Today our topic is marriage, and Ephesians 5 is one of the main passages in scripture that gives us instruction on marriage. So Ephesians 5, 22 and following says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. All right. So there's two reasons for us to be thinking about marriage this morning. For many of you, marriage is a theory. Marriage is not something that you have experienced yet. But that means it's a perfect time to think about the importance of marriage. It's always better to think through an issue before the moments come than to think of the issue when you're in the middle of the circumstance. We're going to be, for you younger guys, we're going to be talking about marriage as a theory. Marriage is something to be prepared for. Marriage is something to be thought of seriously. I have no false illusions that seven years from now or five years from now or ten years from now, whenever You'll find yourself in a married state that you're going to think back to December 1st, 2018 and all the wisdom that you learned from Pastor Gleason in this lesson. But what I am hoping is to give you a framework that you can think through or at least a starting place so that you can think more beyond this lesson, maybe with your parents or with your father especially, thinking through what it means to be married and how to prepare for marriage. We're going to talk about what it means to prepare for marriage, but preparing for marriage is not something that you just do on one Saturday. Preparing for marriage is something that you do for many years and even You really do it without actually thinking of marriage in many cases. You simply do it by thinking what it means to serve Lord Jesus Christ. So we're gonna talk about preparing for marriage. For some of us, marriage is a very present reality. We are married, have been married for many years in some cases. And so for those of us who are in that state, I want us to think and be reminded of the significance of marriage and what our function is as husbands in marriage. Now, we can, in one sense, personally tune out what it means to prepare for marriage, because we're already married. But in another sense, we're all here with sons, or we have sons in multiples, and so How do we think through what it means to prepare our own children for marriage? For those of you who are preparing for marriage, there is something for you to think about in terms of, what will I be asked to do as husband in the marriage relationship? And so both parts of the talk this morning will have application for all of us, even though they'll be focused primarily on different groups. When we're married, we come to marriage recognizing that there are realities, there are tensions in those relationships. In marriage, we have two sinful people joining together in a lifelong covenant, a lifelong vow that they make before the Lord, make to the Lord before witnesses and to each other. And so, as sinners, our sins get in the way of our marriage and different things, our financial pressures, the different backgrounds, our histories, our preferences. And so what I want us to do as people who are already in marriage is to check back with a map, right? We don't want to just have a GPS, you know what I mean? The GPS gives you a, you're on your way in the moment. It only gives you as far as the next step. But we want to keep our eyes on the map, kind of on the overall picture. Where are we? Where are we going? Where are we supposed to end up? And that map, of course, is God's word. So we're going to think about marriage along those two lines. These talks, I will talk. I hope to involve you in the discussion. But if you have questions, please feel free to put up your hand and ask and interrupt. And if I'm not paying attention, you can throw something at me, but not anything hard. Something soft like a pillow, or you can throw a pillow at me if you want. Alright, so let's talk about anticipating marriage first. What does it mean to get ready for marriage? And so, the first thing I want to talk about is not really related to marriage specifically, but it's related to how you are supposed to live as a Christian young man in general. Okay, so when it comes to your holiness, which means your conformity to God's Word, when it comes to your holiness, that's not something you start thinking about, or it's not something you should start thinking about when you get married or when you have children. The holiness of the Christian man is for all of life. And as soon as... How many of you have made a profession of faith, have been baptized in a church? You young men. Okay, so for those of you who have already made a profession, that means that from the moment that you made that profession, you said to the whole congregation and before the Lord, you said, this gospel that you have summarized in the Bible, I believe that for myself. And so God's gospel in his word obviously is the promise of redemption, but it's also the promise of sanctification. It's a promise that you will be made holy, that you have a desire to be holy even as God is holy. So there is a sense of personal responsibility to live your life out in holiness. Now I want to think in terms of marriage specifically, the importance of preparing yourself for marriage by guarding yourself. There are various degrees and various convictions about how this can be best done. And I'm not here to talk about dating or courtship or any of the permutations of those things. I'm here to speak more generally because I think That question is answered in your family and through your parents better. But I want to think through a simple guideline that will help you guard yourself when it comes to marriage. And what I'm going to say is that as a husband, you will have physical, emotional, and spiritual responsibilities to your wife. And until you are ready to assume all three of those responsibilities, until you're ready to spiritually care for your wife, emotionally care for your wife, and did I say physically? Spiritually care for your wife, until you're ready to do all three, you shouldn't be engaged in any of them. Okay? So, until you're ready to engage in all three of those things, you shouldn't fulfill any of the activities that a husband would have with regard to one specific individual. Alright? So, let's think about each of them in turn. So, physical responsibilities in marriage. Certainly