Biblical Home - Husbands and Wives

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I invite you to take your copy of God's Word and turn to Colossians chapter 3.
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Find your place at verse 17.
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We are going to continue this morning with our exposition of Colossians, which we have been in now for several months, and closing in now on the end of chapter 3, and we're going to be looking at verses 17 to 4.1 over the next three weeks.
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That is my plan before our family leaves for a couple of weeks of vacation, which I am thankful to have the opportunity to do.
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The title of today's sermon is called The Biblically Functioning Home, and this is actually a play on something that I wrote years ago.
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Many of you are familiar with this.
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Back in 2008, our church went through a bit of a difficult time regarding some doctrinal disagreements and some issues that had arisen, and out of that came a multiple-year study of the doctrines of Scripture as well as the doctrines of the church, the ecclesiology of the church, and that became a book that I wrote, and the book is entitled The Biblically Functioning Church, and it's based on what the Scriptures teach about how the church should function regarding eldership and the diaconate and the ministry within the body and how the gifts are supposed to function within the body and being used for the building up of the church.
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That's where the idea of the Biblically Functioning Church comes from.
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Well, that would later become something that I used to write an additional work on called The Biblically Functioning Home, and that never became a book, but it did become a series of sermons that I did years ago, and that series of sermons is based upon this particular section of text, and because it is not my job to reinvent the wheel every time I preach I'm going to be going back over many of the things that I said, but many of you weren't here then, so this will be new to you.
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But if you've heard this before, understand that I'm not preaching the exact same sermon.
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I have updated my notes, but I am still preaching the same truths because the text didn't change and the interpretation of the text didn't change.
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It's been the same for 2,000 years and will continue to be the same until the Lord returns.
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But one thing I did add, and this is a thought that I talked about last week, is that in this section what we see is we see in regard to the home, we see a three-fold concentric circular pattern that the Apostle Paul establishes in regard to authority, because if you've missed it, that's what this entire section will be about.
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I know we haven't read the text yet, we're going to read it in a moment, but this particular text will talk about doing all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to do something in someone's name means to do it under their authority, to do it with their power in mind, not your own, with their will in mind and not your own, to do it as you are doing it unto them and for them.
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And then he gives three relationships that ought to mirror our understanding of authority and submission, and the relationships are these three.
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The first relationship is the center circle, the most basic relationship, and that is the relationship of husbands and wives.
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The next outward of the concentric circle that he will address is the relationship between children and parents.
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And finally, on the outer band, the last relationship he will address is the relationship between servants and masters.
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And this particular outline will carry us through the next three weeks.
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If you want to know what the next three sermons are going to look like, this week we're going to look at wives and husbands, next week we're going to look at children and parents, and then thirdly and finally for the end of this chapter and the beginning of chapter four we're going to look at servants and masters.
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So with that being said, let's read the text and then go to the Lord in prayer.
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So again, we begin at verse 17 because this sets the stage for the rest of the chapter.
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Let us stand for the reading of God's word.
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Beginning in verse 17 it says, and whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
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Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
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Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
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Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord.
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Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
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Bond servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart fearing the Lord.
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Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
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You are serving the Lord Christ.
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For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality.
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And then in chapter four verse one it continues the thought saying, masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
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Our Father and our God, we come to you in Jesus' name.
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We thank you for this moment that we get to open your word together corporately as the body of Christ.
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And I pray, oh Lord, with everything in my soul, Lord, I pray that you would keep me from error, for I am a fallible man.
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I am capable of preaching error.
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For the sake of your name and for my conscience, I pray that you would keep me in the very palm of your hand.
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Hold me fast as we sang earlier, Lord, as I preach your word.
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And I pray, oh God, for the believers in this room that as they hear the word of God preached that they would be challenged to their very soul as to what it says.
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And for the unbeliever in this room, Lord, I pray that they would not simply hear the rantings of a madman behind a podium, but that they would hear the very words of God.
