To the book of Luke chapter 22, we're going back to the same text we were in last week. I was reading this week about a group of people who were performing what they called exorcisms on sections of the Scripture. So they would actually get together in a ceremony wearing certain ceremonial garb and rip out parts of the Bible saying together, "This text has no authority over me." Now, who would you guess this group of people were? Now, obviously, what you could do is you could go to the trash can afterward. Of course, they burned them, so this wouldn't work. But if they threw them away, you could go to the trash can afterward, and you could find the texts, right? And you could piece together by what you saw in the trash can who those people were without ever meeting them or knowing them. Because the truth is, we all have our beefs at some level with God's Word. We all have parts of the Bible that trouble us in our unique character and our unique personality. If you have a temper, there are parts of the Bible you wish were not there, and so on and so forth.
Well, this group of people, I'll give you another hint as to who they were. If you were to go into the trash can, so to speak, you would have found verses like Colossians 2. In Ephesians 5:22 and Titus 2. Let me read those to you and see if you can figure out who this group was. It's going to be really obvious in a moment. Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord." Titus 2:3-5, "Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to too much wine." They are to teach what is good, and so train young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. So those are the scriptures that were in the burn pile. And yes, the group of people who were ripping those sections out and saying literally together in unison, "These texts have no authority over us," were a group of Radical feminists.
Now, I'm gonna talk about those texts today, but what I'm talking about can be applied to all texts. What I'm talking about today can be applied to that basic question: What do you do with parts of the Bible that hit you especially close to home? How do you respond to them? Well, I think partly it depends on who you think is saying those things. So, I think part of it has to do with who you think is saying, "Wives, be submissive to husbands." If you believe that this is an ancient patriarchy gathered together in a smoke-filled room, figuring out how to keep the woman down, then of course you're going to rip those parts out and say, "They have nothing to do with me. I don't need to listen to them," so on and so forth. But if you believe that those are the words of God, as it says in 2 Timothy, that have been breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and reproof and for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work. If you believe that they're the words of God, what do you do? What do you do with hard words that happen to be God's words?
Well, you have a couple options. You can obey God. Or you can disobey God. And lots of people choose option B, to disobey God. Right after Paul in 2 Timothy 3 talks about the Word of God being living and active and perfect and capable of equipping us for all that we need to do in life, right after he talks about this high view of Scripture, he says in the next chapter as a follow-up, as a practical application to that text, "I charge you in the presence of God and of Jesus Christ, who is to judge the living and the dead, by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. So one option is to just disobey God's Word. One option is to gather for yourselves teachers who won't talk about those particular things, or who will give you an explanation of those hard texts, whatever those hard texts may be, that suit your particular position in life, your particular sin cluster, as it were.
And the reason why so many people choose option B, disobeying God, is because option A, obeying God, is difficult. It's hard to do. This passage especially, Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to your husbands." That's extremely difficult to do. And I want to tell you why it's difficult to do. First of all, because we're all sinners. The Bible says that we like sheep have gone astray. "Each has turned to his own way." We are naturally prone toward individualistic anarchy. We don't want to submit to any authority structure beyond our own desires. And throughout biblical history, throughout history, there have been times when the Bible describes it as people doing what was right in their own eyes. That's our default. Apart from any authority, apart from any hierarchy of authority, our default as human beings is to do what is right in our own eyes. In fact, it gets worse than that. Not only is it our default to kind of live according to our own standard, but Romans 8:6 says that when we're in the flesh, we can't submit to God. So one of the reasons why this passage is difficult is because we're sinners.
And it's made even more difficult by the fact that those people that God would call us to submit to are sinners. It's even much more difficult, not only because we want to do what we want to do, but because the very people that God would call us to submit to, whether it be to governments or to other institutions or to husbands or to bosses, the very people God will call us to submit to, or to pastors, are sinners. And the good sinners know they're sinners. And perhaps compensate in their leadership because they know they're sinners. But there's a whole world full of people who are supposed to lead us that don't know they're sinners. They think they're fabulous. So it's hard because we're sinners, and it's hard because they're sinners. It's just hard because the world is full of terrible people, if we're honest. There are plenty of people who will abuse your weakness. There are plenty of people who love to abuse their power. We're seeing it in the headlines every day. The truth is, this today and last week is a terrible time to talk about submission. When you're seeing in the news repeatedly instances of powerful people using their power to abuse people underneath them.
