Genesis 2:15-18 | The Calling of a Wife

The Calling of a Wife

Big Idea: A wife is called to image the Church as she nurtures unity, wisdom, fruitfulness, and faithfulness.

1. United in Mission (Gen. 1:27-28)

2. Unique in Position (Gen. 2:15-18)

3. Ultimate Fruition (Eph. 5:32)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Amen. Church, let's pray together. As we come out of Psalm 33. Lord, we praise you today because you are rich in your mercy. Lord, if it weren't for you, where would we be? We'd be lost. We'd be condemned. We would be receiving what we deserved in your righteous wrath. Yet today we get to shout for joy. We get to praise you, Lord, because it's befitting, because you have made us righteous. We have not earned our righteousness. You've given that to us, and for that, Lord, we give you thanks. And as it says in this psalm, we will sing to you a new song. That new song, not just the angels praising you, but your people singing a song of redemption. Because of you, we are now made heirs, joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Lord, your word is upright. All of your work is done in faithfulness. Lord, we thank you that you are the faithful one, that you never leave us, you never forsake us. You are here this morning. Lord, that is our mission is to praise you and to make your name known. As we have received this grace that we are singing about, Lord, that is the grace that we proclaim to the nations. May they see you, may they fear you, may they come to you through the testimony of your people. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations, to us. The people whom he has chosen as his heritage. And as Peter says in his first epistle, we are that nation, we are those people, those of us who've been called out, we are a royal priesthood in Jesus Christ. Lord, we praise you because we are blessed. And I pray today that we would give you that glory as we hear your word. The king is not saved by his great army, a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by it great might it cannot rescue. We don't put our trust and our ability and our wisdom in the things of this world. Lord, you've given us so much, and yet we do not find our hope in anything that we possess. We find our hope in you alone. Well, we praise you. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love. That he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Thank you, Lord, that you see us. You see us, you see where we are, you see what we're walking through, you see us in our joy, and you see us in the famine, in the suffering. And yet, Lord, you are not distant from us. And because of that, our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you this morning. Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to receive your word. May you be glorified, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, Church, I'd like to encourage you, if you are able to do so, to remain standing for the reading of God's Word. Today we will be back in Genesis, Genesis chapter two. If you don't have a Bible, uh we would love to give you one. Uh we have them on the outer walls on both sides of the worship center, so feel free to go ahead and go grab one and keep it as a gift so that you can follow along with us today as we go through the Word of God. Genesis chapter 2. We'll be reading verses 15 to 18. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. The church is the word of the Lord for us this morning. May God write his eternal truths in our hearts. You may be seated. Well, good morning, church. My name is Tyler Masters. Uh, I am one of the pastors here at Doxa, and it's a joy to be able to come today to continue this series in marriage. The grammar of marriage is the title of the series. So if you're visiting with us for the first time, uh know that you're coming in about five sermons deep into a 15 series or 15 sermon series on the grammar of marriage, the the basic components of what makes up a marriage. It's God's framework for his gift of grace. Uh, this is something we need. All of us need this. Whether you're married or not married, we need to hear this uh because this is this is what God had created to point toward the marriage supper of the Lamb. And ultimately that's where we're going with this, as we're gonna see it's ultimately fulfilled in Him. And so as we look at these different components of it, especially today as we talk about this particular, not controversial at all subject of the role of a wife in marriage, uh, we need to keep in mind the picture, the whole of what this is pointing to and why God designed marriage the way that he has designed it. And so as we're considering him as the creator, he knows how things work best. He designed them in a particular way. And we, as his children, want to pursue that. And that's what we're doing as we're going through this series. And so last week we looked at the calling of a husband within marriage. So naturally, this week, we're gonna look at the calling of a wife in marriage. And that's in fact the clever title of this sermon. The calling of a wife. Now, maybe you know, maybe you don't know, but I have the privilege of teaching a class on biblical womanhood here at Doxa every fall. Uh and praise the Lord. Yeah, I love it. It's been so much fun. But you know what's interesting is every time I mention that to somebody, at least one on one, and I'm sure it happened out here. Uh, I just am not really trying to gauge the faces when I say that out loud. Almost every time I say I teach a class on biblical womanhood, nine and a half times out of ten, people laugh at me. Right? They they look at me or or they're suppressing a laugh, they're like waiting for the punchline. Like, seriously, you teach a class on womanhood. But we have to ask the question, why is that funny? Why is it funny that I, as a pastor, would teach a class on biblical womanhood? And I asked that question in my very first class, and someone yelled out, because you're not a woman. Good observation. I am not a woman. That's great, but why does that matter to us? And when we think