Transcript

Well, we’ll go back to Titus again this Sunday morning. Titus chapter 2, as I have been developing a little series out of the phrase in Titus 2 about the older ladies teaching the younger ladies specifically to love your husbands. Then in the coming weeks, love your children, to be workers in your home, submit to your husbands in all things. Well, let’s just read the text. Titus chapter 2 beginning in verse 3, Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 3, just to get the flow of the context here. “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that,” the older ladies have such an important role, to the end that, verse 4, “they may encourage,” teach or train, you could translate it, “the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands so that the word of God will not be dishonored.” Now in verse 5 of chapter 1, again, Paul writing to Titus on the island of Crete, says, “Titus, I’ve left you there so that you might go to these local churches on the island and set things in order. There’s a lot of things that have gotten out of order. Now, Titus, your job is to get the church back in order.” Literally, you could translate it, “to straighten things out.” But honestly, my purpose, ladies, in bearing down on the phrase, love your husbands, is not so much to straighten you ladies out as it is to combat the lies of our present culture. Uh, and so many of those lies, and it’s always true, they they creep into the church and it becomes a way of our thinking and and a way of our behavior, often without us realizing to what extent we believe the lies of the culture. And there’s just a vicious, unrelenting attack against women today in our culture and and the lies they tell, this is gonna get you ahead, this is gonna make you fulfilled, this is gonna, uh, give you rights and authority and freedoms, and it’s a lie. You ever seen an old feminist? They don’t look good. They don’t look happy. They don’t look joyful. They don’t go into the latter year seemingly with peace or rest. You know why? Because they believed a lie. And ladies, God wants you to end well. He wants you to go into your latter days with a rest and a peace. It only comes when a lady joys in her Lord and strives toward honoring his word in her life. And so keep that in mind as I’m preaching this.

Now we came to this section of love your husbands, older ladies teach the younger ladies to love their husbands, and I began last week with the first session was to learn to love his manliness, and I I the word for love in our text here is really the word for having an affection toward, or liking something. You know, you can love someone and feel nothing. Love’s not primarily about feelings from a Christian perspective. But here, Titus uses a word, or Paul uses a word rather, writing to Titus, that actually says, teach those ladies to learn to like, be fond of, have an affection of their husbands. Now, I began, uh, two sessions ago talking about to like his manliness, learn to like that God made men different from women. Ladies, don’t try to make your man a woman. Let him be a man and learn to like manliness. Our culture hates manliness. All of this talk of toxic masculinity. Uh, by the way, anything can be toxic. Anybody that misuses their role and place in life can be toxic, I guess you would say, or mean, or unjust, or unkind, or whatever you might want to say. But manliness is of God, it’s God’s design. So we talked about that. Then last time we were together, we began to talk about teach the younger ladies to like the construct of the husband. In other words, the role, the idea of the husband is the design of Almighty God and it’s beautiful and it’s wonderful and it’s glorious, and ladies shouldn’t resist that, shouldn’t, um, uh, scowl at that or revile against that. They should like it, Paul is writing. Like the construct. I use the word construct instead of the word idea because I think it says better what is going on here. A construct means making one from several different parts.

So God takes these several different things and constructs, if you will, makes the construct of a husband and we know that those parts include the male gender. There are only two genders, and God chooses the male gender to have the role of husband, and then he has the role of leader, he has the role of teacher, he has the role of provider, he has the role of protector, and these are weights that are put on him that are not put on the wife. She has a different role. And so we take the construct, what God made, called the husband, and the older ladies are to help the younger ladies to love the glory and the beauty and the wonder of this creation of God. Now, we’re all marred in this fallen world, and sin has corrupted, but that doesn’t remove the requirement to function as God has ordained that we are to function.

So we talked about this construct of the husband, and we looked, first of all, I., at the witness of history, and we primarily looked at Jewish history and how the concept of husband was thoroughly established in God’s, uh, uh, previous, if you will, dispensation as God was calling Israel out of Ur of Chaldees through Abraham forming a nation, and how the husband fulfilled a primary and essential role in that, uh, movement of God to build his people, and how God has ordained the family unit to be the cornerstone of his people and of society. Then we also talked about how the husband and headship are practically synonymous. We do not have the right to say, okay, we’ll call them husband and wife, but we’re going to redefine what that means according to what we think is wise. Well, there’s one problem with that, God came up with the constructs and the ideas, and we don’t get to redefine them. He gets to define them. Better yet, he has defined them. And so when he defined husband, when he established the husband, he established headship or authority in the home.

