Good morning, we're gonna get started our adult Bible study But we have a handout is as usual. We're in first Peter and by happy coincidence. We're going to talk about submission within a marriage on Mother's Day I mean, yeah, just how it worked out. So we'll see how far I get with that. So we're in 1 Peter 3, but I'm gonna start back in Genesis. I think we need to lay some groundwork for what Peter's dealing with when we get to 1 Peter 3, and he addresses very briefly wives and husbands and some different exhortations he has for them. So Genesis chapter one, God makes a decision to create the universe and He creates everything. We say ex in the helo, He speaks into existence. And he makes a very important statement for us about humanity. It's in verse 26. He said, let us make man or make humanity in our own image, okay, in our image. That becomes a bedrock principle throughout Scripture, which impacts how we treat other people. And if we think of other people as something less than in God's image, then that tends to free us up do a lot of evil. After He says, let us make humanity in our image, He says, they, humanity, will rule the fish of the sea. He ain't been fishing with me. But in theory, right? And they'll rule the fishes of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth. So God created man in His own image. He created him in the image of God. He created them male and female. And bless them. He tells them in verse 28, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. So, this is sometimes we might call it the divine mandate. It's the general command to humanity to subdue the planet. What does that mean? Like what is, when you think of that, because we do lots of things on this planet that seem to be a bad idea, right? If you go on the website for Texas Parks and Wildlife, it will exhort you not to eat the fish that you can catch in Texas more than like one or two ounces at a time because it's full of mercury. Right, which should be troubling to us. So did we take dominion of the planet by polluting the rivers and lakes so that we can't eat the fish? Is that what it's telling us to do? It's just to use the resources there. But of course, in a way that's not perverted. Yeah, yeah, right. You said use the resource, but in a way that's not perverted. It would seem there's a command that comes along with this, an idea of conservation and stewardship at the same time. And so there's some balance. And it's something we may dig deeper into another time, but just understand this. It's like it's how to breathe. And it's like it's how to rotate a rock. Well, right, so that's a good example. Like with the Israelites, he teaches them how to rotate the crops and things. When you read early American history, when most of the people, particularly in Virginia, were tobacco farmers, it ruined the land. The crop rotation wasn't done at all. Yeah, it's much later in time. But we can look at all kinds of ways in which Dominion has been perverted. And this comes into this area of marriage as well, unfortunately, where people have distorted what the Bible will say to give them dominion. So we'll see that in a minute. But there's a divine mandate, and it seems that when he creates Adam and Eve, which are referenced in chapter one, but he really gives you the detail in chapter two, That's their job, like he gives them this command, go be fruitful and multiply and take dominion. And I think some of the positive ways we could think of taking dominion, it's interesting, he mentioned you'll have a dominion over the creatures that crawl on the earth, the insects and things. When did we get dominion over the mosquitoes? Fire ants What certainly right so Adam is is charged with Exercising care of the garden. He fails miserably and we know the story and we'll see that Genesis 3 But just understand, you know that there is a positive sense of taking a dominion it took a long time in this country and In the medical profession to convince people that yellow fever and malaria was spread by mosquitoes I mean there were smart doctors who had figured it out, and they'd done studies But everybody was so convinced that it was caused by vapors that come out of you know tepid water They just wouldn't believe what was said. And it shows how a lie can become institutional, usually by much repeating. But the positive sense of taking dominion was getting to a point where they had at least not gotten rid of malaria, but made great strides, they got rid of yellow fever altogether for a long time. That's a positive sense of taking dominion, of lessening the impact of the curse. There's the negative sense when we just, you know, take down rainforests and destroy ecosystems, things like that. So it's all here, but science and medicine and those kinds of things the mandate. I mean these are good things. It's weird for a Christian to be against science or advances in medicine when that's really part of the mandate here. So, this mandate is going along good I think for eight months or so. Probably not too much longer because Adam and Eve haven't had a baby in the garden before the whole