Introduction:
(Ephesians 5:25-33)
- Love your wives... because You have no alternative . (Eph 5:25)
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 - Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Matthew 22:39 - You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 5:44-45 - But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
- Love your wives... by What you say . (Eph 5:26-27)
- Holy words.
- Loving words.
- Checked words.
- Love your wives... by What you do . (Eph 5:28-30)
- Checked actions.
- Affectionate actions.
- Sacrificial actions.
Genesis 2:15 - The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
- Love your wives... as A living gospel . (Eph 5:31-33)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Good morning, Harvest.
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Oh, I'll go back and sit down.
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Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5.
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We're going to start at verse 25.
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And while you're turning there, I've got a little story for you about a time when Bethany newlyweds and had a little incident in our kitchen. Some of you may remember that juice didn't always come pre-packaged in bottles. It wasn't so convenient. You had to make your own juice. You had to buy juice in cans of frozen concentrate. So apple juice, orange juice, grape juice. You had to buy that can of frozen concentrate and you'd put it in a pitcher and mix it with three cans of water and you had a half gallon of juice.
01:36-01:43
The thing about those cans is they had a tab on the top and you had to peel that off and pop the top off.
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Well, one Sunday afternoon, Bethany and I were in the kitchen and she peeled that top off and popped the lid-- this is grape juice, by the way-- and it just went all over my favorite shirt.
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It was a Pima cotton cream-colored polo.
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It had these light purple stripes on the sleeves and the collar.
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And now it had a bright purple splotch on the middle of it.
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And you can imagine what I said and what I did, right?
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You can just imagine.
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You have to imagine a little bit longer, because we're going to pray first.
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Our gracious and loving Father, I pray this morning you would give us a greater vision of marriage, its purpose, and how it glorifies you.
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I pray your word would penetrate deep into our hearts and transform our lives so that marriages here, marriages of everyone watching, marriages of everyone who will see this later, their lives will be transformed and you will be glorified.
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We pray in the great name of our Savior Jesus. So we are in Ephesians chapter 5.
03:13-04:43
We're talking about families and marriage, of course. So who is this message for? Well, it's for husbands, of course, but it's for also any man, young man, who wants to be married and be a husband. The purpose of this message is to give husbands biblical reasons for loving their wives and practical ways for how to do that. But this isn't just for husbands, it's also for wives or any woman who wants to be a wife so that you know what to expect of a husband biblically and legitimately. But it's also for everyone in the church because the well-being and flourishing of marriages of husbands and wives will produce well-being and flourishing in the church because what happens to just one of us affects all of us. So we all need to know where God sets the bar for marriage and encourage and exhort men to love their wives. Now I have to make some full disclosure here. The things I'm going to talk about I've not always done well, but if doing things well were the litmus test for being able to preach, well, the Word of God would never get preached by anyone. So we are compelled to preach the word because it is the word of God that transforms and gives life.
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We're also going to do some practical exercises this morning, so I want you to get ready to participate.
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Men, are you ready? Buckle up because the first hill is always the biggest and the steepest.
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So verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Our first point is you're to love your wives because you have no other alternative.
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It's the command of God. Love your wife as Christ loved the church. It's not a suggestion.
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But you say, "Well, what is love? How is it defined?" Well, we have that definition in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-7.
05:42-06:07
"Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This is the love with which we are to love our wives.
06:08-06:59
The Greek word for love here in 1st Corinthians 13 is agape. It's a noun. It means selfless, unconditional love. And in the scripture it is the highest form of love. It describes how God loves us and how we ought to love God. But in verse 25 and throughout the rest of our passage this morning, love is the Greek word "agapao." It's a verb. So verb means to do, to act, and it's a verb that means we must love selflessly and sacrificially. It means we must do it. We We must, I'm sorry, we must put selfless sacrificial love into action just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
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Now some of you, you may object, you might say, "Yeah, but you don't understand that the spark is gone.
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She's not the same girl I married. She's let herself go and we don't seem to have anything in common anymore. We don't, we don't agree on anything and we seem to fight about everything. You know I'm feeling suffocated. I'm being stifled. Well then, lover is your neighbor.
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Jesus says in Matthew 22 30, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." You have any neighbor closer to you than your wife?
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But you might say, "No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. It is really, really awful. She's barely civil to me.
