Marriage and Redemption (f)

Introduction: God's Picture of a Redeemed Marriage

0:04 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday evening, June 23, 2002, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Well, let's turn again to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians and chapter 5.

0:23 And I shall read only that portion that is directed to Christian husbands. It begins at verse 24. Sorry, verse 25. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy.

1:05 And without blemish. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loves his own wife loves himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ also the church, because we are members of his body.

1:33 For this cause shall a man leave his father in marriage, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church. Nevertheless, do you also severally love each one his own wife, even as himself, and let the wife see that she fear or have reverential respect, for his own wife is his own wife. For her husband.

2:07 Well, let us again ask the help of God the Holy Spirit, as we seek to understand and feel the pressure of this portion of the word of God. Let's pray.

2:25 Our Father, we have read things in your word that remind us afresh that you are not a God to be trifled with, and we would not traffic lightly in holy things. For you have said to this man will I look, even to him who is of a poor, and a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word. Give us, we pray, the poor and the contrite spirit, and the spirit that trembles before the word. Help me that I may accurately reflect your mind as contained in this portion.

3:06 Help your people that they may willingly and with spirit-wrought perception receive the word of God. Amen. Amen. Amen.

3:12 Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

3:12 Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

3:13 And, O Lord, where there are those strangers to your grace, that that word may come in its saving, life-transforming power, do, exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or even think, according to the power that is at work in us, and unto you be glory and praise through Christ Jesus now and forever, we ask in his worthy name. Amen. Now those of you who were with us this morning will know that our meditation this evening is the continuation of what we began to consider this morning. In the course of our series of studies on marriage, motherhood, and homemaking, we are considering the institution of marriage, and in particular, the relationship of a husband and a wife in the light of redemption. And that has brought us into Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 to 33, a portion of the word that I have called God's picture of a redeemed marriage. What does a marriage look like in which the redemptive grace and power of God has been operative in great measure to neutralize the horrible impact of sin

4:40 upon the marriage relationship? The answer is Ephesians 5, verses 22 to 33. And having considered God's redemptive directive to wives in verses 22 through 24, and then in 33b, we began this morning to take up God's redemptive directive to Christian husbands. And what we covered this morning was this.

Review of God's Directive to Husbands

5:09 We saw, first of all, the assumed context of this directive to Christians, And that assumed context is husbands who, as Christians, have embraced their God-given place and identity as head of the wife and are prepared by the grace of God to bear the burden of that headship and to administer it in a way that pleases God and glorifies Christ. Then we looked at the essence of God's directive to Christian husbands. Three times in the passage, husbands are directed to love their wives. In verse 25 with an imperative, in verse 33 with an imperative, and in verse 28 it is laid upon them as a solemn moral obligation. So ought husbands also to love their wives.

6:09 And then we sought to wrestle with the very vital question, what is this love that constitutes the essence of the redemptive directive to Christian husbands? And I tried by a number of means to strip away from the very concept of marital love that it is encompassed by romantic chemistry. I did not negate or demean the essence. There are elements of romantic chemistry leading into marriage or growing and developing within the marriage, but I sought to demonstrate that what is commanded here is not romantic fuzzies.

6:53 What is commanded here is that agape love which, as Mr. Lenski suggested to us, always involves a love of understanding and comprehension joined with a purpose. The question for us in the investigation today is rather broad. That is, where are the problems, the Economy, and the Marriage of God worn out?

7:37 And when he pointed to our partner in marriage? He asked my question. Now that didn't work with your judge. In Mediarrez.

7:39 That is what it was. I know that obviously you're going to want to try on. commanded. Then I just hinted by way of a brief introduction, the third major heading, the pattern of this redemptive directive to Christian husbands. And I noted with you as we closed our study this morning that it was a twofold pattern. The identification of that pattern was as follows. We are to love as husbands as Christ loved the church, verse 25, and then we are to love our wives as we naturally love ourselves and our own bodies, verse 28 and following. But though there is the twofold pattern in this directive to love our wives, we noted there is a unifying substance in this pattern.

