Biblical Marriage: Sacrificial Love and Respect

Husbands, we are not called to be the king of the castle. Our model is not the king of the castle. Our model is Christ on the cross. That's the model. Love your wife Christ loved the church gave himself up for her. We are called to a love that is sacrificial. The husband's love is to be sacrificial. He gave himself up for her. [00:51:44] (37 seconds)  #SacrificialLoveHusband

Stop saying they started it. Stop saying they started it. That whole process began in the Garden Of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Adam says, the woman you gave me, it's all her fault. Eve says, the serpent deceived me, it's somebody else's fault. saying they started it. Start obeying your command, not your spouse's command. Husbands, there is no command here to enforce the submission of your spouse. That's not your commandment. Wives, you can't make him sacrificially love you. But here's what you can do, you can obey your command. [01:03:08] (51 seconds)  #ObeyGodNotBlame

We need to ask ourselves some questions, man. I I thought about these this week and that is, does my wife experience my leadership as protection or pressure? Does my wife experience my leadership in the home protective? Does she see me as a leader standing between my family and an outside world that is filled with evil and harm? Am I a protector or is my leadership pressure? Pressure to perform, pressure to be perfect. Which one does she experience? [00:53:31] (43 seconds)  #LeadAsProtector

Does my wife experience my strength as safety or intimidation? how does she perceive your strength? How does your wife perceive your strength? And by the way, she wants you to be strong. She didn't want a weak man. She wants you to be strong. But she wants that strength to be a strength that she can rely on and lean on, not a strength that is intimidating to her. [00:54:14] (42 seconds)  #StrengthSheCanLeanOn

Does she perceive my presence as peace? Husband, when you walk into the situation, when you walk into the home, is there something about your leadership that brings peace in this situation or do I bring tension? Do they have to walk does your family have to walk on eggshells around you? Does your presence, does your leadership bring peace or tension? Guys, I think you gotta look deeply at those questions. [00:54:56] (34 seconds)  #PresenceBringsPeace

And I would recommend that occasionally you do those things, but but that's passive. Paul calls us to an active kind of love and that kind of love isn't a giving in kind of love, it is a giving up kind of love. We give up our selfishness. We give up our harshness. We give up looking at pornography. We give up our laziness. We gave we give ourselves up for her. [00:52:58] (32 seconds)  #GiveUpToLove

And what Paul is saying, what Peter is saying, what the New Testament is saying is find your identity ladies in the beauty and and in your identity in the God who created you. But submission is ultimately to the Lord. Submission is ultimately to the Lord. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Submission is an act of obedience, not necessarily to your husband but to the Lord. [00:47:55] (32 seconds)  #SubmitToTheLord

Ladies, I I wanna tell you something that is that you need to know. Your husband has a deep deep need in his soul for something that only you can give him. He does. Now men like to act like we're self sufficient and we have no needs. I'm going to tell you that your husband has a deep longing in his soul for respect. is deeply rooted in the heart and soul of a man that he be respected. My definition of success is when those who are closest to me love and respect me most. [00:49:24] (54 seconds)  #RespectFeedsHisSoul

And I was in a restaurant and I tried my best at speaking Romanian. And the waiter just looked at me completely puzzled and my friend started laughing and he said, Bob, that sentence did not make any sense whatsoever. It's not what I said. It's not what I intended. It's what the waiter heard which was absurd. And the same thing same thing is true in marriage. It is not what I intended to communicate, it's what she received. I need to learn to speak her God given language. [01:05:50] (36 seconds)  #MessageIsWhatSheHeard

We men, we need to step up and be spiritual leaders. What does it mean? By the way, men love the word leadership until they figure out what it is. We love the role but you can't have the role without the responsibility. What does it mean to be the leader of your home? It means that you get up and you lead your family to church. You lead your family in prayer. You lead a bible study for your family. You are the lead repenter in your family. [00:57:19] (27 seconds)  #LeadSpirituallyAtHome

And one of the aspects of that is that it's not just the award show, there's always a pre show and it's the red carpet. When the ladies come out and they come out dressed and and some of them some sometimes half dressed but they come dressed to the red carpet and it's all about the outward appearance. Our culture is obsessed with the red carpet, with filters, with gym selfies. Our culture puts pressure on women to be thinner, to look younger, to be more curated. [00:47:23] (31 seconds)  #RedCarpetCulturePressure

You know, are some things that when they are old they become obsolete or outdated, But some things, even though they are old, they are still functional and actually there's a word, sort of a trendy word for that right now, we call it vintage. People love vintage stuff. Well perhaps biblical marriage isn't obsolete, it is vintage. It has not expired. The expiration date on biblical marriage has not come and gone. It has endured. And this morning, we're going to look at another passage on marriage. [00:32:55] (42 seconds)  #BiblicalMarriageIsVintage

You see, our culture says marriage doesn't work anymore and what I would say in response to that is we haven't tried biblical marriage. We're trying aberrations, we're trying half heartedness, we're trying cohabitation, we're trying no fault divorce, we're trying no commitment, no covenant. That's not biblical marriage. And so marriage would work if we would actually try biblical marriage. And here's the whole thesis of where we're going with this entire series. I said it last week, I'm gonna keep saying it. [00:34:57] (39 seconds)  #TryBiblicalMarriage

Guys, when you defend your wife's honor, you are loving her in a way like Christ loved the church. That's what you're doing. So here's the command. Paul wraps this whole thing up down in verse 33 And he says, so so here's the deal, to sum up. Okay? Each one of you is to love his wife as himself. That's our command guys. And the wife is to respect her husband. And we got one question, but how? How do I do that? I'm gonna give you these five things real, real fast. [01:02:19] (49 seconds)  #LoveAndRespectCommand

You need to speak your spouse's language. It is not enough that you say the right things. The question isn't what I said. The question is what did she hear? What did she understand? And I can say it over and over and over, but if I am saying it in a way that she doesn't understand it, then we're still not communicating. Now I haven't been to Romania in a while, but I went enough that I began to pick up a few phrases, in the Romanian language. [01:05:11] (39 seconds)  #SpeakHerLanguage

You gotta think about those because our love and leadership in the home should bring a sense of protection and safety and peace to our home. a husband's love is sanctifying. Look at verse twenty six and twenty seven. We didn't read these necessary to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor without any spot or wrinkle or anything like that but holy and blameless. [00:55:30] (38 seconds)  #HusbandSanctifiesWife

you have pushed that about this much too far. He apologized and he stopped. was a kind of a slight fellow and I'm not. And I will say this, yeah, I said it in an intimidating I didn't say it in a threatening way, but I said it in an intimidating way. But what the look on his face was nothing compared to the look on her face. Her face went from being wounded and hurt by his words to being honored that I had stepped into this situation. [01:01:25] (53 seconds)  #StepInAndHonorHer

Now Peter is not saying don't look nice. Being an attractive wife for your husband is a gift to him and and it's it's a way in which you express your affection toward your husband. So what Peter is saying is it's not abandon outward appearance but it's don't make that the focus of your life. And in our culture, especially for women, we are obsessed with beauty. This is the season in the springtime when there are all these award shows, music award shows, movie award shows, TV award shows. [00:46:49] (34 seconds)  #BeautyAsExpressionNotFocus

So the only way you're gonna get this out of your Bible is with a pair of scissors. That that that's the only way you're gonna get it out of your Bible. So we'd best come to grips with the fact that we don't get to edit the Bible, we don't get to say, well, this is an outdated command for another period of time. This is the way God has set up marriage. [00:43:10] (22 seconds)  #ScriptureGovernsMarriage

In all those years they they never got married. Goldie Hawn was asked why they hadn't married and her response to that was revealing. It is revealing in that I think it reflects something of what maybe our culture thinks of marriage. She said, I don't like the idea of ownership. This is this is a basic misunderstanding of what marriage is in the New Testament, That it is not domination, it is devotion. It is not control, it is covenant. And we're going to explore another dimension of marriage this morning from the book of Ephesians. [00:34:14] (44 seconds)  #MarriageIsDevotionNotOwnership