R393 Living Well With One Another Part 2

Welcome to this edition of The Encouraging Word, featuring the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton and a message on living well with one another.

Today we bring you the conclusion of this two-part series as we study not only how we work well together, but more importantly how we work well with God, leading us, guiding us, and directing us every single day. We'll be headed to Ephesians, both chapters 5 and 6 in just a moment with Dr. Wilton, but we want you to know that we have a number of resources available 24 hours a day on our website. If you haven't been lately, it's a brand new website, freshly redesigned at www.tewonline.org. Drop by today, www.tewonline.org. While you're there, we'd love to have you follow us on our social media and sign up for the daily Encouraging Word devotional, an email from Dr. Wilton every single day.

Sign up today online at www.tewonline.org. Now, Dr. Don Wilton. If we understand the vital essence of what it means to hupotasso, what it means to be subject to one another as unto the Lord Jesus Christ, it means, my friends, that we are never going to have absolute efficiency in our relationships. We are never going to enjoy a smooth working in our relationships, and we are never going to experience complete and ultimate victory in our relationships. What God is saying here is, listen, if you want to know how to get along with one another, you need to understand God's order.

Many years ago, during the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King, who was beaten up brutally by the police, went on television. And he said, and we will never forget, let's just get along. Can't we just get along with one another? And the Apostle Paul is saying here, listen, the reason why people don't get along is because of I, me and myself. And when you subject I, me and myself under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and you understand the spiritual dynamic of what it means to be subject to one another out of reverence for the Lord, guess what's going to happen?

You're going to have complete victory. Most marital problems come down to this issue. Most problems in the workplace come down to this issue.

Problems at school on the faculty come down to this issue. Problems in the church can come down to this issue. Much of conflict resolution, even in the church of God, my friend, is when people begin to assume ascendancy over the Lordship and the headship of Jesus Christ. And many people in the church today say that the church is a democracy where everybody has a right. The Bible says the church is not a democracy, it's a theocracy in which Jesus Christ is the head of the church. Jesus Christ is the head of the church. What is Paul saying? He's saying here that the whole idea behind our relationships with one another must carry with it the complete relinquishing of our rights to one another. In 1 Peter 16, 16 Paul said, Be in subjection to faithful ministers and to everyone who helps.

In 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 13 through 15, Submit ourselves for the Lord's sake, for such is the will of God. Nations who have no order result in anarchy. Folks, I've been around some of those nations.

Many years ago, I was in some of those nations. Anarchy. When order begins to break down, anarchy breaks loose.

That's when we usually have to send in the United States troops and try to arouse the United Nations from their lethargy to do something about it and all these things. Anarchy breaks loose because there's no order and God says if you want to get along with one another, follow my order of things. The writer to the Hebrews in chapter 13 and verse 17 talking about the church put it like this. He said, Obey our leaders and submit to them.

Why? Because they watch over our souls as those who will give account. And so God takes these principles and he applies them to the home.

What does he say? Husbands, love your wives. Wives, submit to your husbands. Children, obey your parents.

Employees, submit to your employers. That's what God says and he uses as his illustration the church. Now because of political correctness and nervous tension, the question of authority has become misdirected and distorted. It's become sometimes abused and misused in the home. In other words friends, how can anybody expect a wife who is being abused by ungodly behavior on the part of her husband to submit to him?

How can you? How can anybody, Paul says, how can anybody expect a child to obey parents when those parents are exasperating their children? And are abusing them in whatever form or fashion that might take. You see friends, not even the smallest household can function if each member demands his or her own way all the time.

It's not going to happen. And here Paul explains that the structural function of the family, like the church, requires two things, authority and submission. There you have it.

Now listen carefully. You take those two things out of your home, out of your school, out of your workplace, out of your nation, out of your state and you've got the ground root of major problems. Authority and mutual submission. Now you can work it any way you want to. You can throw the Constitution of America at it. You can conjure up the ACLU to bring about a lawsuit.

You can devise every kind of plan and strategy ever known to man. But I'm going to say to you, beloved friends, what God is saying is this. You take authority and submission out of reverence for the Lord, out of any institution and you've got the makings for chaos.

You've got the root or the seed bed of problems down the road. There are two factors which are vital in the home and the church. Number one, it must be controlled by love.

And number two, it must be modified by mutual, and I want to emphasize, by mutual submission. You know, I love being a husband today because most husbands, boy, they love to talk about verse 22. But what we husbands don't seem to understand that if we're looking at ratio and proportion, far more time is spent in the fifth chapter talking about husbands than about wives.

