Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Ephesians 5-6

  • A Supernaturalized Existence

    A Supernaturalized Existence

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 12, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Christianity, this closing sermon insists, is a supernaturalized existence from top to bottom, no natural life with religious accessories added on. Every imperative reviewed across Ephesians 5:21-6:9 depends on that supernatural reality rather than standing as independent moral advice. A proper view of law and imperative, the series’ whole burden, comes down finally to this: obedience is supernatural or it isn’t real obedience at all.

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    Sermon transcript

    We are reading from Ephesians chapter 5 and 6, and we begin in the 21st verse of the 5th chapter. This is Ephesians 5 verse 21. Give your attention to the word of God. Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.

    The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it. that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So watch men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet tainted his own flesh, yet nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.

    Nevertheless, let every one of you, in particular, so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ, not with eye service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will, doing service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven, neither is there any respect of persons with him.”

    As you minister to us, O God, by your word, we are concerned that this word which you have given to us would minister to others. And, Father, you have called us to pray, and we do so, that you would raise up laborers for your harvest. and that they would be many who bring your word to the world.

    And even now, this day, as that word is brought, there would be transformation. Those who are dead would be brought to life. Those who are lost in corruption would be found and revived in righteousness, even the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord, these things. as we continue to look to you for the ministry of your work in our lives. Amen.

    It should be clear to us by now, given this series on living the Christian life, it should be clear to us by now the way in which Paul, the Apostle, directs us to see Christian living. This made particularly evident to us with one more reading of the text that has been before us in this series. in Ephesians 5 and 6.

    Putting it simply, according to the Apostle Paul, the Christian life is a supernaturalized existence. It is a supernaturalized existence. Now, it is important for us to realize in saying this that Such an approach to Christian living is not concerned among us, much less the Ephesians, with what some might have thought. That is, the supernaturalized life is not concerned with the interjection of the miraculous, as if we might continue to expect rose and fish multiplied, men walking on water, herds of swine cascading demon-possessed into the sea, and bodies raised after four days dead in the tomb. I might also say that the supernaturalized life for the Ephesians and for us, is not looking toward those special endowments, those special gifts of the Spirit which Paul had spoken about earlier in his ministry to the Corinthian church, particularly 1 Corinthians, chapters 12 through 14. Actually, Paul’s concern here with the supernaturalized life is to impress upon his hearers, impress upon his readers, the fact that they always live in the presence of the living Christ, in the presence of the resurrected living Lord. here principally is that supernaturalized existence Paul has in mind.

    Not the occasional miraculous occurrence, nor the experience of part of the Church in those periodic and selective visitations of the gifts of the Spirit, but in the constant environment which has been established for the Church in Christ, in which now the Church is to live. And by mentioning constant with regard to this environment, certainly eternity is brought into view.

    Paul’s point in this regard is apparent from the latter part of the text we’ve read this morning, from Ephesians 6, verses 5 through 9. In verse 5, the apostle tells the slaves to be obedient to their masters as to Christ. He addresses them as slaves of Christ in verse 6. He implores them to render service as unto the Lord, that is, as unto the Lord Jesus Christ, in verse 7. Verse 8 finds the slaves receiving their wages even from the Lord, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.

    In verse 9, without spelling out all the details, the Apostle calls those who are masters to the same sort of considerations. That’s the force of Paul’s word to the masters. Do the same things to your slaves, or better possibly, pursue the same kind of life with them that I have asked the slaves to pursue with you, that is, pursue the supernaturalized life.

    But what is this supernaturalized life specifically? We have said that it’s life in the presence of the risen Christ, but can we be more specific about it? Such a life is the direct consequence of the saving work of God in Christ. This means that it has nothing to do with the nondescript, mindless mysticism that informs much religiosity of our time. Likewise, it has nothing to do with a retreatist monasticism. Much less does it have anything to do with that philosophical bent of mind which believes in an invisible world behind the visible, and commends itself as inherently superior to all materialistic competitors and worldviews.

    This supernaturalized life has everything to do with the specific reality of the heaven which the Bible describes, that place which has become resident for the once-crucified, now-risen Christ, who is at the Father’s right hand, the true and only destiny of the saints in glory. Even though the saints have not as yet been raised in their bodies to it, has been described earlier by Paul in Ephesians as the realm in which they already live.

    This is the place of their residence because of the choice and predestination of God. Ephesians 1, verses 4, 5, and 11. This is their residence because of their inclusion. through that choice and predestination in Christ, by whom they have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Chapter 1, verse 3. This participation in things heavenly does not belong exclusively to the future, as Paul makes it clear in Ephesians 2, verses 5 and 6.

    Even when we were dead in our sins, God made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him. and yes, even seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ as a done deal. Because of God’s eternal will and due to the effectual working of Jesus Christ in keeping with that will, our lives have been subjected to a change of venue. As Paul says in Philippians 3 verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven. And as he says also in Colossians 1 verse 13, we have been translated out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s own dear Son. Because our living Lord lives in heaven, we live with him and in him there.

    And this is all of grace. not of worse. Our faith, if genuine, being the confirmation of our election and God’s predestination of us, such faith the means by which God has been pleased to seal our union with Christ in our heavenly life, since that faith in no way, if rightly understood, contradicts or challenges His sovereign grace by which we have been brought to glory. The supernaturalized life, therefore, according to the Scriptures, is the heavenly life in Christ, the doing of God for which we can take no credit.

    As it shall be in the day in which we and our bodies shall be brought before the face of God, so it is now. Can you imagine yourself in that day suggesting to God that you are there because of something good in you or something that you have accomplished? I challenge the Arminians. to conjure in his mind his presence before God in the great day, and I ask him if he can generate from within himself any form of suggestion that the reason that he is there is because of him in any respect.

    Now it is this supernaturalized life of heaven which informs all our actions and all our relationships. No, even more, it is this supernaturalized life in the risen Christ, life in and from the heavenly places, which is our life now. We have no other life. I dare say, I want no other life. And if we want to get into testimonies, this is mine. Consider the text again.

    The relationship of a slave to a master is no mere matter of an inferior’s relationship to a superior in the social scale of things, although in the social scale of things there are inferiors and there are superiors. Nor is it a mere matter of citing law codes with regard to the relationship between slaves and masters. For those blessed with heavenly life, are called to see this relationship, even the relationship of slaves and masters, in the light of glory itself. My relationship as a slave to my master is informed by the fact that my labor is not simply for the sake of Christ here on earth, that is, to the end that I might please him and be rewarded by him one day in glory, much more, my labor is to Christ, before Christ, in Christ, as if performed in his very presence in glory already.

    It’s as if I’m there, working before him. That’s the effect. of what Paul is stating here in Ephesians 6. Your labor is performed before him. Now, how are you going to work? Paul, who describes himself as Christ’s bond slave, none lower, has this very perspective in view with respect to his own labors in the ministry. He says about his preaching ministry, I speak in Christ in the sight of God. That’s how he conceives of his preaching ministry.

    2 Corinthians 2.17. It’s as if he’s there. And what might we say about the circumstances of the Apostle? he’s presently a prisoner of Rome. He makes mention of that repeatedly, but is he really a prisoner of Rome?

    According to Ephesians 3.1 and 4.1, he’s the prisoner of Christ.

    You see, all relationships and circumstances are subjected to this supernaturalizing vision with respect to life. And if this is the perspective The supernaturalized life brings the slaves, what about masters? Is not their position likewise affected by their office considered in the full view of Christ in glory? Slaves motivated and disciplined by Christ and the environment of heaven have their counterpart in masters motivated and disciplined in the very same way. But I judge for you It is now blatantly evident that Paul has been prosecuting the case for this supernaturalized life all along, in everything that he has been saying, whether it is with respect to masters or slaves, parents or children, husbands or wives.

    Paul subjects each of the relationships from Ephesians 5.22 to Ephesians 6.9 to the identical scrutiny. Parents, for example, in the supernaturalized life. must see the children of God in front of their Heavenly Father, in their own children, standing before them. Husbands, according to the supernaturalized life, must see the bride of Christ, the Church, standing before her Lord, in their own wives, standing before them.

    That’s what’s happening. These relationships, then, are part of a total life view, thoroughly, completely informed by the work of Christ, his present position, and by heaven itself. being raised with Christ, how do I treat my wife? How do I treat my children? How do I treat my employer? It’s all different. I’m telling you about another world. But now I must add to this in conclusion. This view of life further helps us to appreciate the positive force of the law. Now I know it may sound as if I’m pulling something out of the air here. And you’re thinking to yourself, how did he get to the law from where he is presently?

    But I want to remind you that we started this series in an effort to consider Paul’s imperatives. Now, we are convinced, are we not, that we can never disassociate the indicatives of the apostle from his imperatives. The accomplishment of redemption from its application to us and our responsibility to God with respect to that salvation. But now, here, at the conclusion of the series, we must return to the issue of the imperatives, even the issue of commandment and law.

    I said the positive force of law, commandment, of imperative. We are all aware of the way in which the apostle negatively assesses the law and the commandment. We are not under law, so says the apostle. But now there is this positive assessment of things.

    Paul, here, to the Ephesians, is laying down the law in a series of imperatives. And such is the nature of our life in this world that we are not going to be able to escape imperatives. We are not going to be able to escape commandment and law. In fact, you will note that he specifically quotes from the law the Fifth Commandment in Ephesians 6, 2 and 3.

    Although Paul’s perspective has in view more than motivation and discipline from the law, that is to be sure, the law maintains its usefulness for us. in our present situation. Yes, heaven is a place in which the constraint upon our moral and spiritual obedience is not by external command, neither is heaven a place in which we will need the plotting of the apostles’ imperatives and reminders. Still, the commandments, like the apostles’ imperatives, are testimony to the present paradox of our current existence.

    On the one hand, we are placed in glory in Christ. On the other hand, because we still live here in this world and must do so until we leave this world at death or at Christ’s return, we have to be reminded, we must be reminded, about our true home and about our proper orientation and the way in which we are to appropriate that home and that orientation and be faithful to them. Therefore, we cannot dismiss, much less do we want to neglect, We must remember that they themselves render service to our goal in which they will have exhausted their purpose. It could well be that at Ephesus there were many in need of this reminder, many in need of the commandment.

    Possibly they had so caught the bug of heaven that they imagined themselves free from all moral and ordinary relationships and responsibilities in this world. Possibly they even imagined that the world had ended, or that it was about to end. Paul puts the record straight.

    True heavenly-mindedness and proper living out of the heavenly life now does not run from relationships and responsibilities, but sees them and pursues them in full, brilliant, gracious, supernatural life. Such an outlook does not abominate the law. or the reminders that are given to us with respect to the law, but see them serving their proper function as servants to the full possession of our inheritance above our heavenly goal. Won’t you take to heart, then, the nature of our true life in Christ, the supernaturalized life of glory already in your possession of which you are hereby reminded in the gospel and its commandments.

    And although yours is a heaven in life, one by which you are made to share in Christ’s very own exalted life and glory, remember that this one, to whom you are united, loved you according to Ephesians 5.2, gave himself for you in offering any sacrifice of God, not only so that you might be granted life in heaven, so that you might live a heavenly life here, even as you submit yourself to one another in the fear of Christ.

    And having worked our way back to Ephesians 5.21, we bring this series to a close. Our Father would never be a matter of us conjuring up or inventing the world into which Christ has ascended, the world to which we are destined, even predestined. Father, as we have not invented it, as we have not manufactured it as it stands, and that even in keeping with the work which he has performed at the present rule and session from that realm, we glory, O God, that by our union with him, we are brought to that world already. Father, we pray that in keeping with the imperatives, with the commandments, with the law itself, we would persevere in our responsibilities, in our obligations, in our duties But Father, as we do so, may it be a matter of us seeing that this great blessing and gift which has been given to us informs us in all of our actions and relationships. Here then, O God, is a fulfilling of the law and the commandments in us, and we pray our that we might live with a full consciousness of our reign with Christ and our service in this world to him. Bless us as your people. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Apart From a Slave and a Master

    Apart From a Slave and a Master

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 29, 1996.

    About this sermon

    The common claim that Paul simply opposed slavery does not match the Bible, and the text’s real complications remain. 1 Timothy 1 condemns ‘manstealing,’ which differs from the household slavery Ephesians 6 addresses. Believers cannot rightly think of themselves apart from Christ as a slave and God as a master, categories modern readers resist and Paul assumes.

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    Sermon transcript

    We begin our scripture reading this morning in the book of Exodus, chapter 21, and we are reading from that chapter a single verse, verse 16. This is Exodus 21, verse 16. Give your attention to God’s word. And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”

    Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope unto Timothy, my own son in the faith, grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord, as I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some. that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith, so do. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfamed, from which some, having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling. desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. But we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for poor mongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men stealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. And then finally, turning over to Ephesians chapter 6, returning to our messages on Ephesians 6, picking up Then at verse 5, servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ, not with thy service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free, and he masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven, neither is there respect of persons with him.

    Our Father, our hope is for the consummation of all things, and we look to the blessed hope of the return of our Savior in the clouds of glory, bringing to a conclusion this world and its history. But Lord, in order that we might face that event rightly and well, we plead with you, O God, that our faith may be strong and our obedience sincere. To this end, Lord, would you bless this congregation, even in its giving and in its praying? even in its worshiping, even in its living. And Father, in the center of these things that are of concern for you, as far as our lives go, we ask that we might be devoted to one another. Even more, O God, may we be devoted to the wide extent of your church, and intercede faithfully after the pattern and power of your Son for those who are beloved of you, called by you throughout the world. And may it please you, Lord, to save many today. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    How do we gracefully approach a text like the one that is before us this morning, Ephesians 6, 5-9? We have been convinced, through the force of historic events, Through an enlightened assessment of political realities, and through what we have judged the sheer weight of common Christian decency, that the institution of slavery as such is more than simpliness guided and improper, it is much the rather inherently evil. Therefore, slavery, or the economic and social relationship in which someone has property in another, someone has ownership of another, is wicked, always and ever wicked, to be viewed negatively. And that, without exception, case closed. But this being the case, what in heaven’s name do we do with Ephesians 6, verses 5 through 9?

    A text that speaks explicitly about slaves and masters. And what do we do with any number of other texts? in the New Testament and in the Old Testament that speak about the same thing. Obviously, we cannot make this text here in Ephesians say something that it does not say. We cannot, for instance, turn this text into a diatribe against slavery. or even an overt prescription for slavery’s deconstruction.

