Marriage is a gift of God given to all people. It is a wonderful institution established in the Garden, before the fall, intended to magnify the glory of God and be a picture of the love of Christ for his church. Though God made men and women equal in worth and dignity, each bearing the image of God, there are particular roles and duties each is to take in order to have a happy and truly biblical marriage.

What a precious song we just sang together. He will hold me fast. I hope you know that love of Christ. I hope that you know what it is to be held fast by the Savior. As we visited yesterday, I'd hoped to present something of God's perspective on how precious marriage is and what a treasure it is.

And I realized that I'm certainly not capable of doing that. Felt like less than a flea trying to describe the glory of the entire universe. Trying just to present a picture of the loveliness, the beauty, the treasure that marriage is. But I wanted to encourage us to think about marriage like God thinks about it, so that we would think about the duties in marriage the way that we ought to think about them. So often I've seen sermons on marriage and conferences and talks and articles that people read the duties that husbands have to wives and wives have to husbands, and they just, they throw up their hands.

They say, well this is impossible, which of course in our flesh it is. But sometimes that response is just, well, this isn't even, this isn't realistic. I've seen marriages. I've been in a marriage. I don't know marriages that look like this, and mine's never going to look like this.

And we just sometimes were tempted to give in to our flesh and just not strive in the way that God would have us strive for godly marriages. And marriages in which we fulfill the duties that husbands have to wives and wives have to husbands. And there can be a lot of reasons for that. We can think of trying to do things in our own strength and realize how little that is and how impossible it is that we don't operate in the grace of God and operate in His strength. And yet, we can also just get discouraged.

And sometimes that's because we don't treasure and understand how precious something is. And sometimes that keeps us from fighting for it, from striving for what God has to say about it in the ways that we should. And yet it's something that I think we have to soak in for a while to really understand what a treasure marriage is, how precious, how valuable. Sometimes you have to be married. You have to have a wife for 25 plus years and reflect and look back and God's gonna sanctify you sometimes for that understanding to grow in the way that we would like for it to.

But it really does inform our duties as husbands and as wives. The treasure that marriage really is and the way that God teaches us about marriage, the way God views it, is so incredibly important. I pray that He will work in our hearts to give us that biblical, that godly understanding that we would treasure our marriages as the reflections of the Gospel that they are, as the reflection of the Lord Jesus Christ and His church that they are. That we would see those as so precious. That we would treasure God's love in providing that companionship, His grace, His mercy, His kindness to Adam and Eve and to each of us who have ever enjoyed the beauty and the benefit of marriage since our first parents were established in it by God.

We are so blessed by this godly institution of marriage, and it is so precious, and we must fight to protect it like it is the treasure that it is. And we must strive for it to be the model of Christ and the church that it is to be. And we must strive to have homes, which are those seminaries of incubators, of future church leaders, of godly Christians, of the seed of the Lord Jesus Christ that we're called to raise up. I pray that God will make it so. I pray that this morning, He will grant us wisdom and understanding and redeem the time and help us to look at the duties of husbands and wives and understand them according to his perspective.

Let's pray together that the Lord would be with us and teach us as we go through His Word. Father, we are grateful to come together again as Your children. We are grateful for this Gospel-centered, beautiful institution of marriage which you established in which the Lord Jesus Christ celebrated and honored and affirmed. And for our groom, the Lord Jesus Christ, we are grateful to have been brought to Him by Your grace as His bride, Your church, and to be established, to be betrothed, to be looking forward to His coming. And God, we're thankful for the groom who holds us fast.

Help us, Father, to better understand the truth of that and what it can even look like in our own lives as we seek before the Lord to be faithful in our marriages. Father, guide us through Your Word. Please teach us by Your Spirit. May the foolishness of the instrument you might use to speak this morning. Go away, Father and God.

May you simply proclaim the truth through a very inadequate instrument this morning. And Father, may your people be blessed. May your spirit give understanding. May we take away and apply that which you would have us to apply about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and our own marriages. Lord, we thank you for them and we thank you for Christ and we pray in his name, amen.

Well, turn with me, if you have your Bibles this morning, to Ephesians chapter five. We're going to look at this most beautiful passage on marriage. We're going to try to look at the duties of husbands and wives. I can recommend some resources to you that we won't look at together today. If you go to the NCFIC website, the Puritan Richard Steele, there's a beautiful summary of the duties of husbands and wives made just very succinct and easy to understand that you can go through.

You see that he, among other Puritans and modern preachers who have understood the duties of husbands and wives really categorize these things often into three categories. They're mutual duties, and then duties that the husband owes to the wife, and then duties that the wife owes to the husband. There's really a beautiful summary of that that you can look at as you engage in further study, as the Lord gives you a heart to really seek Him in marriage. And there are so many resources, others on the NCFIC websites, other excellent books and resources. I've just been blessed to look at so much in past weeks about marriage, and just to be so convicted about how much I have to learn, how far I have to go, how little I understand yet of the glory, the grace, the wonder of God in so many ways, And oh, largely among those, His establishment of godly Christ-honoring marriages.

We see that described beautifully, really richly in Ephesians 5. Understand the context here as Brother Scott pointed out yesterday. We're seeing instructions given about spirit-filled living here. This is embedded in commands to walk in love, to walk in light, to love one another, to walk in wisdom, to be thankful, to be walking in the Spirit. And what we see immediately preceding these verses on marriage is the admonition that Christians, the attitude of Christians as they love each other is an attitude of submitting to one another.

