Spirit-Guided Relationships
Ephesians 5:18 – 25a
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason - Sunday, April 18, 2004
Bamboo
Once upon a time, in the heart of an ancient Kingdom, there was a beautiful garden. And there, in the cool of the day, the Master of the garden would walk. Of all the plants of the garden, the most beautiful and most beloved was gracious and noble bamboo. Year after year, bamboo grew yet more noble and gracious, conscious of his Master’s love and watchful delight, but modest and gentle withal. And often when the wind came to revel in the garden, Bamboo would dance and play, tossing and swaying and leaping and bowing in joyous abandon, leading the Great Dance of the garden, which most delighted the Master’s heart.
Now, once upon a day, the Master himself drew near to contemplate his Bamboo with eyes of curious expectancy. And Bamboo, in a passion of adoration, bowed his great head to the ground in loving greeting.
The Master spoke: "Bamboo, Bamboo, I would use you." Bamboo flung his head to the sky in utter delight. The day of days had come, the day for which he had been made, the day to which he had been growing hour by hour, the day in which he would find his completion and his destiny.
His voice came low: "Master, I’m ready. Use me as you wish."
"Bamboo," The Master’s voice was grave "I would have to take you and cut you down!"
A trembling of great horror shook Bamboo…"Cut …me… down ? Me.. whom you, Master, has made the most beautiful in all thy Garden…cut me down! Ah, not that. Not that. Use me for the joy, use me for the glory, oh master, but do not cut me down!"
"Beloved Bamboo," The Master’s voice grew graver still "If I do not cut you down, I cannot use you."
The garden grew still. Wind held his breath. Bamboo slowly bent his proud and glorious head. There was a whisper: "Master, if you cannot use me other than to cut me down.. then do your will and cut".
"Bamboo, beloved Bamboo, I would cut your leaves and branches from you also".
"Master, spare me. Cut me down and lay my beauty in the dust; but would you also have to take from me my leaves and branches too?"
"Bamboo, if I do not cut them away, I cannot use you."
The Sun hid his face. A listening butterfly glided fearfully away. And Bamboo shivered in terrible expectancy, whispering low: "Master, cut away"
"Bamboo, Bamboo, I would yet… split you in two and cut out your heart, for if I cut not so, I cannot use you."
Then Bamboo bowed to the ground: "Master, Master… then cut and split."
So did the Master of the garden took Bamboo…
and cut him down…
and hacked off his branches…
and stripped off his leaves…
and split him in two…
and cut out his heart.
And lifting him gently, the Master carried Bamboo to where there was a spring of fresh sparkling water in the midst of his dry fields. Then putting one end of the broken Bamboo in the spring and the other end into the water channel in the field, the Master gently laid down his beloved Bamboo… And the spring sang welcome, and the clear sparkling waters raced joyously down the channel of bamboo’s torn body into the waiting fields. Then the rice was planted, and the days went by, and the shoots grew and the harvest came.
In that day, Bamboo, once so glorious in his stately beauty, was yet more glorious in his brokenness and humility. For in his beauty he was life abundant, but in his brokenness, he became a channel of abundant life to his Master’s world.
Ephesians 5:18-25 contains the verse that is our focus for today:
18Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. 19Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts. 20And you will always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. 23For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. 24As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything.
25And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church…”
Our text is verse 21 which says: “And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
When looking at the text in the original Greek language, one sees that Paul is not giving us a command here nor is he making an exhortation which we must obey. Many translations of this passage view it as a command to be obeyed.
What Paul is saying here is a continuation of what he has been teaching us in his statement about being filled with the Spirit. (5:18). What we have here is Paul’s application of that principle…that teaching that we are to be continually, in the process of being filled with the Spirit.
He is writing to people who know what it means to be filled with the Spirit.
Remember, the controlling idea in the being filled with the Spirit is that our lives are willingly placed under the control and authority of the Holy Spirit…the third person of the Godhead. It is the continual surrender of the control of our lives totally to the Holy Spirit. You will remember that one of the facts about the drunken person is that his or her life is under the influence or control of the alcohol. The drunk lacks control.
Notice if you will what Paul says here: “Submitting yourselves to one another out of respect for Christ.”
The drunk asserts himself.
We, who are to be filled with the Spirit, are to be unlike what the drunk is. There is a different kind of surrender in view here…a surrender of our lives to the Holy Spirit.
We have seen that to be filled with the Holy Spirit means to be surrendered to Him. To be filled, we have to surrender the control of our lives to the Holy Spirit.
We need to understand the origin of the word submission:
It is a military term. Dal would be able to explain what this means. The picture here is one of a soldier in an army unit. The word literally means: “to place yourself under the authority of”.
A man voluntarily joins the army and begins his army career as a sub-human ( or maybe that was in the Marines) and upon completing basic training rises to the rank of private. That basically places him in the position in which almost everybody in the army has higher rank than he does.
However, in Basic training, this man has had to learn that he is no longer an individual, who does what he pleases. He is now part of something much bigger than himself. When he volunteered, he gave up the right to determine his own life and activities. He has to do what he is told. He is a man under authority. The rules dictate to him what he must do, when to do it and how he must do it.