I think there's a reason for it. What does Paul say? Paul says that the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church. The husband must love his wife in verse 25 just as Christ loved the church. The husband must love his wife in verse 28 and 33 just as he loves his own body.

And here's the clincher. This is the one where God just kind of goes overboard. He says the husband must give himself to his wife in the same way that Jesus Christ gave himself to his bride. Now what did Jesus Christ do for his bride? He gave his life for her.

He gave his life for his church. Husbands today, are you willing to give your life for your wife? Are you willing to submit to that extent? How far are we willing to go in order to submit to one another? The submission that God talks about in chapter five, my friend, is not a one-way street. God is not saying that wives need to get on their knees. He's talking about co-equal status in the glorious divine balance of the makeup of the female and the male. And he says, wives, you submit to the headship of your husband in the home because and on the basis of the absolute sacrificial giving of the husband in love to his wife in the home.

If you don't do that, how can your wife submit to you as the leader of the home? Every obedient and spiritual Christian is a submitting Christian. That's what Paul is saying. It's not just husbands or wives and the husband who demands submission but does not recognize his own obligation to submit to his wife distorts God's standards and cannot be a godly husband. That's what Paul is saying. Parents who demand the obedience of their children but are not adhering to God's standards are distorting God's divine order and are guilty of upsetting the wonderful balance that God has in store for his children. Now, Paul, right through the epistles and through his letters, talks about this. For example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, he talks about the physical relationship between a husband and wife and something very interesting that Paul says. Now, folks, listen very carefully this morning. You can go to a therapist.

You can go to a marriage counselor. You can read every book that's ever been printed about our physical relationships together. But here's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. He gives us the secret. He gives us the key according to God's divine order of mutual submission.

What does he say? He says the husband is not in charge of his own body but the wife and the wife is not in charge of her own body but the husband. What is Paul saying?

Paul is saying that if you want the key to absolute unity in marriage, physically, emotionally, spiritually and in every other way, and in this instance he's talking about the physical relationship between a man and a woman, he says here's the key. Selfishness has no part. If you are selfish as a man or if you are selfish as a woman, you're going to have problems in your marriage.

That's what he's saying. You have to do what? You've got to deny yourself. You've got to say what I feel and what I want is absolutely irrelevant compared to what my spouse feels and what my spouse wants. It is a total abdication of I, me and myself. How? Because of the Spirit of God in honor of my spouse.

That's what submission is all about. Please forgive the interruption. We'll be back in just a moment with the completion of Dr. Don Wilton's message, Living Well with One Another. But Dr. Don wants me to remind you that we are available to pray with you and for you as we move forward in this struggle of not only making the best of our relationships and living well with one another, but the struggle that we have against good and evil.

There is opposition to the Christian way of life today more than ever, and we have a wonderful resource about this spiritual warfare, including the strategy of Satan and what it means to be fortified on our website right now. It's a wonderful resource. Drop by TEWonline.org and take a peek at what is going to be, I think, one of the most powerful resources we've made available this entire year.

Again, it's online right now at TEWonline.org. The good news is we know who wins in the end, but the battle is very real, and we'd love to pray with you and for you. You can connect with us at 866-899-WORD anytime to be prayer support for you.

That's 866-899-9673, first and foremost for prayer, but also to connect with great resources like you'll find online at TEWonline.org. Now back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton on the encouraging word. So it is here that Paul conjures up five pictures. First of all, Jesus Christ and God. What did Jesus say of God, the Father?

He said, not my will, but thine be done. The second picture he gives us is of Christ and the church. What did Jesus do for the church?

He loved the church, and he gave himself for the church. Thirdly, husbands and wives. What does he say in the same way? Husbands love your wives, wives submit to your husbands. The fourth picture he gives us, parents and children. The fifth picture he gives us is of slaves and masters, and when you bring it all together from the workplace to the playground to the schoolroom to the boardroom to the White House and right there to the fireside in your own home wherever you are, Paul gathers together all the people of all the world, and he said, listen, I've got news for you.

You can get along together. You know how you can do it? In Jesus Christ. And so what did Paul say to wives?

Perhaps three things. He says you have a manner. It is as unto the Lord Jesus Christ. Right there in verse 24. You have a motive.

What is your motive? Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He looks at all the wives of all the years and he says, you have a model, and his name is Jesus. Then he turns to husbands, and then he nails their hind leg to the wall. He looks at husbands and he says, don't you get ahead of yourself, buddy.

Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to. What does he say to husbands? He said there must be absolute love in your heart for your wife.

Second, there must be total sacrifice according to verse 25, second part. Just as God, Jesus Christ, gave himself up for the church, so husbands need to be willing to give themselves up for their wives. There must be purity in the home, purity in love.

There must be care in the home for the wife, for the children. What does that word care? How does Paul describe it? He relates it and he ties it into the way in which one cares for one's own body.

What is he saying here? Paul is saying, if you want to know how to care for your wife, just think of how you spend a lifetime trying to take care of your own needs. How you're always looking to satisfy number one. Paul says that's what care is.

Care is subjecting all the things that you do for yourself and giving that to the ones that you love. And then he says in the fourth but not final instance to husbands, he says there's got to be commitment. What kind of commitment?

It's the leave, cleave and become one flesh kind of commitment of verse 31. He says you've got to be totally committed. If you're going to live in a right relationship, you've got to be willing to go 100%.

I've said this many times, forgive me for saying it and I'm going to say it a thousand times more. If I said to my wife when we got married many years ago, listen, I'm going to love you with 97% of myself. She wouldn't appreciate that.

You know why? Because we wouldn't accept anything than 100%. But here's what happens in marriages. We get married saying we're going to love each other 100% and as the years go by, we clip off a few percentages so that by the time we get to 15 years or 20 years, we're loving one another with 60% and Paul says it's not good enough. It's not good enough.

It won't get the job done. To children, Paul says obey your parents because this is right. The word right there is the same word that is tied into the righteousness of God. It is pleasing to God. It makes God happy. But he says honor your parents and to fathers and mothers, he says do not provoke your children.

You want to live in a right relationship? Don't provoke them. Well, how can you provoke your children?

Let me give you 11 suggestions. Number one, by being overprotective, you can provoke your children. By being such a fine mommy and such a fine daddy that you don't allow your children to do anything. Never let them out of your sight.

You're in trouble. You're provoking them. Number two, favoritism. All children are different.

Don't show favoritism one over the other. Number three, comparisons. You can provoke your children by making comparisons either with other children or next door neighbors constantly telling your children about this one down the road and this one up the road. Number four, unrealistic expectations.

We dads are perhaps the worst at that. We're convinced they're going to run down the hill at Clemson and play ball just like we did. We're convinced they're going to become a gamecock and they're going to shoot hoops just like we did or they're going to throw football just like we did.

They're going to hit a ball down the fairway just like we did and we impose unrealistic expectations on them. Number four, five, public lashings. You want to provoke your children? I was in a grocery store in Spartanburg and some little young chap there had the misfortune about eight or nine years of age to find his hand. He couldn't understand it, but as his mother was checking out, his hand just suddenly started to lift. I mean, I was standing there.

I watched it. He couldn't help it. There was about 10 rows of chocolates. What do you think his hand's going to do?

They designed to do that. And his hand, it was just like a reaction and it just reached up and it just grabbed two or three of these things and stood there waiting for his mommy to say, but of course, honey pie, poofykins, you can have all the chocolate you want. She didn't do that. She publicly lashed him. She tore strips out of him.

She assassinated him. She told everybody around there what she thought of him and what a nuisance he was and then turned and started to lecture me and the other lady that were there about all the pitfalls of this young boy. Folks, let me tell you, that is inexcusable behavior. That is abuse of the highest order.

It is unacceptable. Bible says don't provoke your children. Not spending time with them is provoking. Discouraging them is provoking them. Making them feel unwanted is provoking them. How many parents say to their children, we didn't want you anyway. You're a mistake. You were a surprise.

We didn't plan you, but I suppose you're here now. So we just, you know. We think it's wonderful, but it provokes our children. What about a lack of discipline in the home?

Are we living in a loaded day and age? You go and speak to superintendents of schools today. We've got some of the finest superintendents of schools in Spartanburg anywhere in this country and headmasters and principals and school teachers and they're going to tell you across the board one of the greatest problems that we face today, my friends, is an absolute lack of discipline in the home. Parents who refuse to tell their children that there are boundaries. There's another one, unlimited freedom. You want to provoke your children? Tell them they can go anywhere at any time, do whatever they want to do.

Just call if you need anything. Unlimited freedom. Parents who just let their children watch television without any kind of supervision or watching.

