48 sermon' topics for church growth

The Importance of Obedience in the Family and in the Church

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord,

because the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the Church, and He is the Savior of the body.

But as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her,

to sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water through the word;

that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

So ought husbands to love their wives as their own bodies: he who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but feeds and warms it, just as the Lord does the Church,

for we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is great; I speak in relation to Christ and the Church.

So let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife respect her husband. (Eph. 5:22-33)

In the modern world, people, as at all times, strive for happiness. We want to love and be loved, and very often in achieving these goals we are guided by emotions, and not by the recipe for happiness given to us in the Holy Scripture.

God loves man and has done everything for his salvation. He also wants man to be happy during his earthly life. There are times when we all go through trials, but if you ask a Christian who has lived with God for 5, 10 or 20 years whether he regrets the choice he made, you will get a smile and the answer "no".

Recently, the number of divorces has become equal to the number of marriages. The problems in people's relationships have become especially acute during the pandemic – while in self-isolation, we spend 24 hours of our lives with our spouse.

Once again, we can turn to the Word of God, the Bible, to find answers to our pain, our problems, and the loneliness we may be experiencing.

Following and fulfilling God's word is the key to a happy life for us.

What is the recipe for happiness for a person, to be happy in earthly life and inherit eternal life?

There is one story that I am inclined to believe because it seems very close to the truth. One day, Barack and Michelle Obama went to a restaurant to have lunch there, and this visit was not planned and prepared by his security. While they were in the restaurant, they saw the restaurant manager talking to security, trying to approach the couple. "What does he want from me?" the president asked. "Oh no, he wants to talk to your wife," the security answered. When Michelle returned after the conversation, Barack asked, "Who was that?" "He was in love with me when we were in college," Michelle answered. "If you had married him, you would have been the wife of the restaurant manager," the president said with a smile. "No, if I had married him, he would have been the president of the United States, not you."

But let's go back to our passage and look at the historical situation and the cultural atmosphere of that time to understand what God put into these words for us living in this time.

According to the commentators of the past, the epistle was written during Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea and/or Rome in 60-63, since in the text Paul repeatedly calls himself a "prisoner" (Eph. 3:1, also 4:1 and 6:20). That the epistle was written by Paul, as St. Theophan (Vyshensky) noted in the 19th century, "there are almost no doubters of this, or there are so few of them, and the grounds for their unbelief are so insignificant that it is not worth dwelling on." However, in modern biblical studies there is an opinion that the author of the epistle was not Paul, but one of his Ephesian disciples, who used the apostle's authentic letters when writing.

Paul hoped that all who were striving to attain Christlike maturity would receive this letter. Ephesians contains science for application by true children of God. In addition, studying this letter will help to form and strengthen the believer to fulfill the purposes and calling of God. The purpose of this letter is to establish and equip the mature church. It presents a balanced view of the Body of Christ and its importance in the work of God.

This epistle was probably written between 60 and 63 A.D. The epistle was written from Rome towards the end of the Apostle’s time in bonds, i.e., about 63 A.D., and was delivered by Tychicus (Eph. 6:21). This is not the second, but the first bond; we see that the Apostle freely preaches the Gospel, asking for prayers for this work (Eph. 6:19–20). He could not have written this during the second Roman bonds, when he knew that “the time of his departure was at hand” (2 Tim. 4:6).

The immediate reason for writing the Epistle was the Apostle’s desire to share with the Ephesian flock his deep contemplations about the mystery of the Church of Christ, to reveal the mystery of the salvation of Jews and pagans through the Church, and also to teach a whole series of moral teachings.

Let us look at the state of the world at the time Paul wrote his letter.

The Jews had a low opinion of women. In his morning prayer, the Jew thanked God for not creating him "a heathen, a slave, or a woman." Under Jewish law, a woman was not a legal person, but a thing. She had absolutely no legal rights; she was the complete property of her husband; he could do with her as he pleased.

In theory, the Jews had very high ideals about marriage. The rabbis had sayings like, "A Jew should prefer death to idolatry, murder, or adultery." "Even the altar sheds tears when a man divorces the wife of his youth." But in reality, divorce had become terribly easy in those days.

At the time of Christ, even among the Jews, the marriage bond was in danger to such an extent that it threatened the foundations of marriage, because Jewish girls refused to marry because they faced uncertainty.

In the Greek world the situation was even worse. Prostitution was an essential part of Greek life. Demosthenes described the norms of life in his time: “We have courtesans for pleasure, concubines for cohabitation, and wives who bear us legitimate children and take care of our household.” The woman of the upper classes of Greek society led a solitary life. She did not take part in public life, never appeared on the street alone. She did not even attend banquets or public holidays, she had her own chambers, which only her husband could enter. Everything came down to the fact that, as Xenophon wrote, “she saw, heard and asked as little as possible.”

The woman of the noble Greek classes was so brought up that all friendship and companionship during marriage were excluded. Socrates said: "Is there anyone to whom you have entrusted more serious matters than to your wife, and is there anyone to whom you have spoken less than to her?" Verus, who shared power with the great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, answered his wife, who had accused him of having relations with other women, that she should not forget that the title of wife gave the right to self-respect, and not to pleasure. The wife of a Greek had to keep house, care for his legitimate children, and he sought society and pleasure elsewhere.

To make matters worse, there was no judicial procedure for divorce in Greece. As someone said, divorce was a matter of chance and caprice. The only guarantee a woman had was that her dowry would be returned. Hearth and home life were fading, and marital fidelity was nonexistent.

