Sunday Morning Worship Service June 28, 2020

Well, good morning. Good to see you on this Lord's Day. Thank the Lord for the nice, warm weather we're having today.

Are you thankful for all that rain we got? I think we got like four inches yesterday. Been good for the gardens and the grass, so you have something to mow this week.

I'm sure you're looking forward to that. Well, we're glad that we can gather together on this Lord's Day. We can worship

Him together and serve Him in paying attention to His Word and hearing from Him as well as singing to one another and speaking to one another in those psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

Before we begin the service, just a reminder of the announcements on your handout there. I am doing these daily devotionals each day,

Monday through Friday at noon and six o 'clock. That's live, sort of live, at noon and re -recorded for the evening.

You can catch those on the Faith Baptist homepage, these four different venues actually,

Facebook, the church homepage. We have a YouTube channel.

I have my own website. You can even catch those on that website as well.

I got an email from somebody yesterday or Friday, I think it was, and pointed out that for some reason when he went to the website to view the devotionals that were passed, he said they weren't available.

They were only available live. I realized I had made an adjustment, made some changes this past week, and that ended up killing being able to see the recorded videos.

Well, that's been corrected, so I know what to do from here on out. Just so you know, you can see those anytime, not just at those particular times.

Then a reminder that on Wednesday nights we do meet here in the auditorium at seven o 'clock, have a little

Bible study time and prayer time. Then a few weeks, July 12th, we'll do some resuming of things.

We'll have the nursery opened and staffed, actually have one of those little digital thermometer, non -touchless thermometer things just for making sure that no little ones come into the nursery with a fever and none of the staff does as well.

So we've got that kind of a precaution going on. We'll also resume children's church on that Sunday and then the evening service at six o 'clock, resuming those things.

So a few weeks away from that yet, but just want you to be aware they're coming. As we begin our worship service today,

Psalm 5, verse 11 says, but let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice. Let them ever shout for joy because thou defendest them.

Let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. So let's take our hymnals as Jim comes and leads us in our opening hymn.

Jim? Certainly let us sing together the joy that's in our hearts and the opportunity to do so in the

Lord's house. Let's turn to page number 126. 126, love divine, all loves excelling.

Let's all stand together, please, and sing. I have to find out, oh, stanzas one and four.

Just stanzas one and four of 126. Love divine, all loves excelling in our place.

Let's pray together. So, our Father, we are grateful today for divine love, your love that excels all other love that we could possibly know.

And yet we also realize today, we're going to realize, that that love that was expressed on Calvary is a love that serves as a pattern.

And I pray that as we consider that today, that you would challenge our hearts with that great divine love.

And our need to emulate it and to pursue it and to desire it for our own hearts and lives.

Thank you, Father, for gathering us together today. We pray that you would meet with us in this service and pray that all that is said and done would be done to the honor and glory of our

Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Thank you, and you may be seated.

I want to read Psalm 47.

It's there on your handout to follow along. And normally we read portions of these psalms together and we sing all the stanzas together.

They tell us that one of the dangers in gathering together is those kinds of activities.

So, we can still do those things, but we'll do them on a little more limited scale. I was just talking to Jim.

I was reading in 2 Kings this morning about one of the kings of Judah, and you may remember this story.

One of the kings of Judah went to Damascus in Syria and saw there this wonderful, what he thought of was a wonderful altar.

It was not an altar to the Lord. It was an altar to a pagan altar. But he saw this thing and he was so impressed by it, he sent the plans for that altar back to Jerusalem and he told the priests and the builders of Jerusalem, build an altar like that.

And they did. And he got back to Jerusalem and then he told the priest, I think it was Uzziah, he told the priest, get rid of the brazen altar, put the brazen altar in storage and offer all of the sacrifices on this altar from Damascus.

And the priest did so. And I read that and I was struck and reminded of some of the recommended limitations on worship that government guidelines have issued.

And they have recommended that churches do away with things that God says when we gather together for worship, we're to do.

Things like singing to one another. We can do so reasonably. We can do so sensibly.

But we have to be very careful that we don't allow the government or government agency to dictate to the church how to worship.

We get our directions for worship from the Lord and we need to follow those guidelines that God gives us for worshiping.

Well, anyway, Psalm 47. The psalmist writes and he says,

Oh, clap your hands, all ye people. Shout unto God with a voice of triumph. For the Lord, most high, is terrible or awesome.

He is a great king over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us and the nations under our feet.

He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob, whom he loved.

God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God.