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And Lord, that they would be moved in their soul by having their heart of stone replaced with the heart of flesh and given the gift of faith this morning.
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And Father, for all of these things that you have done and are going to do, we praise you, give you glory, and we ask that you be with us now as we seek to understand your word.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Never before in human history has there been such a confusion over the distinction of the roles of men and women in the world.
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We have come to a place where the distinction between men and women is so obscured that some men have even tried to convince the world that they are in fact women, even as their five o'clock shadow in Adam's apple clearly testifies to the contrary.
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In 2022, Judge Katonji Brown Jackson was in her second day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings when she was asked by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn to define what a woman is.
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Now you remember this is a person who has been through law school.
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This is a person who has passed every exam she's had to take for the bar and everything else and is now standing before the United States leadership being asked a question as simple as, what is a woman? And her answer is, I can't define that, I'm not a biologist.
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Conservative commentator Matt Walsh produced a documentary entitled What is a Woman? Where he interviewed dozens of people from gender reassignment surgeons to pediatricians and professors and if you've not seen the film, I will tell you this, the answers were flabbergasting.
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What is a woman? No one wanted to answer.
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Even those who were marching at women's events, marching for women's rights, did not want to define what a woman is.
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We are now at a time where psychology more than biology determines a person's sense of identity.
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You're not a woman because you were born with women parts, but rather you're a woman because that's what you think that you are or moreover that's what you feel that you are.
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And have you ever stopped for just a moment to ask yourself, how did we get where we are? This didn't happen overnight.
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In fact, it's important to understand really how we got here, to understand why we're facing the enemies that we are facing.
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And while I can't give an expansive social history in just the few minutes that I have here on a Sunday morning, we need to at least understand that we didn't arrive at this current cultural insanity by biblical fidelity.
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Most of our world is much more influenced by Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud than they are by Paul, Peter, and John.
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And they don't even realize it.
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That's the problem is you don't understand how much you have been influenced by those men that I mentioned.
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You may not have ever even heard their names, but the very culture in which we are steeped, the very foundations in which we are wrought have been established by the thinking of men like those.
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Bible professor Carl Truman wrote a book entitled, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
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In it he outlines how we have arrived at such a point of sexual confusion and identity politics and he makes the point that two generations ago, just two generations ago, had you said to your great grandfather, I'm a woman trapped in a man's body.
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He would not even have had the social wherewithal to understand such a sentence.
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He would either think that you were making a joke or he would not understand the words that were coming out of your mouth.
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And yet we have now arrived at a place so quickly within just a few generations that if someone were to say that to us, it would not even cause us to bat an eye.
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How did we get here? Well Truman in his book traces how western society has moved from what he calls a mimetic order, which means we mimic transcendent reality, and rather we have moved to a therapeutic order where everything has to adjust to the individual's psyche, where rather than conforming to God, we want the world to conform to us.
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Rather than conforming to the transcendent, we want everything to be about us.
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We are the eminent.
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We are the focus.
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It's all about us.
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We've gone from understanding a transcendent truth to which we must conform to the idea that truth is shaped and determined by the individual.
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And the individual becomes the highest rule.
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And this didn't happen overnight.
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Truman's basic contention is this, the sexual revolution is a symptom rather than the cause of efforts to redefine human identity.
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Centuries before the nation swooned when Bruce Jenner debuted as Caitlyn, for example, intellectual shifts were taking place and made the cultural event happen.
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It made it available because we were already thinking in terms that had been skewed and changed.
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You don't understand it, but the world has become functionally atheistic.
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And what is functional atheism? Functional atheism says the authority of God is to be mocked and the unfettered autonomy of the individual is to be celebrated.
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I'll say that again.
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The authority of God is mocked and the unfettered, meaning unshackled, authority of the individual is to be celebrated.
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And beloved, is that not the best explanation of where we are? Functional atheists.
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And the problem is it's not only in the world, it's not only in the government, it's not only in the corporations, but it is in the church.
