[0:00] Going to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians 5, 22 through 33. Ephesians 5, 22 through 33. Some of you know where we're at, and you're like, okay, yeah, here we are. We're going to see this portion of passage of Scripture.
[0:11] Some of you have not been with us, and you don't know exactly where we're at, but we're in Ephesians 5, starting in verse 22. We're just making our way through this great book of Ephesians.
[0:22] What we have for us here, we have to directly connect to what precedes it here in the first part of the fifth chapter, but we'll get to that in just a few moments. So if you are physically able and desire to do so, I'm going to ask you if you would join with me as we stand together and we read the Word of God with one another.
[0:42] Let's back up to the 21st verse, because this is the transition verse that Paul is writing to the believers at Ephesus. And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
[0:53] Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
[1:08] Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.
[1:27] So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of his body.
[1:43] For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself.
[2:00] And the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this day. God, we thank you for every opportunity that you've given us today. You've given us opportunity to stand and to praise together.
[2:12] Father, you've given us the opportunity to hear of prayer concerns regarding the mission field. Lord, you've given us the grand privilege of hearing your word with brothers and sisters in Christ, of standing together and seeing the word of God clearly before us.
[2:29] So, Lord, we pray now by the power and presence of your spirit that you would open it up before us. Lord, that we would come to a greater understanding of it, that our understanding would be lived out in application, and that it would bring glory and honor to you, O Father, and to you alone.
[2:45] And we ask it all in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. As we have made our way through the book of Ephesians, you know, Paul has divided Ephesians very clearly.
[2:59] We have doctrine and we have application. We have the two halves there because they are absolutely essential. Without proper doctrine, we do not have proper application.
[3:10] Without proper application, then good doctrine doesn't do us any good. We cannot separate the application from the doctrine nor the doctrine from the application. They must go hand in hand.
[3:21] Paul has, before he gets to the reality of the home, so it would be real easy to pull this passage out of context and to look at it and make it say anything you would like it to say or to twist and distort it into any agenda that you may want to have.
[3:36] But we cannot separate it from the passage of Scripture in which it is in, and that namely is the book of Ephesians. In the book of Ephesians, we have found out who we are in Christ, how we are redeemed and restored and renewed, and we are enriched according to the riches of Christ, that we are called into the family that he chose us before the foundations of the world were laid.
[3:57] We've seen the glory of our redemption. We've seen how he put us together as a body of believers called the church, and we have seen how he wants us to live as a body of believers in the church, and in the application, he's working backwards.
[4:12] But when we made the transition into the fifth chapter, and we got down to verse 17, we have seen that from chapter 5, verse 17, into chapter 6, verse 9, Paul is really telling us what it looks like to live in a transformed society.
[4:30] Because the reality of this is, the presence of the church should change the society in which it exists. The church is there not only to be a billboard to a watching world, but to also be the thermostat that dictates to the world how we should live before a holy God.
[4:51] When God called Abram out of the land of the earth of the Chaldeans, and he chose Abram, and he made a nation out of him, and he became Abraham, and we have the nation of Israel, God did one of the most gracious things he could ever do.
[5:04] That is, he chose to display himself to a world, not in dreams and visions, but through personal relationships with individuals. He chose to show to everybody else what it looks like to live in communion with a holy God.
[5:18] Abram and the nation of Israel were to live in such relationship with God that their animals would not fail to give birth, that their crops would not fail to bring forth fruit, that the rain would not fail to fall on the land in its season, and that everything would be a land flowing with milk and honey.
[5:34] And in a land and a society so dictated by droughts and famines and all this other, people were to look upon the nation of Israel and say, well, they've got something we ain't got.
[5:45] And they were to look and see what is different about this peculiar people that the blessings continue to fall, and they were to say it is because we're in relationship with the God who controls everything.
[5:56] Unfortunately, that relationship was broken by their rebellion. That relationship was broken by their sin. That relationship was broken by their denial of God's proper position among them, and they began to dictate what they wanted life to look like.
[6:11] And when they began to dictate what they wanted life, I'm getting somewhere with this, so stay with me. When they began to dictate what they wanted life to look like, they wanted life to look like everybody else.
[6:22] They just wanted to fit in. They didn't want to stand out. They wanted a king like everybody else. They wanted to worship like everybody else, and they wanted to eat what everybody else ate.