about it, you say we don't have any experience being a woman. And I'm not gonna pretend like I do, because I don't have any experience being a woman. But what we're doing when we when we think like that and we talk like that, we're revealing a particular worldview that we've bought into. That somehow experience is our ultimate authority. And so we judge everything in the world, including scripture, based on our experiences. And therefore, only a person who has an experience can then teach on a particular subject. And we don't do this in the medical world, right? I mean, we don't need a doctor to have like broken his femur in order for him to do surgery on our broken leg. We he doesn't have to have that experience of going through it himself. Because he has a different authority and his knowledge isn't based purely on experience, it's based on something that is rooted and grounded in objective truth. That's why we call it biblical womanhood, not experiential womanhood class that I teach in. I will never teach an experiential womanhood class. Know that. If it ever comes up, I am not doing that. And you notice that my my title is executive pastor of mission and teaching, not the women's pastor at Doxa, as some people were projecting. Maybe that's what it is. That is not my my title. But we buy into that idea because we think experience is ultimate. Really, we we we go we we do that. And oftentimes, even within these marriage series where different stages of marriage, you're you're facing a lot of trials, or you're older, and you're looking at younger pastors thinking, like, what do you have to offer? Like you tell come back in 10 years, 15 years, and then start talking about marriage. Well, you may not be around at that time, so we've got to talk about it now, all right? But what it what it comes down to is a disposition of the heart and what we find to be our authority. Our authority is not experience, our authority is the word of God, and therefore we judge our experiences by what scripture says. We do not judge scripture by what our experiences tell us. And so that's what I want to do today. That's my goal, is to make scripture our ultimate authority. And I know that we have a variety of circumstances here. We have a lot of single people, we have people who are divorced, going through divorces, those who are widowed, those who are happily married, and those who are unhappily married. And I want to be sensitive to that as I address this subject. But we have to go back to what we talked about before, and when we look at all the brokenness, we have to ask, so what is it supposed to look like? How was it designed before it was broken? Before sin entered into the world, what was God's plan and design for marriage? And so, with that, and before I give you the big idea, I want to make a few things very, very clear as you hear this topic. This is not a formula that guarantees a happy marriage. So just know that right now. I'm not giving you a step-by-step, here is how that how you're gonna have a happy marriage, here is how everything's gonna work out just right for you. This isn't a formula. It's not a to-do list that will make your husband love you spontaneously, and then suddenly your children are all obedient to you. That is not what this is guaranteeing. This isn't a legalistic way to earn God's favor or merit his blessings. So know that. That's important going into this. You're not earning God's blessings by being better than someone else at doing the things that Scripture says a godly wife is called to do. This is about knowing and accepting God's good design for your marriage, God's good design for womanhood and biblical femininity within the context of your marriage. And again, it's about a disposition of the heart, a willingness to submit oneself to God and to trust Him. So, with that build up, here's the big idea for today. A wife is called to image the church as she nourishes unity, wisdom, fruitfulness, and faithfulness. The calling of a wife. A wife is called to image the church as she nourishes unity, wisdom, fruitfulness, and faithfulness. And believe it or not, it's really hard to boil down a big idea on this topic. Uh, and a lot of it has to do with our definition of a calling. And I and I went this direction with it, and I hope that you can see this in scripture because I truly believe that a calling has more to do with why someone or something exists rather than how they're supposed to function. Okay, oftentimes we talk about just and how a person is supposed to function within a marriage, that's their calling. That that is actually a way that their calling is manifested. That's a practical application of a calling. But what you want to do is we want to go back to the why. Why, why did God create woman? What was the purpose of that? And then we'll look at how she's supposed to function within the marriage. And we always want to go in that order: the why, the what, and the how. And so a lot of people probably going into this week were expecting me just to go directly to Ephesians 5 and start talking about wives submit to your husband. This is an apostolic command. Here's the thing: we will get there. And I'll touch on it a little bit today, and then we're gonna touch on it and go a little deeper in a couple weeks. But this message actually is focused primarily on what we see as the foundation for that. The foundation for the marriage relationship between husband and wife. And so we don't understand the why, the what and how are gonna be either confusing or infuriating, especially within a culture that doesn't value Scripture as the authority of the Word of God. And so, with that, we want to go back and look at the beginning, where the foundations are before we start looking at the fulfillment of that within marriages. And so this this message is actually focused on just one verse. We we read a few, but it's really focused primarily on one verse as we are going into this passage of Genesis 2. It's verse 18. The Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. But before we go deep into that, we need to see the