I’d like to add again, ladies, this is not just to rule over you, it’s because he bears a weight God did not want you to bear, God does not want you to bear. Always in God’s economy, authority equals added responsibility. So let’s be careful if you think, well, I ought to have the say-so in the church as much as the elders. I ought to have the say-so in the community as much as the civil authorities. Well, God’s not ordained it that way. He’s given us structures of headship and authority, and they bear a heavier weight and responsibility before God. Now, you can have, uh, headships and not have husbands in the sense that there’s leadership elements all through our culture, but you cannot have a husband without headship once you remove his authority and his headship, and, of course, the responsibility that correlates to that, then you remove God’s idea of the husband. And ladies should learn to love what God has put together in that.

Then we talked about how headship responsibilities are are illustrated throughout the Scripture. And, uh, I talked about the fact that, uh, the chief cornerstone phrase that is used of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the word chief there is the same word as head, when God said he’s made man head over the woman, and I illustrated how this headship means that the the cornerstone receives the weight of the building, it aligns the building, and God puts the weight of the alignment of the home and the responsibility of the home on the husband. So those responsibilities being illustrated.

Now we come to what I think is the the most glorious thing, and and ladies, if I could say this, I don’t want in any way, if you come to me and say, “Boy, you stepped on my toes.” I don’t wanna hear that. Here’s what I want to hear, “Pastor, God’s Spirit enlightened my heart to joy in His wisdom.” That’s what I want to hear. “God’s given me a deeper treasuring and affection and fondness of what He has designed in making husbands and wives.” That’s what I want. I’m not real concerned about where you are in the progression. I want us all to keep progressing as husbands, keep progressing as wives, according to God’s word. Of course I do. But I want you to joy, because by the way, listen, you can be a submissive wife and honor the headship of your husband and dot every i and cross every t and be displeasing to God because God wants you to do it out of a heart of joy in his wisdom in designing it. Are you hearing me? Not just because you’re a a wallflower, let’s say, and feel beaten into submission. That’s not the goal. That’s opposite of the goal. True submission is godly empowerment. Real empowerment is when you can joy in the role God’s given you by his divine design, not resisting it.

So as we come into this, IV, the perfection of headship, I I we’re gonna touch on several verses. I wanna begin with Ephesians 5:22 through 24, and notice how as we go from the Old Testament image of marriage and the roles of marriage in the Old Testament, by the way, where the wives were often not much more than a piece of property, and the husband far too often treated them like much not much more than a piece of property and abused their wives, but how when you get into New Testament truth, marriage is taken to a new ideal. It’s taken to a new level. It is perfected in Christ. And here’s what we see. Ephesians 5:22 through 24, ” Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” That remains the same. That was true in the Old Testament. That’s true in the New Testament. Verse 23, “For the husband is the head of the wife,” same in the Old, now same in the New, “as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ,” now this is new, “so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.” And I think the point is you no longer, ladies, view your husband’s headship according to the Old Testament elementary or rudimentary principles. where the Old Testament, the men were modeling God’s relationship with Israel through law. We’re not under law, we’re under grace now. So there’s a perfection of things now. But now in Christ, you begin to see submission and honoring of headship as an essential role as you represent Christ and you represent, rather the bride submitting to Christ, the church submitting to Christ. How joyously should this church honor Christ? How completely should this church submit to Christ? Should we not submit to Christ out of a warm, fond, treasuring affection? Should we not like submitting to Christ? See the difference here? What what happens is as God perfects marriage in the new covenant of of grace, he takes the wife’s submission from a cold, harsh legalism to a joyous, warm heart of love for Christ and her husband. Ladies, do you see this? Do you see what God is showing us here?

This is the completion, if you will, of marriage. This is the perfection of marriage in Christ, in New Testament grace and truth. This is the highest plane for marriage. Headship of the husband is not canceled out in the new covenant. It’s not canceled out in the church or in Christianity. It’s perfected. It’s made what it ought to be. I I wish we could go back to the ancient cultures and see the the rigidness, the coldness, and the harshness, and we still see a lot of this in the Islamic faith around the world, by the way, where women are treated awfully. Well, in Christian teaching, the woman is to submit. In Islamic teaching, the woman is to submit. Nature teaches us that even, but it’s radically different because the love of Christ has transformed us so we live it out far differently than just the obeying of cold, harsh letters of the law.

