Ephesus Family Conference, 1

Good morning. It is good to be here with you on this morning. As you heard, I did come in from Zambia, where my family and I have been living for the last three years. I got here on I don't even know what was today, today, Saturday. I got here on Thursday afternoon, and yesterday I was great. You know, everybody's like, wow, you came all the way from Zambia. I'm like, yeah, man, you know, half man, half amazing. I got this today not so much. So pray for me today as I'm beginning to feel a jet lag in that twenty nine hour journey. My wife, Bridget, and I have been married for twenty nine years in a row, and we will be celebrating our thieth anniversary next June. So I am already planning for that and preparing for that, not because I am a great husband, but because my wife told me, you need to start planning and preparing for that now. So I am. We have nine children, we have one grandchild and another grandchild on the way. Our two oldest children live here in the US, one in Mississippi, one in Louisiana, and so I will get to see one of them during this trip. I come back three to four times a year for a two week tour and try to get to see the kids and grandkids during that time. I won't be able to see everybody this time. And those of you who are grandparents will understand when I say this. If I can't see everybody every time that I come, I choose the grand baby. So I will be seeing our grand baby on this on this trip. If you if you have your Bibles with you this this family conference, we're concentrating primarily today on marriage. And it may not seem like that as we start, but I promise that's what we're doing. But we're going to spend our entire time together in the Book of Ephesians. So if you have your Bibles, open them to the Book of Ephesians. I think the Book of Ephesians gives us not only the the clearest and most direct teaching on the marriage relationship that we find in the scriptures, but I think the way that the Book of Ephesians is organized, the way that it is written, gives us some of the most significant theological instruction on marriage, the right thinking about marriage, the right understanding for our marriage. When we talk about marriage, we are not you know, we're not building a shack here. You can just you know, throw up something, some temporary structure. We're not pitching a tent. We're actually building a skyscraper. Amen. Some people approach marriage as though we're just pitching a tent, when the fact of the matter is, we're building a skyscraper. And when you're building a skyscraper, you spend almost as much time going down as you do going up. You have to because you can't just put a skyscraper on top of the ground, right If you don't dig deep enough when you build a skyscraper, it will fall. Amen. And this is what happens oftentimes with marriage when we think about marriage. The way we've been taught to think about marriage culturally is to think on a very surface level, like you know, we're just two people about to pitch a tent, and we have not been taught to think about it in terms of the groundwork that we need to do, the foundation that we need to lay in order to erect this skyscraper. But marriage is interesting, and that unlike the skyscraper. So you know, if we were literally talking about a skyscraper and I was an engineer and I came in and you've got this, you know skyscraper, you know, reaching two hundred stories high or whatever, and I tell you, sorry, your foundation is not deep enough. So what do we do? Right? But here's the beautiful thing about marriage. In marriage, you can dig deep and high at the same time. In marriage, you're not just sort of stuck if your marriage is built on a bad foundation or built on the wrong foundation. The beauty of the spiritual reality of marriage is this, by God's grace, you can stop right where you are and dig and deeper and stronger and more secure foundation. Amen. So so I want you to hear that because so many times when people find themselves facing difficulties in marriage, and you you face difficulties in marriage. You know when I when I do weddings, when I'm preaching a wedding sermon, I often tell people, you know that your first marit or disagreement will probably happen before this day is over. Amen. Somebody right. And there are people who come into marriage and they think it and even the way that we do weddings right, the way that we do by the way, I don't allow people to do their own vowels. I just don't. I don't even have time to explain all that. But I don't. I don't allow people to do that. We have our own vowels and we yeah, no, yeah, we're not doing those. And they look at me all are hurt. What you just can't what? Yeah, if you were joining the army and I said raise your right hand, would you look at me and say, you know, sir, before I joined the army, can you make me pledge to these No, it's not your army, it's my army. In fact, after you say the words that I'm going to tell you, just say, and not those words that you want to say, come see me. We got a special way for the army to start for you. But one of the things that we want to do is we want to say no, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. Our thing is unique. Our thing is not like the rest of the marriages that have come before. And so you need to hear our vows because our marriage is a celebration of the love to end all loves, and people need to hear that our love is the greatest love in the history of loves that have been great, and in fact, those other loves haven't been great. They've only thought they were great because our great love hadn't been around yet to show them the lack of greatness that their love had. Yeah, okay, talk to me a month after you're married. You can't say amen. You ought to say out. And part of it is because we have this sort of pitch a tent mentality right this surface right here, visceral emotional understanding of what it is that we're doing, and we have no idea whatsoever the spiritual warfare that's involved. Forget just the difficulty of two sinners, right, iron sharpening, iron, sparks flying, you know, forget forget just that difficulty of two people who are trying to learn each other and adjust each other and figure out how to, you know, get out of each other's way and turn this conflict into a dance. And forget that. How