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She's on me about something the minute I walk in the door from work.
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She nags me constantly about every little thing.
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And I know how she talks about me with her friends when they're out throwing back glasses of wine? Yeah. We're not even intimate anymore.
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We sleep in separate bedrooms. We barely see one another.
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Maybe in passing in the morning. I'll tell you our home is more battleground than haven.
08:33-09:04
All right then, Jesus says, "Lover is your enemy." Matthew 5, 44 and 45, he says, "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." You might want to say, "Oh, surely, surely love for a neighbor and an enemy, that's different, Right? It's not the same kind of love I'm supposed to have for my wife.
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Now I want you to look at our three verses again.
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It's the same degree of love required for each. Agapao.
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It's not just conceptually like the noun agape, but active, doing, sacrificial, selfless loving. Man, you have no alternative but to love your wife regardless of what you think about her.
09:39-11:55
You must love your wives as Christ loved the church. Do you understand that Christ gave himself up for you when you were his enemy? Romans 5, 8 and verses 10 and 11 says, "God chose his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now listen to this, "For if while we were his enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life." More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. The great selfless sacrificial Lord love with which Christ loves you and gave himself up for you when you were his enemy so that you would be reconciled to your Heavenly Father? That is the love you must show to your wife. You have no alternative. You might object, "That sounds rather grim, kind of fatalistic. Oh, I have to love my wife." No, not at all. Loving our wives can and should be a great joy. It was in consideration of the joy set before him that Jesus Christ endured the cross to save you. And just as we read in Romans 5 11, we rejoice in God because Jesus has reconciled us to him. If you're not finding joy in loving your wife, perhaps you need to check on your love for Jesus. Do you realize how you love your wife is a barometer of your love for Jesus? Do you understand that how you love your wife reveals how much you love and value Christ? That is, how much you are truly rejoicing in the fact of your salvation is an accurate measure of your love for Christ, and if you want an accurate measure of your love for Christ, the best place to look is your marriage.
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Is it my imagination?
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Did it get quiet in here?
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You know that it's true.
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There's a direct correlation between how much you love and esteem Jesus and how much you love and esteem your wife. You wanted to be married, but I didn't want this kind of marriage. All right then, let's get to work on some very practical ways you can begin to change things. I'm gonna warn you, someday soon your wife may say to you, the things that guy talked about, the things he preached about, the things he said you should say to me, the things he said you should do for me, I want you to do that for me. I want you to say those things to me. It may be on the ride home from church today, it may be over dinner, it might be while you're laying in bed, together in the dark, but I'm giving you a heads-up so that you can start saying and doing those things before she ever has to ask. So we're gonna look first at how to love our wives by what you say. Look at verses 26 through 27. "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." So the first thing we need to say to our wives are holy words.
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The word of God.
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We must speak the word of God to our wives.
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You are the priest and lead theologian in your home.
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And you say, "Well, I'm no theologian.
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I haven't studied much." But you are.
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Let me ask you, men, what do you believe?
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Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died according to the scriptures for our sins buried rose again the third day according to the scriptures appeared to his disciples appeared to over 500 at one time ascended into heaven where he now sits at the right hand of God the Father you believe he is returning again that's theology you men you are theologians but you need to grow you need to grow in your understanding you need to prepare yourself start by praying for wisdom and greater understanding you need to be washed with the water of the word so you must read and study God's Word every day get yourself some resources this this nation is awash in resources to help us grow in our understanding of God's Word. Get a concordance, get a layman's one-volume book of systematic theology or biblical theology, start studying it.
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Get the Westminster Confession, get the catechisms, the Heidelberg Catechism.
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there's all kinds of resources current and historic. Get involved in your small group, get involved in men's studies. We've had a discipleship's journey here. You're missing out if you're not involved in fishermen. And then you need to relay what you learned to your wife.
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You must wash her with the water of the word by praying with her, reading the word with her, get a devotional and do a devotional with her every day, and be ready to answer her questions.
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And if you don't know the answer, go find it.
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You must take the lead, and the two of you must walk together in your growth and sanctification so that you can continually be presenting your wife to Christ and to yourself in holy splendor.
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Next, we're going to look at loving words.