Now, so as the wife is to say, “I cherish, I treasure Christ and I honor him, so therefore I want to learn to treasure and cherish my husband and his headship because that is a mirror, that is a picture I’m to present to this world.” Now on the other side of the coin, husbands, our role in leading and providing and protecting is is also being perfected in Jesus Christ, Ephesians 5:25. “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” Oh, wow, this would have been mind-blowing, or I I should say this was mind-blowing to the Jewish and Greek thinking of the day. They just could not fathom viewing a wife this way with this kind of preciousness and devotion and and and and passion and what height of devotion.

So the elementary structures that were known in the Old Testament, husband’s the head, wives submit, that cold rigidness is removed, and now the husband is still the head, the wife still submits, but it is done in a perfection that is only found in Jesus Christ, that is a love for one another that supersedes everything known previously. Matter of fact, in Christ, all the old elementary truths remain but are perfected. For example, children are to obey their parents. That’s taught in the old part of the book, right? It’s also taught taught in the New Testament. But children obey their parents, but the parents are not to exasperate their children and now they’re to raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, which means the things of Christ and the grace of Christ. Not a cold, harsh legalism, but a parent has a heart of love for the child and wants to discipline them for the glory of God and the good of the child. It’s changed. The child doesn’t exist, parents, for our good. They exist for God, for their good and for God’s glory.

You see, Christ takes everything to a higher level and you could go all the way through, honoring civil authorities, and then, of course, wives submitting to their husbands or or or employees submitting submitting to their employers. That’s taught in the old part of the book, but it’s perfected in the new part of the book. Now the employees must not, or rather employers, must make sure they’re not threatening and unkind, because Christ’s love has changed the equation. And you understand, in the old, uh, structures of of slavery, and by the world up until, what, about the middle part or the early part of the 19th century, the entire world basically practiced slavery. It’s been a a foundation of mankind from the beginning, and that’s a tragic and horrible thing, but it’s just true. But under slavery, very often, the master had the authority of life or death. Christianity changes that radically and says, no, now you must care for that one who is under your authority as your slave and care for them in the love. Christianity did not remove the structures, it perfected them.

You see, that’s what this world gets wrong. The the instant somebody sees a failure in a marriage, maybe a husband mistreating their wife, what they wanna do is throw out the whole concept. Wrong, wrong, that’s not what God does. Matter of fact, and boy, I don’t want you to get bogged down in this text, all right? So you’ll promise me before we go there, you’re not gonna get bogged down. We’re gonna get the main truth that I wanna bring out and we’re gonna go on. Matthew 19:3-9. Matthew 19:3-9. This is that text on divorce, and there’s so, so much debate about it. I just don’t think there’s much to debate about, but some people do. Now, Matthew 19:3, “Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?'” You know why they ask, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? Because that’s what they did. They had for generations been practicing just throwing away their wives anytime they wanted to. As one guy said, if she burned the bagels that morning, you could get rid of her. That’s just the way they lived. I mean, it’s hard to grasp the callousness and the selfishness of the way these men were functioning. So they were just, uh, allowed under Moses, just write her a writ of dismissal, certificate of dismissal, and you can set her aside. Now there’s a lot that we’re gonna learn what’s behind all of that, but they just perverted Moses’ concession and made it something they could indulge in and abuse for their own selfish purposes.

Jesus speaks in verse 4, “He answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” In other words, Jesus says God’s original design does not change. His original constructs say the same.

Verse 5, “and said for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man separate.” So Jesus said this is God’s standard and God’s plan that you’re perverting grossly. God designed as one man and one woman for one lifetime.

Verse 7, well, they said to them, “Moses said give her a certificate of divorce and send her away.” And Jesus says, “Yes,” but what was the context? Verse 8, “Because of the hardness of your heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it has not been this way.” So Jesus says the original intent of God stands, but in a fallen world, sometimes concessions are necessary. That’s basically what I think our Lord is saying. Moses allowed, Jesus is saying, due to the hardness, I’d elaborate on that, due to the wickedness and self-centeredness of your behavior, he allowed you to give your wives a certificate or written state of dismissal, and then you could divorce her. But here’s what here was the point, they were going to get rid of her anyway and what would happen is that they would put her aside and she didn’t have a legal dismissal from that husband, she was not allowed to marry anyone else. And in this day and age, that means she was left destitute and on the streets and possibly perish.

