Today I want to invite you to come back with me to Colossians. We are at this point inching our way through chapter 3 as we look at the things which are the consequences of letting the word of Christ richly dwell within you. We've seen how That command in Colossians 3.16 is parallel to the command of Ephesians 5.18 to be filled with the Spirit. They produce the same results in the body of Christ, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody, teaching and admonishing one another. And then it begins to affect all of our human relationships, wives, husbands, children, parents, servants and masters. Today we come to the Christian husbands part of it. We've already done one message on Christian marriage, then Christian wives, today Christian husbands, and probably going to have to not completely gang up on the husbands one more time, but one more on a Christian home, and then children and parents, and we will move on. I thought I'd start with something to maybe lighten your load just a little bit, but also to make a point. I want to read you several biblical ways to acquire a wife. I don't know who originally wrote this, but these are ways from the Bible how to find a wife. First, you could find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes, and she's all yours. That's Deuteronomy 21. Or, find a prostitute and marry her as a sermon illustration. That's Hosea. Or find a man with seven daughters and impress him by watering his flock. That worked for Moses. Or purchase a piece of property and get a woman as part of the deal. Go study Boaz and Ruth. Or go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife. Work for the Benjaminites in Judges 21. Or do it the easy way. Just have God create you a wife while you're asleep. Adam did that. Or, agree to work seven years in exchange for a woman's hand in marriage. Get tricked into marrying the wrong woman, then work another seven years for the woman you wanted to marry in the first place. That was Jacob in Genesis 29. Or, cut 204 skins off your future father-in-law's enemies and get his daughter as a wife. See 1 Samuel 18. Or, even if no one's out there, Just go wander around for a bit and you'll definitely find somebody. That's how Cain did it, Genesis 4. Or become the emperor of a huge nation and just hold a great big beauty contest. Work for Ahasuerus and Esther. Or when you see someone you like, go home and tell your parents, I've seen a woman, now get her for me. If they question your decision, simply say, get her for me. She's the one for me. Work for Samson. Or, watch for a woman taking a bath in plain view of your window if you find her pleasing. Once you've taken her, kill her husband and marry her. Trust your first wife to be understanding, but prepare to lose four sons. That's not a happy story. Or, wait for your brother to die. Take his widow. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. Onan, Boaz, Deuteronomy, or Leviticus. Don't be so picky. Make up for quality with quantity. See Solomon. Or Paul's version, a wife? Not. Or sleep on a threshing floor and wait for a nice girl to uncover your feet? See Ruth. Or go to the watering hole and wait for women to start filling the watering jars to water your camels? See the story of Rebecca. Or have your good-looking sister lure someone to marry her but substitute yourself for her on their wedding night? See Rachel and Leah. I guess we've done that one twice. That's kind of silly, right? But you know, every single one of those things is biblical. because I say that because it's recorded in the Bible. There's a big difference between what the Bible records and what the Bible teaches. The Bible records even lies inerrantly, but is that the teaching of the Bible? There are people around today who have some very strong feelings and they are perfectly willing to very legalistically enforce them on others about how you should get married. But that's not the point. The Bible addresses here's what to be when you are married. Christian marriage is to be an illustration of the relationship between Christ and His church. And today we're going to look at the husband's contribution to the picture. It's a pretty simple outline. Talk about your rights as a husband. You have a right to love your wife. We're going to break that down into give sacrificial love, give sanctifying love, and give nurturing love. Now as we did for wives, since we're studying through Colossians, we're going to look at Colossians first and then I want us to flip over to the expanded parallel passage in Ephesians chapter 5. Colossians has it all boiled down to one sentence that we call Colossians 319. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. Now we've just had the command, wives, submit to your husbands. From a human perspective, you might think that the companion command to be subject to someone would be something like, exercise your authority over her, or be the leader. But here you see the heart of God and His design for marriage when you see what He demands of husbands. Husbands, you do have authority. You have authority to do one thing, love your wife. Love your wives is pretty clear. Love is that standard New Testament word for love. The noun is agape. The verb is agapao. It's not the word for sexual love. There's a different word for that. It's not the love for the natural bond of blood relatives within a family. There's a word for that. It's not the love of mutual friendship. There's a word for that. This is a different word that was pretty obscure until the New Testament. This is a word that means love in the sense of doing what is in the other person's best interest. It's the love of self-sacrifice. It's the kind of love that Christ has for the church. The kind of love that drove Him to give Himself up for the church. It is love by choice. It's the kind of love that is faithful because it is part of a solemn covenant. God designed that a wife's submission should operate within an environment of love. That way she's protected because a man who loves his wife as Christ loves him would never want her to submit to anything humiliating or degrading or sinful or that violates her conscience. So he says, husbands, love your wives. And then he says, and do not be embittered against them. That obviously means that a godly husband is not harsh. He is not irritable. He's not resentful. He doesn't exasperate his wife. He keeps a check on his reactions and on his attitudes and on his words. So men Don't expect willing submission from your wife, like we talked about last week, unless you are willing to devote yourself to loving her as Christ loves the church. You are the leader. You set the tone. Give her something she wants to submit to joyfully. And women, do not expect to elicit from your husband the kind of loving leadership that your heart craves if you're not willing to give your best efforts to let him lead you and take responsibility. 