thing. Just, you know, it's a train wreck. But when you look in Chapter 2, 2 and verse 8 of Genesis, God planted a garden in the east and He placed the man there that He had formed. And then go up to about verse 15, the Lord God took the man, placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it, which is what Katie had mentioned earlier about him having a job. I thought he just didn't have to work at all, right? He Yeah, but he has to work. And the Lord commanded the man, you're free to eat from any of the tree of the garden, but you can't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then verse 19, He formed out of the ground every wild animal, every bird, brought each of them to the man to see what he would call it. Why on earth would God ask Adam to give names to these animals? And I'm assuming they weren't Latin names like we have now. But why? Why would he have them name them? To take dominion, that's it. That's the first reason, right? And in the Bible, the concept of naming something sort of is an exercise of dominion. That's why you'll see instances of God changing names, Abram to Abraham. But there's one other reason. Adam is looking at these animals and he sees some bovine, he sees some chickens, some monkeys, different kinds of monkeys, maybe some dinosaurs, maybe some crocodiles. He don't want to marry any of them. See, they all correspond. God is showing him also a lesson, they correspond, and he ain't found anybody that corresponds to him. that's part of the lesson. And so God then makes from His DNA, the old King James from His rib, but it's His DNA so He will be, Eve will be in likeness to Him. And He makes the first woman. So, the man, that's Adam. Adam is just the Hebrew word for man. The man gave names to all the livestock and the birds of the sky. I'm assuming he spoke good English. I don't know. What do you think? Right? I mean southern English, not like, you know, not Canadian for sure. I don't know about it. But you understand, we don't even know what language he's speaking. But Adam is created with mental faculties that are in place already. You know, the mainstream view of this is that we, you know, humanity over thousands of years developed the ability to write and the ability to communicate verbally. The Bible's version is he's created with a language and he can speak it already. Those languages will change later. But the point is, Adam, by carbon dating, he's a day old, but he's already smart, educated, He's been designed to take dominion of the planet. He has all the resources already to begin to do that. He names the animals, and it says, but for the man, no helper was found corresponding to him. So God makes this woman. He knocks Adam out, takes some DNA from him, makes the woman, and he can recognize that unlike the chickens, the crocodiles, and all those other animals he looked at, this one is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. This one will be called woman, as she was taken from man. And in this, verse 24, the marriage passage that Jesus will quote. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, they become one flesh. That's more than physical that is something God does, something somewhat mystical He does. In His mind one plus one is one, that kind of thing. Both the man and his wife were naked yet felt no shame. Now Adam did a sorry job of garden to garden. He And a snake gets in there, as we know, and there's all kind of debate about how exactly that works. And I've had people tell me, well, snakes can't get in trees. You've got to come over to my house. I had some copperheads fall out of a tree a third of a foot up there. So, you know, and snakes can't talk. That's true. Snakes can't talk. But we see animals talking in other places in Scripture. But this snake, who you're told in the book of Revelation is actually Satan, talks to her and deceives her into eating from the one tree in the garden that was prohibited. All the other thousands of trees were there, and they were plentiful, and they were available. but she wanted the one. That basis for malcontent is still with us to this day. God can say, here's all the blessings you have, and it's just never enough. And so we know what she did. After that, God pronounced as part of this what we call the curse. And I just want to focus in on verse 16. He said, to the woman, I will intensify your labor pains. You'll bear children with painful effort. I think this is a, kind of a euphemism. It's not that the childbirth would be painful. I suspect that would have been true without the fall. It's what happens in the next chapter where one of her children kills the other. It's looking at the whole matter of having children, which should have just been a matter of joy, but now it's also because of sin gonna bring pain. But then he adds, your desire will be for your husband, not because he's hot. This expression, expression. Yet men look at this and they read it in a dumb way. That's not what it's saying. It'll say the same thing in the next chapter. I think it's in chapter 4 about Satan having desire for us. The desire is to control and