[6:33] And the moment they began to look like everybody else, they began to have everybody else's problems. Now, if you haven't put it together yet, you ought to. The church has been called to be different, to be set apart, to be set aside, to dictate and display to the world what it looks like to walk in relationship with a holy God.
[6:50] But the problem in the church is we want to look like everybody else. And we take the same truths of Scripture, and we want to conform the truths of Scripture to the norms of society rather than trying to transform the norms of society to the truths of Scripture.
[7:08] We are wanting to bend Scripture so that it looks right in the present day age. That is, it is tempting to look at some parts of Scripture and say, well, that's archaic. When God says, that's truth.
[7:21] And it is tempting to look at some parts of Scripture and say, well, that's outdated. When God says, it's really not outdated, it is misapplied. And so when we come to portions such as this, and God shows us what it looks like to have a transformed society, he deals in verses 17 through 21 with the individual first.
[7:41] Why? Because he goes individual, home, workplace. You can't change the home until you have a changed individual. And you can't change the workplace until you have a changed home.
[7:53] You don't start and try to make work better. You don't start and try to make the home better. You have to deal with who you are as an individual in the mirror before a holy God. And when you have dealt with the individual, then you can deal with the home.
[8:06] And when you've dealt with the home, then you deal with the workplace. Because it is all an overflow from the one which precedes it. See, God deals with the individual first, and then he unites the individual to a corporate body of saints, and he builds a church.
[8:20] He asked a bunch of individuals, who do you say that I am? And Peter made a confession as an individual confession. You are Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of the living God. And upon the confession of the individual, he had a renewed individual.
[8:33] He had a number of them there. There were 11 renewed individuals. He said, oh, there was 12. One of them wasn't renewed. You remember him, right? He was present, but he wasn't renewed. So there were 11 renewed individuals who were joined together, and then that 11 was united with 120.
[8:47] That 120 was united with 3,000. That 3,000 was united with 5,000. All of a sudden, we got a church. But he dealt with the individual. So Paul has told us how to deal with the individual in verses 17 through 21.
[9:03] We surrender control. We learn contentment. We learn what it is to submit to one another as unto the Lord and with the fear of Christ, that is, out of reverence for Christ.
[9:15] Then we make the transition into verse 22. Every bit of pre-marriage counseling, some of you have went through my pre-marriage counseling. And I'm in the process of doing a pre-marriage counseling session now, not right now currently, but with a couple now.
[9:31] And I will be starting one after that, and I will be starting another one after that. Every pre-marriage counseling service that I do comes to this passage. Every marriage counseling that I ever give comes to this passage.
[9:44] It all revolves around this passage. Because it is here that we begin to dictate what the home should look like.
[9:56] And we see here the redeemed home. God does not give us a picture of the home in the world. He gives us a picture of the home of the believer.
[10:07] Paul is writing to the church. My friend, that means don't run to the world and tell them they should look like this because you cannot look like this without Christ.
[10:18] Don't tell your non-believing and unbelieving relatives that this is what the home should look like because it makes no sense to them. It cannot look like this without Christ. Until the individual has come to Christ, we cannot expect to see this in the home.
[10:32] But once the individual has come to Christ, we ought to see this in the home. We see these realities here. Things in which I know every time I open it up, and I kind of give this forewarning, and I give it here.
[10:47] I always look at the bride-to-be, and I say, okay, you are going to be tempted to get upset at me, but hold on. Just stay with me until the end because I promise by the time we get to the end, there's going to be a lot more responsibility upon the husband-to-be than the bride-to-be.
[11:06] And you'll be content because he gets the greater weight. So I'll tell you the same thing. Hold on until the end. If you're going to throw something, wait until I'm through, and you can throw it to me at the end, okay?
[11:16] Here we see the redeemed home. What does the redeemed home look like? Number one, there is a masterful design. There is a masterful design.
[11:28] It tells us in 21, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. So let's go ahead and put this on the table. Every believer in Jesus Christ is to walk in submission.
[11:43] Everyone. Every believer in Jesus Christ is to submit to one another. Submission is an overflow of the possession of the Spirit.
[11:56] That is, we submit to the Lordship of Christ, and we submit to the reality that he knows what he is doing when he puts us somewhere in our life.