The Pattern of Christ's Love for the Church: Self-Giving and Purposeful

8:30 The first is Christ loved to his own as his bride, and the second it is Christ loved to his own as his body. Now this evening I want to come to the opening up and application of this pattern. So we shall consider first of all then the pattern of Christ in his love for the church, verses 25 to 27, and then secondly the pattern of the Christian man's natural love for his wife. His natural love for himself and his own body, verses 28 through 33a. So then we take up then for our study tonight the pattern of Christ in his love for the church, verses 25 to 27. Husbands love your wives even as, and the adverb kathos is the adverb of an equal sign. Husbands love your wives even as, in a manner that is commensurate to some degree and in some accurate reflection of this pattern, the love that moved Christ to give himself up for the church in order that he might

9:53 sanctify it, having cleansed it, that he might present it to himself without sinning. And so this pattern of Christ in his love for his wife is to be nothing less than this love of Christ for his church. And what are these specific characteristics of Christ's love for his church? I suggest that all that is contained in verses 25 to 27 can be subsumed under these two headings. It is a self-giving, sacrificial love, and it is a purposeful and pursuing love. 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. For it has already been used in this fifth chapter. I direct you back to verses 1 and 2.

11:06 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 sinners. So when we are told that it was Christ in his love who gave himself up for the church, whatever other dimensions of self-giving, sacrificial love this may entail,

12:29 one thing is clear. Its focal point is that to which he gave himself up that you and I might have a Savior, that God might extend to us righteous pardon and just forgiveness. And even a very surface acquaintance with the gospel records informs us that in giving himself up to be a sacrifice, and an offering to God, he gave himself up to the horrible false accusations of his accusers. He gave himself up to the shameful, brutalizing treatment at the hands of the Roman soldiers, who stripped off his ordinary robe, placed a robe of mock royalty upon him, put a crown of thorns upon his head, beat him with rocks, rods, cuffed him with their fists, lacerated his back with scourging, strapped a cross upon him, took him out to a place called Golgotha, impaled him upon this horrible instrument

13:45 of execution, hung him up to die. He gave himself up for us. The rejection, the brutalizing, the horrible experience of scourging, of crucifixion, and the greatest horror, the darkness of the three hours from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, the drinking of the cup full of the wrath of God against the sins of his bride, his church that he is redeeming by the voluntary sacrifice of himself, that cup which he saw in Gethsemane. . . .

14:26 . . . . . .

14:26 . . . for which he drew back, and in the intensity and agony of spiritual struggle, fell upon his face, stood and fell and stood and fell, sweat as it were great drops of blood, and pleaded, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. If it cannot pass, except I drink it, not my will, but yours, be done. And then the horrible darkness, from the third hour until the sixth hour until the ninth hour, high noon to three o'clock, at the end of which time, the mysterious cry that I'm convinced even eternity will not exegete for us, my God, my God, why did you abandon me? My God, my God, why did you abandon me? He gave himself up.

15:25 For it, compressed in those words, are all the realities of his giving himself up in this self-giving, sacrificial love and offering and a sacrifice unto God. Husbands, love your own wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up. That kind of love is not born in your heart looking at the moon and feeling the stirring of your hormones. That kind of love is only known when by the Spirit of God its manifestation in Christ becomes in some degree transplanted into the stuff of our own inner life. Husbands, love your wives so that God you can be Himself. That is the word of crystal. That is the word of , and I simply congregate in this, that it returns légation, , even just a little bit.

16:29 umb чiam cayмет or wives even as christ loved with a self-giving sacrificial love but then the second quality of that love identified here is that it is a purposeful and a pursuing love verses 26 and 27 he gave himself up for the church in order that and then within those next two three two verses there are three henna's h-i-n-a is the transliteration into english it introduces a of purpose so whatever he did driven by his self-giving sacrificial love on behalf of his church it was a purposeful and a pursuing love he did this in order that he might sanctify it that is his church, his bride, having cleansed it, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and

17:42 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 we were, filthy in our blood, uncleansed, unwashed, unfit to be anyone's bride.