about the fact that marriage is a living, breathing picture illustration of the relationship between Christ and his bride, the church. And how about the fact that Satan hates that reality more than any other reality in the world, and therefore marriage is a prime target for spiritual warfare. So even the best of us find ourselves in the midst of a pitch battle when we get married. And this is why very quickly our theology changes. We come into marriage with Beatles' theology all we need is love. Huh, all we need is love? But quickly we go from Beatles' theology to Tina Turner theology. What's love got to do with you? All right? And so this is why we have to dig the foundation and dig it deep. So we start with the Book of Ephesians, and the move Aphsians gives us that it's interesting. The main marriage instructions in the Book of Ephesians really come in the second half of the book. Right before that, you get all the foundational stuff that's necessary for you to understand those instructions. In the second half. Ephesians is divided neatly into two halves, chapters one through three first half of the book, chapters four through six the second half of the book. And when I say that it's divided in half, I don't just mean yeah, there's six chapters, so you know three on this half now, No, no, no. Thematically and theologically, the book is divided in half as well. The first half is about orthodoxy or are calling indicatives right to believing? In the second half we go from orthodoxy to orthopraxy. We go from our calling to our conduct, from indicatives to imperatives, from right believing to right behaving. And again it's divided right down the middle. And we know that it's divided right down the middle because at the end of the first half we get a doxology right at the end of chapter three we get a doxology end and I'm in. And then at the beginning of chapter four we get a therefore, so doxology. I'm in. We just finished something right, and then chapter four therefore we just started something so divided equally right in half in the first half. The theme of the first half is a proper understanding of what Christ accomplished on our behalf to the Father's glory through the Cross. That's important. Let me say it again. In the first half of the Phesions, we get a proper understanding of what Christ has accomplished on our behalf to the Father's glory through the Cross. Again, you understand that. As we go forward, let me give it to you one more time, we get a proper understanding of what Christ accomplished, not just what he accomplished, but what he accomplished on our behalf. What Christ did He did on our behalf, in our stead. He did it on our behalf, and he did it to the Father's glory, and he achieved it through the Cross. In the second half, we focus on proper living in light of and as a direct results baul of Christ's active and passive obedience. See that again in the second half. Remember we said we go from you know, our calling to our conduct, from right believing to right behaving. In the second half we focus on proper living in light of and as a direct result of and this is hugely important in light of it, as a direct result of So our obedience in the second half is a direct result of what Christ has accomplished. It's a direct result of his active and passive obedience. This is why one of the where we're going to start here today is with membership in the body. That's that's where we start, because oftentimes what we want to do is we want to just run right to Ephesians chapter five, and we want to say, okay, fine, you do this, you do that, everything will be all right. But you can't do this, and you can't do that apart from the person and work of Christ, because your ability to obey what you find in chapter five is conditioned upon your ability to receive the truths found in chapters one, two, and three. Right, So to go back to our military analogy. Okay, you want to run to chapter five and do what chapter five says. In other words, you want to go be a good soldier, but you have not enlisted or been commissioned. And we'll give me a playing ticket. Go over there fighting wherever we're fighting. Okay, but you won't be a soldier or sailor or airman or Marie. You'll be a mercenary. You follow. And so if the realities in the first half of the book are not true of you, if you are not found in Christ, and you want to then just run to chapter five and say, you know, okay, I'll do this, and okay I'll do that. Will that be of benefit to you? Will that be better for you than not doing those things? Sure? But you cannot and you will not experience the fullness of what God has prepared and promised unless and until you understand the reality and are part of the reality of chapters one through three. That's we start there so proper, living in light of and as a direct result of Christ's active and passive obedience. What is this active and passive obedience stuff? On Second London Baptist Confession, Chapter eleven, paragraph one reads those whom God effectually calls he also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone, Not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and soul righteousness by faith, which faith they have, not of themselves. It is the gift of God in his active obedience. Think about this. You and I are born in sin, born under the federal headship of the first atom, and we are guilty before God. Because of the federal headship of the first atom. We have a sin nature, because we are born from the first atom. We inherited this sin nature, and our actual sins proceed from this sin nature that we inherited from the first atom, and we are guilty before God and deserve death and hell and the grave because of the federal headship of the First Atom and our actual sins which proceed therefrom we are enemies of God because we belong to the First Atom. And so Christ, who is born not of ordinary generation. Christ is born of a virgin. Why is he born of a virgin? Because if he is born of ordinary generation, the same way that you and I are, he would inherit a sin nature from Atom. But because he's born of a virgin and the product of the Holy Spirit of God, he is not born of natural generation, and he does not inherit Adam's sin nature, and he is not guilty. It is important. I know liberals want to say, yeah, virgin birth, No virgin birth, Oh