In this video, Scott Brown and Jeff Pollard discuss another chapter from William Gouge's book on marriage, Building a Godly Home. Specifically, this chapter discusses a husband's kind a gracious correction of his wife. It is important to realize that a husband does have authority given to him by God. That authority comes with a responsibility to govern his home according to Scripture and correct error if needed.

1 Corinthians 16:14 (NKJV) - "Let all that you do be done with love."

Okay, well, men, welcome to Husbands Love Your Wives. Here we're going to be dealing with chapter 15 of William Guge's book here on a husband's patient correcting of his wife. So glad to be here. This is probably going to be one of the more controversial sessions that we'll have, And perhaps it's one of those areas where a man finds himself, even in the lion's den. But God has made men for lion's dens and it's a good thing.

So it's a blessing to be able to go through this stuff. So Jeff, hey, thanks for coming on tonight. It's really good to have you. Oh, it's wonderful to be here with you, Scott. I've been looking forward to it.

So Jeff, you've been married 40 years. That's right. Yeah, 40 years. I've been married 32 years, But you married a Cajun. I did.

I'm one of the few very blessed. There you go. That's right. You know, of the guys who are on this webinar, you know, with Sam Waldron and Joel Beakey and Derek Thomas, we've got 164 total years of marriage. How's that?

That's great. If we had another lifetime, we might be able to get it right. That's right. Oh. Well, so, Jeff and you guys, we've been speaking of the different responsibilities of headship that Gush surfaces as he's doing exposition of Ephesians 5.

And it's a headship that's affectionate, it's a headship that's gentle, it's all seasoned with love. It is an authoritative headship, absolutely, but it's always blended with love. It's not mutual submission. The Bible actually doesn't teach mutual submission. The Bible says, you know, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church." That means that there is no role reversal.

Jesus doesn't submit to the church, and neither do you have this mutual submission idea. It might be nice sometime, maybe later on, we can deal with this matter of mutual submission. But tonight, we're going to talk about one of the really critical responsibilities of a husband. And that it's one way that he uses his authority and it is in the rebuking of his wife actually correcting her. What marriage book did you ever read, Jeff, that even talked about this?

I can say very, very few of the ones that I've read ever dealt with this subject. And those that have generally haven't had much substance. Goudj is wonderful on this. It is hard to find the kind of wisdom, the gracious wisdom, that he sets forth here in any modern works. It really is remarkable.

He sets forth headship and authority, and he actually uses a word that has become popular today. He uses the word in other places complementary. You know, there's this whole complementarian view of marriage, you know, in contrast to the egalitarian view, the feminist view, in which there really is no authority except perhaps, you know, in the role of the wife. So he really brings a beautiful blending of authority and sensitivity and things like that. Now, tonight there are three sections that I wanna try to get us through here and I'm gonna try to charge us through this because our intent really is to try to represent what Gogue teaches about this.

So the first section is on pages 215 and 216, which really speaks of the responsibility for correction that comes with the authority. And so he begins there and we'll start there. And then he talks about the matter of it. He talks about the matter and the manner of that use of rebuke and correction. And when he talks about the matter of it, he's talking about what should be done.

How do you do it? You know, I mean, exactly what do you do? And that's from pages 216 to 219. And then how he does it, that's the manner of it, and that's page 219 to the end on 224. So, just by way of introduction, this really is one of the central components of playing the role of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A husband washes his wife by the water of the word, and one of the ways he washes her is by helping to rescue her from her sins through his kind and gracious rebukes. Wives, as Ephesians 5 says, have spots and wrinkles. All wives have spots and wrinkles, and husbands have to own them. And one of the ways that they own them is that they address them in a really appropriate way. So, in a husband's concern for his wife, he rebukes her.

Okay, so let's talk about this now. In the first paragraph there in chapter 15, He starts right off by saying, the authority and responsibility which God has given to a husband over his wife require that when good and right reason presents itself, he should reprove her. So Jeff, what are your thoughts about that opening statement? First of all, I think it's great. He has said it well and he's captured everything that he's going to unfold in that one, in my opinion, remarkable sentence.

First of all, he says, authority and responsibility. Husbands have been given authority. The first thing to understand is that all authority resides in God. All authority resides in God. Any authority that a husband has is not inherently in himself.

It isn't about maleness. It's about God's order. So as a husband, he has authority, delegated authority, and because he has that authority to govern his home according to the word of God, then he has a responsibility to correct error. Many people today have a very bad taste in their mouths about the word rebuke or reproof. But the idea is to show someone their error.