manipulate. She's going to have a desire as a wife to control and manipulate her husband, which is something important before we get to 1 Peter. I don't want to take his place. He just wants, in the flesh nature, in the sin nature, is to have him be a marionette, right? To use an old word, right? Puppet with strings. Pull little strings and... She's the head, she's the neck. Maybe. and the mouth, right? If she can get away with it. Now, this isn't a statement about what all women in fact do. It's a statement about what the sin nature produces. And in the same context, yet he will rule or dominate over you. And where men have read this wrong is that first, she's just gushing over how handsome you are. Why would that have anything to do with the curse? I guess that's beyond, it's beyond dumb. But then you're in charge, not what he's saying. He's saying because of a sin nature, wives are going to want to exercise control. And because of that same sin nature, husbands are going to want to dominate. This is a problem, right? You can have an odd number of people and have a vote, but when there's an even number of people, there can be a gridlock. And if there's just two people, what do you do then? Well, I tell you what you ain't going to do is have a vote. So maybe there's some room for manipulation. So with that backdrop, marriage for the Christian is supposed to be a place not where those things are gone. Sin has not been, and I mean sin nature, it's not been eradicated. Paul's very clear about that in Romans. But what he says is for the Christian, it's no longer reigning over us. Sin nature should not be on the throne of our life, but we can make that choice And and so the marriage is supposed to be one of those places where we could see Something of what the original marriage should have been without the sin nature except that we still got the sin nature to deal with and so Peter is dealing with this matter of marriage and briefly in 1 Peter 3, and with this kind of background from Genesis I think we can understand what He's going to say. Now, He had said in chapter 2 that, He said a lot in chapter 2, but one of the things He had said was to submit to human authority, chapter 2 verse 13. And then in verse 18 that household slaves, or in some translations household servants, were should submit to their masters. He's still talking about submission, and he's going to continue talking about submission in one way or another throughout the rest of the book. But he will say in chapter 3 in the same way. You start off in chapter 3, the first words. either likewise or in the same way. He's saying like in the same way as what? In the same way as I just said to submit to human government. In the same way that I said to submit slave to master. In that same way. And he's going to speak to the wives and then look in verse 7. Husbands in the same way. So he's going to have something for the husbands that's to mirror the submission to the government and the masters, the slave masters, from chapter two. So that's important to see that. He's going to have six verses for the wives and one for the husband. I don't know why. I know Peter was married. And I think what he's going to say reflects writing is a married man. He has more to say and something different to say than what Paul says about wives and husbands in Ephesians 5. So in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands. This doesn't say for women to submit to men. And when he gets to what the husbands are going to, he's going to tell them, he's not directing them about something toward all women. It's just toward their wives. This is a very narrow focus. Submit to your husbands, and we're going to back up in a minute and say, well, what does submission look like? But he has the idea that there might be a result. He also has the idea, and I don't know where he got this, where he heard the rumor, but apparently somewhere some Christian woman married a man that don't act very Christian. He may be a Christian, and he may not. He doesn't act the way a Christian ought to act. And Peter's heard the rumor and he says, you know be submissive to your own husbands So that even if they disobey the Word of God, okay, if they're wayward, they don't do what God tells them to do They may not even do what God tells them to do in first Peter 3 verse 7 Where he's talking about how husband I'll treat a wife. He says the submission so that even if they disobey the Word They may be won over without a word by the way their wives live when they observe your pure, reverent lives. So let me just stop there. Let's deal with the submit part first. And we've said this before. Submit doesn't equal obey, but sometimes obey is a part of submitting or subjecting yourself to human government. We make a decision as we the people, some of us have, to drive the speed limit, things like that. Within a workplace, we make a decision to submit to the boss. He's in charge, even though maybe he's a grouch or whatever the problem is. But it's not always obey. It sounds like you're choosing to do what they say or what they expect of you. You are choosing