We read also from God's Word one verse from 1 Peter 3. We'll read verse 7 and then we'll go to Ephesians 5. We're looking at the two places where 1 Peter commands how husbands ought to treat their wives, and then we will see what Apostle Paul, inspired by the Spirit, commands how husbands ought to relate to their wives. So first, Peter chapter 3, verse 7. In Peter, we find one verse, and God's Word reads, Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered." And we go to Ephesians chapter 5, and we'll be reading beginning in verse 15 to the end of the chapter 15 through 33. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore, be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, 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 without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband. thus far in the reading of God's holy and precious Word. We all know that we live in days where the institution of marriage is being severely attacked. There has been a war waged against it. And we believe it's primarily because of what we read in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 32. Our tendency is to focus, and we ought to focus, on those verses that bring the command straight on for the role of the woman and the role of a man. But in verse 32, Paul brings in one little dimension that really connects the whole of what marriage is all about. And it really explains why marriage is attacked by Satan and by the world and even by the sin within our own hearts that is in enmity against God, indwelling sin, militates against marriage. Verse 33 of Ephesians 5 says, this is a great mystery. Paul is talking about how husbands, right here in the context, are to deal with his wife, but he says, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Now he's speaking about wives and how they relate to husbands, and husbands and how they relate to wives. But you notice that even as he does so, in speaking to wives in verse 23, he says how wives are to be submissive to husbands. He says, even as Christ is the head of the church, verse 24, therefore as the church is subject unto Christ. So let the wives be to their own husbands. And when he goes to husbands, he immediately goes to the church in Christ. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church. And then he says how we are to love our wives even as our own bodies in verse 29. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it even as the Lord the church. So it's not surprising that even though Paul is speaking to husbands and to wives and how they should relate to one another in verse 32, he says, I speak concerning Christ and the church. And the bottom line here that we gather from this is that you cannot speak about how wives and husbands relate to each other apart from the reality of Christ and the church. Because this is what husbands and wives are made by God to portray upon this earth. The direction is not that God looks upon husbands and wives and say, oh what a beautiful example of Christ in the church. I'll use that as an example to the world. No. We have to realize that Christ in the church, in the heart of God, came first in the sense of what is to be placarded upon this earth. And He created the institution of marriage, husbands and wives, and how they relate to each other, to be upon this earth a living paradigm of Christ and the church. A living example. And even as you open a book and you see colorful pictures and that calls your attention, sometimes you don't even want to read what's there, you want to see the pictures. Boys and girls, if you're like me, when I was younger and even older, I find myself going through books just looking at the pictures. They attract our minds. We look at the color and we look at the figure, we look at the art. And marriage. is a picture in this world. Every single marriage is to be a picture, a luminary, like this giant floodlight into the world of Christ and His church. And that's why Paul cannot speak about how women are to relate to their husbands without speaking of Christ in the church. And he cannot speak of husbands, how they ought to love their wives, without speaking of Christ in the church. So the attack upon the church, the attack upon the family, is not primarily because of the family, but because of what it represents on earth. Because of what a symbol it is of Christ and the church. And there is no one that Satan hates more than Jesus. And since the church is the body of Jesus, it is hated as well. And so we need to realize that us now focusing as husbands, there is here and given to the husband in a primary way this load of responsibility that we would be as those who bow to Scripture and not to the ways of the world that point us into all different directions to in effect destroy the family. but that we as godly leaders would say and understand, this is my responsibility to portray on this earth the love of Christ for the church, to help my wife portray upon this earth the love of the church for Christ, and that people could literally see my marriage and think of Jesus. and think of the church of Jesus, and be evangelized. Husbands and wives are evangelists, bringing light into this dark world, the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is primarily why it's attacked. because it is this living example. See, it's not just a book that you read. As beautiful as that picture is, we all prefer the real thing. Would you prefer a picture of the Grand Canyon or to be right there, a few feet back of the edge, but looking at that magnificent view? We all would prefer that than to the book. And God has given us something so close. We don't see the Lord Jesus on this earth, but we see His