18:55 But his love was a purposeful and a pursuing love, a love in which he gave himself in that self-giving, sacrificial act of making himself an offering to God in order that he might have a glorious bride, a spotless bride, in order that he himself might present to himself a purposeful and a pursuing love, a love in which he gave himself in that self-giving pride, resplendent with the glory of his own moral perfection. Now, for any of you that want a more detailed exposition of all of the various nuances of this passage, when preaching on the return of Christ, message number 11, preached on August 5th of last year, I sought to give a more detailed exposition of what is said in these verses. And we must not think in terms of a one-to-one equivalence. You see, you find this again and again with the Apostle Paul. He's enjoining a very practical duty. He's showing how that duty is either exemplified

20:06 in Christ, or how it is rooted in the grace of Christ, and the minute he mentions Christ in his work, he goes off into orbit. And often, he includes or not includes, but expounds upon dimensions of the person and work of Christ that go far beyond any one-to-one equivalence with the practical duty. And the grace of Christ is rooted, better said than done by the下 duty that he's just been enunciating or identifying, and that's true here. When he says, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, gave himself up for it. Yes, we are to exemplify that self-giving sacrificial love, but we cannot atone for our wives' sins. Nor when he says in order that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it, that he might present it without spot or wrinkle, he is not saying that we husbands have some power given to us by which we can truly and efficaciously sanctify our wives with a view that before we die we will present them to ourselves morally perfect. No. But what he is saying is that behind this purposeful and pursuing love of Christ,

21:21 the heavenly bridegroom, who looks forward to his wedding day when his bride will be everything that he wants her to be, there are principles that are to be reflected in the way we husbands love our wives. And the principle is that his love is a purposeful and a pursuing love. It has a definitive purpose and goal, and he relentlessly in that love pursues, that goal. And when you think that it's you and me, with all of our spots and all of our wrinkles and all of our remaining defilement that he is scrubbing away and rubbing away and that he is dealing with, surely there is mirrored, to be mirrored in a husband's love for his wife, something of that love that patiently pursues that purpose of her highest, conformity to the will of God. That is, we as husbands are to love our wives with a love that is purposeful. We look upon our wives and say, I purpose under God to be a means in the hands of

22:41 God and by the grace of God and by the means given to me by God that my wife shall come to her fullest development in Christ. In every facet of her sanctified femininity. As my wife, I am concerned for her spiritual maturation. I am concerned for her emotional stability. I'm concerned for her physical health and well-being and appearance. I have a purposeful love, and it is a love that pursues that purposeful love. This husband's love as Christ loves. A love that not only is marked by self-giving, sacrificial dimensions, but by purposeful and pursuing dimensions.

The Pattern of Natural Self-Love: Identified and Justified

23:40 But now we come in the second place to the pattern as found in verses 28 to 33a. The pattern of the Christian's man's natural love for himself. And his own body. And I have four brief sub-headings. The pattern identified, the pattern justified, the pattern specified, and the pattern exemplified. And I'm not trying to be clever. I just want to responsibly open the text and try to hang it together in a way that you can follow. First of all, the pattern identified.

24:16 Look at verse 28. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives. As. their own bodies.

24:28 And there the emphasis is upon the natural self-love of any Christian husband. It is not the inordinate, idolatrous self-love of the unregenerate man, but he's writing to Christian husbands. Remember now, the prerequisites are present. These husbands have been delivered from the tyranny of self-centeredness.

24:52 But grace does not neuter nature. And it is natural for us to have a spirit of self-preservation, to have a legitimate dimension of self-love. Now he says, Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. Verse 33a, Nevertheless, do you also severally love each one his own wife, even as himself.

25:21 In verse 28, It's love as your own body. Very specific and concrete. And then the more general statement in verse 33, Love each one his own wife, even as himself. So I have tried to combine them and say it is the pattern of the Christian man's natural love for himself, the larger, and his own body, the more specific.

25:52 Do I carry your judgment? That those words capture what is here in the text. So that's the pattern identified. Now secondly, the pattern justified.

26:03 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.

26:22 It's so rich. It's so rich in opening up the scriptures in a warm as well as an accurate way. Peter O'Brien writes commenting on this dimension or aspect of our love, namely, the natural love for ourselves and our own bodies. He writes this, They are to love them as their own bodies.

26:43 A statement that is rather surprising and has been regarded by some, number one, as a descent from the lofty heights of Christ's love to the rather low standard of self-love. Some say there's something not right here. There's an incongruity. Husband's love as Christ's love.

27:04 Sacrificial, self-giving love. Purposeful, pursuing love. Now he says husband's love like you love yourself. There seems to be a horrible descent from the glorious and the noble down to the very ignoble and inglorious.

27:21 Some say, secondly, it's too demeaning and degrading since the wife is viewed simply as her husband's body. And others, at best, it is a commonplace that is rather pragmatic in its self-interested approach.