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Loving words. You're to build your wife up with loving words to help her grow in security and beauty. Do you know you are responsible for your wife's beauty? You might think, "No, no, no, she puts the makeup on and goes shopping for clothes." No, you are responsible for your wife's beauty. You're to wash her with loving, affectionate words that affirm in her heart and mind that you truly love her and cherish her. Because how you see her is how she will see herself. All right, it's time for our first practical exercise. I will go first. Bethany, would you come up?
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My sweet girl, I love you more than life itself. You are my beloved, and I adore and cherish you. I love you more than life itself, and you are altogether beautiful, my love. My heart is and always will be yours, and I thank you for loving me and I thank you for marrying me. I will thank you forever for that.
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Thank you. Now I know I know that's not as as cinematic or perhaps romantic as you complete me and you had me at hello but those are real words and I say those things to my wife all the time I can say them in public because I say them to her in private you might be sitting there saying ah I can't say such things or you know what I don't need to say such things because she knows I love her you say such things? Or you won't? Your wife needs to hear you say loving words. No one else is going to say them to her. Do you want some other man saying those things to her? Most assuredly, you do not. It's your privilege and your prerogative to speak affirming and affectionate words. If you're sitting next to your wife right now, I want you to lean over and whisper in her ear that you love her.
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Go ahead, I got time.
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Remember the barometer that we talked about? The Spirit of Christ in you needs be calling out to the Spirit of Christ in her to allure her and draw her to yourself so that she knows beyond doubt that you love and cherish and adore her.
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Next we're going to talk about checked words. What do I mean by checked words?
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Well, I mean there are times when you need to stifle it. You need to bite your tongue. You need need to bridle your tongue.
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You don't need to say everything to your wife that might come into your head.
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By that I mean no cutting remarks, no demeaning words, say nothing that would humiliate her or break her spirit.
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You do not pile on guilt-inducing words, neither in public and especially not in private.
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Do your utmost to not raise your voice in anger, because these kinds of words, they only wound.
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They don't help.
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They don't encourage your wife.
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They only produce spots and wrinkles and blemishes on your wife's heart.
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Oh, speaking of which, my shirt, my shirt with the purple spot.
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What did I say?
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Well, before I said anything, Bethany looked at me, and she felt bad.
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She knew it was a mess.
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It was an accident.
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But she said, before you say anything, you need to remember you have to love me more than you love your shirt.
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[LAUGHTER]
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(audience laughing)
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You're right.
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I don't have that shirt anymore.
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But 36 years later, I am more delighted every day with the wife of my youth.
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So we love our wives because we have no alternative.
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We love our wives with affectionate, loving words.
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We love our wives by what we do, is our next point.
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Please look at verse 28.
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In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
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He who loves his wife loves himself.
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For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
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This is really an extended way of saying, do to others what you'd have others do to you.
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Do to your wife what you want her to do to you.
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Now men, we show ourselves a great deal of grace and do a great many things to ensure our own comfort and well-being, but we're called to do the same for our wives.
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And just as we finish the last point with checked words, we're gonna start this one with checked actions.
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There are things that you must not and will not do. And first of all, you will not lay angry violent hands on your wife. You will not hurt her. And if you have that as an issue, as a sin in your life, you need to talk to Pastor Jeff or Pastor Taylor or one of the elders immediately. And as Jeff said last week, Ladies, if this is happening to you, you don't have to live like that. You get help.
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You talk to one of the pastors, you talk to another woman in this church that you trust, and we will get you to a safe place, you and your children. That is not how you are to live. That is not what a loving husband does to his wife.
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Another thing is, you must stop looking at pornography. You're committing adultery and you're despising your wife. You are sinning against God with a high hand. You must hate and kill this sin because if you don't, it will kill you and it will kill your marriage. I speak from experience. I was exposed to pornography from the age of 10, hardcore pornography. And it is destructive. It warped my view of women, it warped my view of relationships, it warped my ideas about what's supposed to happen in marriage. And praise God, once I became a believer, I could leave some of that behind. Because back when I was a kid, a lot of it was in print. And it did pretty good for a number of years in my marriage. But then came, I wouldn't call it Pandora's box, Satan's box of sin, the internet, and made it all available again. And I went down that death spiral.
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Because all that baggage from my youth, I'll tell you, Satan's bellhops were really happy to help me carry all that baggage into my marriage.
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So what did I do?
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I knew I had a problem.
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The first thing to do is confess it to your wife.