Sing praises. Sing praises unto our king. Sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth.

Sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen. God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.

The princes of the people are gathered together. Even the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong unto

God. He is greatly exalted. The Lord add his blessing to the reading of this psalm.

This next song that we're going to sing in your song supplement book, it may not be as familiar to you as some others.

It's a song we have sung before, an old hymn. I trust it'll be a blessing to us as we sing.

Jim, come lead us. Thank you, Pastor. And that is number 45 in your blue books, your blue supplement books, number 45.

My song is Love Unknown. I might mention that in what Pastor was referring to in that comment, that political comment that he heard, and referring that to the king that took away the brazen altar and the sacrifice is the only one that can take away the brazen altar and the sacrifices, is the one who truly did, and that's

Jesus Christ. Amen. Number 45, as the psalms

Pastor read, number 45, sing praises unto the Lord, verses 1, 2, and 5.

1, 2, and 5 of 45. Together.

Together. As we pray together this week, several requests we want to share in prayer together.

I want to pray for our Missionary of the Week, the Barillas, Mark and Rachel Barilla, their family missionaries to Cameroon, West Africa.

I got an email from him the other day. Actually, he was emailing me in response to the

Pastor's Page article this week, but he mentioned that he's planning to go, maybe they, planning to go back to Cameroon in August, provided that the borders all open up.

So we want to pray for Mark and Rachel and their family. They'll be leaving a couple of children behind, young people behind in college.

Also continue to pray for the Shedders, Larry and Emily, as they get settled in their new home, resumed home back in Wisconsin.

Pray for Bob Klein. Bob begins chemotherapy tomorrow. Got an email from Jerry yesterday, said that procedures so far to prepare for the chemo have gone well.

He tested negative for COVID, so he's ready to go with that chemotherapy.

And he asked us to pray that he can tolerate that chemo as well as his body tolerated the radiation.

So pray for Bob and Jerry. And then we want to continue to pray for the shut -ins that can't have any visitors.

I'm talking about Sue Cherry and Jeannie Ludwick and Jerry Sailors, these ladies who are basically confined to the nursing homes or the homes where they're staying.

Can't have anybody come in and see them. They can't go out. And this has been going on for months now.

So just pray for the Lord to encourage them in their loneliness and that lockdown condition.

And then also pray for Raina Taylor. Gordon and Raina were here last week, and Raina wasn't feeling good at the time.

And Gordon later explained to us that she's been having some problems with an infection in one of her ears, one where she had had surgery, three different surgeries.

Well, it got really bad, and so she's now at a hospital in Madison, University of Madison, Wisconsin Hospital, and actually receiving some

IV antibiotics to try to treat that. And it's not like your childhood ear infection thing.

This is a much more serious situation. So ask us to pray for her. And then, of course, we want to pray for our nation with the various levels of crisis.

In every, it seems like every area of national life, there is some kind of upheaval and crisis.

So let's look to the Lord in prayer, shall we? Our Father and our

God, we're thankful today that the Lord Jesus Christ took on frail flesh and died.

And in doing so, He took upon Himself the penalty of the sin that is at the root of all of our ailments.

And we thank You for that great sacrifice, and that in Him, we can not only find forgiveness of sins, and not only can we be reconciled to You, but we can be reconciled to one another.

We realize that when sin is forgiven and the

Christian, the believer in Christ, grows in grace and the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and becomes more and more like Christ, the sin that is so desperately plaguing our nation right now is fought against, and it is overcome, and it does not dominate the life.

So we think about our nation today, Father, and we think about the crisis on a political level, where the political parties cannot get together and agree on anything.

And Father, we realize that the root of this is pride, it is ambition, it is selfish ambition.

And Father, we pray that You would bring conviction of sin, and we pray that You would bring a spirit of the right kind of cooperation that will bring about the right kind of changes that we need to see in our land politically.

We think of the social crisis and the animosity that is expressed between individuals.

We see it on our television news channels, we see it on social media.

People standing up and shouting and giving obscene gestures and using obscene language in the face of law enforcement, in the face of anybody who opposes their particular position.

Father, this is grievous, and at the root of it is sin, it is hatred, it is strife.

And we realize that the root of this strife and this hatred and animosity is not ultimately the color of skin, and it's not ultimately a different ideology.

It is the sin of the human heart. Father, I pray that You would so work in the hearts of mankind, in this nation, and even around the world.

We see this expressed elsewhere too, but in our country, we pray. Our country that has been so liberally blessed with the truth of the gospel, so historically confronted with the reality of man's sinful condition.

