Let's open our Bibles this morning to the book of Ephesians. The book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 21, Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church. not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Let every man, let every one of you in particular, so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Last week, I was driving down the road, I had the radio on, and I was listening to a sermon. I don't even remember who the preacher was, but he was preaching about marriage. He primarily covered things that are destroying marriages, but he also stressed the importance of marriage as well. And as I began thinking from, I believe it was last Monday on through, as I began thinking about some of the things he said, I began to realize how often marriage is misunderstood in modern society. I begin to think about how that marriage as an institution is being destroyed today by many, many factors, both in the home and in society. For those of you who keep up, you know this. For those of you who don't have time, I'll educate you real quickly. Because gay marriage has become the law in many, many states. They are now petitioning the courts. If gay marriage is okay, why isn't multiple wives okay? That's already in the courts now. I forget one of the western states. If gays can be married, why can't I have multiple wives? And he sued. And, you know, it'd be interesting to see what the judge does with that. Some of the things I'm going to say will not be new to most of us. You've heard me say it many, many times. Hopefully, it'll just be a good reminder so that you don't forget. But I'm going to be speaking very plainly. I've gone over and over to try to make sure that I am not offensive in some of the things I'll say. I may deal with some very sensitive areas, but I believe this thing of marriage has been so corrupted, so destroyed, that it's time we step back and say, you know what? This is what the Bible says. First of all, in my points I hope will be easy to follow, marriage is literally the foundation of society. When God created Adam and Eve, immediately after He created Adam and Eve, He set up a democratic form of government. Is that right? Boy, some of you are thinking way too hard. You know what God did immediately after he created Adam? He created Eve and instituted the home. God made Eve, brought him, Adam, and Eve together to live as husband and wife, long before he created government, long before he created society, before he created the church, he created the home. Marriage is the foundation of government and of society in general. And I'm not a great historian, but you don't have to be. Look at any of the major world powers in history, and when the home breaks down and the home is destroyed, it's only a very short time until that government breaks down and is destroyed. In fact, no society has ever survived very long when marriage is broken down. That tells us marriage is key, foundational to society. Marriage is the foundation of the church. I know, and I hear this, and I'm sure you've heard it. I have some friends that have wrote me, and we've contacted over the years. You know, they tell me that they go to a homosexual church and that they worship God and they have a great time worshiping God and fellowshipping around God. in their openly gay lifestyles where they are approved and homosexuality is sanctioned. In one case, the pastor himself was a homosexual and they called themselves a church. But look at what those churches contribute to the community. How many hospitals can you name that were started by homosexual churches. How many orphanages can you think of that were started by homosexual churches? In fact, years ago, every single hospital that was started was started by a church or a religious organization. Most orphanages were under the auspices of a church of some kind. If you can destroy home, you can destroy church. Now, let's move on. Number two, I'm going to give you the ideal marriage. Are you ready for the perfect marriage? Oh, I could have fun with this one. Ephesians 5.21, the perfect marriage starts with a mutual submission one to another. Now, I know men like to jump to verse 22 and, you know, we like to jump on that verse, wives, submit yourself unto your own husband. You know, men love that verse. I've even known of lost men who knew enough to quote that verse to try to beat their wife into subjection. Why submit yourself? But verse 22 is preceded by verse 21. Any marriage, any relationship, any submission starts with a mutual submission one to another. In other words, I truly, with all of my heart, want what is best for my wife. She, in turn, wants what is best for me. And when we have mutually submitted and we reach a point that, you know what, we can't agree, As the head of the home, I make the final decision. But wives, submit yourselves is not a dictatorial statement. It is not a me Tarzan, you Jane arrangement. It is not a one-sided arrangement that is all about me. And your sole purpose in existence as a wife, your sole purpose is to make me happy. That will destroy any marriage before it ever gets off out of the gate. It begins with a mutual submission. Right? People will say, oh, you're just a sissy. No. And I'll come back to this. We're to love our wives as Christ loved the church. You think Christ is a sissy? You think Christ is a sissy because He gave Himself for His church? Do you think Christ is a sissy because He literally gave Himself? He died for His church? No, I think one of the big, big problems today is many people, many preachers run to verse 22 without starting with verse 21. Notice not only that, but this submission is to be in the fear of the Lord. Verse 21, submit yourselves in the fear of the Lord. Marriage is not merely for the fulfillment of my fleshly personal desires and lust. Leadership and submission starts with a right fear, a godly fear of the Lord. If I have the right kind of fear of God and I'm in the right relationship with God, and I fear God, I'm not going to require that my wife do certain things because I fear God and I know that God is going to hold me responsible. And so, yes, she submits