Ephesians 5:18

There are occupational hazards in being a Pastor.  Let me mention two of them. One of them is that while people expect you to be pious, you can come across as a little too pious at times -- like the lady who came to a pastor at the end of a service, and was very effusive in her gratitude.  She said, "That was the most wonderful sermon I've ever heard. That was absolutely fantastic!  It was so powerful, it has changed my life!" 

Well, what does a pastor say to something like that? This one decided that he had to be very humble about it, so he said, “Oh, thank you madam, but it was not me, it was the Lord!"  And she said, "Oh, it wasn't that good!"  So that's one of the things you have to avoid.

The other thing you have to avoid is assuming that people remember anything that you said.  One of the worst things a pastor can do is talk to somebody who has been in the service, and say, "You probably remember four weeks ago, I was talking about such and such a thing." It is just plain embarrassing for everybody.  The only reason the pastor remembers is that he just checked his notes. 

Now, I'm not going to make that mistake.  I'm not going to make the mistake of saying, "You remember that in August, I did a series of five messages under the general heading "Family Business".  This was a series of messages dealing with relationships, based on Ephesians, Chapters 5 and 6.  I'm not going to make the mistake of assuming you remember that, so I'm just going to tell you. 

What we did in that particular series was look at some of the very practical teachings which the Apostle Paul gave the people in Ephesus, and accordingly to us as well, concerning marriage and family.  We noticed some very powerful things, and I've come back now, just for this one week, just to have a little check up and see how you are doing.

For instance, one of the things we noticed it said was that in the context of mutual submission -- which the Christians do as unto the Lord -- that wives in that particular culture, needed to be very careful, because they were given a lot of new liberties and needed to make absolutely certain that they were submitting to their husbands, as to the Lord.  Well, I was just wondering how that was working, wives?

Then to balance it out he said, "husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it."  How is it going, men?  What difference does it make?

And then, kids, it was all about how we need to respect and honor our parents, obey our parents, that sort of thing.  The balance, of course, was to parents: don't drive your kids nuts, but make sure that you're bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Well, how is it going? 

You probably noticed that when I asked the first question, there was a nervous ripple of laughter around the place. Then as I carried on in that same vein, it got quieter and quieter. Some of you are now thinking: I do believe he's serious, I do believe he's really asking us what difference did it make? 

Well, isn't that why we listen to the Word of God -- so that we might take it to heart, put it into operation and see transformation taking place in our lives? Obviously, that is the case, and I'm sure many of us have been taking the Word of God seriously. 

But I suspect that in taking it seriously, some have found it a bit of a struggle. If we honestly look at the way we tried to obey these instructions in Scripture, we found it was more difficult than we imagined. So let’s deal with the practical issue of how Paul’s instructions are realistically possible in our lives.