I pray that You would bring those truths to the forefront of thinking, and people would realize just the blackness of their own heart is causing the animosity and the hatred they feel toward others.

We think of the moral quagmire and the mess that we are in morally, where a majority of individuals on the

Supreme Court of this nation can come to the conclusion that it is morally acceptable for an individual who is a male to proclaim that he is a female, and that that individual should have all the rights and the privileges of normalcy.

Father, this is a quagmire, and the implications of even that one decision are yet to be realized in the further degeneracy of our nation.

We think, Father, of the health crisis with this virus, and how it is being used in so many ways to create strife and discord.

Father, I pray that You and Your miraculous power would just make that thing go away, and therefore, thereby, give no more pretense, no more excuse or opportunity to create greater and deeper strife.

At the bottom of all this, Father, is the spiritual crisis of our land.

You have been vilified. Your Son, our Savior, has been castigated.

He has been rejected. Your gospel is hated. And, Father, I pray that only by the work of Your Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of men and women, that You would so work through Him to bring people to repentance, to bring men and women, boys and girls, to faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the only real hope for lasting change.

So, Father, we pray for our nation today. We also pray, Father, for these individuals. We pray for the

Barillas as they plan to return to Cameroon, for the Shedders as they settle in in their home in Wisconsin.

I pray that You would continue to give them sustaining grace and meet their needs. We pray for Bob Kline as he begins chemo tomorrow.

I pray that You would be gracious to him, that his body would be able to handle it without great adverse effect.

We pray for Sue Cherry and Jeannie Ludwick and Jerry Sailors today and their loneliness. I pray that You would encourage them.

I pray that on this Lord's Day they would have a sense of Your care and Your presence and Your love for them.

And for Raina Taylor, we pray that by Your grace, You would touch her body and give healing to this infection and the source of it, whatever that may be.

May it be discovered and rooted out and may she be healed. Father, we commit these things to You and we commit ourselves to You today.

And we pray that by Your grace, You would meet these needs. We ask this in Jesus' name and for His sake.

Amen. All right, Jim's going to come and lead us in one more hymn. And that hymn is number 143 in your hymnals, 143.

I stand amazed in the presence, so let's all please stand together, singing verses 1 and 3, just 1 and 3 of 143.

Stand together, please. My song shall ever be, how marvelous, how wonderful is my

Savior's love for me. If you would take your

Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 5 for our Scripture reading. This passage will also serve as the text for our message today.

Ephesians 5. I'm going to read verses 25 through 33.

Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 25. Follow along in your copy of Scripture as we read with the 25th verse.

Beginning with the 25th verse. Paul has addressed wives in verses 22, 3, and 4.

And now he turns to husbands. Husbands, he says, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave

Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth, even as the

Lord the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

A brief prayer. Take, O Lord, this passage we've read and burn it into our hearts, the truth, the importance of it for our lives as husbands and men, for the sake of our families.

This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I suggested a couple of weeks ago that one of the many reasons for our crumbling society is the crumbling of the

American family and that the family is in crisis is very evident just by simply looking at statistics, at the way things are.

Marriage itself is at a historic low. Fewer people are getting married today in relation to the total population, the percentage of the total population, than has ever been the case in American history as it's been recorded.

And it's been recorded for like 140 years, I think. So on the one hand, the marriage rates are at an all -time low and the cohabitation rates are at an all -time high.

It is considered, almost considered normal and expected that a couple will live together before they ever get married, if indeed they do get married.

And then single -parent households. Single -parent households. One in four children in our country is growing up in a single -parent household.

It is twice as common among Latino households and it is three times that rate in African -American families.

And that single -parent household situation doesn't even factor in the number of abortions.

That is, these cohabitation relationships or hook -up relationships that end up in a pregnancy and nobody wants to be bothered with a kid, so let's just get rid of that hunk of flesh, is the attitude.

So just looking at those statistics, you cannot help but realize that there is a crisis in terms of the traditional family.

And by traditional, I also mean biblical family. And at the root of this, at the root of much of this failure, has to be the failure of men to submit to their basic responsibility to love their wives.

Why are marriages at such a low rate? Why are the marriage rates so low?

It's because too many young men don't know how to love a woman. That's one of the good reasons.

Too many young men don't know how to love a woman. They don't want to give up their, quote -unquote, freedom.

They don't want to be tied down to one person. They want to live their life the way they want to live it.

