Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Now, if you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn, if you will. Tonight I want to talk about the power of the Holy Spirit. Spirit in family life. The secret of the Spirit filled family and relations. Spirit filled relationships.
If there is a verse of Scripture that is, that causes more negative energy, I can't imagine that it is that. There is one more than Ephesians 5 and 22.
Ladies, if it's your husband's verse of scripture, favorite verse of scripture in the whole Bible, you have to understand it's delicious.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. Every man in the room say, hallelujah.
The problem is it is also the most misunderstood verse of scripture in the Bible, taken out of context and robbed of its greater implications.
Tonight I want to talk to you about the secret of spirit filled relationships.
And it is submission. Ephesians 5:18. We'll read quite a lengthy passage and be ye not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be ye filled with the spirit. Now just stop there. He's telling you the theme.
He says, now I'm going to tell you how to live being filled with the spirit.
Now it's translated from Greek into English. There is a tense here in Greek that we don't even have in English. It's sort of like present tense, continual. And we don't have that. In order to translate it directly from the Greek, it would be awkward. It would read something like this.
Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be being filled with the Holy Spirit.
So it's just translated flat. English is a bit of a flat language. It works good in engineering and it is be filled with the Spirit, but it's present tense continual. How to live in the constant state of being filled.
And he says, here's how you do it.
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ. Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. 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 own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
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 and of his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his mother and father 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. Now, I'm just going to skip a few verses. I'm going to skip down through parts of chapter six. Look at verse one. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment, with promise that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth. And you fathers, or if we like the translation better, you parents, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Servants or employees, be obedient to them that are your masters, your employers, according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart as unto Christ, not with eye service. Pause a moment. Eye service is an ancient English word that we no longer use. In American English it means don't just work when somebody's watching you.
That's what it means.
And it's a real challenge. Not with eye service as men pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Then go down to verse nine, and you employers do the same things unto them, forbearing, threatening. Know that you, your master, your owner also is in heaven. Neither is there any respect of persons with him. Let me give you the Revised Rhetlin translation of chapter six, verse nine.
You employers, treat your employees with dignity and respect. Pay them what they're worth and don't withhold their pay. Don't browbeat and exploit them. Treat them with dignity because you also have a big boss and he is not impressed with you.
I.
My wife and I are Braves fans.
We're not Braves fans. We're Braves fanatics.
We love it.
And the other night we were watching the commentary, the Braves had won a comeback game. They'd been down six to nothing. They won seven to six. And there was one of these brilliant sportscasters who was explaining the game and he said, here's the secret.
If you score more runs than the other team, you'll win.
I said, what?
That's it, Just score.
My wife and I stared at each other and she said, turn it off. We know more than this guy.
Yeah, I don't know what was going on with that. Score more than the other team and you win. There is that sometimes that reductionist view of things that you try to bring it all down to some fundamental truth.
Why is it, for example, that it is so difficult right now to teach?
This is a mature audience here, But I spent 16 years as the president of two different universities and I still speak to younger audiences a great deal. A great deal.
And why is it so difficult to talk to them about what makes a good spirit filled marriage? Why is it so difficult Here it is.
Many of them have never seen one.
It is difficult to explain something to someone who's never seen it.
If half of the congregation of Christian young people have grown up in divorced and remarried or blended homes, I'm not kicking anybody to the head. Just stay with me. They may not have ever seen the real essence of a spirit filled Christian home and marriage.
So we try to make up for it by teaching everybody rules.
Americans have a veritable lust for, for that kind of book. Go through Christian bookstores. The nine keys, the 14 solutions, the 12 answers.
We want, we just want the rule. Just, just tell me the rules.
And so some Christian woman goes to a who grew up in a broken home. She gets married. She wants to have a Christian home. She wants to be a Christian wife.
And so she goes to some Christian women's retreat and somebody pounds her with Ephesians 5. 22. Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. She says, okay, I got it. Okay, I got it. I know exactly now. I know exactly what to do.
So the next morning at breakfast, she and her husband have an argument.
Not over anything that I want to explain here, just an argument.
And he leaves to work. He leaves to go off to work. He works as a auto mechanic, okay?
Five minutes away from the house. He has completely forgotten the argument.
This is God's Joke on women.
