Evangelical Free Church of Oroville

Understanding the Bible's teaching on marriage you need to return to the teachings in Genesis 1-3. If you look in chapter 5 of Ephesians, verses 21 to 33, you will see that Paul himself reaches back to Genesis 1, 2 and 3 as the foundation for what he had to say regarding marriage. If you look in fact at the thirty first verse, verse thirty one of that chapter, you will see that it is a direct citation from Genesis chapter 2- -Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.-

What the media portrays as love is a mockery and a deceit which betrays reality and leads foolish people into personal ruin. But it is not just the modern media that tells a cautionary tale regarding marriage.

to take a look at marriage, but today we want to look at marriage in terms of a -Jesus kind of Love-.

The LORD recounts His love for Israel

Love is a complex reality. That is brought home to us when we reflect upon the fact that the Greeks actually had four different terms for love. There is erotic or sensual or possessive love. There is friendship love. There is affectionate love, moral or covenantal love, love that delights in giving, that delights in excellence, delights in what is honorable. All four of these kinds of love need to be present to have a truly healthy marriage. That is the reason why when it comes to knowing how to love we need actually how to love.

there is a distinction between how men submit and how women submit. That distinction is laid out for us here by Paul. Men submit to their wives how- By loving them as Jesus loved the church. Women submit to their husbands how- By respecting them- and that is what we are going to examine today, the issue of respect.

This is a reference to children. As we move into this portion, the next chapter of Ephesians, the focus begins to shift from mom and dad, the parents, to the children. We are going to be at kind of a half-way house today. -Children- a huge issue. We need to know what the Bible's perspective is on children because it does not agree with the perspective that has come to dominate the world.

We continue to deal with the issue of children and the way we deal with the issue is from the perspective of parents. Paul begins by addressing children, but you realize that by the time you come to the fourth verse that his mind is still very much on fathers and on what fathers are to do.

Sword Drill of Scripture. WRITTEN, BELIEVE, and KNOW.

How many of us parents have had occasion, and how many of us children can remember our parents saying, -Are you listening to me-- -Are you hearing what I have to say to you-- Communications between the generations