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need to be accountable to her. That's a difficult thing to do, I understand, but you must do it and then you need to build protections around yourself and your marriage. In my house, all of our devices are connected so Bethany can see everything I'm looking at and she has permission to ask me what have you been looking at I gave it's a blank check what have you been looking at lately and she can see she sees all the texts she sees all the emails she sees the browsing history that's a protection for me it's a huge deterrent I mean the greatest deterrent for me is how can I sin against my Lord Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself up for me? How can I do that to him when he has made me one with himself? And how can I do that to my bride when I am one with her? Man, you've got to exterminate this. You've got to exterminate pornography from your marriage. Next thing we're going to look at is affectionate actions. Let's move on to something positive here. You need to show your wife affectionate actions.
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You need to do affectionate things for her. Acts of remembering. Give her a card.
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Write her a poem. If you can't write a poem, you know, find one that speaks to your love for your wife and and give that to her. Give her flowers. Give her a gift when you've been traveling. Bring a gift home for her. Just something small. It doesn't have to be anything big, but just so she knows that you were thinking of her. Call her during the day. Send her an affectionate text message so she knows that she is never ever very far from your thoughts. And always, always Always wear your wedding ring.
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If you're working at a job where it's dangerous and you gotta take it off, well, get one of those silicone ones or something that it would pull away.
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But always wear your wedding ring.
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It's a tongue twister.
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Acts of affection.
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An impromptu back rub.
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My wife loves it if I just come up behind her and just rub her shoulders.
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kiss on the back of the neck, a gentle touch on her arm if you come up alongside her.
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Give her hugs and kisses. You need especially to give your wife hugs and kisses in front of your children. They need to see that you love and adore your wife. They need to see that. They need to see what a loving marriage looks like. And it doesn't matter if they go, "Oh, mom, dad." No, no, you're building in their heart security.
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They will be secure knowing that mom and dad are like this. They're tight. Mom and dad are good.
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We're good. Look at her across the room. Give her a wink. Hold her hand when you're in public.
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sit next to her in church. You realize when you you've got an hour or more of of unfettered time to sit next to your wife. Why, maybe it's time for a practical exercise. Some of you aren't sitting next to your wife right now. Maybe you need to get up and move. Go ahead, go ahead.
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Sit next to your wife. There we go. Put your arm around her.
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Hold her hand.
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I'm sorry if I'm putting you on the spot. I meant to.
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Put your arm around your wife. Hold her hand.
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And if you, since you weren't sitting sitting next to her earlier, lean over and tell her how much you adore her.
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Again, man, no one else can and certainly no one else should be doing these things for your wife. And really, truly, she only wants them from you.
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Finally, sacrificial actions. Like Jesus, we must love through sacrificial actions.
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Jesus gave himself up for his bride. He loves, nourishes, and cherishes us.
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And we know that greater love has no one than this, and that someone laid down his life for his friends.
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We too can lay down our lives for our wives.
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We don't have to do it all at once. We can do it a little bit at a time.
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We can lay down our wives, or lay down our lives, a little bit at a time.
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I'm glad we can laugh because this is a pretty heavy subject.
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Now, now, now you may think there's a division of labor in the home, right? That stereotype of, this is women's work, this is what the wife does in the home, and this is what the guy does in the home, and the two will never meet. That's the world. The reality is it's all your work, all of it.
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Why do I say that? Well, let's go back to the beginning, Genesis chapter 2 verse 15.
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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
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Who was responsible for the whole garden? Adam. Eve wasn't around yet.
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But we know God also said it's not good for the man to be alone.
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So he made him a helper out of himself, out of Adam. God made him a helper who corresponded to him.
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Your wife was given to you because you need help.
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And she's glad to help, but remember, remember she's a physically weaker vessel than you.
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She needs breaks. If she works outside the home, she's tired when she comes home at the end of the day. If she's been home with children all day, she's probably exhausted. She needs a break and you need to help help her, right? You need, because it's your work, you should be picking it up and doing it yourself. And when you do that you give her a break, but you also show that you value her and you value the work that she does. Think about some of the things your wife does. They're just repetitive tasks that you got to do over and over and over again. And it's like there's never an end to it and it just see nobody notices, nobody cares. Go back to those affectionate loving words, "Honey, thanks for doing the laundry. Thanks for putting clean underwear in my drawer. Honey, thank you for that delicious dinner." You need to show her you value what she does. So, wash the dishes, get the vacuum out, vacuum the drugs. Fold the clothes, sit down with her. Hey honey, let me help you fold the clothes.