[12:09] We submit to where we are not only in society, but we submit to where we are in the church. We submit to his leading and his guiding, and we submit to one another in that. In Christ, this whole idea of self-promotion is cast out the window, because it is rather self-humbling and seeking after Christ.
[12:32] And with that in mind, he says, wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now, there's a couple of things we see in this sentence.
[12:43] Number one, this is an emphatic statement. This is all-inclusive. It means every believing wife of all areas and at all times.
[12:55] He's not just picking on the Ephesian wives, right? He says, and all wives, you ought to be subject. Now, here's the good news.
[13:05] To your own husband. That means you don't have to submit to every husband, just your own husband. Now, that's a good thing, because we're looking at design here, right?
[13:16] We're looking at design. When a couple comes and sits down and talks to me, be it for pre-marriage counseling or marriage counseling or whatever it may be, I had to start this a long time ago.
[13:29] When I started offering pre-marriage counseling, listen, we hadn't been married long enough for me to give any kind of counseling advice because I didn't know what I didn't know. I mean, it's just one of the offices of being a pastor.
[13:39] I started pastoring at the age of 26, well, we had, by that time, I had eight years in marriage. You put it together. I was 18, we got married, okay? So I had eight years in marriage. Eight years into marriage, you don't know what you don't know.
[13:51] I mean, you just don't. You're still living in the honeymoon in eight years. I don't care how many, we still had three kids and been married eight years, and we were still trying to figure things out, right? Now, I'm 25 plus years in marriage, so I've kind of began to know what I don't know, but I don't know what I should know yet.
[14:04] So we're getting there, all right? We're beginning to walk there, but I always ask this same question, why marriage, why now? And you have to ask that.
[14:17] And I love to hear when a couple looks at me and says, well, the Lord just drew us together, and the Lord put us together. Most of the time, it's not what I hear, but if I see that, I'm great, because marriage is a God-given and a God-ordained reality.
[14:29] And if he is Lord of the life, and the first thing that we always establish in marriage, and we have to establish it here on this ground, is the personal relationship of both individuals with Christ.
[14:40] And if they are both believers, if they have both given their life to Christ, if not, I usually share the gospel that first session and tell them how they can give their heart to Christ. And I've seen a number of individuals come to Christ in pre-marriage counseling because I tell them, this marriage thing won't work without Jesus Christ.
[14:59] I know it because I tried it for two years. It didn't work. It was, we were struggling and pushing through, and it wasn't until I came to Christ did the marriage thing begin to make sense. And once we established that, I'm saying, okay, so now if God has called you to be wed together, therefore God dictates what marriage should look like.
[15:18] You say, well, I got ideas of how my marriage should look. Well, that's all well and good. I got ideas of how a lot of things should operate, but I have to go back and revert back to the master design, right? And he says here, wives, be subject to your own husbands, that's to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body.
[15:37] Now, this is where we get a little touchy, right? The husband is the head of the wife. You say, ain't nobody head over me. It ain't gonna happen. I remember Carrie had to slip out a minute ago, and of course my mind's always like, well, she's not in here.
[15:49] But I remember we went to one young, and this was a long time ago, we went to one young in the ministry conference, and they broke us apart, took pastors over here, and pastors wives over here, and I'll tell something on her while she's not in here, okay?
[16:02] She'll get on to me later. Some of you know she stands at the back door with me, and people over the years have said, it's so good that she stands with you. It was at one of those first young in the ministry conferences we went to, she had an older pastor wife, she said, honey, I stand at the back door with my man, because I want everybody to know that's my man.
[16:18] And she said, that's a good idea. So she started standing at the back door with her man. You know, she said, I want everybody to know that that's my man right there.
[16:29] That is my husband. And I told her, I need you beside me. And she needs to be beside me, because the Lord has put us together. But it tells us here that the husband is head.
[16:41] Now, head, friends, listen to me. Men, I want you to listen to me here. Head does not mean dictatorial or dictatorship authority. Head means you're the leader who accepts responsibility.
[16:54] If it's going wrong in your home, it's your responsibility. It gets quiet. Because you are the head. If the church falls apart, listen, when Jesus, because it says that Jesus is the head of the church, when Jesus made this declaration to Peter, I will build my church, he made that declaration that if the church failed, it would be because of the head.
