Genesis 2, starting at verse 18. And the Lord said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. Whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to birds of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman. and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. You may be seated. Joshua, can you bring me a water? So forgive me, I'll do my best to not screech at you. My voice is a little off. We are continuing today in Genesis 2. We're dealing with the origin of, thank you, son. We're continuing with the origin of marriage, the origin of the woman, and we're focusing today on the duties of the man. What we have looked at is the origin of the woman, the origin of marriage itself, the duties of the woman in marriage, and now we're looking at the duties of the man. And so the duties of the man are dependent upon understanding the nature of man, understanding God's purpose for man, understanding also the design of marriage. And so we remind ourselves, if we look back at page one, you'll see the highlights on the handout. There's the idea that God made man in the image of God, in the likeness of God, and he grants dominion. The image of rationality, the image is manifested in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. And when we think about the image when it is being corrupted, what you have is error, heresy. You have unholiness, profanation, and you have unrighteousness, right? So irrational thinking leads to false information in the mind, leads to wrong purpose, leads to poor judgments and choices. And so being renewed after the image of Christ is being renewed in the possession of truth. We're sanctified by the truth. John 17, 17, sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. So it is the word that is the instrument that is principally used for the reforming of the inward man, which results in a reformation of externals. And that work of God by the word and the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate the mind and to renew, to edify, to reconstruct is used throughout the scriptures. Now, interestingly, when we see the making of the woman, we see this idea of the taking of the rib and the making of a woman. But the language in the Hebrew is to build, literally the building of the woman. And so this idea of building a woman, we find the idea of building or making, and also the idea of being edified is a word for building. And the idea of renewal is kind of rebuilding. So when we think about what we're being renewed after, we're being renewed to the unfalling condition, we're being renewed after the image of Christ. And so we look at what God has originally designed. Now the making of man as the image of God is something that is true of man, male and female. I emphasize to you in the last couple of times that man is equal to man and woman are equal in their nature, in their essence. And there is a distinction of rank. There's a superiority of the man in rank in marriage. And in the public institutions, we find is women are prohibited from rule. So men are to rule in the state, in the church, and in the household. We also find that the office of the wife is something where she has rule, in some cases, over some men. It is not merely the idea of man or woman that is the basis for rule. We find that there can be adult sons that remain in the house, for example, that are still under the authority of the wife. We can find that there are servants that are under the authority of the wife. So it is not merely a masculinity and femininity, but is a station issue. And so we find the proper ordering of states, churches, and houses to be defined for us by the scripture. And understanding man and woman properly depends upon understanding the image of God and understanding the law order of God's word for the stations and ranks that people are to hold. Now, man and woman together are given authority to rule over the earth and over its contents. for the purpose of being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth with knowers of God and the knowledge of God in them, and subduing the earth. Then we find that there's a grant of authority that's repeated in verse 29 of chapter one, and then in verse, we get to chapter two, and the idea of Sabbath is instituted. So remember, we have the three major creation ordinances. We have work that is given, and dominion, We have the Sabbath that is given for the idea of a day of rest and worship. And we also have marriage that is given for the division of labor with the authority of the husband over the wife and the husband and the wife together having authority over children and over property. These things are established before the fall. Private property is not a curse. Work is not a curse. Marriage is not a curse. The government of the husband over the wife is not a curse. These are things that were created before the fall. And so the idea that there's somehow a way of undermining the authority of the husband over the wife by claiming that the curse involves this idea of the woman wanting to rule the man, but the man's still gonna end up ruling over her, the idea that that's a creation of the curse is a lie, is false. The man, we are shown, has authority. He's given the duty to work the land, but we then find also, when we get to page two of the handout, There's a job given to tend the garden, to keep the garden, so tending is working to add, keeping is guarding to preserve or maintain. And then we find that the woman is given as a helper who's comparable to the man in terms of like nature with his, same nature as his. It's not good for him to be alone. But then we find Adam given authority to name the things that are of an inferior nature. And then we also find that he is the namer of the wife. And so his granting of a name to her is an act of authority. And so she is different from the animals in that she is of superior nature to them. She is of similar or same nature to Adam, and yet at the same time is under his authority. These things are plain in the creation itself. Now, when we go to the definition of marriage, we look at the Westminster Confession as it regards to defined marriage in chapter 24. And there's an emphasis that I want to keep repeating as we go through this series on marriage. In section two, go to page three of the handout, section two, marriage was ordained for the mutual help of the husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the church with a holy seed, and for preventing of uncleanness. So the mutual help is mutual help in work, the dominion work. It's in mutual help in the worship of God, that in the home, for example, there's a cooperation in the raising up of children and the fear and admonition of the Lord, the husband leading and the wife helping and participating. And then there is a sharing together in blessings, in recreation. This is also marriage exists for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue. In other words, not to have illegitimate children, but to have legitimate children, children who are heirs by law and therefore potential recipients of an inheritance of property and also of wisdom to be taught and raised up with the care, the provident care of the parents. Then the idea of a holy seed, a seed that is meant to be set to the glory of God. Before the fall, there would not have been, had there been children during the time before the fall, these children would have been holy unto God and there would have been no world, no city of man that is distinct. There would not have been a separation. There would not have been a separation. of the world from the church, because