body. It's His people. You see, there's this connection of seeing Christ, because we see the body. And the body is to be living in a way, looking unto the Lord, submissive to Christ, looking like the Lord Jesus, so that people will see something to Jesus. It's the closest to being to the real thing. You can draw the picture of a church or you can be the church. You can be the church that looks unto Jesus. And husbands, you can be that example, that living example of Christ loving the church so that people would see you and see something of Jesus. And even primarily in this one majestical way, How are husbands called to love their wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it? Husbands are to be seen by the world and not thinking, okay, here's Jesus doing a miracle. Here's Jesus feeding people. Here's Jesus healing people. Here's Jesus instructing people. But here's Jesus dying for people. What that does when we think of Christ giving Himself for the church, it's really the crowning event of Christ that puts everything together. And that's the mandate for the husband. And there's this one thing that we need to understand in this mandate of love, and we will get to the love element, there's this leadership element. We have to be leading and sensing in our hearts this weight of responsibility. The problems are many, the attacks are great, and there are even attacks from within our own heart, and we need to fight back by simply bowing to Scripture. And when we bow to Scripture, we read in Peter that husbands are called to honor their wives. And remember there in the context, it is most likely husbands who would be married to wives who perhaps are not believers. Because Peter had just spoken to wives who would be perhaps married. to men who were not believers. The whole context there is more like a mixed relationship. And there the word honor crowned the verse. And we saw that we are called as husbands to honor our wives by knowing our wives, by protecting our wives, by being one with our wives. Remember how it captures us that phrase of being heirs together of the grace of life. And we're taking that theme and bringing it right here to Ephesians because we find it here too. Peter only put one phrase of that unity being heirs together of the grace of life. He did say dwell with them, that's an idea of unity. But we're going to see in this passage that there are more verses, also the culminating verses, the concluding verses that bring this reality. And so when we thought of honor, we saw that we are to honor our wives in three ways. And now we're going to look at four ways that we are commanded to love our wives. And now we have here such a beautiful view. We have honor and now we have love. In the context of perhaps a marriage where there are difficulties that are greater, Peter says, honor, no matter how difficult, you honor. It might be a wife who's not wanting to go to church, a wife who's not wanting to follow you to praise Jehovah, and she's still with her allegiance to Zeus. That would be the context of that day. And Peter is telling husbands, honor, protect, know them, be one with them, still. And now Paul here is dealing mainly with weddings and marriages that are Christian. A husband and a wife who are both believers. And he brings, we could really say that love is in the foundation. How will that husband who's married to a wife who's perhaps not a Christian, and militating against him, how will he love her? By honoring her. But He will only honor her if He really loves her. So this is why we need to have one sermon coming to Ephesians. Because Ephesians really brings like the bedrock of what the heart of a husband should be toward the wife. And it is love, but then by reading the whole passage we find four ways that you and I are commanded to love. And the first one is that it's to be a sacrificial love. The way you and I as a husband are called to love is in a sacrificial way. Verse 25, husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church. Love. How? As Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. There's just one word for this right now. It's sacrifice. That's how Christ gave himself for the church. And now just one little word here for a young man and a young woman who's not married yet. The tendency we could have is, okay, this is a sermon for husbands. Even some wives might feel, okay, this is for the husband now. No, this is a sermon for the whole congregation. If you're a young woman who's single, God's word here is teaching you who you are to consider marrying and who alone. someone who would have this heart, who would bow to this mandate. And then, young man, you are being called, of course, to learn to love this way. It's the best time in your life right now, before you're married, before sins would be committed, before errors and mistake would be committed, where your wife may be hurt in severe ways. You're single right now. You see how this sermon, I hope you realize, it is for you. Because these are the days that you can bow before King Jesus and say, Lord, help me to be this man who will love my wife this way, and acknowledging that I have this responsibility to show to this world who Jesus is and the sacrifice that He made for His church. And so see, this is for young men, young women. And of course, it's a sermon that should encourage wives to see how their husbands are to love them in a sacrificial way. It's the first way. It's this idea of sacrifice that even connects with the mandate for the woman. A woman is to be submissive. But when God speaks to the man, He doesn't say, men, love her by being a leader. He says, men love her by giving yourself. And it's in the giving of yourself