[17:23] Now, I'm not telling you, husband, I'm not trying to cast shame or doubt or other stuff. I'm just saying there's a responsibility. So you examine. Sometimes it falls apart. And sometimes you're doing everything you're supposed to do.
[17:34] And sometimes you're walking the way you ought to walk. And sometimes you're saying, Lord, I'm being as faithful as I can. And it's up to your ability. Now, leadership accepts responsibility and says, okay, Lord, you come to me first.
[17:46] And once we've discussed it, that doesn't mean you accept blame. That just means you accept responsibility. Go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, right? In the Garden of Eden is Adam and Eve. Adam was told before Eve was formed by the way, husbands.
[17:57] Remember this? God looked at Adam and said, from every tree of the garden you may eat, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right? He told that to Adam. And then we read just a few verses after that that he took a rib from Adam. He made Eve.
[18:07] And Adam's like, hey, there's my wife, right? And the two become one flesh. Later on, we read that the serpent talks to Eve. And the serpent's talking to Eve and says, has God said? Now, Adam was the one that God talked to, but Eve is the one that is being tempted by the serpent.
[18:20] And Eve listens to the serpent, takes of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, takes a bite of it, and then it says this in Scripture, and gave it to Adam who was with her. Now, friend, listen to me. If you are a man and you are in your home and a snake is talking to your wife and you don't say anything, you've got a problem.
[18:38] Because there was a doctrinal truth that God had declared to him and he let his wife be tempted and led astray because the text implies he was beside her the whole time.
[18:49] Hey, happy wife, happy life. I don't care if she wanted to eat it or not. It was his responsibility to say, no, God has told me we shouldn't do this because when we do, we will die.
[19:04] Eve took of it, ate of it, gave it to Adam. But pay attention because the Scripture goes on. God's walking in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve hear them.
[19:14] Adam and Eve, they hide. They've made themselves some fig leaves, right? God talks to who first? Adam. It was, do you think God didn't know who took it?
[19:30] God looks at Adam and says, what have you done? Adam says, well, the woman you gave me took her the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that seems to be blame shifting, but then he says this, he says, and I ate.
[19:44] Okay. Then he goes to Eve. What have you done? She said, well, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Okay. And then he goes to the serpent. We notice something here. The chain of leadership, the responsibility fell to Adam.
[19:59] God didn't bypass Adam to go to Eve to talk to her about what she did and the fruit she gave to Adam. He went to Adam and said, why did you do that? That's leadership.
[20:13] Most problems throughout history that I have seen, studied, read. I say most, not all.
[20:27] Are not necessarily a problem of the wives failing to submit. Rather, it is a problem of the husbands failing to lead. And the reality we see here is there is a masterful design.
[20:42] God does not create leadership to be, or headship here to necessarily mean lordship to be over. It just means to be the one who carries the weight and takes responsibility for.
[20:54] This is not an isolated text. We find it in the book of Colossians. We find it in the book of 1 Peter. We find it in the book of Genesis. We find it in the book of 1 Corinthians. We find it over and over and over and over and over again.
[21:09] Every mentioning we find in scripture of husband and wives, it says wives ought to submit to the husbands. The husbands, you ought to love your wives and you ought to lead your wives. This is a design thing.
[21:22] God the designer has determined what a redeemed home should look like. The reality is, is that man in his sinfulness has abstained from that design and have abused that design, mankind, men and women, and have abused that design and the abuse has began to dictate the design and that's not how it's supposed to be.
[21:49] We have begun to allow the norms of society to creep into the home and this is not archaic. This is really dreadful.
[22:00] Adrian Rogers said it this way. A thing without a head is dead and a thing with two heads is it's a freak. There can only be one head to be normal and to be alive.
[22:13] And the designer gets to dictate the order. This is why it's as unto the Lord. Now, husbands, wives, that means that leadership is in accordance with the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
[22:33] If anyone is ever leading you contrary to the things of Christ, you are free to abstain from submitting at that moment. Everything falls within the realm of the Lordship of Christ as Christ is the head of the church.
[22:49] You ever notice how our head of the church never forces us to do anything, never makes us do anything, but rather he loves and compels us to do things.
[23:01] I mean, think about it. Christ is the head of the church. I can't imagine if I was the head of the church and I had the authority that Christ has that the world was my footstool and I wanted the church to do something, I would force it to do it.