Ranking themselves. That's what that word submit there and that word that we're going to talk about with regard to wives do. It means to rank oneself under another. It doesn't mean spiritual inferiority. But it means a difference in position.

And embracing that in obedience to the commands of God, by the grace of God, and willingly ranking ourselves under someone else. That's what Christians do when they submit to each other. It's a military kind of a term. It's not that a lower ranking soldier in position is of less value spiritually or as a person than someone who is superior in rank to Him. But there has to be order.

And God established that in the home and in the marriage. And among Christians, and in the church, with elders, with civil government. Things that we've heard about in the last several hours, God established. So understand, that's the context here. It is submission, walking in the Spirit, not putting ourselves higher than others, but a humility, an attitude of humility in which we submit to others as Christians.

And that pervades everything we're going to read about marriage. That applies to husbands in marriage. That applies to wives in marriage. The duties of marriage are full of a need for humility and submitting to another. And Husbands are not the only ones who are supposed to love.

You'll see if you look at these mutual duties of marriage that are very obvious. The duty to love flows both ways. That's a wife's duty to her husband. That's a husband's duty to his wife. Those duties to love and be faithful to each other and to one another each other as Christians one another each other.

Submitting to each other in love. Those are Christian duties which flow. Both ways, they're mutual. But we'll look more particularly at the ones that are described as applicable to husbands and wives together today. And the light's a little dim, and my eyes are a little old, and I forgot my glasses.

So, I will try to read through the Scriptures here. If I can kind of turn where I can see them a little better. As we go through Ephesians 5, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church. And He is the Savior of the body.

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, Love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So, husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.

For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." You see there those duties that we see in parallel passages throughout Scripture that duty of a husband to love and that duty of a wife to submit and to show respect and to honor her husband. Again, not mutually exclusive.

Respect and honor are duties that Christians owe to Christians. These are mutual duties that husbands and wives owe to each other. But there's a reason, as is love of course, but there's a reason that these are particularly directed to particular parties in marriage. Perhaps it's because men don't do as well at love and sometimes women struggle in respecting one placed in authority over them who is so often undeserving of that respect based on his own merit. Any wife here ever struggle with that?

You don't have to raise your hands, I'm not going to make you stand up. But What we've got to understand though is that the duty to respect one's husband is not based on whether or not he deserves it, in your opinion. And the duty to love one's wife is not based upon whether or not she deserves it, in your opinion. It is a command of God only to be obeyed in and of and by the grace of God, regardless of whether or not the party on the other side deserves it. And again, that is how God designed it.

He gave us imperfect husbands and imperfect wives. He gave you children, imperfect parents, so that we would learn to love and submit and walk with one another as Christians so that we would glorify God. And so that the Gospel would be proclaimed through these Christian relationships. As they are played out in our families, in our churches, as those things impact our society. So, understand, while these are particularly directed, There's not the kind of mutual exclusivity, there's not contradiction in any other Christian duty that we see here.

We just see some particular emphasis. And even though we as husbands probably need to hear this worse in the text, or need to hear it more, we're more in need of this teaching. In the text the wives come first. So we'll start there here in chapter 5 with wives who are commanded by God to submit to their own husbands as to the Lord and to do so by the grace of God as we see scripture teaches with regard to every command that the Lord gives. And as we've said, that submission is not a matter of spiritual inferiority.

That is a matter of position, of rank, of willingly in obedience to God, placing oneself beneath another who has been put in a position of headship. Submitting to our own husbands, ladies, as to the Lord, just as we are all to submit to our groom, our husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as the church is to submit to Him, we see the parallel here of wives submitting to their husbands. And it's not coincidental that in this passage and in other parallel passages that I wish we had time to get into, It's not just wives submit to husbands. It's wives submit to your own husbands.

That possessive sort of a pronoun that is so specific there, your own husbands. This is really personal. This is really particular. Wives, you are called to submit to the husband who God has given you. And that language is something that we need to understand and apply better than we do.

Everywhere we turn, we see men gladly asking their wives to go and submit to someone else's husband. Sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it, do we? I am grateful to God for His grace and embarrassed at my own stupidity that many, many years ago when I was married, I didn't understand this anywhere near like I should have. And my wife was working when we married. She should not have been in my understanding now as a Christian.

And I wondered why this nice fellow who was in charge of the bank where she worked, I just didn't like that guy. It's because he was around my wife all the time, and she was submitting to him, making him successful in everything that he did. And it bothered me. It should have bothered me. She was to submit to her own husband.

Not someone else's husband somewhere else. That's why the scriptures say, Don, if you don't provide for your own household, you're worse than an infidel. The curse of difficulty and provision is a curse that the man is to bear. We're not to ask our wives to carry that for us. We're not to ask them to bear that burden.

Childbirth and the difficulty and pain of labor is their curse. And I've yet to see, despite the acrobatics of this culture, a man do that. But every day wives and mothers go off bearing the curse of their husband, submitting to other women's husbands, not their own. You wonder why our marriages are struggling and having difficulty. The simple order of provision and caretaking of a wife and who she is asked to submit to, often by her own husband because, you know, We need two incomes to pay for this house.

Then get rid of that house. Focus back on a home, on children, on a marriage. This is God's design. I wish we had time to talk in depth about some of these things more than we do. Wives are called to submit to to be subject to their own husbands.

We see it in Colossians 3 and in the parallel passage. It's also beautiful, not as detailed as Ephesians 5. We won't spend the same kind of time there that we would. But we do see there in Colossians 3 the same principle that we see in Ephesians 5, and that is that this is to be asked to the Lord. And Colossians 3 makes it clear that This is what is fitting before the Lord.