They don't want to have to compromise their space with somebody else. Why is cohabitation so high?

Same reason, because too many men don't really know how to love the woman that they're living with.

They want the physical benefits of living together. They want the financial benefits that they think go along with that, but they don't want any of the commitment that is involved in a marriage relationship.

And in that selfish outlook on things, they're willing to put the woman at risk.

What if she gets pregnant? Oh, well, she can always just go get an abortion. Or, I don't want to have to deal with a kid.

I'll let her deal with the kid and let her go on her way. He puts the woman at risk with the possibility of a pregnancy.

And if that were to come, and as most of the time occurs that they end up splitting up, he puts her at the risk of poverty.

Why do so many children live without an intact two -parent household?

It's because too many young men don't know how to love a woman. They get a woman pregnant, and they leave her holding the bag.

You could summarize all of this with one word. Selfishness.

Selfishness. Now, when it comes to the Christian and the Christian man and his, can

I use the term, romantic? And I'll put that in quotes so you get an idea of what I'm talking about, the area that I'm talking about.

When it comes to the Christian man's romantic relationship to a woman, he has one fundamental responsibility to which he must submit.

He is to love that woman in the context of marriage.

Now, in the larger context of today's passage, we read chapter 5, verses 25 to 33.

We need to understand where that sits in the book of Ephesians. Remember the book of Ephesians, this letter to the church at Ephesus, the first half of the letter is doctrinal in its emphasis.

It's got a lot of application in that part, but it's primarily doctrinal in its emphasis. And in chapter 4, verse 1,

Paul flips. He goes on a transition. He transitions from the doctrinal to the applicational.

And at that point in chapter 4, verse 1, he says, I therefore, the prisoner of the

Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the vocation, the calling wherewith you are called.

In other words, at that transition point, Paul challenges us as Christians to walk worthy of that calling as Christians.

And so for the rest of this book, the rest of this letter, he's going to tell us what that involves.

What does it mean to walk worthy? And he goes through several different things. We've already looked at those in chapter 4 and the first part of chapter 5.

But then when he gets to chapter 5, verse 18, through chapter 6, verse 9, the focus of that section has to do with submission.

Has to do with submission. So in verses 18 through 21, he talks about the mutual submission that is incumbent upon us as part of the local church.

There needs to be mutual submission in the local church. And he summarizes that in verse 21, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

And then in verses 22 through the end of the chapter, chapter 5, he talks about marital submission.

There is some submission that has to take place on both the part of the husband and the wife.

In chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, he deals with familial or family submission.

The responsibility of children in this area of submission and fathers as well.

And then he rounds out this section on submission in verses 5 through 9 of chapter 6, dealing with, shall we call it, commercial submission.

The responsibility in the workplace. Submission in the workplace.

But this morning, I want to zero in on that responsibility in the marriage relationship that men have.

For a married Christian man to walk worthy of his calling as a

Christian, he must submit to the responsibility to love his wife.

Now, this responsibility is clearly placed on our shoulders. We see this in three different verses at the beginning of them.

Verses 25, 28, and 33. You see it repeated. Husbands, love your wives, verse 25.

Verse 28, sought men to love their wives. And then verse 33, so every one of you in particular, so love his wife.

Now, that responsibility, I think, in the culture at large is given lip service, isn't it?

I mean, what marriage, secular or sacred, doesn't include the statement on the part of the husband or the groom to the bride,

I love you, and vice versa. And in the expressions of affection in the culture, the idea of love is a very common thing.

I think, for example, often expressed in the songs, the popular songs of the culture.

I think of the song that Frank Sinatra sang several decades ago entitled

Love and Marriage. Maybe you've never heard that song. Some of you old timers,

I'm sure, have, even if you wouldn't admit it. But it goes like this. Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse in carriage.

This I'll tell you, brother, you can't have one without the other. Love and marriage, love and marriage, it's an institute you can't disparage.

Ask the local gentry, and they will say, it's elementary. Try, try, try to separate them.

It's an illusion. Try, try, try, and you will only come to this conclusion.

Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse in carriage. Dad was told by Mother, you can't have one without the other.

Now, there's truth in that, isn't there? We'll say more about that nature of love in a minute, but at least in this particular song, the responsibility of love being coupled to marriage is given lip service.

Now, when Paul wrote this, this responsibility for husbands to love their wives would have been a startling thing to say, especially in the cultural context of his day.

Nowhere would it be told for husbands to love their wives, not in the first century

Roman culture. They are to take care of them. They are to make sure that they do their, they, their wives, carry out their responsibilities.