context. That's why we read the first few verses before it. Because we have to remember the context of why he is doing this, what is happening. And this actually goes all the way back Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 to 28, where it says, God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So we want to begin here, first of all, looking at the united mission of man and woman. They are united in mission. And this is essential before we start talking about distinct roles and function. We have to keep the mission in mind. Because we live in a culture that is hyper-individualistic about me and my and how am I gonna advance myself and advance my agenda and maximize my gifts and get what I deserve. And we think very individualistically, and I'm gonna say this individualism is not intrinsically evil. There actually are really good things that we can learn from individualism, including individual value and dignity. But we can take that to an extreme where it's all about me and my vision and my goal and my purpose. When we look at scripture, we see it has more of a collectivistic view of how we all function together. There's a need for one another. Man needs woman and woman needs man. All right, that's that's how God created it within marriage, within the church, within society. We need both, and they need to be distinct. And so as we're looking at this, we we understand that we are united in mission when we are married. And so, well, well, what is that mission? The mission is to glorify God. We've talked about that. That's the per that's the chief end of man, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how do we glorify God? Well, we represent him as his image bearers, we multiply image bearers throughout the world, and then we glorify him by ruling and taking dominion over creation as his vice regents. That's what he designed us to do and to be. And when we go to Genesis 1, we see that is a united mission. And so what we don't want to do when we get to a world that says, well, if I focus on his needs, then I'll never get my needs met. Or if I focus on her needs, I'll never get my needs met. We don't fight selfishness with selfishness. It's not about me and it's not about you, it's about Christ, it's about God. And we actually find that's where we we end up finding the greatest joy is when we fulfill that mission in pursuing his glory, and that we are going to magnify his glory by multiplying disciples throughout the world. And that begins within the family. And so the united mission is what a godly wife focuses on as she is nurturing unity within her marriage. Because that's again what the church represents or what the marriage represents, and we'll we'll see that a little later in Ephesians, is that marriage represents the relationship of Christ and his church. And so when we get to that submission piece, it's the submission piece comes in as the wife submits to her husband as the church submits to Christ. Why? Because it's showing the unity that we have in the mission. And that that unity and not fighting for the rights of one or the other is the way that we glorify God because that mission is about his name being magnified, about his glory going all throughout the earth. And so we must keep this mission in mind. Once we understand that we are united in mission, then we can look at the second point that we are unique in position. So now we start moving into the more specifics of well, how does this function? We understand the why, and we understand that God has created us with one united uh goal of glorifying him as image bearers. But how does that happen? How do we do that? And why is it necessary that there's both male and female? And we're gonna see here in the passage that we just read that we were designed to be complementary, not contradictory. And we see actually this is interesting because the distinction of not just the nature of male and female, but also the role of husband and wife exists before the fall. We're in Genesis 2. The fall doesn't happen until Genesis 3. And so here's the reality that we're going to look at: that God is the creator, and as the creator, he gets to determine the definition, the structure, and the function of his creation. And so, as I said before, this goes back to us yielding to him. The first submission is submission to the Lord and saying, Lord, what is your will? What is your design for our marriage and for me in particular? And what we also are going to see here is that woman is not an afterthought. It isn't like God created all of creation, then created man, and then is looking at him like something's missing. You know, something, he's he's just not right. He's just not really what I had hoped he would be. Of course not. God makes no mistakes. And so what we see here in Genesis 2 is we're seeing this picture of creation narrowing in the creation of man and woman. It's slowing down because there's there's distinct dignity and honor that we see in the creation of woman here. And we see that the Bible elevates woman like this. All throughout scripture, you see the dignity and value of woman all throughout scripture. It is not demeaning. And the irony is that even within culture, as people talk about the church being misogynistic, they're using Christian values to judge that. It's because of the spread of Christianity that we actually have the concept of equality of genders and of races. That is a Christian value that spread throughout the world. And so we're gonna go back to that. All throughout scripture, you see, you see this dignity for woman, even in the life and ministry of Jesus. But for the sake of this message, I want to stay here in Genesis and see what it goes back to, what that foundation is. And we're gonna see she's not an afterthought. Just like God was preparing the church as a bride for his son in eternity past, the plan was always to bring the woman to man. He had prepared woman for man ahead of time, before man even knew that he needed a woman. And Pastor Scott mentioned last week, he said that as we looked at the role of the husband or the