So in that horrible situation of these ladies being cast out everywhere, being left literally to live on the streets, it was better in that context that Moses allowed, this was a civil thing, not a spiritual or religious thing, but as a civil authority, Moses said, “Okay, for the sake of the wife’s condition, give them a writ of certificate of dismissal, and then they can find another husband and find home and shelter and be taken care of.” It was completely designed because of the great failure and abuse of these husbands and so these wives wouldn’t be left destitute. Remember the story of Ruth and Naomi? They come back into Jerusalem, they’re destitute. They have nothing. They’re they’re gleaning in the fields, which means after the crops were taken, they would go behind the the the crop gatherers and find whatever kernels they could just to live on until Boaz comes along and he became the new husband and the protector and provider, of course, a glorious picture of Christ there.

So to keep these ladies from being in that destitute condition, God allowed through Moses a concession for that time. That’s not God’s standard. That’s not God’s will for us. But for that time, he allowed that. But here’s the thing I want to, here’s the point I want to make. Jesus did not say, “Since men often misuse their headship, I’m going to rearrange marriage and I’m going to remove that headship thing because obviously men misuse it.” That’d be like God saying, “I’m going to get rid of the police idea, the civil authority thing, because police sometimes misuse their authority. I’m going to get rid of the parents being over their children because sometimes parents mistreat their children.” No, what they did was wrong, but Jesus did not, the New Testament does not, Christian truth does not rearrange the original construct of marriage with the husband being the head and the wife being under the husband’s headship.

So headship is not wrong just because it’s misused. It just needs to be perfected in Christ. The husband brings a a Christian perfection to headship when he begins to love his wife the way Christ loves the church, and the idea, I’m I’m convinced the central idea behind loving your wife the way Christ loves the church, is that she’s your one and only because that made perfect sense in the historical context because in the the historical context, if you are a Jewish wife, or a Greek wife, or a Roman wife, you are not his one and only. He had other lovers, often homosexual lovers in the Greek and Roman communities, and he could just get rid of you, and often very well did. So the radical Christian perfection of marriage is, no, male husbands, your headship does not mean your your reckless, harsh, uh, treatment of your wife. Your headship means you are now devoted to her for life as your one and only. That’s good stuff, folks. You just can’t, that would split 50 synagogues in Israel, teaching that right there because they thought, “Whoa, wait a minute, I’m on wife number seven, hope to get me several more before I get out of here.” He said, “No, no, no, not in Christianity you’re not.” Christianity perfects the role of the husband in his headship and now he views his bride the way Jesus views his bride.

Jesus will never forsake his bride. He would never cast his bride aside. He would never neglect his bride. He will never leave his bride destitute. He will make sure she’s cared for with all he has. Men, when you get up and go to work in the morning, you don’t get up in the morning, go to work thinking about, “I hope I can make some more money. I wanna get some new golf clubs. I wanna get a new hunting rifle.” That may be okay. You get up in the morning and you go to work because you’re taking care of your one and only. “I wanna get clothes for her and the babies. I wanna make sure the home’s taken care of. I wanna make sure there’s plenty of food on the table and shoes on their feet,” etc. etc. etc. That’s my one and only. See how Christianity takes the old truths and perfects them and how the Jews, along with the Greek and Roman men of the day, were radically warping and perverting God’s original concept, but God does not throw the original idea away because men mess it up. He gives them Christ and the power of the Spirit to begin to fix it and make it what it ought to be.

All right, ladies, Christ in you, number 1, informs you. In other words, you begin to see God’s wisdom in making the idea, the construct of a husband, and God’s wisdom in giving you your specific husband, and you begin to like the concept because you love and trust the God who designed it this way. Ladies, and I know we we men can certainly be silly, and you ladies can be silly too, and sometimes in certain cities, “Well, my husband this, and well, my husband that.” Be careful because you are criticizing God’s wisdom. There ought to be a reverence, not for the person, but for the God who designed the structure. And that’s the kind of thing that the older ladies begin to see clearly, and they need to help the younger ladies to see it more clearly earlier than they perhaps saw it.

