In this video, we delve into the profound concept of submission as outlined in the Bible. Join us as we explore various passages from both the Old and New Testaments, dissecting the meaning and significance of submission in the context of faith and relationships. From the submission of wives to their husbands to the broader concept of submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ and submitting to Christ and the Father, we examine the nuances and practical applications of biblical submission.
Our aim is not only to unravel the scriptural teachings but also to address common misconceptions and challenges associated with this topic. Through engaging commentary and relevant examples, we strive to make the timeless wisdom of the Bible accessible and applicable to modern-day life. Whether you are seeking guidance on navigating relationships or simply interested in biblical interpretation, this video provides an exploration of what the Bible truly says about submission.
Join the conversation and deepen your understanding of this foundational principle of faith. Do not miss out on this opportunity to gain clarity and wisdom from the Word of God. So come along with us as we learn the God Honest Truth about what the Bible says about submission.
Transcript
Submission. That’s one of those dirty four-letter words today in modern culture. But what does the Bible actually have to say about submission? Well, we’ve heard a lot about it sometimes in mainstream churchianity, but during this teaching we’ll get into what the Bible actually says about submission when it comes to both women and men. Don’t believe me? Check it out. So this Draws Your Teaching is going to be all about submission and as it comes from Scripture.
And just to reissue that warning, there is going to be a sort of a trigger here. We’re going to be teaching about submission as it pertains to both women and men. Shocker, I know. But don’t jump to conclusions. Wait until we get into the Scriptures and information and see if there’s really enough to be outraged about because it may not be what you think it is. But before we get to that, I just want to remind everyone that you can go to our website, GodHonestTruth.com and click on the post for this Draws Submission.
And there you’ll be able to get all the information that pertains to this teaching. To make it easier, we have included the link down below in the description. And that should be available whether you’re watching on a video platform or listening through an audio podcasting platform. Just go down below in the description and click on that link. That’ll take you directly to the article post where you’ll be able to find the on-demand video. You’ll be able to find the Draws slides that you see here on your screen, as well as the notes that we took for this subject and the transcript once that becomes available.
All conveniently accessible on one page and the link is conveniently placed for you right down there in the description. So go check it out today or go directly to the website at GodHonestTruth.com. So before we get into the full teaching or the meat of it on submission and as it comes from Scripture, let’s get a basis for understanding what submission actually is because there’s a lot of controversy and a lot of misinformation that goes along with this subject nowadays.
The modern cultural understanding of submission varies somewhat, but it usually boils down to a few different points or, in my opinion, a few different misunderstandings. Commonly, the modern understanding of what submission is equates submission to something like slavery or oppression or servility. Submission is often seen as something that is physically or mentally forced upon a woman. Sometimes the progressives and the liberals will make a woman think that, oh, you’re being submissive, but it’s not your fault.
You were brainwashed into it, somewhere along that lines, or even physically forced into it like someone would a slave. Submission is also often seen as a condition in which a woman is not allowed free will, the ability to make any choices or any decisions for herself, and also where the man micromanages every single little aspect of the woman’s life. Like I said, these are misunderstandings, and hopefully by the end of this draws for this teaching, you’ll understand why these are misunderstandings and why this has nothing to do with the biblical aspect or what biblical submission actually is.
Now, the etymology of the word that we got today, submission, is rather interesting. It starts here in the late 14th century, saying submission comes from a word meaning an act of referring to a third party for judgment or decision. From Old French, submission, meaning a lowering, letting down, a sinking. Noun of action, meaning to let down, put down, lower, reduce, or yield. Remember those words, referring to a third party for decision or yielding, or the sense of humble obedience, act of submitting, act of yielding, entire surrender of control as a verb.
Now what we just described is the etymology of the noun submission, but as far as the verb submission goes, it comes also from the late 14th century, meaning to place oneself under the control of another, yield oneself, become submissive. Also from the Latin, meaning to yield, lower, let down, put under, or reduce. All of these may sound somewhat similar to what you’re used to, but again, take all this in context with the overall teaching of what the Bible teaches and what you’re going to get out of this drosh, and put all that together, and this will be a lot clearer once we get done with tonight’s drosh.
From Merriam-Webster, it defines submission as being the condition of being submissive, humble, or compliant. An act of submitting to the authority or control of another. From the Cambridge Dictionary, they define submission as the act of accepting the power or authority of someone else. So just starting out, what can we kind of get about the idea of submission generally from more of a, I guess you could call it secular kind of understanding? Putting all this together, it’s more of yielding control and authority to someone else.
Is that wrong? I would say no. But again, listen to the entire drosh, take all of this into context, take lots of notes, especially from the scriptures, and at the end, see if any of this fits in with what the Bible teaches about submission. Now to give you a clearer picture of what submission is, we decided tonight to give you a list of words about what submission is not. The antonyms or opposite words of what submission is.