This is what is seemly. This is what is appropriate. This is right before God for a wife to submit to her own husband. This pleases God. This is how He set the family in order.

And this is what we are to submit to. And it suits the created order of God that a wife submit to her own husband. And you notice that it is not set according to how qualified he is to receive your submission. Men, that does not get us off the hook. But you are not to love your wife conditionally based on how lovable she is, and she is not to submit to you conditionally based on how worthy of respect you are.

This is not as much about each other as we sometimes think it is, and It is much more about the Lord Jesus Christ. It is much more about Christ in the church than we often understand. And that again is why I just so want us to understand what a treasure marriage is and how it connects to the gospel and how it connects to Christ. And as we treasure that, We will treasure these duties. And we will strive for them not as those who think they can't do them and that there's no grace for God that's sufficient to do such a thing, or not as those who are casual and don't say, well, what's marriage anyway?

The crown in the dirt. No, we'll see it as the crown that God created. Wives called to be submissive to their own husbands. 1 Peter 3, we see that that submission, again, is compared to the submission that the church has to Christ. We see there that that is a submission that a sheep gives to the shepherd in the context of being shepherded in the church and led by an elder.

That is the submission that we render to our shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it is to look like. And it is to be to our own husbands. And if you think it's about how worthy the husband is, remember how a wife can be an instrument of conversion in the life of an unbelieving husband. By submitting to him.

We don't have time to go through that passage. I wish we did. But if any are here married to unbelieving husbands, submit to them and respect them. That is the God-ordained instrument for their salvation in a marriage with a believing wife. That He would be won by that gentle and quiet spirit, by that submissive heart.

That's the calling of God. And He's not worthy of that if we evaluate it by human standards, is He? Nor are our wives worthy of being loved by Christ if we evaluate that by human standards. But it's supposed to look like Christ in His church. And so let me ask you, how worthy were you to be loved by Christ?

What were you when He called you to Himself? How much did you love Him? I will tell you, not at all. Not until He changed your heart and drew you to Himself did you have any love or any affection or any friendship or a heart of anything other than stone. That's how a bride is to be loved by a groom, when she ill-deserves it.

If we had time to go through 1 Corinthians 13, it would be so glorious. That's such a picture of the love of Christ. Of Him rendering love when it is not only undeserved, but ill-deserved. Him returning good for evil. Him giving benefit in exchange for sin and abuse and hatred.

That's the model. Folks, it's not about how worthy your wife is or how good a job you think you did in picking her. Or how much the devil may have said, well, you picked the wrong wife, so you're stuck with this and she's never going to be lovable and you don't have to love her. Humbug. We're all married to imperfect husbands and wives, and we are called to a godly, Christ-honoring, gospel-adoring, gospel-proclaiming standard as we relate to them.

Oh the beauty of a wife adorning herself with that inner beauty. Not to say that outward beauty doesn't matter. It does. Read Song of Solomon. Look at how enraptured a husband was with the beauty of his wife.

That's how enraptured we should be with the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. God created beauty. We don't have to have a sunset that no artist could draw every evening. God did that. We don't have to have color.

We don't have to have... God the author of so much that is beautiful, and yet that wife who is submissive to her husband, it is not about the outside. It is about the inside. It is about that heart, that gentle and quiet spirit, that heart that says I will honor God, therefore I will honor you. Even if you're not a believer, I will submit to you and I will honor you, because I honor God.

I love you, but I love Him more. And I choose to love you, because He has commanded it, And He has made me His own. And He has given me the grace to do it. Just as we talked about last night. Oh, and these attacks on marriage are attacks on the Gospel.

Feminism started a long time ago to take women away from marriage, away from the home, to do violence to these things that are so beautiful in the Scriptures. To say submission is not a sign of love and strength in Christ, but it's a sign of weakness and inferiority. Oh, what a lie that is. To say that 1 Corinthians 11 saying that Christ is the head of every man and man is the head of woman is just abusive, patriarchal chauvinism. You know, our culture lies about that.

And look at the long-calculated efforts to take a wife out of a home, to have her in submission to everyone but her own husband, for her to bear the curse of provision, for marriage to be sullied and thrown in the dirt, This headship that's described in 1 Corinthians 11, that speaks of authority. Christian feminists will say that it doesn't, but they're just wrong. It's never used that way throughout Scripture. Look at it for yourself. Look at those who have done the studies on the Greek and that word.

Every time that that word, headship or head, is used in terms of relationship, it denotes authority. It denotes one in rank over another, to whom another is to put oneself in willing submission, ranking oneself beneath in position according to headship. Christ is the head of the church. Who would argue that we should kick against that? And yet so many argue that a wife should kick against submitting to her husband as unto the Lord.

It is the same principle of authority that we see in both places. We have very different recipients of that submission in Christ versus a husband, but again, this is God's design. This is how we learn obedience, how we continue to be sanctified. We hopefully learn obedience when we are children. We learn to submit to what God would have us submit to to honor Him.

And yet, we continue to learn that, don't we? We're not done when we get married, are we? The lesson goes on and sanctification goes on, and the grace of God continues to flow. And the beauty of Christian life, and the beauty of the church, and the beauty of the Gospel, these things are all proclaimed through this treasure of marriage. And so much of this, as we've said, is so mutual.

Something that should flow in both directions. We will get to and talk about husbands before we finish this morning, I hope, and trust. And understand even now that this kind of submission, putting oneself under another, that is exactly how a husband is called to love. That's how Christ loves His church. What did Christ withhold in terms of what the church needed?