It informs you. You begin to see God’s wisdom in structuring things this way, and you begin to see God’s glory dependent upon you functioning the way God designed the husband and the wife role to function. But not only does it just inform you, here’s what Christianity, anybody can get some facts in their head, but here’s what Christianity do does, it changes you and empowers you. It enables you to desire and gives you the strength to begin to behave in a new way according to God’s wisdom. So it empowers you. The love of Christ enables you to begin to love that construct of the husband and your particular husband. And have you have you ever heard, you’ve heard it because I’ve said it many times, but as a figure of speech, have you ever heard that you commit to what’s right and then your emotions catch up to the commitment? That’s Christian truth. You do it, and then you begin grow fond of it. As long as you resist, you’ll not have that emotion and that kind of emotional love that God wants you to have. You do, and then the emotions catch up with the doing.

Now, there’s a preeminent example of honoring headship in the New Testament. 1 Peter 1:3, or 1 Peter 3, rather, verses 1 and 2. 1 Peter 3:1 and 2, “In the same way, you wives, be subject or submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives.” Now, I’ve got a whole stack of notes on a sermon that I don’t know if I’m going to use it or not, called “How to Fix Your Husband.” That’s what it, “How to Fix Your Husband.” And he needs fixing but you didn’t make him up. You don’t have the owner’s manual, God does, and you gotta fix it God’s way. Shouldn’t call him it, but fix him God’s way. You should be like Peter is reminding us here, with the kind of behavior that in a sense, in a sense, frees God up to work on your husband on your behalf. “As they,” verse 2, 1 Peter 3:2, “as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.”

Now, he gives examples, “For in this way in former times,” first of all, “the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands.” Their their adornment was a strong dignity of honor and submissive submission to their husbands. That’s the way they adorned themselves. Verse 6, “just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.” Sarah and the holy women of old were not weak. They were not wallflowers. They were not dumb or stupid or ill-informed or uneducated. They trusted God’s wisdom. They believed God, and God came through for them.

Now, this illustration, particular particularly of Sarah, is important because Abraham was not always an easy man to love. Matter of fact, he was a dishonorable man at times, especially the way he gave, uh, Sarah to the Egyptians because she was beautiful and he thought they would take her by force and kill him. His practice did not merit honor, but his position as husband does merit honor. Have you ever learned that? You don’t honor authority just because the authority is always perfect. You honor authority because it’s right in God’s eyes. That’s what Sarah did. She trusted in her God who gave her Abraham as her husband and her God, the God of all wisdom and all power, was the one she saw that had ordained things to work this way. Sarah did not honor her husband’s headship because it was easy. She honored her husband’s headship because it was right. She joyed in God’s wisdom.

Ladies, that’s the thing. You have to love God. That’s what I want to see. I don’t really, yeah, I do care, but I don’t really care what I’m doing. I’m doing this good or I’m doing that good in this. That’s not my point. Loving God is the key in the steps up the ladder of how good you’re doing to take care of themselves. I don’t want you to be a bunch of beat down, cold, robotic rule keepers. That’s not Christianity. I want you to love God because Christ has enabled you to begin to have an affection for God and the wisdom of God and out of the affections for God, that love for God, you see God’s truth as wise and then you begin to walk it out for God and out of love for God. True of everything really in our lives, is it not, the things we’ve done in this church as pastor and people were not easy. A lot of them were very, very difficult. But our love for God and his wisdom held us and wouldn’t let us veer far off the track of God’s truth for his local church.

So this New Testament scripture says Sarah is a model. She you’re her children if you do what she did, not being frightened by any fear, the text says. And it worked out well for Sarah. You know what Sarah did? She fixed her man. She got him fixed. He becomes a godly and honorable man and significantly, perhaps, because Sarah knew how to fix a man. You do it God’s way. Ladies, you know what happens if you just try to fix him by nagging him? He pretends to be deaf. It just doesn’t work. And it’s as if God steps back and says, “Okay, I won’t work on him because you’re working on him all the time.”

Proverbs 31 is the picture of a lady who is certainly devoted to the headship of her husband and devoted to her home and notice, like Sarah, she ends well. Proverbs 31:28 through 30. “Her children rise up and bless her,” obviously as they get older. “Her husband also, and he praises her, saying: ‘Many daughters have done nobly, But you excel them all.’ Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.” The idea is she must be praised. God will require people to praise her. She will end her life with honor and praise from those she cares about the most.

Warren Buffett said recently, somebody asked him, how many billions is he worth? I have no idea, several. And they asked him, what what really matters in life? He said, what really matters is being loved by the people you want to be loved by. Even the secularists get it. Ladies, you want to go into your old age to where those in your family and your husband have a compulsion that says, “This woman must be praised.” God’s wisdom is so good. It’s so good. It’s so right and there’s so many blessings in it for us.