I mean, Paul just told wives to submit yourselves to your husband, and so the first century

Roman citizen would have expected him to follow that up with husbands, make sure she does.

Make sure she submits to you. Don't let her get rebellious now. That's not what he says.

He says love her, love her. Now, today's culture, it would bristle at the idea that the first century culture would have expected, the idea of rule over her, dominate her.

No, today's culture calls for rather a sort of domestic partnership where the love thing is, is a reciprocated thing, whereby if the other party doesn't, no longer loves me, then

I'm no longer going to stay married to that one that I no longer love. So, for example, in another cultural pop song from back in the 60s, the song

I'm a Believer, the songwriter said something like, I thought love was more or less a giving thing.

But then he went on to say, but it seems the more I gave, the less

I got. And so he turned his back on love altogether until some other woman came along, and so now he's a believer.

But that idea, that idea that, well, you know, I gave and gave and gave in this loving relationship, but I'm not getting, getting, getting in return.

So the contemporary culture in its concept of love, it's a reciprocating partnership kind of thing.

So this responsibility that Paul is placing on the shoulders of us as Christian men is a startling thing, and it's startling when it's understood what he's asking us to do, he's calling upon us to do.

What is the nature of the love in the song Love and Marriage? It sounds like it's a good thing that he's saying here, and it sounds like it's a truism, but what kind of love is he talking about?

Remember, Frank Sinatra made this popular. Do you know how many wives Frank Sinatra had? Four, four, four different wives.

I think an insight into the kind of love that he's talking about is that love and marriage go together like a horse in carriage, as dad was told by mother.

In other words, mother was telling dad, you want the benefits of marriage, then you have to show me the affection, show me the love.

I'm telling you, if you want from me, you got to give to me. That kind of an aspect of love.

You can't have the marriage without the affectionate love, dad.

What kind of love is this? What kind of love is this? But what kind of love is Paul calling for?

The kind of love that Paul is calling for is a kind of love that does not seek self -satisfaction.

It's what he described in 1 Corinthians 13. You have that love chapter and there's several different aspects of description there.

One of the things he said is that it does not seek her own.

This biblical love, this agape love that we as husbands are to have for our wives is not a kind of love that seeks its own.

So this would be foreign. What Paul's calling for is contrary to,

I should say, the I'm a believer kind of love. It seems the more I gave, the less

I got. So I'm turning my back on this thing called love. No, the idea of giving, of selfless giving, is at the very heart of this kind of love.

And it gives without any thought of getting in return. The kind of love

Paul is talking about is not a love that is merely an affection that seeks a reciprocating affection.

It's not an affection that answers affection. In other words, I will love you insofar as you love me.

I will express affection toward you as long as you express affection toward me.

As in the I'm a believer thing as well.

No, the kind of love that Paul is talking about is a totally unselfish love.

It's an unselfish love. It's a love that strives for the highest good of the one loved.

I think the best succinct description of this love that Paul calls upon us as husbands to have for our wives was written by a commentator named

Francis Foulkes. It's somewhat of a lengthy description, but listen carefully because there's so much in this paragraph that is descriptive of what he's calling us to do as men, as husbands.

He says this love means not only a practical concern for the welfare of the other.

Now it does concern, it does involve a practical concern for the welfare of the other, but not only that, it calls for a continual readiness to subordinate one's own pleasure and advantage for the benefit of the other.

It implies patience and kindness, humility and courtesy, trust and support.

This love means that one is eager to understand what the needs and interests of the other are and will do everything in his power to supply those needs and further those interests.

Now that was a mouthful, but it's exactly what

Paul is talking about. Being practically concerned for the welfare of the other person with a continual readiness to subordinate my own pleasure, my own desires, and my own advantage for the benefit of the one loved.

I am patient and kind, humble, courteous, trusting and supporting.

With this kind of love, I'm eager to understand the needs and interests of my wife and I will do everything in my power to supply those needs and to further those interests.

Now this is the kind of love that is not very well understood in the pop culture, the songs of the

Monkeys or Frank Sinatra. But this is the kind of love that God is calling us as husbands to demonstrate for our wives.

And Jesus provides the pattern for that love, for that responsibility that we have.

And this is Paul's argument in verses 25 through 27. Love your wives even as Christ also loved the church.

So, okay, how am I to do this? Well, I look to Christ. How did

Jesus love the church? Let me suggest four words to describe that love.