and I'm the head, but I'm the head and I stand in the fear of God. And if you try to exercise submission, or dictatorship, without that fear of God, you're not going to have a very good marriage. Unless there is a healthy love and respect for the things of God, any submission and any leadership will not be on the right foundation, and it is sure to fall. Notice in verse 22, everybody likes the first part of that verse. Wives submit. It even sounds good, doesn't it? Wife, you submit. That's not all Paul said. He said, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. I may get in trouble here, but I'm willing to take my chance. Is a wife required to obey every command that her husband gives her, period? I don't want you to answer that, because if you go yes, you just ruin the whole rest of my sermon. Is a wife required to obey every order her husband gives her, without regard to anything else? I say emphatically, absolutely no. Give you some examples. Vashti, if you don't know who she is, she should be here on Wednesday nights. You would have known. Vashti refused to come in to the king's drunken party. and do a striptease naked dance in front of a bunch of drunken men. She was kicked out as queen. She lost her position. But she refused because she knew the king was drunk. The men at his party were drunk. And she knew that that was, even though she was not a Jew by any means, She knew enough to know that just plain isn't right. And so she refused. Peter refused to stop preaching because the Sanhedrin, even when the Sanhedrin told him to, Peter said, you know what? We must obey God rather than man. What if a husband tells his wife to run naked down Mall Road so that he can win a bet with somebody that he made that you would do it? Is the wife required to do it because the husband ordered her to? I say no. A husband tells his wife to commit some immoral act so that he can get on the good side of his boss and get a promotion. Should she obey just to get her husband a promotion? I say no. A wife is to obey her husband as she would to the Lord himself. And this is where I may get in trouble, but understand here that as unto the Lord, the Lord is never going to require her to do anything that is contrary to the Bible. She is to submit as unto the Lord. But in submitting unto the Lord, the Lord will never tell her, lead her, or anything else to do anything contrary to the Bible. So if the husband orders her to do something, and it is absolutely contrary to what the Bible says, she's to submit as unto the Lord, but understand God and His Word comes first. Now, in thinking of the perfect marriage, its mutual submission, it is the orders, the leadership, and the submission comes as under the Lord. And then there is the love relationship based on Christ and His church. This whole book was written to the church at Corinth and each chapter was written to Christian men and Christian women. There's nothing that I can find that says a lost husband, or in this case, a lost husband and a saved wife. that she has to submit to anything and everything He says. No, because that submission, that submitting yourselves is based, if you take verse 22 out of context, you've destroyed that whole verse. Look at the context. Men are just as responsible to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and they're just as responsible to love their wives as Christ loved the church, as the wife is to submit. Did you get it, or do I need to repeat it? The wife is to submit, but the husband is just as much under orders from God to love his wife even as Christ also loved the church, he's just as much required to do that as she is to submit. Men are responsible to nourish and cherish her just as much as she is to obey. And if you take either part of that passage and ignore the rest of it, you've got a very lopsided marriage that I can almost guarantee you is not going to work. It's not me, Tarzan, you, Jane. It's not I'm the boss, you're the slave. It's we both want to follow God. We both want to build our home on God's Word. The husband loves his wife just as much or as humanly as much as Christ loved the church. And because he loves her as much as Christ loved the church, he will never issue an order that is not based on love and his obedience to God. Notice, You know, the husband's the head of the wife. But as we find out later on in Paul's writing, Christ is the head of the husband. So it isn't, I'm the boss. No, Jesus Christ is the boss. I love you as much as he loved the church. We both serve in the fear of God. I will never ask you to do anything that violates the Word of God. And because I love you, and I have demonstrated that love to you, and I've proven that I'm going to follow God's Word, I'm going to build our home on God's relationship, wives, You submit to that man because he's got your best interest at heart. He's got the Word of God at heart. He's got serving God at heart, and he's not going to ask you to do anything wrong. Fourthly, how to have the perfect marriage. Hebrews 13, 4. Marriage is honorable in all. There's nothing wrong with marriage. And the bed undefiled, the marriage bed, there's nothing wrong with the marriage bed. It was ordained of God. It was given by God. There is no question that God instituted the act of marriage for the mutual satisfaction of each other as well as for procreation. First Corinthians 7.3, let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence. Men, it isn't all about you. The marriage act is not just about you. Do you render unto the wife due benevolence? Do you love? Do you care? And likewise also the wife unto the husband. 