but you have a mindset that in Peter talked about this in chapter 2 that what you're doing You're recognizing God's authority his Right to rule this planet in the way he pleases and in Paul picks up on that same idea So the idea is is that this has to do really with being submission submissive to God but but let's talk about What the opposite of being submissive? It doesn't mean obey and we'll talk about a couple of examples maybe of when you shouldn't submit. But what does it mean to not submit? In other words, what would be the total opposite? And let's be specific. What are the ways a wife might be not submissive? And the husbands, you better be careful raising your hands. But what would be a way? And this is why I read Genesis 3, because what did it say would be the flesh nature she would have? Yeah. In what? Yeah, but if she wants to control him, if that's what God is saying there, her desires for him, And he uses that later when he says, Satan's desires for you, sin lies at the door. It's the idea of controlling. So how do you control other people? Manipulation. That's the key, right? Coercion, right? Coercion can be done in a lot of ways, right? Coercion by force, you know, blackmail, extortion, different things. Lots of ways to coerce. Manipulates very similar. Okay, how can she do it? What might be some ways that a wife could coerce or... Well, what did Joseph Bell do with Paul? Right, right. She totally controlled him and that's a good point, right? The Bible actually has, you know, what we might call the bad girls of the Bible. We don't usually do sermon series on them. We don't want to give anybody any ideas. But they're there. And I always think of that, the one that took the guy into the tent and put a stake through his head. Thinking like, She got no dates after that. Right. And she manipulated other people to get that. And I'm going in my notes. I wanted to find on, I admit to print out this page. I had listed out a few of these just from my own, trying to come up with a list. Let's see here. By the way, I called this in the home training, not because the husband and wife are to train each other. Uh, I wanted to suggest that, that, that God trains us in the workplace on how to be godly there. He trains us in the home, how to be godly there. And I had suggested last time that we'd be wary of, of always thinking that if things aren't just peachy, that I should bolt and run without thinking about, well, maybe God has something he's doing here. I made a list. This wasn't exhaustive, but just tell me, maybe you think of this. Manipulating the husband through her emotions, a guilt trip, passive aggressive behavior. We've coined a term, the silent treatment. The husband says, what's wrong? What does the wife say? Nothing. OK. Now, the newlywed believes her. The man who's been married for a while knows how to translate. Fine doesn't mean fine. Nothing doesn't mean nothing. Right? Arbitrary ultimatums. Turning on the tears. Being impossible to please, these are all examples of my number one. Using and withholding sex to manipulate them, well, that never happens. Men can't do that though, right? Think about this. I've got a list here, but men can do all of these. Making key decisions without the husband's input. A lot of men have ended up with redone bathrooms in pink this way. Using aggression to get her way. That really happens. I mean, you know, micromanaging her husband's life. I knew someone that I'm just curious. I kid you not. He just couldn't hardly talk to another person without her permission. May include prying questions, constant phone calls, text messages. Always complaining or criticizing, but never encouraging or praising. Undermining his decisions, being the cool parent, saying yes when he said no, maybe. Openly engaging in flirtatious speech and behavior toward other men, making sure he knows she's doing it. That happen? This is just what people do to manipulate. And again, I can come up with a list of things the men do, and that's not, that's not the point. I think men can do all of these things, but the opposite of this being subject to, which has some exceptions we'll talk about, but the opposite is being manipulative in this sense, which is not, okay, the marriage was supposed to be two people that are different, but correspond by design. Different doesn't mean one is superior to the other, it means different. Now where Christians have messed up is we take certain stereotypes, go hunting, women don't. And we make those the biblical differences and those are false. The Bible doesn't support that. And then our culture makes the same stereotypes and starts telling you if a boy that's two or three years old puts on one of his older sister's dresses he must think he's a girl. This is nonsense. But we are different but correspond. Making comparison of your husband to other men. and then unrealistic expectations setting a bar he can't meet. I've been asked to do a number of marriage counseling things where ultimatums are there and they can't be met. And you know, I'm just telling you, so those are some ways. You can come up with some