Anything? It's the Gentiles who lord it over. Not the Christians. Christ came sacrificing, serving, meeting every need of the bride. This attitude of submission that comes from walking in the Spirit and according to the grace of God.

That is what is to be mutual in marriage. It is to flow both ways. Always. And yet there are specific commands. It's hard to talk about a wife's duties without talking about Titus 2.

And we'll just touch on it briefly for the sake of time. But in the context of relationships in the church, we see older women commanded to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good. Teaching what is good, but what's good? Just whatever we decide is good or whatever we think is good? Now we get some instruction there about what is good.

They are to be teaching what? The young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure workers at home, subject to their own husbands. That is the specific particular instruction to wives? What an uproar would that cause in our culture today if we actually presented it and preached it and were serious about it to those who don't know the Lord? Love their husbands.

You know what being a wife should do? It should make you a husband lover. That's not just the duty of the husband or the wife. That's why the Puritan said, hey, this is mutual. It flows both ways.

Ladies, your husbands need your love. They do. They need your affection. They need your companionship. They need your friendship.

And not just a, you know, yes sir, respect, sort of an attitude. No, this is tender. This is personal. This is close. Husbands need their wives' love just like a wife needs her husband's love and tenderness.

Oh, your children need your love. If an older woman would teach a younger woman to be a good Christian wife, she would teach her, love your husband and love your children. Be sensible, pure. What does it look like? How do you do it?

Go home. Be a worker at home. That is your place. Go take care of your home. Husbands, stop asking our wives to bear our curse.

Bring them home. Who cares if you have children or not? I pray God would bless you with children. Many don't have children because wife's out working and they don't, well how could we do this in this mess? A wife should be a keeper at home, childless or blessed with many.

You notice that's not the condition here. She is to be a worker at home. Being kind, subject to her own husband, making her home a place of beauty in which the Gospel flourishes. That is the calling of a wife. Oh, what cruelty to children that more women with children under three work nowadays than don't.

It's, what a crime. We wonder why our children are struggling, why we don't have their hearts, why The state's taken over everything with regard to their lives. Wives, come home. Why aren't Christians raising a godly seed? Because they're not raising seed at all.

They've turned it over to someone else. The government schools, the daycare by the time a child is before they're weaned, come home. You know the consequence of ignoring what we see in Titus 2? The Word of God is blasphemed whenever we ignore this. It is dishonored.

It's treated with violence. It is rejected. The Gospel is misrepresented. The Word of God, you know, oh well, you know, yeah, the Word of God says this, and I'm a Christian. Oh, I'm a committed Christian.

Well, I'm not going to do that. What does that say about the Word of God? Well, pick and choose, obey what you want, and ignore what you want. Is that how we feel about the Word of God? Is that what we believe?

Is that what our love for Christ has brought us to about the Word of God? Because something is counter-cultural and perhaps difficult, and maybe our extended family and our friends and the way we were reared and everything else will ridicule us if we obey the word of God? Do we pick and choose? Or is it what we say it is? Is it all we need for life and godliness?

Is it the revealed will of God, and does He give grace? That as we understand His commands by the instruction of the Spirit, we also have the strength, the power to be obedient to what we are commanded. God doesn't just say, do this, I know you can't and I'm not going to help you." No, He says, here's My command, and I will give you grace to obey it. And yet, we have a relationship in this. We have duty.

We need to strive for it. Like marriage is a treasure that we can't let go to. Like that crown that has been thrown in the dirt needs to be picked up and cleaned off and shined up and placed back in the position that it deserves. Marriage is a treasure. We must treasure it if we treasure our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

If we treasure the Word, If we treasure the Gospel, we don't pick and choose. And again, that admonition that they love their husbands, their husbands, their own husbands. We see that throughout all the parallel passages. Your husband, your own husband, their own husband. This is very particular.

This relationship between a husband and a wife needs to be between a husband and a wife and it is dangerous to spread it around all over the place. A wife is to be a helper suitable to her own husband, submissive to her own husband. That's how this family economy works. This is how it is supposed to be according to the Word of God. And we can't call ourselves Christians and call ourselves lovers of the word of God and say, well, but I'm going to ignore that part of it.

I'll do this because I kinda like this. My flesh is okay with that. The entire counsel of God must be what directs and controls and has our hearts and that which we love. Women are to be workers at home. That is the sphere which God has given them.

That is the place that they are called to occupy. That is what is clear from Scripture. To be established in marriage and workers at home. This doesn't fly in the face of Proverbs 31 so often. Well, what about the Proverbs 31 woman?

Isn't she the ultimate working woman? No. Actually, no. She is at home. She is very active, she is very thrifty, she is very industrious, she is very much a lot of things.

She's a businesswoman, but all of it is centered in the home. She's at home. She's directing children at home, servants at home, Her husband safely trusts in her at home. She is a worker at home. And that may take her outside the four walls of her house, but she is at home.

And so yes, there can be work in the gospel and ministry and things that women are gifted and able to do. But again, it needs to be centered. It needs to be at home. It needs to be under the authority of their own husbands that the Word of God not be blasphemed. Marriage, children, submission to a husband, preaching the Gospel.

You know what, ladies, you learn being at home? You know what I've watched my wife learn? Giving birth to seven children and raising them? She has learned to be so selfless. I know better than to talk about her.

It's hard to do it without getting choked up, but she has she's the most selfless person I know. Far more so than I am. You know, she wasn't exactly that when we got married. God's changed her. God sanctified her.