there would have been no world or city of man. The whole would have been the city of God. But since the fall, there became this possibility of people leaving the visible holy people. And we find when we get to Genesis 4, and we have the murder of Abel by Cain. We find the murder of Abel by Cain. What happens is he is excommunicated. He's removed from the city of God. and the ordinances, the law order of God. When that happens, the city is holy. And so the distinction, the world, the city of man, is something that in the providence of God comes about for the purpose of making the contrast visible. Not just a theoretical or hypothetical contrast, but God causes evil to populate the world to display the contrast. And that contrast, makes the need for a holy seed, a children who are raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord under the word of God being taught and under the law order of God as an ordering for life. These things become more and more necessary. We live in a culture that is saturated by hedonistic nihilism and we see the effects of it, the way that it's self-destructive and boring and awful and ugly. And so the world is even born with its own depravity. And that boredom with its own evil, it's not even exciting to them anymore. Transgression is the norm. It's boring. And so this boredom in transgression makes the beauty of holiness all the more apparent. We're in a time of rather matured evil. Now, that matured evil is one of the things that marriage is meant to help to prevent. Marriage helps to prevent uncleanness. It helps to prevent sexual sin. And so since the fall, that is one of the great guards that it provides. It helps to provide a lawful outlet for sexual desire. And so these things, the mutual help, and that includes work, worship, and enjoying of blessings together, the increase of mankind and of the church, the holy seed, a legitimate issue, and also the idea of the preventing of uncleanness. These are the things that marriage is principally for. And the romanticism of our time makes it so that marriage is dominated by the duty of love. The wife needs to be cognizant of the fact that her role is dominated by the duty of respect. It's dominated by it. The wife's mind must be bent to focus on the duty of obedience to the husband and of the showing of respect. That must be the bent of the mind for the woman. or she will not fulfill her role. She will instead seek to, rather than working with the husband for the cause, for her to understand that she must function by working with him and for him to exercise dominion together. But his care for her has to be to instruct her, to teach her in these things, to wash her in the word, and to help her to understand what her good is, what his good is, how they glorify God together in this work, And so to see this properly requires an understanding of the distinctive roles as well as the way that there is a mutual care to be given. Now, one last thing we're gonna deal with here is the covenantal death, where a marriage is formed by a covenant in together to take, the man takes the wife and the wife takes the husband, there's a mutual taking of each other in that. through a covenant, the man swears to love the wife and to be faithful to her. Our directory of public worship has for the wife, she swears to love the husband, to be faithful to the husband, and she has an extra thing she swears, which is to obey the husband. That's the distinction of roles. There's mutual duties, and there's a distinctive duty, and the husband has a duty to give good commands. Now, when the covenant is broken, by an act that is worthy of divorce. The innocent party has the right to forgive, but let me remind you, section six here, although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God has joined together in marriage, yet nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case. So those two things, the idea of the potential just causes for suing out a divorce, sexual sin, and the desertion of the covenant duties. And then the need for external order, external authority to be involved in that. Now, to the husband, go to page five. So we have the grant. Remember the poem that Adam gives his response to God making the woman for him. He responds with a poem. In this poem, He acknowledges the fact that Eve was made out of his body, and that also by the marriage covenant, they become a legal union, a one flesh union. Remember, sex is the sign of that union, which is why it's so profane to have it anywhere other than marriage. And so this idea that there is a legal union that exists, and that the legal union provides the benefits It provides the way in which the benefits of marriage are actually good as opposed to being sin. Cohabitation without marriage, sin. Cohabitation with marriage, good. Not good for man to be alone. It becomes a blessing. So we find that there's this continuation in the poem that what Adam says is something that helps us, it has a concluding argument. Adam says, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she came out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, which makes the sexual union lawful and good and a blessing. So those are the things there. Now this leaving is a seceding, it's an independence act. The joining is the forming of a new house. It's the existence of a new covenant. It's a new structure. It's a starting of something new. And so it is both the act of marriage is an act of secession, a declaration of independence, and a constituting of a new government. So all of these things occur simultaneously in the covenanting act. These are all the legal things that happen. So, the duties that the husband takes on when he swears to love and to be faithful. Go to page five. Here are the matter of the duties of the husband and the manner in which they should be performed. The love of the husband, in one sense, you deal with the word love and there's a broad definition. The broad definition is this. Love is obedience to the law. It is the duty of every human, every Christian, every man, to love his neighbor. There's a duty of love which involves your duty to obey the law. The law is the definition for us of how to love our neighbor. Love is by itself the duty of seeking the good of the object. When you love someone, you have favor towards them, you're seeking their good, and the law of God defines for us how we can seek the good of our neighbor. The law of God prevents us from being idiots who seek the good of other people but do them harm. You ever had that experience where somebody, you think somebody likes you, you think somebody cares for you, you think somebody wants you to be happy and for good things to happen to you, but they behave in a manner that is contrary to your interests and you go, oh, with such friends, who needs enemies? You ever had that experience where somebody was trying to help you and they hurt you? The law of God is the instruction manual that prevents, that prevents, the hatred with the intention to help. And so it also, it tells us the goal to seek for our neighbor. their good being them knowing God and applying the knowledge of God. And then it also teaches us how we can behave in a manner that's appropriate to it. It's not merely the defining of the end of glorifying God and seeking their good and seeking them glorifying God, but it's also the definition of the means to seek their good. That's a general way in which there's a duty of love, and that's a mutual duty between the husband and the wife. But there is a special calling of love from the husband that is distinct from the general