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In the church people tip their hat to God, but often their behavior is no way determined by their fidelity to him.
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And in many ways they become their own gods and they worship self as the most powerful and pervasive idol in the culture.
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See people don't worship golden cows anymore.
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Well, they do in certain parts of the world, but in America the golden cow is inside of you.
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In America the idol is inside of you.
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When John Calvin said that the human mind is a perpetual factory of idols, he wasn't lying because we're constantly creating an idol to worship and it's us.
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We worship what we want as the highest order of things.
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And that's how we get to where we are.
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This may seem like an odd way to start a sermon about husbands and wives, but understand we live in a time where husbands and wives are stopping being a thing.
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You understand that the divorce rate has decreased, but the reason why the divorce rate has decreased is because the marriage rate has decreased.
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The reason why divorce rates, people are excited, well the divorce rate is going down, yes because people aren't getting married anymore.
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Why get married when we can have all of the social benefits of a relationship without having to sign a paper or go before a judge or a pastor? When there is no social consequence to cohabitation, when there is no expectation of authority and submission, when there is nothing in the world that calls for biblical fidelity, why would we expect the world to do anything but run from God like Jonah did? Because ultimately they hate God.
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The Bible tells us that the natural state of man is to be at enmity with God and if you are not familiar with the word enmity it means to be at war with Him.
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People will tell you that they love God, but they love the God that they create in their own mind because they are idolaters.
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So I felt like beginning this sermon was important to simply address the fact that when we talk about husbands and wives we have to be able to define that biblically.
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Because one of the things that I know that when I say some of the things that I say today it is not going to conform to social normality in our culture.
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In fact some of the things may so offend the culture that it would not even be allowed to be said on social media, it would be blacked out, it would be cut out, it would be blocked because it is offensive.
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I know what that feels like, I get stuff I put out all the time gets blocked, I get messages back when I post my videos, I get messages back, can't post that, it's too offensive.
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And I'm not posting, well people can post all kinds of trash, but if you post the truth it gets blocked.
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So let me say this as a sort of a positional starting point.
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If the Bible is clear about anything, it is clear about the fact that there is a distinction between men and women that is to be respected, it is to be recognized, and it is to be celebrated.
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There is a difference between men and women, if you don't believe that, go back to the very opening chapters of your Bible and it says that God created them male and female in His image.
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And then in the second chapter it tells us how He did that, that He created man first.
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And that when He created man He said it is not good that that man should be alone, so He made a helper fit for him, taking that helper out of his own body, removing one of his ribs and fashioning for him a helper that would be to him everything that he is not.
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Not everything that he is.
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See the woman doesn't mirror the man in everything that he is, but she becomes everything that he isn't, so together they can become one.
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And that's why when you put two men together it doesn't work.
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You cannot truly love a mirror image the way that you are supposed to because God made us to love the complementary image.
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He didn't make us to love the same, He made us to love that which complements, and women complement men and men complement women.
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And if you don't understand the distinction between the two, if you don't understand that there is a difference between the two, then you end up where we are today, where men marry men and women marry women, and people marry multiple people and call it polyamory, people live in sexual communities and just sleep with everyone and there is no rhyme nor reason.
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And what was taboo yesterday will be celebrated tomorrow.
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So our whole passage today elaborates on the distinction, we are really only going to look at verses 18 and 19.
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These elaborate the distinctions within the home between the husband and the wife.
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I don't want to say this, this is the least progressive section in all of Colossians.
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It will affirm many things which our culture forbids, and this is one of those sections that many preachers will spend the vast majority of their sermon apologizing for before they preach it.
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But I'm not going to apologize for anything that this says.
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I will seek clarity and proper application, but where the Bible speaks clearly we need not contort it, and we need not treat the Bible like a wax nose that we can fashion any shape we want like Martin Luther said.
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Where the Bible speaks clearly we must listen intently.
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And honestly we are looking at less than a couple dozen words here.