27:36 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 or they're more fastidious about what is noble and ignoble than God is. Well, Mr. O'Brien is not one of those.

27:57 He says the issue is more nuanced than these comments suggest. The statement applies the second great commandment. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19.18 In a direct way to the love which the husband should have for his nearest and dearest neighbor, namely his wife. And he quotes another commentator who astutely points out that neighbor in its history in its Hebrew feminine form is used repeatedly by the lover in the Song of Songs when addressing his bride or when speaking about her to others. And then he cites no fewer than six or seven instances in the Song of Solomon when the husband speaks of his bride as his neighbor in the Hebrew feminine form. And so O'Brien is rightly

28:54 pointing out that if the second commandment is next to loving God with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength is to love one's neighbor as himself, then surely the second commandment has its highest demands in the most intimate of neighborly relationships that of a husband with his wife. She becomes his closest neighbor. And therefore, he is under the most solemn obligation of the second commandment to love his neighbor as himself. However,

29:34 though that no doubt is sort of the substructure out of sight behind the apostle's injunction, what is explicit in this pattern justified is the reality of the marital union which makes a wife a part and an extension of oneself.

29:58 Look at the text, verse 28. Even so, husbands are under solemn moral obligation to love their own wives as their own bodies. Why? Because he who loves his own wife loves himself.

30:20 When I'm told to love my wife as my own body, it is because I am really loving myself with a legitimate, God-approved self-love. So the pattern is justified because the reality of the marital union is such that it makes a wife a part of and an extension of the husband himself. And when did this occur? In the marriage covenant culminating in the two-one-flesh union.

30:56 For this, this is why he quotes verse 31 from Genesis 2, 24. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. If the two have become one flesh, then a husband who loves his wife as himself is loving himself. You see, there's the logic.

31:24 It is not some kind of gross, carnal, demeaning, self-indulgence. No, he says, husbands, you're to love your wives with this pattern as you love yourself, as you love your own body. The pattern is identified, and now it's justified in terms of the very nature of the marital union. Now, that does not mean that a woman loses her independent identity.

31:50 Otherwise, Paul couldn't address the wives separately, who have brains and who have consciences and who have an independent relationship in union with Christ, totally divorced from the husband. And yet, in the marital relationship, the two shall become one flesh. They become a new entity of which the husband is head and the wife is body. Now then, that brings us very naturally to the pattern specified.

The Pattern of Natural Self-Love: Specified and Exemplified

32:20 We've looked at the pattern identified, pattern justified in the very nature of the marital union. Now, the pattern specified. What will it involve? Verse 29a.

32:31 For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Now when he says no man ever hated his own flesh, Paul is not saying, look, no single individual in all the history of mankind has ever done hurtful things to his own flesh. Read Romans 1. Paul knows what hurtful things people do to their own flesh.

32:55 He speaks of certain sins which bring upon men the judgments of God upon their own flesh, receiving in their own bodies. What he's saying is, as a general rule, men naturally care for their own flesh and bodies. They don't need to be told to. They don't need to be instructed.

33:15 What man ever hated, treated with disdain his own flesh? No. Men naturally, unless they are given over to some quirk in their thinking or twist or short circuit in their brain, or other things, people naturally do two things. They nourish and they cherish their own bodies.

33:39 No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Now these two words, nourish and cherish, are words that ooze with deep affection. They have strong overtones of what we would say are feminine qualities. They have strong qualities of nurturing and cherishing.

34:01 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.

34:27 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.

35:09 That's our verb. This is what we do naturally with our own bodies. We nourish them. We cherish them.

35:18 We feed them. We rest them. We bathe them. We pull out the slivers.

35:24 We ran to our mamas when we skinned our knees, say, Mommy got a boo-boo. Kiss it and make it better. Nobody had to teach us how to do that. We nourish and cherish our own bodies.

35:35 Now the apostle says, even so ought husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loves his own wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. 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 kind of chronic illness, indifferent to the indications that something's wrong with my body. When I am not solicitous for the well-being of my wife, I am refusing to nourish and cherish myself. That's what the text says. He that loves his own wife loves himself. He who does not love in a nourishing and cherishing way is not loving himself.

36:43 But from that pattern specified, he goes to the pattern exemplified. Verse 29b and 30. No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. And now you see he can't get Christ out of his mind, even as Christ the church.