When she came home, God worked and He gave grace. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It's a place where women are sanctified and learn to not glory in themselves but to glorify God. It's where they learn love. Where they learn to love a husband who may not be lovable and respect a husband who may not be respectable because they are loving children who so often don't deserve it.

Who so often ill-deserve it. Just like Christ loves us. When we so often don't deserve it and so often ill deserve it. When we don't return love. When we just say, ah, give me.

And yet a precious bride at home caring for these little ones who can't love her back. I know there's a sense of, oh, this baby's loving me. Those babies are selfish little sinners who want only what they want. That's how we are born. That's how we are conceived.

If God doesn't change our hearts, That's how we remain. God gives a wife that kind of a love. God sanctifies a wife and makes her selfless in that way. God makes her Christ-like in that way. In her home.

Making that a place that whether everyone is there or whether no one is there with her, is a place of beauty. It's not about every minute someone has to be there or I can't be at home. Stay home. The Bible does not speak favorably about women who will not stay at home. It gets connected to harlotry and all kinds of things.

Gossip and being busy and doing all kinds of things that no Christian, and certainly not women, ought to be doing. Stay home. Be at home. Be a keeper at home. And men don't deny the faith.

Provide for our wives. That's what we're called to do. Again, 1 Timothy 5a, it's not me, I'm just the messenger. He doesn't provide for his own, he's worse than an infidel. He's denied the faith.

Why is that? Well, we see it better now, don't we? Because if I say, hey wife, don't be a keeper at home, I'm telling her, disobey God. Hey wife, go and bear my curse. I'm disobeying God and telling her to do the same.

How can the Word of God not be blasphemed whenever I am a living, breathing example as a professing Christian that I don't believe it and I won't obey it? These things matter. These things are so incredibly important. These are the things that make a Proverbs 31 woman. These are the things that make you trust your wife.

That's trust. Not where is she and who's she submitting to and what's going on in my home and how am I going to do this and I need some help and you know that house that mortgage payment those new cars whatever is driving us not to believe that a man can provide for his own family we need to repent of those things bring our wives home If that home needs to be half the size it is, then so be it. Fill it with children. Fill it with love. Fill it with the obedience of God.

Let the grace of God fill it. Our culture, our society is lying to us about these things. Don't paint yourself in a corner where you say, well I would obey God but I just can't. Oh, what's this submission to look like? It's to look like submission to the Lord.

That's the wholeheartedness, the beauty, the fervor, the zeal with which it ought to be engaged, as unto the Lord. There's a standard. Wives, you know, you're kind of prickly about submitting to your husband. You want to make the argument that you shouldn't submit to Christ? I didn't think so.

That's the argument we're making when we say we don't have to submit to our husbands. Because the Scripture says submit to Him as unto Christ. He is put in a position of authority over you like Christ is put in a position of authority over the church. You want to try to make the theological argument, church, we don't have to submit to Christ. That's outdated.

Women don't do that anymore. Churches don't do that anymore. That's the problem. That's why the word of God's being blasphemed. That's why our homes need to be places, our churches need to be places where the gospel is proclaimed and where the word is obeyed.

And one of the most glorious opportunities we have to do that is in the context of marriage. I know this is not natural. Another part of the wife's curse is that she does not want to submit to her husband. She wants to lord it over him. Genesis 3, look at it for yourself.

We just don't have time. Part of her curse is that this is difficult for her to receive. It's a hard manner of submission, maybe partly because her husband so often ill deserves what she's called to do. Man, we could help with that. God give us sanctified husbands who are easier to submit to in their love for the Lord, and yet that is not an out.

Yes it's difficult. Yes it's incredibly important and yes it is modeled after Christ and the church the Savior of the body. The protector, the provider, the preserver. Ladies, if your husband is seeking to do that, appreciate it. Do you appreciate Christ?

His protection, His salvation, His love when you don't deserve it. His sacrifice. His service. And appreciate your husband as he seeks to emulate that. Seeks to imitate Christ in His marriage.

I know often it doesn't look very much like Christ. But that's not the standard. That's not the if. That's not in there. God gives grace to submit to men who ill-deserve it, to love those who don't deserve it.

That is marriage. That is how these duties flow in both directions. That is part of the beauty and the treasure of marriage. A wife has a Savior in Christ and she has a protector and a deliverer and a provider. One to rescue her in trouble.

One to help her in illness. One to protect her from danger. One to be there in disaster. A companion. One to love and who is commanded to seek to understand her, to listen to her.

Ladies, you have that in a husband. As imperfect as it may be, appreciate what is there to be appreciated. A husband who should, like Christ, sacrifice anything for your well-being. Man, are you starting to feel like we're headed in your direction? We are.

We're trying. That's what a husband is called to be, and a wife is called to submit to him, And she can only do it by being filled with the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why that's the context of these commands. Walk in the Spirit. Submitting to each other.

That's how we do that. And husbands, you've heard much about your own duties, even as we've talked about the duties of a wife. We can spend a little bit of time being more specific about some of those things now in the time that we have left though. A husband's call to love His wife. I hope you're more grateful for your wife than you were yesterday.

I hope that as we are talking about these things, and you are thinking about the treasure of marriage, and the gift of a wife, and the proclamation of the Gospel, and the Helper that God has given you, and the fact that you are not alone, that you enjoy companionship, that you have the hope of children, and many of you have children and have been blessed in that way. As you have this wife of your youth, I hope that this is producing joy and gratitude that's not related to how perfect she is, but is related to the gift that she is from the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that we are moving in a more spirit-filled direction of mutual submission. And men, Yes, you are called to love your wife. That is what we have read about.