6 · Oswald establishes that marriage's authority structure reflects God's own Trinitarian order and explains that biblical submission means walking in a husband's God-given calling, not token deference or pretense
But the truth is, marriage is an institution created by God. Just like any institution that God has created, it has an authority structure. And human beings love to hijack authority structures. Any institution God has created will have a hierarchy because he's patterning them off of His order within the Godhead. And every institution that has an authority structure will sooner or later be hijacked by sinful people who want to abuse that authority structure. You know, it's also really hard to do this. It's really hard, wives, to submit to your husbands because the word submit means submit in a very extensive way. It doesn't mean pretend submission. It doesn't mean I'll let you pick a restaurant. It means to walk with your husband in the calling he's received from God. It means to do that first. It means to pursue that first. And that's hard to do. That's hard to hear.
7 · Oswald pivots from diagnosis to solution, offering the simple instruction that when Scripture is difficult, believers should look to Jesus to see both how He obeyed and how He empowers our obedience
So what do we do when we hit something hard in the Bible? What do we do in life when we're called to do something difficult? Well, I will give you the I guess I've been a Christian for 35 years or so. The 35-year Christian answer to that, that's really simple. When you hit something hard, look to Jesus. When you see a difficult text, look to Christ and ask this question: How did He fulfill this? How did He obey this? And how did He empower my obedience? How did He obey this passage? And how did he empower my obedience? If you really want to obey God, that's the place you have to look— Jesus Christ.
8 · Oswald argues that Jesus models both perfect leadership and perfect submission, and specifically presents Luke 22:42 as the paradigmatic expression of submission—Jesus praying "Not my will, but yours be done
Now, when we look to Jesus, and this is what we're doing in this series we're calling the Cross-Centered Marriage, when we look to Jesus, it is amazing how we see Jesus fulfilling all of the roles that he would call us to in scripture. We tend to think of Jesus in the Ephesians 5 passage, Jesus is presented primarily as the one laying down His life and leading the bride, the church. But the truth is that if you're here today and you're called to submit to someone, and everybody in this room, by the way, is called to submit to someone. Or if you're here today and you're called to lead someone, everybody in this room is called to lead people. If you're called to lead or you're called to submit, you can look to Jesus and see the perfect expression of both leadership and submission. In fact, you can't find the perfect expression of leadership or the perfect expression of submission anywhere else but Jesus. Jesus is the place to go if you want to figure out how to obey the hard text and how his obedience brings about your obedience. So that's what we're doing when we're looking at Jesus in Luke chapter 22, specifically verse 42. Where Jesus says to the Father, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done." That's submission. That's submission. "Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done."
9 · Oswald distinguishes casual association with Jesus from true discipleship by identifying the mark of genuine conversion—discovering within yourself a capacity for obedience that is not native to you but is alien righteousness from Christ, evidenced when you say "Not my will" despite personal cost
You know what's really interesting is what separates a lot of people who like some association with the whole Jesus thing, from those who are following Jesus is when they get to the parts of the Bible that make it hard for them to be happy, they keep obeying. They try to obey. They say very openly, perhaps, to their friends and the church, to God himself, "This is hard. This doesn't fit my personality. This doesn't fit my position. This is going to cost me something." 'But nevertheless, not my will be done, but your will be done.' We're going to unpack that phrase a lot more, but I just find it interesting that really when you look at what's the core of a true follower of Jesus, what, you know, how do you know He's really changed you? How do you know it's really changed you? Oh man, there's these moments in life where you try to explain why you're still with Him when what He's calling you to is so hard and so contrary to what you want. And you dig and you dig and you dig and you dig and you find this little thing buried deep inside your heart that is saying to God, "I don't want to do this, but not my will, but Your will be done." And you excavate that and you discover, that's not me. That's alien righteousness, as the theologians would say. That's a righteousness not from me. And you see that it's the Jesus righteousness that He describes, that He is speaking in verse 42. "Father, if You're willing, remove this cup from Me." I don't want to do this. This is difficult. This is profoundly terrifying, in fact. 'But nevertheless, not my will but your will be done.'