It doesn't mean to beat them up verbally. For most people, the idea of a rebuke is just taking off a few layers of hide. That's not the idea. The idea said here is to show error. So he should show her her error because he has a responsibility and he says, requires that when good and right reason presents itself, the husband has got to be completely on board understanding why he's doing, and of course that's why he's going to talk about matter and manner.

So he unfolds this beautifully. I liken it to the rebuke and reproof that we find first in the Christian life. If we love our brethren, we must reprove one another. This should be gracious. I mean, there are people that love to just spend their time correcting people.

But that's not what's being talked about here and more of that will unfold as we get into it. One of the things that he points out right there in the sixth line down, I love this statement. He really speaks to the purpose of it. To free a wife out of this misery and wretchedness is as great a sign of love as to pull her out of the water when she's in danger of drowning or out of the fire when she's in danger of burning. It's really interesting the terminology that he uses.

It's an act of rescue. It's not to nail her to the wall, it's to rescue her from trouble. That's exactly right. And one of the reasons for that is because the Puritans took sin so seriously. We live in a day when people simply don't take sin very seriously, and therefore the idea of someone being in sin, it generally washes out like this, well, I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, so for me to say anything to you would be hypocritical, it would be judgmental, it would be prideful, etc.

Etc. But he points out that because of the grievousness of sin you're actually rescuing your wife, and if someone reproves us, let the righteous smite me, as the scripture says. It would be a kindness. So yeah, this is an act of love when it is properly done with the right circumstance. And by the way, throughout this entire chapter, he makes statements like this that are quotable, they're beautiful, and they are memorable.

Yeah. Hey, I don't know how many years it was into my marriage when I realized I was actually supposed to help my wife with her sins, because I think probably at least a decade went by and I was totally clueless about this. And do you agree that men today really don't realize that they have been given to their wives by God to teach them and to help them with their sins too? Do you think many men believe that's their role as a husband? I don't think many men understand that to begin with.

It's rarely taught. And number two, when men do hear it, they're likely to misapply it. Right. You have men that are either authoritarians or they're abdicators. They know what they're supposed to do, but they won't do it.

So it's very difficult to find a man who understands that he has a responsibility from God to govern his house according to God's word. And therefore that means teaching, positively encouraging, but also correcting error. Yeah. You know, a lot of the problems in headship come when knowledge is a little bit ahead of maturity. And the guy, you know, he's reading the Bible, Maybe he reads Ephesians 5 and he realizes I'm supposed to be the head of my house.

I haven't been the head of my house and he goes home and he says, I'm the head of this house. You know what he likes? He's down on the couch. And you know, he really, and he, and his wife is saying, are you serious? I've been carrying the ball.

This is our whole marriage. And now you are the head of the house. And so he starts throwing his weight around and now you got a bitter feminist on your hand and life gets really hard where because a man's maturity hasn't really caught up with his knowledge. That's right. And so that's why he really sort of tempers that full thing.

The way you explained it with just a little modification was my story. I didn't have any weight to throw around. I'd been such a blockhead. It was frightening. I'm smiling right now, but at the time it wasn't smiling material.

My wife couldn't have gotten a more raw deal than for me to read in the scriptures at that time, that I was to lead my home. And it was frightening to her, and rightfully it should be. I didn't know what I was doing. And we knew very few people that believed, understood these things from Scripture. So I was just learning day by day from the Word of God.

And yeah, it was very frightening for women. So men need to understand that. Yeah, maniacal hyper patriarchy is really no fun for girls, basically, I think is what you're trying to say. So now you get to the bottom of this page right at the beginning here and he says, he talks about husbands who are groveling and fearful. They're absolutely afraid to deal with their wives.

He says, against this is a groveling and fearful mind of many husbands who hate to offend and they think to provoke their wives, and for this reason, choose to let them continue in sin rather than to tell them about it. So now we're talking about the groveling husband. So guys, here's the deal. You need to ask yourself, are you this guy? Are you afraid to cross up your wife?

You know, are you afraid to talk to her about the things that are really hurting her? And it's a critical matter. So he uses this. I thought it's pretty interesting. He uses the word groveling.

Yeah. And fearful. You know, what what what is it that that makes us that way? Well, there are probably a number of answers to that, Scott. I would say one of them, the primary one, is that the pulpits of our day refuse to teach us about the hideousness, the horrifying character of sin.

It's kind of like a couple of bad things we do occasionally. They don't teach about the nature of sin. They don't teach how much God hates sin. The word hate and God almost never join in any modern sermon. We have to show people how horrible, how terrible, how destructive, how corrosive, how horrifying sin is.