1 Corinthians 7, which we're not going to take a side trip to, is clear that husbands and wives are expected to be sold out to pleasing one another. When you get married, all other relationships are secondary on this planet. You love the Lord and you're committed to your spouse beyond anything else in this world. Now I want you to come over with me as I said to Ephesians chapter 5. We've already seen several times the parallel commands, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you and be filled with the Holy Spirit are the same essential command. They produce the same results. As you work through it in Ephesians chapter 5 after the part about singing to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart. Verse 21 of Ephesians 5 says, and submitting to one another in the body of Christ. Everyone submits in the body of Christ. It's not just women, not just wives. We all submit to one another. Submitting to one another is one of the evidences of the Holy Spirit being at work and controlling your lives for your life. For wives, it means voluntary submission to the husband. For you as a husband, submission to the needs of your wife means being the leader in love. How to meet your wife's needs is summed up in one simple statement over in Ephesians 5 verse 25. Husbands, love your wives. It's exactly the same as Colossians. Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now I said that's a simple statement. I didn't say it's simple to fulfill, but it's clear. I tried for a long time as I worked through Ephesians 5, actually studied it several times, and I tried for a long time to outline this passage for husbands and I finally realized it's a one-point outline. It is, love your wife. It is leadership in loving, if you will. Now when I realized it's one command, I realized that it has three different aspects to it. The idea is that you love in this way, in this way, in this way. Many years ago there was an interesting book that came out. It had a great title. It was one of those books where you would buy it for the title and then you found out the title was the best part of it. But it did have one very good concept. The title of the book is Passive Men, Wild Women. The thesis of the book, which was not Christian in origin, that's interesting, is that when men fail to take leadership, women tend to fall away from the role that they should fulfill in relationships and in families. And though it wasn't a Christian book, it did underscore one biblical point. Men are responsible and men will answer to God for how they lead their wives and their families. So let's see how God phrased these instructions to husbands. Love your wife. First of all, give sacrificial love, just as Christ also loved the church. Now, the word headship isn't in Ephesians 5. It's also not in Colossians. It is in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 where it says the husband is the head of the wife. That's one way of describing that pillar of authority. The other pillar being submission. Remember I've said if you If you knock one pillar out, the roof's going to fall in. You need both of them to hold things in place as they should. But I want you to notice that the context of this statement about headship is limited to marriage. This is not speaking to single women. This is not addressing the role of women in relationship to men in society in general. The Bible teaches male leadership in two contexts, in marriage and in the church. Otherwise, that's not the case. To force the principle in other contexts is to go further than Scripture does. Heard somebody one time say, oh no, in my district we elected a woman legislator. How can I possibly submit to that? Well, as under the Lord. Submit to the authorities that are over you. Submit to the government that is over you. We're talking about marriage here, so keep that in mind. Also, I want to point out, since today we're talking to men, you are the head. You are in charge. You are most responsible. And understand, headship does not mean superiority. Some of us married very well. We are not superior, all right? Servants are not inferior to masters. A wife is not inferior to a husband. Children are not inferior to parents. But in relationships, there's a necessary order that requires people to accept the responsibility for their role, leadership and submission. Each in the relationship occupies one role or the other. And men, headship does not make you smarter. Headship makes you more accountable for even what you can't figure out that you need help on. It makes you more responsible to God. Being a head does not being a ruler. It means being a savior. The head, as Christ is head over the church, is the one who gives himself up for someone else's benefit. Give sacrificial love. Husbands, your wife needs your care, your protection, your guidance, your concern, your affection, and your example of godliness. That's what she's called to submit to, not your dictatorship. Listen to her, seek her opinions, understand her feelings, ask for her advice. Listen, I understand you will never understand women, but you are ordered by God to figure out one of them. Got that? First Peter chapter three, dwell with her according to knowledge, figure her out, figure out what makes her tick, do it. She's the helper that God gave to you. He knows