What does that look like? It looks like submitting to her. Not advocating your position of headship and not failing to lead, but submitting to her how? Submitting your desires to what she needs. Submitting your strength to meet her needs and to help her in her weakness.

Submitting time, effort, energy. Submitting before the Lord to lead her spiritually. This is a Spirit-filled life of humility that a husband is called to. The Gentiles lord it over. That is not Christian leadership.

That is not Christian authority. Gentiles there denoting those who are lost, those who don't know the Lord. Those apart from the Lord. Those who are not His own. Those are the ones who lord it over.

So many husbands want to look at Ephesians 5 and say, huh, looks like I'm commanded to take authority here. I don't see that. Your wife's committed to submit, commanded to submit to your authority, but men, we are commanded to love. What does that love look like? The context tells us.

What are we talking about here? Submitting to one another as we walk in the Spirit. The godly husband is the servant of his wife as the Lord Jesus Christ came to serve His bride. What need of the bride did Christ say, well, I'm not gonna meet that? He gave Everything.

And that's simply our calling as husbands. I read one sermon where a Puritan was quoted, I think it was one of the Puritans quoted, is saying if a wife has to be sliced, no, If a husband has to be cut up into a thousand pieces a thousand times over for the sake of his wife, he should just do it. Just submit to that. You know what you owe your wife? That.

If somebody's got to slice and dice you a thousand times over, and that's what's required for her good, to love her, to sacrifice for her, to protect her, that's your calling. What are you called to give for your wife? Everything. You think that makes this life of submission and grateful submission for a protector and a provider different than what the world wants to say it looks like? Absolutely it does.

Oh, the humility and the need that a man be filled with the Spirit, the Christian humility that is required as husbands exercise godly, God-given authority in leading their wives and in loving their wives. That's what a husband must focus on. We so often want to focus on this is my authority, this is my leadership, this is my role, And again, that leadership is important, but it needs to be exercised in a godly way with humility. That's the way that Christian leaders are to lead. That's how elders are to lead churches.

That's how Christ came and served His bride and led the church and continues through the Spirit to lead us. That is what godly Christian leadership looks like. It is not domineering. It is not hyper-authoritative. It is not look at me, beat my chest, I'm going to have my way over you.

That is not God-honoring authority in a marriage. We must submit to Christ, humble ourselves, lower ourselves, while our wife is commanded to place herself in a rank below us, really in a very military kind of a term, and since we are commanded in the preceding paragraph to do the exact same thing with our Christian brothers and sisters, to submit. This is not flying in the face of leadership. This is leadership. It's service.

It's love. It's sacrifice. It is always asking, how can I minister to my wife? What does she need? How can I love her?

How can I build her up? How can our marriage look like Christ in the church? How can I look like the Lord Jesus Christ in my marriage in the same way that He relates to me in my salvation? How can I bring her joy? How can I bless her?

That's the way parents serve children, isn't that how we lead children? Is the selfish father who puts his needs first and over his children going to do anything but frustrate them. This is God honoring servant leadership. That's a life on course before the Lord. That's submission.

And yes, a wife is to be in submission to her husband, and a husband is in his love for the wife to be constantly, relentlessly submitting his time, his needs, his desires to what she needs. Not what's godly, Not what God commands. In neither relationship do we say, well God has commanded this, but I must place another authority over Him. No. We do not have authority to forbid what God requires or require what God forbids.

That is not a part of a husband's authority. That should be rejected. But how often is that really the issue in our Christian marriages? Oh, my husband's telling me not to read my Bible. To forsake fellowship with the church.

To not love my children. Is that really the point of conflict? Or is it our flesh? Is it the selfishness that is at work so often within us? The world attacking what we read in Ephesians, beginning in v.

25, that husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church. And oh, the detail that we get about that, and we won't have time to get into all that detail the way that would be wonderful and beautiful. But let's talk about some of it. Loving his own wife as Christ loved the church. Loving his own wife as he loves himself.

Loving that in a spirit-filled home with a spirit-filled attitude of submission. That agape kind of love, that is the kind of love that Christ showed to His church. Again, it's not dependent on how deserving the subject, the object of that love is. It is a love of the will. Love.

Action. Don't think of it as feeling. Get away from that. You don't love your wife when you feel like loving her. You don't love your husband when you feel like loving her.

You choose to love your wife. You choose to love your husband. Because God has commanded and it glorifies Him. And this is Christian life. And this preaches the Gospel.

And this is what we are all about. It is action. It's not about how you feel. And it's not about what they deserve. Remember, Christ holds you fast.

Is there a wife that doesn't want her husband to hold her fast? To be that secure? To be that confident? To be that protected? To be provided for in that way?

To be led spiritually in that way? Is there a wife that doesn't yearn for what we just sang about with her Savior and with her husband? I submit to you, no Christian wife should do anything but love and appreciate and yearn for that. And husbands, we are called relentlessly to serve, to serve, to serve, to sacrifice, to remember how Christ has done that for us. To remember how unlovable we were when our wife might not be as lovable as she was yesterday or she will be tomorrow.

But just remember, Christ loved me when I ill-deserved Him, when I hated Him, when I was His enemy, when I blasphemed Him, when I had nothing to do with Him, He loved me. And He changed that in me. And I love my wife the same way. That is the model. That is the example.

That is how I am called to do it. That is what it should look like. Go through Romans 5, Romans 8, Everything you want to look at about salvation. Husbands, think about how and where God saved you and what He has done and the kind of love that He has directed to you. And we are called to love our wives the same way, just like Christ loved His church.