absolutely not. No virgin birth. You don't get active and passive obedience. No active and passive obedience, you don't get salvation. So he's born of a virgin, not of ordinary generation. He's not under the federal headge the first Atom. He's not an enemy of God according to the flesh. But then there's his active obedience. What is his active obedience? Well, in his active obedience, he keeps the whole law, and he keeps it perfectly. So not only is he born without sin, but he lives without sin and actually achieves perfect righteousness, real righteousness, actual righteousness. Perfect righteousness is achieved through Christ's active obedience. This means that he has actual righteousness that he can now impute to us. He can credit this righteousness to us because as the last atom, we can be under his federal headship. But his active obedience is what is credited to us as actual righteousness. But then there's also his passive obedience. What's his passive obedience. His passive obedience is his vicariance, situtionary atoning death on the cross. He has no sin in himself for which to die, and so his righteousness can be imputed to us because of his actual righteousness, and our sinfulness is imputed to him, so that when he dies, he dies in our stead and for our sin, because he had no sin of his own to die for. So there is a double imputation because of the active and passive obedience of Christ. My sin is imputed to him and nailed to the cross. Because he didn't have his own sin to die for, he could voluntarily vicariously die for my sin. His righteousness is imputed to me, a righteousness that I do not have and cannot achieve, because I am found in the first atom. So through this double imputation, my sin is paid for and my righteousness is secured through the person and the work of Christ. This is the truth of the Gospel. This is the good news of the Gospel, and this is the whole first half of the Book of Ephesians. This is everything. It's everything, and so our right living is a byproduct of this actual righteousness that is now ours, having been imputed to us through Christ. Well, what we're gonna have to do to understand this is really I don't change our view of scripture. We're gonna have to understand the difference between what the Gospel produces and what the Gospel requires. We're gonna have to underst and the difference between indicatives and imperatives. And we're going to have to view our righteousness through the centrality of Christ's work. Let's take these in turn. First, What the gospel requires, What does the gospel requires? All the Gospel requires is repentance and faith. That's it. That's all the Gospel requires is repentance and faith. And I like the pause there. You know. The reason I like the pause there is because for so many of us we're like, well, you know, I get yeah, but there's but those obedience, there's holiness, there's righteousness, there's you know, the Gospel does not require obedience. The Gospel does not require holiness. All the Gospel requires is repentance and faith. Well, brother, I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, because I mean, you know that holiness is clear, Holiness rights, it's clear, it's there. Yes, that's what the Gospel produces. It is not what the Gospel requires. Now you may think I'm splitting hairs, but let me explain why that distinction is absolutely essential. If we believe that the Gospel requires obedience and holiness, then we believe that we can be holy and obedient apart from the Gospel. If you could be holy and obedient apart from the Gospel, you wouldn't need the Gospel. Do you understand that distinction? The Gospel requires repentance and faith. The Gospel produces whole. If we confuse what the Gospel requires and what the Gospel produces, we end up pursuing Work's righteousness and negating the very Gospel to which we are attempting to conform. This is how we people mix it up. You ever talk to somebody who's talking about, you know, getting their life back together so they can go back to church. Huh, that's crazy backwards. It's not just backwards, its crazy backwards. Right. We get my life back together so I can go back to God. No, brother, ah ah, you go to God so you can get your life back together. Amen. But this is how we get We get this backwards, and it's incredibly common. I got to clean myself up. I gotta get myself right so that I can know that's works righteousness. That's works righteousness. That is a picture of God who sits here waiting for you to do something before you can come to him and he be pleased with you. That's the wrong picture. It's the wrong picture of God, and it's the wrong picture of you. Amen. Well. The second idea is the idea of indicatives and imperatives. What are these? And those of you who just you know, who love grammar, be all excited, bless your little low spirit. Indicatives indicate what something is right. This is a microphone. That's an indicative. An imperative tells you to do something. Speaking to the microphone. Okay, this is a microphone indicative, speaking to the microphone. Imperative. Right from a theological perspective, indicatives are what God has done or produced in us and through us, in us and for us through christ work. Let me say it again, what God has done and produced in us and for us through Christ's work on the Cross. Those are the indicatives. Here's what's interesting in the first half of the Book of Ephesians. In the first three chapters of the Book of Ephesians, there are no imperatives. There are no commands in the first three chapters of the Book of Ephesians, not one command. And the whole first half of the book it's all indicatives. The whole first half is about what Christ has done, period ended discussion, about who we are because of what Christ has done, period end of discussion. That's it. That's all we find. Imperatives what God requires and enables us to do as a direct result of Christ's finished work, as a direct result of christ finished work. You may notice you're hearing that again and again and again. Okay, this is incredibly important. It is Christ's person and work that enables and empowers us to fulfill the commands that we find you can't fulfill those commands apart from Christ's person and work. And let me say something clearly and pointedly that I have now alluded to at least three