calling of love. The general calling of love is the duty to love your neighbor as yourself. The calling of the husband is to die for your wife. That's not an equality of love. That's not a loving your neighbor as yourself. The husband's call to sacrifice himself for his wife is to prefer her interest at his cost. That is a self-sacrificing love. That if you have to choose who dies, you die and you save her. The willingness to die for the wife is an illustration of that. And the Lord Jesus Christ's example helps you to understand the distinctiveness of the love that the husband owes to the wife as opposed to the general obligation of love that we have to the neighbor. Now, that duty of self-sacrificing love is actually in your interest. The duty of self-sacrificing love is actually in your interest because when you sacrifice for her, you're really sacrificing for yourself. The Protestant doctrine of delayed gratification is that the present you suffers for the blessing of the future you. And when you suffer presently for the well-being of your wife, either presently or in the future, what you are doing is you are storing up blessing for yourself for the future. It is a type of delayed gratification. That is the way this works. And there's an order of operation here that is distinctive from the general duty of loving the neighbor as the self. It's a self-sacrificing love. And that self-sacrificing love has been twisted by people who want to make this emotional and palatable to effeminate men and to women who really want to turn leadership of men into a subjection of the man. It's been twisted. The self-sacrificing is not to be commanded or controlled by the woman, because then it's just the woman sacrificing you. This is to be offered by the man willingly of himself, and what he's to do is to seek to lead the wife for her good according to his judgment, according to the word of God, and not to have that imposed, except by the law of God. So this willingness to do this is the attitude the husband needs to have, and the wife needs to have the attitude of subordinating her actions to the command of the husband. Everybody's fine, everybody delights in and applauds the idea of husband sacrificing. But the sacrifice of the wife to having to subject herself to the commands of the husband is something that gets groans. Perhaps not in this audience. And so these things we need to be aware of that we live in a world that hates that. And so we have to be aware of both. And the principal thing to be dealt with is most husbands understand that they are supposed to be better. They understand that they're going to get a earful from me when I talk about the duties of husbands. But in our time, the principal problem is feminism and women who even who have been trained in the idea of patriarchy still do not function under it. And this idea that even though there's a recognition of the authority of the husband, the acknowledgments are not often enough. The acknowledgements do not occur with honoring titles, honoring actions, obedience, great care. The sin of the wife to not obey the husband is not dealt with nearly as seriously as the sins of husbands. And so these things can be twisted. And so what we need to understand is that the proper instruction that has to occur, I need to give more instruction to men than to women because women, your husbands need to give you the instruction and you need to obey their commands. The instruction that I'm going to give to husbands will be longer here and what needs to occur is a recognition that the husband has to lead the wife and the husband has to lead the wife and teach the wife at home and these things must occur and the teaching that I'm going to do on the self-sacrificing of husbands must not be twisted by women in the congregation to undermine the authority of the husband. So we proceed now into the duty of husbands to love I have a quote here from Gogue. So William Gogue, we've got copies, we've got more copies coming in. We're going to be in our parish meetings going through Gogue. Please approach me and start asking for copies of this. I don't know who has them. We've already given some out. We've got more that have just come in. We'll have even more coming in. This is eight treatises of magnificent stuff on the household, okay? It's going to teach about the general idea of the household. It's going to teach about the mutual duties of husband and wife, the duties of the wife, the duties of the husband, the duties of parents, the duties of children, the duties of masters, the duties of servants. That's the household institution. The detail that's gone through in here is way more than I'm going to have time to go through in these sermons. And it's excellent, and it's worthy of meditation, and it's worthy of being used in family worship. And so I really want to encourage you to study this Puritan doctrine of the household, because it's the biblical doctrine. And as we engage here, we come in, Gouge focuses on, in the treatise on husband's duties, he gives us reasons why the love of the husband is extremely important. And so let me go through this. Because no duty of the husband's part can be rightly performed except it be seasoned with love. If you don't love your wife, it's going to become harsh, it's going to become something that's testy, it's going to become something where it becomes sort of this brittle thing. There's a danger that the husband's duties, when it's not seasoned with love, that they still become distortions. Now, two, because of all persons on earth, a wife is the most proper object of love. There's no neighbor who's closer. There's no kindred who's closer. By covenant, she's closer to you than any blood. And so this idea that the wife is the most proper object of love is something to be emphasized because your loves will not be ordered properly unless you love God most and wife second. These are the things that must be understood. Third, because the place of immanency and power of authority may soon puff him up and make him insult over his wife and trample her under. With you, amongst you, interacting with you, is that the husbands here do not use their authority enough to command their wives to do enough and to press their wives hard enough. That would be my guess. That's my interpretation of the congregation from living amongst you, interacting with you. So I would suggest that's not the general problem. At the same time, Any of you who are listening to this, don't use a general thing to excuse yourself of any potential problems. If you are over harsh, if you find that you are not careful in showing love to your wife, examine yourself and let the pricks of conscience that come by the preaching of the word of God be effectual to bring you to a place of not being over harsh. So generalities are useful to avoid dangers, but it's hilarious because it's as though no matter how many caveats you give and how many warnings on the sides of the road and how many things you set up, people just jump over the edges. It's like, no, no, no, there was a fence there. Like, I know, that's why I climbed. So be careful to use these warnings that are meant to be slowdowns to examine yourself. Examine your own house. And consider this, the generality makes it so that your bias needs to be in favor of assuming the fact that, husband, you're probably not pushing hard enough, and wives, you're probably not doing enough to encourage and acknowledge the authority of the husband. On the side, if you think in your house that's not the problem, examine yourself to see if there's ever much harshness. Now, four, because