10 · Oswald confronts the worldly zero-sum assumption that leadership and submission are mutually exclusive, asserting that Jesus refutes this by being simultaneously the perfect leader and perfect submitter
Jesus amazes me that he is such a perfect submitter when I routinely think of him as the perfect leader. You know, I'm subject to all of the world's misinformation, indoctrination, just like everybody else. And the world in every area of life plays a zero-sum game. If someone's wealthy, that means someone has to be poor. If someone's important, that means someone has to be unimportant. If someone's strong, that means someone has to be weak. And we've all been told that if someone's a leader, they can't be a submitter. But that's exactly the opposite of what we see in the Scriptures. That's exactly the opposite of the gospel. Jesus is the perfect leader and the perfect submitter.
11 · Oswald anticipates and refutes the objection that Jesus' submission is categorically different from ours, asserting that Scripture explicitly presents Christ's submission as the normative model for all believers in all submission contexts
Now, some people will say, and I've heard this, I've heard this often in fact, When I tell people who are called to submit that they should look to Jesus and be submissive as Jesus was submissive to the Father, they will say— this is true— they'll say, "Well, Jesus is different. He's different. He's an exception." Well, first of all, Jesus is different. That's very true. But did you know the Bible actually tells us that on the subject of submission in particular, we should use Jesus as our standard. Let me say that again. Wives, if you're trying to understand what submission looks like, you would look to Jesus as the standard of that submission. Husbands, as you're thinking about how to— not just husbands, my wife works outside the home as well— if you're thinking about how to submit to a boss, and you're like, what does that even look like? The place to go is Jesus. Look to Jesus and sort out how He would submit to this situation. So no, we don't look at Jesus' submission and say, "This is different." The Bible actually says we're supposed to look at Jesus' submission as the model for our own.
12 · Oswald demonstrates through extended quotation of 1 Peter 2 that Scripture explicitly commands believers to imitate Christ's submission, especially His non-retaliatory endurance of unjust suffering, as the pattern for their own submission to authority
1 Peter 2:17-25 says, "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect." not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin, you are beaten for it, you endure? But if, when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you've been called, because Christ also suffered for you. Leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you've been healed, for you were straying like sheep, referencing Isaiah, for we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way. You were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. The Bible expressly says, as you're trying to figure out how to submit to authorities, look to the way Jesus submitted to the Father and submitted to those in authority as unto the Father.
13 · Oswald reinforces the point by citing Philippians 2, which commands believers to adopt Christ's mindset of submission and demonstrates that this mind is "ours in Christ Jesus"—available to believers, not reserved for Jesus alone
Philippians 2 is perhaps one of the most classic texts on the idea of Christ's submission. And in verse 5 of Philippians 2, it says this, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant." Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So the person who would say, well, Jesus is different, Jesus' submission is different. Actually, 1 Peter 2 and Philippians 2, Philippians 2 specifically saying that His submission is indeed ours. In Christ Jesus. This mind that Jesus had in dealing with authority is a mind available to us as we interact with authority.
14 · Oswald critiques shallow submission in complementarian homes where wives pursue their own agenda while only occasionally checking in with husbands, attributing this primarily to husbands failing to live in an agenda significant enough to require partnership
So Jesus is the only model of submission that ultimately matters because not only does He show us what we're supposed to do, but He gives us the power to do it through, by the way, His act of submission, which we'll talk about in a moment. And Jesus' submission to the Father is not a shallow submission. I said last week that all too often in homes that believe in Ephesians 5:22, in homes that believe in complementarity, the idea that men and women have different roles in marriage designed to reflect the gospel, all too often in homes that believe all these things, there is simply the idea that the wife is moving forward with her agenda checking in every once in a while to see if the husband has anything interesting to do. And that's not reflecting the Gospel. And by the way, that is mostly a male problem. I'll talk about that later. But that's usually because dudes are not living in an agenda big enough to need help.