better than you do what you need and so pay attention. and you have to do whatever is best for her and best for your family. Same word here in Ephesians and in Colossians, that same word, agapao, doing what is best for the well-being of something else. This kind of love is defined by action far more than it is defined by feelings. When this kind of love is defined in 1 Corinthians 13, there's a whole list of things there, and every single one of them in the original is a verb. This is love that is action. When someone says, well, I just don't love my wife anymore, or I don't love my husband anymore, what they're really saying is, I won't love my spouse. I don't believe God. As God says, He has given you, if you're His child, He's given you the love of Christ. It's poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit, Romans 5, verse 5. You have the Holy Spirit in you and the fruit of the Spirit is, there's a whole list of things starting with love, same word, therefore you can love anyone if you will. commanded to do it. This is the only kind of love that can be commanded as in love your enemies. You can do what is in the best interest of your enemy in spite of the animosity that you might feel. Understand, there is not always perfect congruence between having affectionate feelings or sexual attraction or even a desire to be with someone and loving that person. You can love at all times and you must. The fleeting nature of positive feelings is why marriage is based on commitment, not on feelings. Feelings ebb and flow. They are a very uncertain basis for a relationship. When we talk about falling in love, we know what we mean, and those are some pretty special feelings, but you can't make a lifetime commitment just based on those feelings. You know the definition of falling in love? That's when you feel the feeling that you feel you're about to feel a feeling that you've never felt before. And you really like it? Well, that's good. Hey, if that happens, rejoice. But commitment. is what's going to see you through the hard times, and the days when you don't feel that you're feeling the feeling that you've never felt before. Commitment is what gets you through the times when the feelings aren't what you wish they were. Spirit-filled people, or people who let the word of Christ richly dwell within them, are capable of practicing love even toward the unlovely. And that's why the commitments of marriage are attached to the teaching on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Same pattern is given to husbands that was given to the wives. Remember it said wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Part of being a Christian wife is submitting to the Lord and He gave you the husband and therefore you submit to Him by submitting in part to your husband. Well, husbands are to love as Christ loves. We submit ourselves to Christ. That means that as our worship to Him, we treat our wife as Christ treats His church. In both cases, doing what is right toward a spouse is part of worship and obedience to God. your wife deserves to be as confident of your love as she is the love of Christ for her. Now you're going to fall short. He will never disappoint her. I can pretty much guarantee you will. But she ought to be able to say, my husband loves me so thoroughly, and he looks out for my interests so consistently that you know what? It's my joy to adapt myself to him. So that we, together, can be more than we could have been individually. Now, how can you ever get your wife to that point? By loving her, as Christ loves the church. And how do you do that? He gave himself up. This is the translation of an interesting word that means to give over or to hand over. And it's another one of those words that keeps coming up in context like this that's in a form that implies it is the voluntary act on the part of the husband, just as it's a voluntary act on the part of the wife to submit, just as it was a voluntary act on the part of Christ to give Himself to save us. This is a voluntary act of a husband to love his wife. Husbands are called to be so intent upon pleasing God by meeting the needs of their wives that they even set aside their own desires if it is in the best interest of their wife, their marriage, their home. You know in many ways a wife can only be as successful as a wife and mother as her husband will allow her to be by his leadership. You need both pillars. And of course there's a flip side. If a wife is unwilling to devote herself to her role, a husband can't fulfill his. How can you lead someone who won't follow? For submission to be all that it needs and to be in practice, that necessitates spiritual leadership. If your wife doesn't have a spirit-controlled leader, she can only submit to what she thinks is right in God's eyes and hope it doesn't cause a problem. I've talked to a lot of wives in that role. I want a Christian home, but He won't lead us in that direction. I say, well, you do your very best to honor the Lord, keep your eyes on Him, and do your best to submit to your husband, but all you can do is submit to the Lord and hope for the best. Men, we are called to love our wives with a sacrificial love of the same kind as Christ's love for His church. That means as the head of your house you have to lead the way for your family. That's not handing down edicts from your throne. It's trying as hard as you can, led by the Holy Spirit, to make your wife boast that you are more than she deserves and you are a gift from the Lord Himself. Love your wife. Give sacrificial love. Secondly, give sanctifying love. Your love should not only be patterned after Christ by being sacrificial. It should be a love that desires to help your wife be more like Jesus. Ephesians 5, 26 and 27. He did this so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless." I think you know what sanctify means. It means to set apart for sacred use. You should keep your wife as free as you can from defilement of sin or worldliness so that she can serve the Lord effectively. Now that doesn't mean you make up a bunch of rules for her to keep that God forgot to