Love your wife, first of all, intentionally. Intentionally. Christ loved and gave.

Christ loved the church and gave himself for the church. In other words, Jesus saw the need of us as fallen, sinful people.

He saw the need, Jesus did, and he took the initiative to meet that need.

Notice he was not asked. He was not cajoled.

He was not begged. He was not browbeaten.

He was not nagged. He saw the need and he took the initiative to meet the need.

I fully admit, gentlemen, that one of our problems is cataracts, right?

We've got some cataracts over our eyes and we don't always see very clearly the need. But that goes back to what our writer who gave us that description of this love wrote when he said, it means that we are eager to understand what the needs and those interests are.

We take an active interest in trying to find out what are those needs. Love your wife intentionally.

Secondly, love your wife sacrificially. Jesus gave up himself, literally is what that says.

He gave up himself for the church. What did this cost him?

What was the depth of his sacrifice? Where do you look to really get a sense of the depth of the sacrifice?

You can look at the gospel accounts of the cross, of the crucifixion, and you can see the nature of the sacrifice, right?

Okay, he gave his body to be broken, he was beaten, was abused, the crown of thorns, the whip, the scourging.

Yes, you can see all of that. You can see the nature of his sacrifice, what his sacrifice was like.

But how deeply did that sacrifice affect him personally as the

God man? Where do you go to see the depth of that sacrifice?

Go to the night before in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus leaves his disciples behind and he goes deeper into the garden and he falls down on his knees and he cries out to his father.

Oh, father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Three times he prayed that.

And he prayed with such intensity and such earnestness that great drops like of blood fell from his brow.

Now what that tells you is how deeply this sacrifice cost him.

He expressed it again on the cross when he quoted that psalm, my God, my

God, why have you forsaken me? The thing of it is he still sacrificed in spite of the cost.

And that sacrifice serves as a model for us as husbands.

Love your wife sacrificially. Then thirdly, love your wife purposefully.

Purposefully. Look at verse 27. Here's the purpose that Jesus gave himself for the church.

He might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without a blemish.

So the purpose for Jesus' sacrifice and behalf of the church was that he might eventually present that church to himself a glorious church with no spot or wrinkle, nothing polluting in it whatsoever.

It would be holy and without blemish. That's the ultimate purpose. That's the ultimate purpose.

That was the goal that Jesus had in mind for the church. That was the goal that demanded that self -sacrificial love that he expressed in the garden and on the cross.

Now, we're not called to do what Jesus did. I mean, you and I, as husbands, we cannot, we cannot present our wives in this particular way.

I think the point that Paul is making here is that as we love our wives, as we engage in this self -sacrificial, intentional love for our wives, we do so with a noble purpose.

We do so with a purpose behind our self -sacrificial giving that is for her sake, for her benefit.

See, that's the idea. Now, as a spiritual leader in the home, certainly there are things we do to encourage spiritual growth and all the rest of that.

I'm not minimizing that, and I'm not saying this doesn't apply at all to that, but what I'm saying is the emphasis, the focus is that Jesus gave himself intentionally and sacrificially and purposefully for the church.

Husbands, love your wives like this. Purposefully. Purposefully.

So, for example, I want my wife to thrive.

I don't want her to merely exist and to go through life next to me, and that's about it.

Again, I think of, I'm reading Chernow's biography of Ulysses Grant, and in the early pages of his biography, he talks about Grant's childhood and his family growing up, and his dad was of the mold of the authoritarian, domineering, my way or the highway kind of a guy.

And his wife, Grant's mother, Ulysses Grant's mother, was a quiet, you could almost see her as being a beaten down kind of a woman that knew she better not say anything or do anything that was out of line.

She just co -existed as the wife of Ulysses' father.

Not any real thriving going on in her life. This is not what we as husbands want for our wives, not

Christian husbands. We want our wives to thrive. Let me give you a very practical example of this, and I totally failed in it yesterday.

I had thought earlier, I need to do this, and then I completely failed at it. But we had a conversation

Friday, I think it was, Chris and I had a conversation at lunch, and we were talking about going somewhere where we would take two separate cars, and I was going to go on a backpacking trip, and we'd spend the night someplace, and then

I would leave the next morning from that location to go on my backpacking trip, take the one car just a few miles away to start that backpacking trip, and then she'd take the other car and come home.

So we would at least have that trip that night together and so forth, and then I'd go off on my little excursion for a few days.

And then she said something like, well, you know, maybe Scott and Sarah will be going along on this little outing, and I can just ride home with them.