more. But these are things that are the opposite of what he's saying. And sometimes it's easier to see things in the opposite, being subject to versus wanting to be the one pulling the strings. The reality of the marriage is neither the husband or wife should be pulling strings. And when they are, it's not a healthy marriage. But what about the exception? Like when is it right to not be subject to, to not put yourself subject to? One of the weird things that's happened, and I've read a number of books of this, and I found it interesting, a lot of what was shared were you know, real accounts of things people have gone through. Within very conservative, theologically conservative churches, the teaching is often fairly strong about the submissive stuff, and you should never get a divorce. And what happens is when a woman's in a marriage where something's happening that should not be happening, and she should not be subject to that, She will go and try to seek some help or some advice, and she's really just told to just stick it out. You've got to be submissive to him. No. No. And it's just bad advice. When he's an abuser, you know what the big problem is with the abuser when it comes to getting advice from other people? And sometimes the abusers, the female, I gave you a list of things they can do. Those are abusive things. They are master manipulators. You study pedophiles, they're master manipulators too. They're always the person no one thought it could be. They do a masterful job of infiltrating churches and convincing everybody that they would be the last person that would be a pedophile or an abusive spouse. I had this years ago in a Sunday school class I taught. It was a little larger than this and it didn't, it didn't, the cycle didn't break until she was in a hospital and just darn near died. But the advice is always, well, you gotta be submissive and you can't leave him. And I'll just tell you, I've had some of those phone calls before and I'm like, pack up all your stuff, go. If you're gonna stay, he's got guns, go get rid of him. Now, I mean, you know, there's just, but, but, but, but people have this, this weird thing. And then what happens is the, the, the pastor or whoever's giving the advice calls the abusive husband and gets totally convinced that he's just totally innocent. And I'm not saying that couldn't happen. It could. Um, but often it's, it's just, he's a master manipulator. That's why she stays with him. He's always sorry after the fact. And now you're being just as foolish as her in being beguiled and then telling her to go and get beat some more. That's not scripture. Yeah, I can tell you how you confront them. First, you get her out of the house. And you arrange for a safe house. And it may be someone else in the church. And you don't go tell a bunch of people. Whole point of being a safe house is you don't know. Second, you help her get an attorney and get a restraining order. Third, you try to get her talked into pressing charges for the abuse. Okay. Abusers, well first of all, pedophiles almost never stop their behavior. That's just a scientific fact. You read the studies, it's almost unheard of. I mean true pedophiles, okay. Abusers in a marriage, abusive men, abusive women, almost never stop their behavior. And you've got to start from that premise. But the reason is the same reason a lot of little children throw tantrums at the grocery store. They've never had consequences. And telling her to go and be more submissive and maybe you'll win them over and quote in 1 Peter 3 is exactly what he's trying to manipulate you to tell her. It's enabling. So what about the marriage where the husband is a human tick? You know what a tick is, right? When does the tick leave the dog? Well, the dog dies, right? Or runs out of blood, which is the same, right? And it's been said, and it's true, a lot of marriages are two ticks, and they figure out in the marriage there's not a dog. But when there is a dog, they're not going to leave. And I've watched real marriages in real churches where he's a tick. And what I mean by that is you've got a man that either never works or he's always looking for work. Every job lasts three or four months. They're mean to him. And when they come counseling to me and I say, why don't you get a job and hold it and man up, they get mad at me. But that's the problem. They've been coddled so long. But I've watched women work two jobs to provide enough liquor so he can live his whole life in a bottle. And he's a tick. And well, you just got to be submissive to him. You don't. Giving an alcoholic who's killing himself slowly and treats you like garbage more liquor is not being a good Christian. And it's not the submission that he's talking about. It becomes apparent when we read the next couple of verses. So I'm just saying, I can come up with real examples of things I've seen in churches with real people all day long. And you probably can too. And we need to be careful. It's broader than whether, you know, is it a sin for him to say, will you stop and pick me up at six pack of beer? No, in isolation. He's an alcoholic