calling of the husband first, he said that because the foundation for the role of a wife assumes the reality of the role of the husband. And so that's actually why we see we why we're looking here at this whole passage. That's what's going on. That God did create man first, and that was intentional, and that has significance, and you can read about that in the New Testament at another time. But we want to see right here, real quickly, why man was created. Because the woman's purpose in life, again, united in mission, is tied together to the man's purpose. It's not like, well, he's important and I'm not. That's not how it is. You are important, you have dignity, you have value, but your purpose is tied together with that of your husband's, because you have now a united goal. And so we see here, as we look here at what a husband was created to do. Well, we we heard last week that a husband is called to sacrificially love, lead, provide, and protect. And so now as we get into verse 15, we're gonna see that it starts off with this phrase, the Lord God. And I wanna I wanna just right there stop real quick. The Lord God. This is unique here in Genesis 2, 3, and 4. It's a combined phrase, Lord, all capital letters, L-O-R-D, God. This here in Genesis 2 is the first time that this is introduced, this combination. It is Yahweh Elohim. It is the two names that we that are used for God combined together. Up to this point, Genesis 1, it was only Elohim. All right, we talked about the plurality of that. It emphasizes the power of the creator. But now we're introduced to the covenant name of God, Yahweh. And that's important. Because we're going to see that all the commands that we see here are based on that covenant relationship with our Lord God. And it's used here all throughout Genesis 2, 3, and 4, with the only exception being when Satan is talking to Eve and deceiving her, he goes back to Elohim. He takes away the covenant name of God. So we need to understand, again, when we get down to verse 18, it starts off with that the Lord God. This is a covenant-keeping God who loves you and has your best interest in mind as we're going through this. So it says here, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. To work and to keep. And that is what leadership does. Leadership is not meant for the benefit of the leader, it is meant for the benefit of those who are being led, to invest in them, to cultivate them, to bring out the full potential of what is there, to provide for, to strengthen. And then to keep, the word keep means to protect physically, spiritually. This was the responsibility given to man. And I bring this up because the role and the responsibility of a woman is connected with that working and keeping. But then it goes immediately into verse 16 and 17. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. This could be an entire message in and of itself. But what we're seeing here, that man, when he was created, received a command. That man, we see within Scripture, is given authority. Authority is always delegated. God is the ultimate authority, and any authority anyone possesses is delegated by God. That man is actually first under authority before he is in authority. And if someone doesn't recognize they're under authority before they're in authority, that's where you're going to start seeing abuse taking place. Man is held accountable before God and will face that judgment of how he dealt with and handled the responsibility of authority that was given to him. So man is under authority. He has limitations given to him immediately upon entering into the garden. But then, after seeing that, we now see verse 18. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. Well, we're gonna stop right there again. Starts off the Lord God, a reminder of the covenant-keeping God. The Israelites who would have been reading this, Moses wrote this to Israelites in the in the wilderness. Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, covenant-keeping God. He said it's not good. Not good that man should be alone. This is the first time within the creation account that we see something is not good. So we have to ask, well, what is not good about this? Well, it wasn't it wasn't Adam's masculinity, that wasn't what was not good. It wasn't his lack of intelligence, it wasn't his lack of spirituality. It was Adam's lack of a corresponding companion. And we've already talked about the importance of a companionship and best friendship within marriage. But it goes beyond that. It's not less than that friendship, but it is more than friendship. We see this as the pattern all throughout creation, that everything has a corresponding part. If you look at the first three days of creation and the and the second three days of creation, they all correlate with each other. First day, God creates, he creates light and separates it from darkness. Day four, God takes the sun and moon and puts them in there. So he forms and then fills. Day two of creation, we see the separation of the waters within the sky and the sea. Day five, which correlates to that, we see God filling it with birds and with fish. And then day three, you go and you see that God creates, he separates the land. He brings the land out of the earth or out of the waters. And then so you see on day six, God then populates that with animals and with human beings. So there's forming and filling. So everything within creation has a corresponding part. And so we we we look at man, and that that should be obvious to us. Okay, he this is the form, we've got this, but where's the filling? How is this going to come together and be whole and to be complete? And here's where we see that unity, that unity that a wife should be cultivating, because she was created to bring that unity, that wholeness within the marriage. And it says here, God says, I will make him a helper fit for him. Now, this is where it hits the fan, right? Helper? What? Like that's super degrading. We think of a helper as someone who's like a sous-chef, which means under the chef, like someone who is below, beneath, someone who