    How then do we retain the text? Much more, how do we retain the apostle and the integrity of the scriptures, and at the same time do justice to the way in which we have been taught to read history, appreciate political reality, and express Christian sensitivities about such matters as justice and freedom.

    Well, one way some have endeavored to resolve this problem is to suggest that the Bible, and particularly now the Apostle Paul, were conditioned by their times, and therefore only expressing the social attitudes of the cultural environment in which they appeared.

    Furthermore, so it is said, although Paul’s statements do not expressly challenge or refute the institution of slavery, they do so implicitly. For the slaves and the masters here are addressed as members, collaterally and equally, of the Church of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the overall effect of Paul’s words was really the undermining of slavery, even its abolition. Not its protection, certainly not its promotion. However, it has not gone unnoticed that this position, which I have just stated, creates its own tensions.

    For example, can we avoid the power of the parallel between these verses, which we’ve read in Ephesians 6, verses 5 through 9, and what appeared previously, in Ephesians 5.22, to Ephesians 6.4. In other words, we find in Paul not just remarks in this context about slaves and masters, but also about children and parents, verses 1-4 in chapter 6, and wives and husbands, verses 22-33 of that fifth chapter. Since Paul’s comments in each of these units are deliberately in sync, since they parallel each other, it would seem abundantly evident that we have to treat each unit in the very same way. In fact, it is the force of this observation that has now, of late, driven some to suggest about parents and children, and his views about husbands and wives are just as arcane, are just as culture-bound and outmoded as his views on masters and slaves.

    And just as the Gospel set in motion the message concerning the abolition of slavery, even saintly honoring the institution, so also that gospel has set in motion the message about children’s rights, and that message prescription for anti-discipline and the promotion of a self-esteem evangel for child rearing. That gospel also set in motion, so we are told, the message about female co-headship in marriage, together with a redefinition of the nature of the family and a new understanding of the relationship between wives and husbands.

    Those who have suggested this approach have this going for them. They have labored to be consistent in the application of their method, and they have labored to maintain what they consider to be a credible biblical message in the modern world. They feel that if they go in a contrary direction, not only they, but their gospel becomes an embarrassment. How can we hold up our heads? in modern society. Our question this morning is whether these who have suggested this route have been either biblical or consistent. Have they been successful in their pursuit of a unified view of the Christian life? with respect to these three areas of interest marked out by Paul—marriage, family, slaves and masters. And have they been biblical, in tune with the Apostle Paul’s intention as he addresses the leaders then and by the Spirit now?

    Let’s begin with the issue of consistency. Yes, there is a consistency in method applied by these people of whom we’ve spoken that sees each of these three areas now—marriage, family, and labor—affected by the gospel. But should we also expect to see a consistency of effect upon all three areas? What I mean is this, if all three relationships are parallel, shouldn’t we expect the same impact from the gospel across the board?

    And if in one area, the area of masters and slaves, the goal is actually abolition, would not the impact of the gospel in the other areas be equal? Shouldn’t we expect abolition in them as well? And if the abolition in the one area is actually the abolition of the institution in view, do we not expect then the abolition of the institutions in the other instances? That is to say, if Paul’s message about masters and slaves really means the abolition of the institution of slavery, doesn’t his message about children and parents Wives and husbands really mean the abolition of marriage and the family.

    And tragically, isn’t this precisely the way in which a growing number of Christians have begun to live? repulsive, rampant divorce, abandonment, abortion, abuse, financial unaccountability, and absolute irresponsibility and perversions of all kinds. The consequences within the confessing Christian public, which both consciously and subconsciously lives as if Paul’s imperatives to Husbands and wives, parents and children are no more binding on them than his imperatives to masters and slaves.

    Of course there is ample justification offered for this attitude from within the Christian community. That justification summed up in the vain and misguided confession. I believe, I believe, this is my credo, I believe God wants me to be free. After all, my personal freedom is God’s greatest concern. And I am determined that no patriarchal notions, no antiquarian views of marriage, no old-fashioned opinions about a child’s place or a parent’s responsibility, no unwanted pregnancy, no financial obligation, no sexual identity or stereotype shall restrict my free movement to be in concert then with God’s chief interest for me, my personal freedom within this world.

    It would seem, would it not, that those who have thought themselves consistent in the application of their method inevitably fall beneath the weight of a position they have sought to maintain in the interests of their assured convictions that Paul’s position must mean the abolition of slavery, otherwise Paul’s credibility and the credibility of the Bible. are lost. But this failure on the part of these people, of course, is the result of a more serious failure still, that of not truly grasping the Bible’s intention, the Apostle’s meaning. Now it is very important to say at this point Paul’s comments are not meant to vindicate the modern institution of slavery based upon the notion that slavery is the solution to political dissent, such as has been practiced under communism. Nor do Paul’s statements vindicate the infamous system, the infamous system built up by Christians, built upon the practice of slave trading, which lay at the root of the slavery institution as practiced in this country for so many years.

    That institution depended upon what the Bible calls man-stealing. Exodus 21 verse 16. 1 Timothy 1 verse 10. Man-stealing. A sin, which you will note from that Exodus text, punished in the Old Testament by death. Oh, we got death, didn’t we? We have blood running from one end of this country to the other. horrible sufferings and his judgment. When John Newton, the slave trader, the man-stealer, came to Christ, he repented of all of his sins, including his sin of man-stealing. He later wrote, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, could save a wretch like me.

    But if now Paul, when he speaks about slaves and their masters in Ephesians 6 verses 5 through 9, doesn’t mean a solution to political dissent or that slavery which belongs to the wicked world of slave trading, what does he mean? He means what we suggested at the beginning of this message. He means that essentially economic and social arrangement in which someone has property in another, in which someone has ownership in another. That’s what he means.

    Now, you might find yourself recoiling from this definition as much as you did from any other. But before you recoil too far, let me suggest to you that what I am proposing offers you a consistent line for Paul’s argument, namely that the apostle means the institution of which he speaks in chapter 6, verses 5 through 9, to be just as perpetual, just as constant in Christian experience and within the world as he means the institutions of marriage and family to be. All three are treated alike, all three are affirmed. But how, you ask, is this possible? How is it possible for him, for the Apostle, for the Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, to affirm slavery, to affirm this distinction between slaves and masters, by any definition? because he understands that that of which he speaks is as common and as inescapable to life in this world as marriage and family. It is inescapable for us as it was for the Ephesians to whom Paul wrote. As inescapable today as it was then. Paul’s words therefore include us. We are in view.

    How so? You ask. I’m no slave. I’m no master. Let me ask you. Do you have a mortgage? I don’t care how you cut it. The bank owns you. I don’t care how you dress it up, how you finesse the language, the bank has ownership in you. You’re working for the bank. Do you have debts? Yes, it’s true. People actually do have property in others. It’s unavoidable. You cannot escape it. People do actually have ownership of others. It’s inescapable. That is at the heart of what Paul is saying. And what do we make of bankruptcy court?

    Being a little bit more general, are you an employee? Then someone has property in you. I don’t care how you dress it up. I don’t care what language you use. Someone has property in you. On the other hand, are you an employer? Have you purchased the labor of another? Then you are a master, and have property in those who serve you. The arrangement is inevitable. It is as automatic and as natural as the sun in the sky. You’re going to have to make a completely different universe in order to escape it.

    But notice now, in conclusion, What Paul says about slaves and masters is as well consistent with what he has said about marriage and family. Slaves and masters, just like children and parents and wives and husbands, are subjected to the gospel and informed in all of their relationships by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

    The husband cannot consider himself now apart from his Savior and his Savior’s love for his church. The wife cannot consider herself apart from the church and Christ’s love for his bride. A child must not consider his or her parent apart from the God and Father who stands behind that parent. And a parent cannot consider their children apart from the way in which the heavenly parent has dealt with his children. So also with slaves and masters. Is it not true? The slave cannot consider himself apart from that one who was the Lord who made himself the bond slave. And masters cannot consider themselves apart from that humbling activity of Christ and the consideration that they have. a master in heaven.”

    Truly then, we affirm the consistency of the apostle and the word of God, and rightly divided, it offers up rich reward. blessing for all of us, we God’s children, that we might live as we should. Father, we may chafe at your word. We might find ourselves emotionally in severe disagreement. We might rebel for a time, but we do ask you, Lord, that you would bring us to your feet. That in our submission to you, there would be that beautiful and wonderful submission to your word, that we might live in a way that is pleasing to you, even in a way in which Jesus Christ is evident in us and foremost for all of our considerations. Lord, bless your church even as she struggles in these matters and forgive her for her sins. We plead on our behalf, on behalf of others.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Fathers Who Know the Father

    Fathers Who Know the Father

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 1, 1996.

    About this sermon

    Christ’s own ministry focuses, at its center, on revealing the heavenly Father, a focus liberal theology has tended to flatten into a vague universal fatherhood available to anyone. Ephesians 6:4’s instruction to fathers assumes something more specific: fathers who actually know God the Father are the ones equipped to correct their own children rightly. What the verse is really asking for is knowing the Father, more than disciplinary technique.

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    Sermon transcript

    John also taught his disciples, and he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’

    And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves? For a friend of mine is in his journey, and he is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not, The door is now shut, my children are with me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needed. And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

    If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit? to them that ask him. And turning over to Ephesians chapter 6, reading at verse 4.

    And he fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Lord, we know the power of your word. And Father, we yearn for the fullness of that power at work in us, even as we give ourselves willingly and lovingly to that Word. Father, we are mindful of the labors in the interests of the Word throughout the world. We pray, Lord, that you would profit the Word and increase it here in this country and throughout the nations, even as you call those whom you have ordained unto everlasting life unto yourself by that word. Father, bless us in our prayers on behalf of the ministry of the Word, and bless us, Lord, in our giving, that we, out of our prosperity would direct our gifts, even sacrificially, to the work of the kingdom. And bless the gifts, O God, and multiply them in ways that are pleasing to you. We ask this through Christ, who is himself your gift to us. Amen.

    Jesus’ ministry can be called the revelation about the Heavenly Father. If you have been in the habit of thinking that Jesus’ ministry is above all else, at least as it is reported to us in the first three Gospels, the revelation about the kingdom of God, I ask you to place alongside the reality of the coming of the kingdom this revelation about God, our Heavenly Father. Now, it is quite important that we are aware of what is being said at this point.

    First of all, I am no friend, and neither is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a friend of the liberal position of what has been called modernism, that position that has clamored so incessantly for its doctrine of the eternal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. This position, the liberal position, claims that Jesus simply uncovered a monumental religious truth that had always been available to humanity. But until Jesus arrived, had remained buried beneath the religious primitivism and tribalism enshrouding the world’s population. Jesus’ message about the fatherhood of God, therefore, according to the liberal, announced an unprecedented advance in the evolutionary development of humanity’s religious consciousness. I’m merely quoting from Harry Emerson Fosdick. Before Jesus, according to Fosdick, God was thought to be a local warrior deity who guided and judged his people from the top of the mountain.

    But after Jesus, God became the Heavenly Father who cares indiscriminately, equally, and I might add non-judgmentally, for everyone. As I said, I am no friend, neither is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a friend of the liberal position and its caricatures of both the Old and New Testaments, and its reconstruction of Jesus into the guise of a modern humanitarian. But at the same time, I am no friend, and neither is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a friend of that conservative Christianity. that so emphasizes what God is from all eternity that it has absolutely no understanding of what God has done uniquely in the gospel.

    Yes, God is eternally king. Yes, he has been the Father from all eternity. And yes, the Old Testament does speak about God’s kingship and his fatherhood in both general and also in specific terms. But as much as we acknowledge these truths, still, with the coming of Christ, God’s kingdom and his message about God’s fatherhood literally explode upon the scene as if they had not formerly existed. The force of what Jesus declares and presents startles us, for it seems that his message about the kingdom and about his own Father in heaven are totally new, as if previously absent but now present. In this regard, concerning the kingdom, you will remember Jesus’ own words.

    Mark 1.15. The kingdom of God is at hand, as if it had not been present previously. He also says, Matthew 12, 28, the kingdom of God has come upon you, speaking of it as if it were a recent event. And Luke 17, verse 21. the kingdom of God is in your midst, having recently arrived.

    Along the same line, and equally, this concerning God’s fatherhood, Jesus announces an entirely new day, a new day of intimacy and access. are now given the overwhelmingly powerful invitation to address God directly as their Father, the force and the power of the opening for the Lord’s Prayer.

    But further, although these disciples are Jews, It is as if they have become now the children of God for the very first time. God’s great and new action in the dawning of the kingdom takes sinners, these Jewish sinners, who in their sin have trusted in their native heritage, and made of them sons of God in truth. God has come. and has taken ruined, stained sinners who, despite their pedigree, were, as Paul says, children of wrath, even as the rest, and made of them saints, belonging to their Heavenly Father’s realm. These newly born children of glory then are blessed with unheard-of nourishment and fatherly oversight, but even more, such access to God’s presence as has been never before known.

    Need I remind you of what the writer to the Hebrews says about all this, a text which we read this morning? in our call to worship. Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. and our bodies washed with pure water.” Even though Jesus in his ministry speaks before the actual accomplishment of all of these things, about which the writer to the Hebrews speaks, Jesus himself assumes the full gamut, the totality of the ministry, in issuing his invitation to all who are the children of God.

    Jesus says, ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you. Luke 11, verse 9. In this context, Jesus expounds the meaning of the revelation about the Heavenly Father. In the previous verses, 5 through 8 in that eleventh chapter in Luke, Jesus tells us, even close friends may be put out by a request for help from you at midnight. Still, though grudgingly, they rise and help you because of your persistence.

    The implication being, your Heavenly Father is even more accessible, being perfectly willing to respond to the children of the kingdom. But further in this context, Jesus says, verses 11 through 13, Your earthly fathers, while sinners, give you good gifts. How much more your Heavenly Father now gives the Holy Spirit to all who ask Him.

    In this day, then, this day of the arrival of the Kingdom and the unveiling of the Father of Glory as never before, in this day of new and unparalleled access to our Father in Heaven, We live confidently and even boldly in the sure and certain knowledge that our gracious, loving Father, who has made us his children, will receive us gladly and lovingly respond to us. In another passage in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus encourages his disciples and us through those disciples by telling them, that our Heavenly Father will not long delay in responding to their cries for help, those who cry for him day and night in faith. But you should know, the action of God in sending his only begotten Son into this world means more, of course, than the change in the ages, that transition by which the Kingdom now appears and advances towards its inevitable consummation, by which the fatherhood of our God wonderfully opens up for us as never before. Included in this change of the age is also a change in us. One aspect of this change in us and for us is that this new revelation of the Father of Glory creates anew fathers who now know how to be fathers because they have fellowship with their Father in Heaven.

