If you have your Bible, would you turn please to 1 Peter and to chapter 3. 1 Peter and chapter 3. Wives, likewise be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct, or your pure conduct, accompanied by fear. Do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honour to the wife as to the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered. Let's pray once again. Father, will you help us this morning to honour you as we hear your word preached? Lord, give us an appetite for the winning of the souls of men and women, boys and girls, and equip each one of us, even in the most difficult of circumstances, to glorify you in our family lives. In Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. There's nothing more normal and nothing more truly natural than to desire spiritual blessings for our natural families, those whom we love according to the flesh. You see it, for example, in the language of the Apostle Paul when he's writing his letter to the Romans. I tell the truth in Christ, he said. I'm not lying. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises, of whom are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is overall the eternally blessed God. Amen. And so in chapter 10 and verse 1, he can testify on the back of that depth of feeling. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. Now if the apostle felt like that about the entire nation of Israel, his brothers according to the flesh, We can understand, I think, the grief and the distress of spiritually divided families, the language of great sorrow and continual grief. of all the relationships that can cause this kind of sorrow, this continual grief, and that give rise to a desire of the heart and a prayer from the soul for salvation is that of a Christian woman with an unconverted husband. And the Lord God speaks particularly to women in that specific situation. We've known and we still have many such situations in our church. Historically we've seen it again and again. A godly woman with an unconverted husband and often unconverted children also. And the Lord here in 1 Peter chapter 3 has given some specific counsels and encouragements to our sisters in that situation. And you might say, well, why do we need to worry about that? Surely it's a minority. Well, friends, can't you weep with those who weep? Can't you enter into the sorrows and the struggles of one another? If we're members together, don't these things have an impact upon our souls? Or let me put it in John's language, are you really a Christian? Because if you're here this morning and you say, why do we deal with some of these sort of fringe issues? It's because, brothers and sisters, they are very close to the hearts of the people that we love for the sake of Jesus Christ. Perhaps you also ask, why does the Holy Spirit only speak to women with unconverted husbands and not to husbands with unconverted wives? Why is the primary counsel that he gives where one spouse is a Christian and the other is not, why is that counsel directed first and foremost to Christian women and not to Christian men? Well, I'll give you a number of reasons why I think that is the case. First of all, that in the context where you're dealing with a Greek and Roman culture, men had not just authority but power. It was the wife's duty to conform to her husband. Whatever she thought or believed or wanted before, when she comes into her husband's home, he is like a king to her. His word becomes law and she and her desires and convictions are expected to be swallowed up in his. It played into male arrogance. I think it's worth bearing in mind. that Christianity has been the greatest force for the good of women that this world has ever seen. It has brought a nobility and a dignity and an honour to them and restored them to what they ought to be in the eyes of God and men where God and his word is honoured. So in the context, men have the advantage because the husband rules absolutely and the wife folds herself into his demands. I think a second reason for this is because the natural flow of headship gives a natural advantage to men. That God has made men to be the head and women are in submission to those who are over them. And so it is easier, not always easy, but easier for a Christian husband to use the natural channels of leadership to lead his wife in a godly way. I say easier rather than easy because there are plenty of evidences in the scriptures of how unpleasant a godless wife can make life for her husband. Some of you might even know the story of a preacher in Scotland who invited a visiting preacher into his home. And the preacher said, why is there a hole at the end of your rooms? And he said, didn't quite put it this way, he was kinder than this, but he said, my wife is a shocking bully. She hates what I do. She will not give me any light by which to study. And the reason why there's a hole at each end of the room is because I study by pacing up and down in my room. And I know that I've reached the end when I hit the wall. And I go up and down in the darkness, meditating on the Word of God. That's the only way I can prepare. You might say, what's a man of God doing with a woman like that? I don't know all the details. But I'm not saying that men have it easy and women don't. I think another reason is because husbands and fathers, even statistically, tend to have a greater spiritual influence over their families than the other way around. I don't know quite how it works, but it seems to be God's determination and design that Christian husbands more often have a sanctifying and ultimately a saving influence on their wives and their children. that where a husband is converted, it is more often the case that he will lead his whole family, not just to church, but to Jesus Christ. That may also be a reflection of that natural headship. But I think perhaps the most significant reason is because in the Bible, Christian husbands already have an example of what it is to love someone who is sinful and imperfect. because that's the love that Christ has for his church. He's our model. A couple of weeks ago, a month or so back now, we heard sermons on Hosea, didn't we? Hosea, you