put in the Bible. It means that you bring her along with you in understanding what God says so that you lead her into pure and edifying things more than anything else. Be her example. Make worship a non-negotiable priority. Be her example in serving the Lord by serving His people. Immerse yourself in God's word. That's what sanctify means. Cleansed is the negative side of sanctify. Christ is cleansing us and sanctifying us continually until we die. This word has to do with cleaning up what's dirty. I paid somebody to cleanse my car and sanctify it after the stuff that's been happening to it in the winter. So you help clean up the messes. You help through the hard times. You do it by the washing of water. Now some people actually believe this refers to baptism. That's really far out for this context. The key to understanding this is the reference to the Word. You lead your wife by living in accord with God's word. You wash your wife with the water of the word. That's not by having a list of scripture references to pull out and correct her whenever you think she's wrong. That's leading her by setting the example and establishing the priority that God's word is the ultimate authority in your home. Remember the parallels. Be filled with the Spirit. Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you. Remember the prayer that Jesus prayed for all of us in John 17 17. Sanctify them in the truth. Excuse me. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Your short term goal for your wife is to do everything you possibly can to cooperate with God's plan for her sanctification. The ultimate goal glorification, presenting her without any spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Just as Christ cares for the church by providing all that we need to be as beautiful and perfect as possible, looking forward to the consummation of our relationship when He takes us to be with Himself, so a husband should do that for his wife, lead her in things that will delight our bridegroom. He wants to present us in all our glory. No spot, no wrinkle, blameless. That's the definition of in all her glory. Well now that he's stated the theological truth, Paul applies the analogy to husbands. How does that look in practice? Verse 28, so husbands, so means in the same manner as Christ loves us. a husband should imitate his love and apply it to his wife. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself." You know the principle love your neighbor as you love yourself? That's been turned upside down by the Psychologize hogwash in our world that you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anybody else. That's that's bunk You already love yourself When things are damaged you repair them when things are hungry you feed them when things are thirsty you give them a drink It means care about the other one as much as you care about yourself. Well here it's getting even more personal than that as your own body In the home you're the head She is to you like the body of Christ is to Christ Himself. If you don't take good care of her, both the body and the head are going to be disgraced. So he who loves his own wife loves himself. God makes you one flesh together in a unique way with your wife. The relationship of the head and body is such that to love her literally is to love yourself. Marriage is not just a merger of interests. Marriage is not just a way for two people to get by on one rent payment. Marriage is a co-mingling of two lives into a unique entity. It is different from all other relationships. All right, today we're talking to the husbands. Husbands, I want to tell you this. I've had this, learned this, observed this by experience with a lot of years, talking to a lot of people who've been through a lot of bumps in the road in marriages. Usually husbands are more satisfied with their marriages than wives. Wives are more emotional than men. Wives probably tend to run on feelings more than men. There's probably a reason why the men are more satisfied more often than the women. I have seen many men completely miss the idea until way too late. It's a simple idea. It goes like this. If your wife thinks there's a problem with your marriage, you have a problem. Now, it doesn't matter if you see it. You probably don't. It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not. You have to face it, understand it, and take the lead in working through it as if it's Christ taking care of his bride. The sad truth is, men, when it comes to doing wise maintenance on marriages, men are usually pretty clueless. You know, the cliche, well, I told you when we got married that I love you. If I change my mind, I'll let you know. That's kind of the caricature of the man's way of going about it. Most men, unless they listen to and heed wise advice, they will let a marriage deteriorate until the need isn't just for maintenance, it comes to be a need for major repairs. You know, you can go buy a new car. You can drive it 5,000 miles. Nowadays, a light will come on, say, maintenance required. You don't have to do that. It'll just keep going and going and going. You don't need to change that oil. You don't need to rotate those tires. It'll just go and go and go and go until you have a great big problem on your hands. Or you can do that systematic maintenance, and it'll keep going a lot longer. Well, relationship-wise, most men's perceptions, most men's intuition, leave them several feathers short of a whole duck. We just tend not to get it by intuition. The way that most guys come into a marriage, there ought to be a tattoo that says, body by Fisher, brains by Mattel. That's where a lot of guys are when it comes to relationship. Or when they shave in the morning, there should be a sign which says, warning, objects in the mirror are dumber than they appear. And in some cases, that would be shocking. The point is, You need to submit yourself to the Lord so that you submit yourself to the wife of your youth by loving her as Christ loves the church. That is to give sacrificial love. That is to give sanctifying love. And finally for today, that is to give nurturing love. Look at verse 29. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church. Nourish, cherish, couple of great words put together. To nourish means to supply with food, to nurture, to bring up. The only other place this word is used is in Ephesians 6, 4, same context where it talks about parents taking the responsibility for nourishing and developing their children. You are responsible to be the leader in developing your wife in her glory. Cherish means to heat, to warm up, Metaphorically, it means to tenderly care and make someone feel warmed and accepted and safe. Now, we're gonna need to stop for today. There's something so good at the end of Ephesians chapter five, I'll probably be our main focus next time we come back here, next Lord's Day, I trust. But I think there's probably some things you've heard today or last week, that maybe you look at your own life and say, you know what? We need some maintenance here. If you need a marital oil change, if you need something fixed, where do you go? What do you do? Well, be filled with the Spirit. Let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you. place to go is back to the root, back to the bedrock commitment. So let's take a step back and think about what we've learned of Christian marriage, Christian wives, Christian husbands. Are you struggling with something? I want to take you back. There are some in the room that I've had the privilege to actually perform their wedding ceremony. So if that's you, you've heard these exact words. If I didn't do yours, you probably said some words, something like this. This is how you get things right. You push the giant reset button, you go back to the Lord, you go back to His word, and you go back to the commitment that you have made. Here's how I word it in a marriage ceremony. I take you to be my husband or wife, and I do promise and covenant before God and these witnesses to be your loving and faithful husband or wife, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. If you need an oil change, if you need the tires rotated, if you need the windshield washed, go back to the bedrock commitment. I take you, look, there are over two billion people on this planet of the opposite gender. I chose you. You are my one and only one for this relationship. All others are out of the running. And I promise a covenant. A covenant is a solemn promise. That's actually redundant. That means that you're saying, this is my oath and I say it before God and in the sight of man. I said this to God. Now if you said those words to God and your behavior doesn't match what you've learned from the Word, where's the problem? It's right there before God and in the sight of men. Hey we invited our friends and we threw a big party to celebrate this solemn covenant. I will be your loving, that means sacrificial, and faithful, that means exclusive and tenacious in commitment to this relationship. I will be your loving and faithful wife or husband." Oh, and then those things that we say that the couple getting married that day hears exactly half of it. In plenty and in want. A marriage does not depend on worldly stuff. Not at all. If yours does, you don't have a Christian marriage. The commitment is there. God may bless you with tons of stuff and that gives you a lot of options, a lot of things that can be a lot of joy and a lot of things that can be a big headache and plenty and in want. What if He gives you all the stuff and then He lets you lose it all? If that's going to hurt your marriage, it wasn't a Christian marriage and you'd better fix it. What's the commitment? in joy and in sorrow. I promise you'll get both of those. Some people get married, they get blessed with lots of stuff and they never have to deal with the want. I promise you will have joy and you will have sorrow. If nothing else, your own moods and feelings will go through joy and sorrow and joy and sorrow. You stood before the Lord and you said, in sickness and in health. That means Christian marriage says, you know, I might become your caregiver and I won't bat an eye. And I'm trusting you that you might be my caregiver. We are in this together as long as we both shall live. Back in the olden days, they used to say, till death do us part. Same thing, right? Listen, every time I hear that somebody's had an argument and they've started throwing around the D word as a threat, that's not a Christian marriage. A Christian would never, ever use that as a threat. If you meant those words, that's a Christian marriage. Anything less, don't pretend you're calling yourself a Christian. Has Jesus ever said, I don't like the way you're behaving, I'm gonna divorce you. What do we call it when a person says, I belong to Christ, and then they walk away, we call that an apostate. That's not a Christian, that's a phony. This is the commitment, this is the bedrock. Now I know I'm talking to all of us, but guys, first and foremost, it's our responsibility to lead in loving the way that Christ loves His church. Sacrificially, nurturing, relentlessly. That's what being a Christian husband is all about. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your grace to us. I know that marriage is a picture of Christ and the church, and I know that I am a woefully marred example of Christ, but thank you for your grace in which we stand. Thank you for your sufficiency to enable us to have good marriages, good homes that glorify you despite our many, many failures. Father, I want to lift up any man here today who is sensing by the work of your Holy Spirit that an oil change is needed, that work needs to be done, that there needs to be repentance and fresh new commitments have your way in each such man's life. Perhaps there are wives here that realize that they've made it difficult. Father, you know the needs of each of our hearts and we ask you to meet them. to bring us to repentance where it's necessary, to bring us to commitment where it's lacking, and most of all, to get yourself glory through us, that we could be ever better spokesmen of the gospel for the glory of our Savior, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.