I said, oh, no, you need to spend the night with me. Don't you want to spend the night with me?

You know, that kind of thing. She said, well, it's just I don't want to drive home alone.

I mean, I just, the idea, I'm just driving home alone, you know? And then I made a wisecrack about, you know, her mom.

Not a particularly smart thing to do, guys, but the thing is, and her mom's probably watching this right now on livestream, but her mom doesn't go anywhere.

She doesn't drive anywhere, and she won't do that. I said, look, you don't want to be like that.

You know, I'm dead and gone. Don't you be sitting around the house because you don't want to go anywhere. You want to be able to get in the car and drive and go.

And then she said, well, Darrell, my dad's name, you do all the driving.

Maybe if you didn't do all the driving and you let me drive, then I wouldn't feel so intimidated.

I said, okay, touche. You got a point. So yesterday, we took a trip over to Clinton to go to Home Depot so we could get something without working.

Anyway, and when we thought about that trip, I said to myself, I need to remember to let

Chris just drive to Clinton and do this. And then out of habit, you know, we got in the car.

I'm driving the car. I didn't think another thing about it. Didn't even think another thing about it until I was reviewing my message and I thought, you numbskull.

That would have been a wonderful illustration about how I wanted my wife to thrive. And here

I failed. Okay. Well, maybe that's a good enough illustration to make the point that we need to love our wives purposefully.

And then here's our fourth word. Love your wife practically. Practically. So in verse 26, to get to the purpose, to fulfill the purpose.

Okay, I want my wife to thrive. How do I, what do I need to do to help my wife thrive?

Well, I need to let her get behind the wheel even when I'm going to ride in the passenger seat so that she feels more comfortable driving in places that are unfamiliar to her.

That's the practical thing, right? Well, what did Jesus do to fulfill the purpose? Verse 20, verse 26.

He gave himself for it that he might sanctify it. He might set the church apart and cleanse the church by the washing of water by the word.

So Jesus had the, Jesus had a purpose behind the sacrifice. The purpose was to present the church holy and without blemish before him ultimately, right?

Verse 27, a glorious church. But to get there, to reach that purpose, to fulfill that purpose, he needed to set the church apart.

He needs to be cleansing the church and sanctifying it and washing it with the water of the word.

He's got very practical steps that he's taking to fulfill that purpose.

Jesus provides a pattern for the fulfilling of our responsibility. But so does nature. Nature also provides a pattern.

Verses 28 and 29. Verse 28, he says, so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.

He that loveth his wife loveth himself. No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it even as the

Lord the church. Nature provides us with a pattern for fulfilling this responsibility to love our wives.

How so? By the way, remember, Leviticus 19 .18 says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And your wife, men, your wife is your closest neighbor.

You will love your neighbor as yourself. Love your wife as yourself. Now the loving of self here that Paul is talking about and that God is talking about in the book of Leviticus is not a selfish, narcissistic kind of love.

He's talking about the natural self -care that goes into any normal human being's existence.

You take care of your body. You feed it. You clothe it. You make sure it has what it needs.

You protect it as much as you possibly can. That's what he's talking about. It's a very natural thing.

So in the natural kind of love her as you love yourself, once again he shares with us three very practical ways of doing that.

First of all, love her by protecting her, by protecting her.

No one ever yet hated his own flesh. No one ever yet despised his own flesh. He takes care of it by protecting it, by protecting it.

So men, what that means is we stand between our wives and danger or harm.

And by the way, going back to this idea of the cohabitation thing, a man who truly loves a woman will not pressure her to move in with him, will not pressure her into a premarital sexual relationship that could endanger her.

He wants to protect her from any danger, protect her from harm that might come her way.

Love her by protecting her. Love her by enriching her, enriching her.

This is what Paul is talking about when he says here in verse 29, no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes it, nourishes it.

Provide what you can for the emotional and the spiritual and the mental and the social health of your wife.

Nourish her well -being and then love her by cherishing her. No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it.

The idea of cherishing is the idea of keeping fondly in mind and treasuring something.

You see that. You see in your wife worth and value and you look for it and you treasure it and then you express to her what you value.

You express to her how valuable she is to you. This is where some of the romance comes into things, isn't it?

You exalt her. You don't demean her. There was an experience

I had my sophomore year of college. I had gone down south, South Carolina, and I was serving in a church out in a rural area of South Carolina.

I had my kid, 19 years old, I guess it was, and I'm working with the young people.