Yeah. So that's that's number one. Number two, most men know how sinful or at least how weak they are, and they don't want to open up their mouths. Yeah. So, I mean, Gooch used some pretty withering language to talk to husbands who are groveling and fearful.

He says they both dishonor their position and the image of God. So, they reject really who they've been created to be when they're fearful, and also they hate their wives. It's a way that you hate your wife, And of course, he quotes Leviticus 19 17 where God says, Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart, thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. In other words, if you refuse to rebuke your neighbor or your wife, you're actually hating her. So he's pretty clear about how devastating this whole thing is.

Yes. There's not any question about it. That is a central passage in the Old Testament. But we find that type of thing throughout the scriptures. To let someone go on in error is, as you just said, to hate them.

It is not to love them. Love cannot stand the idea of someone destroying themselves. But it's deeper than that. Love cannot stand the idea of letting someone that you love dishonor God. Right.

Right. And I think he's saying, you know, if you hate to offend your wife too much, then you may be in danger of hating her much. And, You know, I think we just have to consider, have we hated our wives? Have we properly cared for their souls by helping them understand their infirmities spiritually? And, you know, not to flatter them too much, but to help them see that there might be some spots and wrinkles And I think that's a really important part of the issue.

And I think that's a really important part of the issue. And don't don't relinquish your headship in this matter. You know, I've gotten a number of letters from men. Really speaking about this this issue where a wife, you know, might be rebellious or she might have some things, you know, going on in her life that need to be corrected but they're afraid to correct her and you know are they just supposed to submit to it that's a big issue so any more on this this first part about the responsibility of ahead to rebuke Any final thoughts before we move on? Yeah, let me just say a couple of quick things.

Number one, first and foremost, men need to love God with all their hearts, souls, mind, and strength. They need to love Jesus Christ more than anything or anybody on this planet. If they love God, if they know God, then they will grieve at the thought of their own sins dishonoring Him. And they will grieve that anyone in their family would dishonor him. And out of love for Christ first, love for God first, then they put everyone in perspective and they can correct them under honoring God.

If it just becomes about the husband and his authority, we've missed the point. It's all about God and glorifying him. So, yeah, that would be the first thing to say. Secondly, I would say a man not only doesn't realize that he hates his wife when he refuses to correct her, he makes an idol of himself. He loves himself.

He loves his comfort more than he loves his wife. So yeah. Well, you know, and a man might be fearful to speak truth to his wife because he's afraid what he might lose. She might withhold certain things from him, even if maybe intimacy, maybe all he might lose, be fearful of losing all kinds of things. But, you know, here it's really clear, you know, the urgent issue is don't hate your wife but help her.

So he starts out by saying, you know, that it must be done. And then he speaks of what should be done. That, you know, takes us to near the top of page 216 on the matter of the reproof, where he says, that the husband may clearly show that his reproving his wife is indeed a fruit of his love. He must have a special care to sweeten it, especially with gentleness, for it is the bitterest pill that by a husband can be given to a wife. It is a verbal correction and in that respect a middle means, as I speak, between admonition and correction partaking somewhat of both.

So he's saying, yes, it is. She's got to know somehow, she's got to know that this is a fruit of his love, not a fruit of his rage, not a fruit of his being offended or shorted in anything. He's not trying to get back at her. It actually is a fruit of love. So a husband has to first of all recognize, does his wife understand it?

And is it true that it's a fruit of love or is he just trying to get back at her? Right. Yeah. This once again, that sentence is absolutely beautiful I love the way he says the bitterest pill that a husband can be given to a wife That's something else. I don't think many modern men understand.

Women take reproof. It can be extremely painful to them. They want to be wanted. They want to be loved. And so they often hear correction as rejection.

That's why he must be very, very aware that what we're talking about tonight is not griping about things he doesn't like. Right. We're talking about correcting when we see biblical error. And in doing that, we've got to do it with a great love, a great kindness and gentleness. Because it is a bitter appeal.

It's like when a parent has to discipline a child. I can't think of any parent who truly loves to do that, but they understand that they must. It's like church discipline. I have never been in a church discipline situation that I enjoyed. There's nothing enjoyable about it.

But if you love someone, you have to correct. And so that's the idea here. And he's saying, because this is the dearest person to you in the planet. Yeah. And you ought to give that pill as gently and graciously as you can.

Yeah. And so he lays out a bunch of criteria here. He says, first of all, justice requires that it be a truth. In other words, there's got to be some proof of this in her life. In other words, it should be clear and obvious.

And he quotes Matthew 18, you know, if your brother trespassed against the go and tell him his fault. And then he talks about fairness. If you go over to page 217, he says, fairness further is in the first main paragraph. Fairness further requires that the matter for which the husband reproves his wife, be important." And then there's a really interesting list here. He gives five things, namely—or four things.