15 · Oswald defines submission as living in the agenda of the one you're called to submit to, illustrating this with Jesus' total preoccupation with the Father's agenda, then transitions to the reality that Jesus' submission in Gethsemane was an actual historical battle to secure real righteousness for believers
But when we look to Jesus, we see that's all He did. That's all He did. All Jesus did was ask, "What's the Father doing? What's the Father doing? What's the Father doing? What does the Father have for me to say? What does the Father have for me to do? What is the Father about today?" That's what He did. That's submission. Living in the agenda of the One you're called to submit to. And as I've said, this is far more than a model, friends. I just want you to think about this. If you love literature, this section of Scripture is just beautiful. Beautiful writing. There's knees on the dirt. There's blood coming out of sweat pores. It says, "About a stone's throw away." It's just this beautiful evocative writing. Just think about this. This is a real place in real time. This is real dirt on real knees and real blood out of sweat glands. And this is a real place and this is real righteousness. And the wrestling, the battle that Jesus is engaged in right now is a real battle to give you real forgiveness and real righteousness so that you can obey Him in this moment.
16 · Oswald universalizes the application, asserting that whatever hard command a believer faces, the capacity to obey was purchased by Jesus' submission in Gethsemane, where He said "Not my will" on behalf of all believers
And friends, whether it's submission or sobriety or self-control, whatever the hard text is for you, the battle was fought and won in Luke 22:23. Jesus' ability in His perfect righteousness to say, "Not my will, but Thy will be done. And not only for me, but on behalf of all who would believe in me." That's amazing.
17 · Oswald signals the sermon's structure, previewing three points on submission while clarifying that the teaching applies universally to all submission contexts, not exclusively to wives
So today I just want to give you 3 more points on the idea of submission. And as we said last week, this applies not only to wives in marriage, but this would apply to anybody called to submit to anything, and all of us are called to submit to all sorts of things. I want to just give you 3 points about this. The first one will apply to that larger issue of the hard text as well.
18 · Oswald introduces the first main point—that Jesus valued a hard word from God over easy silence—and grounds it in Jesus' habitual practice of withdrawing to pray, demonstrating His love for hearing from the Father
First point is this: In Jesus' heart, a hard word was better than an easy silence. In Jesus' heart, a hard word was better than an easy silence. Look at verse 39, 22. "And He came out and went, as was His custom, to the Mount of Olives." And the disciples followed Him. And when He came to the place, He said to them, 'Pray that you may not enter into temptation.' He withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed.
19 · Oswald interprets prayer as the embodied practice of submission—submitting body, mind, and time to God—and notes that Jesus' habitual withdrawal for prayer reveals His love for both speaking to and hearing from the Father
One of the things we see in that little section of Scripture is that Jesus loved speaking with God. And I want you to think about the idea that prayer is this sort of functional, practical way that we submit our bodies and our minds and our time to God. You know, that's probably why prayer is so hard for us. It's because it's kind of like pure submission. We're submitting the moment to God. We're submitting our fidgets, our wiggles to God. We're submitting our wandering mind to God. You know, prayer is this sort of like moment of practicing submission to God. And Jesus, as it says in this passage, loved to withdraw. It was His custom to withdraw and pray to the Father.
20 · Oswald clarifies that biblical submission does not mean silent endurance but engaged conversation with authority, interpreting 1 Peter 3's "quiet and gentle spirit" as internal calm achieved through prayer rather than external silence
I want you to just remember as we think about submission, especially when we think about verse 42, which is where Jesus says, "If there's any way for you to take this cup from me, please do it, but nevertheless your will and not my will be done." I want you to think about this: a hard word is better than an easy silence when it comes to submitting to an authority figure. What we see modeled by Jesus in this text is not suck it up and bear it, right? It's not just shut up and do it. Jesus is engaged in a conversation with the Lord. He's telling the Lord, this is tough, this is difficult. You know, ladies, there's that passage in 1 Peter 3. My wife refers to this passage often in her counseling. It's a passage that refers to women having a quiet spirit. Quiet and gentle spirit. And I just want to be clear as we're talking about what it looks like, what marriage, what submission looks like in marriage in particular, it doesn't mean shutting up and doing it. It actually means engaging in a conversation like Jesus engaged in with the Father. The quiet and gentle spirit in 1 Peter 3 isn't referring to not talking, it's referring to have a spirit inside of you that is calmed and quieted. By the way, probably through a lot of prayer.
