Anchored in Surrender | Genesis 2:18, Ephesians 5:21-23

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Thank you Kathleen for reading for us. Maybe for some of you today saying, thanks be to God after that passage, you’re like, I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’m thankful for that one. But it’s a tradition after the reading of God’s word, there’s some passages that it’s hard to say that about, isn’t there?

So normally. When there’s a tricky passage like this, I just get to blame Alex for it and be like, he assigned it to me. If I screw it up, it’s on him. If I do a great job, it’s on him. Like all these sorts of things. I did this to myself. I, I was writing, I wrote this series about six months ago and selected this passage for some reason, and then a couple weeks ago we opened it as a daily devotion writing team and read it, and I was like.

Why did I do this to myself? There are landmines everywhere in this text. We’ve got submission husbands, wives, and the word submit itself just gives me the heebie-jeebies. And then we have slavery in here and it’s just riddled with landmines. So if anything, you should stick around to see if I can avoid all the landmines.

I was as a kid, I grew up, I was like the most compliant kid. And it wasn’t because I was necessarily a good kid, it was because I was too stupid to disobey. My parents would tell me, work hard in school and I’d be like, okay, I will do that thing now. I would, my parents would say, be nice to my friends and family, and I’d be like, okay, I will do that thing now.

So I just didn’t occur to me to disobey. But as I got older and as I went into like adult life, I started to realize the tension around and my relationship with authority shifted. ’cause I started to realize I could choose alternatives or disagree with people that were put in authority over me.

It’s one of the reasons that I suspect it’s probably one of the hardest parts of adulting. Am I wrong? It’s one of the reasons politics is so charged. Because we’re selecting someone who’s gonna have all this power over my wellbeing and my comfort and all these sorts of things, or our relationship with bosses or authority figures.

It’s a difficult part. Our relationship with these kinds of figures is complicated, isn’t it? Today we’re talking about our relationship with authorities, but also more importantly, our relationship with. Authority systems and structures and how our hearts can engage that in a really healthy way.

So before we dive in, I just need to pray, reset for myself.

Maybe take a deep breath. Allow yourself to settle into the space. Remind yourself that the spirit of the living God. Was in this room long before you walked through these doors. That Jesus who loves you has a plan and a mission to reach you with something this morning.

Father, I pray today as we proceed

that you would speak life and hope. And your goodness into our lives. Amen. Amen. Yeah. So submission is everyone’s favorite topic. But I want to propose to you that there’s actually so much goodness and so much beauty in this passage, and I’m excited actually after last week in the daily team.

When I was nervous, I’ve come to be so excited about this passage. But before we dive into the Texas self, I just wanna remind us where we’ve been. We’re in this series called Anchored. The last several weeks I’ve been using a quote from Fleming. Rutledge. She’s been doing some heavy lifting.

She’s a rockstar. One of my favorite theologians this week. We’re gonna look at a different theologian to illustrate this idea, but here’s the premise for the series anchored. The idea is that here in America especially and in the western world, we’re teased and we’re, we live and breathe in this world where we have rights to freedom, right?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that has done so much good in the world. We need some freedom in order to thrive as human beings. But the series, the premise of the series, that there’s also boundaries that God gives us. Because without boundaries, we actually fall apart as human beings.

We need boundaries to thrive. And so each week we’ve been exploring what some of those boundaries are. These are boundaries that God’s gives us for our good in order for us to thrive. Margaret Schuster says it this way, to come to him to come to Jesus is to admit once and for all that nothing we can do can save us from our spiraling futility.

That many things we can do will destroy us and others in ways we cannot foresee or imagine and listen to this. And that we desperately need a limit at the center of our lives. So this is the sort of thesis of this series. It goes like this, unanchored freedom is a different kind of bondage. So each week we’ve been exploring an anchor for our souls a relinquishing of a freedom that actually allows us to thrive as human beings.

First week we explored this, you can’t be a you until you’ve anchored in a we. You’ve made, you were made to be in community. It’s an anchor. It’s a freedom. We relinquish freedom in order to be in community, but we were designed to thrive in community. And then the second week, last week, we learned this a life anchored to the way of Jesus survives the storms that the teaching the person of Jesus, if we anchor our lives and say, I’m all in.

What you say goes Jesus. That is a recipe for building a life that can handle the storms. And then this week we’re gonna be exploring this idea. The title of the message is Anchored to Surrender. So are we ready to wade our way into this tricky passage? How you feeling? Another way of saying this title of this series is, or this message is this, it’s the power of submission.