that you put it into the category of leadership. If there is one in the marriage who has to have this heart of giving, it is the husband, and this is how he leads. This is why this is often called a sacrificial leadership. Leading in a sacrificial, loving way. In hearing a sermon of MacArthur, he has a whole series on the family. I've shared it with many people, usually people getting married. I like to lend that whole series. It goes through the family, wives, husbands, children, parents teaching children. And he has this one quote there from a sociologist called Lawrence Fuse. This is very eye-opening. He is Christian. There's this logic to what he's saying. It's not bringing in all the details. There's more to the whole. situation, but he's pretty much showing in a historical way what has happened to our nation. Because we go some years back, like in the years of the Reformation, and then the Puritans, and you looked at Christian homes. Men were the stalwart leaders who were present in their homes. They were present in the lives of their children. And they saw these mandates. Maybe they had their own exaggerations here and there in different ways, but they saw this with seriousness. But then something happened. And let me begin reading this quote. This sociologist, Lawrence Fuse, he says, A series of historical events beginning at the Industrial Revolution has had the net result of disestablishing American men from the true role of fatherhood and moral leadership in our land. The American male, at one time the ever-present guide of the close-knit colonial family, left his family for the factory and the materialistic lure that the Industrial Revolution brought. The most numerous and most active members of the church, the men, who commonly debated theology in the colonial marketplace, were in time to be found arguing business practices in the tavern. Men in those days who were believers wouldn't even dream to spend a minute in a tavern. Men who once taught their children respect and obedience toward godly authority came to act as though independence were a national virtue. Men who once had an active hand in the education of their sons relegated their responsibility to the public school system. And once the leaders of social progress, once they were the leaders, American men came to look on social reform and mercy movement as women's work, and in time became themselves the objects of that social reform. By far the highest number of homeless people are men. Over the course of 150 years from mid-18th century to the end of the 19th century, American men walked out of their God-given responsibility for moral and spiritual leadership in the homes, schools, and Sunday schools of the nation. The groundwork for the 20th century fatherless home was set. By the end of the 19th century, for the first time, it was socially and morally acceptable for men not to be involved with their families. to the point where today, in many realms, if you say you're a father who likes your family and spend time with it, you are seen as the odd one and as fool. So this paints the general picture that explains the search of this individualistic character among men. And add to this picture the skyrocket high divorce rates of our days, 13.6 million parents are raising around 21 million children alone. And of all those 13.6 million parents, 84% are single moms. So in these 84% that are moms, 100% of them have no fathers present. men have left their marriages. And of many marriages where the father is still there officially, he's often not still there physically. And so, this is what I mean, that for the well-being for the family, husbands, men, ought to see this sense of responsibility and live in a way to say, I will take this mandate serious. And so it begins here, acknowledge that you need to realize that you need to love your wife sacrificially. And you see that very reality sacrificially. It means that things that perhaps were important to you and central to you, and you had this whole universe before you got married. But see, you got married and you received that inheritance. And it says life, and that life is you and your wife together. And so yes, perhaps there's a place for things that are done individually to some degree. But beloved, the key thing is here. A lot of people are living their lives, wives in this quarter, husbands in this quarter, so individualistically that they hardly know each other. They hardly spend each other, time with each other. How can a man then protect her? How can a man then believe that way of honoring and being one? And sacrifice may really mean sacrificing things and ideas and plans that you had as a husband. You're not single anymore. You are now united to your wife. And both of your lives are one. And you will have to sacrifice. Look at the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. He left heaven. He left the worship of angels in heaven. He left His apparent glory in heaven. And He came to this earth as a humble servant. This is the bridegroom coming to show his love for the bride. And then among us, He was instructing, He was healing, He was feeding. See, it's the totality of this, the sacrifice of Christ, all the way to the cross, all the way to where He is there giving His life. And now, notice this. It's not just sacrifice in a generic way. It says, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. This is a very important element. And it sounds like the same thing, sacrifice, but no, it's self-sacrifice. And here's the difference. If it's sacrifice, maybe you can think of something that's not really you, but it's yours, your time, and you will give it. Or your money, and you will give it. Or your house, and