21 · Oswald applies the principle to parent-child relationships, modeling how authority should invite conversation rather than demand silent compliance, encouraging children to present evidence before discipline is administered
So when we talk about submission inside of marriage or kids, when you're called to submit to your parents, I always used to tell my kids when they were younger, as I was disciplining them, or actually before I would discipline them, if I'm missing something, tell me. I don't want to make a fool of myself here. If I'm missing something, give me the evidence I need. And what I was asking them to do was engage in this process with me. Talk with me through this process. This isn't just shut up and take it. This is submit with hard words rather than an easy silence.
22 · Oswald contrasts legitimate authority (which invites conversation) with hijacked authority (which demands silent compliance), arguing that the biblical pattern in Psalms shows God welcoming honest struggle and questioning that ultimately leads to submission
So one of the things we mean when we talk about hard words are better than an easy silence is that Jesus loved to talk to the Father. And even in this moment when God's will was expressly clear, Jesus kneels down in the dirt and says, I'd really prefer another way. But nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. Remember I was telling you earlier about how people love to hijack authority structures? When they're hijacking authority structures, they'll usually want you to shut up and do it. When they're actually hijacking the authority structures, they don't have the time, they don't have the patience, they don't have the love And they certainly don't have the intellectual rigor to actually engage in a conversation with you about the hard thing they're calling you to do. They just want you to shut up and do it. But that's not what we see here. And that's not what we see in the biblical model of submission. In the biblical model of submission, the Father invites us to speak to Him as the Father, as Jesus does here. The Father invites us to say, "I'm troubled. My soul is troubled within me." Friends, if you'd read the Psalms, you'd see that over and over again, these sorts of conversations take place and they always end on submission. But they often involve some questioning, some trouble, some wondering, "How about this, Lord? What about this?"
23 · Oswald identifies the deeper meaning of "hard word is better than easy silence"—that Jesus treasured hearing from the Father even when the word was costly, and contrasts this with our tendency to respond to God's hard words by either pretending not to hear or openly declaring distrust
But what I really meant when I talked about a hard word being better than an easy silence is that Jesus not just loved to speak to the Father, but He really loved to hear from the Father. Jesus had this attitude toward God's Word. He wanted to hear God speak, and the Father had made His will known to Him. And it was a hard word, but it was better than no word at all. This is relating to what we sang before I came up here: Where else can we go, Lord? Where else can we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. The deep irony is, is that in those moments when God drops a hard command in our life, he's inviting us into a conversation and into a relationship and into depending on him and into proving his faithfulness. And so often when he drops that hard word, we just get mad and walk away. You know, I've noticed that as my kids got older, when they were young, their favorite disobedience was to act like they needed needed hearing aids at the age of 8. So you'd tell them to do something and they would act like they didn't hear you. Right? And then as they got older, instead of acting like they don't hear you, they just tell you you're wrong and that you're unfair. Usually unfair. Where does that word come from? I didn't teach them that. Unfair. So there's a pivot between I don't hear you to I don't trust you. Right?
24 · Oswald tells the story of a missionary whose wife was declared dead after a car accident but revived, using the husband's joy at her first request for water to illustrate that hearing any word from someone you thought lost is pure gift, not burden
But instead, when you hear God's hard word, you say, "You know what? He doesn't have to talk to me at all. He doesn't have to speak to me at all." I had a friend in Africa that was in a terrible car wreck. And he woke up in the hospital next to his wife, and she was declared dead. She was actually She was actually not just declared dead, but they had stopped working on her. They had left her alone. And he's kind of conscious, he's in pain, but he realizes, they tell him, "Your wife's dead." And this is a man of faith, and he goes to her bed and is just laying on top of her wailing, "Lord, bring her back. Bring her back. Lord." Bring her back. Not yet. I'm not ready for my wife to leave me yet. Not yet, not yet, not yet. And she chokes, coughs, and she's awake. Now was she dead? Or was she mostly dead? I don't know. In his mind, she was dead. In his mind, and in the hospital's mind too, by the way, she was dead. They'd left her alone to just to be there, they were attending to other people who actually could be treated, and she's awake. Now I want you to imagine his joy in that moment. I mean, he describes it, it's just this unbelievable moment, my wife is with me again. But I want you to imagine, in that moment, she said to him, I know this woman, she said to him, please get me a glass of water. Now can you imagine the husband saying in response to that, "You're such a nag. You've literally been alive for less than a minute and you're already telling me what to do." No, he wouldn't say that at all. He'd gladly get her the glass of water. Why? Because his relationship with his wife is alive. She's asking for things. He is happy to give her those things.