37:02 And why does Christ nourish and cherish the church? He says, I'll tell you why. Because, verse 30, we're members of his body. It's an amazing concept.

37:15 When Christ in redemptive grace took us into union with himself and brought us into his church, which is his body of which he is the head, he said, now that you're a part of my body, I will not negate the dictates of natural self-love. I'm going to nourish you and cherish you because you're now a part of my body. Isn't that precious? It's not that you are now part of my bride and I'm going to perfect you so one day I can present you to myself, a glorious bride.

37:55 You're now part of my body. And as part of my body, I'm going to love you as I love myself. No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ, his body, for, because of his body. Now you think of all that it means that Jesus nourishes and cherishes you because you're part of his body.

38:31 What's that mean? He builds you up with his promises. He builds you up with his forgiving and pardoning grace. He nurtures and cares for you when you come to him wounded and spiritual bones are broken and need to be set.

38:50 And there are the horrible, horrible effects of spiritual declension and he nurtures us back into spiritual life and vigor, cleanses our conscience in his own precious blood, reaffirms his love to us in his promises and in the supplies of his grace. He nourishes us. He cherishes us because we're part of his body. Now, husbands love your wife that way.

39:22 She's part of your body. You love her like Christ loves his body. You say, that's revolutionary. Yeah, it is.

39:34 This is God's directive to Christian husbands of whom the apostle can assume to talk about Jesus as husband perfecting his bride and head perfecting, nourishing, cherishing his body. These are precious realities to these men. They don't sit there when Paul writes this and they're read in the assembly saying, what are you talking about? No.

40:05 They hear this and they say, oh, Lord, what a horrible thing that I would misrepresent the Lord Jesus who loved me and gave himself up for me, loves me with this self-giving, sacrificial, love, and I'm so self-centered and unwilling to sacrifice for my wife, who loves me with this purposeful and pursuing love, and I'm so indifferent to any long-term purpose of her maturation and growth and development in the totality of her humanity as a redeemed sister in Christ. O Lord, how can I be so indifferent to loving her as I love myself, for you are the great exemplar of what it is to have sanctified self-love. You've made me a part of your body, and you nurture and cherish me because I'm part of your body, and Lord Jesus, I'm to reflect you in the way I love my wife.

Application to Husbands: The Call to Christ-like Love

41:09 This is revolutionary. This cuts to the nerve of the notion that I call a shots and she's to do what I say, and if she doesn't, I'll preach. Submission to her. God have mercy on you.

41:27 You see, there is rarely a Christian woman, when a husband is committed to love her like this, that won't count it her privilege and her joy to submit to such a head. And just as I said to you wives last week, could it be that the reason some of your husbands are not more sensitive and gentle and don't give you as much? As you know, other husbands give their wives in terms of seeking their input, and even at times capitulating to your judgment on matters that you've discussed, is because you're constantly challenging their headship, and everything in them as men and as Christian men says, no, I must not relinquish the headship. And you, some of you women, you're reaping the fruit of your own resistance to your husband's headship. You're reaping the fruit of your own resistance to your husband's headship. And your refusal to submit to them.

42:32 Now I want to turn the tables. You know why some of you men have wives that feel insecure in truly submitting to you in everything? You know why? I'll tell you why.

42:44 It's no secret.

42:47 Because they have no assurance, or precious little assurance, that you love them with a self-giving, sacrificial love. With a purposeful. And pursuing love with a love that reflects their consciousness, that you're a part of them, and they are to be as solicitous for your well-being as they are for their own.

43:21 If they began to really sense that from some of you, they'd melt in a blob of the most sweet submissiveness imaginable. 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.

43:53 You're not going to like what I said, but I don't care. I'll answer to God for being honest with the text. And seeking, as Baxter said, to screw the word into your conscience by close and lively application. Whenever you do that, you're going to get a lot of love.

44:08 You're going to get a lot of love. Whenever you do that, you're going to get a lot of love. Whenever you do that, you're going to get a lot of love. Whenever you do that, you're going to get a lot of love.

44:08 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.

44:29 He knows. He's smiling. I can see Jonathan smiling. You drill a pilot hole.

44:33 Well, this is what some of you, in trying to take your headship, you need to do the pilot hole. The pilot hole of beginning to love her as Christ loved the church. Instead of coming home and pontificating on this decision and that decision in the family, you sit down with your wife and say, sweetheart, I've been thinking about such and such about our vacation, and I know there's all kinds of, here's some of my, what are your thoughts? She'll look at you and say, well, were you drunk?