It's dangerous to her soul. It is hurtful to her estate. It is contagious and a bad example to children. It's a sin against God, and it pulls down a heavy curse upon her. So he's got to somehow explain to her why it's harmful, And he gives these different categories.

So men, if there really is an area of sin that your wife needs help with, make sure there's a real clear explanation. He's really advocating not just saying, you know, hey, you've got to get it together. It's a little bit more, it's a little deeper than that, you know. Talk to her about what's actually wrong or what's happening and reason with her, take the time to do that. Yeah, once again, beautifully worded and the first, I think the only thing I might have done differently here would be to say the sin against God first.

I think I would have put that first in the list. But apart from that, when he says dangerous to her soul, that really puts the light on it. This is an act of love when we see something that goes on in our home, whether it be our wife or our children, we see our own wickedness and it must be dealt with. And there's a place for our wives even to prove us. That's absolutely an act of love.

And here, the whole thing is concern, concern for her soul. Now, unless you understand a biblical vision of sin, then you've got something that's hard to understand here. The Puritans believed powerfully in the preservation and the perseverance of the saints. For someone to go on in sin, may be the evidence that they're not really converted. Right, right.

So a man, if he loves his wife, he wants to encourage her not to continue in these sins, unrepentant. Yeah. Beautifully said. Yeah, and this has nothing to do with nailing your wife because she's bugging you, she's offended you. In fact, he says, it must be a truth, a known truth, and an important truth.

So he tries to dissect the nature of it that this isn't about your offense. It's really about rescuing her like you would pull her out of a fire or something like that. And he talks about undo reproof down at the bottom. And he mentions different ways that husbands get themselves into undo reproof. It's interesting he uses the word gullibility.

Against justice and equity are naive gullibility and undue suspicion. So he's gonna, he points out those two things. Gullibility and suspicion, you know, will drive a man to wrongfully rebuke his wife. So now he's saying, you've gotta be careful what you're doing. Amen.

Yeah, in fact, if I could back up just a little bit, the One thing I would add is your important emphasis that when that for which a wife is removed is a truth, a known truth and an important truth. In order for this to have weight, the husband has to know the scriptures of God. He's got to have God's word. He must know it so that he can identify what is offensive of God and what may just be a personal gripe on his part. He has to be able to very clearly discern his preferences as opposed to that which could clearly be error and offense before God.

And that ties into this, what we're looking at here, naive gullibility and undue suspicion. Men can far too easily believe things about their wives if they don't have the kind of intimate relationship that they should. They have to know their wives, they need to know their brides, they have to learn something about them. And it's far too easy. Of course, it's kind of hard for us, I guess, in our day to imagine 90% of what we're talking about.

But the fact is, we can get wrong notions about our spouses from our own sinful flesh or from others, others in the home or others that were around. And so we've got to be very careful that we're not gullible to believe things about our wives that come from other sources. We need to know our wives so well that we can begin to discern some of these things. Yeah, he talks about that, you know, as suspicion is like having colored glasses. Everything is the wrong color.

And a man has to ask himself, you know, am I looking through stained window panes through colored glasses? He mentions gullibility, suspicion, and rations. Those are the three vices, kind of in the lower middle of page 218. And then he brings up a really interesting problem, and that is, it's a question, can a husband reprove his wife for something that he's guilty of? That's a great question.

I wonder why he asked that question. Well, he might know something about his own flesh. I'm sure that he also has heard pastors generally begin to get a catalog of the excuses people make for not obeying the Word of God. When I read that I thought, what goes around comes around. Your sins might be found in your wife as well.

But he once again, Scott, he says, I do not deny that he ought to have a special care. The second time he uses that special care, this is important he's saying. We need to be really careful about this, that he is not guilty of that crime for which he corrects his wife. He's gonna tell us in the next paragraph, he is going to say, now, however, even if you are guilty, that doesn't change your responsibility to correct your wife. It just diminishes your ability to bring that reproof the kind of loving firmness that it needs, well, the credibility that it needs.

Yeah, and I think he's kind of saying, you know, if you're guilty of that same sin, you're gonna need to suck it up in a lot of ways because it blunts the edge of your reproof. That's how he says it. And then he says you might do the right thing and deal with your wife's sin, but you might hear Luke 4 23 back, Physician heal thyself, or Matthew 7 5, you hypocrite first take the plank out of your eye. Or Romans 2.21, you then who teach others, you know, teach yourself, you who preach against stealing do you steal, or you know, Romans 2.1, you therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else. You might just hear that back from your godly, biblical thinking wife, you know.