[23:13] He doesn't do that. He leads it lovingly, which gets us to the second thing, a mutual desire. There's a masterful design. There's a mutual desire. By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, men, the weight is on us.
[23:27] For the husband is the head of the wife. It's Christ also is the head of the church. He himself being the savior of the body, but as the church is subject to Christ, also the wives ought to be to their own husbands and everything. That means husbands. You have the leadership and the responsibility for everything.
[23:39] Here it is. Husbands, love your wives. That'd be great if it stopped right there, right? Okay, well, I love my wife. Husbands, love your wives.
[23:51] And here is the standard of that love. Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. I'll tell you a little secret.
[24:01] I have never, ever encountered a bride-to-be or a wife who did not want to submit to someone who would die to themselves in loving them.
[24:17] Love your wives as Christ loved the church. Here's where the husband gets the greater responsibility because the love of the husband, not the love of the wife, the love of the husband is elevated to a level that is abnormal to mankind.
[24:34] God calls husbands to agapeo love. That love there means to agape. That is to choose a love. When it says, for God so loved the world, it's that God so loved the world, he did something, right?
[24:46] So agapeo love is a love that does something, and it's not a love that does something because someone deserves it. It's not a love that does something because they're worthy of it. For while we were yet sinners, Christ loved us, right?
[24:58] He died for us. God loved us while we were unlovable, when we were wretched, when we were miserable, when we were poor, when we were blind, when we were revolting against him. God loved us then, and his love was so active for us then that he pursued us with a love that adored us.
[25:15] They sent his son upon the cross to die for us. And it says, Husbands, that's how you love your wife. You say, Oh, wait, she would do this, this, this, this, this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and you know, the book of Proverbs says it's better to live in the corner of a roof than in the house with a nagging wife, right?
[25:30] Well, then love her when she's not unlovable, when she's so unlovable, because I have news for you, man, you're unlovable too. But she's not called to love you that way, you're called to love her that way.
[25:42] That's what the passage declares, and that's what it dictates, is that the husbands and the men are to live in agapeo love, and that love that chooses to love. I promise, the reciprocal of that is so astounding.
[25:56] I know society loves to tell you, and science loves to tell you, and all these other counselors would like to tell you, but innately, there are two great desires that define male and female.
[26:08] And you see it in children. When children raise in normal circumstances, in normal societies, in a normal home, you know, I've been blessed to have both sons and a daughter, and now I'm surrounded by little girls, I have granddaughters, and it's awesome, and my boys tell me I'm getting soft.
[26:21] I said, it's okay, it's time for me to get soft. I don't mind that. But I love this thing, right? Little girls, when they're little and they're innocent and their world hasn't affected them, all they want to know is, am I pretty and do you love me?
[26:34] Right? Innately, their desire is to just receive love. They want to be loved. Little boys, am I strong and are you proud of me?
[26:46] You think I can knock it over, daddy? You think I can take it on? I mean, you say, well, that's machoism. No, that's masculinity. That's just not a bad thing. Right? That's just being a male. That's how the brain works.
[26:57] It's, you know, I'm going to knock it down. Why? Just because I want to see if I can knock it down. That's what happens. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just how it is. Right? So there's these two things here that are just so innately wired in the creature by the creator.
[27:09] That is, the desire of the female to be loved and the desire of the male to be honored. And it says, husbands, your call is to love your wife as Christ loved the church, to give her the one thing that the creator wired within her, the desire to be loved and the longing to be loved.
[27:25] And when that love has been removed either in early childhood or in the greatest of all, shames and hindrances in the home with her husband, then it is very detrimental. But it is the husband's responsibility to pour into that love.
[27:38] Will we fail? Absolutely. Because we're mankind, right? We are yet but men and we cannot love the way our heavenly father loves. But we can strive for the way our heavenly father loves. That's the calling.
[27:49] And it says, husbands, love your own wives as your own bodies, right? For I've never seen anyone who hated himself, but he loves his own wives as his own bodies. And it says, and see to it that the husband respects or honors her husband.
[28:00] The wife respects and honors her husband. You see that? This is a mutual desire. We go through this with any kind of couple or we go through it as a congregation.