Well, headship from the beginning is a subpoint here under the perfection that we find this perfection of marriage, perfection of headship, perfection of of the marriage roles in Christianity. I, um, had the unique distinction of having a person that was close to our family who was the president of the National Organization for Women in the state she lived in. She was very strong and radical in her feminist views but she had been raised in a Christian home and she had a knack of taking the Bible and spinning it to justify her view of there should be no male headship and women are just as capable in the home of leading as men, etc. etc. For example, she she she would take, not that she did, but an example of the kind of thing she would do, she would take the Genesis text and says, Genesis taught that Adam was so deficient, so needy that he had to have a helpmate to fix him and that just shows that Adam and Eve are basically evil equal rather. Sort of a a dual headship, which turns into dueling headships. I like what Dr. Adrian Rogers used to say. He said, you know, when you come together in marriage, the Bible says the two become one flesh or one creature, one organism, and he says a creature with no head is dead and a creature with two heads is a monstrosity. God didn’t function you to come together and have dueling headship.

But Adam wasn’t the only one who was intentionally created by God to need another one. Genesis 2:18, it did say concerning Adam, “I will make a helper suitable for him. I will make a helper,” God says, “suitable for Adam.” Suitable means a helper corresponding to Adam, a special helper, not one from the plant kingdom and not one from the animal kingdom. He had no one fit for him. So he said, “I’m gonna make one special for Adam.” Adam was made with a dignity and an excellence above all the other creatures. He was worthy of having his own special helper, he being made in the image of God, of course, and superior to all the rest of creation. So Eve was not given to Adam because Adam was somehow deficient. After all, Adam was sinless, and he’s made in the image of God. How could there be any deficiency there? No, he was intentionally designed for a helper, not deficient, so needed a helper.

So God gave him this helper named Eve who was worthy to be a helper to him. Adam or man is the crown of creation being in the image of God and he deserved to have a helper like Eve. Man was was commissioned to rule over all of creation. He is the monarch of the earth under God himself. And for his rule and for his enjoyment and his blessing, God creates Eve a co-equal to be his helper. Powerful. It’s God’s design. And God intentionally designed Adam, our man, to need a unique and qualified helper, like the woman. And God intentionally designed Eve to need the special and unique headship of Adam. It’s all the construct of God. God didn’t look and say, “Oh, my goodness, I messed up on Eve. I’m gonna have to put a head over her.” God didn’t say, “Oh, no, man, I’ve made Adam and I’ve messed up here and he’s gonna have to have some special help.” No, no, no. Perfectly designed so that Adam needs the helper and Eve needs the head. So Eve gets the most wonderful headship. God does not summons Eve to worship or show headship to something in the plant kingdom. God did not design Eve to submit to or honor something made in the animal kingdom, but man, one made in the very image of God, the one who is the height of God’s creation. This is the highest honor God could bestow upon Eve, saying, “You get to function under the highest of creation.”

Now, the New Testament does not remove the husband’s headship, it does not remove the wife’s submission, but it perfects it in Christian love. So here God brings Adam and Eve together, man and woman together, husband and wife together, co-equal of the same essence, equal as joint heirs before God through Jesus Christ, but designed them with different roles. Now, Satan in this wicked world, this wicked culture hates God’s glorious, wise, and beautiful constructs. He hates the marriage relationship. He hates the husband and wife system that God’s ordained. And plus, he knows the greatest way he can destroy mankind is by destroying the marriage relationship as God designed it. So Satan works tirelessly to pervert and destroy this original construct of God. So Paul writes to Titus, and Titus is to tell the older ladies in the churches on the island of Crete, “Teach the younger ladies to love what God’s put together. Teach the younger ladies to love God’s wisdom, particularly the wisdom of God in making the construct of the husband as the head of the household.” Literally says in our text to teach the younger ladies to have sane, sane, sober thinking instead of insane. It’s insanity to reverse the roles and think it’s going to work. That’s what the Scripture is teaching. Husbands, as given by God, are given with God’s wisdom and are given with God’s power and are given through God’s glory for his purposes.