1 Corinthians 7, one of the purposes of the act of marriage and the marriage itself is to avoid fornication. or adultery. And I can say that Satan is doing everything he can to destroy this marriage relationship. Pornography has become a curse that has filled our land. Addiction to porn is far more prevalent probably than most any of you would believe. I'm talking addiction as much as addiction to drugs. I'm talking addiction that takes over the mind and the heart and the body of men. I'm talking about addiction that leads to more and more and more and more pornography. And each step becomes more progressively worse. I found out, and some of you I'm sure will disagree, but in the secular world and in many religious circles, there are basically two types of pornography. There's what they call soft pornography, and then there's what they call hard pornography. Soft pornography, and I'm taking this from the world's interpretation, soft pornography is simply pictures of naked women, period. That's considered soft pornography. Hard pornography progresses from there and gets into rape, where it's actually filmed and sold on the internet to watch a rape in progress. Hard pornography leads and gets into serial rape, which gets into serial murder. Hard pornography gets into bestiality and a host of other things. And while we think soft pornography is horrible, soft pornography is only the first step that leads to addiction to other things. Like people ask, what's wrong with smoking marijuana? I'm not going to get into the medical effects of marijuana, but it is a fact that marijuana often leads to other things. It builds one on the other. And so this addiction, pornography, has destroyed many, many, many homes. I have known of preachers who resigned their church because they got in addicted to pornography. I know of husbands that have lost their wives because they got mixed up in this thing of pornography. It will destroy a home. It will destroy a marriage. It will destroy a relationship. That's why Satan has made it so prevalent. That's why Satan has made it so easy to get. You know, I'm amazed and yet I'm not. I hear and read of many men who follow the perverted ways of pornography. And then they come home and expect their wife to compete with a prostitute and a porn queen and there's not a wife on earth that can compete with that kind of stuff. They go out on the internet and they get this filth and this vulgarity and this pornography in their mind and then they get into the hard stuff and they come home and expect their wife to be what they saw on the internet or what they read, and their wife cannot do it, should not do it, and then they end up in trouble. Let's face it, no wife can compete with the perverts, and I call them perverts, in the porn world. In fact, men, To even study pornography is committing adultery in your heart, even if you never do anything else. Isn't that what Jesus said in Matthew? Thou hast heard that it hath been said by them of old, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto thee that whosoever looketh upon a woman and lusteth after her hath committed adultery with her already. in his heart i said i'm gonna get a little uh... what word did i use i'm gonna get a little uh... strong here but men i don't think there's a man there's a man alive well there might be one or two out there but I don't think there's a man alive who can stare at pictures of naked women and not have improper thoughts. And the fact that you look at those pictures and have those thoughts in your mind in the sight of God, you have already committed adultery in your heart. Pornography is not God-honoring. And it's not the biblical pattern for marriage. Marriage is honorable in all, and the marriage bed is undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. It's no accident that porn has become so readily available. I remember growing up, Now granted, I grew up in a Christian home. My parents sheltered, my brother and I. We were very, very sheltered. I mean, we were very sheltered. Now I look back and thank God for part of it. But as a child, I would hear, I had no idea what it was, but I would hear He bought a Playboy magazine. And it was the most horrible thing anybody could think of. To buy one, you had to go into a store and you had to ask for it. And while everybody's shopping around you, you had to pay for it in the store with everybody around watching you. And there used to be a stigma to it. Nowadays, if you've got a computer, oops, better get out of that one. It was a text message Rachel sent me during Sunday school. If you've got an iPhone, you can take your iPhone and you can get more pornography on your iPhone than you would ever, ever imagine. You don't have to go to a store. There's no stigma. Nobody knows. You've got it in your hands. You clear it. You put it in your pocket. Nobody's the wiser. Nobody knows. And you think, man, I can look at this stuff all day long and nobody will ever know. God knows. And I'm going to I suspect after a while your wife will probably figure out something just isn't right here. Something isn't right. If you can get on a computer, an iPhone, an iPad, you can see and find anything under the sun that you won't soft, hard, super hard, and super, super, super hard, you can find it and never leave the convenience of your own room. But I'm going to go a step farther. You don't have to go to a pornography website to see nudity. you can go to Walmart and see all you want to see but let's bring it even closer you can go to a lot of churches and see more than you ever wanted to see why is it that women have so cheapened their bodies that they're willing to dress like the prostitutes the porn stars, like the sex fiends of the world. I don't know. I've studied it both ways and I still don't have a firm opinion. But I really think that many women wear clothes today that are specifically geared to attract the attention of men to certain parts of their body. I think in a few cases it's ignorance. But I cannot help but think that in the majority of cases, women dress specifically to attract the attention of men to certain parts of their body. Ironically, though, if a man commented about their body, they'd slap him and have him arrested for attempted rape or something. But they dress in such a way that they deliberately attract his attention. Ladies, when you dress like that, you are imitating the prostitutes and those that are out there trying to destroy men's lives. All of this together has so cheapened marriage and almost destroyed the love and the bond of marriage that we will never understand all the damage that's been done. Let's face it, men, and I'm talking mostly to men, I understand and I don't know