there's intimacy, and I'm not going to touch on that. That's going to be up to your dad to talk to you about that. But there is, beyond intimacy, there is a physical responsibility to your wife in the sense of provision. So as the husband, you will be responsible to provide for your wife. And it's not that you have to be rich, it's not that you have to have an abundance of things, but you have to be in a place where you can provide the necessities of life for this other person that you're going to take a vow towards. That means that you should be willing to do whatever it takes, whatever's necessary to provide for your wife. And there's a wide spectrum of how God provides for people in this world. And some men are asked for seasons at least to work extremely hard, many hours to provide for their wives and to provide for the physical needs of their wives. Why do I say that? Well, I say that because the Bible teaches us that the orientation of the wife is to be towards the home. So let's look together at Titus 2. And who can read Titus 2 verse 1 through 5 for us? Go ahead, Jeremy, nice and loud. But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Alright, so what are some things that the Apostle Paul says here, especially the young women, should be engaged in? That would make me say that you guys, by preparing for marriage, have to be in a place where you can physically provide for your wife. What are some of the things that Paul is saying that young women should be doing that would cause me to say that you as young men have to be prepared to be working to provide physically for your wife? To allow them to have the time in the home to take care of the needs of the household. That's right. Being with the day-to-day. That's right. So there's that section in verse 5 that talks about how the young women are to be working in the home. In verse 4 it talks about young women who should love their husbands and their children. Does that mean that it's always wrong for a woman to have a job, a part-time job, even a full-time job, especially when there's no children in the home? I would say certainly not, but I do think that what Scripture teaches us is that the orientation of the woman should be towards the home, the orientation of the man should be towards working. Is there another place in Scripture where we could turn to have that same principle established for us? Okay, so Proverbs 31, although Proverbs 31 talks about the woman selling cloth in the marketplace and all that kind of stuff. What about Genesis? After the fall, Genesis 3, and God declares his curses on the man and the woman for their sin against his righteous requirements. So if you go to Genesis 3, And you look at God's curse on the woman in Genesis 3 verse 16. It says there, to the woman, God says, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain shall you bring forth children, and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. We're going to leave alone the whole idea of the desire for your husband and he ruling over you for now. We'll touch on that later. But certainly God's cursing is in the area of the woman's primary primary realm of responsibility in terms of childbearing. You see the difference when it comes to the man. When God curses the man, he doesn't say your responsibility in parenting is going to be much more difficult, even though because of the fall, parenting is much more difficult, don't get me wrong. But that's not what God says to Adam. God says to Adam, Because you've listened to your wife and you've eaten of the tree, cursed is the ground because of you, in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return. Will farming be any less difficult for a woman than for a man? It'll be equally difficult, right? But, God is addressing man and woman in their primary areas of responsibility. And man's primary responsibility is work, when it comes to the marriage relationship. So, you young men, us older guys, we're living under the curse of Adam. We're living under the curse of Adam, and so God has given to us a toilsome labor on this world, and that's our responsibility when it comes to living in the marriage relationship. Okay, does that make sense? Any questions, any other comments that we want to make on our... Yes, Jackson. You also have to look at 1 Timothy 5, 8, if anyone does not provide for his relatives, especially for members of his household, he is denied of faith, he is worse than an unbeliever. And I think that's also a litmus test for a husband in terms of is he caring for his family, is he caring for his wife in terms of giving them the things they need, taking joy in providing for them versus Me, me, me. I want this, I want that. That's what really I'm focused on, rather than joyfully, cheerfully providing for your family. That's something that may not come easy at times. That's where our hearts should be, not lavishing gifts that are wasteful. but in things that are good. Very good. So 1st Timothy 5 also is an important passage. All right. So beyond the physical responsibilities we also have an emotional responsibility. Now emotional responsibility dealing with our feelings. OK. Feelings are not to be trusted in the sense of our ultimate direction. We don't get that from how we feel about one thing or another, but feelings are a gift from God, right? So feelings are not to be spurned. They're not to be despised. Feelings are given by God. So the question when it comes to providing emotionally for your wife, the question that you're asking as you're preparing for marriage is, are you strong enough to lead your wife through difficult challenges that will come your way? Okay, anybody here who is married will tell you that sometimes marriage is difficult. There can be challenges that come along with marriage, and some of them are, they come at you from outside, so they're not really a direct result of any sin on your part, but they're just circumstances that you're faced with. But sometimes, because of the sin that's in your marriage, there is, there are difficult feelings that you have to negotiate and manage. And so as a husband, because you are called to lead your wife, you have to be strong emotionally. You have to be able to be strong enough not to give up when your wife is ready to do so. It means that you have to be willing, in some senses, like what Jackson was saying, except for not in the physical