Marriage and Redemption (f)

Driving home: It is first of all a self-giving, sacrificial love. Husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it. And that language, gave himself up for it, is a self-giving, sacrificial love.

Martin details Christ's suffering, false accusations, brutal treatment, scourging, crucifixion, and the darkness on the cross as the ultimate example of self-giving, sacrificial love for the church.

Be ye therefore imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for you, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell. So when the apostles, later on in this same epistle, love as Christ loved and gave himself up for the church, there is no question as to what the precise focus of this giving up of himself entails. It entails everything connected with what he did in the way of self-giving, sacrificial love, in order to present himself voluntarily as an offering and a sacrifice to God on behalf of hell-deserving sinne...

11:06 - 12:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Husbands are to love their wives with a purposeful and pursuing love, aiming for their fullest development in Christ, spiritual maturation, emotional stability, and physical well-being.

He references Ezekiel 16 to illustrate the defiled, polluted, and unlovely state of God's bride (Israel/the church) before Christ's purposeful and pursuing love cleansed her.

without blemish. In the background, the assumption is when he died for his bride, having within his own heart this purposeful love, his bride was contemplated as she was in Adam, defiled, polluted, separate from God, filthy, uncleansed, unwashed, besmirched in the dirt and vileness of her sin. She was not all dressed in white and lovely and lovable in desire. In the background of this language, you must always think of the Old Testament roots. Read the 16th chapter of Ezekiel. Read what God saw in his bride Israel when he first cast his eyes upon her and set his love towards her. That's what w...

17:42 - 18:55 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It's amazing how arrogant some people can be in judging what God says in his word. It never ceases to amaze me to think that mere creatures would dare cast dispersions on what God says as though they know better than God…

Martin quotes Peter O'Brien's commentary on Ephesians to address the common criticism that loving one's wife 'as oneself' is a 'descent from the lofty heights of Christ's love' or demeaning, thereby justifying the pattern.

The moment we hear that, some of us have a knee-jerk reaction. Listen to Peter O'Brien, most helpful commentary on the book of Ephesians in the Pillar series edited by Dr. Donald Carson. I've read through large sections of this commentary just in my own devotional reading.

26:03 - 26:22 Read in full sermon

Driving home: When I do not nourish and cherish my wife, it is as incongruous as though I am indifferent to my own slivers and my own boo-boos, indifferent to my own backaches and headaches, indifferent to my own indications of some k…

He uses Ephesians 6:4, where fathers are told to 'nourish' their children, to define the word 'nourish' as providing everything necessary for fullest development and maturation, applying it to how husbands should love their wives.

The word nourish is found in chapter 6 in verse 4. You fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but here's our word, nourish them, nurture them, provide them with everything necessary for their fullest development and maturation. That's what we naturally do with our bodies. We nourish them and we cherish them.

34:01 - 34:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: When I do not nourish and cherish my wife, it is as incongruous as though I am indifferent to my own slivers and my own boo-boos, indifferent to my own backaches and headaches, indifferent to my own indications of some k…

He uses 1 Thessalonians 2:7, where Paul describes himself as a 'nurse cherishing her own children,' to define 'cherish' as deep affection, nurturing, holding, and caring, applying it to how husbands should love their wives.

Now the word cherish is used in 1 Thessalonians 2 and verse 7 where Paul says, we were gentle among you as a nurse cherishing her own children. Think of a woman that loves children enough to be a nurse to someone else's. And he says, when that nurse is cherishing, when she's caring, when she's holding to her bosom, when she is sitting upon her knee and rocking that child in a rocking chair and stroking it, with a shrievered brow with a cold washcloth, he says, that's how we were among you as the servants of God. We were among you, gentle among you, as a nurse cherishing her own children.

34:27 - 35:09 Read in full sermon

Driving home: When I do not nourish and cherish my wife, it is as incongruous as though I am indifferent to my own slivers and my own boo-boos, indifferent to my own backaches and headaches, indifferent to my own indications of some k…

He uses the common experience of a child running to their mother with a skinned knee ('boo-boo') to illustrate the natural human tendency to cherish and care for one's own body, which husbands should extend to their wives.

We feed them. We rest them. We bathe them. We pull out the slivers.

35:18 - 35:24 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You'd think they got converted all over. When the truth is, you got converted from your harsh, right-angled, unloving, domineering, tyrannical authoritarianism in your role as a husband.

Martin uses the analogy of trying to put wood screws into oak without pilot holes, causing them to break, to illustrate that husbands need to 'drill a pilot hole' of Christ-like love before expecting submission or pontificating decisions.

Whenever I think of that imagery, I think of the years when I stupidly used to try to put wood screws into oak with no pilot holes. You talk about screwing something in that's difficult, and the screws would break off. They'd get so hot from the effort. We got a carpenter.

44:08 - 44:29 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He directly applies these truths to husbands, arguing that a wife's submission flourishes under such love, and challenges them to honestly ask their wives if they feel nourished…

He shares a personal anecdote of asking his wife if she felt nourished and cherished, encouraging other husbands to have a similar honest conversation.

Now, you can't sit at your desk for several weeks and hours and ponder over this and then hope you can come and preach it with any degree of grip, if you've not been willing to have a little judgment day with your own wife. I had one this afternoon.

45:17 - 45:32 Read in full sermon

The point: Husbands should ask their wives, 'Sweetheart, do you believe that if the circumstances warranted it, I would literally lay down my life for you? Do you have the confidence that in my presence you are protected even if th…

He shares a second personal anecdote of asking his wife if she believed he would literally lay down his life for her, challenging other husbands to consider if their wives have such confidence.

Sweetheart, do you believe that if the circumstances warranted it, I would literally lay down my life for you? Do you have the confidence that in my presence you are protected even if the price of your protection is my blood?

48:24 - 48:42 Read in full sermon

The point: Husbands must pray over, pray in, meditate upon, and develop mental habits to think in the framework of Christ-like love for their wives.

He uses the metaphor of putting on socks, combing hair, or showering to encourage husbands to think of their wives as an extension of themselves, prompting them to consider how their actions affect their wives' well-being.

And say something and plan something and pontificate about something that oozes of self-centeredness and self-will in the presence of my wife, then if I'm living near to the wonder of his selfless sacrificial love, some alarm systems are going to go off in my soul. But if I'm living at a distance from the wonder of the cross, living at a distance from the wonder of what it is to be a redeemer. Being sinner as a husband, then you see it's easy for me to be selfish, insensitive, self-seeking, non-sacrificial. Then if we begin to train ourselves to think in terms of our wives as an extension of o...

51:30 - 52:36 Read in full sermon