you will give it. whatever property and you give it, that's sacrifice. But you are called to do self-sacrifice. And so it's not technically something that is yours, it is you. You are giving you. You are to give your heart. You are to give your soul. You are to give your hands and you are to give your feet. You are to give your eyes and you are to give your ears. And you are to give your words. Your soul. And so you give your prayers. and you give your worship to God is in sacrifice to your wife. You see, it's self-sacrifice. It's not sacrifice where you get ten dollars and you give, or even a thousand or a million. That is sacrifice, but it's not self-sacrifice. You see, anything external to you that you would give is sacrifice, but Jesus didn't give anything external to him. He gave him self. He gave His body on the cross. It is His heart that was there aching to the point of death. It was His mouth that was there cleaving His tongue to the roof of His mouth. It was His bones that were aching and it was His blood that was shed. It wasn't His angels that He was sending forth. It wasn't His prophets. It wasn't just this world of His He was giving. He was giving Himself. And brothers, as a husband, the day you said that vow, I do, we need to be reminded, we were saying, I give myself. Like Christ gave the church, I'm willing to do this. Love your wives sacrificially. But now notice that this self-sacrifice has in itself a direction. It's not speaking of money, it's not speaking of property in any of those ways, properly speaking. And even speaking of yourself, maybe you think of yourself, okay, so I'll use my hands and build a house, and I will use my sweat and bring a lot of money to my family. No, it's not primarily in those ways. It encapsules that. But it's not primarily that. Look at, again, the text, verse 26. So Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to him, a glorious church himself, a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish." So where is the direction of all this self-sacrifice is to see the holiness of your wife. And this is so important. It's not so that you will have a wife that loves you and makes you feel good. It is not so that you will have a wife who is happy in this world, who is healthy in this world, but a wife who is holy. This is what Jesus did. He didn't die on the cross just so that you would be forgiven of your sins and live a happy life. It doesn't end there. He died on the cross so that His righteousness would cover you like a cloak, and your sins would be washed away, though they be red as crimson, that you would be white as snow. Holiness, you see? Yes, it makes you happy and the hope of heaven comforts your heart. But the goal of God was holiness. And this is how a husband should think, I will love my wife, giving myself to see her holy. So sacrificial love. and sanctifying love. Now, there's a detail here in this sanctifying love that really helps husbands. You might be asking, well, how am I to see my wife holy? Well, first of all, you need to be holy. You cannot imagine that by living in vileness, you can make anyone holy. So if your call is to sanctify your wife, you need to be sanctified. It needs to start there. You as husbands need to come at the foot of the cross and say, Lord, make me holy because I am called to make my wife holy. Lord Jesus, if you sanctified me by the washing of the water by the word to make me a glorious church without spot and without wrinkle, that's the mandate I have to love my wife. Help me then to be without spot and without wrinkle. And He's giving the formula here, go to the Word. How will you be sanctified and without wrinkle? Go to Christ and He's there in the Word. That's why He speaks of the washing of water by the Word. So the first thing you need is to be holy yourself. The second thing you need is the Word. And I'll remind you again, the very first sermon we had of the year on New Year's Day was to go back to the Word. How have you been in reading the Word? Have you been reading the Word? You will not grow in holiness without the Word. And you will have no hope to see holiness in your wife if you're not in the Word yourself. And then bringing the Word to her. making sure there is family worship, making sure your children are memorizing Bible verses, be it from school, be it from Sunday school. The Word. And notice how this is so clear in Scripture. Jesus prayed in John 17, 17, sanctify them. He was praying, asking God, sanctify them through Thy Church, Thy truth. Thy Word is truth. So when Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified, He went to the Word. And so we need to understand the Word has this connection with purity. The more you read the Bible, and of course obey it, ask forgiveness because you don't, and for the things you have not been obeying, ask forgiveness, come with repentance, that is becoming holy. And other verses that say this, Psalm 119.9, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word. The well-known Psalm 119.11, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. And so in this second point of loving your wife in a sanctifying way, remember, you need to be sanctified and you need the Word for that. And so in living a sanctified life in the home, bring the Word to bear in the home. Read it to your family. Encourage your children to be memorizing it. And in this sanctifying element, there's a very important application. Sometimes a family may have their difficulties and there are worship services. The saddest thing is when a husband is not interested in helping get the family ready to come to church. That husband is not loving his wife in a sanctifying way. He's too tired or he has other