And so you're going to have, you might have to, you might have to eat a little bit of crow. But he says that if you use your own sin as an excuse not to do the right thing. He calls it a double fault. Do you see that? It's in the middle of the second paragraph on page 219.

Thus he makes himself guilty of a double fault, one of committing the sin himself and the other of allowing his wife to lie there, whereas if he reproved his wife, he might by it reclaim both her and himself. Yeah, That is stunning, these things that you're picking out. I mean, if I could get up here and show you closely in my margins, you can see a marking those same things. But yeah, it's a double fault. First of all, because of his authority.

Secondly, because he has that authority from God, it's not his own, because he is representing God, he has responsibility. Now, if he lets her go on in sin, he is guilty, first of all, of letting someone that he loves head toward destruction. And he's letting a plague loose in his house. Right. And then he's guilty because he had the responsibility to do something about it.

I like the way he finishes the paragraph by saying, it is good advice that no man be guilty of that which he reproves in his wife. But it is no good rule to say that no man ought to reprove his wife of that of which he is guilty. Right. His responsibility doesn't change because he's not being faithful himself. He still has a responsibility before God.

His own sin does not relieve his responsibility. So he's got repenting to do before he talks to his wife. Yeah, and he'll probably have her opinion after he talks to his wife, because she's gonna say, hey, you know, you do the same thing. You know, what about, what gives you the right to talk about this? And so it, In one way, it works for the sanctification of a man because it helps him see a sin.

If he really, you know, if a man really goes to his wife because he loves her and he's not trying to nail her, then it opens the door for him to see his own sin. It makes him a tender-hearted shepherd in that sense, and one who really cares for her. And like he said here, I like what he said, he might reclaim both her and herself and himself. And so, this whole, you know, this whole issue of sanctification is really on the table. There's sin in every family, and there's sin, you know, between every husband and wife.

And what God is saying is that One of the purposes of marriage is for sanctification. And we get married and we think, marriage is about all these other things, but God really has designed one of those things to be sanctification and sanctification hurts. Somebody said, marriage is a little like taking a tooth out without any Novocain. And because this kind of thing, you know, presents difficult, you know, difficult situations. So Any more on this, on the matter of it?

You know, on the what you're supposed to do? Well, let's just recap and make sure that a husband needs to understand that God has not given him authority to enforce his own whims upon his house. Right. He is to rule his home humbly, according to the word of God for Christ's glory, not his own comforts. Right.

Right. And and secondly, that double fault thing to pick up something we said earlier. First of all, her sin, if it goes on unrepentant, might be pointing to her not being converted. But secondly, if he lets it go on, it could be pointing to the fact that he's not converted. Right.

A man that would tolerate sin. I mean, now tolerate clearly defined, sure. Biblically defined sin in his own home. Maybe an unconverted man. Sure.

So so yeah, he's got to make sure that when he, when he goes to the reproof, he's got a biblical matter to deal with. Right. And here, here's the point that I think is an extension of what you just said. Often it happens with men who are married to unconverted wives. Maybe they've been, you know, Christian in name, maybe they've been baptized, been in the church all their lives, but they don't act Christianly and they don't think Christianly and they don't respond like Christians do.

And so, if a husband doesn't reprove his wife, he may never know if she's really a Christian or not. A true Christian will hate the sin, And you can often smoke out the unconverted wife by her raging, you know, against what's really true. And I'm certainly not saying that every wife that smarts from what her husband might say or might react negatively is unconverted. I'm not saying that. But it could possibly be a sign of that because she still might love her sin and she may have actually not been truly converted.

Okay, so then he talks about the manner, you know, how he does it here. And this is the longest section in the chapter, and he uses two words in here. At the end of the first paragraph under that heading, handling the manner of reproof well, he says that the reproofs therefore must be, and he uses two words, rare and meek. Rare and meek. Again, so not only are you, you know, is this about nailing your wife?

It's, you used a word earlier. You said it's not, what was the word you used? You know, like a dripping, you know, a drip, drip, drip, drip of, And you used a great word to explain it. I could. We're going to say, if you recorded it, I could go back and look at it.

Yeah, we can go back and look at it. But anyway, it's rare. And you're not all over her back about everything. Right. This is not about using the Bible to justify our complaints.

This is about a loving care that has to do with correcting before God, knowing that we ourselves are highly fallible, limited. And for this to be rare and meek is absolutely vital. Yeah. You know, He says, when reproofs are seldom used, except for urgent and necessary reasons, it shows that a husband takes no delight in rebuking his wife. It shows her that he cares about her.