Oh, and it's beautiful. And we're to live with them, we see in 1 Peter 3, in an understanding way. That also is beautiful. Any wives here just wish their husbands didn't understand them? They just didn't understand him as well?

I don't even say, you know, he listens to me too much. I hate that about him. He is always trying to understand me and listen and care and be tender. That just drives me nuts. I've been a pastor a long time, and I've been a husband longer than that, and I have never heard a wife say anything like that.

Oh, There is a tenderness to loving and understanding and being close to and relating our wives. We are to be understanding. Understanding. And I struggle with this. This is a hard sermon to preach in front of your wife, brothers.

I'm still trying to understand her. I'm still trying to figure her out. She is still a lifelong study to me. She is still so in so many ways a mystery to me. And yet there are mysteries in so many things of God.

That doesn't trump what we're called to do. That's part of the fun of it, guys. That's part of the joy of it. That's part of the beauty of marriage. Oh, you know, you want to go back and you want to do things differently than you've done so much of the time, but you know, we can't.

We can't be discouraged by what we haven't done and what we wish we'd done. But we can love that weaker vessel now. That's not an insult. That's just a physiological fact. Our wife is a weaker vessel.

We're supposed to understand her as such. Man, you are to be stronger. You are physically stronger. Our culture wants to say, no you're not. That's just stupid.

Nobody with a lick of common sense fails to understand that a man has physiologically created a stronger vessel in many physical ways than a woman. Now, I'm not talking emotional, and I'm not even going to talk about childbirth. Strength and perseverance and ability to bring a child into the world. I don't pretend to have a fraction of the strength of my wife in many ways, but the Bible says she is the weaker vessel, and I am to be in many ways her knight. Chivalry is not supposed to be dead.

I'm supposed to protect her. I'm supposed to love her. I'm supposed to treasure her. I'm supposed to keep her from danger. I'm supposed to fight off the wolves.

And oh, that includes spiritually. Oh, the spiritual protection and provision and leadership and washing her in the Word. We see that, don't we? We're to wash her in the Word. What is a husband's love supposed to look like?

What is one who wants to be a husband supposed to learn to do? To love a wife in a purifying way. Real love from a godly husband never defiles. It never leads to sin. It is purifying.

It is loving. It leads to the Word. It leads to Christ. Oh, the men who would try to fulfill their own pleasures by asking women to sin with them. Oh, how can marriage be what our culture is trying to say it is?

Husbands washing a wife in the Word, presenting her holy, without blemish, without spot, before a holy God. How on earth can that be purported to involve what God says is sin? What God says is an abomination. We're now going to call that marriage and say, oh, here's a husband washing a husband in the Word, and sanctifying, and loving. A wife supposedly doing that with a wife.

Friends, we can't bow to this. We cannot give up on marriage and say, well we've got to be politically correct. And you know, God's just gonna have to take a back seat here. You know, the pressure's too much. Again, marriage is the treasure we talked about yesterday so inadequately, but it's the treasure.

It is the connection to the Gospel. It is the connection to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the gift of God. It is the grace of God. It is the beauty of God.

It is a treasure. It's not a place of defilement. It's a place where sin is not encouraged, but discouraged. It's a place of sanctification. It's a place where the water of the Word washes.

It's a place of salvation. Oh man, we need to be concerned about the salvation of our wives. Whatever spiritual condition we find ourselves in, and the sanctification of our wives. If we love them, oh, we should want them to love Christ. We should want them to walk with Christ.

We should want the grace of God to abound in their lives. And we're to give ourselves up for that. To sacrifice everything, if necessary, for that. We are to wash her in the Word. We are to give ourselves like Christ gave Himself for His church and it's action.

It's not how you feel. It's what you do, brothers. And there ought to be warm, tender, affectionate feeling with that. That is a part of love. But that is not the driving force of love that is talked about here.

This is not that kind of love. The word used for love here in loving our wives, it's not eros, it's not philos, it's that agape love. It is that love of the will, you choose it. You choose it, and it is not dependent on how much your wife deserves it, but I'll suggest to you that your wife deserves it more than you realize. If you look at the selflessness of a godly wife, she deserves your love and affection more than you realize.

Stop looking at her faults. Stop picking her apart. If she needs to be corrected or reproved, that may be your job, but let it be gentle. And I'm listening to this and stepping on my own toes. But let it be gentle.

Let it be seldom. Let it be private. If there are things in leadership that may be difficult for her that you must do as you wash her in the Word, do it lovingly. Do it sacrificially. Do it kindly.

Do it tenderly. Do it with affection. Have a purifying love for your wife. Not one that ever says, hey, join me in sin. Let's do this that we shouldn't do.

Come on. We don't need to be in God's Word right now. The church is not that important. Discipling our children? Eh.

We get a little tired of them. No. It's not something where we lead our wives into sin. It's just the opposite. It's a purifying relationship, not one where defilement and sin is ever courted.

And it requires a continual washing of the Word because we are fallen creatures with an ugly nature and it's hideous. And so we need a constant bath, a constant shower, a pressure washer, I don't know how to put it, you know, with what we need in terms of the washing of the Word, but it's what we're called to do as we seek to present a picture of what Christ is doing in our own lives as He's sanctifying us. You see the connection. You see what God's doing to sanctify us. That's what we should be doing to sanctify our wives.