wives, through the weakness of their sex, for they are the weaker vessels, are much prone to provoke their husbands. The Bible is full of warnings, women, about you not being nagging or contentious or provoking your husbands, and about the general decline in the quality of life and enjoyment of the home that occurs upon the presence of such a woman. It's said to be better to live in such and such a place than to live in a house with such a woman. What type of place was that? The wilderness? A rooftop? Those are suboptimal living conditions. And that's supposed to be better than living with a contentious woman. So if that's the case, women, be careful about provoking of husbands. And husbands, expect that because of the fall, because of the curse of Eve, that there will be provocation, and you must intelligently manage those provocations with rebukes, instructions, commands, sometimes simply by strength of soul, by fortitude and meekness, not responding. There are times when that's the appropriate thing to do. So being very careful to exercise your power in a way where you are not provocable. So your love helps you to reduce that provocability. When you see a child whom you love behave inappropriately, you are likely to see that provocation as something that causes sympathy in you and makes you desire to give discipline to the child for their well-being, not out of some wrathful hatred. The love of the child makes it so the discipline is given for the good of the child with proper restraint, proper order, to make that child understand that the pain is for their good in order to change things. And so when we think about the need to lead wives, the husband has to lead, has to suffer provocation in order to lead the wife. And if he simply gets into contention with the wife and does not intelligently, wisely, according to knowledge, seek to lead her through times where she provokes, then what you will find is that you have a difficult time leading. You will just be in squabbling. And so when you find you have a wife that rejects, rejects your corrections and responds to your covering of offenses in love, If that occurs and you can't lead the wife, you need help from church officers and the threat of church discipline needs to be brought to bear because women have a duty to submit to their husbands. And so when that's difficult, the need for church authority to back the authority of the husband is important. When there's not a willingness to sit down with officers, if there's something going on where you cannot lead the wife and there's a rebellion that's occurring, you need to press into that harder. If the wife is unwilling in rebellion to sit down with church officers, you must love her by telling her, you're in rebellion, you're not listening to me, the fear of God is not sufficient to make you stop rebelling. And so we need to meet with church officers so that those who are in authority might bring counsel and have the threat of the keys be useful to make you sensible to your duties. Five. because as Christ, by his love, first manifested, provoked the church to love him. We love him because he first loved us. We love him because he first loved us. The man, as the initiator, he's the one who initiates the relationship, he pursues the woman, he gains her love, her favor by his pursuit, and he chooses the object of his favor and chases and catches. That is what happens. The effort of the man to gain the marriage, and in the marriage, The man over and over again initiating is something that helps to lead. That is something that you may have a reaction because all of the preaching for the last 20 years about the leadership of husbands was, serve harder, love harder, and it will make the woman respond. That is a general rule, and it is not always sufficient. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater just because servant leadership was abused as an idea. The love of the wife and the initiation of the husband is the thing that helps to spur the love of the wife. That is the ordinary rule that is the general case and so that idea What happened in preaching in supposedly conservative churches about marriage in the last 20 years was people said that, and they didn't say anything else about the wives' duty to obey commands, anything else about the general duty of wives to understand the desire of the husband and to seek to submit to it as though it were a command. That stuff was never emphasized, and rebellion of women was not taken seriously. In this church, that's not the problem. So do not let what I just said pass over you as some sort of boomerism. Do not let that be a thing that you disregard. The love of the husband initiating is a thing that is key to the relationship. The husband must pursue the wife. The husband must self-sacrificially love the wife. And the love of the wife by the husband is something that spurs the love of the wife for the husband. Now, bottom of page five. The duty of the husband is to maintain, is to maintain his authority. I have heard many sermons where preachers belittled the husband's effort to defend his own authority. They will mock the husband and say, husbands don't respond to your wife not obeying by saying, you listen to me, I am husband, hear me roar. That is not helpful. Husbands ought not to lord it over the wife, but when the wife is in rebellion, the callback to authority is necessary. When the wife is in rebellion, the callback to authority is necessary. When the wife is in rebellion, the callback to authority is necessary. And wives, if you mock the husband's appeal to the law of God, you do not mock him, you mock God. Don't. If you find that temptation, hold your tongue. Be careful. Do not mock the law of God that the husband is in authority. The husband must maintain his own authority. The first thing to do is you have preaching that's occurring right now, where wives are hearing this and daughters are hearing this. The second thing is the husband needs to teach the wife that this doctrine is the case and encourage the wife to acknowledge it with her own lips. The second thing is the husband must manage his authority well so as to maintain and encourage it. The managing of the authority well so as to maintain and encourage it was always encouraged by people who preached in complementarian circles. So you find that this is a common thing. Do not throw it out. Do not let that pass over you just because you've heard that in the last 20 years of conservative churches, but who didn't properly support the authority of men. This is the key thing. The love of the husband is key, and the good management is key. There's also sin in women that must be dealt with, but the managing of the authority well so as to maintain and encourage the authority is the principal tool that you have as a head of house to make sure that your authority is respected. The teaching of the doctrine and the management. So forgive me, the teaching is actually the principal tool. The second is a good use of that authority. Now, page six. This means giving a good example. That's how you manage yourself well with the authority. Showing love and fidelity. If you act in a hateful way to your life, it will certainly set a stumbling block for her for submitting to your authority. Does it give her an excuse? No. But is it something that, as a rational creature, you can understand? That if you act in a hateful manner towards your wife, that it's going to make it harder for her to love you? Yes. So, that idea of not showing love, the neglect of love, or the manifestation of bitterness and hatred, these are