So an antonym of submission might be something like disobedience, rebellion, defiance, waywardness, disrespect, revolt, contrariness, rudeness, rebelling, perversity, stubbornness, misbehavior, among others. These are words that describe what submission is not. And when we get into discussing what scripture says about submission, you’re going to discover that it kind of fits into this whole hierarchical structure that the scriptures outline for us. As far as it relates to Yahweh and Yeshua, to the assembly, what’s better known as the church.
And of course, the husband-wife relationship and the family structure, all that together. All that comes from scripture as more of a hierarchical structure. And there is a benefit to having a hierarchical kind of platform. The hierarchical structure provides things like order. It also provides a clearly defined authority structure and a clear line of authority. You’ll see that clearly from scripture tonight. It promotes unit loyalty such as loyalty to your family and then on up loyalty to your local congregation or assembly.
Further up, loyalty to Yeshua and Yahweh as opposed to loyalty to any of these other false religions. The hierarchical structure also promotes a more efficient leadership and decision making. Think about it. If you have two or three or more people trying to make one single decision, sometimes that can get very messy very quickly. So if you just have one person doing that and as it goes up, each different level has that responsibility of making that decision.
It can be made a lot quicker and hopefully with a lot more accuracy, although not always. But it does promote more efficient decision making, especially in the timely aspect of it. It includes delegation of authority as each tier delegates authority to those that they have authority over. Things get done in a more divided kind of piecemeal thing, but each one specializing in the area that they are assigned to. It gives us a sense of identity as well because when you have a hierarchical structure with well-defined positions and roles within that structure, you have that identity within that role and within that position.
So it gives us a sense of identity. It also helps people within their different functions and roles specialize in their particular job and their particular function and in their particular role. And this hierarchical structure, it’s not only coming from scripture, but we also have this hierarchical structure within our greater life as well, as far as going out into society, when we go to a job, when we go to various things. Within all this, we also have a context of submission.
Think about it. We have different roles that we have within society, whether it’s a citizen or a governing leader. Either way, there is a sense of submission, regardless of where you are in that societal structure. We have different roles on the job, and on the job, we pretty much submit to those who are over us in authority. Our supervisor, our foreman, our CEO, whoever it happens to be. There is that sense of submission. There’s also different roles within the body of Messiah.
You have the elders and deacons, but you also have various gifts that are outlined within scripture as well. The gifts of the spirit, meaning gifts of prophecy, tongues, interpretations of tongues, et cetera, et cetera. All of these have to be done decently and in order, as scripture tells us, and within certain aspects or different gifts, you have a sense of submission as well. For instance, the gift of tongues, if it’s done according to scripture, needs to be submitted also to the gift of the interpretation of tongues.
It’s not just blabbering. You have to have that interpreter as well. So it’s got to be a real language for someone to actually be able to interpret that. So I know that’s kind of a stretch, but that kind of gives you a sense of submission there, or at least it did in my mind. We also have different roles within the family. Obviously, not everyone should be doing the exact same job because you’ve got other jobs being left unattended to, and then you’ve got all these people trying to do one thing in one area at one time, and it gets to be chaos, gets to be disordered.
These are words that are going to come up rather often tonight too. But there’s different roles within the family, and as scripture lays it out, there is a hierarchical structure within the family. Now, a little bit more understanding about the general subject of submission. Scripture, when we look at it here in just a moment, when we get into the main meat of it, scripture does not teach that women are less in value than men. However, that’s the way society perceives submission.
That’s not the scriptural view of submission as viewing women as less value than men. Being in submission too has a sense of being under the authority of. Remember how we described all those different roles within society with your job and with your basic society? If you’re going out on the road, you’re going to be under the authority of the law. You might run into the lawman, the law enforcement, right? So there’s going to be that authority there, but you’re going to be submitted to the law, whether you want to or not.
Submission is also voluntary. Think about that for a minute. If you tried to force submission, would that really be submission? Would that be something more akin to slavery or something like raising a child? Now, with children, yes, you do need to make sure it’s done or certain things need to be done regardless of what they want to do. So sometimes you do need to force that in one way or another. But when it comes to adults, in my humble opinion, I think it’s a different story.
We’ll get into that a little bit more as well. Submission is also about order, and it’s exemplifying the structure of humans to Yahweh, which we’ll get into when we read the scriptures. But scripture is about, not about chaos, not about everyone wanting to do their own thing. We’re all submitting to the role that we were assigned. Sometimes we can’t help it, sometimes we can. But we’re submitting to the role that we have at that time and doing what we’re supposed to do and being under the authority of who we’re supposed to be under the authority of.
But again, submission is not about the value of any particular person. Rather, submission is about order. And as we all know, Yahweh is not the author of disorder, not the author of confusion, but rather of peace. We look at 1 Corinthians 14, verse 33. For Elohim is not Elohim of disorder, but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the set-apart ones. Now we went through and looked at the various translations of how they translate this one particular word.