25 · Oswald applies the illustration to the congregation, arguing that believers who were dead in sin should receive any word from God as pure privilege, that walking a hard path with God is better than an easy path without Him, and that God's words—even difficult ones—are light
Friends, you were dead to God. Without hope and alone in this world. Dead in your sins and trespasses. And if upon waking, He asks you to do something for Him, you should be thankful that you hear from Him at all. You should be overwhelmed with the privilege of knowing the will of the God of the universe. You should count your lucky stars that you have a hard word because the easy silence is terrible. The easy silence is death. How do we respond to moments when God calls us to do hard things? We say, "Well, I'm just glad You're talking to me." It is better to walk a hard path with God than an easier path without God. Psalm 119 is a great psalm to read this week as you think about this point. There are just these moments over and over again in the psalm when David, taking on the type of Christ, actually writing what Christ would pray Himself, things like, "I will delight in Your statutes. I will not forget Your word. Your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors." 'For I find delight in Your commandments, which I love.' Jesus is spoken of in Hebrews 10 as quoting Psalm 40, 'Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God, as it is written of Me in the scroll of this book.' Let's put it this way, guys. You've got about 80 years in this life. If what you do for 80 years is listen to God and do what He says, it's all good. That's an incredible privilege. That's a great way to spend a life. That's an eternally significant way to spend a life. We can't forget that God's words are lamps unto our feet, even the hard ones. And when He tells us to do something we don't want to do, that we find painful and confusing, friends, it's still light. In fact, it might just be pretty bright light, which is the problem. In Deuteronomy 4, Moses reminds the people of God, you're lucky to have this God, you're lucky to have His word. He says, "For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord God is to us whenever we call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as this law that I set before you today?" Friends, hard words are better than no word at all.
26 · Oswald transitions to the second main point, asserting that while submission to God Himself is difficult, submitting to God by submitting to sinful human authorities is even harder
Number 2, submission to God through sinners is hard. Submission to God through sinners is hard.
27 · Oswald uses community group dynamics to illustrate the difficulty of submitting to sinful authorities—men complaining about bosses while wives smile ironically, knowing their husbands have asked them to submit to flawed leadership in marriage
So we did a community group this week and we talked about the sermon from last week. And what I thought was hilarious was all the guys whining about submitting to their bosses while all the wives sat there and just smiled, like, with this look of irony on their face. I bet if you talk to your wife, there may have been moments in your marriage where you asked her to do something and then took it back from her moments later. Or you asked her to do something with a lack of clarity so as to not really know how to do it. Or you asked her to do something without giving her the resources to accomplish the task. Or you just didn't ask her to do anything and just left her kind of hanging out for a while. I bet if you talk to her she would have moments like that. Truth is that everybody in this room knows what it feels like when God tells us to submit to Him. That's hard enough. But then He tells us, "I want you to submit to Me by submitting to that guy." And you look at that guy. And you're like, "Oh, okay."
28 · Oswald argues that Jesus did struggle with submitting to God through sinful men, evidenced by Luke 9's repeated emphasis on being "delivered into the hands of men," and that this was part of the bitterness of the cup Jesus prayed about in Gethsemane
As I was working through this text for the last 2 weeks, the question kept coming up to me is, Did Jesus struggle with that? Did Jesus articulate that particular problem? That it's one thing to submit to God, but it's another thing to submit to God through sinners. That's especially hard. And I thought, you know, I'm pretty sure that was a part of this cup that He didn't want to take. I think this idea of submitting to sinners was a big part of the process. But I remembered there was a passage in Scripture in Luke 9. Where Jesus not only talks about this, but He says it, He underlines it. Luke 9:22, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise." Let's say that again. "He must be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day may be raised." Now, He keeps talking And He says in verse 44, this phrase, "Let those words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men." So yes, I think that for Jesus, the experience of being delivered into the hands of sinful men was a unique experience in His submission to God. It was part of the terror of the disgust in the cup that He was to take. It was part of the bitterness of that cup, the prospect of submitting to sinful men, submitting to God by submitting Himself to sinful men, which we see actually right after He's done praying starts to take place.