firsthand, but I understand that there is a magazine out there somewhere called Playgirl It's made for girls who are attracted to men with muscles and all of that stuff. But for every playgirl, there's a dozen playboys. How can you look at that stuff and go home and look at your wife in the same way? It cheapens marriage. It cheapens the love relationship of marriage. This thing of marriage is so important that God gave adultery, fornication as grounds for divorce because it is absolutely against everything marriage stands for. Marriage cannot survive the cheap, filthy perversion that tries to force its way into the act of marriage between husband and wife. Now, lest you think that I'm Saint Lee or Saint John or whatever, is pornography tempting? I think every man here that's honest would say, yes, it's very tempting. It's very appealing. That's why you see it everywhere you go. You see it on billboards. You see it on TV. You see it everywhere because if Satan can get his hook in you and start reeling you in pretty soon. And again, I have actually known of a preacher who was spending so much on his credit card on pornography. that they almost had to file for bankruptcy. Don't put yourself in a position of getting sucked in. Well, third main point, the destruction of marriage. The devil has always tried to destroy the marriage relationship because he knows That if he can destroy the home, he can destroy society and he can destroy the church. There are many ways to destroy a home. But there's only one way to build a home and establish it. That one way is to take the Bible as your guideline. Not verses that fit your fancy. Take the whole Bible in its context and use the Bible as the guideline for your marriage. The Bible is the guidebook for proper conduct in marriage. I've said this and this week, let me check, yes, this week My wife and I will have been married 42 years this week. I can honestly say in 42 years, I have never hit her, beat her, slapped her other than a love pat maybe occasionally. I have never, ever, ever hit her in anger. I have never, ever, ever slapped her in anger because that is just not proper conduct in a marriage based on the Bible. The Bible tells us how to resolve differences in marriage. I asked a question in Sunday school. Answers were very interesting. How long were you married before you had your first disagreement? You know what? marriage is going to have disagreements. It's unavoidable. When you live with someone that much and you see their good points, their bad points, you see their ups, you see their downs, there's going to be an occasional conflict. But when someone uses irreconcilable differences As an excuse for divorce, they are admitting that they are not interested in following the biblical guidelines for reconciling differences. I remember years ago, first church I pastored, one of the young couples, he walked in home one day, she had cleaned out all of her stuff, left a note, I'm gone. compiling for divorce, she went to court and the judge said, why do you want a divorce? Under oath, this was her answer. Well, we fight sometimes. Under oath before the judge, that was the reason she wanted a divorce. We fight sometimes. Well, you know the Bible tells you how to handle that. The Bible tells you how to deal with that. According to the Bible, there's a biblical pattern to deal with differences. Let's face it, what marriage doesn't have some differences occasionally? I like to joke. Fortunately, my wife is very patient, very tolerant. She loves me anyway. But I tell people, you know, yeah, we've been married almost 42 years. And you know, we've had three or four really good days during that time. Well, everybody knows I'm joking. But you know what? 42 years, there's been some times when she just wasn't as spiritual as she ought to be. And you know what? There's been some times I wasn't. as spiritual as I ought to have been. Are we going to get a divorce over it? Nope. Somebody said, I hate fighting, but I sure love making up. There's going to be differences, but if the Bible is your foundation, the Bible tells you how to work through those differences. Happy marriage must start outright. I'm going to be very brief because I see the clock. Believers should only marry believers or you're already starting off on the wrong foot. Not only should saved people marry saved people, but you should only marry people whose theology is similar. I think there are truly saved people in other denominations. Even though they very possibly may be saved, their theology and my theology could never mesh and therefore we could not, should not marry. Understand before you get married, there's no such thing as a perfect husband or a perfect wife. It doesn't exist. So understand before you marry that he's not going to be perfect. But if you start on the Bible, you build your marriage on the Bible, you follow the leadership of God, marriage can and I believe should be as close to heaven as you can possibly get on this life. Before you get married, understand he may be perfect dating, but that's only because he wants you. Once he's got you, he'll go back to being his regular self again. Understand there's going to be differences, but if you truly submit to one another, and you build your marriage on the Bible, there is no excuse for not making your marriage work. If you're here today and you're lost, it really doesn't matter how good your marriage is or how bad your marriage is. You may say, One of us is saved, one of us is lost, but we've got a wonderful marriage. Well, that's great. Enjoy it while you can, because when you die, you're not going to have anything wonderful. More important than marriage is that you're saved, because if you're not saved, you can't start off on the foundation of the Bible. If you're not saved, you can't have Christ as your head. But more important than a good marriage is knowing that when this marriage ends and we both go back to dust, that I truly will see you again on the other side because I am saved. Father, we come. Lord, we know that We see it on every hand. We see it everywhere we look. On TV marriage is ridiculed. One night stands are the end thing.