    Here is what informs the Apostle Paul in his statement in Ephesians 6.4. Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

    It is very important that we are clear as to what is behind the Apostle’s statement. Paul’s appeal to these Ephesian fathers does not rest upon the basis of some general notion about the way things ought to be for the preserving of civilization. Nor does his appeal rest upon the basis of some automatically operative natural law undergirding a society at launch. Nor does his appeal rest upon the basis of some agreed-upon definition for family values and what would produce the most efficient and morally sound domestic operation and tranquility.

    And most certainly, his position does not rest upon the basis of an inspiring moment, one that someone might have had while attending a mass gathering when, in a filled stadium, fathers together with other males in an act of male bonding have regained their manhood by discovering that they don’t have to be embarrassed about singing real loud, hugging one another, and saying the name Jesus out loud in public.

    Now, the appeal that Paul makes to these Ephesian fathers is on the basis that they know the who because of our Lord Jesus Christ have been revealed to them as never before. The real promise keepers are those who are serious in the keeping of their vows made to the Father in light of the full, brilliant range of that revelation that has come in Jesus Christ, such revelation as is not disassociated from Christ and his work and the totality of it, including the Church. The real promise-keepers do not make the Church an afterthought, do not make the Church a subordinate category in their position. It is at the very forefront of their consciousness and who they are. And it is within that context they have made their vows, and they are determined to keep them as they have presented those vows before the Father in the name of the Son. The real promise keepers, then, are those who are serious in the keeping of their vows made to the Father in light of the full, brilliant range of the revelation that has come in Christ. and that which cannot be separated from Him, namely His Church.

    The fathers from this company of the real promise keepers respond to their children in the manner the Heavenly Father responds to His children. The Heavenly Father does not exasperate or frustrate His children, driving them to rage but rather makes himself easily, openly accessible to them, inviting their approach, giving to them graciously and even sacrificially. Fathers who know the Heavenly Father do the same. But further, as the text makes plain, seeing that which is behind it, the Heavenly Father does not make a mockery of his generosity by being the indulgent parent who feeds his children’s greed and selfishness. Instead, he disciplines and admonishes his children in keeping with the truth that has revealed his very own son and in the realm over which his Son presides, namely, the Church.

    When you read nurture and admonition in the Lord, or of the Lord, you must also understand that what the Apostle means is nurture and admonition of and in the Church, which belongs to the Lord. This does not diminish your home in its importance. This does not diminish your family. It provides merely the proper orientation for you to understand your family. Good fathers learn how to be good fathers at church. Fathers who know the Heavenly Father follow the Heavenly Father, imitate the Heavenly Father.

    Christian fathers must not allow their generosity to obliterate the appropriate nurture and correction found in the Lord himself and within his assembly. And they certainly must not teach their children to despise the authority in Christ’s Church. But notice now, in conclusion, the fact that this nurture and correction are specifically of the Lord and His Church, and that this fact is of the greatest encouragement to us. This is the case, first of all, because it means that we who are fathers are not alone in our calling to be good fathers, but are supported by others in this company of Christ’s assembly. Secondly, this is the case because the Lord Jesus Christ, in the full range of his own obedience, has not only been the perfect son of the Father, but the one in whom the perfection of the Father’s love and care is manifest for his own children.

    Therefore, you fathers must not despair of your performance as fathers, for even though you are called to repent of your failures, you must also realize that the God who now makes himself known as your Father and gladly grants you access to him for glorious communion, is the same God who gladly supplies you, as fathers, all you need for life and godliness through and in Jesus Christ your Savior. May God the Father grant to you fathers the full realization of these things. even as you resist provoking your children to wrath, and commit yourself to bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

    What a blessing, O God, your great and glorious work in sending your Son. How wonderful, O God, your mercy to us in granting us the Kingdom of Heaven. But Lord, we are also moved by this truth that as the kingdom has been given to us, so also you have given us yourself as a father, and you are a father to us, we your children. O God, this is instructive, and we pray that the instruction would not be lost to us, that as you are a father to us, and this recently revealed in Jesus Christ. We also recently have been enabled through Christ and by your grace to be fathers who are formed after your image and mottled by your love and your care. Lord, may it please you to grant the fathers of this congregation a love for you, such as the very magnificence of your graciousness to them is now seen in them as they relate to their children and to their families. This we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Grace Grounded in Eternal Love

    Grace Grounded in Eternal Love

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 24, 1996.

    About this sermon

    The gospel begins with a gift, grace itself, which means it begins with Christ and never with a demand. Ephesians 2:4 grounds God’s mercy in his own eternal love, apart from anything in the one who receives it. Covenant children inherit that same grace, and grace never licenses sin.

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    We are reading from Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2 beginning in verse 1. Ephesians 2 verse 1. Give your attention now to the reading of God’s word. And you were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prints of the power of the air, the spirit now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

    But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

    Then turning over to chapter 6 in Ephesians, verse 1. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth. Lord, may it please you to help your people in their hearing, that they may be helped in their doing. And Father, may it please you also to help me in my preaching, that indeed, by your Spirit, your people may be ministered to. Father, may it be my desire to minister to your people, and may it be your people’s desire to receive your word, that gladly that they might obey. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    It has been my contention in preaching to you on Ephesians 5.22-6.9, and now as we focus on the opening verses of chapter 6, it has been my contention that in living the Christian life, we must begin with the gift.

    This is that common confession that has come down to us through the ages, testifying to us that when this truth has been grasped, there has been an explosion of piety and righteous spirituality. from Augustine, to Luther and Calvin, to the Westminster Divines, in their company by century, John Bunyan, John Newton, in our own time, J. Gresham Machen. When there has been a grasp of this truth, there has been an explosion of piety and righteous spirituality. In our own lives, can you not yourself testify to the fact, when grace struck you, there was an internal explosion for you? We cannot, therefore, begin with our own efforts, with our own strivings, with our own merit.

    We must begin with the gift of God. This gift, as I have said to you throughout the course of these messages, is the most amazing gift. Indeed, amazing grace. For it is a gift into which we enter, into which we have been placed, more like a house than a present presented to us, a treasured item wrapped that we unwrap, then appreciate and keep by us. But this gift is even more marvelous than a house in which we might live, for it is actually a person whose life has been given to us and for us, in which the totality and the completion of our existence now finds orientation and expression. Simply put, the gift is Christ. We live in Him and in His perfect, complete life for us.

    When Paul, therefore, tells the wives of Ephesus, submit yourself to your own husbands as to the Lord, as he does in chapter 5, verse 22, he has in mind nothing less than these women living in the gift, living in Christ, who has been given for them and to them, while this Christ, in all the superlative nature of his perfect and complete submissiveness, lives in them. And when Paul tells the husbands of Ephesus to love your wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, as he does in chapter 5, verse 25 of Ephesians. He has in mind nothing less than these men living in the gift, living in Christ himself, who has been given for them and to them, while this Christ, in all the spectacular radiance of his own perfect and complete sacrifice for his bride lives in them. And when Paul tells the children of Ephesus to obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right, as he does in the first verse of the sixth chapter, he has in mind nothing less than these children living in the gift, living in Christ. who has been given to them and for them, while this Christ, in all the wonderful beauty of his own perfect and complete obedience as a child to his Father, lives in them.”

    So yes, I cannot say it too emphatically. or underscore it too much with my emotion. We must begin with the gift, with grace, with Christ himself in living the Christian life. And equally obvious to us by now, I trust, is this collateral truth. For me to progress in the Christian life I must continue with and abide in that gift, which is nothing less than Christ my Lord. Now, as glorious, as great, as compelling, refreshing, assuring, as positive as this It has this overwhelming brilliance for us precisely because of a truth of similar magnitude, but one as distressingly dark and awful as this truth is bright and hopeful.

    And in order that we might understand this better, I have read to you this morning from Ephesians chapter 2, and I ask you to look at the beginning of that chapter at verse 1. Here Paul says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. I want you to consider the importance of this statement, and that in context with respect to what has preceded, but especially this morning, with respect to what follows. For it is precisely against the background of this statement that Paul will now build, by contrast, his presentation of the gift of grace. For into this desperate darkness of our transgressions and sins, God’s luminous love shines. Consider, then, the death of which Paul speaks, this death which is ours.

    This death in which we lived left us intimately bound, not to God, but to our sin. And as the dead have no power to escape their condition, so we have no power to escape our condition. And how comprehensive, how complete our circumstance and situation not simply weighted down thoroughly by my own personal offenses against God, but as Paul goes on to say, we were dead in an age of sin, an age that is characterized by him as this world, in which every molecule of the atmosphere is dominated by the prince of sin, the prince of the power of the air. who exercises his authority over all his servants, not just the sons who disobey, but the children born to disobedience, born into the family of disobedience. I believe that you will agree with me. It is difficult to imagine a more devastating and depressing description as this. I am dead to God because of my personal sin, living in an age of sin, enveloped in an atmosphere of sin, ruled over by the prince of sin, with a family tree belonging to the line of sin.” But as Paul goes on to say in the third verse of the second chapter, This devastating and depressing description doesn’t apply simply to those that he’s addressing here presently in this Gentile congregation in Ephesus.

    It is not something that applies merely to the nations, separated as they are from Israel. For Paul could not be more forthright and brutally frank in his description of himself and his fellow Jews. Verse 3, Among whom, that is, among these sons of disobedience that he has just described, these sons of disobedience of Gentile stock As if from the same family tree, we Jews, all of us, also formerly lived in the lusts of our transgressions and sins, giving ourselves over to the spirit of this age in the flesh, the thoughts of our minds likewise subject to the ruinous air we breathe. So that we, the Jews, must be reckoned by our own very nature. since our lineage has provided us no escape as children of wrath. Not children born to wrath, but for wrath, for condemnation, just as all the Gentiles.

    I tell you that the distressingly dark and awful description of the human condition could not be more complete. All, Gentile and Jew, sealed within a tomb-like existence, transgressions and sins our coffin in which we by nature are born, that coffin belonging to the world of the flesh and its desires, that coffin filled with the stifling air of Paul as if it had come from the very lungs of Satan himself, our minds deprived then of spiritual oxygen, and we buried in the deepest depth With the marker over our grave reading, here lies a son of disobedience, a child of wrath, hellbound just like everyone else. No escape, no exit, no possibility of anything any different, because, after all, the dead can do nothing.

    Unless you get the point, you can’t go on. Unless you get the point, you don’t have the gift. You haven’t received a gift. You don’t understand. But Paul goes on, marvelously, wonderfully. He goes on. The description that I have just given is not the conclusion. It is prelude. And now comes the symphony. Hearing what has just been declared, you are able better to appreciate what Paul has said in the first chapter of this epistle, and especially now what comes next. Particularly what he says at the opening of verse four.

    But God. But God. I do not know a more sublime transition in all of Scripture. So powerful, so profound, so concentrated is it, over against the utter hopelessness and helplessness of humanity. Jew, Gentile, black, white, Asian, Indian, stands God himself, the only one who can bring the dead to life.

    And this he has done, says Paul, as the expression of his rich mercy, a holy compassion, a holy pity, which he has directed towards us in our miserable estate. But you must not think that this holy compassion, this pity, for us in our misery, the sole and sufficient ground for moving God to do that which is impossible, respecting us.

    For to suggest such a thing allows His action, then, to rest in a sort of negative merit. In other words, because of the magnitude of my misery, God, in His pity, has counted me worthy of His kindness. Furthermore, to leave God’s action rest in His compassion and His pity suggests that when our misery is removed and resolved, He has no further ground for His affections toward us. Is love being only to the extent of our misery? But Paul will have none of us. To be sure, he doesn’t dismiss God’s compassion and His pity for us in our miserable estate, but he sees that compassion and pity grounded in God’s great love. This means, then, that the pity is neither the ground nor the extent of that love, but rather the cause of that pity and compassion which he demonstrates.

    He is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He has loved us. This love is inscrutable, the reasons for it being specifically directed toward us, being directed toward you or toward me, being hidden in God Himself and in His counsels of eternity from before the foundation of the world. God shows the riches of his mercy then because of his eternal love for his elect, known to him from all eternity. But now, while the elect are dead in their sins, they are given life, the gift of life from the dead, through the action of God in raising them with Christ in Christ’s own resurrection. Verse 5 spells out the way in which he has done this.

    Such is the gift that is not the type to be unwrapped, examined, depreciated, and set on the table beside us. This gift is one in which we find ourselves. Such is its nature that we are placed inside of it. This gift is Christ himself, the one in whom we have been made alive, raised with him from the dead. the very one whose life is perfect and complete and even secure in glory. For by grace, for by the gift of God, for by Jesus Christ, you have been saved.

    But now let me return to Ephesians chapter 6, the opening verses. and say a few things against the background of what has been stated concerning what Paul has to say here. First of all, the full lesson about our spiritual deadness and the transition to life through and in Christ’s resurrection must be appropriated by all of us, even by you children. Paul has not forgot what he has stated earlier when he comes to the sixth chapter to make his points with regard to the children. What he has to say assumes all that he has said before.

    This means that even though you, a child, have been raised in a Christian home, and never known a time when you didn’t believe in Jesus, you must decidedly acknowledge that you too were dead in your transgressions and sins, and that one with a common humanity in the most desperate of spiritual conditions. You dare not presume upon your position within a Christian family. You dare not presume upon a Christian upbringing.

    You must rest in Christ. as all must rest in Christ. And therefore, you must decidedly acknowledge that you too were dead in your sins, and at one with a common humanity in the most desperate of spiritual conditions. You children must acknowledge Paul’s description of human depravity to be a description of you in order for his description of God’s grace in Christ to include you. It behooves us as parents, with respect to our children, to labor with them that they understand this, and that they understand it clearly. Grace, be it for an adult or child, makes no sense except against the background of our unworthiness and our hopelessness.

    Secondly, and finally, there is no justification for you, a child, to think that because you now have the gift that you can ignore God’s commandments. Just as God’s law must not be used as a shield for self-righteousness, God’s grace must not be used as an excuse for license. I’m in, and therefore I’m at liberty to disregard the law of God. I’m at liberty to disregard His commandments. For even if I break them, I am in.”