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Better yet, honey, show me how to fold t-shirts so I do it the right way. Honey, I'll help you make the bed. Show me how you do it. This is a point in my home because I know how I make the bed is different from the way Bethany makes the bed to just two different families.
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I help her make the bed the way she wants to make the bed? Because I value what she does.
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Another thing you can do is take charge of the children's bath and bedtime.
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Let your wife, maybe she just wants to go lay down on the bed and take a nap, but maybe she wants to just do something to decompress from the day. You need to give her that opportunity because no one else is going to do that for her. Acts of listening. You should put aside what you're doing and give her your full attention. Talk about sacrifice. Right? Guys, we get we're looking on our phone or we're I don't know if anybody reads the newspaper anymore or you're watching the football game or you're playing a video game and she says honey can you come here a minute and our first response might be what what do you want now no right we're not doing those kinds of words anymore no it's just just a minute honey I'll be right there and you go and listen to what she has to say when you're sitting at the dinner table give her your full attention if she wants to talk you know men I think they use they have something like ten thousand or a thousand words a day and so by the time we get home from work we're done we don't want to talk to anybody anymore our wives have something like 25,000 words a day they need to use I'm exaggerating but our wives love to talk We need to listen to them. Sometimes you're the only adult conversation they're gonna get in a day. You need to be there for your wife and give her undivided attention. In fact, I would strongly encourage you to set aside 10-15 minutes every day to just sit down with your wife at the table, on the couch.
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Kids go away go play your mother and I are gonna talk And you just honey tell me about your day How's it going? How do you feel you didn't seem to sleep? Well last night what's going on?
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Just listen to her She needs that and she will know you value her Finally, acts of forgiveness. You're going to sin against your wife, and you will need to ask her for forgiveness.
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And it's got to be more than just saying, "I am sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that." Not good enough. You've got to keep short accounts. You need to be quick to confess and say exactly what you've done and acknowledge the hurt you've caused.
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You need to be able to say, "Honey, will you forgive me for saying such and such to you?
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I know that really hurt you and it made you feel like thus and such.
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I had no excuse. I had no good reason for saying any of those things. Will you forgive me?" You've got to do that. And if you do those kinds of things in front of your children, if you sin against your wife in front of others, then you need to ask for forgiveness in front of them. Again, I realize this is not an easy thing to do.
38:56-41:10
There was one time my kids had friends over and I was I think I was tying my shoe and Bethany said something to me and I'm done tying my shoe and she said something to me and it just struck me as condescending. I don't know why, I don't know what she said, but I just jumped up and like "why do you talk to me like that?" and I just I just unloaded on her and she's like what did I say and I and I stomped off and like I am such a jerk and I went back into the kitchen and I said kids kids my kids their friends come here you need you need to hear this and I asked Bethany for forgiveness for what I said. Your children need to see that you are man enough to ask your wife for forgiveness. Your children need to see what reconciliation looks like in in the flesh, in reality, not just conceptually, not just, you know, Sunday school lesson forgiveness. They need to see real forgiveness sought and given. And don't keep a record of your wife's wrongs, that your wife is committed against you. God doesn't keep a record of your wrongs, and you should not do so with your wife. To our last point, we're going to turn to why we must love our wives. We've looked at who, we've looked at what, now we're going to turn to why we love our wives. We love our wives to be a living gospel. Look at verses 31 through 33. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
41:12-41:18
This mystery is profound and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
41:19-41:40
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Paul says that leaving one's parents to hold fast to your wife, becoming one flesh in the process is a profound mystery. That doesn't mean Paul doesn't understand it.
41:40-42:31
That it's something like, "whoo, we can't, that's mysterious, we can't figure that out." No, and it doesn't mean that we can't understand it. And I'm going to do my best this morning to explain how it can be understood. You see, the mystery is the revelation of the gospel in the microcosm of marriage. The mystery is that in marriage God illustrates the what, the how, and the why of his redemptive work. Our marriages are either proclaiming the gospel truthfully or they're telling lies about the power of Christ to save. The purpose of marriage is not self-actualization, it's not self-gratification or self-promotion.