And various translations give different words. Some of them translate it as confusion, as disorder, as instability, as strife, as unsteadiness, as turbulence, as tumult, as dissension, etc., etc. So this is very interesting. This will go right along. I know the context in this one particular verse, the specific context, is not regarding submission, but rather the gifts of the Spirit, etc., etc. But it does fit in with the subject of submission because when you do not have submission and performing the role and responsibilities that you were assigned, there’s going to be chaos.
There’s going to be disorder. But Yahweh is not the author or the God of disorder. He is the Elohim of peace. So regardless of who you are, where you are, be in the role you’re supposed to be and under the authority and submitted to who it is you’re supposed to be under the authority of. All that laid out, hopefully that gives you a pretty good foundation of understanding of what mainstream modern society kind of perceives submission to be as, what submission actually is defined as, the etymology of it, what submission is not.
Now, let’s go ahead and just dive in to the elephant in the room, especially any of the progressives or liberals out there who are watching this. We’ll go ahead and knock this out right from the beginning. But what does the Bible say about women and submission? If the Bible’s going to talk about it, we should too, and we should not shy away from it, regardless of what society thinks about it. So let’s dive right into it and get the God honest truth about what the Bible teaches about women and submission.
We first see this, or an instance of it, from Genesis 3, verse 16. And He does rule over you. So right here in the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, we see that women are to be submitted to their husbands. Eve was supposed to be submitted to Adam, and then it continues on down through the Bible, and we’ll see that later on also. So this was the structure from the very beginning. We go on down to 1 Corinthians 11, verses 8-12.
For man is not from woman, but woman from man. For man also was not created for the woman, but woman for the man. Because of this, the woman ought to have authority on her head because of the messengers. However, man is not independent of woman, nor woman independent of man and the master. For as the woman was from the man, even so the man is also through the woman. But all are from Elohim. So, we can see right from the very beginning that Adam was created first, and then Yahweh created someone for Adam.
He created someone for the man. Who did He create? He created woman for the man. This is what it’s getting to right here, and it’s also referencing back to that patriarchal structure and submission of the woman to her husband. Saying here that she ought to have authority on her head. And if you know anything about 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is speaking here about authority structure. And by authority, he’s using the, I guess you’d call it maybe idiom or phrase, head.
So, he’s not actually referring to a physical head, but a symbolic metaphorical head, meaning authority. That she ought to have authority on her head. Who is that authority that’s on her head? Well, back in verse 3 of chapter 11, he states, So, the head or authority of the woman is her husband. And if she’s not willing to submit to her husband, she really should not be married because she’s not willing to be a biblical wife. Now, you might be asking, well, what if a woman is unmarried? Well, she should be submitted to her head still.
And who is her head when she’s unmarried? That’s going to be her father. Now, if she’s out of her father’s house, she’s not under her father anymore, in my opinion, it should be her local congregation. But she should still have authority on her head as the scriptures outline here. What we are specifically addressing here in this teaching is going to be the structure that’s laid out for us, as we can see clearly defined from scripture, and that pertains to the husband and wife relationship.
So, the wife should be submitted to her husband, not any other man, her husband alone. We go on to read in Ephesians 5, verse 22-24. Wives, subject or submit yourselves to your own husband as to the master, because the husband is head of the wife, as also the Messiah is head of the assembly, and he is savior of the body. But as the assembly is subject to Messiah, so also let the wives be to their own husbands in every respect.
So, Messiah’s body, the assembly, the church, is submissive or subject to the Messiah, and the wife is subject or submissive to her husbands. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands. Titus chapter 2, verses 1-8. But you, speak what is fitting for sound teaching. The older men are to be sober, serious, sensible, sound in belief, in love, in endurance. The older women, likewise, are to be set apart in behavior, not slanderers, not given too much wine, teachers of what is good, in order for them to train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, blameless, workers at home, good, subject or submissive to their own husbands, in order that the word of Elohim is not evil spoken of.
Likewise, urge the young men to be sensible, show yourself to them an example of good works in all matters, and teaching, show uncorruptness, seriousness, soundness of speech beyond reproach, in order that the opponent is put to shame, having no evil word to say about you. So again, it’s reiterating this whole concept that women are to be submitted to their husbands. Also, take note here how it’s outlining also, say it too many times, it’s outlining how the older women are to be teaching and training up the younger women.
In our day and time, that’s an important thing to lay out, because a lot of times the younger women, and yes, this goes for men as well, but the younger women are not really looking to the older women to be trained by them from their life experience. Instead, a lot of the younger women are turning to their friends, they’re making a lateral movement. And that’s not always good advice. They’re also sometimes turning to society for advice, and that’s not a good thing either.