and he beats you every time he gets drunk. Now it's a problem. And I think as soon as you or your children's safety are in question, including psychological safety, you need to get out the house. It's the same thing. There has to be consequences for her behavior. She'll never change. And I've seen it. You know, you almost can't make this stuff up. Talk to a man and, you know, she slept with other men while they were engaged. Had a little tryst at her own bachelorette party. Now you're, but you thought it would stop when you got married. Why? I don't know why you would think it would stop, but it was used to, she used her having affairs to manipulate her husband. Like these things really happen and it goes both ways. And you don't have to, you take that. I have taught a Sunday school class where I know for a fact that this guy would come in all polished up on Sunday morning, then he would leave and go to his prostitute immediately after church. Okay? And post a picture with her on Facebook instead of with his wife. You've got to do a lot of manipulation to get a woman to a point where she will take that. And it's hard to break away. And I'm not making light of that. What I am saying is too often the response of a theologically conservative church has been to do the very thing that feeds the abuser's ability to continue. Because there's not immediate harsh consequences. And until there's harsh consequences, there will be no change. And even with it, there may be no change. But we've got to keep people safe. And we don't tell people, we don't send an abused woman and some children right back into the hell hole. We get them to a safe place. Now, sometimes they're not willing to do that. And you can't change that. But you keep a door open. So, okay, so that's a lot of background, but I wanted you to understand that it's real important because you can get these verses out of balance and give some really bad advice. So he tells her, your behavior may win over a wayward husband. This is not continuing to be a punching bag, hoping he'll stop. This is demonstrating holy character, and that's contagious, and it influences people. And this is the positive way you can be a good influence. And there's a lot, a lot of people in this world, a lot of men, men in ministry, who would reflect back, and it wasn't their father who was the example. that really guided their life. It was their mother, which is one of the reasons we have Mother's Day, make a big deal about it. My own pastor, anytime he would talk about his own testimony, the most influential, godly influential presence in his life was his mother. She's the reason he came to Christ, the reason he devoted himself the last 60 years to ministry. And she was fatally died in a car wreck when he was 16 and impacted his whole life. But we underestimate the influence that anybody can have when they demonstrate godly character before other people. But if the marriage is another classroom where God teaches us, he can use the husband to teach the wife and the wife to teach the husband. And right now he's talking about the wife teaching the husband. So verse three. Don't let your beauty consist of outward things like elaborate hairstyles, wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes, but rather what's inside the heart. Your heart is your immaterial person, the seed of your emotion, your intellect, what in the plain English people might call the soul. I don't use the word soul that way, but in our common English language, the soul or the mind is separate from our body, separate from our brain, and it's the seed of our emotions. God's beauty test isn't one with her gold and her fancy hair and her fancy clothes. This does not say she can't wear makeup, can't wear a nice outfit, and can't have nice hair. This is one of those ways, again, where people, their legalism comes in and they want to take it and change it. Can you think of an example in Scripture of someone who's held up as godly and has nice hair, nice clothes, and nice jewelry? Go back to the Old Testament. Well, yeah, I was thinking of a female though. You're right, you're really close to who I had in mind. What was King Solomon? Well, Esther's a good example, right? But King Solomon writes a book called The Song of Solomon. Shulamit's his wife in the book. I think she's probably fictional, but she's extolled as this wonderful wife, and he goes out of his way to talk about how well she dresses. The issue isn't dressing well. The issue is we have beauty pageants based on what you look at on the outside, and you have a whole bunch of people. God says, I'm looking at the stage, and most of those people up there are ugly. Why? Because he measures the beauty looking at the character of the person. Okay? So in God's beauty contest, right, it's the beauty of character, and that's what influences people. This doesn't say that you can't wear makeup or, you know, all these things, and people kind of twist that around and make it kind of this little rule. If you want to dress plain and have no makeup and not do your hair and not wear nice clothes, that's fine