    Paul reminds the children of Ephesus of this very thing in quoting to them the fifth commandment in verses 2 and 3 of that sixth chapter. Therefore, as children of the great King, through Jesus Christ, you children Even the children of this church must grow up understanding more and more perfectly the nature and the extent of God’s grace, His gift to you, and your privilege to live by His law.

    Father, we ask for a strong fellowship in this congregation, one in which parents and children are agreed. They are agreed about your grace. They are agreed about their own depravity and sinfulness. They are agreed about the greatness of Jesus Christ, the hope of salvation to be found in him, and they are agreed that they must live by your commandments.

    Father, grant us mercy even as we consider these things, and as we do, may we be proved your children. Lord, in our love for you, may we obey. and that in gratitude for the salvation which you have brought to us. You have given us a gift. You have heaped upon us your mercy and that because of your great love for us. Hear us, O God. We ask this in Jesus name, in the name of the one who is

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Grand Theology for Children

    Grand Theology for Children

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 17, 1996.

    About this sermon

    A simple-looking exhortation to children carries grand theology, and the common split of Ephesians into doctrine and application is superficial. The phrase ‘in the Lord’ in 6:1 does the real work. Children can obey because Christ has already obeyed on their behalf.

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    Sermon transcript

    And we are reading from verse 41. Luke 2, verse 41. This is the Word of God. Now, his parents went up to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.

    But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey, and they saw him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed.

    And his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be about my father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

    And then turning over to Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1. Ephesians 6, verse 1. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

    Pray with me now. Oh God, deal with our hearts Indeed, O Father, we pray, we who are of faith, that our faith would be active and exercised in and by your Word. And we have come, O God, to your Word, that we might be built up in this, our most precious faith. And Father, we would also ask on behalf of those who struggle with the faith, or as yet find themselves outside the faith. Again, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Lord, may you be gracious and grant faith today, here and in many places. for Jesus’ sake.

    Amen. despite their simple, direct, and practical tone, Paul’s words to children in Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, should never be allowed to slip from their grand, exalted, doctrinal, theologically vital heights. By this I mean, these words should never descend to the barren, sterile level of moralistic instruction. We must not suppose that we have touched in these words the bedrock of, or the promise for, all future health, wealth, and long life. accrued to us because of our behavior and because of our moral effort. These words are not meant to be a mere reminder of common-sense family values.

    True in and of themselves, and quite capable of functioning for us, relatively free of the powerfully expressed gospel that is laid throughout the entirety of this letter from Paul to the Ephesians. Paul, therefore, does not mean Ephesians 6, 1 through 3 to be any less severely or profoundly theological. that he does, for instance, Ephesians 2 verses 8-10, a passage which many of you have committed to memory, where Paul speaks about salvation through faith, that salvation being a gift of God communicated exclusively according to God’s grace. Or Ephesians 2 verses 14 through 16, where Paul speaks about the creation of one new man, beyond Jew and Gentile, through the cross of Jesus Christ. This means then that we cannot fall into the usual partitioning of the letter to the Ephesians, by which we are told that the first three chapters deal with doctrine and the last with the ordinary, more practical matters of Christian life. You should be aware that Paul’s position is not even doctrine leads to life, as sound and as orthodox as that may seem. Rather, Paul’s position is this.

    Doctrine is life. and life is doctrine. Doctrine is life, and life is doctrine. Let me ask you, is this doctrine or life? There is one body and one spirit. just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

    Given the ordinary division of the letter to the Ephesians, since these lines which I’ve just read to you come from chapter 4, verses 4 through 6, then they must be about life and not about doctrine. So goes the ordinary interpretation. Or how are these words to be taken? Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.

    Doctrine or life? Well, since I just read to you Ephesians 5, verse 25, from the latter part of Ephesians, these words, according to the common interpretation, must be about life, not about doctrine. Or what about finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the full honor of God, that ye may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Doctrine or life?

    Well, naturally, life, since these verses and lines which I’ve read to you come from Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 and 11. I’m being facetious, as you know. Each of these quotations is no less doctrinal than practical in orientation, no more concerned with the life situation of God’s people than with their doctrinal integrity.

    But sadly, we have encouraged the doctrinally ignorant the doctrinally indifferent, and the doctrinally lazy, with an all-too-willing, all-too-easy surrender to the superficial division of the epistle to the Ephesians. And in this we have encouraged those whose hearts and heads are telling them, you know, you really have no doctrinal aptitude. You have no real doctrinal interest. You have no doctrinal predisposition.

    Therefore, you should dispense with all this cumbersome, intellectualistic, heavy, boring doctrine and get on with some more practical directives, the action items for real Christian living. Don’t delay long, then, in what you judge to be doctrinal sections of Scripture. Hurry on to practical advice. Now, I hope I’m not being too harsh. But such an attitude of heart and mind doesn’t come from God. So you tell me, from whence does it come? All of this only reveals a deep and basic misunderstanding of the apostles’ ministry and message.

    He intends no separation between doctrine and life, between theory and practice, between intellectual theology and application. For him, doctrine is life, and life is doctrine. While both are expressive, not of a division, of ideas in the brain on the one hand, and moral actions on the other, but of a unified existence of the whole, the entire person, and that because of the intrusive, gracious, gloriously breathtaking work of God in Jesus Christ. That’s the foundation of it all. The Apostle is not idea-centered, he’s not even morality-centered. He is event-centered. God has done something. And all ideas and all moral attitudes and estimations flow forth from that.

    This means, then, that for Paul, as he writes Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, He is giving us testimony supercharged with witness concerning the intrusive, gracious, gloriously breathtaking work of God in Jesus Christ. Yes, Paul’s instruction to children are filled with theology. Paul’s instruction to children preaches, proclaims gospel. And I might point out in this regard, in speaking this way to the children, Paul expects fully to be understood by them.

    He expects fully to be understood by them, not by their parents, but by them. Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Paul therefore will have none of this parental or ecclesiastical intervention from those claiming to be wiser than God. He will have none of this protective coddling but suggests our children must be shielded from the doctrinal level of religious living, because these matters are too confusing and beyond.

    Better that we simply tell our children that they should obey us, we their parents, and be done with it. And if they challenge us and ask us why, we should convince them. that this is best for the better working of the family unit, in which everyone has his proper place. And if God enters the discussion at all, as well he might to shore up our case as parents, we should say that God likes nice children, and most certainly will reward obedient children.

    Do I need to ask you to imagine the consequences of generation after generation raised on such drivel? Tragically, you don’t have to imagine at all, do you? Because you see the consequences everywhere around you. In a culture, supposedly one-time Christian, that first decided not to speak to its children about the gospel, but increasingly can’t even speak to its children about God.

    We are living in a macrocosmic Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I’m tempted to say it. Oh, why not? Our nation, as far as children are concerned, are going to U.P. Sunday School. mainline church Sunday school. We are now faced with a broad-based church and a society informed by that church which can no longer present its children with the biblical environment and constraint for their moral actions.

    I’m reminded in this context of my brother Jim’s experience while he was a graduate student years ago in Cleveland at Western Reserve University. His lab partner in an anatomy class was a professed Christian, a young lady who confessed to him and then constantly bugged him about the fact that she couldn’t make up her mind whether to sleep with her boyfriend. This went on for days and weeks. Finally, Jim shut her up by asking her, why don’t you? Jim later said that he never saw anything so tragic and desperate as the vacant look on that young woman’s face. Indeed, Why didn’t she? She had no answer.

    We are now faced with a broad-based church and a society informed by that church which can no longer present its children with the gospel environment and constraint for their moral actions. The past stands contrary to all of this, and to us as well, if somehow we, in all of our conservative refinement and orthodox self-assurance, have allowed the gospel’s doctrinal vibrancy and living theology to be read out, to be dismissed from our appropriation of texts like Ephesians 6, 1 through 3. Shame on us! Shame on us if, while we are wrapping ourselves in our orthodoxy, we have reduced this passage to a bare principle, a law for guaranteed God-sanctioned domestic success and tranquility. That this might not happen to us. But it might not happen to you children who are addressed directly by this text.

    It is of greatest importance that you be alert to the doctrinal vibrancy and the living theology of Paul’s words. And to this end, you must know what Paul means by his words in the Lord. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. First of all, you must know to whom these words refer.

    Yes, we all call God, in the totality of his person, the Lord. We find this title used concerning God throughout the whole of Scripture, Old and New Testaments. However, more often than not, Paul uses this title, Lord, and specifically this phrase, In the Lord, to describe Jesus Christ. In chapter 3, verse 11 of this very epistle, Paul speaks about God’s eternal purpose which he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord. There’s the phrase, there’s the explication of it. And that’s Paul’s meaning here. He is referring to Jesus Christ as Lord. But secondly, you must know, if you are to grasp the vibrant doctrinal significance of Paul’s words, you must grasp what these words in the Lord describe.

    Do they describe the children? Do they describe the parents or someone or something else? Well, of course, now Paul is assuming the children in this text, those whom he is addressing, he is assuming that they are in the Lord. That’s the basis upon which he addresses them.

    They are in the church. They are baptized, they are receiving the instruction of the ministry of the Word, and they are expected to respond to it. So, yes, Paul assumes that these children are in the Lord, they are of the Church, they belong in the Church, they are members of the Church.

    And more than likely, their parents also are in the Lord. Their parents have brought them. So yes, the children are in the Lord, the parents are in the Lord, but Paul in this context, in this instance, doesn’t mean his words in the Lord to describe either the children or the parents.

    Instead, he means his words to describe the obedience. of the children. Their obedience is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you might be taken aback. You might be asking yourself, what could he possibly mean by this? In order to answer that question, we must decide what Paul specifically means by the connection, the connection of the children’s obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. Does he mean, for instance, to call attention to the limits which children owe to their parents when it comes to obedience? Well, yes.

    There is certainly something of that in what Paul is saying. You children are not obliged to obey your parents when they command you to sin, when they command you to commit a crime, when they command you to do something that is heinously wicked or just plain wicked. But hopefully neither you nor these children to whom Paul writes were often faced or ever faced with such a situation as that. Well then, if Paul is not primarily interested in the limits of obedience, what is his concern?

    Does he have in mind an obedience that is in the Lord because it is an obedience that is as unto the Lord? This too might be a helpful way of looking at the matter. For surely there is that relationship between the Lord, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and our parents, in which we are to see the pattern and the authority of the Lord himself in the figures of our parents. And we should love and honor and respect and even fear our parents as we do the Lord. But as proper as this is, Paul’s thought runs in a different direction.

    You see, this obedience that is in the Lord is the obedience that is found in the Lord himself. And it is at this point we are brought home in the text. and all the marvels of the gospel began to spill out. And you begin to become amazed afresh at the full provision of grace in God and his salvation for us. The obedience that is in the Lord is the obedience found in the Lord himself, who according to the gospel not only obeyed perfectly his earthly parents, and while on earth is heavenly Father, for us, for us, that obedience was for us.

    But this one who is now called the Lord is alive, raised from the dead, forever living, obediently in his Father’s glorious presence. And it is this which is placed at your disposal. Hear them. The Bibles of the Gospel are read out of the text, and you begin to see just how much even matters as ordinary and as common as obedience to parents. cannot be disassociated from the glorious, vital theology and doctrine that emanates from the gospel.

    You cannot do it. You cannot lose the gospel when you come to these texts, because if you lose the gospel, you lose the power. You lose the effectiveness. And all of your efforts are empty. And in the end, they are utterly vain. The gospel then is found for you, you children, in this command. Even as you consider your inability even as you consider your failure, even as you consider your sin and your disobedience against your earthly parents and against your Heavenly Father.

    But the obedience you say, to which you have been called, and into which you have entered, is the already perfect obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, because he is living now, continues to be one, into whom you may enter by faith, through whom and by whose gospel his obedience avails for you.

    And you are impelled, because you are in him, to obey as he obeys. You love him, don’t you? You love your Lord, don’t you? Out of this love and the effectual union that you sustain with him, your obedience flows. But at the end of the day, you know It is really His obedience that is at work in you.

    So it is all of Him. Ephesians 6, 1-3 preaches high doctrine. It is filled with theological vibrancy. He declares to you the gospel environment and constraint upon your moral action in all respects. And that gospel environment and that constraint is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Himself.

    Amen. Our God, we who are older, and parents, We who are adults, beyond the years of our childhood, may look back upon our childhood with even a measure of shame and a deep sense of disgrace. And Father, we who are presently children not yet adults, are those also who may look upon our situation and condition and be struck in the heart because of our sin. Yet Lord, how gracious you are, for Jesus has come He has lived through the whole of our life, from childhood to adulthood.

    And He is without sin. And not only so, He lives now in your presence. In such righteousness that is His, He is able to dispense. And He gives it to us. And we in delight, O God, live for him. Our sins are covered, and our obedience is invigorated. And we thank you for that, even as we obey our parents in the Lord, knowing that this is right. through Christ, your Son, who is at your right hand, who serves obediently even now. Amen. In conclusion, we are singing 656. Okay. Yeah. you

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Even Children in the Heavenly Battle

    Even Children in the Heavenly Battle

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 17, 1996.

    About this sermon

    Believers’ heavenly life with Christ is a present reality as well as a future hope, as Ephesians 1:3 and 2:5-6 say explicitly. ‘Heavenly places,’ the phrase of 1:20-21 and 6:12, means the same thing in both places. Even children stand in the spiritual battle those heavenly places describe, and their age shields them from none of it.

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    Sermon transcript

    Tonight we are returning to Ephesians, and we are in Ephesians 2, beginning at verse 1. This is God’s word. And you were dabbed in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now is working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

    But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he has loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

    Then turning over to chapter 6, at verse 1, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. Our God, even now, in distant places, your people are taking heart because of your word. And Father, it is pleasing you to establish for yourself witness to the power of your name and the glory of your son.

    Oh, God, build your church, even as you have committed yourself to build it in and through Jesus Christ and that by the spirit. Hear us, O God, that we would not be left behind in the matter of edification. But rather, Lord, be encouraged all the more as we see others, as we hear about others, built up in the faith. May this come as refreshment to our souls, and may we delight, O God, in such a way that our joy is joined to theirs, even as they celebrate your goodness. O Lord, hear for we would have your work in our souls, even the work of your word, to the full. We pray this through the one who is the living word, Jesus Christ. Amen.