There is a power that God gives us. When we submit, and so the question I have for us this morning that we’re gonna be spending our time on is this, how in the world is submission powerful? How in the world is submission powerful? We’re in the book of Ephesians. This was a letter written by Paul to the church at Ephesus.

Just give us the lay of the land. It’s a letter in which he breaks the letter into two parts. It’s a very diverse church, a lot of Gentiles and Jews there. So a lot of people that aren’t really familiar with. The Old Testament texts, and then some who are, and what he’s trying to do is get them all on the same page about what the gospel is.

And so he breaks it into two sections. The first part, chapters one through three, he talks about the gospel, the implicate of the power of the gospel, what God has done, the work in life and work of Jesus, all these sorts of things. And then in the second half of the letter he starts talking about the implications of the gospel.

Meaning this, if you believe the gospel, these things will naturally just flow out of you. And so it’s a way of doing some diagnostics. If you don’t believe the gospel, these things won’t flow out of you as well and as smoothly and as in life-giving ways. So we’re, our passage is, we are in the second half here, so we’re in these implications sections.

And so the verse is right before us, here’s what Paul’s been trying to teach. Do not get drunk with wine, which leads to de Bacher, but instead be filled with the spirit speaking to one another with Psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit, singing and making music from your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to the God the Father, for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And then here’s starting our passage, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now interestingly, so he’s talking about what a life in the spirit looks like. What does a life that is saturated in the spirit of God look like? And he gives these three, three sort of metrics by which you can see or prove that you have a life living in the spirit be filled.

And then there’s three little participles after this by speaking by. Giving thanks and by submitting one to another. By the way, it’s interesting. As a side note, it’s interesting that one of the signs of being filled in the spirit is that we will sing together. It’s the first one he gives. So that’s one of the reasons why we have a worship night here, is it’s just an, it’s a sign that we are living in the life of the spirit of God.

So we worship together. So I’d encourage you to come out this Wednesday and worship with us. It awakens the spiritual work in you. But if we’re gonna talk about submission, I’m gonna use this word a ton this morning uncomfortably, but hopefully by the end it’ll be comfortable. You’ll actually enjoy this word.

I might, my, my goal today is maybe that you would enjoy the word submission. So if I’m gonna talk about it, we should define it. Submit is this little Greek word, huso. And it means to subject yourself or to submit. And BDA, which is a sort of a, one of the most valuable Greek sort of dictionaries, says it this way.

Submission is the sense of voluntary yielding in love. So before we proceed into talking about submission, I need you to remember and lock in your brain right now early on in the message. This is a voluntary yielding in love. I’m gonna say it this way for us, submission is a power used by the one who submits.

This is a biblical idea of submission. Submission is a power used by the one who submits, subjection, and subjugation are when some force takes away that power. You cannot demand anyone to submit. Biblically speaking. That’s subjugation. The only way submission happens is when the one who submits decides to wield a power in their own life.

So we need to know that before we dive into this passage. Alright, so our text starts in verse 21, but right away, I’m gonna have to get into the weeds, by the way. This text is complicated. There’s a lot of movements and I’m not even gonna be able to touch on half of the stuff in here. But there’s a lot of stuff to go through and we’re gonna be diving through all this text, but I believe in you.

You are a brilliant church. I may not be able to handle this with some churches, but you’re gonna track with me ’cause we’re gonna weed through a bunch of passages. I have full confidence. So the role of verse 21 is the first confusion among scholars. So some scholars, if you’re in the NIV, you probably have a heading above verse 21.

If you’re in a different translation, the heading comes after verse 21. And part of the reason that’s complicated is because they’re trying to decide does verse 21 fit with the previous section or does it fit with the following section? And I’ve already shown my cards by reading the previous section to help us get some context.

The reason it’s complicated is because. Linguistically meaning the sentence structure, it ties to the previous section. It ties to being filled in the spirit. But thematically, it strongly ties to the following section. And so most scholars have come to believe that this is a sort of hinge verse that’s designed by Paul to highlight how important this verse is.

If you’re gonna understand what’s going before and understand what’s going on, you need this pivot text. So it’s both. A conclusion to a section and the introduction to the next section. So we already talked about this, be filled. This is the previous section by speaking, by giving thanks and by submitting.