You need to be turning to, number one, the scriptures to find out what you should be doing to get advice from, but secondarily, before anything else, you should be turning to the older ladies that you know and that you trust who are in your congregation, who are in your local assembly. Learn from these older women, learn from their life experience. They’ve made mistakes before in their life, and they can give you pointers and advice so that you do not make those very same mistakes.
So ladies, go seek out an older godly woman whom you trust that you can get advice from about family life, about submitting to your husband, about honoring your husband. Go seek out these older ladies. Seek their wisdom and their advice. 1 Peter 3, verses 1 through 2. In the same way, wives, be subject or submitted to your own husbands, so that if any are disobedient to the word, they, without a word, might be won by the behavior of their wives, having seen your blameless behavior in fear.
This is one of the effects that a submissive wife can have when she’s performing her godly role within the family, and that’s being submissive. She can actually be in a role of evangelizing by being submissive. If her husband is not a believer, her doing what scripture tells her to do in her role and being submissive could be an evangelical opportunity to her husband, and it could turn her husband towards the Bible and Yeshua and Yahweh. So submissiveness is important for a number of things.
Number one, because scripture tells wives to be submissive to their husbands. Number two, it could be an evangelical opportunity. Number three, it shows the world what a holy, godly, set-apart woman wife is supposed to be in his life, driving them hopefully to jealousy so that they turn towards this godly way of life. Moving on in 1 Peter 3, verses 5 through 6. For in this way, in former times, the set-apart women, or holy women, who trusted in Elohim also adorned themselves being subject or submitted to their own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Master, of whom you became children, doing good and not frightened by any fear.
Now most of you have probably heard the traditional King James rendering of this passage, where it says that Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. Nowadays that would sound very out of the normal for a wife to call her husband Lord. Nothing wrong with it. In fact, I’ve actually seen wives, or certain wives, call their husband Lord. I understand it, so it’s not as odd to me, but it would definitely come across odd to most people. Understanding what this word is.
When Sarah called Abraham Lord, or in this translation calling him Master, that was a term of respect. Sarah was showing Abraham respect. That she respected his position within the family. That she respected his authority. That she was going to be the godly, set-apart, holy, submissive wife that she was supposed to be. Take that into our modern times. If you say that nowadays, if you still wanted to show your husband respect, but you didn’t want to use words from the Elizabethan King James days, you would use a word such as Sir.
We commonly use that nowadays. And we use it as a way of showing respect to lots of different people. And both men and women use this term. When we go, maybe to court, we refer to the judge as Your Honor, or even Sir. When we’re stopped by the police, we say, Yes Sir. Did not know what speed limit was, Sir. When you’re in the military, and you come upon an officer, you always refer to them as Sir, if they’re a man.
Or Ma’am, if they’re a woman. But we use this word Sir as a sign of respect more often than we think of. So why not use it, if you’re a wife, why not use this term of respect toward your husband? When he tells you something, or comments on something, say, Yes Sir. Or, No Sir, I don’t think that would be a good idea, but I will trust you and go with that anyways. Just various ways that, as an example, that you could use this term, all of respect.
There are other options as well, but that’s something you can discuss as a family unit. And if your husband decides, for whatever reason, that he would rather have you use the term Lord, that’s his call. He’s the head and authority of your family, but I don’t think most people would use that. Sir is definitely appropriate. So, again, talk amongst yourselves in your own family. Decide on what is the proper address for showing respect. And in so doing, you’re doing what Sarah did towards Abraham and calling him Lord or Master.
She was simply just showing him respect. At least that’s my humble interpretation of this particular passage. So, for the sake of time, we didn’t include a bunch of, or any more scriptures on this. We could have went into a lot more depth. But let it be known that submission is something that wives are supposed to do towards their husband. So, what would submission look like in a real life practical aspect? Submission, general terms and also applying to the wife, would be submitting your authority and decision making to your husband.
Your husband would have the final decision on whatever it is that comes up in life. Regardless of what it is that you want to do or what you think should be done, submitting and doing his final decision, that would be a description of submission as it comes from scripture. His will, not your will. And trusting in him to make good decisions. Granted, he’s human. He’s not always going to be right. He’s going to make mistakes. Prime example right here.
But, he should be striving to do biblical things in biblical ways for the love of Yeshua and Yahweh. And always striving to improve himself. So, you should be able to trust him. If you don’t trust him, why did you marry him anyways? If you weren’t willing to submit to this man, why did you marry him? So, yeah. Submit to his decisions, what it is that he decides to do, the direction he decides to take the family.
Submit to that. Trust in that. And pray for him. Obviously. He’s going to need your prayers because he’s human as well. But, submission means supporting him and submitting to his final decision on whatever it is that he decides in life. So, now let’s go on to the triggering part of tonight’s drosh. And that is men and submission. Some of you out there are already triggered and you’re like, no! We just got into this in the whole polygyny series.