realm, are you willing to lay down your own preferences to help your wife emotionally? And that means different things for different people because the strength of somebody's emotions will vary, but are you going to be able to comfort your wife, be strong enough for your wife, point her to Christ when everything else seems to be falling apart, or are you going to be a puddle on the ground and your wife is going to be trying to mop you up off the floor? It's important if you're going to be a leader in your home, That you're able to lead emotionally. That your feelings don't overwhelm you, but at the same time when feelings get you bogged down, that you can be the one who keeps your marriage going, looking at the map as a whole. So the emotional consideration. Then spiritually. And I think this is a fairly simple question because it doesn't just deal with marriage, but when it comes to marriage in the spiritual realm, you're asking yourself, whether or not you are ready to lead somebody spiritually. Now, again, every husband is going to say, I'm inadequate to lead my wife, because we all are, because of our sins, and we don't know as much as we should, and very often our wives are smarter than we are. That's just the reality of it. Okay, I remember when I was just newly married, and I knew from my dad teaching me that I had some responsibility to read the Bible with my wife, and to try to teach her from the Bible. Well, I realized very quickly that I didn't know nearly as much as I should about the Bible. And when Lisa would ask me questions, I would very often not know the answer. Now, that still happens at times. There are still questions that... So, I don't want you to think that if I'm going to be a husband, I need to know all the answers about the Bible all the time. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, in order to be in a position where you can lead somebody else, you have to be firmly grounded in God's Word yourself, and in your relationship with God yourself. So, are you growing in your spiritual maturity, and how can you measure that? Well, there are some different things that you can see. Are you committed or do you see in your life a desire to read God's Word every day? Do you see in yourself a desire to pray to God? Do you see in yourself a commitment to the public worship of God? Those are not necessarily things that say, I'm doing okay. Right? Because you could read hypocritically, and you could pray hypocritically, and you could go to church hypocritically. But if all of those are a joy in your life, and they're a central part of your life, then that will be an indication that there is at least the Spirit's working in you, and the Spirit's growing you in your faith. So, it's not a question about whether or not you know everything. It's a question as to whether or not you are committed to Christ. If there is one thing, well, there are several things, but one of the things that I wish I could do over in my life is I wish that as a young man, I was more serious about the church and my faith in Christ and knowing the truth of God's word. and less interested in kind of the flashing trinkets that the world tells me I should want, right? Whether it be how I look, if I have enough money in my bank account, if I'm cool enough, you know, all those things, they're not that important. But when I get to be married, I want to be ready. And so that's my challenge to you, to you young men. Think less about the things that the world tells you to think about. Think more about the things that the Lord tells you to think about. All right. Yeah. I mean, the emotional and spiritual ones are not usually exclusive, I think, more than the physical one. There are many unbelievers that I can provide for somebody, but the spirit in which they do that and all that is what you can probably examine for. But I tell you, the emotional one and the spiritual one are very different. are very closely linked because most times the emotional challenge that you'll face are fear, anxiety, you know, hey, I lost my job. So that does affect the physical, but that you're really going to start addressing the emotional at that point, but you can't do it without the spiritual, because that's where the world really starts creeping into your relationship, whenever you start dealing with those types of things, and you have to have that. foundation in order to calm the emotional storm that may be coming and you have to and your resilience in that in that instance will rely heavily on how prepared you are in a word to deal with that because you may have someone that's coming at you from an emotional standpoint and in order to remain calmed and navigate that you If you don't have the right foundation, then you're going to get sucked into that emotional rollercoaster as well. It would pump you in the pillar of the storm, if you will. That's good. If spiritually you're not right, you're probably going to have emotional issues. All right, so those are kind of things to think about for you, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, and to be working at developing them today. But I also want to think a little bit about some considerations that you just have when you're choosing a wife. Now this will be a little bit different than what the world might tell you that you should be looking for in a wife. So I want to look at 1 Peter 3 together. 1st Peter 3 and we're going to look at verses 1 through 6. Who wants to read 1st Peter 3 verse 1 through 6? Michael? Let wise wives be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a worry by conduct that they wise. when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external, and the braiding of the hair, the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women of the Holy God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, Alright, so this is a very countercultural text, obviously. So let's think about what does Peter value in a woman. Let's look first in verse 2. What are some things in verse 2 that Peter says a woman should have? Okay, so a respectful and pure conduct. What does he say in verse 4? A gentle and quiet spirit. So we have four things, respectful and pure conduct, gentle and quiet spirit. Now this is not the leading qualities that the world would put forward when it says this is what you're supposed to look for in a wife, right? The world's gonna say, find