His name was Ray Bartlett and he was famous. He wasn’t always famous. He wasn’t always famous, but he became not only famous but reviled and hated as well, right across Canada. Not bad for a small town lawyer. It was when Bartlett became a judge that he put the town of Truro on the map. All across the country people were talking about him, and their opinions ranged from having him tarred and feathered and then shot, right through to people who really disliked him.
Judge Bartlett gave Truro a name as being a narrow, provincial backward little town. But it gets worse then that, Ray Bartlett professed to being a born again Christian, came from a very conservative evangelical church. And the reason he was hated by all the women and a good majority of men was his interpretation of the scriptures. It was well within the mark to say that Judge Bartlett had given evangelical Christianity in Canada a great big black eye.
How could a family court judge in a little town in Nova Scotia cause a national uproar? Easy! A woman who appeared in Bartlett’s court appealed her case to the Nova Scotia Attorney General. it would appear that the woman was seeking a legal separation from her husband because he was beating her. Instead of issuing a bench warrant keeping her husband away or granting the separation that she had asked the Judge pulled his battered old King James Bible from under the bench and read Ephesians chapter five verse twenty two Wives submit yourselves unto your own husband, and then he sent her home.
Needless to say the appeal court wasn’t all that impressed with the Judge’s interpretation of the law or the scripture. But the worst was yet to come because upon further investigation it was discovered that Bartlett was regularly sending women back into potentially explosive situations with the admonition to submit to their husbands. Let us say that the courts were not amused.
But how come? We’ve all heard the words countless times, "Wives submit to your husbands" maybe we’ve even said it countless times "Wives submit to your husbands" This morning we are going to look at just exactly what those words mean, and how they can affect our marriages.
It all goes back to Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, "It isn’t good for the man to live alone. I need to make a suitable partner for him." Well I’m sure that you all know the rest of the story, it’s found in Genesis 2:23 and the man exclaimed, "Here is someone like me! She is part of my body, my own flesh and bones. She came from me, a man. So I will name her Woman!"
And everything went well until Satan came into the garden and tempted Eve to eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the next thing you know she had eaten them out of house and home. She tempted Adam and he ate and through their twin actions sin entered into the world.
Now to say that God was a little put out would be an understatement, he was a lot put out and so he pronounced curses on all three participants when they were caught. Eve’s curse is found in Genesis 3:16 Then the Lord said to the woman, "You will suffer terribly when you give birth. But you will still desire your husband, and he will rule over you."
Now it would appear that up to that point that man and woman were equal partners in the eyes of God. Remember what we had read earlier in Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, "It isn’t good for the man to live alone. I need to make a suitable partner for him." The way that God created that partner is spelled out in Genesis 2:21-22 So the Lord God made him fall into a deep sleep, and he took out one of the man’s ribs. Then after closing the man’s side, 22 the Lord made a woman out of the rib. The Lord God brought her to the man,
The Beacon Bible Commentaries state "The Rib can mean both the bone and flesh attached to it. It is the part of the body nearest the heart, which to the Hebrew was the seat of affection. Woman was not made of an inferior substance."
God gave Adam a partner not a slave, not a servant but someone who would share the responsibility. Had Adam been meant to rule over his wife from creation then it would not have been necessary to have stated in Eve’s punishment and he will rule over you. It was from this punishment that the Hebrew family took their order, 1) husband 2) wife 3) male child 4) female child and 5) slave.
Now you gotta recognize a couple of things here though the first is that the Jews were more enlightened then many other cultures. In Exodus 21 the law was set down concerning personal injury and death. If the person was male or female it made no difference in the punishment, when the injury or death was intentional. If a slave was killed or injured the death penalty was not required, instead there was a financial punishment. But within the context of the law woman was equal of man.
In many cultures of the day women were no better then slaves. The Greek author Demosthenes stated "We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure, we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation and we have wives for the purpose of having children legitimately."
In the Greek culture there was no place for a wife, Xenophon said "Let her live that she might see as little as possible, hear as little as possible and ask as little as possible." Within the Greek thinking of the day the wife’s role was to run the home and care for legitimate children, but the husbands pleasure and companionship were found somewhere else.
The Roman’s view of wives was just as enlighten. Senneca the Roman historian wrote, "Woman are married to be divorced." Under Roman law a wife had no legal rights and no legal recourse everything she was was dependent on her husband.
Hebrew woman had it better then many of their counter parts but just. By the time Christ came along divorce was becoming rampant among the Jews and all the rights lay with the man. Any reason was deemed as suitable for a divorce, the law was spelled out in Deuteronomy 24:1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, Conservative Rabbis interpreted uncleanness to mean adultery, the more liberal teachers said it could mean a spoiled dinner or going with their heads uncovered while the even more liberal Rabbis interpreted "finds no favour in his eyes" to mean that he had found someone more attractive.