    This morning I started down a trail that I intend to follow this evening. It was my plan to continue with my series by way of reminder and its concern to summarize the message coming from this pulpit over the years. My intention with that series is to conclude it with sermons on the subjects of the Covenant and then on the five points of Calvinism. But this evening I ask you to indulge me as I pursue further the issue I addressed this morning, namely the grand, exalted, doctrinal, theologically vital heights belonging to and informing texts like Ephesians 6, 1 through 3. My interest tonight is very broad, and has to do with the radiant, beaming expansiveness of glory, and our lives which belong to the realm of glory.

    What I want you to see is that Paul in no way intends for us to lose sight of or lose our grip upon that glory, to lose sight of or lose our grip upon the heavens themselves when he speaks to us about those matters that concern our daily living. For Paul, children know less than adults. must appreciate the heavenly vantage point from which the Apostle speaks. For this one, the Apostle, conceives of himself as speaking in Christ in the sight of God, as one who is already positioned in heaven and speaking from that vantage point even as he declares God’s message to those who are in the earth. But it’s not just a matter of his own proclamation. It is also a matter of the living of the people of God, the lives of the people of God. For they, no less than he, are positioned in glory. For Paul then, children no less than adults are to appreciate that which has been given to them by grace in Christ.

    Namely, a repositioning so that we also have the vantage point of glory as we live. Now Ephesians is the letter. Ephesians is the letter to have before us when dealing with this subject. For you will remember how Paul begins things in the very first chapter at the outset of this letter. It’s hard to imagine anything more glorious than that third verse of the first chapter. Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. I plead with you not to hurry over those words. I implore with you that you meditate upon them.

    You must not think that Paul is making here some general reference about the heavenly places being our goal eventually, as if he were referring to the common biblical hope that we shall march through life, much like Christian in Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress, and shall arrive at the celestial city at the end of the matter. at the close of the day. This, of course, is true, as Bunyan saw and understood. And I was powerfully reminded of this very truth this morning, when Peter Jansch, I believe, was finishing out his memorization of the Children’s Catechism. Question 144, what will become of the righteous in the day of judgment? Answer, they shall be taken to heaven. Question 145, what is heaven? Answer, a glorious and happy place where the righteous shall be forever with the Lord.

    Now, I don’t know about you. But when I hear those questions and answers, I want to sit down and think about it for a while. Or should I say, I want to sit down and meditate on it for a while, on what has been affirmed and confessed in these words. And I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m liable in that meditation to get a little choked up.

    But as wonderful as this is, this affirmation and confession, this marvelous truth that is right at the center of Bunyan’s vision as he writes Pilgrim’s Promise, to consider our pilgrimage and to think of ourselves as being taken to heaven by Jesus to live in that place of glory at the conclusion of the day, the end of the matter.

    Paul, yet, has something else in mind when he speaks as he does in Ephesians 1.3, when he speaks there about the heavenly places.

    For Paul, you see, heaven is not only a future hope to which he, by grace from God, presses until he attains to the resurrection of the dead. Heaven is not only a future hope, it is also present reality. And it is in this precise sense of the matter that Paul speaks of blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. The heavenly places, therefore, are not only the destination to which we shall be brought at death or at the end of the world, but those places into which we have been already brought, that we might begin to enjoy the full complement of blessings belonging to the Holy Spirit. It is Paul’s corollary conviction, as is brought out in what follows that third verse in the first chapter, it is Paul’s corollary conviction that God, having brought us to this point, to spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ, that we, by this route and in this reality, have actually touched the eternal purpose of God for us. and that for which we were chosen and predestined from before the foundation of the world. Our present spiritual blessing in the heavenly places belongs to the administration of God, who by His Spirit brings us into the full redemption of His own possession at the resurrection.

    I have just surveyed for you verses 3 through 14 of that first chapter. Now, if you have any doubt about the fact that Paul means anything less than present contact with heaven and even an abiding contact in heaven, as a contemporary blessing for Christian life, I invite you to look then at Ephesians 2, verses 5 and 6, a text which we read this evening. Paul, in this context, speaks to the fact that we were dead in our trespasses and in our sins. But God, that fourth verse, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ.

    That is, when Christ was brought to life from the dead in the resurrection, we were counted with him. We were numbered with him, we were in him, and this in keeping with God’s eternal plan who brought Christ to life in that resurrection and us with him. But in being raised up with Christ, we who share in his resurrection have likewise become participants in his exultation into the heavens, there to enjoy the blessings at his Father’s right hand. He seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

    Paul clearly means, therefore, for these saints in Ephesus and us through them, that we are to realize the environmental and atmospheric change which, by grace, has been brought about because of God’s work in Christ. Because of our union with Christ, we have entered into this new heavenly environment and atmosphere. And it is this heavenly environment and atmosphere which is the primary arena for our existence. Now it is even the prior arena for our existence.

    We live in and from heaven, and all our activities bear the stamp of the transcendent culture of glory. even as we give ourselves back to life in this world, and that in imitation of Christ himself, in manifest servanthood for sacrificial labors in this world to the glory of God, be it in worship or work, labors of necessity or labors of charity. graciousness and clear-eyed wisdom for my home, or responsibilities with respect to my job, whether I am a wife or a husband, a child or a parent, a slave or a master.

    The point of origination is heaven, not the earth. You must begin from above. You must start from the end, and you work backwards, and you work down. Any other direction is the contradiction of grace. You are forfeiting what has been given you in Christ. If you don’t start with heaven, you don’t get there.

    Because what you are saying is, you can actually work yourself, in some fashion, to that destination. obtaining unto the resurrection and gaining glory, is merely coming into possession of what we have been already given. That’s the irony of the Gospel, and that is its power. It is not then, you see, that the Apostle Paul is caught up in what some have said is a heavenly-mindedness that makes him of no earthly value. That is far afield from anything that the Apostle Paul would recognize as belonging to the gospel that he proclaims.

    You see what is happening to the man. He realizes that in the death, resurrection, and ascension, He, an object of God’s love, has been so united to Christ that he actually participates in those events, and that he presently is seated with Christ in glory.

    But who is this one to whom he is bound? It is the one who bears the wound marks of his own humiliation. the one who gave up his position in glory and made himself of no reputation, taking upon himself the form of the servant and gave himself back into the world that he might there suffer the death of the cross. What then might be expected of us who are united to this Christ? We are united to the one who bears the wound marks of his own humiliation, and we are compelled by that to give up whatever position we have, and whatever claim we have, to sacrifice ourselves by condescension back to this world for service in it under God’s glory.

    As you know, I trust none of what I have said to you this evening is inconsistent with what Paul says elsewhere. In Philippians 3, verse 20, he tells his readers about their citizenship in heaven. He says our citizenship is there, by which he informs them and us about the prior and primary arena in which we in all our rights of citizenship function. Colossians 3 verse 3 tells us that our life presently is hid with Christ in God. And Paul’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit makes it plain that the Spirit himself ministers to us in such a way so as to introduce us in our salvation to the higher and ultimate world of transcendent glory, the Spirit being the down payment of our inheritance. communicating the very substance of that inheritance presently.

    Paul speaks of this in 2 Corinthians 1.22 and also in Ephesians 1.14. But before we end tonight, I want to ground what I have been saying to you from Ephesians a bit more firmly in the history of salvation. I want to open up for you a little better Paul’s use of the term, the heavenly places, as it is used in the letter to the Ephesians, and show you that it has its roots in Old Testament history, and what Paul is actually telling us is that what was anticipated in that history is now fulfilled in what has been accomplished in Christ. All of this is opened up for us when we relate the heavenly places, to which Paul refers repeatedly in Ephesians, when we relate the heavenly places to the word inheritance, which also appears a number of times in this epistle. Now, I want you to think about it.

    In the Old Testament, what was the inheritance? that stood foremost to the minds of most Jews. Inheritance was, in fact, viewed to be the land of Canaan, into which Joshua brought the children of Israel. In fact, no book in the Old Testament more concerns itself with the issue of inheritance than the book of Joshua. You might recall the stories of that book about the entrance into the land and then the struggle which Joshua and the tribes had in gaining completed dominion over that inheritance. In the end, we are told about Israel’s possession of the inheritance, yet how they struggled.

    Yes, they have dominion, it seems, but yet there are portions that are not under their control. Ephesians is the New Testament book of Joshua. But now, in this book, the inheritance, as Paul is making it clear, is no longer the land of Canaan, nor anywhere else in the present earth. And the leader is no longer that one who came after Moses, that Jew who died so long ago, but in actual fact the Son of God who was resurrected, who enters into his inheritance not by walking between the parted waves of the Jordan River, but by undergoing the baptism of the death on the cross, whose warfare is not with Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Gergesites, Anorites, Jebusites, or any other earthly item. Now, I hope you remember that.

    But as Ephesians is prosecuting its case, and as Paul is preaching to us from it, he is endeavoring to convince us that Christ’s warfare is against rulers, authorities, powers, dominions, and names in the heavenly places. And that’s what he stresses in chapter 1, verses 20 and 21.

    These opposing spiritual powers he brings into subjection under his speech. Nor is Paul’s position now, as it works itself out, that the final eschatological Joshua directs his attention to the heavenly places and its usurpatious rulers, while we, living in this world, give ourselves over for the sake of a new Canaan here. Namely, instead of just a piece of real estate in the Mediterranean world, we have the whole and that our battles are pursued against earthly, hostile governments, governments that resist the claims of King Jesus, as our obedience to the demands of our exalted Lord procures conquest for us over the entire earth. In fact, Paul makes the point, just as the inheritance is heavenly, so also is the enemy. This is what he says, not just with respect to Christ, but with respect to us also.

    And that’s how he concludes in the sixth chapter of the twelfth verse. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, powers, wicked forces of darkness, spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. I plead with you in this regard. For the Reformed Church has been flagged in its history with those who have said to us, though there is this spiritual dimension to Christ’s battle against spiritual forces, And there is that spiritual dimension to our own struggle.

    Yet the real and true and vital battle is with flesh and blood opponents to the gospel and the claims of King Jesus. It is my judgment that that flies directly in the face of what the Apostle tells us in Ephesians. And I judge that there is no competent exposition of Ephesians that can hold to that position. If there is to be any battle with regard to flesh and blood opponents, it must first of all begin with a clear-headed, clear-eyed understanding of the heavenly arena.

    The sad truth is that I fear those who wish so much to conquer the world for Jesus don’t give heaven much of a thought at all. In fact, it functions as an afterthought. You have to give it up. And that is a message that needs to be read out loud and clear over the Reformed Church throughout the world. You have to give it up.

    Even then, the call for children to obey their parents concerns the battle against such hostile forces as are arrayed in heavenly places. Unseen threats. Those then that intrude upon that inheritance which is theirs they then learning to stand in their Savior against all encroachment, even be that encroachment from hell. A child standing up to hell and winning Yes.

    And I say to you, a child standing up to hell and winning, what earthly power or force is his match? None. Do you know who you are? Do you understand that the whole world turns for you? That you are at the center of the heart of the God of the universe. And because you are secure in heavenly places, you don’t have to be afraid. and that’s the glory. It is truly better than anything Joshua could give us. We all should praise God for this one who is greater than, better than, Joshua. breath.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Christ Draws the Children Near

    Christ Draws the Children Near

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 3, 1996.

    About this sermon

    Paul’s brief instruction to children in Ephesians 6:1-3 is theologically brilliant, and no afterthought to the household code. Christ draws children near to himself even amid the temple’s chaos in Matthew 21, and that gives the pattern behind Paul’s instruction. Paul addresses children directly with the gospel.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning our scripture reading begins in Matthew 21. We are reading from verse 12. This is God’s word. Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple. and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seat of them that sold dogs, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David, they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? Jesus saith unto them, Yea, have ye never read? Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise. And he left them, and went out to the city of Bethany, and he lodged there.”

    Then turning over to Ephesians chapter Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. I want to suggest to you this morning that what you have in front of you in Ephesians 6, verses 1 through 3, is a piece of apostolic brilliance, a gem calculated and generated by the Holy Spirit to be a most glorious blessing to the Church of Jesus Christ until he comes again.

    So brilliant is it that its light reaches out to the previous section in Paul’s letter, the section dealing with wives and husbands. This section will help them to illuminate that previous section and also the following section in which Paul deals with slaves and masters.

    But unfortunately, few passages are looked at so often and in such a lackluster pedestrian fashion as this one. Few passages are treated as this one is. Few passages are treated pedantically as this passage is, generating a bit of somnolent rather than responsible exegesis.

    First of all, we must realize the force of the address. Paul is speaking to the children of the Church. This, then, is a public letter. It is to be read in the Church. It wasn’t coming to the Church as just another piece of correspondence to be filed away by the pastor of the congregation, or even as a missionary communique, as welcome as that might be.

    Instead, this is in a letter from the Apostle Paul, and it comes with the authority all the authority of his office. Have you thought recently about what it meant for the apostle Paul to be so described, for him to bear that title? The word apostle means one who is sent, one who is commissioned. It is even used with respect to Jesus Christ himself in Hebrews 3 verse 1, where Jesus Christ is called the apostle of our confession. It has the general sense of an ambassador, an envoy, an emissary.

    Specifically in its New Testament sense, it has in view those who carry the office within the Church, Those who had seen, yes, seen, the risen Christ, and had been directly commissioned by him for service. Therefore, not all preachers and teachers in the New Testament are apostles. There is everyone who saw the risen Christ an apostle. Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ. She is not an apostle. But notice the environment out of which the term apostle rises.

    I remind you of the words that I mentioned earlier—ambassador, envoy, emissary. Those words suggest a governmental background, a regal and a royal setting, as the king sends out his emissary to deliver his message. And that is the dimension so often missed by messages on this text.

    Paul is delivering a message from the king, the great king, the glorious ruler of the universe and his exalted son to those who are the privileged subjects of his realm. And in this case, Who might those subjects be? They are the children. Think of it. The apostle of God the Father, the ambassador of Jesus Christ, comes with a message from the throne, a message to children. The children themselves. are addressed. But now I want you to consider once more where they are addressed.

    To be sure, what they are called may well be judged appropriate for a domestic setting and for their domestic relations. Those that they sustain in their own homes. Children of their parents. However, the place in which they hear this command is not in their homes, but in the church. What do you think? As nice as that would have been, that each of these children in the congregation at Ephesus received their own personalized letter from the Apostle Paul. Maybe they could get it by e-mail. Well, of course not.