If he begins to act on his own, independently, he is guilty of insubordination and will be punished accordingly.
The point Paul is making here is that we must be willing to do voluntarily what the soldier is required or forced to do because of his association with the army. We are servants of Jesus Christ and because of that, it is fitting that we willingly submit ourselves to Him and to the Holy Spirit. As servants of Christ, we have no individual rights to anything.
It is interesting to note, however, that what God does is this: He gives us things back as privileges. We yield up to Him our rights and He gives things back to us as privileges. What is the difference, you ask? Well, when someone violates one of our rights, we become angry. We get upset. However, when God needs to restrict our privileges for some special spiritual reason we simply adjust. We don’t have a right to that “thing” any more. God must have a good reason for limiting my privilege in this regard and I don’t find it too difficult to get in step with God’s program of the moment. I may miss the privilege, but I am not angry. I have been blessed to have had that thing for as long as I have had it. It has been a blessing and it is ok if God now does something else.
Therefore, what Paul is teaching us here is one of the operating principles of our life in Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a simple statement of what we ought to be as Christians.
Notice how Paul applies this to our lives here:
The person who is submitted to the Holy Spirit is the one who ought to be submitting himself to others in the body of Christ. The unsaved, or un-filled man or woman simply cannot do this. It is obvious that only saved men and women are able to be filled with the Spirit. When we voluntarily submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to fill us to over flowing, we are able to be submitting our selves to one another.
Notice how the basic intimate relationships of life fall under this responsibility and that there is a progression that we should understand:
As a result of being in submission to the Spirit, we find that we are to be ‘submitting ourselves” to one another.
* Who are these in the “one another”?
* Husbands love your wives.
* Wives be in submission to your own husbands.
* Children obey your parents.
* Servants and Masters respect and fairly treat each other…In today’s world this speaks to employers and employees.
That basically covers most of our most intimate relationships.
Submission here is not being a doormat. We are not talking about oppressive relationships.
There is another operative part of these responsibilities that expressed in one manner or another along the line of “out of respect for Christ”, as would Christ, etc.
Our pattern is that of Jesus Christ and his love for us. What would Jesus do, becomes the governing principle for all of us.
* Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. If a husband would love his wife in that way, then submission for the wife would not be an issue. A wife is to be a helper, suitable for the man…a complementary partner, not an echo, but a counterpart. That is the Biblical pattern. Like everything else, man has perverted even that basic relationship so that in the world, women are viewed not as God intended, but as less than equal to the man. It has many irritating aspects to it and many that are simply evil and destructive to the relationships of men and women. Why do you think the world speaks so much about the battle of the sexes? Sin is why.
o If , however, a husband has a selfless, giving, unconditional love for his wife, it will bless his wife and family and the pressure will be off so that she can willingly place herself under the authority of her husband. God has his own reasons for identifying the husband as the head of the family, but he never envisioned the head of the family as a tyrant, a dictator.
* Children are to obey their parents…because of their love and respect for Jesus. Your parents are not perfect. They will not always be right. But they will always be your parents and God expects that you will respect them and obey them just as you would obey Jesus. They will do the best they can do to do things right and ultimately they bear the responsibility for the family before Christ.
* Employers and employees both have a responsibility to respect and fairly treat each other…and to do it out of respect for Christ. Imagine how many things would change in our work world if we were concerned about how Jesus fits into all of these work relationships. Harmony would bless us all!
If you would have God use you…you must place yourself under the authority of the Holy Spirit.
If you would have harmony in your family, you must yield yourselves to each other.
Driving down a country road, I came to a very narrow bridge. In front of the bridge, a sign was posted: "YIELD." Seeing no oncoming cars, I continued across the bridge and to my destination. On my way back, I came to the same one-lane bridge, now from the other direction. To my surprise, I saw another YIELD sign posted. Curious, I thought, "I'm sure there was one posted on the other side." When I reached the other side of the bridge, I looked back. Sure enough, yield signs had been placed at both ends of the bridge. Drivers from both directions were requested to give right of way. It was a reasonable and gracious way of preventing a head-on collision. When the Bible commands Christians to "be subject to one another" (Ephesians 5:21) it is simply a reasonable and gracious command to let the other have the right of way and avoid interpersonal head-on collisions.
And we do it all out of love and respect for Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. If we concern ourselves with how it relates to Jesus or how Jesus would respond in any given situation, we will find that submitting ourselves to one another out of respect for Jesus works!
What would have to happen for you to actually be in the position of “submitting yourself” to others out of respect for Jesus?
What would you have to do to make it happen?
How might you have to change in the process of connecting with others in the body of Christ?
Remember, it all begins with submitting to the Holy Spirit.
Once we have done that and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we will be able to effectively submit ourselves to one another in the body of Christ…including our family relationships, and our work relationships.
We do it all for the sake of Jesus Christ…that others will see Him in us and be drawn to our Savior by the lives we live for each other and for Jesus.
--Dennis Gleason