On the other hand a woman could divorce her husband for one of three reasons, that he developed leprosy, became apostate or ravished a virgin. In Jewish culture a woman had more rights then a slave but only just. And so it was into this culture that Jesus came, and Jesus was nothing short of radical when it came to his treatment of women. He had female followers, he even had female sponsors, women of wealth who supported his ministry. He spoke to the woman at the well, was entertained by Mary and Martha and some historians feel that there is a very strong possibility that Mary Magdelene had been a prostitute before she became a disciple of Christ. Jesus behaviour and acceptance of woman was to say the least extremely radical and I’m sure that it was more then just a little bit scandalous.
So Paul is writing this letter at point in history where a wife is more then a slave but less then an equal. Paul is writing to a culture where a wife is little more then a brood mare, good for bearing heirs and running the home but not much more than that. And into this situation Paul speaks to a problem. That is to say that if a lack of submission hadn’t been a problem then Paul wouldn’t have brought it up. Paul seems to have a philosophy that says "If it ain’t broke then leave it alone."
In the entire writing of the Old Testament there is no command worded "Wives be submissive" or "Wives submit". The only place in the first 48 books of the Bible that the idea is even alluded to is back in Genesis 3 when Eve’s punishment was spelled out with "He shall rule over you". Other then that the first mention of wives submitting is located in Ephesians 5.
Why then after four thousand years of recorded Biblical history is the subject brought up? Whey does Moses only mention it once? Why isn’t it mentioned by Joshua? Jeremiah? David? Solomon? or any of the Prophets? It isn’t even alluded to by Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, or Amos. Why then even though it’s not mentioned in the thirty nine books of the Old Testament, the four gospels, or the book of Acts, why then does Paul mention It not in one letter but on two separate occasions that wives should submit to their husband? And at least four other times he states that woman are not to have authority over men? Why? Because it was a problem.
A problem for who? Jesus? I don’t think so, we’ve already seen that he was quite liberal when it came to his views on women. For John, James or Matthew? no none of them seemed to have a problem. Paul was the one with the problem. But why? What had caused the problem? Why all of a sudden were women becoming more and more independent? Hold on to your seats cause this might come as a bit of a shock. What had caused the problem was the gospel, that’s right the good news.
And it was Paul himself who cultivated the problem when he stated in Galatians 3:28 Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman.
Must have been a shock to the Jews, don’t know if it’s fact or not but some historians tell us that Rabbis of that era started the day with the prayer "Thank you Lord for not making me a gentile, a slave or a woman." But Jesus had broken the chains of sin, redeemed us from the fall and made us equal at the cross. Not only had Paul lifted the equality barrier in theory, but he proved it in practice. He used women to help spread the gospel, shock, horror, never you say, check out Philippians 4:3 And, my true partner, I ask you to help them. These women have worked together with me and with Clement and with the others in spreading the good news. Their names are now written in the book of life.
And in Acts 21:9 Paul’s stayed with Philip the evangelist one of the first seven deacons of the earl church, and his four daughters, Acts 21:9 9 and he had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. The word that is translated prophesied here literally means to hold the prophetic office. When Paul closes his letter to the church in Rome in Romans 16 he sends greetings to 24 people referring to them as fellow workers of Jesus Christ, of those 24, 6 were women.
Now picture the uproar that was caused by women who thought that they were as good as men. Women who dared presume that God could use them in spreading the gospel. "Well I’ll tell you what, this Christianity is dangerous stuff. Since my wife started following the teaching of this here Jesus fellow, why she thinks she’s almost as good as me. The other day she looked me right in the eye and yesterday she spoke back to me. You know what she told me? She said that this Paul guy said that in Christ there was no male or female. What kind of rubbish are they filling her mind with at these meetings? I think we’d better do something about these nuts."
Christianity was about to hit the skids because it had instilled a little self worth in women. It has to be seen in the context it was written in. In Ephesians 6:5, Titus 2:9 and 1 Timothy 6:1 Paul exhorts slaves to be obedient to their masters. Is Paul then condoning slavery as an appropriate institution? I’m sure that slave owners 150 years ago used those very texts to condone their actions. But was Paul actually saying that slavery was correct? No he’d already decreed that there was no difference between a slave and free man, however to have encouraged slaves to rise up against their masters may very well have been to sound the death toll of the new church.
In certain letters to certain churches, Corinth, Epheses and Collosa women were told to be submissive to men, to be silent in church and were prohibited from teaching or leadership. Yet the same author in the same Bible writing to different churches, for example the churches in Phillipi and Rome sends greetings to key people in the church, a good portion of who were women.