One of the families in the church invited me and a guy who was working with me to dinner after church on Sunday.

Okay, great. So we went there for dinner and something struck me that I thought was extremely odd and not very gracious or kind.

The meal was set. The table was set. The food was brought out and then the wife says, okay, everybody come to the table.

I looked at the table and there were six places set at the table and there were seven of us to eat.

I just kind of observed this and I'm looking around and wondering what's going on.

Then the husband led in prayer, gave thanks for the food, and then the wife said, okay, everybody have a seat.

Everybody else just sat down at a seat and I'm getting ready to sit down and I'm noticing there's no place for the wife to sit.

Where's she going to sit? I thought, well, maybe it's just because the table was too crowded.

So I said to her, here, you sit here. She said, no, no, no, no. No, no. I'll eat in the kitchen.

What? I said, no, no, no. You sit here. I can eat out there. She said, no, no, no, no.

This is our house. This is the way we do things here. I thought, hey, that's weird.

I realize that may be a cultural thing and it may be a common thing in some places in some areas down south, but to me it communicates something.

To me it communicates a demeaning thing. I may not mean that whatsoever in that culture.

I'm sure to them it means that the wife is just expressing servitude and a servant spirit and that's fine, a great heart, but here's what

I want to get at, men. You do the serving of her. You let her sit down.

You honor her. This is just a thing I do and it's meaningless if you don't do it, but one of the things

I do to kind of communicate that at our table, especially with the little guy sitting there most of the time, is

I don't take anything and put it on my plate until after Chris does, after my wife does.

I let her get served first and usually Melissa gets served and Nico gets served and then

I'll take food. Why do I do that? One of the reasons

I do that is I want to communicate the worth and the value. You don't have to do that.

I'm just saying that's one, it's just a very simple thing, a very practical thing to do. The key is do it.

Do it. Cherish it. Nature tells you to do that. As you cherish your own body, cherish her.

Cherish her. Finally, verses 30 to 32, very quickly, marriage, marriage, in quotation marks, provides the basis for the fulfilling of your relationship.

What do I mean by that? Verse 32, verses 30 to 32. It says, We are members of his body, speaking of Christ's body, the church, and of his flesh and of his bones.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh.

Now you recognize verse 31 as a marriage verse and then verse 32, he says this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

All right. Marriage, marriage, pictures Christ and the church.

This is the idea of verse 30 and 32. Paul says, I'm speaking a mystery here concerning Christ and the church.

We are members of the body of Christ. We are members of his flesh. We are members, we are of his bones, of his flesh and his bones.

And the point that Paul is making here about the church and the union between Christ and the church is that it's a union that cannot be undone.

A true Christian, a true follower of Jesus is part of Christ's body and cannot be excised from it.

Can't be cut off from it. There's not a finger on the body of Christ that isn't going to be there.

No. It's a union that cannot be undone. And that's the idea that God has for marriage expressed in verse 31.

For this cause, and this is a quotation from Genesis 2, right? For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh.

The idea of marriage is it's to be an indissoluble union. And the point of all this in verses 30 to 32 is that because by virtue of the marriage union, you and your wife are one.

You need to love her. You need to love her as a very extension of yourself.

This is what verse 33 says to summarize. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself.

Now this whole passage verses 22 through 33, this whole passage is a passage on marital submission.

And it addresses two fundamental desires that most married couples have.

Husbands desire that their wives respect them and follow their leadership.

Wives desire to be loved like this. And the relationship between the two is very well expressed,

I think, in the traditional charge to a bride and groom on their wedding day.

And I use it in the weddings that I do. And here's one of the things that is said.

Surely God's purpose is that you husbands conduct yourself in such a way that makes it easy for your wife to respect you.

And you wives so conduct yourself in such a way that your husband will find it easy to love you.

But men, regardless of whether or not she does, love your wife as Christ loved the church.

Father, we're called to be like Jesus. This is a challenging calling.

Our own sinful self gets in the way. Father, I pray that by your grace you would enable us and encourage us as men to be the kind of Christian men that exhibit

Christ -likeness in our relationship to our wives, in our attitudes toward them and toward women in general.

Give us this grace, we pray, to be like Jesus. This we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen. Let's take our hymnals and sing just one stanza of number 375, the hymn,

O To Be Like Thee. 375. Let's stand together as we sing,

O To Be Like Thee. O to be like thee, blessed

Redeemer, this is my constant longing and prayer.

Now may the grace of the Lord enable you to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. This we pray in the name of Jesus.