And so that’s actually how it would read submitting to one, one another Outta Reverence for Christ. So let me just break it down, be filled with the spirit speaking and singing, giving thanks. And submitting. So the first thing that I need us to see in this passage is this submission confirms spiritual filling.

So if you have no submission in your life, you are not under any authority and you’ve not chosen to be under any authority, it’s a sign that you are not being filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the first thing that I think that this passage, the fact that this text sort of functions this verse 21, functions as this pivot in our text.

Another way of saying that is this submission correlates with spiritual filling. There is a strong relationship between spiritual filling and submission. Okay, so who do we submit to? Great question. The first thing we see in verse 21 is this to one another. So he’s talking to this church in Ephesus and he’s saying, Jews, gentiles, people from all sorts of different walks of life, I want you to submit to each other, to prefer the other.

This is the mandate of this passage. This is a command from Paul to this church, this highly diverse church. And then he says a few other things. Who else are we supposed to submit to? It reads this, wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. Now, literally speaking in this, in the Greek, the word submit doesn’t show up a second time in this, the only command is actually in that first movement in verse 21.

So it actually reads more literally from the Greek submit. There’s the word. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ wives to your own husbands. And the reason that’s important is not because he’s saying, wives don’t submit to your husbands. It’s that verb, that command functions for every other character in the text going forward.

So this is how you’re gonna submit to one another wives to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. And then notice. As you do to the Lord, that’s gonna show up in every single character. Let me show you what I mean. Husbands. So again, husbands submitting, here’s how husbands are submitting here one another in the Lord.

Love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So there’s the Lord again, wives to the husbands, as if to the Lord, husbands to wives, loving as Christ loved the church. Children. Obey your parents in the Lord again, children submitting to one, one to another by obeying your parents in the Lord.

Fathers parenting in the instruction of the Lord. Slaves obey your earthly masters respect and fear with sincerity in your heart, just as you would obey Christ, but as slaves of Christ as if you are serving the Lord. Masters. Treat your slaves the same way as your slave is interacting with you. Do not threaten them since you know that he, God, the Lord, who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

So here’s how it flows. This is the logical flow of thought of Paul the Apostle in this passage. Be filled with the spirits, submitting wives to husbands loving wives, children to parents like Jesus, slaves to masters and masters like Jesus. So here’s the command for us today. The command to submit applies to all parties involved.

We are all called and invited into this submission relationship one to another that submit word carries weight all the way through for us. There maybe there’s some natural questions that come out of this because in this context it’s a little easier, right? We’re the church we’re supposed to take care of each other.

Submitting to someone who’s like out for your good and all that sort of thing is a little bit easier maybe. But what about some other authorities? Because beyond this passage, there are some passages that are way scarier when it comes to submission. Let me give you another one. This is Paul the Apostle.

Still let everyone be submitted to subject. That’s the same little Greek word to governing authorities for. There is no authority except that which God has established, the authorities that exist have established by God. We’re supposed to submit to governments to choose voluntary, out of love, surrender to government systems.

Peter makes it even worse. Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority, whether the emperor, by the way, horrific. Emperors in this day and age, Roman Empire, who’s murdering Christians, okay? Just submit to them as the Supreme Authority or governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and commend those who do right slaves and reverence for Christ.

Submit yourselves to masters not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. Come on Peter, you’ve got to be kidding me. But remember at the top of the message, I wanted you to remember some truth about the word submission. Submission is a power used by the one who submits, and it’s always unequivocally.

It’s at least maybe you can find a verse in the New Testament that says, otherwise, I can’t find an invitation in scripture where submission is not to Christ. And then. To another authority. So the final call for us is all throughout our passage and every one of these examples that I read to you that are even scarier is you submit to Jesus.

And we learned last week that his goodness and his way is for our good, and he loves us. He’s demonstrated his love for us. He is unequivocally pursuing your good, and he’s the one who loves you so much, who died on the cross for your sins to call you forward, to bring you back into relationship.

That’s who we’re asked to submit to. He didn’t just. Talk about loving us. He demonstrated it deep down to the core of who he was, all the way to the point of death. That’s who Jesus invites you to submit to. It’s to him. So the second thing we learned here in this passage is submission to Christ, overrules all else.

So I’m gonna have to give you some context in order to understand why this is very complicated submission. So we’re invited to submit to some entities, some governments and maybe husbands, wives slaves. What’s up with that? Children, parents. But these same authors, disobey governments all over the New Testament.