things that are going to discourage the wife from doing her duty. Fidelity, if you're unfaithful to your wife, that gives cause sufficient for divorce. And if the wife restores you, it's going to still create lots of temptation towards rebellion, a disrespect that's going to occur. And so that's going to be something that's difficult to work through. So a failure of fidelity is one of the great ways of destroying your household. The other thing, if you want to understand the ways of managing yourself well as a man, you want to study the qualifications of elders and deacons. So we'll get back to that. Skip with me over pages six and seven and eight and nine. No, bottom of nine. Bottom of nine. So we got all that there. Then there's this idea of wisdom, holiness, and righteousness. These general things, right? You want to be renewed after the image of God. at the image of Christ in wisdom, holiness, and righteousness. You want to pursue peace, purity, unity, and order. You want to manifest joy, gravity, honesty, and piety. These are all things to pursue. But notice there what I've just laid out for you is essentially a list of view. Be perfect, right? So the closer to perfect that you are, the more that you're going to, as a husband, encourage your wife to follow you. But wives, your husband's a sinner and you knew it when you married him. Your husband's a sinner and you knew it when you married him. That being the case, to expect perfection before you grant submission is you breaking covenant and is, wait for it, divorceable. If you reject the authority of your husband, if you're a rebel, you've abandoned the covenant. When you refuse to keep the covenant in its most basic terms, you will not love your husband. You will not be faithful to your husband. You throw off his authority rather than being obedient. What you have done is broken the covenant. So we treat rebellion of wives in our culture without any level of sufficiency. The throwing off of the authority of the husband is a throwing off of the marriage. The throwing off of the authority of the husband is a throwing off of the marriage. And when you simply take the resources of the husband and refuse any obedience at all, you have abandoned him and become a parasite. Husbands, if you just live in the house and take all the productivity of the house and leave it so that your wife and children have no money to provide food with, or they have to hide money to be able to pay the rent or something absurd like that, you've abandoned them as surely as if you went to Turkey. The idea of throwing off the covenantal responsibility is something that we need to understand. You can be physically present and you can break the covenant and throw off all duty. So the need to respect the authority of the husband is severe and serious. And when you do not respect the authority of the husband, what you have done is you have rejected the marriage. You've broken the oaths. You are a covenant breaker. And so husbands, you need to do well to seek to support your marriage because I'll tell you what, if you want to make your life something that's hard and terrible, then what you find is a divorce is a way of destroying lots of wealth, destroying lots of time, wrecking your body with stress and making your soul traumatized. These are things that occur. And so you need to recognize that even where there is cause for divorce from some past action, in many cases, the wisest thing, in most cases, the wisest thing is to try to go through the use of authority to seek, to seek, to bring the other party to repentance and to fulfill their role properly. So there is the issue of, just like choosing to go to war, somebody on the border might shoot at some of your border guards, and you might decide it's not the proper response to invade their country and occupy it. A choice to go to war, to full war, to invade another country in response to some offense that's a justification for war is not always the wisest thing to do. So things that are divorceable, utter rebellion, abandonment as a broader category that includes rebellion, or some sort of sexual uncleanness. These things are things that we need to recognize. There's a need to say, just because something that is divorceable has occurred here, it is not always the wisest thing to proceed forward with that. In fact, the bias should be to consider otherwise. This is the advice to that party. To those parties that are issuing, going through a divorce and initiating, we need to have a bias towards the innocent party who has received the offense. So you, as the party considering, you must consider those things. Now, why do I say all this? Why this discussion, the middle discussion of love, the idea of divorce? Because, one, the fact that rebellion has not been dealt with makes it so that there is no understanding of the severity of rebellion. And two, because the need for the husband to say, I must treat my wife who is not in a condition where I'm pursuing something like that as though I am Christ and she is the church. I need to sacrifice myself. And you have to deal with bitterness. The principal problem, the principal problem for husbands in the giving of love is bitterness. Bitterness is the sin of authority. Bitterness is the sin of authority. And if you're sitting there with bitterness and you're nursing bitterness towards your wife, the love that you should give to your wife is not going to manifest properly. So if you sit there thinking about all the rebellion, thinking about all the ways in which there's not proper love, all the ways in which you feel like she's doing things to undermine you, you go, is this stuff divorceable or not? If it is, okay, what are you gonna do? Do you think that this is something that needs to be dealt with in that way? If not, then pull your head up, get out of the bitterness cycle, forgive it, and move on and seek to love your wife. Do not let yourself stare at your wounds for a period of months or years and allow that to destroy your marriage by a failure to give love. You either have something that's so awful and atrocious that there's grounds for divorce and you should seriously consider it because of the utter ongoing rebellion, or get over it and lead. Love her. Pour into her. Do the work. Chase her down. Make her see that you are a man who is worthy of being followed and call upon the law of God and tell her to repent. Do the work. Take the initiative. Push forward. Do something. The leadership of the husband is necessary and in action by husbands rooted in bitterness. makes it so that households for a decade or longer can sit in squalor, in despair, in non-productivity, non-advancing. A husband and wife working together with children who are growing and learning to work together should cause it so that their station, condition, godliness, wealth, all of it advances dramatically over time. If it's not present, you go, what's happened? How many planes have crashed into your house? How is it that across a decade, the work of you and your wife cooperating together, seeking to store up wealth, seeking to store up wisdom, helping to coordinate and cooperate, having children, raising them in the fear and admission of the Lord, working with other people, having a church that you're interacting with, networking to find opportunities to advance economically. Why is it that your wealth and wisdom, across a decade, don't advance? Well, it can be that God is testing you. But what's the general rule? The general rule is that wisdom builds a house. What's the general rule? General rule is the wisdom on her. All of these, your