we know that they're ungodly, don't worry about it, that's the only heaven they'll probably have, is right here, and their doom is waiting them, and we don't have to worry about that. So use those two verses when trying times come, commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Rest in the Lord, trust in Him. Now then if you can come back with me to Ephesians. So it's the same way in the marriage relationship. We commit our marriage into the hands of the Lord, and as the husband and wife in union commit that marriage to the Lord, then it follows that we're going to follow God's format, and God's format was established back in the Garden of Eden. All right, and here it is, verse 22, "...wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, not as some totalitarian slave master, but a husband who can be likened unto whom? The Lord." Now there's nothing wrong with being submissive to that kind of a husband. 99.9% of women would just revel in that kind of an environment, to be married to a man who treats her even as the Lord treats him, and that's the analogy all through here. Verse 23, "...why should the wife submit to the husband? Because the husband, according to God's decree, is the head of the wife." And again look at the analogy. Not like some king is putting his subjects under his rule, but the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and remember the church is the body when Paul talks about it, and Christ is the Savior of the body. Now in order to become the Savior of the body, what did Christ have to do? He had to die. And so what's the admonition to you and I as husbands, man? We've got to be willing to die for it. I think I could. Unless something would drastically happen, I think I could die for it, because that's what the Scripture demands, that we love our wife with such a love that we're willing to give up our life for it. Now I'm going to take you back to the Old Testament for the benefit of the women, out in television as well as here in the studio. How many women will sit up and say, I'm not going to go by what my husband says, he makes the dumbest decisions. Isn't that right? Sure! Well we all do. I've made a couple of whammies myself. I really have, and she doesn't constantly remind me of it, she's a good wife, and she could, and I would just say, I know it honey, I know it, I've made some of the dumbest moves. But you know what God has promised by our going back to the Old Testament? That in spite of our dumb moves, God works it out for His own good. Now let's come back with me to Genesis chapter 12. Now I don't intend to do all this in just half an hour, we're going to use another one I think. I never know, you know we're going out to Pennsylvania next week, and a lady called this morning and she wanted to know what I was going to speak on, and I said I'll tell you when I finally stand up and get started, and that's probably when I'll know. Genesis chapter 12 Here we are dealing with Abraham and Sarai, and he has just been given the Abrahamic Covenant. So he's on right standing with God, he's a believer, he's a man of faith, and no doubt Sarah is as well, because we're going to go back in a minute and look at what Peter says about these people, and she was a believer. So here we have two believers, and they have just begun their walk after this tremendous covenant promise earlier in the chapter, and as I tell people so often when I'm instrumental in leading them to the Lord, is now in short order you're going to come through a time of testing. It happens every time to a new believer, God will test them, and all it does is just deepens their faith. Well here we have the same thing, Abraham has just now begun his walk on covenant ground, and there's famine in the land, that is in the land of promise. And Abraham already I'm sure having been instructed, went contrary to God's instruction and went down into Egypt. Now those of you who know your Bible, Egypt is always a picture of the world. And so he leaves the land of blessing, he leaves the land of promise even though it was now being tested with famine, and he drops down into Egypt. Now whenever I teach Egypt in the Old Testament, I've been doing it a lot lately in our Oklahoma classes, always remember that Egypt in the ancient world was like Washington is today. Egypt was at the very core of all the commerce and the economic activity and so forth, and so it had all the allurement that the world even today has. They had the same things in Egypt, don't think for a minute they didn't. So here Abraham and his wife, and of course Lot is still with him, they can't take the heat of the famine in Canaan, so down to the world they go, because after all there's no doubt food and grain in Egypt. So he went down into Egypt, and there was a famine in the land, and Abraham went down into Egypt to sojourn, he didn't just go down to get food, he went down and set up camp. Now this is the husband speaking, a believing husband and a believing wife. Ephesians 2.5 Therefore knowing the culture of his day, therefore it shall come to pass, that when the Egyptians shall see thee, they shall say, This is his wife, but she is such a knock-out, Pharaoh is going to want her in his harem. And there's only one way we can get away with that, because you want to remember the ancients had a moral code, don't think for a minute that they didn't, they may have abrogated it most of the time, but they had one. So they begin to rationalize, hey this gal is beautiful, Pharaoh will give us some points if we get her into his harem, but it looks like she's that man's wife, so we better kill him so that she's free to go into the harem. That's the thinking, that Abraham is swirling in his own mind. So he says, It shall come to pass, the Egyptians shall see thee, and they shall say, This is his wife, they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. You see what Abraham is doing? The exact opposite of what Paul instructs us to do. Paul is teaching that Abraham should have been able to say, Sarai, you're beautiful, they'll probably kill me, but for your sake I'm willing to let them do it. But he chickened out. I mean, he chickened out and he said, Sarai, we're not going to let them kill me for your sake, you just go ahead and tell them that you're my sister, and they will spare my life. Isn't that something? Now according to today's thinking, the sociologists, the psychologists, and the feminists, they would say, What should Sarai have done? He should have whopped him on the side of the head and said, I'm not going to do such a thing. I'm not going to end up in some pagan king's harem just for your sake. Isn't that the thinking today? But see, Sarai didn't respond that way. Sarai obediently let them take her, and sure enough, oh Abraham was right, they took her into the king's harem. But you know what? The Almighty overruled. And even though Abraham pulled a dumb stunt, God still overruled on behalf of Sarai. And I think the lesson for women today is, yes, once in a while your husband is going to make a dumb move, I have, but you know what we know? God is going to intervene in a way that the end result for both, husband and wife, will still be for our good. Now let's look at another one. Chapter 20, Genesis 20. You'd think that by now Abraham would have known better. He got kicked out of Egypt the first go around because of what he tried to do, and so now he's back in that same border area of Gerar, a different king of course, and this is a good many years later, his name has now been changed from Abram to Abraham already, and Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar, which is a border if I understand my geography right, between Canaan and Egypt again. And again Abraham said of Sarai's wife, She is my sister. And Abimelech the king of Gerar sent and took Sarai. Now you see you have to understand the pagan thinking of the ancients, and that was that they would kidnap beautiful girls and women, and bring them into the king's harem against their will. So hear it again, Abraham instead of standing up and giving his life for Sarai, lets them take her, and so she ends up in Abimelech's harem. But God intervenes, and he came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken is a man's wife. And of course you know what the story goes on to say. And so by the intervention of God, Abimelech woke up and brought her quickly back to Abraham. Now there is one more, and Isaac pulls the same stunt, Genesis chapter 26, the whole next generation later, and Isaac dwelt in Gerar. And the men of the place asked him of his wife, and he said, She is my sister. See isn't that something? Instead of saying, That's my wife, and I'm ready to die for her, he says, She's my sister. And in so many words what's he telling them? You can have her. See you can have her, alright she's my sister. For he feared to say, She is my wife, lest he said, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah, because she was fair to look upon. And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech the king of the Philistines looked out a window, and saw, and behold Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety, she is your wife. And he said, How can you tell us that she is your sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said lest I should die for her. Isn't that something? Well of course we know again that the Lord intervened, and spared both Abraham and Isaac. But now if you'll come back quickly, you only have a few seconds left. Come back to Ephesians, you see how women can rest on the promises of God, that if you are submissive to your husband as Sarah was, as Rebekah was, even if the man of the house does make a stupid move, who is going to by his intercessory power take care of the situation? God will. Don't ever doubt the power of God. Don't ever doubt that He is fully capable of overcoming every bad situation. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, please visit us online at lesfeldickministries.com.