Men do not have the capacity to remember arguments.
Listen to me, girls. He's not faking.
He has completely forgotten the argument. But she has memorialized it.
She rehearses it all day in her mind. She thinks of that way when he said that one really stupid thing that his eyebrow went up and the way his mouth just made the palm of her hand tingle. She remembers all that.
Do you ever watch a really angry woman vacuum a carpet?
It looks like Japanese bayonet practice.
And she's chewing on that thing all day.
All day.
He has a terrible day at work.
Everything that can go wrong goes wrong. He breaks open his skin bleeding down his arm. His female boss yells at him. He puts a overhead cam on upside down. He comes home, drives up in his driveway, and he says, a man's home, his castle.
Inside there's going to be affection and affirmation and healing and supper.
Everything that makes his life worth living.
And he throws the door open and there's his wife at the kitchen sink. And he says, baby, I'm home.
Give me a kiss.
And she turns around and glares at him.
And that argument is hanging in the air between them. And there he is with his hair in his eyes and sweat stains on his blue shirt and grease to his elbows. And she's thinking, not on your best day.
But she says, I know how to win a baseball game.
Score more points than the other team.
So she says, you want a kiss? I'm going to give you a kiss and I'm going to tell you why I want you to know who the Christian in this marriage is.
And she stomps across the kitchen floor and she goes there in the name of Jesus.
And she says to herself that she did exactly what she was taught to do in the women's Bible study, by submitting herself unto her husband.
So here's the problem with Ephesians 5. 22.
We take it out of context and turn it into a rule. And rules are both too easy and too hard at the same time.
So what is the problem with Ephesians 5:22?
The problem with Ephesians 5:22 is Ephesians 5:21.
So Paul says, let me teach you how to live in spirit filled relationships.
Live in praise, submitting yourselves unto God. And then he says in Ephesians 5:21, Submit yourselves to each other in the fear of God.
I know God didn't mean that every man in the room take a ballpoint pen and just mark out verse 21, because surely he didn't mean that.
No, that's exactly what he meant.
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
After that, periodically throughout the next chapter and a half, you can add, for example, before each of the admonitions that follows and you do no violence at all to the text. Live in mutual submission to, to each other.
For example wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. For example, husbands, love your wives. For example, children, obey your parents. For example, parents, raise your children in grace and love in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. For example, work for your boss as if you work for Jesus. For example, treat your employees as if Jesus was one of your employees.
So the whole thing is examples of how we live in submission to one another.
So here's the challenge. What does submission even mean?
Let's suppose this is not Wednesday night healing service at Buford Church of God. Let's suppose this is the first day of a class at some university somewhere and I'm your teacher. I say, all right, if you look, there's your. You have your syllabi. Look at the bottom, you will see that it says, on the last day of class you must submit to me a 20 page double spaced typed manuscript. Research on the topic listed on your syllabus. If you'll do that. A good manuscript, well typed, footnoted, I'm not going to mention it every day. This is not high school. Welcome to the university.
You work on it, you study, you prepare it, you put it in your briefcase. The last day of class, you take it with you to class, you've got it, it's in your possession. Flawless manuscript, well researched. And I walk in as a professor and I say, all right, I told you judgment day was coming.
Submit your term papers.
You have them, it's prepared. It's an A paper. All you have to do to fail it is one thing. Who can tell me?
Yeah, just don't turn it in.
The fact that you have it means nothing. So when your teacher says, submit your term paper, take out the two syllable word submit and give me a simple one syllable verb.
Say it out loud, give it to me.
So if A equals B, then B equals A.
So Paul the apostle says, you want to live in a spirit, in spirit filled relationships. The secret is the same secret of your relationship with God. And it's giving wives, give yourselves unto your husbands as if you were married to Jesus. Now for some of you girls, that's a bigger stretch than for others. But then he says in Ephesians 5,25, husbands love your Wives, even as Christ loved the church and what, he changes verbs and what gave himself for it.
So then we come to the second problem with the passage, and that is that Paul lists women first.
So usually male teachers, it seems to me, say God listed women first because the priority for submission in the home is on the wife.
I don't believe that for a minute.
I think Paul was not only a brilliant writer and a brilliant theologian. I think he was a brilliant student of human nature. And he knew if he didn't deal with the women first, the men wouldn't listen.