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It's very clear, it's very concise, and some of the things I say may offend.
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I'm satisfied with that as long as it's not offending God.
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I'd much rather offend you than to offend God.
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I'd much rather apologize to God on your behalf than apologize to you on His.
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The pulpit has become a place for suggestions rather than proclamation, and that's a problem.
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We proclaim the truth and let the truth stand on its own.
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So let us look now at 18 and 19.
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18 and 19 are sister verses because they pattern after this two-fold relationship, which is the foundational relationship of all society.
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Husbands and wives make up the smallest unit of social contraction that is put together in society, and I would say the most important.
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Back when I do a wedding, I just did a wedding a few weeks ago, I have some others I'm looking forward to doing, and when I perform the wedding I say this is the strongest social contract that anyone can enter into.
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It rises above all other social responsibilities and stands above any other relationship.
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For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
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This is how God establishes marriage.
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He establishes marriage as the most important relationship that you are able to enter into and will be outside of your relationship with Christ the most important relationship that you will be in until you die.
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And even after you die, I know it says we're not married in heaven, and I believe what the scripture says, but I made my wife a sign years ago, I carved it into wood, and it's sitting next to our television, if you've ever been to our house you've seen it.
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It says I know I can't, I know we can't be married in heaven, but can I sit next to you when we get there? Because that's my wife, the most important social relationship I have.
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I love my parents, I love my kids, and I love you, but not like I love her.
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Not like I love her.
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So this is talking about that relationship.
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It says in verse 18, wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord, and husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
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Now I want to point out that in Colossians 3.18, down to the end of the chapter, we have a concise version of something that Paul wrote in Ephesians, and as I've said many times in our study, Colossians and Ephesians are sister letters, and what we have in these is we have a concise version of what Paul did write in Ephesians chapter 5.
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So if you do have your Bibles open, I want to encourage you to open them to Ephesians 5 and just have your thumb in between, because we're going to go back and forth.
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I feel like it would be a good thing for us to be able to see both of these at the same time.
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So if you have your Bible open to Ephesians 5, you'll notice that what Paul says in one verse in Colossians 3, he expands out to three verses in Ephesians 5 regarding wives.
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Because in Colossians 3, he says wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord, but then you notice it says in Ephesians 5, wives submit to your own husbands.
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By the way, I love that he adds your own husbands, because your wife doesn't have a responsibility to submit to me.
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That's right.
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You don't submit to all husbands, all men, it's your husband.
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There's a point that Paul's making there by adding the personal possessive pronoun.
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But then he says, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior.
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Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
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So right there, we have the longer version of Colossians 3, verse 18.
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And I want you to notice something about this, is that this is unqualified.
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I'm giving that a second to seep in.
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Because it doesn't say, wives submit unto your husbands if he's a good leader.
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It doesn't say, wives submit unto your husbands if he's a nice person.
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It doesn't even say, wives submit unto your husbands if he's a believer.
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It simply says, wives submit to your husbands.
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And it says it two different ways.
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In Colossians it says, as is fitting in the Lord, meaning that if you are in the Lord, meaning if you are a believer, then this is what is expected, this is what is fitting, this is what it is to be.
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And then in Ephesians it says, as unto the Lord, as if you were submitting to Christ.
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And automatically the objections ring out in our ears.
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We all are nothing if not qualifiers.
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Every time God gives us a command, we want to find the work around.
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Well what if this? What if that? Does this mean if my husband tells me to jump off a cliff, I'm bound to that request? God is not a fool and neither is His Word.
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Does that mean if he's beating me or my children that I'm bound to stay in that abuse? God is not ridiculous.
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And God has in fact placed things to help you in those regards.
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The church and the state both are there to help in those issues.
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If you're under abuse, your elders need to know and your government may need to know if it's abuse.
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If he puts his hand on you, you come tell us.
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Because that's not godly.
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Go tell Adam.
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He's a police officer if you didn't know.
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That's not godly.