times. This is why why what? Bible's very clear. Do not be unequally together with an unbeliever. It's a scriptural command as clear as dey. Do not marry an unbeliever, period, full stop, exclamation point, full stop. Do not marry an unbeliever. Don't do it, don't do it. Well, there's a number of reasons behind that. You don't need them, amen, right, some of all, I have parents like mine, son do so, and so why wait? Wait, what did you do? You ask me? Why anybody else grow up in that house? Huh? He started learning classical poetry. Yours is not to question why. Yours is just to do or die. So, in all honesty, we don't need a We don't need a why. God says, don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. That's enough, Amen, That's enough. But God is gracious and he's not like Mama. He'll give you a why. And there are several whys, not the least of which is marriage is a living, breathing picture of the relationship between Christ and his bride, whom he redeems by his death the church. Number two, There are commands and instructions within marriage that are designed to make it all that God intends it to be, and those commands are rooted and grounded in the indicatives of who we are in Christ. Marrying an unbeliever means that you are crippling your ability to live out these commands because one of the members of the marriage does not have the prerequisite in order to do them appropriately. Here's the other command. Here's the other reason. The other reason is when we get to chapter six and we start talking about our children. Okay, children, to be your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Aren't even mother than your father's first commandment for the promise that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land Verse four of chapter six. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. By the way, that's the byproduct and the fruit of marriage. Chapter five, right, we see marriage, and then chapter six we see the byproduct and the fruit of that, and that is children, but not just children who are born to be born, but children who are born to be brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And I asked this question and usually end up asking it to women because it's almost never the case that there's a godly man who's pursuing marriage with a non Christian woman. It's almost never the case. I'm an in pastoral ministry almost thirty years, maybe once or twice run across that where there's an issue of a godly man who is pursuing marriage with a woman who just she's just not a believer. Right, But I can't even count the number of times where young women have been pursuing marriage with men who were not believers. It is almost always the case that it's a young woman who is in it. And so I just say, go to ephesis, chapter six, verse four, until can fine rid of me this bad girl. You're going to marry this man who's not a believer, and you want to have children with this man who's not a believer if he's in sixty four, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. How is somebody who doesn't know the Lord going to bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord? And what have you just said about your children? If you choose to pursue a marriage with this man. At that point I usually say something like, you know what breaks my heart right now is I'm beginning to think that this marriage might be appropriate because the only way that I could conceive of that a woman would think that it was okay to marry and have children with a man who wasn't a believer in light of this text, is if she wasn't a believer herself. And in that case, you guys are actually not unequally looked because you're lost. No, I'm not lost. I'm a Christian. Well then why are we having this discussion? It is utterly inconceivable. Inconceivable. Well, and then we get into well, you know, actually, you know, he is a Christian, you know, he just he may not be you know, all this, and he may not be all that, but you know, I mean, you know, he was I think he was baptized one time, you know, and he goes to church. He's i mean, he's been to church, you know, and he's and here's how we solve that. Here's how we solve that. Fathers, do not prefer your children anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Is this a man who is not only in Christ, but is capable of making disciples? We just settle all of it right there. Don't tell me about somebody who went to church one time, or who might have had this religious you know, tradition, or who might have been through this ritual or that ritual. Is this a person who can disciple you and your children. That's why we start here. Aymen, all right, boy, okay, look at chapter one Fesis chapter one. We'll do a couple of things here. Pesians chapter one beginning a verse three. Esians chapter one beginning verse three. Let's look at some key indicatives here. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he show us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be wholly and blameless before Him and love. He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. According to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he blessed us in the beloved. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? In him? We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the richest of his grace, which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things and heaven, things on earth. Do you catch that? Did you catch that he blessed us, He predestined us, he called us. Okay, these are indicatives. These are indicatives, But it's not just about what God has done. Haw's he done. Let's look at the same passage again. This time we're going to put the emphasis on a different salable. Okay. Blessed be the God and Father followed Jesus Christ, who blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heaven places, even as He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love, He predestines us as sons through Christ Jesus, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he blessed us in the beloved. In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the richest of glorious grace with which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven, things on earth. Did you catch that? It's not just about what God has done for us to us, but how did he do it? In Christ? Through Christ, by