So he says, wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. And every man in the room said, amen.
Amen.
Now you're preaching now.
And then he says, and you husbands, you give yourselves to your wives as Christ gave himself.
Uh oh, for the church.
So here's a big line we love. Husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.
Yes.
Now, girls, we're not voting on that.
That's what the Bible says. The only problem is, what does it mean?
How did Jesus become the head of the church? Did he ascend to the pinnacle of the temple and say, all right, down you dogs. Worship me or I'll melt you like wax?
No, he didn't become the head of the church by ascending to the pinnacle of the temple. He became the head of the church by ascending to the cross.
So, yes, brother, you're the head of your wife. You're the head of your whole household. What does that mean? It means you get to be the most crucified one in the family.
I've never heard a man yell hallelujah to that one.
So then he.
He continues with these examples, and he says, children, obey your parents in the Lord.
That's how you give yourself to your parents, by living in obedience.
So all the parents in the room said, that's right, that's right, that's right.
He says, yeah. And you parents, raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Show them how God would raise a child.
How has God raised you? With grace and forgiveness and peace. Don't be angry and drive them away from the church.
And then he says, employees, work for your work, for your. For your employer, as if you, Jesus, was your boss.
Don't just work when you're being watched. Give a full day's work.
All the employers in the room said, home, this is it.
And then he says, yeah, and you employers, remember, you also work for a big guy.
And he's no more respectful of you than he is of your janitor.
So the whole passage is based not on who's in charge here, is based on the character and nature of the relationship itself, which is based on giving.
So what about this argument with which we began?
So she looks at him instead of looking at the rules. What does the rules say? Your husband wants a kiss. Okay, give him a kiss. Show him how submitted you are. Obey the rules.
But instead she looks at him and she says, look at him.
Big old dumb thing.
He's so stupid, he doesn't even know I'm angry.
He's not faking.
You want to know the most wasted question women ever ask their husbands?
What were you thinking?
He has no clue.
What were you thinking? You know, I'm hungry.
That's about as deep as it goes.
So she looks at him, and instead of thinking, I'm gonna obey the rules here, he wants a kiss. I'll give him a kiss.
She lets all that hurt and that anger and disappointment melt.
And she looks at him and she says, look at him.
He's bleeding. He's discouraged.
He wishes that God, his mother, was here and she's not.
So I'll have to do.
And she says, all right, big boy, you want a kiss?
I'll give you a kiss.
And she races across and grabs him and takes him in her arms and bends him backward over the dining room table and rings his chimes.
Now she's submitted.
Now she's submitted.
Husbands.
Who. Who told you you were the boss?
This passage doesn't tell you you're the boss. It tells you you're the one who gets to die. For everybody else in the house.
This guy says to his wife, it's the opening day of deer season.
You can color me gone, woman. I'm in the woods, opening day of deer season. She says, please don't go.
Please don't go. Two of the children have got diphtheria.
The take back man is coming for the car. They're turning the gas off in the house trailer. Please don't leave me alone. He says, I'm the head of the household.
Argue with me. You're not arguing with me. You're arguing with the word of God.
Listen to me, brother. That's not King Jesus, that's King Kong.
Everybody wants to talk about the submitted wife. The real deal is the submitted husband. The even realer deal is the submitted family. The real deal is submitted Christians, people that live in an attitude of giving, not just trying to obey the rules.
That's where Christian gets wonky. Christianity gets wonky.
Just tell me the rules.
What Paul says is that Christian relationships look a lot like praise and worship.
Be ye not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things, to God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and submitting yourselves to each other in love.
So somebody here says, well, I'm, I'm not married. This is, I didn't know this was a marriage seminar. No, this is a. This is human relationship seminar.
So how does it work with our kids?
So here's, here's a guy watching the last game of the World Series.
The Braves and the Yankees. You put any adjective before the word Yankee that your conscience will allow. And it's the last game, the Braves are ahead. It's the bottom of the ninth inning, there's two outs, it's three, two on the batter, and there's a Yankee on every base. One hit and the Braves lose. One strike and the Braves win. He's like this.
He looks over his shoulder and his five year old, little five year old boy is playing with a priceless Ming vise that his wife inherited from her great great grandmother.