We should be doing it with the same spirit, with the same attitude, with the same willingness to sacrifice. Oh, we shouldn't commit any act of unfaithfulness. That's one of those mutual duties of love and faithfulness to each other that you can read about as you study these things more. But certainly, you know, what an abomination adultery is, and what an abomination spiritual adultery is, as we would fail to be spiritual leaders for our wives. We are a constant reminder in our families that we are betrothed to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That we are in that relationship with our Savior. That God established, and that our marriages should reflect that and it should involve a purity. A washing of the Word. A caring love. We're a lover like we love ourselves, man.

How about that? And someone says, oh yeah, no problem. I don't know. Who you gonna make sure gets fed? Who do we naturally take care of and just almost never neglect?

I was guilty of it this morning, texting my wife. You know where any of this is? And what did she do? Somebody came running with it. I was plenty ready to care for myself this morning, and I was trying to get ready to be with you.

It's very natural. I'm preaching on marriage, and yet minutes before we come over here, can you help me with this? Where's that? And she's doing everything in the world, the children, you know, hey honey, can you take care of me? That comes really natural to us.

We're to care for her the same way. Love her like we love ourselves, And in the process, we are also loving ourselves when we love her that way. You know, if you love your wife and take care of her, that's a great benefit to you. I'm not encouraging you to do it selfishly. The whole point of the two talks that I've been so clumsy in trying to give was really what our brother Curtis talked to us about.

Let's do this for the right reasons. We're talking about the duties of marriage. I'm not trying to browbeat you or discourage you. Or say, oh, this standard, how could I ever meet it? I'm so hopeless.

No, by the grace of God, you're not hopeless. But let's do this for the right reasons. To glorify God because marriage is beautiful, is a treasure, is ordained and established by God with such kindness and such grace that He would not withhold something that would make paradise better for a man and a woman. That He would make companionship like the Trinity is in companionship with itself. Making man in our image, it says, the counsel of the Trinity, established marriage by God.

What a caring love that is. How kind. We take care of our bodies. We're to nourish and cherish our wives. That's what the Scriptures tell us.

Nourish and cherish her. Nourish her. Feed her. What she needs, provide it. Whether it's food, whatever it is, nourish her.

Feed her. Take care of her. It means what it says. Cherish her. The Greek there actually denotes to keep someone warm when they're cold.

Cherish her. Meet those needs. Nourish and cherish her. Nourish and cherish her. One of the sweetest ways in which we do that is to take care of her and provide for her.

Oh, that Christian culture would return to a culture of raising godly children in Christian homes. I know many here are committed to that. We need many, many more committed to that. That's the incubator for the church. That's how most people are saved.

I know there's some dramatic salvation experiences that can be described here. The Apostle Paul has one. But normally, The church is populated. Christians come from Christian families. There is a covenant promise.

Proverbs talks about raise a child up and the way he should go, and when he's old he will not depart from it. Hearing the Word of God. That is how faith comes. That's what ought to be going on in our homes. In our homes, but we've got to have homes.

We've got to have homes where men provide for and nourish and cherish and take care of their wives, and where wives are there working in the sphere that God has given them. And finally, Tom has stood up and I know I'm late and I'm hurrying brother. How committed to loving this way should we be? Absolutely. Just Absolutely committed.

Purpose to it. Purpose every day. Purpose when you see your wife. Purpose to be absolutely committed to her. To hold her fast in a love that's unbreakable.

Where you leave father and mother and cleave to your wife, purpose that nothing will break that. What can separate us from the love of God? What? You know what the Scripture says about that, we're out of time and we won't have time to spend there, but what can separate you from the love of God? Who is it that holds you fast?

We are called to imitate Christ in holding our wives fast and loving them as He loves His church. Let's pray together. Father, we thank You for the beauty of Your Word, and Father, I pray that You would drive the truth of it deep into our hearts, and that our homes, our families, our marriages would be beautiful pictures of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. God, please work by Your grace and according to Your truth in the lives of Your people. Help us to love each other, and oh Father, help us to love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and proclaim the Gospel, the good news of Christ, through our marriages and in every aspect of our lives.

Father, we know in our own flesh we are not capable of these standards. But Father, we thank you that by your grace you give the strength to obey what you have commanded. Father, I pray that you would pour that grace out in the lives of your people, in the marriages of your people, in your church. Now God, that You would reform marriage in this country, and God, You would reform it beginning in our own hearts and in our own families that we would repent. God, You would grant us more godly marriages that imitate the Lord Jesus Christ and His love for His church.

We pray in His name, Amen. Amen. Amen and Amen. Thank you, brother. I turned to my wife and said he is doing so good.

And she said, he is saying everything. But we talked about machine gun delivery this morning. That was great. Thank you. Thank you Jesus.

Now I was reading several weeks back and I just kind of reviewed it back there but in Deuteronomy 29 16 we're reminded by Moses at the end of the book not to say in your heart that I can have rebellion and I'll be okay. Because if you do, the next generation will rise up and see the destruction of the land and go, what happened? But what a warning. You know, Don't young people listening, husbands, wives, let us all not have any place in our heart where we think that we can rebel or be reserved toward or hold back from full obedience to the Word of God. And we know it's only by the grace of God, in His work of salvation and transformation, the sanctification process that He'll bring us through.

But don't hold back or turn away. Cling to and cry out. Oh, we all do so. Blessed be His name. For He is worthy.

And He will help us. He has. And He will continue. And He will help the next generation by His grace. Let's take a break.

That clock says 10 30. We'll start back at 10 45. I understand the coffee is ready. It wasn't earlier. We're having a party and somebody else is home.

We're learning a lot. We're gonna get the light straight too during this time. Sorry about that. But uh good morning. God bless you all.

Have a nice break. We'll see you in a few minutes. Thank you.