need to love a woman who's not going to be faithful to you, who's in rebellion against you and against God. And in that you show yourself a pattern of God in his love towards his people. You have then a Christ in Ephesians 5 who is caring for, nurturing his church and bringing her to a state of happy perfection. So Christian husbands have already an example of what it is to be loving that which is not yet perfect and still sinful. But if you're a wife and you're saying, I'm to be like the church toward Christ, you don't then have an example of what it is to deal with a head who is not perfect and sinless. So I suspect that that's why God in his kindness speaks specifically to Christian women with unconverted husbands, because they need this particular encouragement and counsel. And so Peter says to such women, Starting generally, wives, in the same way, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, that's the situation he has in mind, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct, your holy or pure behavior, accompanied by fear. So there's a general principle that needs to be underlined. Then there's a specific circumstance that needs to be acknowledged. Then there's a desired outcome, which Peter identifies. And then there are some particular directions or some means which a Christian woman is encouraged to use. So the general principle, first of all, is underlined by Peter. Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands. That's true for all women. Every Christian woman is to be submissive to their own husbands. In fact, we could go further and say that every woman ought to be righteously submissive to her own husband. And that's what we've looked at for the last couple of weeks when we've studied this from Ephesians and chapter five, verses 22 to 24. We've looked at this language. We know what Peter means when he uses this kind of speech of submission and respect. It is this affectionate regard, this cheerful honor that is given to God's appointed authority in the home. It is something that is offered voluntarily, not that is dragged out under some great felt weight of obligation. And Peter does a lovely job here of putting flesh on the bones. He says, this is what this can look like. He talks about inner beauty. He says that the beauty that really lasts, the beauty that God and men will both praise, is not just the outward adornment. It's not dressing up and doing your hair and putting on your makeup and putting on your jewellery. He's not saying that stuff is absolutely worthless and pointless. He's not exhorting you to dress in sackcloth and to let your hair hang down and not to wash and all those kinds of things. God forbid that anybody should take it into that direction. But he's saying what really makes a woman beautiful is what happens on the inside. Remember the Proverbs, charm is deceitful, beauty is passing, this world's beauty, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. And here's how that fear of the Lord works out, in a gentle and a quiet spirit, not in aggression and domination, a respectful attitude and a righteous life. And Peter takes account of the fact that that is not easy, that the duties of a Christian woman in this respect are difficult. And so he reminds the women who are reading these things that they are not standing alone in this, but that many godly women have gone before them, including someone like Sarah, who called Abraham Lord and obeyed him, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. Now are we saying again that you should start calling your husband Lord? No, that pause wasn't because I was thinking it might be a good idea. No, but how do you address your husband? Not so long ago, it was at least here in the UK, it was a cultural custom to refer to one's husband publicly as Mr. So-and-so. Angie might talk about Mr. Finn. Alyssa might talk about Mr. Walker. Rachel about Mr. Norton. That doesn't mean that that's invariably how they referred to them in private, but at least in public, it was typical to afford them that kind of respect. Publicly or privately, would someone listen to the way that you speak to and about your husbands, if you're a Christian woman, and conclude that you're a daughter of Sarah because of the respect that you show in word as well as in deed. Now, when you think of Sarah, you might say, well, Sarah doesn't get everything right, does she? Nope. Sarah laughed, didn't she? Yeah. Sarah didn't always believe, did she? No. But what did the Lord take notice of? Here he puts Sarah's frailties and weaknesses into the shadow, and he throws the light on that which is pleasing to him, the disposition that Sarah had toward her husband at her best. That's a reminder to all of us, but to women here in particular, that your God and your Saviour takes note of and is ready to commend even the little details of your life. that you have a heavenly father who, when you speak towards or about your husband in a certain way, or when you act toward him in a way that honors God, the Lord in heaven is delighted with such things. Ladies, how many Christian women do you know from history? Do you know the ladies in the Bible? Do you study their example? Some of you will know the example of a woman called Monica. Monica is typically known as the mother of Augustine. And she was a woman who pursued her son with prayers and actually in person, more or less across the ancient world, praying for his conversion. But did you know that Monica also, first of all, struggled with drunkenness? She got used to having a bit too much wine when she was carrying it up to the table. That's not part of a history that we concentrate on. Why not? Because we don't necessarily draw attention to the faults of those whom we esteem. But did you also know that there is good evidence that before his death, Monica's husband also became a Christian? It was not only her son that she pursued, but her husband also. And there are good indications that he also was converted before he died. Do you know your Monicas? Do you know your Salinas? Do you know the women in your history who give you an example of this kind of godly living? And do you speak like