wife, and you're pouring into her, and you're teaching her, you're washing her with the word, and you're helping to lead her, the two of you together should be able to accomplish a lot over time, a lot. So that vision of the love, including a provident care, Now, a part of this comes to helping the wife to not be demotivated. When a husband is leading a wife well, if she's godly and she's under the authority of the husband, she's going to find that she prospers more and more. She has a glow of the holiness that occurs Her peaceable and quiet spirit creates a type of beauty that is attractive, the beauty of holiness. And a part of this comes from the husband understanding the dignity of her place. The bottom of page nine, rightful accounting of the wife's place in person. Remember, your wife is your chief lieutenant. She has a high calling. You have a duty to seek to provide her with things to govern. as the mistress of the estate, if you need to ask her to add to your labors by improving the use of your capital to produce more and improving the use of the consumptive goods to be more pleasant and fitting. So there's two types of property. There's property you consume for enjoyment. It's consumptive goods. There's capital goods. Money or property that you have, it's meant to produce more property. You should, part of the Protestant work ethic is the desire to lay up money to be money producing, right? This idea of investment. And the wife helps. When you read Proverbs 31, she is able to use her time to help to improve the management of the property, to make more property. So this is a significant part. The wife's diligent work to help to add to the property of the estate. The division of labor allows for people to focus on things that they're better at. The division of labor makes it so there's more productivity than just two individuals working apart. The division of labor makes it so that people can get more done. So a marriage should be more productive than a couple of people separated. So that's a part of the benefit in division of labor. The other thing is, if husbands are focused principally on the acquisition of property to bring in, and the wife manages property that's brought in, and helps to deal with, especially thinking about the consumptive element, how to make it better. That means, here's money, the wife buys a steak, and she cooks the steak and makes it better than if the man were just buying the steak and eating it tar-tar. This idea that there's some work that goes in that beautifies the thing. So this work of beautifying makes the consumption for the same dollars more pleasant. that work of beautifying makes the same number of dollars generate more pleasure. So this work of seeking to work on expanding capital, by thinking and working together, and the work of consuming better, so when you buy things it's better, not beauty working together, the fittingness of the consumption, these are things that occur there. Now, the husband, as a part of his love, He's going to appoint work and goals and priorities and by giving her people into her charge to command and teach. Now the most, the principal one there is going to be children. If you really accomplish a lot, that can also include servants. And in reality, here's the thing. A lot of you do have servants in various ways, or you have robotic things that act like servants used to act. You have washing machines. you have dishwashers, you have refrigerators that produce ice so you don't have to send a servant up a mountain to get it for you. That's very nice. And so you have all these things, all these machines that do things, and you also have a bunch of people that you pay for little services that are fractions of servants, people you pay to do things like dropping off food or cleaning a yard or cleaning a house or whatever, whatever you happen to do. Any of those things that you might do, those are hiring servants on a fractional basis. And so this hiring out of contracted services, and the use of machinery, and all the stuff that's done, these are all things where you're handing it. But the principal thing is, husbands, you need to lead your wives to have lots of children. You want to encourage them to think that having children's a good thing. They have a child, they have an immortal soul, they have a body they're caring for, they can train somebody up. Having children's a blessing, having grandchildren's a blessing, and the way that you extend her dominion, one of the ways that you do that is by increasing the children under her care. And so you teach her that children are good. And you're unafraid, and you say, honey, however many children the Lord gives us, we'll provide for. He'll provide for them. He will cause manna to rain from heaven if he needs to. He owns the cattle on 1,000 hills. We'll work hard. We'll get this done. We will rely upon God. We don't have the power to generate it, but God does. I don't have the power to give you a child. I'm not God, but God does. And let's seek. Let's apply the means. Let's do that. It'll be a grand time. I guarantee it. Now, that whole thing, the pursuit of having children is one of the big things to help the courage of the wife. And helping the wife know that you love her, that you care for her, and you think it's worth the travail of childbirth, the love of the husband for the wife, and the encouragement of the wife in having children is something that is for her good, it's a risk for her, and at the same time, what you're doing there is you're encouraging her to have courage. And so those major elements. Continue with me, still on page 10. So Proverbs 31, Proverbs 31 requires a highly productive man and woman. for the children to be trained to add to the productivity of the house. Those things together make that possible. You read Proverbs 31, this woman has a lot of property already, her husband's in a high station, they're older, they have children, they have children that are speaking, the children call her blessed. Okay, so this idea that there's been time. Everybody wants to have everything and they want to have it now. Let me tell you what, the way your husband gets to be known in the gates is by a decade or more of solid service in the local church. Let me tell you what, The way your children call you blessed women is by raising them well for over a decade. The way that there's property for the women to manage and the ability to buy vineyards and have servants is by diligent labors with the slow accumulation of capital over a long period of time with this grind of work. And you can accelerate that for your own children by leaving them an inheritance. One of the frustrations we have is that we live in an age where inheritance is viewed as a thing to be consumed in retirement, where retirement accounts. the consumption of things, the holding on to things forever, and the only giving of any property to help children occurs at death, right? This is one of the frustrations of our age. We live in an age of enormous abundance, where the old are extremely wealthy and extremely isolated from the young, and that's a source of great frustration. And I'll tell you what, it's a source of great frustration to them, too. They feel alone, and they're consoling themselves with money. And so there's a pity there, and there's a warning. Do not allow yourself to be consumed with bitterness that your fathers didn't hand you more when you were young. Work hard, break the sod, and make sure that your sons and your daughters don't have to break it again. This idea that there's a need to pass on inheritance and to help people