Christ. That's how. That's how it is Christ. It is Christ. Roma was eleven thirty six. From Him and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen. Well, then there are the chapter endings. These chapter endings give us an important piece of this puzzle. At the end of each chapter there's like a crescendo. Each chapter builds to this crescendo, and then at the end of chapter three there is this grand crescendo to end the whole thing. Right, we end with a whole doxology and in our men. But these I like to call the arch indicatives of the Book of Ephesians, and they're important because they help you understand what's happening in the second half of the book. So let's look at them. Ephesians one, beginning of verse twenty two, the end of this one, and he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who feels all and all. So the first idea is Christ's headship over his body. We're going to understand the Book of Ephesians. We have to understand that this book is all about Christ's headship over his body. Can you say that with me? Christ's headship over his body. Right, We're going to see that again and again and again in the second half the end of chapter two, Chapter two, beginning verse nineteen. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostle and prophets, Christ, Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord and him. You're also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit. You see the building language there. So the first point is Christ's headship over his body. The second is this unity in Christ's body. Can you say that one with me? Unity in Christ's body. The Bug of Ephesians is all about Christ's headship over his body, and then unity in Christ's body, telling you this is going to be huge when it comes to interpreting the second half and then the last chapter here is where we get that doxology Verses twenty and twenty one, Chapter three. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, forever and ever a man. So again, obviously we just finish something right. We're about to turn a corner and we go from indicatives now to imperatives. And so Christ's headship over his body. That's number one. Number two unity in Christ's body, and number three the glory that the body gives to its head, the glory that the body gives to its head. Okay, these are the interpretive keys to the Book of Ephijis. If you're going to understand the book, you have to understand these three things. Christ's headship over his body, unity in Christ's body, and the glory that the body gives to its head. So when we get to the imperatives in the second half, what has God given us in order to equip us, encourage us, motivate us obedience. Christ's headship over his body, unity in Christ's body, and the glory that the body gives to his head. Okay, these are the things that we'll come back to again and again and again in this letter. You've got a couple of minutes left. Let me look at the beginning of chapter four very quickly. This transition. Paul says, I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner where they again. Therefore, therefore, therefore you've probably heard the saying when you see therefore you ask what it's there for. Right, This is pointing back to the first three chapters. I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, I therefore, ENLiGHT of the indicatives in the first half urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Do you get out of unity? Again? I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, Chapter twelve, verse one, Romans Chapter twelve, verse one, by the way I appeal to you therefore, brothers, because by the way Romans Chapter eleven ends with a dxology and an amen. Romans Chapter twelve are therefore first eleven chapters of Romans indicative chapters twelve through sixteen would get the imperatives in light of the indicatives, and he does the same thing. He says in chapter twelve, verse one, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your body's living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Back in Ephesians four, verses three through six, there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called in one hope that belongs to your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is overall and through all. By the way, I want you to notice a couple of things. One unity in Christ's body, right one one one one one. Here's another thing. This is the second half. The second half is all about the imperatives. These are all indicatives. So in the first half we get indicatives and no imperatives. In the second half we get imperatives surrounded by indicatives. So what's more important indicatives? The indicatives are far more important because if you not if you don't belong to Christ, if you're not in Christ, then you don't have what is necessary and what is required. One of the things that I always do when I come back to the States is I collect up all the this kind of money that I have in the house and make sure that I pull it in my wallet before I go, because there have been a number of occasions, you know where I've come. I made the flight and I get to the US, and I'll pull out my wallet and I got my zambient money in there. I can have a million dollars in Zambian money in my wallet, but if I get to the counter, it won't spend. It won't spend and if you are not in Christ, you are trying to spend a righteousness that is of the wrong currency. You can have millions upon millions in good intentions outside of Christ, but they don't spend in the Kingdom of God. Your currency has to be exchanged otherwise your money's no good. Here are you smelling one of stepping in? So when we talk about marriage, this is where we have to start, because everything else that we talk about is built upon this truth and this foundation. Now here's how good God is. Even unbelievers who pursue these truths better off because of it. Amen. Better to do this than not. But I'm not satisfied with you just pursuing some semblance of this. My desire is that you would know the fullness of this, and it begins with knowing the fullness of Christ. Let's pray, Father, thank you for your goodness and your mercy and kindness towards us. Grant by your grace that we might not only embrace these truths, but be embraced by them. We ask this in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.