[28:12] We see God has so ordained marriage that the desires of both are met wonderfully. It is within the confines of a redeemed marriage that the wife finds the love that the creator has so embedded within the core of her being.
[28:28] And it is the confines of a redeemed marriage that the husband finds the honor that really, if you're being honest as a man, your whole life, you're trying to find it through your activities, through your recreation, or through your workplace when really the grandest place you'll ever find it is in your home.
[28:43] Because wives, I'll tell you one thing. There's so much more that there is something to be said. And I say this with a very imperfect marriage and I'm very imperfect in the way that I should do this.
[28:56] And I told your pastor's wife this week, I'm not even fit to preach this message so often because we do fail. I fail so often. But there's just something to be said.
[29:09] When everybody else in the world may look at me and tell me I'm going to fail, but I know my wife at home will look at me and say, I believe that you can do it. And she entrusts me with it.
[29:20] But the only way she'll ever entrust me is because I pour out that love back to her. And it's an empowering thing. And I've given up so many times on other things and just said, I can't do it, forget it, no matter what, you know, whatever it is I may be working on.
[29:35] I said, I can't do it. And I go back in and she'll look at me and she said, I think you can do it. Go back out there and do it. That's an honor. Right? It's encouraging. And it's really the picture of a redeemed home in all of our imperfections.
[29:51] And we see this. So we see this masterful design. We see this mutual desire. Third and finally, we see this, the home, the redeemed home.
[30:01] It is a measurable display. It is a measurable display. Look at what the Word of God says. The Word of God, as Paul is speaking of the home, you notice how much he keeps bringing up Christ, right?
[30:14] He keeps bringing up Christ. He keeps bringing up Christ as Christ loved the church. And Christ redeemed her and gave himself for her and cleansed her. By the way, the church is better because the groom of the church is making it better. There you go, husbands.
[30:24] What about that, right? The church is getting better because of the love of the groom of the church. So it is Christ loving the church, which is redeeming the church and renewing the church and restoring the church.
[30:36] And this is the soul pattern that we have before us as husbands. And we see, you want the home to be better than husbands and dads. It's your responsibility. It falls on you.
[30:46] It really does. It's not an easy thing to shoulder. Sometimes, I looked at a pastor friend of mine one time. I was going through a very difficult season. I said, man, I don't want that. He goes, well, that's why God gave you broad shoulders. I said, I want skinnier ones.
[30:58] You know, I don't want to carry all that load sometimes. He said, well, that's, he said, get over it. That's what you're called to do. And now, sometimes it falls apart in our lap, but that's sin. That's the tragedy of sin in the world, right?
[31:09] Even when we try to follow the pattern so great, and we do, we say, well, I was doing the best. Sometimes it falls apart. And Jesus said, that's a result of the sin that is in our world. Because of man's weakness, these things have come upon us.
[31:23] But we see here, in verse 30, Paul makes this transition. He's speaking of how Christ has loved the church and Christ redeems the church. He says, because we are members of his body. And then he quotes this passage from Genesis, Genesis chapter two.
[31:37] For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. He quotes that, and this is something that we need to understand that's so essential to marriage. Number one, we see here in this, the essentials of marriage, look at the dedication of the husband.
[31:51] For this reason, a man, I highlight this one every time I go through marriage because it never says that the lady leaves her father and mother. It is implied because they're joined together, but it is the man's choice, right? Which is, I tell husbands to be, hey, listen, your wife is going to always care about her parents.
[32:07] You may be able to go months and be okay with that. She's always going to have, in a healthy home, is always going to have this pull back home, and that's okay. Don't ask her just to cast that off because scripture doesn't even ask her to.
[32:18] Because a man needs to make that cut, make that desire, and say, okay, now my focus. Man, you know it, we can only focus on one thing at a time, right? We have tunnel vision. It's a great thing, but it's a bad thing. We can only focus on one thing at a time, so God says, you've got to focus on your marriage, and you focus on your family, and boom, for this reason, you should leave father and mother and be joined together to your wife.
[32:37] And that word joined means to be cemented, glued together, welded together, in a permanent fashion. So we see the sacrifice of marriage, and we see the permanence of marriage. But then Paul says, but we're not just talking about husband and wife here.