just kind of comes along as reactionary and doesn't really have any point as if the other person doesn't exist. Might as well just have wife burnings like in India and might as well just go all go all to this extreme. There's no purpose, no value if she's just a helper. Time out. Time out. This this word helper is a Hebrew word ezer or ezer. It is used 21 times in the Old Testament, and 16 times it refers directly to God Himself. He is our helper. Okay, it's not saying that, well, when we need God, we can kind of click on the button to bring him in because we are our supreme, and then he just kind of comes along and helps clean up things for us. Not at all. It brings with it this idea of strength, of nourishing, sustaining, bringing power and strength to someone. To make up for that which is lacking, that which is weak in another person, that which a person cannot do on their own. And so when you hear that word, helper, easer, we we have it all throughout scripture. You even hear it in a psalm. People have asked about that, right? And um, Come thou fount of blessing. Um, it says, Here I raise mine Ebenezer. Like, what's that? It's like Scrooge, that's all we can think of. No, and Ebenezer, it means the the rock of help. Uh it means it's a it's a reminder that God is our rock, he is our help. And so, as we're hearing that, that's that's when he's saying, I need to create for man an easer, a helper, someone who will strengthen and make up for that which is lacking in him, because the command to fill the earth and to subdue it is too great for a man, too great for one person. There needs to be another to come and to strengthen him. And so it doesn't imply inferiority. What it does imply is that we need one another. There's an interdependence between husband and wife, and we need to embrace that interdependence. Adam was insufficient to fulfill his mission by himself. God knew that. God designed him that way because God alone, he's the only one who is independent. We are not. And so he created for him his wife so that together man and woman could fulfill the mission he had given humanity. And with that, neither husband nor wife should be threatened by the other. You're not in competition for who's going to be more important, who's going to be the one, who's going to be on top. No. We are working together. That idea of the helper coming together and fitting perfectly within the marriage. That's what this is all about. And so, with that, we we need to understand that there is actually a unique blessing in sharing that united vision and actually coming together in all areas of life. At home, even in work, in ministry, in community. And I'm not saying you have to be intricately involved in every aspect and know everything about the other person's work. However, what you do find is that when you are on mission together, this really brings together that relationship. You're like, man, I wish we were really closer. Then find more things to be doing together, to be on mission together. This is what happens on mission trips all the time. People will spend one week together in Central America or over in Africa, or we have a team coming back from Scotland today. And you look at the text, we're in a text group, and they're like sharing all kinds of like funny inside jokes with each other, and there's like this strange bond that exists forever after this one week of shared mission. Because that's what we were that's what we were designed to do, is to be on mission together. You don't have to go on a short-term mission trip with your spouse. What I'm saying is that when you understand the importance of that unity of the wife being the helper, not in a derogatory sense, but in a sense of she will enhance his ministry, enhance what he is doing, enhance not just his work, but our mission. This is how we will both maximize what God has given us to accomplish. And we see here that she is a helper fit for him. The word is suitable or his corresponding opposite, intentionally different. They're supposed to be different. The two of you are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses that complement one another. God loves harmony. All throughout creation, you see harmony as God brings things together that have the different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses to come together to give Him maximum glory. And that's why we use the word complementary. All right, you say, well, why do we use it? It can be kind of controversial on both sides of the fence. But complementary means to combine in such a way to enhance or emphasize the qualities of another. So that the two corresponding parts come together and enhance and emphasize the quality of the other. And so the distinct complementary natures that we have are expressed in distinct complementary roles. And one of the ways in which a wife strengthens and enhances her husband is through wise counsel. See, because while oftentimes we think like a helper is like you're to be seen and not heard, not the Bible's approach to this, not the Bible's approach to a wife, not the Bible's approach to women. In fact, as we look all throughout Scripture, we see women portrayed as those who are wise counselors. Just read recently in 2 Samuel 20, where Joab is going to go and destroy a city because there's an insurrection is hiding in it, and a wise woman of the city comes out and says, Why destroy the whole city? A city that has been like a mother to Israel, giving wise counsel. In fact, wisdom is personified in a feminine sense within Proverbs. And so we see that a godly wife cultivates wisdom in her marriage. It isn't just stay out of the way and just serve a sandwich every now and then. That is not at all the role of the wife. Wise men listen to wise wives. So husbands don't check out. This is for you. Alright? Listen to the counsel of your wife. It doesn't mean you have to obey everything she says, but if you are wise, you will listen because she sees things differently than you. And you need a different perspective than your own. Wise women speak wise counsel into their relationships. So