the most beautiful, physically beautiful person you can find. or find a strong woman. Being a strong woman is valued very highly right now in our culture. But what the scripture teaches here is that, well, Peter is calling women to be quiet and gentle, to be respectful and pure in their conduct. And so, does that mean it's wrong to have a beautiful wife? Certainly not. It's not wrong to have a beautiful wife. you who are husbands and those of you who will be husbands that you will think of your wife as a beautiful person. Both on the outside and on the inside. But Peter is stressing the inside. And the reason I'm mentioning this is because as guys usually we don't have to be told to look for the outside. That kind of comes naturally to us. But what I want us to do is to slow down and in some sense add a level of objectivity to our attraction. So our attractions will come naturally. But are you also, as part of your attraction, being guided by God's Word? Are you saying, is this girl, that I think is, that I'm bananas over, my heart is all aflutter about this girl, but, is she gentle and quiet in spirit? Is she respectful and pure in her conduct? And how would you learn that? How would you learn if a girl is gentle and quiet in spirit, or if she's respectful in conduct? How would you learn it? You have a survey, you have her fill out a survey. Here, here's a survey, can you fill this out? Because I want to know if I can be interested in you. By spending time with her. I don't know what it's like in your families, but in my family, the way my children behave at home is not always the same as they behave in public. There are some things that they do at home that they probably wouldn't do in public. Right? Can I fool you for an hour on Sunday that I'm a great guy? That I'm so laid back and that I'm easy going and that nothing bothers me? I bet you I can pull it off for an hour a week. Or two hours a week, I probably could. But if you spend time with me in my home, it'll be more difficult when I'm around my siblings. Because how I talk to my siblings is not how I talk to my friends. And so it's not by removing them from their natural circumstances, right? A lot of one-on-one, but it's by inserting yourself into their daily life that you see whether or not they are respectful and pure, gentle and quiet. And so I want to encourage you to spend time finding ways to discern whether or not they're respectful and pure, gentle, and quiet. Another thing I want to point out is that a Christian can never pursue a relationship with a non-Christian. Cannot do it. In Scripture, in 2 Corinthians 6, verse 14, it says that the Christian should not be... What's the phrase he uses? Does anybody know? Unequally yoked, right? So it makes the distinction that the Christian and the unbeliever do not have the essence in common. I'm paraphrasing, but... Well, let's look at it together. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 6, verse 14. Let's look at 14 and 15. Who wants to read 6 verse 14 and 15, 2 Corinthians? Go ahead, Jackson. Okay, so there is a difference between the believer and the unbeliever. It doesn't mean that unbelievers are all not nice people, that there's nothing that we can see in them that we enjoy being around them even. But the primary purpose between a believer and the unbeliever is different. And so you see that all through the Old Testament too, where God commanded the Israelites not to intermarry. Why did he command them not to intermarry? Because their wives would. Yeah. And so it's the same thing in marriage today. Although we're not Israelites, we're believers, so we're the family of faith. So when you're in the family of the faith, if you introduce an idolatry in your marriage, they're not going to point you towards Christ. Right? They're going to lead you away from Christ. So, look for these qualities in a wife and the non-negotiable, because all people will have some spectrum of where they're respectful and pure, where they're gentle and quiet. There will be a spectrum of that in everybody. But one thing that has to be non-negotiable for you as you consider, especially if some of you are going off to college, Think about, if I become attracted to a girl who is an unbeliever, I'm already off the rails. Because scripture says, do not be yoked with unbelievers. So, having an attraction to an unbeliever, you're already out of bounds. Yes? Are you going through the rest of 1 Peter 3 or not? No. Okay. Yes. You know, verse four talks about the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. You know, I would say Patrick Gleason and I and the other married men here would say we're married to beautiful women. Well, their inner beauty is going to remain whether they are 20 years old or whether they are 90 years old and beyond. And so I think we need to draw a distinction between attractiveness and beauty. Because you're going to encounter women who the world is very attractive in the world's eyes. But many of them you just talk to a little while, and you see that they're not beautiful. And they may even be repulsive to you because they are not believers. And you really want to be around them after hearing what comes out of their mouth. So that attractiveness fades. in time and in my line of work and what I do, and I'm sure Mr. Ernst, you see people who make that decision, they are unequally owed, and then after a while, that beauty talent, it fades or they're not quite as beautiful as they thought they were, or somebody else's more beautiful, or more attractive, I should say, more attractive in their eyes, catches them, and they want the latest and the greatest, and that marriage does not survive, and that's a very hard, tragic thing that has repercussions for a lot of those people. Of course, it displeases them inside of the Lord, so I was just, I wanted to point out that distinction between attractiveness and true beauty. And also I would say the inner beauty of a woman, it comes out externally as well in the exterior beauty. All right, so one thing for you guys to be thinking about is talking about not being led by your feelings when it comes to selecting your wife. You don't only want to be led by your feelings. I want you to be attracted to your wife, both inner and outer. But there should also be some objectivity in terms of what you think about. So just for review, the first one would be if she's an