Paul's letter is divided into three main segments: 1) Chapters 1–3 present principles regarding God's work;

2) Chapters 4–5 set forth principles concerning our present existence;

3) Chapter 6 presents principles regarding our daily struggle.

This letter, although it has an epistolary form, can be considered as a doctrinal teaching – a scientific article. Despite its brevity (6 chapters), the Epistle to the Ephesians is very rich in content both in the dogmatic and moral parts. St. Athanasius called it "a catechism of Christian teaching."

I The Necessity and Importance of Subordination.

The stability of any system of power is built on subordination. If there is no subordination, the structure will fall apart. This is what the Roman wisdom "divide and rule" says, the rabbinical wisdom says that "a house divided cannot stand." Therefore, the absence of subordination is extremely dangerous for any structure. Where can a person take an example of subordination?

A. Wives must submit to their husbands.

Paul writes for wives to submit to their husbands. This is difficult. For a later version of man, with stronger intuition, emotions and analysis, to submit to an earlier version is not so easy. For men, the submission of wives should be an example of their submission to Jesus Christ. As the wife submits to her husband, so the husband should be included in the vertical of authority God – Jesus – husband – wife

B. Husbands must submit to the Lord

From the point of view of submission to God's will, all people can be divided into four groups:

Dielectrics are ordinary people who do not know about God and cannot fulfill His will voluntarily. (pagans)

Semiconductors are mostly religious people, but they do not fulfill God's will in full, and only when it is beneficial or convenient for them. (Saul)

Guides are believers who live a spiritual life and, for the most part, fulfill God's will. (Jonah)

A superconductor is a person who carries out God's will despite the circumstances and even despite the safety of his own life. (Jesus Christ)

S. How Christ Submits to God

Christ completely submitted Himself to God, and already at the Last Supper He says that the Father has given everything into His hands. The manifestation and confirmation of this is the arrest, mockery and execution of Jesus Christ. As a result of this, Jesus was resurrected, made the head of the church and is our heavenly intercessor.

1. Christ is the head of the Church

This is the secret of the invincibility and eternity of the church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it as long as it obeys Christ. The head of the church is not the senior pastor or the church council – the head of the church is Jesus Christ.

2. Savior of the body

Furthermore, Jesus not only exercises leadership over the entire church, but He is also the personal Lord of every believer.

3. The Church must submit to God

The submission of the church to God is an unquestionable statement. But how often do we fail to fulfill God's will? God's desire is for us to go and bear fruit. What is our good fruit: stable families, high professional achievements, good deeds and our charity, helping those in need. But all this must be a means of evangelization. Without this, the church will only look like a charity fund.

II Husbands should love their wives

A husband's love for his wife is not a feeling. It is a choice. We make a strong-willed decision to love our wife even more than ourselves.

A. Husbands should also love their wives.

No one has emotional love for their body (narcissism), but to take care of it, protect it, treat it if it is sick, not leave it until death. This is the image of how a husband should love his wife. Does everyone always do it this way? I don't, but you have to try.

B. Just as a man loves his flesh

C. Family is the unity of husband and wife

D. The wife should be afraid

A woman's emotional life is even more complex and mysterious than a man's. That's why the Scripture does not force her to love her husband. It says that a wife should show her husband the utmost respect. It is difficult to imagine that a husband will be respected at work, obeyed, if he has problems with obedience and respect for his wife in the family.

E. A husband should love his wife as himself.

But no matter what, a husband must love his wife and take care of her. If our body fails us, gets sick, or even becomes paralyzed, we still remain in the body until God takes us. So our love for our wife must continue until our death hour.

III Christ loves and nourishes the church

This is another important point for being in the church. By giving the church tithes, serving in the church we come under the care and provision of Christ for His church.

A. Christ loved the church and gave Himself

Christ's love for the church is so great THAT HE DIED FOR IT. How can we doubt His provision when even His life was given for the church.

V. He presented it as a glorious church.

Jesus is the head, representative and intercessor of the church before God. Therefore, we can rest assured that Jesus is involved in our earthly life and is guiding our Salvation, our road to Heaven.

C. That the church may be holy and blameless

In the church there is a cleansing by the Word. Therefore, it is important for us not only to be in the church, to listen to the Word of God, but also to be doers of this Word.

D. The Church is the flesh of Christ

Being in church and doing His will is where we can experience the closest fellowship with Christ. One day, while in a home fellowship, conducting an Alpha course, I was telling guests about the love of Christ, and at that moment His love passed through my heart. It is an experience like no other. All the people who were in the meeting then are now in the church.

IV

In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 7), Apostle Paul set forth his teaching on family life and virginity. There he gives preference to virginity if it is chosen for the sake of the Lord. Here he sets forth his teaching on the height of Christian marriage (Eph. 5:22–23).

The Apostle points to the Divine institution of marriage: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). The depth of the unity of both spouses extends to the point that they lose their limited individual qualities and each becomes the possessor of mutual completeness – the two of them constitute one body.

Marriage is also a sacrament, a mystery, the prototype of which is the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church: "This is a great mystery; I speak concerning Christ and the Church" (Eph. 5:32). After all, each member of the marital union before marriage is already a member of the body of Christ, i.e. the Church. Of course, the spouses, as one new being, "one flesh", are attached to Christ. Marriage as a sacrament consists in the fact that the grace of Christ, which united a person with Christ in baptism, now unites, blesses and sanctifies the spouses in the image of the union of Christ and the Church.