it does not mean that the helper, that the wife, is powerless. It doesn't mean that she's insignificant and has no voice. She's a profound influence. And we get all up in arms about this idea about leadership structure and authority and say, well, the husband is the head of the home. It's objective. It's the indicative. He's the head. He's the leader. And we say, well, then I had no value. I had no influence. I can't do anything. Think of some of the most influential people in scripture. Like Joseph, for example. He was never allowed to be first in command. He's like, well, I'm not significant, and well, I guess everybody's gonna die of famine, whatever. Pharaoh's probably not even gonna listen to me anyway. No, he had significant influence and power, but didn't have to be the Pharaoh to do it. Daniel's another example of that. He didn't have to be the emperor of Babylon or of the Medo-Persian Empire, but as a counselor, he had an immense amount of influence and immense amount of uh of power and strengthening of what God was doing within those regions. So, wives, realize that you have an immense amount of power and influence. You don't have to be the head of the home to have that. God has given you wisdom, and so cultivate that wisdom in yourself through the word of God and invest that into your marriage. A godly wife seeks to use her wisdom and knowledge to amplify her husband's effectiveness in fulfilling his calling, which is in fact their shared mission. It keeps going back to that. It's your shared mission. It's not about him being success, it's about you collectively succeeding what God has called you to do. And then we see that a godly wife is fruitful and that she's going to invest and nurture in fruitfulness. And this relates to the idea of filling, where we fill the earth, multiply and fill the earth, working, that you are given a job, a responsibility of fruitfulness. God created Eve to work alongside of Adam for both to fill and subdue the earth. They were meant to be fruitful together. Yes, and having children, and that's that's fruitfulness, but being fruitful in every aspect of life and worship. But that means that we need to consider what that looks like within the home. Motherhood is important. And I don't believe that motherhood is the primary calling of a wife, because there's some women who can't have children, and that's okay. God knows this. So I don't think it's her primary calling, but it is an extremely important role in fulfilling the united mission of husband and wife to fill the earth. And so God designed marriage to be fruitful, designed the woman in particular to be fruitful, to care, to nourish, to, again, the idea of working, it correlates to his role, the husband's role of working. But her role of working now is cultivating that which God has given her within the family, to cultivate the children. And so, first of all, children are not a curse, they're a blessing. And you laugh, but the world, that's how the world views it. You have children when you're ready to have children, when they benefit you. That means they're a curse. They're a burden. No, the Bible sees them as a blessing. This is something that we that we should love and desire. And on top of you say, Well, I don't have time to do ministry because I have all these kids. They are your ministry. They are your disciples. The parents bear the primary responsibility in discipling their children. It's great to have other people invest in them. It's great to have other people you're discipling, but you have built-in disciples in your home if you have children. See the importance of that. Recognize it says in 1 Timothy 5 that the mothers and that the wives are managers of their households. You say, well, the husband bears the primary responsibility of what happens in the house, but he doesn't micromanage that. The wife is the manager of the household. That's 1 Timothy 5.14, where it talks about encouraging younger widows to marry, bear children, manage their households. You are the regional manager. You have that authority within the home and that responsibility to manage the home well and to invest in the children and to cultivate them. That's what the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31 is doing. Say, yeah, she's an entrepreneur, she goes out and does business. She's doing business on behalf of her home to help her family thrive. Her husband is praised in the gates, her children rise up and praise her. What she is doing in her work, and it's not saying she can't work. No, work is great, but the work, the career cannot be her identity and her goal. Her goal is to use that career, that job that she has for the benefit of her own home. This is something that Rebecca Merkel in her book, Eve in Exile, mentioned. She said, I would never say that a wife's place is in the home, but I would say that a wife's priority most definitely is her home. See, that's the priority. Working or not working, caring and managing the home well. This is what produces that fruitfulness. It then allows fruit coming from within the family to go out into the world to give God glory. And for those who don't have children, physical children, you can still be a spiritual mother. You can still invest in people. We have this church family, you have a body. Invest in cultivating the children who are here. Invest in cultivating the people around you in discipleship. You still can function within the nature that God has given you to nourish and to cultivate within the body of Christ. The next thing we want to look at is that a godly wife is faithful. She cultivates faithfulness within the family. And this is where we would get to Ephesians 5, where we'd end up talking about a wife submitting to her husband and showing respect. And you're going to see that respect actually is the basic summary given to Ephesians' definition of submission, submitting to her husband in all things. But this goes back to this idea of working and keeping, protecting. She is protecting the family, protecting her children. Yes, God has given you a mother bear instinct. You are. If