them? And can you then become a model for others, the older women teaching the younger women in their turn to use Paul's language in Titus? So we're not going to go back into Ephesians 5 and rehearse all of these things, but Peter assumes exactly the same thing as Paul taught. The general principle that wives should be submissive to their own husbands. But now Peter takes account of a specific circumstance, that some do not obey the word. that some of the men to whom these Christian women are married are not subject to the gospel. They have not believed it. And perhaps Peter's language emphasizes something more. It may suggest active opposition to the gospel. These are men who do not want to hear what their wives have to say on this topic. They want to live the way that they wish to live, and they have little or no regard for what their godly wife speaks or wishes. Now there would have been, as we've already hinted, these natural and cultural pressures that would have made that kind of relationship particularly painful. It would have brought in some griefs and some pressures. You think of someone like Naaman in the Old Testament who says, I'm the king's right-hand man and when he's leaning on my hand and we go into the temple together and my king is bowing down before his idols, He asked Elisha, remember, would you excuse me under those circumstances? What would it be like for a Christian woman whose husband says, we're going to the temple? She has to stand fast and say, I am not going up to worship false gods. What is Peter teaching us? that the fact of an unconverted husband does not suspend or distort the duty of a Christian wife to submit to her husband. Paul and Peter are not saying, wives, submit to your husbands as long as that's easy, as long as your husbands are sympathetic, as long as they're creating an environment in which submission is sweet and straightforward. No, wives, be submissive to your own husbands and even those who do not obey the word. The second point I think it's worth making is that nothing in what Peter says is meant to legitimise marrying or pursuing an unbeliever as a spouse. Peter's in a situation where women have been converted, but their husbands have not been. In fact, when I asked friends whether or not they agreed with my reading of these things, one of them said, when I go out on the doors, one of the responses I often get when I say to a man on the door, I've come to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ, is I'll go and get my wife. Think of how many women there are mentioned in the Gospels who followed the Lord Jesus. Some of them are identified in terms of their relations to husbands, but there's no evidence that the husbands themselves were following Jesus Christ. Or you think of Timothy. You had a mother, Lois, and a grandmother, Eunice, and they were Christians. But his father, potentially his grandfather, seemed not to have been. So these are women who have been converted as married women and are now learning what it means to walk in the ways of Christ in that situation. Let no man or woman imagine that this legitimizes or commends the idea of pursuing somebody who is not a Christian in the hopes of converting them. God's people are not to be caught up in entangling romantic relationships with those of the opposite sex. It is a dangerous path to pursue. We're dealing here with people who are in this situation, not who've put themselves in this situation. And I would also then say how thankful we should be if we're in a family where both husband and wife are Christian. If there's great grief and sorrow where that's not the case, can you wake up in the morning and look at the person whose head's on the pillow next to yours and say, how thankful I am that we are heirs together of the grace of life. My friends, being married as a believer to a believer is one of the sweetest blessings that the Lord can give you in this life. I think you should also be thankful if you're married to an unbeliever who's receptive and responsive to you in some measure. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 talks about unbelievers who basically walk away. That would have been an option. at least for the men. I don't want anything to do with this kind of woman. I'm leaving you. And he says, if they depart, you can let them depart. It's been a particular kindness, at least for some of the ladies that we know who are in this situation, that their husbands have not been as brutal or as dismissive or as absolutely negative as they might have been. And so we should be thankful and grateful for every good thing that there is in a marriage relationship, and especially if God in his mercy has put us in marriage with a fellow Christian. So, Peter says, all wives should submit to their own husbands. But some wives will have to submit to husbands who do not obey the word, who are not themselves submissive to the truth as it is in Jesus. It says, what's your goal? What's the desired outcome? This is our third point. What is it that you want above all things? That they, without a word, may be one. That they may be one. W-O-N, that they may be gained, that they may be conquered for Jesus Christ and for his church. This is the prayerful desire of any Christian man or woman for an unconverted spouse. This is the great prayer and desire of Christian parents for their unconverted children, of Christian children for their unconverted parents, of Christian brothers for their unconverted brothers or sisters. of Christian people for their friends, their colleagues, and their neighbours. My heart's desire and prayer to God is that they may be saved. We love you enough to desire above all things that you would come into God's kingdom. We want you to be one for Jesus Christ. I've told you before about a lady who met me at the door after I'd been preaching, not on this, but on something where I'd made mention of parental desire for the conversion of children. And she came to me and she said, Pastor, I used to pray that God would make my children happy. Now I've learned to pray that God will do whatever it takes to save them from their sins. Doesn't that tie in with what we're looking