unbeliever, is out, so you can't proceed. If she is a believer, then you can proceed and you can look for these qualities in her. But then I also want to encourage you to talk to somebody outside of yourself. Because when you get into the intensity of a relationship like that, you're not going to always think objectively. And then one last word of caution for you young men, okay? And I fail to do this as a young man, and I know my boys will not fail to do this as young men because I won't let them. And so I want to share their misery with all of you, make you share that same misery. No, it's not misery, it's actually, it's a beautiful thing. If you are at the stage where you are emotionally, spiritually, physically able to provide for a young lady, you never pursue that relationship apart from the blessing of her father. If a dad finds out that you're, if a guy, if I find out a young man is pursuing my daughter and he's not talked to me, he's in the doghouse right at the start, okay? So if that's an area where you are wanting to go, First, talk to your parents. Also talk to the dad of the girl. Because in doing so, you are setting the foundation for a strong relationship within this new family that you're going to join to yours, if the Lord blesses your relationship in that way. And won't introduce kind of a... a disrespect. As a dad, you feel disrespected if somebody pursues your daughter without talking to you. Okay, so anything on preparing for marriage? There's much more to say about it, but we're going to move on if there are no other. Yeah. One more quick thing. Yeah. As you prepare for marriage and you're thinking or doing certain things, Try to, another way I think to determine whether you're doing the right thing is would you want your life of the future to be doing or thinking or saying the things that you're doing. Because we can be, whatever it is, it could be you're struggling with this, that, and the other, or hanging out with wrong people, or looking at this stuff you shouldn't be looking at, or physically, like you said before, you're prepared, you're physically involved in some way or whatever. Would you want your wife to be doing the things that you're doing? And sometimes that can correct your perception. Kind of as a check, you're saying. Yeah. Ask yourself that question. Yeah. Very good. Alright, so let's look at what it means to be a godly husband. We read several passages, we read 1 Peter 3, we read Ephesians 5, 22 and following, and from those passages it can be very tempting to rub our hands together with excitement because It talks a lot about the woman's responsibility to submit to us, to the husband, and all those kinds of things. And it is important to know that biblical truth because it's in scripture and as a leader in the home, that's part of your responsibility to see how that's functioning in your family. But I don't want us to dwell on that right now. What I want us to think about is not so much what should the wife be to the husband, but what should the husband be to the wife? And I think that's a more significant question for us to ask. Because in marriage, if you're going to have a healthy marriage, if your contribution to the marriage is going to be as healthy as possible, you will first need to be thinking about your responsibilities, and your sins, and not your wife's, okay? If you get into a situation in your marriage where you're constantly thinking about her sins, and her shortcomings, and her failings, you're gonna be unhappy, because just like you, she will have enough things that need to be fixed in her life that you could be busy full-time trying to fix your wife. But the question that's more significant, which is much more possible for you to control, are your sins, and your shortcomings, and your failings. So, I want us to read our own mail today. I don't want us to read about the wife and her responsibilities. I want to read about the husband. God wrote to the husband and to the wife. Certainly each of them has application for us as husbands as we try to read. But I want us to read primarily the mail that God sent to us when he talks to the man. And so, in Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 25, that's where he addresses. husband. And just right at the beginning it says, So the primary assignment that God gives to the husband is to love his wife. The primary responsibility that God gives to the wife is to respect the husband. It doesn't mean that the wife isn't supposed to love you. It doesn't mean that you're not supposed to respect your wife. But he leads with loving your wife. That's the primary responsibility. Now love is a bit of a It's a little bit of a nebulous word, isn't it? It's hard to pin down exactly what love is in human relationships. But one thing that's obvious is that to say you love somebody is not the same thing as actually loving somebody, right? To say that you love somebody has to be translated into action for it to have any meaning at all. Right? I could say to my wife, I love you, but if I never talk to her, or I never interact with her, I just love the idea of her, then I'm not really loving her, I'm loving my own idea of my wife. And so, Ephesians 5 gives us a bit of a clearer picture of what this love is supposed to look like. And what's the picture that Ephesians 5 gives to us when it comes to our love? It's right there in the first verse. Husbands are to love their wives, and it gives us a model. What's the model? As Christ loves the church. How did Christ love the church? It also says that in there. He sacrificed himself for her. Gave himself up for her. Okay? Now, this was an idea that I had never thought about when I was first married. When I was first married, what really happened in my marriage, I think, and Mrs. Gleeson's not here to contradict me, so it's all okay, but what I think happened was, we both were Christians. We both were Christian people. But we were Christian people who came together as individuals. So she had her ideas, and Ahai had my ideas, and we kind of lived side by side. And if she didn't do what I wanted, I became offended, and if I didn't do what she wanted, she would become offended. And for the most part, our arguments in the early part of our marriage, and they still raise their ugly heads at times, but this topic would be the primary source of our arguments. The primary source of our arguments