the husband is the shepherd of the family, you're the under-shepherd in that you're caring for the sheep as well. So watch out for wolves in their lives. Watch out for those dangers that are threatening them. And likewise, within the marriage, you should be protecting your husband, not enabling him to sin, that is not what I am saying, but protecting him in his honor and loving him and caring for him and giving yourself to him. It's a form of protection, faithfulness in the marriage. Prioritizing your marriage over parenting is important. Because your children will move out, but your responsibility, your calling as a wife does not end until death separates you and your husband. This is a lifelong calling. And so, with that understanding, we've got to prioritize our marriage because these kids aren't going to be here forever. And it's the best thing you could be doing for your children is modeling what a godly wife looks like within the home, whether you have sons or daughters, showing them this is the design that God has created us to fulfill, and this is how it works best. So continue to nurture faithfulness in your marriage. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. And so before we go off and say, Well, what about my situation? My husband isn't fulfilling his responsibilities, or he's left us or abandoned me, or or all of these terrible things that have that that do happen. Abuse does exist. It's there. I get that. Like I said, we're gonna talk about it more in two weeks because it's too much to talk about as a part of one message. I do get that. But we have to understand, though, that God is asking us to have a particular disposition. Of a heart, a disposition of the heart to yield to him. And this is how John Piper summarizes submission. He says, submission is an inclination of the will to say yes to the husband's leadership and a disposition of the spirit to support his initiatives. Why? Because she's submitting to her husband, and when it comes to this inclination of the will to say yes to his leadership and this disposition to support his initiatives, it's not about him primarily primarily. It's about the Lord. It's submitting to the Lord. She submits as unto him. Because it goes back to that relationship with him. The Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. This is expressed, though, in her conduct, the way she interacts with her husband, the way she talks to her husband. Proverbs 18 says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. So speak life-giving words to your husband. Encourage him. Show the Lord through your speech. Honor and respect him and how you talk about him with others. Instead of just complaining about all these problems and all these issues that he has, speak with respect about him. Because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And you're not doing it for your husband's sake, primarily, you're doing it as on to the Lord. Because the third and final point we're going to look at here very briefly is the ultimate fruition. Because this is what it points to. The goal of a wife's submission and respect for her husband is to show unity between the head and the body, ultimately pointing to the reality of Christ and his church. Marriage has always been about more than companionship or personal fulfillment. From Eden onward, God designed marriage to display his covenant faithfulness. Every faithful Christian marriage becomes a living testimony that Christ never abandons his bride, never breaks his promises, and never ceases to sanctify the people he has redeemed, which is why it says in Ephesians 5.32, this mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. So a godly wife seeks to nurture unity, wisdom, fruitfulness, and faithfulness in her marriage. Or this is just not working right in my marriage. Here's what I want you to hear. First of all, it's not too late because again, this is a yielding of the heart to the Lord that then produces actions. But also realize you cannot do this on your own. And I'm going to share something with you briefly that has been a help to me, especially in thinking through mission and talking to people about resilience in mission. Share this with missionaries, but I think again, as we're thinking about our shared mission, we need to understand this concept of the cycle of grace. And we're going to put it up here and you can look at this. And what this is, this is a response to a problem that English mission agencies were seeing in the 1960s, as they were sending out missionaries to very difficult fields with a lot of oppression, a lot of persecution. They were getting discouraged and burning out. So a lot of missionaries were leaving the field permanently. Some of them left ministry permanently. Some of them even walked away from the faith. And so as the mission agencies and the pastors and theologians were looking at this, they were thinking, well, why is this happening? Why is it that people get burned out? Why is it that people say, I just can't do this anymore? Maybe that's where you are in your mission, in your marriage. You say, I understand the mission, but I'm just tired. I'm getting burned out. I can't just keep doing the things. And here's what they did: they looked at the life of Christ and his humanity, and they said, Well, how did Jesus function when he was here on earth? Because he faced a lot of opposition, a lot of persecution. And so they looked and saw, and you can see this right at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus begins his ministry with his baptism. Not miracles, not teaching, his baptism. He had accomplished nothing at that point. And yet as he comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, and the voice of God speaks and says, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. In fact, Mark says it speaks to him directly, you are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. So he said, Well, Jesus began his ministry with acceptance, having accomplished nothing. And then immediately he goes out into the wilderness to sustain by the Father, and the Holy Spirit, as