    They heard Paul’s message in church. They came to church, and there they received the apostles’ message. These children were in church where the apostolic word coming from the throne of the king was delivered. They were able to comprehend what was being said.

    Children, obey your parents. And they were in church, not in some junior church or some children’s church, God forbid. You actually think that the Apostle Paul went around on his missionary circuit organizing children’s churches in those congregations that he formed. I plead with you for a little sanity. In fact, there may well be some connection between the command that children obey their parents and the place. Could it be that some of the children in the Ephesian church were giving their parents a hard time about going to church? Therefore, the command, children, obey your parents and stop giving your parents a difficult time about being where both they and you know you ought to be.

    At the same time, be aware of how the setting of the Church heightens the glory of the entire matter. You see, the Church has already in this letter been described as Christ’s body. It has been described as the fullness of Him who fills all in all. You can check that out in the first chapter, verses 22 and 23. The Church has already been described in this letter as God’s household, chapter 2, verse 19. A holy temple in the Lord, verse 21 of that second chapter. A dwelling of God in the Spirit, chapter 2, verse 22. And in chapter 3, verse 21, God’s glory is inseparably connected to the Church and to Christ’s very own person, the implication being that the two cannot be separated when it comes to the manifestation of God’s glory. And in chapter 5, verses 25 through 33, Paul has already described the Church as Christ’s bride. the extension of himself.

    It would seem that the message from the apostles, from this ambassador, doesn’t simply come from the throne, there is that sense in which it comes to the throne. In fact, The Spirit, together with the Word itself, have effected this monumental reversal. The place in which the King’s words are heard is the place to which the King, by his Word, has come. And the presence of the King makes of the setting a throne room, no, even more, a holy sanctuary, a royal and a holy place. Thus the Church.

    This is why the current habit of so many in interpreting this text trivializes this text. This is why the current habit of so many in interpreting this text is so misguided and so utterly common, the heights and the glory are never seen. All we have here, so we are told, is Paul’s use of contemporary domestic household curves, to which he adds a couple of catchphrases like, in the Lord, some gospel allusions, and a few Old Testament quotations.

    He does this in order to draw upon the common practical wisdom of the Greco-Roman society concerning daily living, in order to not offend his culture, but at the same time provide a Christian flavoring to all that he has to say. Now, if you pick up commentaries on this text, I suggest to you that that is what you are going to find invariably. that nothing could be further from the Apostle’s intention and from the truth of the passage. Paul may very well take the pattern of the domestic and household codes of the Greco-Roman world, but not so as to leave them at that level. Rather, he translates them, he transforms them by his apostolic service into the royal, sacred setting of the Church. You learn how to be an obedient child, first of all, at church, not at home.

    What am I saying? Why, I have just uttered heresy. For everyone knows that the basic social unit for all civilization is the home. Let me tell you what the heresy is. I have just outed it. The basic social unit of human civilization is not the home. It is the church. The family of God. In fact.

    You may be forced to make decisions against your home in the interests of the church, which comes first. There are many of you here without your parents. Some of you are here without your children. Because you have had to make those choices. He who does not hate father and mother, brother and sister. Cannot be my disciple. I didn’t say that. Jesus did.

    The whole discussion then is elevated, is exalted into the presence of God, and these children find themselves in the most exalted, earthly setting imaginable. Even while here in this world, our environment, our children’s environment, has been permeated by the heavenly light. Our children enjoy access to that. We have some marvelous pictures of this very truth in the Gospels, don’t we? In the Gospel of Matthew, which we have read this morning, we have the account of Jesus’ triumphal entry, and we find this marvelous accounting of things.

    Verse 15, And the children were crying out in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. And the chief priests and the scribes were indignant. What is alarming about this passage and shocking to the Jewish leaders was the fact that the children had stormed the temple. They came right inside the temple. By Jewish law, they weren’t allowed to do that. They were always kept at a distance from the temple, but here they are right inside the temple, and whom are they praising? Surely it is a picture, is it not, as Matthew telegraphs it to the Church? It is a picture of the coming Church, wherein the new temple of God, the voices of the children who draw near to Christ, are heard in praise of Him.

    Jesus will teach us this very same truth when He blesses the children even as he links, through children, heaven and its glory to the earthly gathering of those who congregate before him. Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for as such is the kingdom of heaven.” The Old Testament had its own appeals to children. Psalm 34, verse 11, finds David saying, “‘Come, you children, listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord,’ as the Book of Proverbs has been interpreted as an extended appeal to children. Still, these appeals only anticipate a greater day to come. since they are uttered in an era in which the children are still kept at bay, kept from the royal sanctuary of God.

    But now, in this new day of access, in this new day of their access, what about in and through Jesus Christ, whose ministry, death, resurrection, opens the doors for them? They are present in the new royal sanctuary of God. there to hear directly for themselves the message of their glorious God and King, Jesus Christ.

    Children, obey your parents. That’s what the King says. The environment of this new royal sanctuary of God is therefore not simply for adults, As the Jews and even Jesus’ disciples said, thought, imagined, prosecuted the case for, that it is also for children and all those who are like them, for such is the kingdom of heaven. Such children who receive the command and by grace act upon it. Children, here, I ask you. Do you see where you have been positioned by the grace of God? In a sanctuary, in a holy place, in a royal dwelling, before the face of the King. But there is one more thing we have to say before we close this message.

    The command itself, children obey your parents, is a reminder to you children, not just of your glorious new privilege, but that you are sinners. The teaching of the Bible is not that you are a special class of people. in yourselves, innocent of corruption and sin, you, too, need a Savior. And having been brought to the one true Savior from sin, you must fight like your parents against the sin that pursues you. One very important way in which you fight against that sin is by giving yourself to this biblical passage. Children, obey your parents.

    The strength to do this does not come from yourself, but in keeping with the gospel, which I hope you cherish and understand more and more, your strength to obey comes from the Lord, for your obedience is in the Lord. In fact, before the Lord Jesus Christ calls you as members of His Church to obey, He has obeyed for you and on your behalf, being the perfect child of His parents and the perfect son of His Father. If you want to know how you ought to behave as a child, And what obedience looks like, I plead with you children to look to Jesus unto his obedience, which is more than example to you, it is saving grace and power. But I will be saying more about this in the coming messages. and I trust that you children will be here, aware of your sin and your need of a Savior, willingly obeying your parents as they bring you to church, delighting in your privilege to enter into this royal sanctuary, the royal sanctuary of your great God and King, the throne room where Jesus Christ, in whom all perfect obedience resides, sits enthroned at his Father’s right hand.

    Our God, though we be small and young, yet you have given to us ears, and you have blessed us in this covenant relationship that we sustain with you, with our parents, an opportunity to sit under your word and to profit from the message that comes from the throne. even as you transform our humble surroundings into a royal dwelling, a holy sanctuary. Lord, we who are small and yet young ask of you that you will work in our souls, that we will see the glory of the surroundings in the church more perfectly, even as those surroundings and that glory are joined to what is above. where Christ sits, yes, that one who is your obedient son, at your right hand.

    Bless us, O God, in this day of privilege that is ours. If we had been kept at a distance formerly, now we walk right into the sanctuary, and we bless you for this privilege. But, Father, we plead with you that you will keep us from sin. Lord help us to obey our parents.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Blessedness of Singlehood

    The Blessedness of Singlehood

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 27, 1996.

    About this sermon

    Ephesians 4-6 develops one sustained theme, the Christian walk, and within it singlehood has real standing as a calling of its own. Heaven has no marriage, and that fact frees the single believer. Marriage and children point toward heaven in the meantime, and they do not compete with it.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning we are beginning our scripture reading in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and we are at verse 17. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and we are reading from verse 17. This is the word of God. I am reading from the New American Standard this morning. Only as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each in this manner, let him walk. And thus I direct in all the churches. Was any man called already circumcised, let him not become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.

    But what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God. Let each man remain in that condition in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it. But if you are able also to become free, rather do that. For he who was called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise, he who was called while free is Christ’s slave. You were bought for the price. Do not become slaves of men.

    Brethren, let each man remain with God in that condition in which he was called. Now, concerning virgins, have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy. I think, then, that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is.

    Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you should marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin should marry, she has not sinned, yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you. But this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened so that from now on both those who have wives should be as those who had none, and those who weep as though they did not weep, and those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice. And those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use the world as though they did not make full use of it, for the form of this world is passing away. But I want you to be free from concern.

    One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. and his interests are divided. And the woman who is unmarried and the virgin is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I say for your own benefit, not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is seemly and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord.

    Then turning over to Ephesians chapter 5, reading from verse 25, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the Church, because we are members of his body. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife, even as himself. and let the wife see to it that she respects her husband.

    Our Father, teach us the meekness of Christ the one who submitted himself fully and completely to you while in this world, thereby providing us the very foundation of such neatness as should come to expression in us. Lord, you are patient with us, but Father, as you are patient with us by your Spirit you direct our attention to our Savior, that we might live in and from his meekness. Lord, at this time, we are before your word. And Lord, we ask that our hearing would be that kind of hearing that is also obeying. Bless us, O God, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

    Now, it is very easy when messages from the pulpit turn to the subject of marriage for some to feel left out. single folk, single parents, the divorced, the unmarried, the widowed. As one woman, whose husband died a number of years ago, said to me as she left the church building after my sermon on husbands and wives last week, you didn’t have anything to say to me this morning.

    It is greatly important that we be very careful when we find ourselves talking like this. For we must guard against that spirit that says within us, I don’t have to listen because the preacher isn’t saying anything that applies to me. We do well to take note of the extensiveness of the concerns for biblical texts and sermons based on them, for they have a wider context than the immediate words, much less our immediate situation, may suggest.

    For instance, the passage we have been dealing with presently, specifically Ephesians 5, verse 22 through chapter 6, verse 9, is part of a section in this letter from Paul that begins in chapter 4, verse 1, for wider context. A section that has as its theme the Christian rock. Hear what Paul says at that point.

    I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called. But notice how this theme is furthered as the apostle continues. Chapter 4, verse 17. This I say, therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind. But join these two texts to what we find closer to the passage that concerns us. Ephesians 5 verse 15, Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise, but wise.

    Paul’s theme in this section to his letter is the Christian rock. Or, of course, more colloquially, the Christian life. A matter, I may remind you, from which none of us is exempt. About which we can say at no point the apostle isn’t speaking to me, or this doesn’t apply to my situation. But, of course, the relevance of Paul’s words lies even closer at hand, for the capstone statement hanging immediately above That section that concerns us most, beginning with the 22nd verse of that fifth chapter, is what we find in verse 21, where Paul says, be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Surely we are not exempt from that statement.

    Paul intends, then, his remarks in the succeeding verses to be representative of the way in which the call to mutual subjection works itself out in the Christian’s life. This means, therefore, that all of us in the Church, in one way or another, are addressed by each of Paul’s pairings in the successive verses.

    Regardless of the advancements of our culture and our economic and social ideology, the work world will always be defined by bosses and workers. Or, as Paul puts it in chapter 6, verses 5 through 9, masters and slaves. Shall we go further? Children will always have parents. There will always be parents of children. These categories involving each other, necessarily, and marriage working backwards through the and marriage similarly.

    It engages our energies, be it with respect to our own or others, or be it simply with respect to the idea of marriage and its institution. Paul himself was not married, and from what we can tell by his writings, he had no desire to be married. Yet his energies were engaged by the subject. They could not help but be. He was alive and breathing in this world. and he was intimately bound to others who were married. Shall I speak about the Lord Jesus Christ? He also was not married. He had no wife. in this world, nor did he generate any children, yet he was absorbed in a righteous concern for marriage and for children.

    The mutual submission to which the Lord calls us through the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5.21 has something to say even to retired persons who have removed themselves from the workaday world situation of their former occupations. It has something to say to people without children. It has something to say to orphans. It has something to say to the unmarried, the previously married, about their outlook and their estimation.

    So please, for the sake of Christ and in light of the Word of God, don’t imagine yourself left out of a text of Scripture or a sermon because the words don’t appear immediately germane to your particular situation. And whatever you do, don’t succumb to the selfish heart that is always demanding the easiest and most transparent applications. before it would admit to any profit from a Scripture passage or from a sermon. But now, having gone to such great lengths to relate all of us to the relationships listed by Paul in Ephesians 5 and 6, particularly with respect to the institution most immediately in view in his writing Marriage, let me turn the tables on you by laboring to relate us all to the inversion of these relationships, particularly to the estate or condition of the unmarried, the single estate.

    Now here we have a subject. How shocked we are to learn, when we are facing things as we ought, how shocked we are to learn that the New Testament ideal is not marriage. but the undistracted, unencumbered, single devotion to the Lord of which the Apostle speaks in 1 Corinthians 7. Let me remind you of some other texts in this regard.

    Matthew 22.30, Jesus’ words to the Sadducees.

    This is what he says, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. This comment from our Savior makes it clear, does it not, marriage is for this world, not for the next. may be made in heaven, but they do not carry over into heaven. Marriage relationships, therefore, are temporary. They have a transitory significance.

    But faced with the difficulty of what Christ says in this particular text, we are also faced with the difficulties concerning the implications of His thought. For Christ’s words affect not only marriage, but those realities of life most closely tied to it. For instance, sexual relations.

    Sexual relations, according to the Bible, always belong within the bounds of marriage. I cannot say that too loudly. I fear that sexual relations have become epidemic outside of the bounds of marriage, not only among unbelievers, but among believers. Sexual relations, according to the Bible, always belong within the bounds of marriage.

    Marriage However, being transitory and temporary spells the same with respect to sexual expression. Sexual expression is transitory and temporary. This means, yes, it may be a revelation to many, this means that sex is not eternal. Much less is it the power and energy of life, as was suggested by D. H. Lawrence, as if it were some kind of deity to be served with the most absolute devotion. We might also get that idea from what is communicated to us through the popular media. And what might we say about children, the product of marriage and human sexuality?

    Have you ever wondered about the relative absence of genealogical lists in the New Testament? Now, I know that you are aware of them in the Old Testament. In fact, you skip over them regionally. But in the New Testament, we have only two genealogical lists, and they occur very early in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And then we see them no more.