at in the adult Bible class? She said, I used to love my children enough to want them to be happy in the world's terms. I'm learning to love them enough to desire above all things that they would be converted. That's the prayer of a Christian woman for her unconverted husband. I want this man to know the Jesus that I know. This is the plea from the souls of converted family members for those who are around them. And my friends, if you're a part of this church, you too should be praying in that connection. You should be entering into the grief and the distress and the longing of Christian women, in this case, for their unconverted should be assisting them, you should be interceding for them, you should be encouraging them, not invasively, not insensitively, but you should take account of the fact that this is one of the great battles and griefs of their life as a child of God. And I want you to know that we as a church not only should pray like this, but we do pray like this. You boys and girls who aren't converted yet, this church prays for you. If you have unconverted brothers and sisters or parents or children or husbands or wives, this church does pray that God in his mercy would give the life that is in Christ, that you who are friends who are not following Jesus Christ, we are praying for you that God would have mercy upon you and lead you to Christ as he is and to his true church. Why do we do this? It's because we love you and we want the pinnacle of blessing for you. One of my family members caught me at that door last Sunday morning after the baptism. He more or less got me by the collar and he said, does it get any better than this for a father? No. No, whatever we pray for our children, no greater joy than to know that they are walking in the Lord. That's the highest good that we can desire. And so that is the pinnacle of our prayers and our pursuits. We want you to become a Christian, not because we hate you, but because we love you. Not because we want to weary you and burden you, but because we want you to be set free. And so if you are in a family where there is a Christian, if you're the friend of someone who's a Christian, you need to know, first of all, that they're praying for you. Secondly, that we're praying with them. And let me therefore urge you now, come to Jesus Christ. It's the greatest blessing. We want to win you for him. We want to see you enjoy what we enjoy. We want you to have the blessing of salvation. Now, for a Christian woman with these unconverted husbands, that's a particular challenge, especially if they're at the rough end of the scale, as Peter imagines it here. And so he tells them, not just, we want you to win your wives, and we want your husbands to be won, and you as wives to win them, but he says to these women how they can do it. Notice what he says. that these husbands, some of whom do not obey the word, without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives when they observe your chaste conduct or behavior accompanied by fear. So first of all, there's a negative, without a word. Now this does not mean that we don't need to speak the gospel to people in order that they may be saved. You may have heard the ridiculous phrase, I believe it's attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, although I may be wrong, preach the gospel always, if necessary use words. Well, that's not true. The gospel is words. We're just told that they don't obey the word. They're not subject to the word. The gospel is truth that needs to be proclaimed. In fact, Paul, when he's talking about his desire that Israel would be saved, asks the question, how are they going to hear without a preacher? We're not saying that the gospel does not come with words. But we are saying this. that in this situation what seems to be the case is that the wife has spoken and the husband has given her the brush off. That the wife has borne testimony and perhaps even aggressively and unkindly the husband has tried, quote, to put her in her place. He's used words, possibly even fists, in order to belittle and demean and diminish his wife. It is a reminder that wives cannot nag or cajole their husbands into the kingdom. I think if I asked for a show of hands, how many men in this room like being nagged? I'm not putting mine up. You can't nag a man into heaven. You can't nibble and complain and snipe. until finally he just gives up. Peter says that's not going to work. Here you've got a husband perhaps who's saying in effect he's not going to give a hearing to anything that you have to say. And it may even have become dangerous for some of these women to keep pressing the Christian case. Again, how thankful you should be if you can talk about Jesus Christ to your unconverted family members. perhaps an unconverted husband or an unconverted wife who's happy to speak about these things, or a parent who's willing to listen to you. That's no small mercy, friends. If you have an open channel, at least in measure, to explain, to go home and say, this is what I heard at church today, to be able to read your Bible openly and easily, to talk about perhaps the things that you are reading there, Some of these women were not in that position and we have had ladies among us who have had their mouths stopped by husbands who do not want to and will not hear about Jesus Christ. So what can they do? Here's the encouragement. Wives, Be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, and even to that extent, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Peter's saying, sisters, if you can't get them through ear-gate, get them through eye-gate. They may not listen to you, but they have to see you. And so you live in such a way as to make them ask, what makes my wife a woman like this? When they observe, when they're provoked to investigate because of your pure and holy living accompanied by fear. that they can see that you have a respectful God that works itself out in a respect for your husband, when they can see that your life is marked by a consistent holiness and purity, your relation to your husband is one that bears the imprint of Jesus Christ and His life in your soul. They may dislike