Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): You've tuned in to the Power Walk Ministries broadcast. We're so glad that you've joined us today. Reverend Paul Cannings seeks to bring foundational biblical teaching with relevant application to our lives each day. Today he begins volume three in our series Relationships, Marriage and Family.

This volume is based on Ephesians chapter five, and Pastor Cannings challenges us to understand how important the institution of marriage is to God and the guidelines that he gives especially to the man. Let's listen as he begins the message, The Role of a Husband.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Ephesians chapter five, verse 25. Let's just walk through this today because I have had to learn how to lead with a wife who has got a brain of her own. She went into college at 16, so she was a very bright woman, grew up in a single-parent home for some of her upbringing.

What happens in a single-parent home when you grow up in it for quite a bit is that you're accustomed to grabbing things by your own hands, not depending on somebody else to do it, and running with it. So when you've got to listen to somebody else, it's not always easy to adjust, especially when they don't make any sense.

I understand. I have tried to work with my wife, and sometimes there have been some difficult times. I will never stand here and be so pastoral that the truth is hidden. We're going to start in verse 21, and then I'm going to read this a little different, but I'll slowly read it so you could follow me so we could go through this message today because our series of messages is on relationships, marriage, and family.

In verse 21, he says, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. That's how he first starts. Then he says keywords: wives, not women, not female, wives. He doesn't have in there 'be subject' in that particular verse. It actually reads, wives, to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, watch the progression, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself the Savior of the body. Take the word body and follow me down to verse 28. Husbands ought also to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also the church.

Verse 30, because we are members of His body. This word body goes all the way down there. Back to verse 24. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

He might present to Himself the church. In other words, the job of the husband is very similar to Christ's job with the church. In her own glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. If you want to solve all the social problems in this world, the crime, suicide, the people walking around lonely and angry, if you want to solve the problems that our world faces today, the institution you have to go to is marriage.

That's the institution. Please understand everything pivots itself on this one thing, everything. So understand when God is designing everything, He also says male, female, husband, wife, man, woman, husband, wife. Anytime you change a title, it changes responsibilities. If you go to a job and they say you're a computer technologist, guess what that means? You are doing computers.

If you are the manager of the tech department, guess what you're doing? You are managing the tech department. You may never touch fixing the computer ever. You may never touch it. What the Bible is saying is the same thing, in that God changed titles from man to woman, from male to man, to female to woman, and then He says husband and wife, because responsibilities changed.

Notice attached to that, He also had in all of that the fact that the person has to grow mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to handle that level of responsibility. If you take a five-year-old and put them in front of a computer, they may play games, not get a job done. You take a responsible person and put them in front of a computer, they focus on the job to get done.

They focus on what needs to be done because they're telling you by the way they walk to that computer, sit at that computer, and operate that computer, I'm an adult. That's the issue. Life is complex, but how we approach it either makes the complexity of it productive or the complexity of it shows our lack of capacity to operate the computer.

If I go to the computer with a lot of skills, the computer's an asset. If I go to the computer with less skill, the computer's a problem. The computer's actually not the problem. It is the person who comes to it with either a lot of skill or little skills. That's the issue. I never forget my computer was acting up at the house, and I said, why does it always act up when I've got to study?

I happened to call the tech person at that time who was working as a consultant at the church, and he says, "Man, it's funny. I'm not that far from your house." Yes, God, you are God. He was not far from my house. He says, "I literally could be there in 15 minutes." So it just happened that way. He comes to the computer and I sat behind him just to see what he's doing.

He's touching stuff and stuff is coming up on the screens and I'm going, man, I have been working on that same computer forever and I never knew that that stuff was happening on the back. I never knew it was there. He said, "Oh no, this is not that big a problem. It's actually, I figured out it's not a programming problem." He's eliminating things. He said, "I think all you have is this problem, and by God's grace I've got a part, I'll fix it."

He could do all of that because he was a trained technician. He could not just work on it, he could fix it. We come to the whole issue of marriage and we don't understand it, so we come to it as if it's about the bedroom and God is talking about the house. Because we're in the bedroom way fast, the house is not functioning.

As a matter of fact, the surveys prove that if people go to the bedroom before marriage, the house doesn't work after three years. That's secular surveys that say that. Today I want us to back into this passage by first looking at how could we come to marriage and press the refresh button?

How do we refresh this by just looking at marriage for what God says it is, not marriage in how the bachelor or the bachelorette says it is, where their marriage doesn't last that long after the big show is over? Please, even people in Washington that get us to look at all these romance movies, they don't keep their marriages together for long.

That's because they don't have what God requires first: blind faith. Now, please understand when I come to texts like this as well, people say Paul is being traditional, Paul is not really functioning in modern times, and that is so not true. Please understand the reason why Paul's head was cut off is because he wasn't fitting into the regular times.

The people in Roman and Greek times—Ephesus is a place of Roman influence—those people had their 30-year-old men marry 15-year-old girls. That's what they would do. Basically they were slaves in every area without being too explicit. They were slaves. They took care of their homes, and some of them had servants, so therefore they were in the bedroom a lot.

You had this structure. That's why the Romans hated Christians and wanted to kill them, because they started to affect their social structure. For people to say that Paul was being a chauvinist, when you look at the background and historical context, that is far from the truth. The reason why they were beating Paul up and treating him ugly is because he wasn't fitting into their Roman structure.

The Roman structure made women basically subservient to the man, and the man tells the woman what to do. He may get her some servants so she could take the baths, she could smell real good so when he comes home, she's there for him. Paul was not fitting into that context and that's why they cut his head off. So it's not true that Paul was being traditional or following a chauvinistic approach.

It's really not true. It's just people who are feminists don't want to come to this text and learn it for what it is, because women are not being treated bad. Women are actually lifted in this passage, not brought down. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that women are less than men. I made them in my image, male and female. There's nothing a woman can't do. That's why she's a helper.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. It's amazing how everything in our society boils down to the family, the crux of which is marriage. I'd like to invite you to take a few minutes to visit us online at powerwalkministries.org and get to know our ministry. We are a listener-supported broadcast and request your financial support.

Dr. Paul Cannings: Hello everyone, this is Pastor Cannings. It has been a pleasure coming into your home, maybe your car. It has been a blessing to serve you. I hope that you will become a partner as we seek to continue to serve God in an effective manner. Many times He opens up so many doors, but what we lack is resources to get it done.

You can't go through every door, but you know the ones that are a great fit for our ministry to touch lives. I pray that you would become a Power Walk partner as we power walk together to impact lives. Thank you for listening. It's been a blessing serving you.

Guest (Male): Would you prayerfully consider becoming a Power Walk partner today? You can reach out to us at powerwalkministries.org or call us at 281-260-7402. Again, that's 281-260-7402. Our mailing address is Power Walk Ministries, P.O. Box 920517, Houston, Texas, 77092.

We greatly appreciate your support and your prayers for us. And now as we leave you, remember to pause and consider how you are carrying out your role in the family and, yes, in society. Let's honor the Lord with our lives.