to start homes, that generational cycle was broken because of hedonism and nihilism. Do not respond with nihilism. Respond with hope that if you work, the blessing of God can restore what the locusts have eaten, that you can have an inheritance to give to your children and your children's children, that you can see your own wealth build more, greater, faster than what your parents have grown. When you diligently labor and seek to advance, you can see the Proverbs 31 paradigm be manifested. We live in a time of higher productivity of persons than ever before. The dominion tools of technology, the ability to communicate, the opportunities that exist in the world are enormous. And so this ability to do more with less, I mean we, beloved, we live with greater luxuries than kings. You know this. How many horses drew a king's carriage? How many horses draw yours? How many servants do they have to use to send messengers across the world? How many do you have to use? How quickly can you listen to whatever teaching you want, watch whatever entertainment you want, read whatever book you want? The ability to access knowledge, entertainment, pleasures, tools, the ability to get places, do things, is enormous. Page 10, attend to respect for the wife. The wife should be loved and her station needs to be respected as the chief lieutenant. Attend to respect, the fifth commandment applied to her means you care for her station and her honor. You expect her to obey you and you expect her to be honored in your house. One of the rules that I have is you disrespect me to my children, that's one thing. You disrespect your mother and I see it or hear about it. It's a significantly worse matter. The tender respect for the wife. So there are external actions that occur there, acts of love. There's a regard for her station. Let me read to you from Gouge here. Look at the bottom of the Gouge quote. Well, actually, the beginning of it, too. Her place is indeed a place of inferiority and subjection, yet the nearest to equal, nearest to equality that may be a place of common equity in many respects, wherein man and wife are after a sort even fellows and partners. Hence, then, it follows that the husband must account his wife a yoke, fellow, and companion. This is one point of giving honor to the wife, and it is implied under that phrase whereby the end of making a wife is noted, which in our English is translated meet for him, word for word as before him, that is like him, one in whom he might see himself or even to use the apostles word himself. These phrases imply a kind of fellowship, as also the many prerogatives that are common to both, which have been noted before. A wife's acknowledgment of her husband's superiority is the groundwork of all her duties. So a husband's acknowledgment of that fellowship, which has betwixt him and his wife, will make him carry himself much more amiably, familiarly, lovingly, in every way as beseems a good husband towards her. Okay, so wives. you're not going to do your job at all. You're going to be terrible at it unless you consistently have in your mind the idea that you are under the authority of your husband and it becomes the focus of your mind in terms of controlling how you think about the relationship. Husbands, you will do a terrible job at leading your wives unless the focus of your mind is on the duty to love the wife and to care for her and to see her place honored and to see her as a partner and a fellow worker with you. And so that idea of those foci, the husband must focus on the duty of love. The wife must focus on the duty of respect and obedience. These are the foci. They're distinct because your roles are distinct. And to focus on the duties of the other is to blame shift and look for opportunity for excuse. Page 11. It's important, as you manage, attend to respect for your wife, that you have an internal attitude where your opinion of her is carefully guarded. And this is an application of the Fifth and Ninth Commandments. You have to avoid fond admiration where you see your wife is always in the right, no matter what, and where she's, you know, you see her as faultless. You also have to avoid scornful contempt, where out of bitterness you always see her as wrong, and you trot her underfoot. You have a duty to avoid thinking or speaking too highly or too meanly of yourself or of others, and that includes your wife. You have a duty to not deny the gifts and graces of God in your wife. And you have a duty to not aggravate the smaller faults of your wife. These are duties that you have. So thinking in a way that honors her legitimately and properly. This is not just thinking about her place, right? Now we're talking about thinking about her person. Her place, you must understand the station of the wife and the duties of that role and the honor due to it. She's the mistress of the estate. She's owed honor in that place. She's the mother of the children. She's owed honor in that place. And she is your wife, and you have a duty to treat her with care, love, and a respect for her station in a way that is meant to see her as dignified in the world. Now, her person, you have to make judgments about her, not just the station that she enters, but there's a duty to evaluate her And you need to be careful to examine your wife in truth and to not come up with a bunch of negative things about her where you magnify smaller faults, where you make mountains out of molehills. We all have our weaknesses and you must overlook many weaknesses and infirmities and care for her well. And let me say this, the leadership of the husband over a course of years will dramatically shape the kind of woman your wife is. Women are the accumulated glory of men. The more you lead your wife well, the greater the tendency for her to be magnificent and resplendent in beauty, glory, and honor. The more you lead her poorly, the more of a tendency there will be for her to be shrewish and inwardly ugly and difficult, to be contentious. These are things where you need to take responsibility to lead and to recognize that good leadership is one of the principal things that will affect the kind of woman that you are leading. If you married a woman who was a horrible shrew and she deceived you about it, well, you should have exercised better discretion at the point of entry. And now you better work hard to seek to see that that situation can be salvaged by bringing officers in quickly so that she can receive a rebuke from yourself and from them And do not let this simply be an excuse for the destruction of your house over a long period of time. Go to page 12. There's a duty of affection towards the wife. This is a part of the work that needs to be inward. The acts of love are external, the inward affection. A husband's affection, this is Gouge, to his wife must be answerable in his opinion of her. He ought to therefore delight in his wife entirely, that is, so to delight in her is wholly and only delighting in her. That means you don't just give her stoic externals all the time, you give her signs of a kind acceptance of the good thing the wife does. a positive countenance, smiling on some little act of kindness, saying thank you. Words of commendation or praise, well done, that was excellent. Seeking to bless or reward or give favor. Courteous acceptance of signs of respect, that's obeisance is how Gouge sometimes talks about it. Don't be too lofty over her. When somebody does something like standing to greet you when you come home, doing something to acknowledge it is a good thing. You're responding back with an embrace of her. You give affection for respect. The wife, wives, give respect, give external acts of respect to your husband and husbands respond to the external acts of respect with an external act of affection. That's the appropriate display. The husband's grateful reception of respect and giving special affection shows the distinction of the wife to other people under your authority, or other people who might show you respect. That familiarity with the wife, that showing that this is my special companion, the one in whom my soul delights, who is my secret friend, These things, the display of that, the giving of affection for respect is a beautiful display of the rules. If your wife comes to you with a humble request or petition or suit to ask you to change something or do something, being careful and patient to hear her, and then also delighting in giving her things that she requests. And wives, when you go to your husband and ask him for something and he grants it, show appreciation for the thing. This idea of these little kindnesses, these little courtesies, these acts of respect and appreciation are the things that make life delightful and pleasant and create the beauty of the home. hearing out her humble suits, D, avoiding harshness and testiness. I think that one of the things that happens as we learn to be initiative taking and to issue commands is a temptation towards pride, loftiness, harshness, stoicism, and to be quick to be angry, to be testy. Men, we have to have initiative and to issue command and to have our authority be acknowledged and to be real in the home. and we have to be careful to not be those who make the home unpleasant ourselves. The gracious, kind, and courteous acceptance of respect and the issuing of commands and requests in a way that encourages the pleasantness of the home are things to do. Now, notice this real quickly. What I'm talking about here, these are the details of how to make it nice. Wives will sometimes grab hold of the imperfections of husbands issuing commands and make those into a point of squabbling. If your husband is learning to command and to lead in the home, allow for him to have some time to learn to do it. If he does it poorly, praise God that he does it, and pray that God would give him strength to do it better. As he's done it for a few years, he will get his sea legs, and you can, as occasions are coming, You can occasionally bring up a kind request in respectful ways. You're seeking to encourage him, and you're taking opportunities to, in an honoring way, point to things that might be helpful. But this idea of being slow in that, and instead, appreciation. One of the things that makes husbands not testy is respect. Many sermons are given that tell husbands, when the wife doesn't respect you, love. Too few sermons are given that say, wives, when the husband seems harsh or testy or seems to be stoic, give him respect. Respect melts the hearts of men. Respect melts the hearts of men. If you want him to show more affection, show him more respect. If, over time, it seems that the respect leads to a pride and an arrogance and a trampling underfoot, you come to him and you express, I'm seeking to give you more respect, husband, and I'm finding that your harshness is increasing. I beg you to stop discouraging me in righteousness and to change this and to show me more love. What husband would not be brokenhearted to hear such an entreaty from a respectful wife? The soft tongue breaks the bone. If the husband, upon repeated entreaty, continues to be harsh and to trample you underfoot, then come to, express to your husband that you think you need to involve officers and bring them in. If this criminal behavior, biblical criminal behavior, you bring in authority quickly. Criminal behavior, according to the Bible, done to a person by an authority that's supposed to protect them is a divorceable offense, an abandonment of the covenant, and it should involve authority quickly. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about gruffness, testiness, being impatient, being angry, growling too much. You can forbear. You can deal with it over time. And it would be better for us to have men who are too testy but lead, than to be stuck with an effeminate lot who take no initiative. Women, your own good is much advanced by a testier, more initiative-taking, less agreeable sort than very agreeable and inactive men. This is the world that agreeable and inactive men gets you. And it must be stopped. It must be fought. It must be trampled underfoot. So men, save your trampling underfoot for the world and not for your wife. And wives, if you feel as though there is too much testiness and impatience, seek to overlook and forbear and respect, and if necessary, entreaty, and if necessary, seek to involve an officer. Now. E, forbearing to command and exact everything that you might. Husbands, you can start to command over much. You're going to be over rigorous. You need to pick what you're going to command where. You need to habituate. You need to train. You pick more basic things to less basic things. If really basic duties aren't getting done, you focus on those before you move on to more advanced things. If really basic doctrines aren't understood, you focus on those before you move on to more advanced doctrine. These are the things you do in training and teaching your wife. Now, If you need counsel on that and you're not sure, you think you might be over complicating things in your home, please come and talk to me. G, mild replies to the wife. I'm not asking you to be sicky sweet. I'm asking you to not be a terror in your own home and to not be a common troubler of the peace of your home. Giving mild replies means you manage your own bitterness. Remember that love is a weighty thing, that it goes down more than it goes up. And so you should be also willing to sacrifice and giving more love to your wife than you see her giving to you. And then recognize the fact that ingratitude is common. The sacrifices you give to your wife. Remember how many times you have been ungrateful to God. Be careful to not be over bitter with the ingratitude of your wife for the things you provide for her by recognizing your own ingratitude to God. Remembering the forgiveness that you've received from God. The use of titles for your wife. I would encourage you to find titles to refer to your wife. Just as the husband should have titles where the wife refers in a respectful way, the husband should look for ways to speak in affectionate ways to the wife. The title of wife, spouse, or dignified terms of affection like love or dove that you find in the Bible. Those types of things are great ways to refer to the wife in the presence of others in a way that shows your affection for her and her place, her special place as your wife. And then we're out of time. So I will not go into the prominent care we'll go into that more at a later time perhaps tonight. Comments questions objections from the voting members and those with speaking rights. All right. Let's pray. Father we ask that you would bless the teaching of your word. We pray that you would help. Wives to respect their husbands. Husbands to love their wives. Them together to lead the home and the children. That the wife would respect the authority of the husband as the head of the house. Father, we pray that you would cause much affection and respect to flow from our houses and for the delight and joy of our houses to be seen. That the word of God would not be blasphemed. That the respect of wives for husbands is a powerful testimony would be known. Father, we pray that you would cause.