    Why? Why? Because, from the Bible’s perspective, there is that sense in which the production of children has reached a most definitive and definite endpoint in the birth of the Messiah. The seed promised to the woman has come. He has arrived. So there is that sense, as you come to the New Testament, there’s that sense in which the genealogies cease in him, for his is the last generation. There are very eloquent ways in which both Matthew and Luke communicate that in their genealogies. We can’t go into that this morning. But I just give you that aside. But considering this point now, do you grasp what this means? Do you understand what this means? It means this. The end point having been reached, something of the eternal heavenly estate intrudes upon us. that a state of glory where children are no longer being conceived and born. However, we may say even more at this point.

    For you see, the conception and birth of children themselves have within them the message about this higher world to which we are called. The conception and birth of children through human parents are an analogy in which we see higher things. our birth by the creative and regenerative power of God, that we might be His spiritual children, living already in this world as we look forward to the arrival of the next. Children born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” According to John, in his Gospel, chapter 1, verse 13. Now you’re really upset. Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. The full message, and I underscore it, this is the full message of the Word.

    This full message from the Bible is not designed to provide us with an easy excuse for not having children. That is not its intention, much less an excuse to ignore or abuse the ones we have, because after all, we’ve arrived at the end point, and these children are important. Nor is this full biblical message intention the removal or denigration of the natural desire for children, much less the removal of all pain when we cannot have children. Nor is it justification for those who have arisen in the Church from time to time, who have legislated for all or for some in the monastic orders against the conception of children. Much less justification for those who, once the child is conceived, would destroy that child in a fetal cycle of madness, in murderous abortion.

    But at the same time, this full biblical message sets before us our true situation in light of the conclusive work of God in Christ, by whom a genealogical end has been reached, and in whom the reality of the eternal order has been introduced in which there are no children conceived or born. What we have said here about children, we can echo in our comments about marriage itself.

    You see where I’m going. As noted earlier, Jesus in Matthew 22, verse 30, has nudged us in this direction with his comment about there being no marriage in heaven. But he directly connects the kingdom of heaven’s future to its present earthly reality when he says in Matthew 19 verse 12, there are also eunuchs who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus has in mind at this point not actual physical units, nor members of monastic orders, but spiritual units who have become those in whom we perceive the eternal world where no one marries or is given in marriage.

    It is now this background that provides us our entrance into what many have judged the strange and even unnatural world of the Apostle Paul, as he opens himself up in 1 Corinthians 7, making such a point about not marrying. His advice to the Corinthians does not rise simply, as he says in verse 26, because of the present distress that has overtaken the Church in Corinth. Rather, his advice rises just as much because, as he says in verse 31, the form of this world is passing away. In other words, the form of the world to come is making itself felt, is it pressing itself upon our present world order. And particularly, we are able to see something of that world, something of that eternal world, in the undivided, undistracted devotion of the unmarried, those who are presently for the kingdom’s sake, what we all shall be in glory.

    You dare not look down upon the single person as if they were a secondary citizen in the kingdom of heaven. You must not scorn them. You must not hold them in contempt. You must not become suspicious of them, they being members of the body of Christ, with regard to their sexual orientation.

    It may well be that it is a strain for them to live under their present condition. They may well wish to be married. We may pray with them and for them with regard to their condition, and hope with regard to the best concerning that expectation of theirs. But, at the same time, we must be prepared to see and to recognize the glories that are appearing before our eyes in the single person. But in conclusion, we also need to remember what is so obvious in Ephesians 5. Even for those of us who marry, the institution itself carries within it the message of something higher.

    I have often thought that the smallness of this congregation is somehow related to this message. I understand the passions. I understand the drives. I understand the ambitions of men. And the high hopes of women. But coming to this church week after week and being told There is something more than a piece of real estate, a house, children, and a good retirement plan.

    It’s very difficult to take. You may find yourself in the course of this message very upset My contention is that you are upset with God and his gospel and not me. I cannot preach to you your family. I cannot tell you to worship your wife, much less your children. That is idolatry.

    By God’s design, the institution of marriage carries within it the message of something higher. The conception and birth of children carries this message, and so does marriage itself. In marriage, we see a greater and more ultimate reality, the blessed relationship between God and His people, between Christ and His Church.

    Paul finds this testimony to the higher and more ultimate relationship even at the beginning, in Genesis 2.24, and the commentary on Eve’s creation for Adam. Marriage, as wonderful as it was for Adam and Eve in the garden, as wonderful as it may be for us, was never intended as an end in itself, but a mirror in which we behold the dynamics of the covenantal bond between God and His people. Putting it in its most trenchant New Testament form, Paul says, this is a great mystery, but I am speaking about Christ and His Church. Or as John puts it in the most sublime New Testament expression, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

    None of this which I have told you this day will make you a worse husband or wife. I can say to you on the authority of the word of God, it will make you the best husband and wife. He loves his wife best who loves God first. I dare say that this gospel makes us all better citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. We, then, free as sons of God, and not in slavery to anything of this world.

    Father, your son presses us in light of the coming of the kingdom. Your apostle presses us in light of the coming of the kingdom. And father, we ask that in our hearts, we might first of all be ready to let everything go. For your sake, and for the sake of that thing. Yes, even marriage and children. Help us, Lord, bless us. We know your will, sir, superintendence, and therefore we acknowledge your will may well be for us that we marry and that we have children. And in that event, oh, God, may we give ourselves to our families as a blessing to them. And may we help them also see. And the things they experience in the institutions that they are acquainted with in this world, how all things are for you. For your greater glory. And for a higher destination.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Offense and the Wedding

    Offense and the Wedding

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 20, 1996.

    About this sermon

    Ephesians 5:22’s instruction to wives offends modern ears, and the text makes no effort to soften it. Genesis 2 gives the older pattern, in which God made woman, in a real sense, for the wedding itself. Depravity on both sides ruins marriage, and both a husband’s love and a wife’s submission rest finally in Christ.

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    Sermon transcript

    Genesis 2, verse 18, this is the word of God. And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him. And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found, and help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept.

    And he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. and the rib which the Lord God hath taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. and they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

    Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives. even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

    For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery that I speak concerning Christ and the Church.

    Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Father, if we are to speak about submission and love, we know that we must speak about the submission and love of Christ, which is the fountain for our obedience. Lord, help us to see these matters well and clearly. in light of his obedience and what that means for us. Father, even as we approach your word, may it be with the submission and the love of Christ. May we have submission to your word and a love for it. Bless us, O God, even as you are pleased to glorify yourself in us. Amen.

    Now, we must do away with the notion that the only reason Paul wrote what he did in Ephesians 5 and 6 is because the society in which he lived was able and willing to accept it. We must do away with the notion that the only reason Paul wrote what he did in Ephesians 5 and 6 is because the society in which he lived was willing to accept what he had to say. Some in the Church are now contending that that society in which Paul lived, unlike our own, tolerated and even expected statements like, wives, be subject to your own husbands. We, of course, being the moderns that we are, not only cannot but must not live by such standards.

    Such is the mantra of modern liberal fundamentalism. Yes, you heard me correctly. Modern liberal fundamentalism. I know fundamentalism is usually that term we reserve for those backwater people, those ignorant bumpkins who know nothing, who live only by their prejudices, who are not impressed by historical research or responsible reasoning. But I am bold to declare to you that there is a liberal fundamentalism that is fiercely prejudicial and impervious to all genuine historical research and responsible reasoning. Don’t let them call you the fundamentalists. The truth of the matter is that Paul’s words were no more popular in the first century than they are in the twentieth.

    That’s why he wrote them. He wrote them because women in the Church of Ephesus, and women in other churches to which even this letter came, needed to hear them. just as surely as women continue to need to hear them until Christ comes again. But to suggest such a thing also suggests that Paul is laying bare here a nerve aggravated in the most basic way when it comes to the condition and composition of women as such.

    We are dealing with a threat to women as ancient to her as the Garden of Eden. Consider Eve in her original estate. She is literally created for the purpose of being a bride. Think of it. Eve was created having never known a moment when she wasn’t a wife. Her first conscious moments are of her presentation to her husband. From the beginning, then, women and weddings belong wonderfully together.

    Now, the habit of this sinfully cynical world, especially sinfully cynical males, is to mock and scoff at the genuine, legitimate emotion women demonstrate over the subject of weddings. But such emotion belongs to woman rightly. and it rises from the very center of her being. She need not apologize for it, she need not be ashamed of it, since it belongs to her very soul.

    Still, This is a sinful world in which we live, one in which women, even in the propriety of their joy about weddings, can be subverted through their own depravity. That which was to the woman originally a superlative joy and a glory, can actually become an occasion for stumbling. And so severe is the seduction here, to which her soul can be subject that she may deny any connection to the joy in which she was originally created. She may generate from within herself even a hatred, a self-hatred, a hatred for what testimony yet remains in her with regard to her original state. She may even hold in contempt God’s ordinance, marriage itself, and if married, whatever suggests within that union, her husband’s rightful place of headship. Or, in this sinful world, her depravity may take another turn. Sin twists things so much that rather than rebelling against God’s creation ordinance—marriage, women may wrongly latch on to that creation ordinance, making of it something far removed from God’s intention.

    You see, a woman may take this God-ordained bond between herself and weddings, and make marriage in all of its extended domain her own peculiar property, her own unique province, her private estate. She may, by her own methods, selfishly rule her domestic empire with a certain kind of ruthless possessiveness. Tragically, in some cases, she may actually view her husband utilitarianly, tolerated only because he is useful in the interests of the empire. Children, as products of her husband’s usefulness, belong to her. And in the extremities of this sinful reasoning, these children may even be judged while they yet remain in her womb to be subject to her whim, and to her decision as to whether they will live or die.

    Sin is serious business. It takes lives. In the face of the many facets of human sinfulness, the very sinfulness facing Christian women at Ephesus and Christian women in Pittsburgh, Paul says these words, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands in the Lord.

    But now I want you to remember the force of those last words, in the Lord. Paul means by those words, in the Lord, a submission to the husband which compares to the submission the church renders to her Lord, Jesus Christ himself. Here is the pattern, here is the paradigm for the wife’s submission, as verses 23 and 24 in Ephesians 5 make very clear. But these words, in the Lord, say more.

    They also introduce a limit to that obedience and that submission the woman owes to her husband. Her obedience and her submission is in the law. This phrase even delimiting and circumscribing the words in everything that appear at the end of verse 24 that are set in parallel in this context. Her obedience in the Lord, her submission in the Lord delimits and circumscribes even those words in everything that appear later on in verse 24. In other words, Paul’s command that she obey and submit herself to her husband does not call her to disobey her Lord. and the expression of her Lord’s will for her life as revealed in his word.

    Let me give you an example. Should a Christian woman obey her husband when he tells her she must have an abortion? Let’s go a step further. Should a Christian woman obey her husband when he says, I forbid you to go to church? Many women have used less than excuse. But I hope that none of you will ever use that one.

    For obedience is in and to the Lord. But further, these words in the Lord specify the submission itself. These words, in the Lord, specifically refer to the submission itself. In other words, she submits in the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Lord Jesus, whose own submission in becoming the Savior of the body has meant her salvation. A salvation in which His perfect submission becomes the submission by grace in which and from which she lives. This magnifies grace. The submission commanded is not found within her, in her natural condition. It is found in Christ. and in the grace that resides in him.

    But as you well know, we have only covered half the story, thus the very long sermon this morning. For Cal goes on to say, Husbands, love your wives. But here we can follow the very same line that we followed with the women. For men are just as much in need of this message from Paul, be they living in Pittsburgh now or in Ephesus in the first century, and they shall be in need of it until Christ returns. So much is this the case that Paul’s instruction here strikes deeply into the condition and composition of men as such. Paul’s admonition and his imperative counters a threat to men as ancient as the Garden of Eden.

    Consider Adam in his original state. Think about him. There was a time, and this in contrast to his wife, There was a time when Adam wasn’t married, when he was in the garden by himself. But then, through the action of God, he was no longer alone. He moved through a transition from one estate to another. He moved, as it were, from what we might call one world to another. After the creation of his wife, nothing would ever again be the same.

    But you might also have noticed in this transition that it is a transition effected through a death-like sleep for Adam, and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, Genesis 2.21.

    Even in the garden, the death to one world that another world might be beheld is proclaimed. Even in the garden, the death of self that Adam might awaken to a greater and higher blessing is proclaimed. All of this symbolically communicated and telegraphed to you in Genesis chapter 2. Even the death of self that another might be brought to life, is being proclaimed. All that is in view here is directly attacked in this fallen world. It is attacked by Satan, to whom Adam succumbs.

    Adam was moved by God in his innocence. even here, prior to the fall, to his greater and higher destiny as symbolized in his wife. But now, in their fallen condition, Adam’s male descendants may despise their destiny and express that contempt by their hatred for something as common as the ordinance of marriage itself. and in marriage, the man may ignore or counterman the divine call to headship. He may prove himself to be more feminine in his relationship to his wife than his wife is in herself. Or he may prove to be an ogre, an overbearing ogre, a dictator and an autocrat. so perverting the true intention of God’s call to headship, so as to standardize that call by his own brutality, his crude insensitivities, and his callous arrogance. Or his depravity may take yet another turn.

    For you see, just as the woman in her sin claims for herself her first estate as her own particular personal domain, that the estate of marriage and the home, so the man does the same with regard to his first estate. He claims his first estate when he was independent of the woman as his native domain. He has his own utilitarian views. he’s useful, that I’m independent. And even in marriage, he demands his independence, refusing to be controlled or managed by the constraints of a life in which he is bound to another. He must have his freedom, and he will find any number of ingenious ways to assert his right to that freedom.

    He will stay out and he won’t come home. She won’t have any idea where he is. He doesn’t drink because he likes it. He drinks because it’s an expression of his freedom. He prefers the business world. He prefers traveling. He prefers being away from home. He likes it. It’s the world of his freedom. Even in marriage, he demands his independence, refusing to be controlled or managed by the constraints of a life in which he is bound to others. This is what it means to him to be a man.

    Now, he may not have bought yet his oversized four-wheel drive vehicle. You know, the ones with the huge wheels. He may not have yet grown all the facial hair his face can carry and allowed the hair to connect between his eyebrows so that he can drive up behind people on the freeway with his headlights on, an inch off their bumper, and stare at them. Oh, that’s real manliness.

    That’s what it means to be a man. But you might find him down at Three Rivers Stadium on a Sunday afternoon getting blind-eyed drunk at a tailgate party, acting like an idiot. That’s what it means to be a man. Such people are not men. At best they are boys, seemingly forever surrounding themselves with their fantasies and their toys.

    And for the sake of their independence, their toys and their fantasies, they may even walk out of their homes and desert their families to their eternal Do you hear what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5 about the man who refuses to take care of his own household? The lights are coming on.