45:01 What are my thoughts? When did my thoughts begin to count? Well, sweetheart, I'm taking serious. Seriously, what the Bible says about how I'm to love you.

45:17 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.

45:34 About five o'clock, I come down. She's had to take her steroids to get ready for her chemo treatment tomorrow. She's lying in bed, and I sat on the edge of the bed, and I didn't want to do it. Everything in my flesh said, no.

45:49 Get a bellyache real quick and have to leave. Do something. I said, sweetheart, I'm going to ask you a straightforward question. I want an honest answer.

45:58 Do you feel nourished and cherished?

46:09 I'm not going to tell you what she said. That's our business.

46:13 But I'm telling you, I was willing to sit down and tell her and keep my mouth shut and listen while she responded.

46:20 You husbands, you ready to go home and do that with your wives tonight?

46:24 You ready to do it? If not, why not?

46:30 If you're doing it, it'll encourage you to have her affirm it.

46:35 It will greatly encourage you. I know. I'm not telling you what she said, but I know.

46:40 It'll encourage you. If you're not, in about time, you face the fact you're not.

46:48 This command is as clear as thou shall not murder, shall not covet, shall not steal. You shall love your wife as Christ loved the church. I challenge you men to go home. This.

47:03 Night.

47:07 And say to your wife, however you address her, whatever your special names with your wife are, do you feel nourished and cherished according to the Bible now? Not according to an artificial standard of an overly feminized concept of nourishing and cherishing. Because you women are naturally nurturers and nourishers. This is to be a Christ-framed concept of nourishing.

47:34 As Christ nourishes and cherishes the church. He does it patiently. He does it lovingly. He does it sensitively.

47:42 Sometimes he does it firmly. Whom I love, I rebuke and chasten, he says in the book of the Revelation. He does it as the Christ of Scripture. There are times when he did that with his own.

47:57 Oh, no fools and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have said. He said that to some disciples that he's nourishing and cherishing.

48:07 So we're not talking. We're not talking about a saccharine concept of nourishing and cherishing, but a Christ-like concept of nourishing and cherishing.

48:19 You ready to ask your wife? You ready to ask her?

48:24 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?

48:45 That's the second question I ask my wife today. You ready to ask your wife that?

48:52 If not, why not, men? Feel a little uneasy? When's pastor going to get on with it and get to the amen?

49:01 If not, why not? If everything in you is committed to love her with a selfless, sacrificial, self-giving love, your wife will know from the many little ways that you constantly protect her. That if it came for, came pushed to shove, that the only way to protect her would be to give your life. She lives in the confidence.

49:30 I've got a man living with me, ready to die for me.

49:36 And I pity the woman who doesn't have a husband of whom she can have that confidence. How vulnerable she is. How vulnerable. How vulnerable.

The Necessity of Gospel Realities for Husbands

49:49 This is the redemptive directive given to us. As husbands. The essence, we're to love our wives. The pattern, Christ's love for his church, a man's natural love for himself.

50:08 And now you see again why I keep insisting that only true believers can take these redemptive directives and by the power of God's grace even begin to implement them. But in Christ, we have all the resources to implement. And it underscores afresh to you and to me as Christian husbands why we've got to live in the context of the most basic gospel realities if we're going to be the husbands we ought to be. It's only when our hearts are constantly suffused with a sense of wonder that Christ loved us, gave himself for us, the son of God who loved. When I was vile and polluted and defiled and wretched, he gave himself for me. It's when our hearts as individual husbands are suffused with that gospel reality that we're at least in a position as we relate to our wives to say, ah, this is what it is to love as Christ loved. And when I'm tempted to do something.

51:30 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 ourselves, maybe a helpful little way is when we put our socks on the morning, say I'm putting my socks on my feet. What am I doing to help dress my wife's feet? Not literally. I'm talking metaphorically, speaking poetically now.

52:36 When I'm combing my hair, what am I doing to help comb my wife's hair? When I'm showering and washing myself, what am I doing to help wash her? To think in terms of my wife is part of me. We've become one flesh.