The first three churches were prominent Greek churches where a woman’s place was to be neither seen nor heard. The other two were more liberal communities allowing women more freedom. In those cities it wasn’t unacceptable for women to be in places of authority. Lydia the seller of purple was a successful business lady in Phillipi, but in Ephesus she would have been seen as a loose woman. When Paul was in Berea it is mentioned that important women believed in the gospel. Not servant women, or cloistered housewives, but important women.
In certain areas it was permissible and even expedient to use women to help spread the Gospel. In other areas when wives and women in general exercised their new found freedom in Christ, they were seen as unsubmissive. And that became detrimental to the cause of the gospel, and therefore it became a local problem.
Guys, if’n you are going to use scriptures like 1 Corinthians and Ephesians 5 to keep your wives in line then you’d better buy her a hat for church, a kerchief for praying and forbid her to get her hair cut. Or was that just cultural?
But Paul did say in Ephesians 5:22 (NIV) Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord Listen to how the CEV puts it 22 A wife should put her husband first, as she does the Lord. Paul defines this further in Ephesians 5:24 Wives should always put their husbands first, as the church puts Christ first. What type of submission is Paul talking about here? Is it a grovelling demeaning submission which some people promote? Does this give the husband the right to demand anything he wants, and he wants it know. Does this mean that the husband speaks and the wife jumps? Hardly. Primarily it speaks of an administrative role. In everything somebody has to be in charge. When Greg and Paul came on staff I told them, "Hey guys we are equals, complete equals, but I’m a little more equal then you are." Has to be that way. Somebody has to have the final say, and that is God.
In the ideal circumstances the husband must be open and receptive to God, he therefore functions as God’s administrative assistant. Now if husband and wife are both in tune with God then there’s no problem. When they do differ then the deciding factor lies with the husband, understanding that the request or decision is in keeping with the law of God. You see the qualifying statement is "as to the Lord". No man has the right to make his Christian wife disobey her primary master, who is Jesus. Nor is any woman required to put up with physical, mental or emotional abuse. A woman can practice forgiveness while at the same time practising common sense. And I would publicly advice you, that if you are in a physically abusive situation then you need to remove yourself from danger. No man, Christian or non-Christian has the right to strike his wife or verbally abuse her or her children.
Submission is respect. Women you have an obligation to submit to your husband in the same way that the church does to Christ. Part of that is making him feel like he is the most important person in the world. Part of that is not being a nag or shrew. Part of that is not verbally abusing him. Part of that is not making him beg for intimacy. You might want to write down 1 Corinthians 7:5 and reflect on it. Part of it is making your husband feel like a man. What is worse then seeing a woman who runs her husband.
Now wives don’t get all snooty and say "well when he loves me the way Christ loves the church then I’ll submit to him as the church submits to Christ" Uh-huh, that’s not the way it works. Paul didn’t say wives respect your husband if he does this or if he does that, he says respect your husband.
Listen up, all too often we figure that our obligation is to make sure that our spouse fulfils their obligation, and that’s not our obligation that’s their obligation, our obligation is to simply fulfil our obligations. Got it?
Listen up to what someone left on my desk one day it says.
LOVE IS PATIENT ABOUT DIRTY CLOTHES LEFT STREWN AROUND THE BEDROOM, LOVE IS KIND ENOUGH NOT TO LEAVE THEM THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. IT DOES NOT ENVY HER HUSBAND TAKING CLIENTS OUT TO LUNCH, IT DOES NOT BOAST ABOUT THE WONDERFUL LUNCH HE HAD AT COMPANY EXPENSE, IT IS NOT PROUD THAT SHE HAS MORE BIBLE KNOWLEDGE THE HE DOES. IT IS NOT RUDE IN POINTING OUT THAT SHE SOMETIMES FAILS TO APPLY IT, IT IS NOT SELF SEEKING CONSIDERS THE MARRIAGE OVER SELF FULFILMENT. IT IS NOT EASILY ANGERED OVER MUD ON THE FLOOR, IT KEEPS NO RECORD OF WRONGS OR TIMES THAT SHE HAS TOLD HIM TO WIPE HIS FEET. LOVE DOES NOT DELIGHT IN EVIL HE ACTUALLY FEELS BAD ABOUT FORGETTING, BUT REJOICES WITH THE TRUTH HE IS THRILLED WHEN HE FINALLY DOES REMEMBER. IT ALWAYS PROTECTS HE EVEN PUTS THE TOILET SEAT DOWN. ALWAYS TRUSTS SHE BELIEVES THE BEST ABOUT HIM, ALWAYS HOPES ANC ACTUALLY BELIEVES SOME DAY SHE WILL HAVE HIM TRAINED, ALWAYS PERSEVERES IN SPITE OF DISCOURAGING SETBACKS. LOVE NEVER FAILS WHEN CONTINUALLY APPLIED.