And he says that rare reproofs commonly pierce most deeply. That's interesting. And he uses this imagery of the sword a lot, you know, the dulling of the effect of the, of the sword. And here, you know, he picks up that same language again, he uses the piercing and it just, it just won't pierce if you're continually scolding your wife. Here we go back in paragraph two under that heading, When reproofs are seldom used, except for urgent and necessary reasons, it first shows that a husband takes no delight in rebuking his wife.

Once again, it should be difficult. It should be distasteful to have to, for a sinner to reprove another. Yeah. If not, if we're delighting in it, then we're looking for a pound of flesh. We're sinning ourselves.

It says, but is even forced to. Right, right. I can't think of anything that's a better example of that right off the top of my head then in that beautiful book, a missionary patriarch on John G. Paton. He speaks of his father in such a way that was just so gripping.

He said his, because of his father's love, his deep love for them, that constant love that was always there. Right. He couldn't stand the reproofs, those rare reproofs. He couldn't stand the thought of his father being displeased with him. A lot of husbands don't have that kind of love.

They need to love their wives in such a way that they're grieved that he is displeased and not displeased with how she made the dinner, but whether or not she is walking in a way, using her tongue in a way, using her attitudes in a way that are honoring to the Lord. Yeah. You know, it's funny, he has all these really graphic illustrations where he uses this illustration of birds in a bell tower. He says, you know, birds in a bell tower, they're not frightened when they're the gong, gong. They're just used to it.

It's not that big of a deal. And he said, you know, so wise, they're unmoved. You know, if you're always swinging the sword of rebuke, you know, they won't even hear you. They're switching you off. So a guy just needs to ask, have I made a bell tower bird out of my wife?

She doesn't hear you anymore. All you ever do is carve about this and carve about that. That's right. You know, she's not going to even get it, you know. And then he says meekness, meekness, he quotes Galatians 6, 1 that, you know, restoration should be in the spirit of meekness.

And then he talks about privacy in this second paragraph on 220. Meekness covers both privacy of place and softness of words. Okay, privacy of place and softness of words. I don't know if you've seen guys rebuke their wives in public, that's really not a very good idea. That's what you say.

Yeah, no, it's bad. And it happens, it happens between husbands and wives. But since we're talking about men, that's the fact To dress down one's wife in public is the wrong thing to do. I suppose I would say unless what she did was so publicly heinous that he believed, like Paul reproving Peter, that it was something that just had to be done for the sake of all those that are there. That would be a serious sin.

Not the kind of things that people usually jump on someone else publicly about. Yeah. You know what else, Jeff, What do you think about his pulling in Matthew 18? He kind of takes the principial steps of Matthew 18, and he pulls him into marriage, and he says, you know, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. That's the privacy part.

So that's why he's applying Matthew 18 to the situation of marriage. He's taking a principle that's really in the matter of a personal offense between people in the Church, and he just he takes it as a principle. If you go alone, he says, it will soak better into her soul. What do you think about him bringing Matthew 18 into this? Because he actually walks us through the steps of Matthew 18.

I think he is exactly right. We very often don't have the right ideas about church discipline. In fact, very often all we think about is church discipline equals excommunication. And that's simply not right. First of all, the idea of discipline has the same root as disciple.

Discipline begins with the faithful preaching of the Word. So we are disciplining God's people whenever we open our mouths, open up the word of God and speak his truth to them. We are disciplining them. And then there is correctional discipline in which there is reproof. We need to reprove and rebuke.

And that's the kind of thing that works right into Matthew 18. Matthew 18 begins with how we should be dealing one with another. In love, how do you do it? You don't go to 10 people. You don't go to the pastor first.

You don't ask eight people for what to do. Jesus has told us, if there's no brother closer to you, then your sister in the Lord. So you should go privately to her and gently and graciously begin to talk with her. Yeah. So are there any guys listening here tonight who they've gone to several of their friends and say, hey, what do you think I should do?

And you've exposed your wife, but you're so afraid to go to her first. You know, the Bible really would have you go. And he says here privately, but then at the bottom of page 230, there's a question that he poses. He says, what if she doesn't regard the rebuke in secret? And the answer he gives is he may know Christ's direction, take one or two more, namely wise, sober, faithful friends if it may be, or her family as her parents if she has any living, or those who are in course of nature next to parents if they're not partial on her side, and before them rebuke her.

So he calls for a wise sort of escalation in order to bring somebody else in to speak to her. Now, does this mean that he goes to her once alone and if she doesn't get it all together, then immediately he brings more? My view is no, there should be a patient working with her on these matters. And it's not one strike you're out in a marriage. Right, I would agree with that.