Why is that? Because submission to Christ, overrules all else. So the question is, what if the authorities are asking us to do evil? Here’s just some passages. If you want to take a snapshot of this, you can go read these passages later. Here’s all the times. Paul Disobeys an authority figure in his life.

For the sake of Christ, for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of loving another human being. Paul chooses to surrender to Christ above the thing that would keep him safe, which was be to appease an authority figure. So generally speaking, we submit to authorities, but if it contradicts the nature of Jesus in the gospel, then Paul Disobeys other apostles disobey authority.

A great example, I’ll just highlight Acts four. This is when Jesus has ascended and then the apostles are preaching Jesus and telling people about the love of Jesus. And then the religious leaders of his day say, you’ve got to shut up, or We’re gonna kill you. And these guys know that this could happen because they just saw Jesus murdered by the same people and they say, sorry.

We have to teach Jesus we’ll try and be nice to you in the process we’re gonna preach Jesus. So sub submit submission to Christ Overrules all else. So why else is submission powerful? How else is submission powerful? Let’s dive deeper into this passage. Submission takes. Some autonomy back from authority figures in our lives.

Look at this when we submission makes it a spiritual practice. I’m just going to look at one example of this in our text. If you look at this, wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as to the as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

His body of which he is the savior. Now as the church submits to Christ. So also wives should submit to their own husbands and everything. So what this wife is doing, and by the way, this is uncomfortable for us, maybe because we don’t think in these terms as often. Maybe if you grew up in the church, you’re like, yeah, duh.

But our culture doesn’t vibe with this kind of language. But in Paul’s day, this was a leaky. Like a leap forward in human civilization to redeem a posture that was just assumed upon women. And so what he’s doing is he’s inviting a wife who’s assume, like culture says, you will be subject not submitted to subject to a husband.

He has complete authority over you. If he’s sick of you, he can just set you aside. And he, Paul redeems that and says no. You can’t subject her. If she’s decided to submit, he gives this wife back a power to say, you know what? If I’m a, if I’m a wife in this ancient fir first century, I’m gonna take this posture of oppression that my culture gives me, and I’m gonna bleed goodness out of it for my soul, and I’m gonna use it as a spiritual practice.

I take this weapon away from you, and I use it for my spiritual good. That’s cool, right? There’s gonna be some more examples of that. Submission also eliminates the abuse of power. Let’s look at this one with husbands. Husbands, love your wives. That’s already a leap forward for this culture. Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her I could read this rest of the section.

This is a much higher calling than submit. This is a Jesus died for the church. That’s the level of submission I would like out of you. Oh. So this is a categorical shift in human civilization submission, eliminates the abuse of power. A husband trying to first submit to Jesus cannot abuse power if he’s submitting to Jesus the way he’s called to in this text.

Submission aligns with God’s promise. Look at this with children. Look at this down here with the children obey your parents. And the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise. Isn’t that interesting? God’s like children. I want you to obey, but before that freaks you out.

’cause parents are imperfect and are broken. I promise you that you will live long in the land. If you try and lean into this practice, that’s a beautiful gift and submission flips the power dynamic for slaves. So this is a tricky point in our passage. It’s one of the landmines, so I’m just gonna deal with it.

Head on for us for just a moment. Why is it that this passage doesn’t condemn slavery? First of all, I need to talk to you a little bit about slavery in the first century, and then we’ll get back to that main point. Once we navigate and tiptoe around this landmine. So our perception of what slavery is very different than what it was in the ancient first century world.

Up to 40% of the population were slaves. This was a sort of an in debt slavery. It wasn’t good or beautiful. I’m glad it’s not in existence anymore, but it was not what we think of as slavery. If you were in debt, then you would be, choose slavery and to pay off your debt. Now in that choice, you’d give all authority away.

Your master could kill you if you wanted to, but it’s almost, not quite, but almost on par as holding a mortgage. This was a massive percentage of the Roman Empire we’re in debt and so therefore they worked for these masters. So not the same exact thing. So we gas ourselves. Paul, great opportunity to talk about how slavery’s evil and bad.

It’s. Deeply intertwined in the culture. It’s deeply intertwined in the economic system. But what Paul does here, and I love this, is he plants a time bomb that blossoms throughout human history, past this text, and eventually culture has to say slavery is no longer acceptable. But the time bomb takes place in this kind of text.