things. There are some men that have businesses and so they don't take their wives to church. That's a lack of love. It's a lack of loving sacrificially in view of sanctifying his wife. This is again the leadership, sacrificial leadership. Husbands, we need to make sure that worship is a day that is protected. The Lord's Day is a protected day so that our families may be in worship, hearing the Word. and making use of it at home. Let us try to talk about the Word. Talk about the Sunday school lessons. What have you learned in each one of your classes? Encourage your children to thank the teachers, to remember to have the Bible verses that you come home with, and to memorize it, to hide the Word in your heart, that you would not sin against God. Holiness. And that's love. That's how a husband loves his wife. And thirdly, Continuing reading now in verse 28, we have this mandate that you are to love your wife sacrificially, in a sanctifying way, and in a cherishing way. Sacrificial love, sanctifying love, and thirdly, it has to be a cherishing love. Now, I could put two words there together. The word nourishing and cherishing, they come together. Let me begin reading in verse 28. So soon as he says about loving a wife in a way of sanctifying, look at the very last phrase of 27, that it should be holy and without blemish. He says, so ought men to love their wives. See, just as Christ loved the church to make her holy, well, men ought to love their wives that way too. But then he says, as their own bodies. And he brings in here the figure of a man taking care of his body, and how he obviously will, and he needs to see his wife as one with him, so he needs to obviously love her. He says, He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." So he's saying, see, the Lord Jesus nourished the church and cherished the church. The church is His body, so He did that. Here, husbands, you have your wife as your body. They are one with you, so nourish her and cherish her. And so we have these words that further show the beauty of what this love is to be. So let's look at these words. The word nourishing is how it sounds. It is to feed. It is to care in a way of bringing up, a nurturing. And it's interesting because We think of that more as parents nurturing their little children. And so you think, of course, it speaks of tenderness. It speaks in terms of, I will provide and I will protect. And here, Paul is using this term from the husband to the wife. Many men think, well, my wife is grown up. I don't need to raise her. Certainly not. But you need to see her. with the eyes of tenderness and how you would raise someone who is very precious and who, yes, perhaps in a child we think of the age, but because a wife is grown up, we can't think of there's no more need for tenderness, that there's no more need for cherishing. There is. That's what Jesus does to the church. That's what a husband should do to his wife. And the word cherishing brings even a more warming demeanor to it because it means to warm and keep warm. The word cherishing, if you think of every single animal that has that fur or feathers and envelops their young ones in its love and embrace, that's what the word cherishing is connected to. It's the idea of that bird that makes that nest and makes it as cozy as it can for the egg and then sits on that egg to make the egg warm with the warmth of His own body. The word cherishing, means to warm with body heat. So further amplifying the idea of tenderness that a husband should have, of sympathy, of empathy. of a carefulness. It is therefore to value and to prize. This is Paul's way to say what Peter said in 1 Peter, honor the wife as a weaker vessel. Remember we looked at that and we saw that if you were to see a weak vessel because it is tender, because it is delicate, which is the way that you would honor that vessel? You would honor it by being careful with it, by prizing it, by putting it in the most protected place of your home. See, it's speaking here of this warmth and this tenderness of heart, a carefulness that we should have. And this is what we see in Jesus. He was like this. He saw how people were so weak and so in their different ways, and He was so patient, He was so tender, and He would speak with so much love with His own. He would give His reproofs here and there, but the very fact that He would relate and would take time and He would say, let the little children come. This is where we see Him nurturing and cherishing. And this is how husbands are called to be. And even as we're called to this cherishing love, Paul already brings here this connection of oneness. A husband is to cherish his wife because she is, after all, his own body, and everyone cares for his one body. He brings already that oneness, already there, and he leads on into it in verse 30, he says, for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. And then verse 31, he quotes Genesis. where the first marriage ever happened, and that statement of oneness was declared, and that later Jesus quoted it to the Pharisees. So verse 31 is a quote of Genesis that Christ quoted in Matthew, and now Paul here quotes in Ephesians. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh." So with this, we come to our fourth and last point. How are you called to love your wife, husband? You are called to love her sacrificially, with a sanctifying love, with a cherishing love, and with a cleaving love, a unifying love. And this is in essence the same point that Peter makes when he says, as heirs together of the grace of life. He's ending in both places, it ends and concludes with this reality of a oneness. And this is really where there is like an underlining mystery about marriage that we need to both reverence and submit to and live out. See, one very important thing, we are not the ones who create this oneness. See, there's this dynamic that the moment you are married and it's consummated, you are one. There's a spiritual union that is heaven made and heaven kept, to the point where Jesus added that what God has brought together, let not man put asunder, which is the idea of tearing apart. And God is saying, Jesus was saying, My Father, God is the one who brings us oneness together. So in this fourth point, what we need to understand is this isn't really what I do, it's what I live out. And I should promote, and I should acknowledge, I should acknowledge that my wife and I, we're married, we are one. And notice what's happening here. In Peter, He gives the figure of receiving, as it were, an inheritance, a document that you open, and it says that it's life, and it's for you and your wife. It is a joint ownership of one thing. Life for two people. Now Paul brings a slightly different figure. He is saying that those two people are one. So that after all that life that is given to two people, they're really not two people after all, they're one. And so you see, Peter is focusing upon that which we have, which is love. Paul is focusing upon that which we are. We're no longer two, we are one. The life I have to live is one life with my wife. And I and my wife are one. And this is the beauty of bringing the passage that says that we are heirs together of the grace of life and bringing it together here to Ephesians chapter five where Paul after all just goes to Genesis and says, for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh. It is so self-evident that he's speaking of oneness. And so, beloved, I just want to end with this reality, that this oneness that God has created in marriage, we, as husbands, primarily in the sense of sacrificial leadership, take upon us the onus of saying, if I am one with my wife, I will see to it that this oneness will be maintained. I will spend time with her. I will listen to her. I will talk about her well so that it won't create a division between us. I will talk to her well so that it won't create a cleaving between us. I will pray for that union to grow stronger. So help me, God. Because we are again in a world where it seems like every cannon and arch, bow, is pointing toward the marriage, and pointing toward this union. And let me give you an end with this one example. The Pharisees came to Jesus in one event. And of all things, they could have asked as they spoke to their Creator. They could have asked about creation. They could have asked about holiness. They could have asked about heaven and the kingdom of God. They could have asked about the Ten Commandments and in what ways they are so precious and near and dear to the heart of God. But instead, they asked about marriage, and they asked about how they can divorce. They didn't even ask about how can we maintain marriage. They asked about how can we divide it? How can we end it? Can it be for any reason? And remember, I've already said how in those days they had big debates because one school said yes for any reason that the man feels. that the wife has done something that in his sight is not acceptable. And there was a school more conservative, no, only for immorality. And it went both ways for the husband or the wife. But these men just wanted to know, how can I make sure it's divided? And Jesus went right to this verse and says, it's been written. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh. And then Jesus added, therefore what God has brought together, let not men break asunder. The Pharisees were even the leading leaders of the church and all they wanted to do was cause division in marriage. We live in a day that's no different. So, beloved, let us ask the Lord with sincerity. Lord, help me in a sacrificial way, in a sanctifying heart, with a cherishing demeanor toward my wife, promote the unity that already exists, the life that we already have as heirs together, and that I may live it for Thy glory. Because when I do so, I am proclaiming to this very watching world that Jesus Christ would never, ever, ever divide Himself from His church. He will be there for her. He will pray for her. He came to this world for her. He shed His blood for her. He's not about now to leave us on our own. And this is what we are declaring to the world. When we believe in this cleaving love and live it, So may the Lord help us in honoring our wives as God's Word commands, and loving our wives as God's Word commands, and acknowledging this is not the instruction of Paul as a man, this is the instruction of heaven from God, and that the world may know something of heaven on this earth. Let us pray. Our gracious and glorious God and King, how we thank Thee for Thy Word, We thank Thee, Lord, for the clarity, but we do pray, Lord, as husbands, that Thou would help us. We confess, Lord, that we have not lived fully to these mandates. And we ask that Thou would give us repentance, that Thou would give us hearts that are humble. It is even so prerequisite to be sacrificial. We pray, Lord, that we would mortify pride in our hearts and the fear of being humiliated or used. Help us, Lord, to be servants, servant leaders, serving in our sacrifice, serving in our sanctifying love, serving in our cherishing love and serving also in our cleaving love. And we ask all these things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as we look to Him for help. Help us, Lord Jesus, to be to our wives in the degree that it is given to us as Thou art to Thy wife, the church. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.