And so, you know, after, you know, graciously and patiently, then perhaps if she doesn't regard it at all, then bring a friend or a parent or a pastor in to have another conversation about it. Yes, there's no question about that. God in His mercy has been so long suffering with us. It's astonishing. It's very much like when people are first introduced to church discipline, the whole idea is that many of them just begin to take it and use it like a club, which is completely wrong.

The idea is that we are to patiently, lovingly encourage. And you see part, there's so many things underlying this, Scott, we could spend the night on this. But if the man is having faithful family worship in his home. Every night is opening the Word of God. You know, working through his church's confession, working through good solid books that teach about sin, teach about the Savior, teach about holiness and what were to be before the Lord, he's got ground to begin to talk about.

Remember, we're not talking about griping about dinner. We're talking about biblically defined sin and talking to someone in a way that would help them come to true repentance. So yeah, he should be very patient. He should spend time teaching, talking with her privately, praying with her privately. And if she proves to be stubbornly unrepentant about known sin, then and only then do you begin to take it further.

Right. You know, if you see progress, you know, maybe you don't take it to the next level. You continue to patiently wait. I mean, how many of us, you know, when told about our sin, you know, have instantaneously removed it from our life? Well, that's not been my experience.

And so, I think he's really arguing for a patient process. And then he asks another question on top of 221, what if her sin is public, such as may be a bad example to them that are of the house and being done right there in the house. What happens if it's kind of poisoning the family or being a bad example? And then the answer is, you know, wisely, he must show his dislike for her sin that he no way harms her honor. I thought that was really an interesting way to say that.

He does it in a deferential, gracious way that doesn't harm her honor, but he's warning the family that these things are harmful. Right, exactly. If I could say this, very often we go to the Bible with the ideas that I'm going to just look at these verses that talk about husband and wife and those are the verses about marriage. That's absolutely not true. Virtually every one another passage in the scripture should be applied to your marriage.

It's marriage counseling. Now, when Paul was persecuting God's people, Jesus Christ met him on the road to Damascus. And I'm paraphrasing strongly here, but he tells Paul, when you touch my people, you're touching me. Right. Now husbands need to get a hold of that.

If these women that are our wives, if they are professing Christians, they're not our slaves, they're not our servants, they're our co-heirs, they're our queens. This is not a master slave relationship. It is a king and a queen. And when we talk to our wives, we need to realize that she is a container of the Holy Spirit, that she is God's blood bought property. And because of that, when we talk to her, we need to realize that how we talk to her touches Christ the Lord.

So we need to keep that in mind. And that's, I think, ultimately, That's what he's going on here. She's a woman made in the image of God. There is an honor just in that. And then she's our wife.

She's our sister in the Lord. We should not defame her honor in the presence of others. Right. Then he goes on and escalates to the issue if it's a really heinous and scandalous sin. He deals with that and he says, you know, at the very bottom, never rebuke when they are in a rage.

So he talks about dealing with the whole thing. And I, you know, from page 222 down, you know, he speaks about that, you know, the rage is like a fire, you know, the fires join each other and it just gets terrible. But he says something, I think, and he says something like this in other places too in this book. Right in the middle, dead center, almost in the middle of 222, he said, he says, regarding the violence of rage in which women by reason of the weakness of their judgment are for the most part most violent. It is also the part of a wise man to refrain from this duty of reproving his wife even when she is in a rage.

Two things here. He's saying that wives are more susceptible to rage. And I don't know if that's absolutely true or not. I think it may be an inflection point, I'm not sure. But he, you know, there in writing in 1622, has this sense that wives run hotter.

But whenever he talks about that, he talks about the corresponding gentleness and wisdom of a husband to bear with her, you know, not to respond in kind. And then, like at the bottom, it says, he says, it shows much meekness and moderation for her husband well to weigh both his own and his wife's temper when he reproves her and to refrain doing it well. Either he or she is in a rage. Now, remember, we're talking about the manner of it. How do you do it?

And he's talked about Matthew 18. You do it slowly and progressively and you bring things in and then he moves to this thing, this whole idea of rage and just, you know, not dealing with these things in a context of anger. Let it die down first. Exactly right. If his wife is in a sinful rage, it's wise counsel not to jump in and then immediately start to reprove her.

Yeah. He's very gracious. This man was gracious. And I agree with you, I would have a little trouble with that statement. It's too bad we can't email him and ask him, you know, how would you prove that, Phil?