Talking about a certain messianic teacher who put forth the idea of mutual submission. And he’s not the only one out there, but this idea of mutual submission is rare. There are very, very few people out there who are trying to say that scripture promotes mutual submission. Spoiler alert. Scripture does not promote mutual submission. That’s not it. Okay? So, bring the trigger level down a little bit. We’re going to get into scriptures here in just a minute.
But for those of you who don’t know, the idea of mutual submission is the idea that the wife submits to the husband and the husband submits to the wife. And it’s based off a faulty interpretation of the book of Ephesians. However, that’s not what scripture actually teaches when it’s taken into context and in proper interpretation. So, even though there’s not mutual submission, the Bible does not teach mutual submission. It still, in my humble opinion, teaches submission for men as well.
What do I mean by that? Well, let’s check out the example that our Messiah set for each and every one of us. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 3, again. So, Yeshua is under the authority of God. Under the authority of Elohim, as it says here. Or better put, Yeshua is under the authority of Yahweh. So, who is Yeshua submitted to? He is submitted to Yahweh and Yahweh alone. Unlike the idea of mutual submission, no. Yeshua was not submitted to the church.
Yeshua served the church. Yeshua served his disciples by washing their feet, etc., etc. But he did not submit to the authority of his disciples. Yeshua did not submit to the authority of the church. Therefore, Yeshua was not in submission to the church. Yeshua only submits to Yahweh. And we see this in more than one example from scripture. John chapter 4, verse 34. Who was it that sent him? It was Yahweh. What is Yeshua saying here? That his desire is to do the desire of Yahweh.
He’s submitting to the will, to the desire of Yahweh. John chapter 5, verse 30. But the desire of the Father who sent me. So again, Yeshua is submitting to Yahweh and Yahweh’s will and desire. And let the example of Yeshua and his, the example that he set forth for us in his submitting to Yahweh, let that be an example to us of how we should submit according to our own roles. Wives submitting to husbands. We’ll get to husbands in just a minute.
But let Yeshua be that example as we go throughout these scriptures. John chapter 6, verse 38. Because I have come down out of the heaven, not to do my own desire, but the desire of him who sent me. Again, Yeshua submitting to the will and desire of Yahweh. Then we read in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 15 through 23. Long passage, so stay with me real quick. For this reason I too, having heard of your belief in the Master Yeshua and your love for all the set apart ones, do not cease giving thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the Elohim of our Master Yeshua Messiah, the Father of esteem, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, so that you know what is the expectation of his calling, and what are the riches of the esteem of his inheritance in the set apart ones, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who are believing, according to the working of his mighty strength, which he wrought in the Messiah when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenlies, far above all rule and authority and power and mastery, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come.
And he put all under his feet and gave him to be head over all to the assembly, which is his body, the completeness of him who fills all in all. And that last part right there especially, goes back to what we read in 1st Corinthians chapter 11, where Yeshua is the head, is the authority of the assembly, of the church. He is the head, he is the authority. So who should the church, who should the assembly be submitted to? Yeshua.
And that includes men. Men should be submitted to the authority of Yeshua. Not the pope, not a priest, not a bishop. They should be submitted to Yeshua. Ephesians chapter 4 verses 11 through 16. And he himself gave some as emissaries, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the set apart ones, to the work of service, to a building up of the body of the Messiah, until we all come to the unity of the belief and of the knowledge of the Son of Elohim, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the completeness of Messiah, so that we should no longer be children, tossed and borne about by every wind of teaching, by the trickery of men and cleverness, unto the craftiness of leading astray, but maintaining the truth in love.
We grow up in all respects unto him who is the head, Messiah, from whom the entire body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the working by which each part does its share, calls his growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” Once again, reiterating that Messiah is the head of the assembly, the head of the church, as some people call it today. Again, reiterating that Messiah is the authority of the church, he is the head, and it also refers to the assembly being his body.
As we all know, a body has one head, not multiple heads. Not a Messiah head alongside a Pope head, alongside a preacher head. No. One head. So that’s who we should be submitted to, as our head, as our authority. Colossians 1, verse 18, And he, Yeshua, is the head of the body, the assembly, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that he might become the one who is first in all. Hopefully this is coming across even more clear as we give all these examples from Scripture.
That Yeshua was submitted to his authority, to his head, which is Yahweh. Men should be submitted to our authority, who is our head, and that is Yeshua. Women should be submitted to their authority, to their head, which is their husbands. But to make it even clearer, let’s go over this one more time. 1 Corinthians 11, verse 3, And I wish you to know that the head of every man is the Messiah, and the head of woman is the man, and the head of Messiah is Elohim.
So to put this another way, the authority of every man is the Messiah, the authority of woman is the man, and the authority of Messiah is Elohim. A little bit clearer? We’ve read this like three times. Hopefully you’ll be able to recite this verbatim by the time we get done. But yeah, that’s the hierarchical structure as outlined in Scripture. Now of course when you go on into the rest of Scripture, you also see the children included as well, and the children are under the headship or authority of their parents.
