It was great to be together today as a church, and to join our voices to celebrate the good news of the gospel that has brought us together and given us new life!

This morning’s sermon from Ephesians 5:22-33, entitled: “New Life//Relationships: Husbands & Wives” is available to listen to or download from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.

The “Take-It-Home” Sheet for this sermon will be available on Tuesday.

And don’t forget, there’s the weekly memory verse song you can download to help you memorise portions of God’s Word. This week’s Ephesians Memory Verse Song — “Husbands & Wives (Eph 5:31-33)” is available now!

(To download this song to your computer… For Mac Users, ctrl + Click and download linked file. For PC users, right click the link and “Save As” the file.)

Here’s the quotes for this week too…

Geoffrey Bromiley:
“As God made man in his own image, so he made earthly marriage in the image of His own eternal marriage with His people.”

John Piper:
“Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts. It’s the disposition to follow a husband’s authority and an inclination to yield to his leadership. It is an attitude that says, “I delight for you to take the initiative in our family. I am glad when you take responsibility for things and lead with love. I don’t flourish in the relationship when you are passive and I have to make sure the family works.”  The reason I say that submission is a disposition and an inclination to follow a husband’s lead is because there will be times in a Christian marriage when the most submissive wife, with good reason, will hesitate at a husband’s decision. It may look unwise to her. Suppose it’s Noël and I. I am about to decide something for the family that looks foolish to her. At that moment, Noël could express her submission like this: “Johnny, I know you’ve thought a lot about this, and I love it when you take the initiative to plan for us and take the responsibility like this, but I really don’t have peace about this decision and I think we need to talk about it some more. Could we? Maybe tonight sometime?” The reason that is a kind of biblical submission is 1) because husbands, unlike Christ, are fallible and ought to admit it; 2) because husbands ought to want their wives to be excited about the family decisions, since Christ wants the church to be excited about following his decisions and not just follow begrudgingly; 3) because the way Noël expressed her misgivings communicated clearly that she endorses my leadership and affirms me in my role as head; and 4) because she has made it clear to me from the beginning of our marriage that if, when we have done all the talking we should, we still disagree, she will defer to her husband’s decision.”

John Piper:
“Biblical headship for the husband is the divine calling to take primary responsibility for Jϰ-like, servant-leadership, protection & provision in the home.”