And he looks over his shoulder and he says, okay, Johnny, put that vase up. You know you're not supposed to have that. Daddy's watching a game and he turns back to the game and smash.
The vase is destroyed.
Now he turns the TV set off, he grabs Johnny up, he spanks him all over the house and he says to himself that it was a biblical spanking.
What does the Bible say? Spare the rod and spoil the child.
Sin is in the heart of the child, but the rod driveth it forth. Isn't that right? That's what it says. I'm not making these verses up. That is what it says.
The problem is you cannot con a kid.
Johnny knows exactly why he got that spanking. He didn't get the spanking because he played with the vase or even because he broke it. He got the spanking because he dared to be inconvenient.
He got between his dad and the ball game.
How can I be in charge?
How can I be the head of my household, be in charge of this moment and yet live. Submitted. How can I submit myself to my children?
Here's how he said, here, let me have that vase. Let me put it up.
No reason in the world a five year old would want to play with a priceless Ming vase. Except you're bored. Let me put it up here where you can't reach it.
Let Daddy turn this TV set off. Braves will probably figure out some way to lose this anyway. So let me and you run upstairs and get your bat and ball and your glove, because the real World Series is in the backyard.
Now, that's a command decision.
That's authority. That's leadership. But it's leadership that is crucified to its own selfish desires.
That's what Paul says is the essence of relationship.
Wherever it goes south. The bottom line question is always, who's in charge here?
When we begin to compete for ownership, we begin to resort to ways that we can obey the rules to win the game.
Paul says, be crucified to the rules and marriage. Then instead of a contest to see who's in charge, marriage becomes a race to outgive one another.
So what do we say to children?
If Jesus was your dad, you'd do what he said without even thinking, obey your dad as if you were obeying Jesus.
Obey your mom.
What do we say to parents? Treat your children with tenderness and grace.
What do we say to wives? That's not the rule.
Submission is not subjection. It's not turning spirit filled Christian wives into doormats.
I was the pastor at a large church in Atlanta and a woman came to me and said, my husband is not a believer, but he is wanting me to get involved into a wife swapping club with him.
I said, what? She said, yes. And he's using Ephesians 5:22. Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands.
And she says, am I supposed to submit to that? I said, finish the verse.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your husband, which means A and nobody else, and as unto the Lord.
You can't use a Bible verse to make it mean what you want in order to get your way.
You also can't use a Bible verse to pummel somebody else into subjection.
The issue is not who's in charge here.
The issue is who's willing to give the most.
Now, one last thing, and then we'll pray.
The problem with giving is the same whether it's the offering or marriage or anything else. And that is, we're Americans.
We want an instantaneous return on our investment.
We live in the Coke machine world.
We want to put our dollar in or $2 in, or whatever it is under the current government, evidently. $10 to get a Coke. Whatever it is, whatever it is you put in, we want to put that money in and we want that Coke to drop out that second. That Second, we push the money in, push the button. We want the Coke. And if it doesn't, we're getting a lawyer or a crowbar, whichever one's closer, and we're going for it. I want my Coke.
Sometimes that's the way people put money in the offering. I'm going to write this check. Put in the offering, I want $100,000 by the end of the year. Lord, give and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together, running over. It may, it may not be like, you know, this afternoon.
We have to live in the delayed gratification of the kingdom economy.
And that is that God runs this.
See, he's like, you know, God and all.
And you're not.
We're not.
So don't turn it into a cash on the barrel head, arm's length business arrangement. I'll give God, but I'm expecting a return.
Give, give openly, give lovingly, give graciously, and let God return it on his own time and in his own way. It'll be bigger and better and more wonderful than you think.
So what do we do in marriage or in relationships? We say, all right, I've given my 50%, I've given my 50%. Here we are, there's the line. Now let's see your 50%, big boy.
And the challenge is, it never works like that.
We give and give and keep giving and keep giving.
When we think we're the only one in the relationship that's giving, that's when the greater payoff is.
It's not a question of who's the boss or who's in charge.
The question is, what does it mean to live in a spirit filled relationship? And Paul says the essential reality is giving.
Live in an attitude of surrender.
Giving and healing begins to happen in the relationship.
Foreign.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr. Mark Rutland or visit his website, drmarkrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