42:32-42:44
The goal of marriage is not to change or conform another person to yourself or to shape them into your version or vision of what they ought to be.
42:47-43:12
You haven't been given a wife so that she can become some warped combination of mommy and made and cook and fetishized six kitten. No, the purpose and goal is for two to become one flesh. As Jeff said last week, our marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride.
43:14-43:20
I want to go back to the beginning and kind of, you know, suss this out a little bit.
43:22-43:32
So we know that God told Adam, you know, you can eat of any tree except one, and when you eat of it, you shall surely die.
43:36-43:43
And we know that when Eve ate the fruit, Adam had a choice to make.
43:47-43:55
Because although he was not doing the things God commanded him to do, he had not yet committed the one sin that brought death.
43:57-44:01
When Eve took a bite of the fruit, Adam was still innocent.
44:04-44:09
He had a choice to make. Eat the fruit or do something else.
44:10-44:25
That something else could have been, "God, God, the woman you gave me has eaten the fruit and she's going to die. I don't want her to die. God, take my life.
44:25-45:36
Take my life instead of hers. I will die for her. We know, of course, Adam didn't do that. Eve gave him the fruit. He just took it. He ate. He committed treason against God. But what Adam failed to do, Jesus Christ has done. Father, Father, these, your people that you have loved before the foundation of the world, because of sin they're going to die. Father, I don't want them to die. I don't them to be separated from you. I will give my life for her. I will give my life for the bride. I will lay it down so that she will live." And Jesus has not done that just for one, but for a vast multitude from every tongue, tribe, and nation. Yet God has so ordered things that he has made marriage between a man and a woman to be the image that displays his glorious work of salvation.
45:37-48:03
You see, in our salvation, Jesus has reset the game board, so to speak. We are justified by our faith. We stand justified and innocent. We are in the exact same place as Adam and Eve were before the fall. We have the power of the Holy Spirit within us to make right choices. Specifically, men, we have the power every day to die to ourselves, to give life to our wives. You see, when husbands love their wives and wives submit to their husbands, marriage demonstrates Jesus' redemptive work. Marriage is a means to learning and understanding the gospel, by living the gospel with a woman like us, yet very different from us. Our marriages are a means of sanctification that glorify God and illustrate for all to see what the gospel looks like in the flesh. So as you put to death your sinful self and put on the life and attributes of Christ, you will become one with your bride. As you put away the worst of yourself, you will become a new and unique one with your wife. And your marriage will become a living, profound, and beautiful picture of Christ's oneness with his bride. This is not easy. This doesn't happen quickly. And I know some of you are in a great deal of pain right now in your marriage and you can't see any light in the darkness but Christ is in you and with you so rise up men of God rise up take small steps if you have to but commit to loving your bride as Christ loved the church if you've completed the practical exercises today you've already taken two small steps and I promise you it is worth it. More importantly in our passage today Jesus himself assures us. He assures you it is worth it. After all he loved you and gave himself up for you.
48:05-49:13
And I like to think that on that last day, that great and glorious day on the other shore, we will meet our lifelong friend, now glorified, and we'll say, "Ah, it's you! What a journey we had together. What joy we shared. Thank you for your love and faithfulness. Thank you for helping me in my sanctification. Thank you for helping me to arrive here. And then we will turn and we will see our Savior face to face and we will hear the words that our souls long to hear. Well done. Well done, good and faithful servants. Enter into the joy of your master. Let's pray. Sovereign God, help us. Help us to love our wives as we ought.
49:15-49:24
Help us to rise up and be your men, to display your redemption in our lives.
49:25-49:47
Help us to love and trust you more every day as we seek with all our heart to faithfully love our wives. And we ask Lord that you receive all the glory and honor we ask in Jesus name, amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Ephesians 5:25-33
What portion of the Scripture or the message challenged you most?
Read Romans 5:8-10. In view of these verses and the verses presented in point 2, what rationale or reason do you have to not love your wife?
What are some cultural reasons why husbands find it difficult to express love for their wives? What are Biblical reasons why husbands must express love for their wives?
Does Ephesians 5:31-33 change your understanding about the purpose of your marriage? In what ways?
What is one thing you will commit to doing this week so that your marriage will accurately present the gospel?
Breakout
Pray for one another!