So women have, I’m sorry, wives have authority over the children. And children should be submitted to the mother, wives, and also to the father, husbands. This, check this out. 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verses 34-35 Let your women be silent in the assemblies, for they are not allowed to speak, but let them subject or submit themselves, as the Torah also says. And if they wish to learn whatever, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is improper for women to speak in an assembly.
Now in my own humble personal opinion here, I’m not, I don’t think this passage is telling women to shut up when you go to church, not make a sound. No, there’s a lot more that goes into this, but I think it is telling women to be decent and in order not to cause ruckus or speak out of turn, that kind of thing. But that’s a subject for a whole other time. The thing I would like you to focus on here, and really pull out of this first, is that it says, if they wish to learn whatever, let them ask their own husbands at home.
This, I think, is giving a command to husbands, to fathers, the heads of the family. And I think it’s giving them the command to teach their family the Bible at home. What the Bible says, how to go about living a godly, biblical life. That the women, the wives, and by extension the children, should be learning from the man. So part of the role, in my humble opinion, part of the role as a husband, as a father, is to be a teacher of the Bible to their family.
And not just dumping their family off on the local preacher, or the local priest, or the pope, or some internet sensation, or whatever it is. No, I should not be guiding and leading your family, men. You should be doing that. We, as men, can come together and help guide and enlighten each other, back and forth. But I am not your authority. Yeshua is your authority, men. And ladies, if you happen to be out there watching, your husband is your authority, and that’s who you should be learning from.
Now, as men, we can do the whole iron sharpening iron thing. You can teach me something, I can teach you something. We can go at it, if need be, and kind of iron things out. But you should be teaching your family in the biblical way of doing things, and what the Bible actually says. This means that you need to turn off the sports game from time to time, and actually read and study your Bible. You need to turn off the video game, or the new Hollywood blockbuster that’s come out, and read and study your Bible.
I know, some of you, that may be a struggle at first. But once you get your eyes open and your eyes enlightened to what Scripture is actually teaching, instead of what tradition has taught us, it is amazing. It gets, at least it did for me, it gets addicting. I have lost sleep because I have been in study on one verse before. I love getting into church history and the background of each particular book of the Bible, what was going on in society at that time, the politics behind it, even sometimes the philosophical stuff behind it.
And yes, there are Christian philosophers out there. That is a field of study. But, gentlemen, learn what Scripture says and teach your family. Guide and lead your family as Scripture is commanding you to do. And by doing the commands of Scripture, you are submitting to the authority of Yeshua. But you, speak what is fitting for sound teaching. The older men are to be sober, serious, sensible, sound in belief, in love and endurance. Likewise, urge the young men to be sensible.
Show yourself to them an example of good works in all matters. In teaching, show uncorruptness, seriousness, soundness of speech beyond reproach, in order that the opponent is put to shame, having no evil word to say about you. Here again is some more commands for you gentlemen. To be sober, serious, sensible, sound in your doctrines and belief, in love and endurance. And also, the older men are to be teaching the younger men. This is what it says.
Urge the young men to be sensible. Show yourself to them an example of good works in all matters. So train up these young men. And just like we said with the older ladies a while back, you, if you’re one of the older men we’re speaking of here, you have those life experiences that you can give to those younger men. You made those mistakes that you can tell them about and give them advice about so that they won’t make those same mistakes.
Almost like a father teaching his son these life mistakes that he had. But yeah, older men, teach these younger men so that they will be even better than you are when they get to the point you’re at. Show them and teach them what you’ve learned and come to see from Scripture. Tell them how you went about life as a husband, what you did that you found to be right and correct and would advise them to do.
Tell them the pitfalls that you fell into and advise them to stay away from those kind of things. But just teach these young men. Be that guide for them. Again, going back to that iron sharpening iron, older men teaching these younger men. And once again, at least in my humble opinion, when we as men perform the roles that we are commanded to do in Scripture, we are submitting to Scripture. That means we are submitting to the authority and the headship of our Messiah, Yeshua.
Because we as men are supposed to be submitted to our head, Yeshua. And that’s what I meant by men in submission. We have someone we submit to. That’s Yeshua. We don’t submit to our wives. We do not submit to our children. Our children submit to the mother and father, the husband and wife. Wives submit to their husbands. Husbands, men, submit to Yeshua. And as we see from Scripture, Yeshua submitted to Yahweh to do His desire, to do His will.
And that Yahweh was the head of Messiah. So, just a few quick tangential things that might be interesting for you that relates to the subject of submission, but not completely and directly. But maybe you’ll get something out of it. Genesis 3, verses 6-19. This is the passage where we see Yahweh coming to Adam and Eve after they’ve eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And He’s asking them, well, what happened? What did you do? And Adam says, well, the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.