29 · Oswald unpacks the depth of Jesus' submission to sinful men by highlighting the ironies—the true prophet submitting to false priests, the true king before false rulers, the true judge enduring mock trials—demonstrating that Jesus' submission to sinners was uniquely profound
Jesus is done praying and these people come to arrest Him and Jesus very, very easily could have winked and they would have all disintegrated, right? He had a million ways He could have killed them. Many we don't even know are physically possible. And He submits Himself to these sinful men. So yes, Jesus did experience this terror. In fact, Jesus experienced this terror at a level we don't understand. I just want you to think about it. Jesus is the true prophet. He sees into the future as the Father allows Him. And He has to allow Himself get caught in a surprise attack. By Judas and the high priests. Jesus is the one true prophet, and he has to submit to these false priests. Jesus is the true king, and he has to stand before Pilate and Herod. Jesus is the true love, and he has to endure the false kiss of Judas. Jesus is the true intercessor, enduring schemes of men supposedly concerned about the spiritual welfare of the nation. Jesus is the true judge, and he has to endure mock trials.
30 · Oswald identifies the theological foundation enabling Jesus' submission to sinful men—He trusted that God could change, lead, and use people for His purposes—and argues that our struggle with submission reveals disbelief in the Gospel
How was he able to do this? He trusted God, guys. Duh. Specifically, let me tell you, this is the key. This is why submission is so important in a marriage to reveal the power of the Gospel. Specifically, this is what he believed. He believed that God could change people, lead people, and use people. For His purposes. And when we struggle with submission, we don't believe that. Which means we don't believe the Gospel.
31 · Oswald presses the application through rhetorical questions, challenging the congregation to examine whether they truly believe in a God powerful enough to work through the flaws of the authorities over them
When we have trouble believing that God can change people, use people for His purposes, that's shorthand for I don't believe the Gospel's true. Jesus was able to submit to sinful men. Because he believed in a God bigger than their sin. Do you believe in a God bigger than the sins of the people you're called to submit to? Do you believe in a God bigger than the weaknesses of the people you're called to submit to? The incompetencies of the people you're called to submit to? The personality flaws, the character flaws of the people you're called to submit to? Do you believe in a Gospel that big?
32 · Oswald transitions to the third main point, introducing the concept of Jesus releasing His grasp on equality with God and the eternal reward that followed
Number 3: Jesus got over grasping and received eternal gladness. Jesus got over grasping and received eternal gladness.
33 · Oswald traces the trajectory from Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane through His passion, arguing that in saying "Not my will," Jesus purchased our capacity for submission by bearing every sin rooted in rebellion against God
So you have Him in the garden sweating blood and deciding, "Not My will, but Thy will be done." Not My will, but Thy will be done. In that moment, in one way, The purchase agreement was signed on our eternal submission. As our High Priest, as our Advocate, as the One who would stand for us, His submission to God is the delivering of our submission. He would soon be blindfolded and beaten. He would soon be cursed and spit on. He would have parts of His beard plucked out. He would hang naked on a cross. A crown of thorns would be shoved into the flesh around His skull, and worse than all of that, Jesus Christ, by submitting to the Father in this moment, would carry the sins of every man and woman that God has chosen to be saved, and every one of those sins had at their root a lack of submission.
34 · Oswald unpacks the profound exchange at the cross—Jesus, who loved submission, taking on Himself our sins rooted in rebellion and hatred of submission, bearing God's wrath against our disobedience so we can obey
Every one of your sins, Every one of my sins, friends, are all about us wanting to go our own way, wanting to do our own thing, wanting to act like we didn't hear God or that He's unfair. And Jesus, if you're His, Jesus took every one of your sins on Him. And every one of those sins has a root of rebellion. So that this perfectly submissive one, the terror of this cup, the bitterness of this cup is this man loved to submit to the Father. He loved to trust the Father. He loved believing that the Father can change things. He loved to do the Father's will. And now he has our sin at its root, a hatred of trusting God. A hatred of doing what God says. A hatred of obeying. A hatred of believing. Jesus has taken on every ounce of our lack of submission. And He's receiving God's righteous wrath against all of it on the cross. And He's doing it so that we can submit to God.