he's fasting for 40 days. And so we see that his acceptance then leads into sustenance, and that's sustenance coming from the Father. And then he comes back in and he starts calling disciples, and he heals a lame man, and he says, Your sins are forgiven before he heals him. And they say, Well, who can forgive sins except God? And Jesus says, Well, so that you know I have authority to forgive sins, I'll say, get up and walk, and he heals the man. He comes back and he's very confident in who he is. He knows his significance as the Messiah. And then from that, we start seeing achievement. But when you look at the Pharisees, you see the opposite. Because this is what we would call the cycle of grace. That you start from a place of acceptance, you're sustained by the Holy Spirit, you find your significance and your identity in God, in Christ, and then He produces the fruit. But the Pharisees go the other way. They use the same titles, but they go backward. They start with achievement. If I can achieve great things, if I can get a great career, if I can climb the ladder, if I can be an important person, if I can achieve success, then I'll be significant. But the problem is, is if you're the one who achieved that success and that significance, you have to sustain yourself. And ultimately what you're looking for is to be accepted by other people or by God Himself. And you can fall into this ditch on either side, into liberalism, and you can say, well, the only way for me to have any significance in the world is to have a career, to have a position, to have a diploma, a promotion, to have successful investments, to become a famous influencer online. I have to achieve, and then I'll become significant. Hopefully, then I'll be accepted that way. You can do that on the conservative side as a trad wife. You can go and have 12 kids, and then you can try to fulfill every single duty given to a wife here within Scripture. But you're doing it to prove to everyone, see, you can do it, and I am significant, and you should do what I'm doing, and eventually you're gonna burn out too, if you're doing it in your own strength, even if you're doing the right things for the wrong reason. So we don't start with achievement, we start with acceptance that in Christ Jesus we are accepted in the beloved. It is through the Holy Spirit we're sustained, that He gives us life and joy and peace and the power to fulfill His calling in our life. We're already significant regardless of how our husband responds, how the wife kicks back, regardless of how the children rise up. We're already significant. It's not based on the achievement. But that should motivate us to serve him and to fulfill our calling in this world. So as you think, okay, yeah, my goal as a wife, my calling as a wife, is to cultivate and nurture unity, wisdom, fruitfulness, and faithfulness. I can't do that in my own power. And if you do, and you're like, hey, look, I figured it out, everybody do what I do, we're working backwards. We have to go back and say, I'm accepted by him. He sustains me. I am his child. I am his heir. And I'm gonna strive to give him glory by fulfilling this calling that he has given me. So, husbands, you're called to sacrificially love, lead, and protect. Do that. But do that in the power of the Holy Spirit because you're already accepted in Christ. Wives, you are called to nurture that strength and that calling of your husband to be the head and to be the leader. Don't see it as demeaning. You are that Azer, that helper. But don't do that in your own strength. Do it because you're already accepted, regardless of how it plays out. If you're single and you think, oh, I don't know. Am I ready for marriage? Am I not ready for marriage? Look at your heart. Is your disposition to yield to the Lord? Is it to fulfill his calling in your life? But are you doing this in your own power and strength? Don't do that. Because your marital status is not what makes you acceptable before God. Whether you're married, divorced, or going through difficult times in your marriage, your identity, your worth is found in Jesus Christ alone. And the goal of marriage is to demonstrate the covenant faithfulness of God toward us. That's what it goes back to. His acceptance of us in Christ. Remembering He is Yahweh Elohim. He is a covenant-keeping God. It's through Christ that I'm accepted. And with that, we're motivated to fulfill the calling he's given us. Every Christian wife lives between two weddings. She looks back at Eden, where the marriage was established by God, and she looks ahead to the marriage supper of the Lamb, where every earthly marriage reaches its fulfillment in Christ. Her calling is to live today in a way that helps others long for that coming wedding. Let the gospel radiate through you in the way that you are living out your calling in your marriage. May our hearts rest purely in Christ. No longer seeking our identity and achievement or approval. We are free to strengthen our spouse, nurture our children, serve our church, and display the beauty of Christ's relationship with his bride. Let us adorn the doctrine of our Savior and point a watching world to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you for this truth. That you have created us with a purpose, a mission, a goal to glorify you, to proclaim your goodness throughout the world, to multiply image-bearers. Lord, you have given us distinct roles and functions within that. I pray that we would embrace it, recognizing our worth and value is not found in what we would determine as success, but found in you. Thank you, Lord, for the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, that we are accepted in Him. Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit that we are now sustained by you, that we have our identity in you, that we are significant because of who you've created us to be. May we now go into this world and seek to fulfill our calling, our duty with joy and gladness, because, Lord, you are worthy to receive that glory and honor and power. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.