And then he pronounces these curses that it’s going to happen because of what they did. He said to the woman, I greatly increase your sorrow and your conception, pain in childbirth. And that your desire is going to be for your husband and he does rule over you. So, call the command to submit a part of the curse. It’s effective, but it works because we’re not in that perfect state anymore. He says to Adam, because you have listened to the voice of your wife.
Because Adam was not performing the role like he was supposed to in leading his family, doing the right thing, which would be following the commands of Yahweh. Because he instead listened to his wife and what his wife wanted to do, he brought sin into the world and we can see the consequences of that all around us. Apostle Paul tells us that by one man, the man, sin entered the world. Not the woman, the man. Because he was the head.
He was responsible for his family and as a result, he was responsible for bringing in sin into the world. But he says here, because you have listened to the voice of your wife. And we can see how that turned out. Not good at all. But there’s also another example of a man listening to his wife and it not turning out all that good. Genesis chapter 16, verse 2. And Sarai said to Abram, see, Yahweh has kept me from bearing children.
Please go into my female servant. It might be that I am built up by her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. And we know how this turned out. It didn’t turn out for the best either. It turned out to cause jealousy with Sarai or Sarah. It caused Hagar and Ishmael to be cast out, which they should not have done. But what Sarah was trying to do here was trying to do things in her own way and in her own timing.
Even though Yahweh had already promised them a son. They did not have faith in him and she tried to circumvent this. And that was wrong to do. Abram should have made the right decision and not listened to this advice from Sarah. He should have had faith and waited on the promise of Yahweh. But he didn’t and bad things ended up. Now notice the point of error there. Just to be clear, the point of error was not that he listened to his wife because a lot of times our wives can see things that we don’t see in a way that we don’t see them.
So they can be good at times. But the final decision and responsibility is supposed to be ours, men. And if it goes wrong, it’s on us, plain and simple. We have responsibility for our families. Adam had responsibility for his family. Abram had responsibility for his family. So the error here is that Abram listened to his wife instead of having faith in Yahweh’s promise. It’s not that women can’t give advice or their input. And it’s not that Abram took multiple women.
No, it’s that he tried to circumvent Yahweh’s promise and Yahweh’s timing. So gentlemen, when you’re out there and you’re leading your family, you’re taking responsibility like you’re supposed to, make sure you’re doing it in a godly manner regardless of what anyone says, regardless of what your wife says, regardless of how much she’s whining and complaining and all that stuff. Don’t give in. Do the right thing. Do the godly thing and make the right decision. That’s the point of pointing out what Adam and Abram did.
Also, is there a possible connection between what it says about Eve and also what it says about Cain? We read in Genesis 3.16 that to the woman he said, I greatly increase your sorrow and your conception, bring forth children in pain, and your desire is for your husband. Now, compare that to Genesis 4.6-7. And Yahweh said to Cain, Why is he wroth towards you, and why is your face fallen? Is it not if you do good you are to be accepted, and if you do not do good, towards the door is a sin? He is lying, and towards you is his desire, and you must rule over him.
So the parallels here. Yahweh is telling Cain to rule over sin. Yahweh is also telling Eve that Adam, or the husband, is to have authority or rule over the wife. To be the head, the leader. Switch that around though. You can see here, the way scripture puts it, that he’s saying that Eve’s desire is going to be for her husband, and he’s saying that sin’s desire is going to be towards Cain. Possible parallel? Maybe. In this respect, in that sin wants to control you, but you cannot let sin control you.
You have to be the head or the authority over sin and not do it. Likewise, a lot of times a woman’s desire will be to control their husband, just like sin wants to control you. But we shouldn’t do that. The husband should be controlling and have authority over the wife, not the other way around. You see that parallel there? I thought it was kind of interesting anyways. But think about this also, last point and then we’ll move on, where he’s telling Eve that your desire is to be for your husband.
Does that mean that, oh, you’re supposed to find him attractive and desirable in that way all the days of your life as long as you’re married to him? I don’t think so. I think this is part of the list of curses here that’s coming upon them, in that the wife would want to desire her husband’s position of authority and control. And especially when you compare it to other verses like you see here in Genesis 4, it kind of makes more sense in that interpretation of it.
If you have a different thought on that, let me know down in the comments or send us an email to team.honesttruth.com. But I certainly don’t think it’s going to be that the wife is supposed to find her husband desirable and attractive all the days of their marriage. I think instead it’s supposed to be insinuating that a wife will desire the position and leadership and control that her husband is supposed to have instead. Just my thoughts. If you have anything different, let us know.
This I always found funny but true. Proverbs 11, verse 22. Like a ring of gold in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who lacks good sense. That is so true, ain’t it? You see someone who is physically attractive at first, but then she starts talking, you get to know her personality, what she’s actually like, and she just looks like a mud-covered pig at that point. No. No, no, no, ladies, don’t be like that. Some verses have this as like a ring of gold in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.