He doesn’t just undo it today as he’s writing, what he does is he usurps the whole system. Look at this. Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey crest. Okay? Just like with the wife, he says, oh, you can’t subject this slave. He decided to serve.

He took submission away from the master and says, I choose to follow Christ first. And because I love Jesus and I, there is nothing to fear in life or death. I decide I will serve humbly. See how that takes a dignity back for the slave and it plants this sort of subversive seed inside of the systems and structures.

Obey your masters. Verse six. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eyes are on you, but as slaves of Christ. Remember again, this is connected with spiritual power, spiritual authority. Do the will of God from your heart. Serve wholehearted wholeheartedly as if you are serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do.

Whatever their slaves are Free now, Paul continues. Masters, treat your slaves in the same exact way that I just asked your slaves to behave towards you. Categorically shifted in this culture, in this day and age. So he doesn’t condemn slavery explicitly here, but he condemns slavery. And as time goes on, as follower of Jesus, try and figure out how to live this out in new cultural moments throughout history eventually comes to a place where followers of Jesus say, we can’t tolerate slavery anymore.

So this is why the last thing that we’re gonna look at here in this passage is some submission flips the script. It flips the power dynamic because it takes some power back submission is a power wielded by the one who submits, right? I want to give you an example from the teachings of Jesus. Look at this passage.

This is right from. The Sermon on the Mount, which we talked a bunch about last week, Matthew said this, you have heard that it was said, eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. Whoa, don’t resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek.

And for years, I think this te text has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, like just be a doormat. Oh, this text is so far from that because in order to slap someone in this day and age, oh it’s actually all the time just ’cause how physics works. But in order to slap one on the, someone on the right cheek, if you’re right-handed, it has to be a backhanded slap.

But in this culture, a backhanded slap was like, I’m so good. I don’t even want the palm of my hand to touch your face. You’re that dirty to me. And to turn to them. The other cheek is slap me like a man. This is a subversion of power. A subversion of subjugation. It’s saying, if you’re gonna slap me, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna stoop to your level, but I would like you to treat me like a fellow human being and slap me with an open hand.

This is what’s going on in this text, and I could make a case for that. And, but there’s tons of other passages that do this kind of thing. So choosing submission actually preserves dignity. When Jesus taught this, he knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying that, I want you to fight and battle the bad systems, the bad structures in this world, not with.

Meeting violence with violence, but by demanding a dignity, that is what you have because of who you were made in Christ. So what we’ve learned is submission confirms spiritual filling. Our submission connects us to is related to whether we’re filled with the spirit. We’ve learned that submission to Christ overrules all else.

This is why if you’re in a situation where you’re in a bad relationship and you need to, for your safety and that sort of thing, that Christ would invite you maybe to disobey some authority. Because first of all, first and foremost, we obey Christ. It’s complicated. Because you might be able to redeem that situa situation as a spiritual practice.

But what he’s saying is, first and foremost, you submit to Jesus and then you may decide to out of love and to redeem situations, maybe even to usurp some authority and change some systems and instructions. You may decide to submit even to a bad authority submission to Christ overrules all else. And submission flips the power dynamic.

And so when it’s all said and done, this. Text is teaching us this. And listen. Christ focused submission is a spiritual power move. This is not weakness. Church submission is the superpower of a follower of Jesus. Let me make a case for this, but this is the bottom line from this passage.

It’s not a weakness. Sub price focus submission is a spiritual power move. Surrender is the secret weapon of the spiritually mature. So a historian by the name of crane Briton wrote this book, the Anatomy of Revolution, where he tracks the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the English Revolution, these very different revolutions, and what he found, and one of the cases he makes in his historical account of these different.

Revolutions is that revolutions that come on the backs of power and fighting weapons tend to create systems only a few years later that are just as toxic as the system that they overthrew. There’s, you could make a case that the American Revolution was not, is the only example he has, where it’s okay, mixed bag, American Revolution.

It, we fought and then we had some preservation there of some goodness, but. What he tracks is other revolutions like these revolutions, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. These revolutions are on the sort of come from within this model of submission. It’s non-violent resistance to subjugating powers.

It’s actually a power that we yield church, and it’s the way of Jesus. It aligns with the way of Jesus. The weapon that we have as followers of Jesus is the choice. To say, I will stand my ground because I don’t fear death. I will stand my ground because Jesus stood his ground and so on and so forth. One example of this, Malala Yoi, she wrote this in her book, with guns, you can kill terrorists with education.