Now, finally, under the perfection of marriage, we we came through from all the way back in Genesis before sin it was designed a certain way and now headship is going to actually last forever. Headship and authority is gonna last forever. Now, I’m not talking about the headship of husbands. We’re not Mormons, amen? You ladies are not gonna inherit your own planet with your husband and be eternally pregnant with babies. You see, they took the glory and left out God’s wisdom. They took the glory of the home and marriage, is what I meant to say, and left out God’s wisdom because the Bible does say the marriage relationship’s dissolved in heaven, but headship still exists in heaven. So, cheer up. You’re gonna have to submit to somebody for all eternity. Ladies, you might as well get practice down here. Men, you’re going to submit to somebody for all eternity, so you might as well practice submitting to your employer, submitting to your pastor, submitting to civil authorities, because God’s ordained headship to last. Headship’s not bad. Headship, the concept I should say, of headship does not end in heaven. You know what does end in heaven? Your own stubborn, selfish resistance to headship ends in heaven. Headship doesn’t change, you get changed. When you’re glorified, you will joy in the authority of God and not resist it because, ladies, every time you resist resist your husband’s headship, you’re resisting God’s headship because he ordained it.

Revelation 11:15, the Scripture tells us that in the end times when Jesus returns, he will reign. The idea of reigning is the idea of headship. It’s the idea of authority. And when that day comes, we will finally fully grasp and glory in God-ordained authority, submitting to Christ’s headship for eternity, and heaven will be our great joy. The God- given authorities you are to honor down here on earth is a warm-up for heaven. All men really know we should honor God’s design of headship or authority in the earth but man selfishly rebels, and we will to some degree rebel. We shouldn’t in Christ because we’re starting to see the truth. In other words, the world can’t see the truth. They’re not born again, but we should see the truth and begin to join it. But mankind in general rebels against it and will rebel until Christ changes and he dwells in us and then ultimately glorifies us with himself in heaven.

Uh, Matthew 19:28. Kind of an interesting concept here, and I can’t unpack this because we don’t know everything about it, but it does teach us something. “And Jesus said to them,” this is the 12 apostles, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne,” that’s ruling, “you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” In the end state, there are gonna be others other than Christ that Christ gives headship that others will submit to. That’s in heaven.

So headship never ends. Headship and authority will be a part of the eternal state. Headship and submission to headship is glorious and good and blessed. We are just too sinful to grasp it and enjoy in it like we should. Headship and submission is woven into the substance of deity. I will say that again, headship and submission is woven, it’s a part of it, it’s the DNA, if you will, of deity because we have the example of Christ. Christ being of the essence or rather I should say, the same essence as God the Father, yet we see him completely submitting to the Father as his head and to the Father’s authority.

1 Corinthians 15, 24 through 28 so powerfully lays this out, “then comes the end, when He,” Christ, “hands over the kingdom to the God and Father.” They had different roles, though they’re co-equal of essence, “when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.” Verse 27, “For He has put all things in subjection under His feet.” God the Father has put all things in subjection under Jesus’ feet. “But when He says, ‘All things are put in subjection,’ it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him.” Here’s what the text is saying: God the Father put everything under the authority of Jesus. He’s head of everything, except God the Father is not under Jesus. According to their divine design, God the Son submits to and honors God the Father, even in the eternal state. That’s what this is talking about. Let’s look at the next verse, “When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One,” that’s God the Father, “who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.” Is that not a powerful parallel for us when we learn that in New Testament perfected view of marriage, the marriage relationship’s primary goal is to reflect Christ’s relationship with his bride, the church? And so as Christ submits to the Father, so the wife submits to the husband because there’s a divine design that lasts even through eternity.

So one of the key elements of your marriage reflecting God is the authority and submission function in marriage. So ladies, the reason why I’ve studied this and belabored on this is because I want you to grasp the wisdom of God in this and glory in this, and that’s what the older ladies must be teaching the younger ladies. So, excuse me, Christ joyously honors his Father’s headship in full submission even into eternity. In Christ, that’s us, when we’re in Christ, we will begin to see this divine design, this divine construct and realize we are most godly when we honor God-ordained headship. And when we are glorified with Christ in heaven, when we are glorified with Christ in heaven, then we will finally, fully, joyously submit to authority. God says, “I’m going to get you all the way back to perfection.” And you thought heaven was bass fishing all day. “I don’t have to listen to this man anymore.” No, you don’t have to listen to that man, but you have to listen to authority because that doesn’t go away. That’s part of God’s eternal design, and it’s perfect.

So Titus writes, excuse me, said it wrong again, Paul writes to Titus, Titus writes to the churches, “Older ladies, help the younger ladies grasp the wisdom of God and love the construct, the idea of the husband.”