was Who is doing more work in the home? That's what we would fight about. Why am I doing more than you? Now, I found out afterwards that this is not an uncommon argument in marriages, right? And the funny thing is that if you have somebody in a marriage counseling situation and you say, okay, the tension is he's not pulling his weight or she's not pulling his weight. You know what the funny thing is? Both sides of the marriage will say the same thing. Both sides of the marriage will think that they're doing more than the other person. Okay, so now I'm not thinking about what the wife is doing in this circumstance, but I'm asking us as men, what are we doing in our marriage? Are we willing to lay down ourselves to serve our wife in our marriage? Are we willing to forsake all that we think we're entitled to to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. And that was a brand new idea. I remember still where I was, I heard it, I was listening to a talk on marriage, and the person who was giving the talk said, guys, how did Christ love the church? Well, he laid down his life for the church. He forsook glory for the church. He hung on the cross for the church. He suffered from the moment he was born until the time when he was raised from the dead. He suffered humiliation for the church. And so the question for us, the question that this man confronted me with, was, are you living that way in your marriage? And I wasn't, and I knew it. I knew I wasn't living that way in my marriage. And so, we as husbands have to be asking ourselves if we're loving our wives with the intensity and the self-sacrifice, if we're loving our wives with the intensity that Christ loved us, of the church, and whether or not we are forsaking ourselves, sacrificing ourselves, laying ourselves down as Christ loves the church. And so in those moments, it becomes less significant if our wife is submitting to us. I'm not saying it's unimportant. But our primary responsibility is to find out if we are loving our wives in the way that God calls us to love our wives. And so the model for a husband in loving his wife is to love her as Christ loved the church. I want to point something out about this passage. This is a unique relationship that Paul's describing. Paul's not describing your relationship with all females on the planet. He's not. He's not asking you to sacrificially, in the same way, sacrificially love every woman on the planet. He's asking you to love your wife in this way. And likewise, on the flip side, God's not asking wives to submit themselves, or women to submit themselves to every man that they find. but specifically to their husband. Now, there are other passages of scripture that address male and female roles and responsibilities in the church, and those have to be considered, but you should not expect somebody else's wife to submit to you as she submits to her husband, because God hasn't called her to do that. Okay, so there's a unique relationship that's being described here. But what God asks in this unique relationship is that we lay ourselves down for our wives as Christ laid himself down for the church. Now why do you think God would give us that responsibility? Why do you think God would have to tell men to love their wives sacrificially as Christ loved the church? Let's think about, first, why would he have to tell you that as a man? Is that your first inclination? Am I the only one who's willing to own up that I'm selfish by nature? That I want my own way? That I want my wife to make things comfortable for me? So that's one reason. The one reason is resident in my heart because of my sin. Why would he have to tell you to love your wife because of her? Why would he have to tell you to love your wife in light of her contribution to the relationship? Yeah, now you're thinking about you. I'm asking you, why would he have to tell you about your wife that you have to love her? Yeah, because she's not always lovable, right? She's not always, she's not always, she's not always going to do the things that you want or the things that you like. She's going to say things that are hurtful to you. She's going to do things that are hurtful to you. And so God gives this instruction to love your wife because your wife will always be lovable and lovely. And so the model again is Christ in the church. Christ, yes sir? So that's how you lead, by how you help the other people who are watching you. So they will emulate what you do. So if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you're showing the example of what she's supposed to be doing. So the rest of the sentence is in order that you sanctify her, present her blameless. So you can tell somebody how to live all day long, But just like you said, I can tell somebody I love them, but you have to make it come out in actions. It's not just words. So I can say, something happens. You can pull this open and read a passage, and you might just get a contemptuous, spiteful response. Or because you don't live that way, it's easy to, in a moment, pull out the Bible and beat somebody over the head with it. But if you're not, If you're not living and demonstrating and giving them the example, then you don't have any credibility, I guess, if you will. And someone is less likely to follow you or listen to you if you don't have that credibility. That's absolutely true. Because if you are not living it, fulfilling your role, then that glad submission is not going to be there because the trust is not going to be there. And I think because of that reason, We need to be as consistent as we can possibly be. Because if you make mistakes, it's hard to get back to where you were. You can get there, but it may take a while. You have to be the standard person. Yep. Absolutely. Very good. Anything else? All right. So this is theory. It's doctrine. It's biblical. But to talk about it in a group like this is a lot easier than implementing it. So I want you to be ready. I don't want you to, and I want to remind us as husbands. So if you're not a husband yet, you will be a husband one day. If you are a husband now, I want to remind you that God doesn't say or promise that this will be easy. Some days you will not feel like doing it. Some days you will say in the weakness of your flesh, I just want to do what I want to do. But that's the significance of bathing yourself in God's word now already, right? And