You can kill terrorism. So she was actually at the age of 11, started writing anonymously for a blog for CNN advocating for girls to get education. I can’t get through a sermon without being moved because when she was 15, her school bus was stopped by a set of radical terrorists from the Taliban. They climbed on the bus and they asked, where’s Malala?

And then they shot her in the head and she miraculously survived.

And then as she started to speak out, as she found healing physically, she started to continue to speak out, and she advocated for kindness towards those who had attacked her because she understands at the age of 15 this principle that we’re talking about today. That she takes a power with a pen that they could never take with a bullet or a gun.

She has a power with kindness and mercy that they could never take away from her with a weapon. It’s the same kind of principle. So submission focus or Christ’s focus submission is a spiritual power move.

So this week, I think I told you last week, I’ve been reading through the book of Matthew and in the book of Matthew, I’m actually just gonna flip there in my Bible because I wanna read it through you right from the passage Jesus is discussing with his disciples power dynamics in the in chapter 18. I will flip it to it here for you, Matthew 18, four.

This whole section, it’s a lot about who should we pay taxes to this evil system and structure should we like? This is all the context. Who has power, who has authority? Who should we bend the knee to? All this sort of thing. And then finally it culminates with this passage and he says in verse one of chapter 18, he says this.

At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Who should be the boss of everyone? This is the question they ask him, and I was reading this. I’m like, this is the principle. Verse two. He called a little child to him and placed the child among them, and he said.

Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such as this child in my name, welcomes me.

And you know what? Jesus put his money where his mouth was because. That’s the exact mechanism, the mechanism of submission that Jesus uses to redeem our souls. The work of Christ was a work of submission over and over again, and all of the gospels. Jesus says, why are you doing what you’re doing? He says, I’m submitting to the Father.

I am a man. Even though I’m a God incarnate, I choose. Which is the definition of submit voluntary out of love submission to the father. I decide to submit to my father and I will go to the cross and I will submit to the horrific governing authorities of Rome and of his own people, the Jewish people, and I will take on even death.

And I will take on the best blow that Satan and the enemy and death could give it. I will wade my way into the darkness of death and Hades I will descend to the dead. And by it he redeems all creation. That is a power move. If I’ve ever heard a power move, that is the invitation we have as followers of Jesus, we have access to the same strength.

So Christ Fed centered Christ focused submission is a spiritual power. It is the secret weapon of a follower of Jesus. It’s to say, I first submit to Jesus my whole life to him, and then I will decide in moments to take away authorities from the systems and the structures of this world by choosing surrender, choosing submission in moments to redeem, to subvert.

To break the systems instructions that will take authority away from us. I wanna invite Jacob up to lead us in this closing song

and this song and the chorus. We’re going to be doing a little bit of surrendering this gratitude for his work, but I wanna read some lyrics from a different song that I think embody this a little bit for us this morning. This is an old song. By Colbert and Joyce Croft called, I can’t even walk.

It starts like this. I think that I’ll make Jesus my, all in all, when I’m in trouble on his name, I’ll call. If I don’t trust in him, I’d be less than a man. Lord, I can’t even walk without you holding my hand. No, I can’t even walk without you holding my hands. The mountains are too high. The valley’s too wide down on my knees, I learned to stand.

This is what I’m talking about. This is what we have access to as fall of Jesus. Our great power is our weakness. Our great power is our surrender, our great powers, our submission down on my knees, I learned to stand and I can’t even walk without you holding my hands. So church, would you stand with me?

Men in this room. I’m not getting into the specifics about husbands and wives and all that sort of thing. There’s some cultural elements, debates among theologians, all those sorts of things. But here’s what I can tell you with confidence today. Husbands, men, if you’re not submitted, then you’re not surrendered to Jesus.

I don’t know who to, whether it’s church authorities, your boss. But first and foremost, to Jesus wives, the invitation is to submit to Jesus hard stop. That’s the invitation. If you choose that’s in the dynamics in your theology around this dynamic in the home. If you choose to make that a spiritual practice in your submission to your husband, great.

That’s a power that you’re going to choose to take. But the answer is for all of us. If not, if we’re not submitted somewhere. Choosing to submit is a power that I invite us to, to yield to today because it’s how we access the spirit of the living God. It’s how the gospel works. It’s how we break the systems and structures of this world.

Let’s sing.