[32:50] He says, for this is a mystery. Look at the very next verse. And this Bible scholars look at this and go, what in the world is he talking about? He says, this mystery is great. Paul says, you know, that Genesis passage means so much more.
[33:01] I always thought about that in counseling. When that is declared in the book of Genesis, Adam doesn't have a mom and a daddy. Right? He was created from the dust of the ground.
[33:11] So from the very beginning, when marriage was designed and it originated, this standard has been set. But Adam didn't have a mother or father to leave. He didn't. But yet it's set there.
[33:22] But Paul gives us a little bit greater insight here. He said, for this mystery is great. This just has so much more to do than just a man and a woman. He says, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
[33:35] That is that Christ laid aside his glory and came to his bride and was joined to his bride, which is the church. And we have become one in his flesh. So this is the, I know this is the mysterious thing, mystery not in a scary way, but mystery in an unknown way in the Old Testament times.
[33:52] The marriage of the believer is so much more than just a temporal avenue for the enjoyments of this life and the pleasures of this life. It is also a display of a reality of eternity.
[34:06] Marriage, by design, has been called to be a billboard to a watching world what it looks like when we say that we are the bride of Christ as a church and Jesus is our bridegroom.
[34:22] That is, can people look at our home and say, that's how Jesus loves the church and that's how the church responds back to his love.
[34:36] See, Paul says, coming to Christ, every aspect of our life is elevated. Our home now is not just for us. It's not just for our good or our pleasures.
[34:48] Our home now is a part of life that is opened up for everyone to say, you know, that must be how Jesus loves the church. Because if the church is his bride and he is the groom and he's gone to prepare a place and he's bringing her back for a wedding supper, the way that man loves his wife must be the way Jesus loves the church and the way that wife is responding to the love of her husband and is trusting him and following him must be the way the church responds to the love of Jesus and follows Jesus in all things.
[35:18] And I know it's a high level of expectation but friend, it's right there in scripture. It is a measurable display. How do you explain to the world how much Jesus loves the church?
[35:32] There's no other way. There's nothing in the world that you can take out there and show the world this is how much Jesus loves the church. You can tell people all day long what Jesus loves you and he does.
[35:45] He loves you as an individual and he takes you as an individual and he unites you with a body called the church which is his bride and the way Jesus loves the church is the way that husbands are to love their wives and wives are to honor their husbands.
[35:58] Because here on the spiritual side of this we as a church we are just responding to the love of our bridegroom who is Christ. So we give him all the honor and the glory that is due him because he loves us in such an astounding way.
[36:14] He is the perfect bridegroom. That's hard for men to wrap their mind around until we realize how imperfect to grooms we are. But we go wow look at how he loves us.
[36:26] And we give him the honor that is due him. Then Paul says it's not just the spiritual mystery it's also the applicable one because he says nevertheless each one of you see to it that not only do you have Christ in your heart not only have you allowed Christ to change the individual let Christ affect your home.
[36:47] live in a redeemed home so that you can have a measurable display to show the world this is how Christ loves his church.
[37:01] See it takes it to another level. I know these realities are often found wanting in our own homes they're found wanting so much in society but the sin of man should not dictate the command of God rather the command of God and the standards that we have set before us.
[37:17] should call us to fall on our face and say oh God we want that. Because if we're just honest if we're just going to be honest with one another now and then there are moments in each and every home present this morning there are moments in each and every home that if a non-believer walked in and said oh that's how Jesus loves the church we'd have to hang our head in shame and go no it's so much greater than that.
[37:42] But that's what we're called to do. That's how we're called to live. And we see it here that the society is only changed when the home is redeemed. And the redeemed home is only a product of redeemed individuals.
[37:55] Let's pray. Lord thank you so much. Thank you for this day. God thank you for your mercy. We fall short.
[38:08] We acknowledge it. God we know that our shortcomings are no excuse to living according to the standards that you have before us so God help us to press forward.
[38:25] If repentance is needed Lord help us to repent. If confession is needed help us to confess. God may we bow our heads bow our hearts bow our minds and say Lord here I am now.
[38:39] Help me to submit to you first so that I can live out for your glory in whatever whatever position you've put me in a society. And the blissfulness of marriage may it be for your glory and singleness may it be for your glory.
[38:54] Lord in all things be magnified and exalted. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.
[39:36] Amen. Amen.
[40:36] Amen.