daily being in that process of being bathed by God's word that you would be shaped not by your own desires, when you get off the rails that you can return in repentance, but you need to be thinking biblically and not according to your feelings. So, as we deal with our own sins, as we deal with the sins of our wives, We will have to practice this. We will be in the practice of being a godly husband. Now, I want to give us some practical helps that will focus us. Jackson said, if you get off the rails, it is hard to get back. It's not impossible to get back, but it's hard to get back. And so it's much easier to maintain something than to try to clean it up when it's overgrown with weeds. How many of you have ever seen a house that has fallen into ruins? Maybe you're driving down some country road and you see this house and there's vines growing all over it, right? And the roof's collapsed, and the door's off the hinges, and the windows are all broken. What would be easier? Would it have been easier to maintain that house a little bit over the years or to now come in and fix everything and clean it up in the condition that it's in now? It's easier to maintain it. It doesn't seem like it in the moment maybe. And maybe some days you don't feel like changing the air filters in your house. But you'll prefer to change your air filters than your furnace or your air conditioning unit. And so it's the same thing in marriage. These are some things that we can do. They're not the only things. These are some things that have been helpful to me that help me maintain my marriage with my wife. So the first thing is to set apart daily time to connect with your wife. And the reason I say that is because you never go from being in a happy and strong relationship on Monday to being falling apart and have nothing in common on Tuesday. It doesn't happen overnight. There is a gradual disconnect that happens when you fail to intentionally interact with your wife, to intentionally pursue your wife Beyond exciting and special times, just the daily connecting with your wife. Simple things. How was your day? What do we have on the schedule today as a family? Hey, you mentioned to me that you were having trouble with our little angel Johnny, right? Okay, well, how's that going? Is there something that I need to be doing to help you in this way? Find out the things that she's interested in. Talk about the common interests that you have. Play a game together. Don't be on your smartphone. Put your smartphone down. Don't even look at it. Spend about 15 minutes talking to each other. It should be something that is joyful. to you, to have a regular time to talk and go out to dinner together, to focus uniquely on your wife. And that means that in those moments, you should not include your children. And you might say, oh, my children, they're my joy and they're my... Nope. You're not married to your children. You're not going to be married. Your children are all going to leave your house one day, and if they don't, you're going to be miserable, right? The goal is to get your children out of your house. But your wife, you don't ever want to get her out of your house. And so you don't want to be, after 20 years when your children are grown and gone, looking at this person that you have nothing in common with anymore because you haven't kept up with her. So keep up with your wife, pursue her on a regular basis without the involvement of your children. So if you're having time with your wife at home and your children come up to you and say, daddy, daddy, daddy, this, that, and the other, you say, no, I'm talking with mom right now. I'll talk to you in a minute. I'll be with you in a minute. You go play your toys. I'm talking with mom right now. Make sure you take your wife out of the circumstance of being a mom and remind her that she's your wife. That means sometimes you remove her from her role as a mom by taking her out of it and leaving the children at home. You can rely on your church family for that, for babysitting. You can rely on your On your natural family, if you have grown children, leave them at home with the other children. And if you come home and the house isn't burnt down and there are no holes in the drywall, it's a win. Okay? It'll be well worth whatever repairs you have to make to your physical house if your marriage house remains strong. Okay? So pursue your wife. Pursue your wife regularly. Then protect your relationship in the subtle areas before your separation is full-blown. Okay? So, little sins lead to big sins. That's the point I'm making. Okay? So you protect yourself in little sins so that you don't end up in the big sins. Has anybody ever seen anything about how a rock can be split by a weed? Like a little weed grows on the top of a rock, and the root goes down into a crack. And as that root expands, that part of the rock cracks. And then the root has more room to bore down into the rock, and it cracks some more. So that eventually, a big strong rock can be reduced to nothing because of one little weed. And the same thing is true in your marriage. If you engage in little sins and you think, well this is just a little sin, it doesn't really matter. Then the big sins will become easier. Let me give you one practical example. and it has to do with finances, it's fairly benign. Say you are budgeting together in your family. And my dad has taught me this lesson, he told it so I don't think he minds sharing it. But my dad, when they were first married, they had a limited budget, but there were times when he wanted to buy some things that they really couldn't afford. And so what he would do is he would buy it, he would put it in the trunk of his car, And then after a while, he would pull it out and put it in the house. And if he was asked, when did you get this? He could say, well, I've had it for a long time already. So it's a greatly deceptive scheme. I'm not recommending this strategy. What I'm saying is, if you're willing to practice that kind of dishonesty in your marriage you'll be much more willing to tell the whopper later, right? You'll be much more willing to be deceptive in greater areas later. If you're willing to deceive over a little thing, like purchasing some items that maybe were beyond what you had budgeted as a couple, which you shouldn't do. You shouldn't do the little thing, not only because it will lead to the