52:54 She's become part of me. I'm head in the way Christ is head of his body and savior of that body. The nurturer, the cherisher of his body, for we are members of his body. And dear Christian husbands, this perspective is not something you're going to get just by hearing it in an hour's exposition tonight and an hour this morning.

53:20 You've got to pray over and pray in and meditate upon and develop mental habits to think in this framework. And may God help us to do so. Go home tonight and be honest with your wives. Have a little judgment day with them.

53:35 And you wives, don't sit there and pounce all over and remember, they've got feelings too. As you would that others do unto you, even so do unto them. That applies to men and women, husbands and wives. This is the law and the prophets.

53:51 Be gentle with them. Find the areas you can encourage them. Because often the husband who's most blustery is the most insecure little boy. And that's why he blusters.

54:04 A lot of it's external bluff. Because he's really not secure. He's insecure in himself. Don't batter him down.

54:10 Treat him sweetly. Puff his face in your hands. Smother him with a few kisses. But sooner or later give him the zinger.

54:20 Tell him the truth. Tell him the truth. Faithful of the wounds of a friend. But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Application to Young Men and Women

54:29 Open rebuke is better than secret love. That's my word to my fellow Christian husbands. Now, what's my word to you young bucks? hmm well someday you can get twitterpated some of you already been and you're going to start thinking about taking on the manly responsibility of a husband and the father the provider and as you do don't wait don't wait to your premarital counseling to read over and pray in ephesians chapter five you begin even now to pray in these things say lord i can't begin to understand what it means to love a woman as myself because i've not yet become one with a woman but lord whatever that means help me in some degree to learn to love others as i love myself my sisters my brother my mom my dad to get out of the orbit of thinking in terms of everything how it affects me and begin to think in and and other oriented way as I emphasized this morning you can begin as a Christian young man to obey Ephesians 5, 1 and 2 and the more you learn in your general relationships to love as Christ loved and gave himself an offering and a sacrifice that's a directive to all Christians

55:57 in all their interactions with one another, the more you learn it in all your general relationships the easier it will be to focus in upon the more demanding specific concentrated expression of that when you get a wife begin to lay up a stock of that perspective now and I say to you unmarried girls and young women and not so young women, if God is pleased in your judgment to bring a worthy man into the crosshairs of your interest and with proper respect to parental input and counsel and pastoral input and counsel in all of those conditioning factors this is one of the things you want to look for, don't assume he'll flip the switch and begin to love like this on your wedding night, you better look for some very concrete specific manifestations that this man has cultivated some measure of ability to love with the selfless sacrificial love of Christ to his church and to his church and is beginning to manifest the ability to think in terms of you as an extension of himself if he is pompously self-absorbed run from him like the

57:24 devil, I don't care if he's so handsome he makes people judge Clark Gable to have been ugly I don't care if he makes a salary in six figures and he can joust theologically with J.I. Packer and Charles Hodge and John Kelton you run from him you'll be miserable living with a wretch like that run from him well I think I've about touched all the bases I've addressed the unconverted I've addressed the saved husbands addressed the wives addressed the young people may God be pleased to write his word upon all of our hearts let's pray Father what thanks can we render to you that you've given us your word we marvel the richness of it some of us who have studied it seriously for decades are amazed at how much we still don't know we're amazed at how we've glossed over things that now appear so plain to us, forgive us where our laziness has left the treasures unopened

58:50 continue to be merciful to us open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of your law and then give us grace to walk in it Father I would pray especially for my dear brothers who are husbands that they would have the moral courage to go home tonight and sit down with their wives and have a little judgment day Lord don't let them shrink back and violate their own consciences if their consciences have been persuaded that this is what they ought to do give them the courage to do it give their wives graciousness to be honest and fair and gentle with them we pray that deep lasting changes will be wrought in many marriages as a result of your ministry to our hearts through the word and by the spirit this day we pray for the the men and women young and old who are unmarried that the things they've heard would be stored up in their hearts and that in the coming days we would see redeemed marriages established among the young and the old alike who are yet to enter into that relationship Father surely in asking these things of you we've not been asking things to consume them upon our lusts but we've been asking things

60:18 which if you are pleased to give us we pray that you would believe would redound to your glory and to your praise and so we ask them in the expectation of faith praying that your blessing will rest upon us as we leave this place as we enter the coming week may it be with the fragrance of your gracious presence in dealings with us resting upon us and to your name and to your name alone be praise and honor and glory through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen