A Word to Husbands (Part 4 of 4)

In Ephesians chapter 5, Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. Think about that.

That's a challenging directive today on Truth for Life. Alastair begged reflects on this assignment and offers practical application to help husbands and wives displayed the gospel in our marriages is titled this message a word to husbands Paul and all of this section is anticipating if you like the close of it, versus 3132 and 33 if you like. All that we are now considering is built upon the foundation, which is about to come and so verse 28. The idea of as their own bodies needs to be read in light of their severity one and when did verse 31 Paul is referencing Genesis chapter 2 and verse 24 writes therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and what will happen. The two will become one flesh one flesh. So another words in the bonds of Christian marriage mathematics go as follows one plus one equals one. I was seated couples when they when they come to be married. I say to them before they go back down the aisle.

I see you are no longer what you were when you came in here.

You came in here singly. You don't go out singly. You are now united. You are united you have made promises before God before each other before the congregation and you are now in an air revocable position in relationship to your union with one another that brings with it all kinds of joys and wonderful challenges to soap what Paul is actually saying here is even something more than now. Husbands, you know, the way you treat yourself you know the way you treat your own body, then you should treat your wife like that as well.

I think I think he's actually saying more than he saying she is you. You are her you not simply say you got yourself a hamburger and fries that was nice.

So why don't you get your wife a hamburger and fries and organic clearing CPC you know now is not what he's saying it's all business English Ferguson. If in doubt, go to sinker. If anyone hates his own flesh, we regard him as on balance, perhaps psychotic for a husband not to love his wife, who has become one flesh within is not only to be a poor husband is to be a dysfunctional Christian get radically. It is presented to us when we say no way going to think biblically. Now you see your wife is not your partner. She's your other half and in most cases she's your better half. We often say that somewhat, you know, finally, but essentially true. She definitely is my better half.

Anyone who knows me knows that and probably husbands you may find yourself in the same position. You see, this is not to people that have just decided to walk through life together. This is something far more significant than that.

This is not the irrelevancy of of Joni Mitchell in 1971. This is not this is not the superficiality and trivialization of relationships male and female that has been part and parcel of our culture know this is so this is song because in the values of marriage and, incidentally, one of the expressions of the discerning disinterest in marriage is the prevalence of young people to want to write our own values, but when they come to write their own vows their Z there terrible I mean I mean yeah they are they are not there not vows. So this is like your worry pattern sure I was sitting there, you show me what it is you going to say and then when I see that I say but either you're writing about.

This is not about this is a Roberta Flack song. You know you want to stand out and say the first time ever I saw your face. I felt the earth move in my hand who gives her red that's got nothing to do with anything, but if that is your view of marriage you see, I felt the earth move. What happens when the earth starts moving where you go to be that Tuesday, you will have to look for somebody else to make the earth move for you know that's why the vows to love and to cherish to dad's due part that is all. The Bible anticipates in the dissolution of the bond of marriage – what about divorce, he allowed you a certificate of divorce because of the hardness of your hearts. It was an accommodation to the chaos. It is never the design of God. No, but it's tough corset stop. You see God's interested in your holiness. In our first of all concerned about your happiness.

Know and hated his own flesh nourishes it cherishes it there almost synonyms on the tenderness, nurture, care, supplying what is necessary for life and for health and for growth is whether husband is doing very strange.

If he didn't care. In this way. In other words, is the opposite of doing what many of us are tempted to do is husbands and that is instead of creating a context that stimulates.

If you like the growth and well-being of our wife's. We actually detract from we stifle it were, when it were not when I'd had a nice to the orchids.

You know it's it's starting to dry out move started to be preoccupied with ourselves. We have neglected the need to provide and to protect to do so by showing her on her by treating her in a way that is understanding and all the time recognizing that it really is going to take a lifetime to learn how to do this I lifetime note these and then there's the biblical there's the biblical framework in the ended.

So we need to think that out and then we need to say. Are we going to live obediently in light of that's really it. Are we going to do what the Bible says. However, this is hard. Are we going to do with the Bible says while this means I'm going to have to go to do what the Bible says, but you don't realize what she's like God it are you going to do with the Bible says you seek marriage. In some ways like a golf swing. It's it it's not easy. Pretty straightforward to me is forced to turn away and turn back and and and have the clubhead squared to the ball at impact, there's really you can you can expand on that. But by and large that's it. If you was a German this afternoon. You find that everybody's essentially doing the say the turn away and turned back really hard, straightforward, like marriage, straightforward love your wife as your own body, to not hard that is will you be psychotic if you weren't taking care of yourself. It would be unnatural for you not to love your wife and let me just anticipate this evening by giving a couple of practical pointers in relationship to this. What was he going to mean than to love selflessly how how then are we going to apply this what the answer is that each each husband is going to have to figure it out for himself and and at the very base line is the attitude of our hearts.

You know you can. We give each other lists of things to do, but if the heart is wrong than those of the listserv superficial and and ultimately ineffective and not everybody comes to marriage with the same set of expectations. I remember being with good friends of ours in California and entering into a little bit of a contretemps between the husband and the wife because he thought he had done his wife, an amazing thing by providing her for Christmas with a new dishwasher. I and let's just say that it hadn't gone over quite as well as the anticipated from his perspective. It was it was selfless.

It was loving it was necessary.

It was helpful, but he then rang her bell. I was for sure. So in terms of loving people you know I really love tea.

Somebody give UT but all IT will tough. I like tea, making tea and coffee as is your that your selfsame activity. So let me give you 14 since I'm talking T here here's here's tea time as a talking golf entity okay teatime teatime work them out for yourself number one touch touch actually touching each other at a mixed audience here were not going to take it any further than that, but touch means a lot to stop tenure.

Tucker hold me like you want to know because you have to touch me think about life thing about when you fell in love with this girl, you can waiting to get anywhere in proximity to her with slight gold dust actually could reach across in church can keep your pinky alongside her pinky slights electricity married for 43 years. Get work because the buzz is not the same touch, along with touch time time the gift of time's for far more than money. Time is everything. Time is one thing that just is running through her fingers. I've run I've run out of time to tell you about the man in the course of pastoral ministry, who were always explaining the wife's that when they got through with the next project.

They were definitely going to make time and in one particular case is in my mind. The man who was going to make time for his wife and this way had a major stroke and and she nursed him to the end of his days. He was a sweet man but he just could not free himself from his commitment to all of his projects. He wasn't loving his wife as his own body. He was loving his use of time, touch time.

Talk talk talk to me our wife's will often anticipate that we will give to them the benefit of what our days have been the trouble is that many of us have gone through Thursdays in such a way that we would rather not talk about them at all and insist slights do something else like touch and so and but if talk matters to her talk matters, talk to me is another song talk to me like lovers do can remember. Or maybe read to your wife to reach your wife you read read I read to Sue but only it as long as she keeps her eyes open and she close her eyes. I stop around the reason I'm not winter if she's asleep 622 to Manny okay last one I saw touch touch time talk travel travel go places like where like down the street, the post office, the young fellows always as music in pastoral ministry. I'm what you do with your wife.

You know what you like to do the wife I said nothing that I know. I mean seriously I'm I know I'm serious, you mean like nothing while we sometimes we go down there and then we come back up really needed gone fishing amazing adventures together. Yes, some but that's not really the issue seek because it is the companionship done better with it that it didn't matter whether you're going to the mentor headlands or your you know it if if you're in the groove. You know the mentor headlands and have a blast. If you're not in the groove. You can go to the course of New Zealand and and and have a worse time in your entire life because it will you we never got the touch and the time and the talk and with other travel would there's not a trip you can take to fix the absence of touch time. Talk on a routine basis. The last thing by way of practical application is just to help us in case will endanger of all of the nagging and this is under the heading of loving selflessly just just three words. Number one that that the danger of neglect. It's inherent in what I've been saying neglect to neglect our wife's physically, emotionally, spiritually, and if any of career or of church or of club interferes, and causes eyes to justify that kind of neglect than that, we need to look very carefully at those things and for neglect A4 abuse.

Surely we are not going to give any credence whatsoever to the dreadful stuff that is part and parcel of our contemporary society's possible to abuse our wife's to belittle them to talk down to them to treat them with disregard to act as if you know they're really very fortunate to be married to us and along with that and I wrote G for granted, this doesn't really work. I know, but nag neglect, abuse granted, as in taken for granted.

So easy is not especially as time goes by, and what it really confronts us with his two things. One, the ugliness of self and to the loveliness of Christ, the ugliness of self in the loveliness of Christ. Paul is not here exhorting the husband to love his wife is simply an extension of self-love or because it would be to his benefit or to his advantage.

Know the love he speaking about is the is the cross -shaped love of Christ for his church.

And it is that same giving up that is demanded of the wife in the opening verses and is demanded of the husband and the subsequent verses because both husband and wife are by nature sinful and selfish and therefore any progress that we make is only by his grace is so that it is we often sing every loving word we say every tear we wipe away every sorrow turned to praises only by his grace and where is thy grace revealed Wallace Enriquez and revealed in the Lord Jesus who although he had all in and of himself, and in the Trinity was in need of no one in the need of nothing.

He came gave himself up in order that we and our needs and in our rebellion and in our emptiness may be caught up in his embrace, and maybe welcomed into his heart and may be brought into his family and may be made part of his bride, and we find ourselves saying, why would he ever love me like that, why he didn't love his bride because she was lovely. He loved her so that he might make her lovely.

And when you see the unfolding story of life.

When we deal with the changes of life.

When we realize as husbands that it means something very very different for our wife's.

In terms of physiology and psychology to be the mothers of our children to be the postmenopausal ladies of our world to be confronted by their own sense of frailty by their own mortality by the awareness that they have all of the potentiality of living life now on their own. In the absence of the one who has been for them both protection and provision and nurture and cherish when I even begin to approximate to that kind of thinking than I along with you.

I find myself saying, well, God, I really need the enabling of the Holy Spirit so that I might think biblically so that I might live obediently and so the buyer help I'm I love selflessly we need God's help in every area of life. Certainly in our marriages. Your listing to Truth for Life. Alastair Begg will return in just a minute with the closing prayer so keep listing. First, I want take a minute to acknowledge that for so many of us these past few months have been a very difficult time. Yet through it all. God's word has been our source of strength and hope during times of prolonged separation from one another. Being able to connect and worship together via live stream or to listen to the Bible being taught through radio on our phones run our computers. That's been a lifeline for so many of us. That's why Christian programs like Truth for Life are so important, so were especially grateful in the season for the faithfulness of crude partners who have sustained this program. If Truth for Life has been a help to you. And if you're in a position to invest a set amount each month.

Even a small amount know that your financial gift will help make Truth for Life possible into the future when you join the true partner team today or when you make a one-time donation to Truth for Life. We like to say thank you by sending you a book about marriage, friendship and family to book titled aspects of love, you may be surprised to learn the despite the connection we gained through technology. Loneliness has been on the rise over the past few decades, divorce and broken families touch nearly every one of us in one way or another. So where is it that relationships go wrong with this book aspects of love takes a candid look at that question and helps us understand how to nurture long-lasting loving relationships with friends and family members. Whether we want to improve the solid relationships we already have, or whether we have relationships from the past, marked by regret where we'd like to see healing aspects of love is rich with biblical wisdom and counsel you can request your copy of the book online@truthforlife.org/true partner or when you give by calling 888-588-7884. Now here's Alastair to close with prayer father. We commend our study and ourselves to you. We want desperately to live in obedience to your truth week. We pray that you would open our blind eyes and soften our hard hearts that that we might hear the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and the first of all we might believe.

And then that in believing who you are and what you've done and trusting in you that you will help us to behave accordingly.

We thank you that it is to your word. We look that your word is faithful. It's true, and it hasn't died out a few centuries ago. It's right up to date so common to help us. We pray and make us in our individual lives in our homes and as a congregation. Help us Lord fix things for us, save us from our selfishness so that that we might be as lights in the midst of a confused and chaotic and dark world when it comes to the matter of relationships and not least of all what it means to be a man and a woman husband and wife, for we pray in Christ's name on a bottle team tomorrow. Alastair continues her study of God's design for marriage in our series called life together sure to join us Friday. This daily program features the Bible teaching of Alastair Begg. It's furnished by Truth for Life or the Learning is for Living