too. But you don't want to twist this around and say you can't do those things. It's that imperishable quality. See, outward beauty, there's nothing wrong with that. It is perishable though. It doesn't stay with you forever. And we don't see it as we look in the mirror every day quite as quick. But when you look at a photograph from 30 years ago, Hopefully there's someone in the picture beside you because you say, well, what happened to her? What happened to him? Right? You're in the photo too. You had hair then too. Okay. The world has changed and you've changed with it. But this imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, that's of great worth in God's sight. For in the past the holy women, Old Testament women that were holy, put their hope in God, they adorned themselves in this way, that is, they adorned themselves with godly character. And he says, submitting to their own husbands, Sarah, book of Genesis, obeyed Abraham, called him Lord. That doesn't mean called him God. It was a term of respect in that period that would recognize his place as the head of the family. Well, that's right. And Sarah, like Abraham, made lots of mistakes as they were growing in the faith. That's why we get this big picture of it. And so she wasn't always, and he wasn't always the... She did, but she also, the whole thing with the way that she wanted to get that child, that was the way everybody did it then. I mean, that was just common. And that didn't, that hasn't really ended in a big, big chunk of the world. But, but in this way, you, you wives, he says, can be Sarah's daughter, Sarah's children. That is by following her example of how she subjected herself to Abraham. And, and the Genesis goes out of its way to point out how beautiful she was. So the issue isn't, oh, physical beauty bad. It's just that what made her beautiful in God's eyes was the holy character. Well, the last thing is husbands. Husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way. In the same way as what? In the same way that he said, wives, subject yourself to your husbands. Workers, subject yourself to the boss. citizens, subject yourself to the government. He doesn't say subject yourself, but he says in the same way. It's a parallel teaching. It's not quite submission, but it's something akin to it. And I think what he's really saying is you need to make your relationship with your wife the most important human relationship you have, hands down, and treat her accordingly. Right. And here's the problem, right? What makes this verse so hard? There's one word in it that makes this nigh impossible. Dwell with them, that's easy. Usually. Understanding, that's the problem. We really don't know what you want for your birthday. It would help if you just tell us, but you're not going to. That's because I'm supposed to know. You, husband, you're supposed to know. Just automatically. But why? Why are we supposed to know? Seeing things from her perspective. But there's a little more though, right? Because this is why you watch these funny marriage shows and they ask questions, even softball questions to the husband. What is her favorite color? And you're like, you know in your head, I'm either going to get this right through a just wild guess, or I'm getting hit. Right? You don't know the best way. You need to be a student of your wife. Start learning how she's wired. Yes. Yeah. It's, you know, if this is the most important human relationship you have, You're going to learn how she's wired and what her needs are. Everybody has some of the same needs, husbands and wives. You could pull a lot of wives, they'd have a lot of the same needs, but they won't prioritize them the same way. Because some wives, there's some things they really don't care a lot about that other women would care a lot about. You don't need to worry about what those other women want. You need to have some understanding of how your wife is wired, what her needs are, and you try to meet them within your human capacity to do so. No, here's the problem. It's a real simple one. We always assume the things that are important to us are important to other people, including our spouse. And they may be important, but they may not be ranked the same, right? Yeah, they know some of that, but I guarantee you, if we could have complete honesty, most men have some rooms they have closed off and they've padlocked them, and she has no idea what's in there. I'm just telling you. And so there's something to be said for women being students of their husbands and trying to understand their needs. When women are asked to rate men's needs in order, what they think the order of priority is, they almost always get them wrong. They get the first one right, and they get all the others wrong. The first one, because you'd have to be a moron not to get it right. But the second one often surprises them. Do you know what the second one is? You know what the first one is. And I'm not saying every man's this way, because I've talked to, I've had many instances of talking to married people, the wife, and to find out that, you know, a husband has no interest