So going back to the whole biblical concept of submission, when a wife is submissive, she is sexy. So when you’re not submissive, when you’re contrarian, when you’re coming against your husband, that’s like a mud-covered pig. But a submissive wife is a sexy wife. I can tell you that from experience. Don’t want to get too personal, but yeah, that is so true. And I remember reading in that book, for anyone out there, especially ladies, a good book about this subject is called Created to Be His Help Meat by Debbie Pearl.
And this is, she points this out in that book. It’s written towards women, but she points this very point, she specifically points this out in her book in that a woman who is doing her godly role in the marriage, including being submissive, is an extremely attractive woman. She gives a very hilarious example, too, that really drives home the point. But yeah, a happy, outgoing, submissive wife is one of the most, if not the most, sexiest things that a man will ever come across in his life.
Keep that in mind. Proverbs chapter 21, verse 9. It is better to dwell in a corner of a roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman. And that is so true, too. I can tell you that from example as well. You’d rather live all the days of your life locked in a room with a submissive wife than with one who’s going to be contentious. Because life is miserable when you’re living with a contentious woman.
Now, ladies, don’t be contentious, be submissive. And finally, the last in this part, Proverbs chapter 31, selected verses here. You all probably know this very well, but it is worth repeating. Who does find a capable wife, for she is worth far more than rubies? The heart of her husband shall trust her, and he has no lack of gain. She shall do him good and not evil all the days of her life. Strength and splendor are her garments, and she rejoices in time to come.
She shall open her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the Torah of loving commitment. She watches over the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. So profound. Ladies, be that submissive godly woman that you are called to be so that you are worth far more than rubies, so that your husband shall have full and complete trust in you, and that you do not eat the bread of idleness. That is what sexy really is.
Not what TV and Hollywood tells you it is. No. If you could just step into a man’s body and a man’s mindset for a day and experience this, I mean, words can’t describe it, how a woman’s personality, what she does for her man when she’s submissive and what scripture tells her to be, how much more sexy that is. I don’t care if you’ve got an absolutely knockout gorgeous body according to the world. When she is nasty in her personality, when she’s yelling and cussing, stuff like that, her beauty value goes way down real quick.
But when you take a woman who may be considered just plain according to the ways of the world, and she is prayerful, she is not lazy when she is submissive, her beauty value skyrockets in a hurry. That’s the way us men see you. When you’re submissive, you’re doing what the Bible tells you to do and be in your role, that is sexy. And it makes you more beautiful, too, in our eyes. So in summary, submission means voluntarily being under the authority of someone else.
Now, I would say the sole exception of this is with children, they have no choice. They have to be under the authority of their parents. But submission means voluntarily being under the authority of someone else, women being under the authority of their husbands, husbands being under the authority of Yeshua. And, of course, like we’ve seen from Scripture, Yeshua was under the authority of Yahweh. Submission has nothing to do with the value of a person, regardless of who it is, at whatever level.
It has nothing to do with their value, but rather submission has to deal with order, authority, and the roles that we were placed in. Yeshua submits to Yahweh, who is his head in authority. The husband submits to Yeshua, who is his head in authority. The wife submits to her husband, who is her head in authority. Children submit to their parents, who are their head in authority. And everyone, with the lone single exception of Yahweh, submits to someone, men and women alike.
Hopefully we’ve covered that in understandable detail tonight. If not, write us. Hopefully we can clarify something that we didn’t get across correctly. But yeah, women are to submit to their husbands. Men are to submit to Yeshua and his teachings. And as always, and like we’ve always seen Yeshua do, Yeshua submitted to Yahweh. So we’re all submissive except for Yahweh in some aspect or another. And that’s what I meant at the beginning of this teaching about men and submission.
Hopefully you can see what I meant by that. It definitely did not mean this idea of mutual submission. No. Not at all. Yeah, that’s it. Women submitted to men who submit to Yeshua. Who obviously, as we saw from scripture, submitted to Yahweh. The greatest, most beautiful verse that I think can show us what submission actually means comes from Yeshua himself. In Luke chapter 22 verse 42. And here, in this passage, Yeshua is in the Garden of Gethsemane.
And he’s agonizing over what’s about to occur because he knows what is coming down the pipe for him. But still, he says to the Father, he says to Yahweh, Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. He submitted to the will of the Father even though he did not want to do it. Even though he was agonizing about it. He submitted to Yahweh and Yahweh’s will. And I think that’s a beautiful example of how we should be submissive in our specific roles.
When we see something in scripture, gentlemen, that we don’t personally like or that we don’t want to do, we should be submitted to that regardless. Just like Yeshua submitted here to Yahweh. Ladies, when your husband makes a decision, is telling you to do something that you don’t want to do, maybe you even disagree with it, you should submit to that. Just like Yeshua did to Yahweh here when he says, not my will but yours be done.
I think it’s a beautiful example of submission.