bigger thing, but because the little thing is wrong in itself. But if you're willing to practice little sins, you will be willing to practice larger sins. And so that has implications for physical purity in terms of what you're thinking about, what you're looking at. It has to do with if you're willing to separate yourself emotionally from your wife for a short time, how do you handle arguments? Well, then you're gonna be willing to separate yourself in a larger scale as well. So don't allow subtle sins or smaller sins to creep in. So that separation will not be full-blown later, or the sin won't have its full root later. I thought I saw you. Okay. So, the call of scripture is to love your wife as Christ loved the church and laid himself down for her. When you're first getting to know your wife, This is not a problem. Isn't that right, guys? When you first fall in love with this girl, it's not hard to pursue her. Because that's all you want. I remember, maybe I've told you this story before, but I remember when Lisa and I first began to be serious about each other. And I lived in one part of town, she lived in another part of town. I knew that if I were to go to her house, Mr. Zegers, my father-in-law, would kick me out at 10 o'clock. He would say, out, 10 o'clock is late enough, you're going home. She lived about a 10-minute drive from my house and from where I work. I work just down the street from where I lived. I would work until 9.30. At 9.30, 9.35 is how fast I could get out of the parking lot, I would get in my car, I would drive 10 minutes to go to her house, I'd get there at quarter to 10, just so I could have 15 minutes with her. That's what I wanted. I was pursuing her. It was not hard. I didn't mind paying the gas. I didn't mind the travel time. I didn't mind the inconvenience. I didn't mind the humiliation of Mr. Zegers telling me to get out of his house at 10 o'clock. I was willing to put up with all of that in order to spend time with her, to pursue her. Well, that's the kind of pursuit I want to see us having today, too. Guys, if we're married, we should be maintaining our pursuit of our wife. And the way you do that is by not allowing small sins to enter into your marriage, by keeping up daily relationships with her, and to come to the marriage with an idea that I'm to love my wife sacrificially, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Okay, anything on marriage? We've got to wrap it up? But I have one more thing that I want to say. We're already eight minutes over time. All right, so I want to say one quick thing about the sanctity of marriage, and that has to deal with divorce. Divorce is completely accepted in our culture. Most people don't ask any questions about divorce at all. But I want to think biblically, The Bible doesn't forbid divorce in all circumstances. So, for example, if you look at a place like Matthew 19, verse 3 through 9, it talks about divorce. Jesus is teaching there, and he says, the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And that's kind of the practice that we have in our culture. And Jesus answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. But therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? He said to them, because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." So Jesus' view of divorce is that it's only permissible when it comes to sexual immorality. There's another passage of scripture that has a bearing on the topic of divorce. It's 1 Corinthians 7. 1 Corinthians 7 deals with the unbeliever who wants to divorce from a Christian. In verses 12 through 16, if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if an unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband, or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?" So here, it talks about the unbelieving partner separating. unbelieving partner refusing to fulfill his marriage vows, sometimes it's called abandonment. The spouse leaves and refuses to perform his marital obligations. And in that case, the Bible says the Christian is not under an obligation. Now, you might point out this is talking about a Christian married to an unbeliever. It still has bearing on what happens in a Christian church because of the practice of church discipline. If a believing man or a believing woman separates herself from her husband and refuses to be reconciled to him, that should begin the process of church discipline. And if she remains or he remains unrepentant in their sin, it should lead to the church declaring in the final analysis that this person is not a believer. So then you're back to the marriage between a believer and an unbeliever. So divorce, everybody in the world, I mean, anybody in the culture, everybody who's non-Christian in the United States of America, and even many Christians, will not see any problem with divorce. But we need to think biblically, and we need to think, what has Christ, what does the word of God teach us about divorce? And the word of God teaches us that it is not to be practiced. There are two circumstances where it's permissible. I want to point out those are areas where it's permissible, not mandatory. I think the preference always is to be working out our differences, peaceably forgiving each other, even as God in Christ forgave us. Okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. I went over time. I apologize for that. Any final comments? Jackson. I think it's important to remember that marriage and these verses we looked at are not isolated in Scripture. Scripture begins with A marriage ends with a marriage. And the language of that covenant adultery, of marriage, of using that as an illustration, husband and wife, Christ and the Church, is woven all throughout Scripture. Yeah, very good. Now you think of the prophet Hosea, you know? That's right, yeah. It's very, very important. And he made male and female in marriage. That was the illustration that he chose to use. And so that's something that's very foremost in the mind of God. Young guys, talk to your parents about this. Talk to your dad about this more. Develop this in your own life. Guys, let's not forget where we are, where we are in our marriage. Let's stay on track. Look at the map every once in a while instead of just listening to the GPS. And let's pray together or pray as individuals also that God would bless our marriages in that way. So let's pray and we can go.