in the physical side of marriage. Okay? So it's not the always the case that for men, human sexuality is number one. It's almost always the case. I mean, almost always. What's number two? Not food, but you would think it's up there. And it is up there. It's up there pretty high. Huh? companionship. You know, men like recreational activities. Maybe it's fishing, hunting, boating, whatever it is they do. And they want their wife, who's supposed to be their best friend, to be a part of it. And it's a real problem when she has no interest in doing those things. People say, well, you can't change who you are when you get married. You need to get better. Um, you, you, you make changes. You, you, you can't fundamentally change your person, but you make some changes, um, to meet the needs of other people. That's what you do in a, in a marriage. And he's telling the husbands, you need to understand how she functions, how she thinks. I think so you can meet her needs as with a, and this is a terrible translation. It says a weaker partner. It was a metaphor, a weaker vessel. Which vessels are weaker, the china and the china cabinet, or the paper plates you keep when the in-laws come over? Maybe I'm the only one, but nothing but the best. I think of a large ship versus a small one. One is bigger, one is smaller, but they have different purposes. Right. There's a difference in physical strength, but that's almost too obvious for Peter to point out. Finer vessel. is typically one made for a different purpose and use. It lacks the strength of the common vessel, but his purpose isn't to deal with physical weakness or strength or muscles, although that's self-apparent. That's why we have this problem now of the men competing in women's sports and all that. But the fact is, we have designed differences so that we'll correspond. There are areas in the male's wiring that are somewhat lacking, and there's corresponding with the female. But to understand the finer or the weaker vessel, the china, it has some differences. You're to understand the differences. This isn't about being stronger than her. And it goes back to what you just said. Yeah. And so if you can understand that the fact is you're not going to build and meet needs very well if you don't understand them. And I'm telling you men think her needs are either the same as his or they ought to be and they're not. There's there's there's no there's no limit to the ability of a man to have a head of solid oak. Right. It is hard. So he says, so let's finish this up and I'll make a couple of book recommendations. Showing them honor. If you're that guy that knows half of a verse from Ephesians 5 about the wife having to submit to you, and I hear this in churches a lot over the years, you've missed the whole point. You honor her. Making her the most important relationship you have. You cultivate it. You understand it. You do things to keep it healthy. And that showing them honor is co-heirs of the grace of life. And I've been around some husbands who seem to relish making sure they humiliate their wives in front of other people. And it's abusive and they don't like being called out for it, but you understand they actually think they're doing scripture These these passages aren't that hard, but they've gotten that misunderstanding and this is saying something else So real quickly we're past time, but this is important material and I appreciate the comments. These are some books I've recommended these a couple years ago and something I put together but This you know, I try to read one or two of these kinds of books a year. These are some of the best I've read It's always a good reminder. You'll hear some things that you haven't thought about. It doesn't matter if you've been married 40 years. You still need to read a marriage book. Sacred Marriage. What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? Outstanding book by Gary Thomas. I don't know if he still is, but for a long time he was on staff at Second Baptist in Houston. This is a good book about God. This is why I call this in the home training. God training us, men and women, sometimes through some of the challenges we face in our marriages. Excellent book. Safe Haven Marriage by Art Gibald and Sharon Hart. I think that was a father-daughter team. It's an excellent book. Safe Haven Marriage. His Needs Her Needs, best one I've ever read. It devotes a chapter to a man, chapter to a woman. It just flip-flops back and forth. It's of a similar nature as the Five Love Languages, which is, by the way, probably the most popular book, but also excellent. It's a similar approach, and I highly recommend them. This His Needs, Her Needs, they did actual studies to have men and women rate their needs and, you know, collate the data. And it usually turns out to be surprising to everyone who reads it that his needs and her needs aren't what I thought they would be. But then, of course, the deal becomes your wife or your husband's not the statistic. You have to find out what their needs are and their priority, which may differ from what's in the book. Well, we'll finish there.