Now in this area, the verses that we've been looking at, the Bible says: God has set certain things in order, or set them up in a way He's arranged it. Now no one can tell Him: why did You do it that way? No one can say: I don't like it that way, and change it. You can't do that. If you do that, there's only two ways you can handle the word of God, or the order God has set up. The first one, is to be subject to it. To be subject to it means literally, it's the word hupotasso: to position myself underneath, or in the place God has appointed for me in the scheme of things, assuming all the responsibility of that role; and if I do that, the blessing of God flows. So to be subject to authority means - I'll put it in other words - position yourself in right relationship, so God can bless you; because they're not for evil, they're for good, to bless you. So my responsibility is, wherever I go, find out what God has set in place, and position myself so I can receive, by having a right relationship and attitude. That's not a hard deal.
Now the only other position you can take is this one: he that resists the power. That is the word anti-tassomai, meaning literally to stand against what God has ordered; in other words, to position my life, my attitudes, my thinking, my actions, so that instead of being in harmony with what God has planned, I am now ordered myself against what God has planned. You can only be in one place or the other, you can't be in both at the same time. You're either positioning yourself so that God can bless you, because you've come into His order; or you position yourself against it. Now you may do it ignorantly, but ignorance doesn't make any difference. If you position yourself against it, God can't bless you. Now God's concern is this: He wants to bless you. He wants you to be positioned, so the maximum good, and blessing, can come on your life. Most people, when they think of these things, think: the Lord God's going to restrict me, or God's going to limit me; but friend - God wants to bless us.
Every good gift comes from Him, so when God says: Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman; He's describing an order, which if I position myself in that place of order, God's blessing starts to flow unhindered around my life, and around those under me. So when God says: the man is the head, it means God has ordained, or ordered, or positioned, that a man must stand and accept full responsibility for leadership of his wife and family. If he doesn't do it, he's positioning himself against what God has ordered, and many problems come as a result of that. You can't be in two places, you can only be in the one place. You've either positioned yourself in harmony with it, or positioned yourself against it; and we want to talk about that. So headship in the home, literally, is the man accepting the responsibility God has given to him, and all that goes with it.
Now Jesus is the classic example of it. Jesus gave up all the authority and goodness and glory that He had in heaven, came to earth, and He was the model example of a servant leader. He loved the church. He gave His life for the church, He gave direction, He led, He released the power of God - how did He do it? Because all the time, He fulfilled Romans 13:1, He was subject, or positioned Himself in harmony with, the positioning God had for Him. Now to position yourself in harmony means this: you learn, or understand, or get to know, and you ask this question: what has God made me responsible for? If you can't answer that, it's almost certain, that at least to some degree, you'll be positioned against what God has planned; and be out of the blessing of God. Now you can pray all you like, it won't change anything, until you change. You must position yourself in harmony with what God's planned, then you can receive.
Now let's just pick it up and go a little further. I want you to look with me now in - where will we go? We'll go over into 2 Corinthians 10. Now I'm just going to keep talking just about the area of responsibility. Headship is a role, or a function, that God has set in place, so He can get a job done. Wherever you've got a group of people, someone must carry the weight of it seeing the jobs get done; so God says to the man: you're the man. You're the man here. God says: you're the man! And you know what? You are wired to carry responsibility. God has made you, so something in you thrives and grows and comes alive, when you carry responsibility; and something inside you dies, when you don't. Sin will cause you to do one of two things: either be passive, and refuse to take responsibility; or to misuse your responsibility and authority, and damage and hurt others around you. God wants us to learn how to handle it right. Whoa! [Laughter] [They're all excited] So to do that, I've got to know what it is. My biggest problem was: I just didn't know, and I had role models that didn't help me either.