35 · Oswald explains his phrase "getting over grasping" by returning to Philippians 2, highlighting that Jesus did not grasp at equality with God but emptied Himself to become a servant
Now, I use this phrase, "getting over grasping," giving him eternal gladness, because it's connected to Philippians 2. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
36 · Oswald diagnoses grasping as the insecurity-driven need to assert one's equality rather than rest in God's declaration of worth in Christ, and specifically challenges women who grasp for recognition of equality rather than resting in their identity in Christ
Now this word grasp really grabbed our attention in community group. By the way, if you're not in a community group, I hear from everybody involved in community groups just how God is blessing those and how great things are happening. And our group is just— we're really enjoying it. We've got two different groups. They're both just— it's been beautiful. But what really got us as we looked at this text this week was this word grasping. Grasping. You know, there is a part of all of us that just can't submit because we just can't handle letting go of the idea that we're as important as everybody else. We want everybody to know that. We definitely want the person we're submitting to to know that, right? I'm going to submit to you, but don't you think it's because I'm not your equal. These profound insecurities. These profound fears of being seen as weak. And Jesus was equal to God. And He stopped grasping. He didn't grasp at that. I said stop, He never did. He didn't grasp at that. He wasn't clawing for equality. Ladies, I'm sorry, this is just going to sound terrible and this is probably going to be on a blog somewhere. The whole world is full of women who are so profoundly insecure about their own equality that all they do is grasp. And there's another way. A way that says, "I believe God's word. He says I'm great in Christ. And I don't need everyone else to give me what God has already given me. I'm going to stop being a grasper.
37 · Oswald identifies the terror of submission in marriage—that wives are called to follow the agenda of flawed husbands—and previews next week's teaching on what that agenda should be
Jesus lets go and follows the Father's agenda. This is huge, especially as it relates to marriage. He lets go and follows— and we're going to talk about this more next week— He follows the Father's agenda. This is terrifying. Terrifying to say, "I'm going to, as a woman, I'm going to submit to my husband." and I'm going to follow his agenda. When we see this guy, he puts his underwear on backwards sometimes, like you've seen the whole deal. This is terrifying.
38 · Oswald completes the Philippians 2 arc, showing that Jesus' submission to the Father's agenda resulted in His ultimate exaltation, and reveals that the Father's agenda all along was to glorify the Son
Well, listen to what happens when Jesus doesn't bring an agenda, except to submit to the Father. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father. What was the Father's ultimate agenda? What was the ultimate agenda that Jesus was submitting to? To glorify the Son, to exalt the Son.
39 · Oswald applies the pattern to marriage, charging husbands to adopt an agenda big enough to require their wives' partnership—beautifying their individual bride for eternity and beautifying the corporate Bride, the church, through fruitful multiplication
What does this look like in marriage? Well, it's pretty amazing what it looks like in marriage. We'll talk about this way more next week. Men, I know many of you, I love walking with you in Christ, and if you're married or going to be married, let me just tell you what this means. You need an agenda big enough to need her. And you need an agenda big enough to need her and you. Her unique gifts, her unique calling, her unique skills. Let me tell you what your agenda is. You don't have to make it up, it's in the Bible. Your agenda is twofold: to beautify your bride in eternal holiness, eternal joy, eternal gladness. To give her the best eternity possible. I love planning vacations for my family. I do. I just think, well, they're going to enjoy this, they're going to enjoy that, this is going to be great, we're going to have so much fun here. Loving my wife, serving my wife is about planning her eternity. Helping her to become more and more holy. Practically, that's my job. So your agenda is to make your bride beautiful. And your agenda is to make the Bride beautiful. You are called to rule and subdue the earth by being fruitful and multiplying. And if you live between these two bookends, make my bride look beautiful, make the bride, the church, look beautiful, that's an agenda big enough to bring your whole family into. And when you live in that agenda, everyone's going to get way more than they ever asked or imagined.
40 · Oswald closes with prayer, thanking God for His faithfulness and beginning to articulate the grace of being addressed by God
Let's pray. Gracious God, we praise your name for your faithfulness to us. It is actually not, it doesn't work this way where we don't get talked into obeying you because