the truth of the gospel that you want them to hear, but they cannot deny the effect of that gospel in your life. And so your life becomes a lived sermon. They may hate the God whom you serve, but they might actually start loving the fact that you serve him. Because it makes you the kind of wife who is a blessing to her husband. I cannot remember where I first read this story, but it was about a woman in China, a married woman, who heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, and she began to follow after him, and she began to associate then with God's people. And her husband told her that he wanted nothing to do with this foreign God. And he said, I will not forbid you to go about your business. But I am telling you now that on the first day of the week, as with every other day of the week, my doors get shut and locked at the same time. If you go out and meet with these Christian friends of yours for worship, and the door is locked when you come home, then the door is locked. And that woman, spent a year going to worship God with his people and when she came home the doors were locked and she slept Sunday night, Sunday night, Sunday night, week after week on the porch of her husband's home and when he opened the door in the morning she would get up and sometimes she would wipe off the snow, break the ice on her clothing or she would come in from where she'd been huddled out of the rain and she would bow to her husband and she would prepare his food and she would serve him and she would say her kind farewells to him as he went out of the door and she would welcome him back in the evening and she would provide him with the food that pleased him until one winter morning Her husband opened the door on what we would call a Monday. And there was his wife lying huddled up with the snow covering part of her body. And she got up and she walked in. She bowed to her husband. She began to prepare his morning meal. And he broke down in tears. he could not resist the force of her Christ-like love toward him. I cannot guarantee that the same outcome would occur in every such case, but that woman, without a word, won her husband for Christ because he observed her chaste conduct accompanied by fear. If you're a Christian woman, you're not obliged to commit sin just because your husband demands it. Again, we've seen those are the points at which you say, I'm drawing a line, I obey God rather than men. But here's Peter's point, that when a Christian woman is living with an unconverted man, The way that she behaves toward her God and her husband, and more widely, should be the kind of life marked by purity and fear that makes a man, if he's going to be honest, acknowledge that there's nothing in the world and nothing in any fake or false religion, nothing in paganism, nothing in heathenism, nothing in secularism that can produce this kind of character. A woman who does a man good and not evil all the days of her life, even when his heart toward her is full of sin and ugliness. Peter says, sisters, I understand this hardship. I appreciate that it is not easy for a wife to submit to her husband and it is particularly difficult for a wife to submit to a husband who does not obey the word. And so if for whatever reason your faithful testimony with your lips is brought to an end. then bear testimony with your lives. Preach a sermon every day with your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Let the incorruptible beauty of a heart that is bound to Jesus Christ flow over in a gentle and a quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of God. Make your husband ask this question. What is the root that produces such fruit? Who does this woman know? Perhaps what has changed her? She used to be like all the other women, but no longer. She's a new creature, and I need to know why. Ladies, if such a man were tracing the fruit of your life back to the root of your soul, would he find the name of Jesus Christ inscribed upon your heart? I might say you may have a Christian husband. This is still no bad way to win his affections. There are still women in this congregation whose husbands are not converted. Let me ask this question. Are you living so as to attract to Jesus Christ? If you're not in that situation, can I put it this way? Could I send that woman to your home and say, you see that lady? Watch and learn. Listen to the way she speaks to her husband. Look at the way she respects her husband. That's how you show that Jesus Christ has got a grip upon your soul in the domestic environment. And for all of us, let us never forget the power of a holy life. Shall I tell you one of the first things that drives away an unconverted husband or an unconverted wife? One of the first things that makes a child say, I don't want anything to do with my dad's religion or my mom's religion? Something that makes the brother or sister of a Christian say, not interested? It's the gap between what you say and how you live. If you say you love God and you hate your brothers, you're a liar. If you insist upon something that you don't follow yourself, if there's inconsistency, hypocrisy, you are going to undermine the sweetest and truest words that you ever speak. It's not always preach the gospel, if necessary, use words. But it is this. Let your lips and your lives proclaim the gospel you confess. Let there be no gap between what you say and how you live. Why? Because your behavior is either going to enforce your words or it will undo them. Friends, this is the goal for all of us, men and women, boys and girls, if we are following our Lord and Saviour. I want a life, and I hope you do too, that obliges the people who are around us to see Jesus Christ, and to use Peter's language, to be brought to the point where they have to ask a reason for the hope that is in us. May God help all of us to live such lives as well as to speak such words. May God grant that our sisters, especially with unconverted husbands, may see their most significant prayers and their highest desires realised in the conversion of those men. and the rest of us in families and friends which are united in Christ and who will share glory together. Amen.