You know, how would you prove that? Other than the fact that perhaps when he says most violent, maybe he's just talking, I don't think he's talking about physical violence, but maybe just responding in an emotional way. Maybe vehemence would be a better... Right. He's writing at a time where very often we import into these kinds of words our own society and understanding, and we don't always get it right.

But yes, he says, rage both fills and corrupts one's heart. So if a husband is angry with his wife's sinful action, That's not the time to reprove her. He needs to get himself together. He needs to go and pray. Sometimes there have been times in our own marriage when Myra and I, I've had to say, we need to stop.

We need a little air. We need to, I need to go and think and pray and cool down. And then we could talk, you know, and it's just the kind of thing he's talking about. Fire and fire meeting together is not gonna honor the Lord. The wrath of man certainly does not accomplish the righteousness of God.

Right. You know, then if you go to the top of 223 here about indiscreetly, reproving a wife, Again, we're talking about the manner of it, how you do it. And he talks about this indiscretion of husbands who do not regard the place, nor persons, nor time, nor temper of themselves or their wives, nor any other circumstance in reproving, but like Saul." And he gives us example of Saul. And the whole tenor of this is restraint on how a husband moderates his own spirit, his own words, his own process in dealing with his wife's sin. And he's not chiding her, he's not nailing her to the wall, he's not just blowing off his own frustrations because she did something to him and now he's mad.

He just moves it to a completely different plane. And it's about the Lord Jesus Christ who's working out the spots and the wrinkles of his bride, who loves his bride, who lays down his life for his bride, and who's washing her with the water of the Word. And what he's saying is that there is a way that you wash your wife with the water of the word. It's really neglected in our day. Men hardly dare to do it.

And they're like this cowering man who's afraid to cross up his wife. And I think we need a new kind of man. We need a kind of man who has the love of Jesus Christ. He's willing to deal with his wife, you know, on matters like this. Right.

Well, we've got buildings that people call churches filled with people that walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, signed a card, shook the preacher's hand, and they were told, you're a Christian now. Right. And one of the that's one of the great saying that no one has ever been converted in that kind of a situation. What I am saying is that very often, that's just a religious machine that sucks people in and then convinces them that they're Christians when in fact all that they've gotten is religion. Then they try to start living the Christian life and they find it impossible.

Genuine conversion where people are brought to see their sinfulness, see their desperate need of Christ, repent of their sins, believe on the crucified and risen Savior, and are transformed by God's regenerating spirit, then began to manifest the Spirit of God. They need to grow in the Word. And when you've got a husband and a wife that are both genuinely converted, they can begin to approach these things. It's not easy, as you said. And by the way, let me say, before we get done, what we're saying here, certainly we're talking about husbands loving their wives.

The fact of the matter is that certainly a woman should and can reprove her husband. I know that there are those who believe quote in family reform, that a woman can't reprove her husband. Can't start Matthew 18 against him. Somehow that's dishonoring him. That's absolute falsehood.

Absolutely. That is falsehood. A woman, she should never be in a place where she thinks that she cannot get help. And a man who thinks that she can't do that does not understand headship at all. And having been recently approved by my beloved wife and she did it so well, I learned a great deal from her that these are exactly the kind of things we need to understand.

So, Yes, how we do it, when we do it, why we do it is absolutely vital. Yeah. And I just want to say two things in closing. One is that we've spent the entire time talking about how husbands do this, And a wife also must help her husband with his sins in very, very similar ways. It does not contradict her role as a helpmate.

In fact, it actually fulfills a role as a helpmate to help her husband with his sins. So we didn't talk about the wife's part in doing this, just the husband, but we don't leave that out. But here's what I'm praying will happen to us after having just spent this time dealing with this. You know, first of all, that we would recognize, we really do have a role in washing our wives, and that does include rebuke. And it's one aspect of love.

It's part of the way that Jesus Christ has loved us, by filling us with the Holy Spirit, giving us His Word to correct us, giving us His Spirit to convict us of sin. And God actually has created a marriage, so that a Marriage is a picture of the Gospel, and one aspect of the Gospel is sanctification. And so a husband that is neglecting, helping his wife with his sin, is not really showing her or the world a true gospel. It's showing the world a false gospel if he's so afraid to deal with sin. And again, this has just been such a lavish expose of the tenderheartedness with which this takes place.

So I pray that what we've done here would promote love and that it would cause more sweetness in a home, more holiness in a home. Holiness is always the way to happiness in a home. Amen. And the turning from sin is the way that you do that. So, brothers, God bless you.

If you haven't recognized it until now, go and help your wife with her sin. In the way that William Gooch speaks of it, I think it'll be a real blessing. Amen. Okay, guys, hey, thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next week with the next chapter. God bless you.