    A man who does not take care of his own household, Paul says, is worse than an unbeliever. Can you imagine worse than an unbeliever? I mean, we’re at the lowest circle of hell now, aren’t we? In a world filled with all these forms of wickedness, Paul says sincerely and bravely to the men of the church, Husbands, love your wives.

    He sets before them in a most extensive appeal, as you work your way to the end of the fifth chapter in Ephesians, the rationale for his command. The men to whom he speaks are Christians, and he appeals to them as such. And because they are in the Lord Jesus, it is the Lord Jesus who determines their behavior. The Lord Jesus Christ so loved his wife, the church, that he gave his life for her.”

    Not a love, therefore, that denies headship, but accepts it. And in accepting it, acts upon it in giving loving sacrifice. Loving self-sacrifice. Not a love that rationalizes its own profound immaturity by demanding a prized independence that always ensures its freedom.

    Rather, this love is perfect in its performance, providing the saving reservoir into the saving reservoir, into which sinful men must be submerged in salvation. That what lies at the root of their primal conscience may be cleansed and healed, that they may be who they were created to be by living in the one who surrendered himself to a sleep-like death, was wounded for the sake of the creation of his wife, was awakened to behold her who is the extension of his own body, who is now his very own flesh. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for her.

    And in this, discover who you really are. And wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands in the And in this, discover who you really are. Again, O God, we thank you for the submission of Christ and his love. We thank you, our God, that this submission and love is made available to us, and that whether we are wives or husbands, we might know, O God, the glories of his obedience and his faithfulness. It may well be, O God, that we are single, that we are not married. Yet, Lord, here is a submission that is common to all, and here is a love that belongs to us all, to be shown within the family of God, the Church of Jesus Christ, his very own body. Father, bless us, then, as a submissive and loving family.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Not Antiquated Teachers

    Not Antiquated Teachers

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 6, 1996.

    About this sermon

    Some say Paul and Peter are antiquated teachers whose household instructions the church can safely ignore, and a three-part Reformed response answers them. Distancing the church from what the Bible says is the same move as distancing it from Christ. Paul and Peter speak with apostolic authority, and the church must receive it.

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    Sermon transcript

    Our scripture reading this morning is, first of all, found in 1 Peter, the third chapter. We begin at verse 1. Listen to the word of God. 1 Peter 3, verse 1. In the same way, you wives, be 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, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.

    And let not your adornment be external only, braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry and putting on dresses, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God. For in this way, in former times, the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands. Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear. You husbands, likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman, and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

    To sum up, let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit, not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.” And then, turning over to Ephesians chapter 5, we are at verse 21.

    Ephesians 5.21. Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, 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, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

    A supposition held by many in the broad and wide expression of Christ’s Church today is that we Christians in the twentieth century must distance ourselves in some regard from the Apostle Paul. And as you have heard this morning from the Apostle Peter as well.

    This supposition declares that we can defend Paul, specifically now in Ephesians 5 verses 22 through 24, only at the expense of our own credibility and our own standing within our culture. Paul, we are told by many, is the champion of an ancient and antiquarian, out-of-date view of society, a view fraught not only with outmoded attitudes, but with unjust and prejudicial practices such practices as work their way into the statements of Scripture itself.

    We, therefore, have no choice. We must distance ourselves from Paul. We must make a choice between him and the truth as we have come to see it. for we can no more defend the Apostle Paul in his statements about slaves and masters in Ephesians chapter 6 than we can his statements about wives and husbands in chapter 5.

    Paul subscribes, so it is said, after all, to that understanding of society in which there are, in the words of the Westminster standards, quote, superiors, inferiors, or equals. We, of course, in our own time, have come to understand that there are no such things. At least, there ought not to be such things in any society to which we aspire. We therefore cannot support the Apostle Paul, so we are told in his view of culture and society generally. When it comes to marriage, we are to find most abhorrent Paul’s notion that wives are to be submissive to their husbands.

    Since we judge that such an attitude, such a notion, betrays the belief, on Paul’s part, the belief of a female of a gender inequality. Such a position is not simply inadequate, so it is stated. Such a position is not simply improperly informed. Such a position is morally reprehensible.

    Thus, all truly moral individuals, most particularly the Christian Church, which is to be a beacon of morality in the world in the expression of its collective moral conscience, must declare itself to stand beyond the narrow, provincial, prejudicial, and even iniquitous prescriptions of the Apostle Paul. Some have gone further. Some within the Church have gone further still, for they have become the most radical exponents of an anti-Paul perspective. They say that the Church has no other current, no more relevant task than to stand as the vanguard for social, political, and economic equality. That is her mission. Liberation, then, is more than the cause of God in our time. Liberation itself is God. There is no other God. He is to be identified thoroughly and completely with the liberating process that is at work in society presently.

    That liberating process is at work on the Scriptures as well, for these radicals yet in the Church are laboring to the end that the Scriptures themselves would have stripped away from them all the husks of a social mythology resident from a prior era. That the Scriptures would have stripped away from themselves all the husks of an oppressive, patriarchal theology. even to the point of doing away with God the Father. The Nicene Creed which you recited this morning, according to some, is not only inappropriate, it is morally reprehensible. In this activity, then, by which the scriptures themselves are liberated, we are to discover no other message than this kernel of gospel truth within our Bibles.

    Liberation is God, and God is liberation. Now, I want to say three things to you this morning in response to this anti-Paul, this anti-scripture perspective that is abroad even in the Church, moving from comments concerning the more radical forms of its expression to a more general problem that relates to its construction, ending with a more positive statement about the gospel itself in relationship to what we find here in Ephesians chapter 5. First of all, I don’t know where all of you are in your thinking, in your reflection upon what is happening philosophically, sociologically, politically in our world. But I plead with you. I plead with you that you at least in historic sense with a sense of historical veracity, recognize the roots of the radical liberation movement at work in our world. Please, don’t be naive. Don’t be ignorant.

    Those roots in the first quarter are not from Christian soil. In fact, those roots are out of a decided, outspoken, articulate, anti-Christian ground. They are found most particularly in the enlightenment of the 18th century and its profound, violent, anti-Christian expression, the French Revolution. As Karl Becker has pointed out in his unsurpassed book, The Heavenly City and the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, the key to the Enlightenment is not simply the idea of autonomy, as defined by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, or the slogan of the French revolutionaries, liberty, equality, and fraternity, but the key to the Enlightenment is the conviction that eternal life in a heavenly city of God, as preached by Jesus, as preached by Paul, as codified by Augustine in his great work, the city of God, must be rejected categorically. It doesn’t exist. There is no such place. Period. You know the next line, I think. Imagine there’s no heaven and there’s no hell. Let us be done then.

    So say the anti-gospel, anti-Christian forces of the 18th century. Let us be done once and for all with the superstitious silliness that sets before us the hope of a supernatural heavenly order.” But Becker went on to say that there is an irony in the Enlightenment. and something of a hypocrisy, for you see, the Enlightenment philosophers went on to substitute their own secularized and wholly this-world utopian vision for the hated and dismissible heavenly city of Christian proclamation. The utopian dream began to be taken quite seriously from the 18th century on, and it has moved like a juggernaut through the last two centuries, joining its confidence in science and mathematics to its belief in nature and psychoanalysis, then adding to all of that yet the assurance of political and economic progress—all of this in the interests of a perfectible human society, achievable by us. in our own strength. But another irony intrudes upon the 18th century Enlightenment.

    It has to do with Christian reaction to that Enlightenment. for not only have the modern Enlightenment neo-pagans offered to the world their own secularized version of the heavenly city, but many a Christian has felt compelled to seek out answers in response to neo-pagan Enlightenment charges. But the route that they have taken in order to answer those charges has placed them dangerously close to the precipice. if not cast them over the edge.

    In an effort to stand up to neo-pagan critics, many a Christian has himself moved onto pagan ground, beginning to accept, receive, as credible, neo-pagan assumptions and convictions. For instance, within the Church began laboring to disprove the criticism rising out of the Enlightenment that the Christian Church has an exploitive view of the natural world, one in line with the biblical message that this world is passing away and is not all that important after all. But in laboring to answer that criticism, some of these Christians have actually embraced the anti-Christian and neo-Pagan conviction that nature is all that there is. Additionally, many Christians have labored to disprove the criticism rising from the that the Christian Church is only and merely an oppressive institution, oppressive to the poor, oppressive to minorities, part oppressive to females and homosexuals. And they have embraced the pagan position on liberation with regard to each and all of these groupings within society.

    But such liberation as they now envision Speaking of it as they do from within the context of the Church, from within the walls of the Church itself, such liberation as they envision has as content for its gospel this message of liberation alone. That is its sole substance. Let none of us be so naive or so ignorant. that we fail to see the roots of the radical liberation movement, to understand that they are not found in the biblical gospel, but in a decidedly anti-gospel agenda rising from an unbelieving source. The anti-gospel agenda has become a profound temptation. seducing even many within the church per se. Sadly, in seeking to save their lives in the world, many are losing their lives. And in the process, lost to them is not only interest in the true and only heaven, but an inheritance within it. With all humility, we must continue to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. The second thing I wish to say to you this morning has to do with the way we approach our Bibles, particularly as it devolves upon this passage in Ephesians chapter 5.

    You see, the unfortunate assumption of far too many is this. We live in a qualitatively different age than the people spoken of in Scripture. Ours is a qualitatively different age than that of the Bible. And because this is true, we are told that we must now apply or accommodate the Bible’s message to our own times in order to fit it into our circumstances. But in doing this, in the process of doing this, We at the same time realize that certain things will have to drop out of the message. Certain things will have to be changed because the situations that we face are different for us in our different and unique age. With regard to Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 24, we face different challenges than did Paul. Truly, the times have changed.

    Paul’s abrupt and even inflexible tone no longer sell in our culture, no longer communicate. They may well have been effective in his own day, given the sociological and religious character of the people to whom he wrote. But such tone and such inflexibility, let alone the message that he conveys by them, would hardly be adequately sensitive, adequately nuanced for our own time. In other words, if Paul were writing today, surely he, in communicating to us the word of God relevantly and winsomely, would not use words such as these.

    Why? subject yourselves to your own husbands in the Lord.” He would know better. That certainly is not going to score him any points. He would undoubtedly understand, therefore, that such a statement would be highly offensive and a royal turn-off. to many that he was trying to reach.

    But what if I were to tell you Paul’s words do in fact have in view our so-called present day and age? What if I were to tell you that there is all sorts of evidence that Ephesians 5 verses 22 through 24 was just as offensive in the first century as it is now declared to be in the 20th. What if I were to tell you that’s exactly why he wrote it? That’s exactly why he wrote it. And what if I were to tell you that from God’s point of view, the times have not changed. They haven’t changed one bit since Paul wrote what he did.

    Our time in the Church of Jesus Christ is one time There is one age now in which we all live, we residents in Christ’s Church and in the Kingdom of God, one age according to the plan of God, that age and time between Christ’s first coming and his second. Therefore, whatever is said in the first is equally relevant to the twentieth century. For this time, this age in which we live, God has given his one sufficient word, which has in view all the situations and circumstances we, as the people of God, will face until Christ comes again. In this time, marriage will continue to be assaulted in the first as well as in the twentieth century.

    And wives within marriage will continue to be confronted with the commands of God in their relationship to their husbands. And there remains an appropriateness to the message of the Apostle ongoing, namely, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands in the womb. The times have not changed. according to God.

    And finally, we must recognize in these words from Paul the gospel message, which suggests to us, if we do away with the words and the specific form of them, do we not at the same time do away with the gospel out of which those words arise? That should be a concern to us, should it not. If I give up the command, am I giving up more? Am I giving up what lies beneath the surface of the command, or is laid within the command itself? In sacrificing the command, do I sacrifice the gospel?

    Paul’s point is just that. We are speaking about the gospel here. The glory, the glory of the command that he gives here to wives is not its foundation in and for a well-ordered society or for the preservation of some primitive view of domesticality, or even specifically for the wife’s happiness. The glory of this command is specifically related to the gospel. Since in the husband, according to God’s operation, she is to see Christ Himself. Life itself becomes a parable. Life itself becomes an allegory.

    In her husband, she is to see Christ. That’s why she submits. Does she submit to Christ? Does she submit to one in whom she sees Christ? The glory of this command, then, is its relationship to the gospel, since in the husband, Christ is seen, and in the wife, the Church herself is seen in its loving, sacrificial, and even willing submission to her Lord. However, please further recognize that as much as the gospel is evident in the command to the wife to submit to her husband, it is also evident in the compliance that she offers up to that command. For you see, verse 22 follows on the heels of verse 21, which is the general command to all that we are to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. What is operative in the woman as she offers up this compliance and this obedience is the obedience of Christ at work in her, the fear of Christ at work in her. Even before she is a wife, Christ has placed himself in her position. Before she is compared to the Church, Jesus Christ is joining himself to the Church, that what obedience might be expected of the Church and of wives would be found in him. She cannot do it without him. The command itself, preaching the gospel, but obedience also. preaching the gospel insofar as you see preceding the obedience of the woman, the obedience of Christ himself. And she draws upon that.

    Our great fear must be that In losing the command, we lose the gospel that informs that command, but we lose also the sufficiency of scripture that supports it. It is appropriate that the warning be issued then. In light of the fact of what we see going on generally in the church and in our culture abroad, even as we see The Apostle Paul set to one side, and the truth as we understand it, set to another. We being called to choose between the two. If I separate the Apostle and his message from the truth, am I separating myself from the truth that is in him and declared by him? One of the sad facts is that in those now within the Church who have declared that the Scriptures are insufficient, who have expressed their discomfort, if not their outrage, at what the Apostle says, we find less and less interest in what the Bible is actually saying, and less and less commitment to the gospel.

    And that should be warning sufficient for all of us. Our God, we are not those who obey quickly. We even find, Lord, that we do not obey willingly unless, O God, your spirit be at work in us. And Father, we are convinced by heavenly things and by your word. Be patient with us, Lord. It is not just a matter of wives submitting to husbands, it’s a matter of each of us submitting in the Lord to one another, a matter that has at its root the submission of Christ to you, a submission even to us, that his obedience might be counted as our own. Father, bless us, encourage us, continue to love us, be patient with us, we ask that we might come to the glorious day and we will see our Savior face to face and rejoice in his presence, even as we are brought into the heavens.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.