You know what you're doing? You're allowing your children to be fed with absolute junk. It's unlimited freedom. It doesn't matter what the Constitution of America has to say about it, folks. This is God's precept, God's principle. Spare the rod and spoil the child.

We're so nervous about it, people walking around in America waiting to see someone give their child a spank so they can report them to the welfare society. And the courts of law upholding this. People can just do whatever they want to do. And God's standards of discipline are null and void. What about physical or verbal abuse?

You see, we could go on and on. What does Paul say? Look at that verse. Paul says, fathers, do not exasperate your children. Do not exasperate them.

Don't provoke them. And then he gives to us the things that we must do instead. Bring them up in the training. Now, that word training there is interesting because that word training is the word paideia and that word is discipline.

Bring them up in the discipline and in the teaching or instruction of what? Of the Lord Jesus Christ. What an incredible thing to think that God could perhaps be so interested in us that he gives to us some of these smaller details that help us.

You know something? All of us here today make mistakes, but it's never too late. It's never too late. God will bless you and your family because you are sincerely before him trying to do that which is well pleasing in God's sight. You've been listening to Dr. Don Wilton, but it's our prayer that the Holy Spirit, the Lord himself, has underscored what Dr. Wilton said moments ago.

It's never too late. No matter how far you feel like you've run from God, God is ready to rebuild and restore relationships and most importantly the relationship with him. You've been hearing Dr. Don teaching. Now as he steps into the studio, I pray you'd open your heart to what he wants to share from his heart. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ?

I'm so happy to hear that. Why don't you pray this prayer with me today? Dear God, I know that you love me very, very much and I know that the Lord Jesus Christ came and died on a cross so that I might be forgiven of my sin. Today I repent of my sin. I confess my sin to you and I invite you to come into my heart and into my life, I pray. In Jesus' name I pray. If you prayed that prayer, let me be the first one to welcome you to the family of God.

This is wonderful. I hope that you know how much I'm going to be praying for you and how very important this is for me. Call us so that we can talk to you and connect you in the right place so you can begin this wonderful journey and in just a moment I'm going to come back with a final word. If you just prayed with Dr. Wilton moments ago, welcome to the family of God, welcome back to the family of God. If you rededicated your life or gave your life to Christ, Dr. Wilton wants you to have some unique resources that will help you grow in your faith and we'd love to pray with you and encourage you in the next steps. You can reach us right now at 866-899-WORD. Grab a pencil, open your phone, jot this number down, store us in your cell at 866-899-9673. Not only we'd love to put those resources in your hands, but you need to know we can be a resource of prayer for you. We believe in the power of prayer. You can also connect with us on our website at www.tewonline.org.

That's www.tewonline.org. That's the place you'll find what I mentioned earlier, this book about the strategies of Satan and this video and DVD series of Dr. Dawn talking about being fortified in the Word of God.

Here's Liz with all the details on how you can get your copy. Are you spiritually dressed for today's battles? As Christians, the Word of God equips us on how to prepare and fight spiritual battles.

The Apostle Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6-12 that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. Join Dr. Wilton as he unpacks Fortified, a powerful four-message series to help you understand the spiritual battle we are in and teach you how to put your spiritual armor on. Plus, to further equip you, you will receive the bonus book, The Strategies of Satan, How to Detect and Defeat Him by Warren Wiersbeek. Call us at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 and request Fortified and The Strategies of Satan for a gift of $25. Thank you for supporting The Encouraging Word as we continue to proclaim the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ around the world.

It's a great resource among many great resources, including the new book from Dr. Wilton about Dr. Billy Graham, all online at www.tewonline.org. And before we get away, closing thoughts from Dr. Don. You know, before we go today, what a day of worship we've had. You know, you and I have in the middle of our hearts our beloved nation, don't we? How much I love America.

I'm so proud to be an American. And you know, this broadcast is seen by so many of our armed forces across the world, and we hear from many, many of them, and we love them, we admire them, we respect them. They are our real heroes, and I want you to join with me as we are praying for them, that God would protect them and their families and loved ones. Let's do that right now, shall we, just before we go? Why don't you join with me? Lord Jesus, I'm joining with thousands of people right now and praying for our members, our brave, brave members of our community and our world who are in uniform. Many are overseas in strange and difficult places, families left behind. Lord Jesus, bless them, keep your hand upon them in every way, in Jesus' name, Amen. Until next time, let's stay connected on our website at www.tewonline.org or call us anytime, day or night, at 866-899-WORD.