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So what does it mean to submit? It means to respect your husband's place as the God-ordained leader of the home and understand that this is a position for which he will be judged.
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And something you need to take into effect when you study this and look at this, ladies, is you need to understand that the word submission here is a willful word.
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It's a choice.
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Hupotasso means to come under the order of another.
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In its non-military use, it means to make a voluntary attitude of subordination.
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It's a willful and voluntary act, which means, husbands, this is not yours to command.
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Your role, husbands, is not to walk into your house and jerk off your jacket and pull out your saber and say, woman, get thee behind me.
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Because that's laughable and ridiculous.
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And the men who do so find themselves to be the worst of tyrants.
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And by the way, I haven't gotten there yet.
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I am going to get to the men in a moment where it says, husbands, love your wives.
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But I'll go ahead and say this because it's important.
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Authority without love is tyranny.
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So if you are called to love your wives as Christ loved the church, that means the authority that you exercise in your home is to be an authority of love for your wife.
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And authority without love is tyranny.
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And if you're exercising tyranny in your home, you're not being Christ in that home.
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But just for a moment, let's go back to the wives for just understanding.
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Because he says, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.
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This is in Ephesians.
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He goes on.
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He says, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
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Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
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That phrase in everything is important.
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When I do marriage counseling, premarital counseling, I ask this question.
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Are you ready to submit to this man in everything? If you're not, you're not ready to get married.
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Now again, you understand what submission is.
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Submission is not, oh, he told me to jump off a cliff.
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Again, that's stupid.
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In every place the Bible calls for submission, there is always the idea of the tyrant that has to be stood against.
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We see that with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who stood against the tyrant who wanted to force them to bow down to his image.
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If your husband's made an image of himself and tells you to bow down to it, Pastor Keith said you don't have to, okay? All right, you got it.
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Understand, there are limits to everything.
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Even in regard to authority, there are limits.
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There are movements out there that try to put men in a position of such power that they have no limits to their authority.
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Those often create the worst of tyrannical leaders because that's unbiblical.
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There are always limits, but when it comes to submission, understand this though, it does mean submission in everything that doesn't cause you to disobey God.
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I've told this story before.
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Some of you have heard it, but I always like to use this when I'm talking about submission because I think it's helpful.
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It's a story about a man getting up in age and he calls his son to him.
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He said, son, I'm getting up in age.
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Your mother is also getting up in age and we've made you the executor of our estate.
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What I'd like for you to do is I would like for you to take a portion of our estate and set it aside at a trust so that when something happens to me, your mother will be taken care of and she'll be able to be financially independent until she passes.
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The son said, dad, that's a good idea.
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I like that.
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I'll go do it.
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He goes off and he creates the trust and he does what his dad asked him to do.
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A few weeks later, the father calls him in and he said, son, as I think about it, I think about the fact that your children also are my heirs.
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They're my glory and I love them.
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I want to put each of your children, some of my estate into trust for them so that when they turn 18, they'll have some money to start out life with.
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And the man said, I love that idea.
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Dad, you're taking care of my kids.
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You're providing a nice inheritance for them.
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The Bible says inheritance is a good thing, so I'll do it.
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And he goes and he prepares the inheritance for his children.
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A few weeks go by, man calls him in.
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He says, listen, you know there's some property we own up in the upper state.
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That property isn't really doing anything for us and I don't like that property anyway.
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It's costing us taxes and whatnot.
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I want you to sell that property and put the money into an account.
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And the son, I don't think it's a good idea, Pop.
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That property is going to be worth more in a few years.
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And the father said, well, it's my property.
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Do what I ask you to do and go sell it.
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The son left the room upset and he didn't sell it.
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Now I want to ask you this question.
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Don't answer out loud because I know some of you have heard this before.
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How many times did the son submit to his father? The natural answer is he submitted twice.
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But the answer is zero because he only did what he wanted to do in every case.
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He didn't submit ever.
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Think about that.
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He only did what he agreed to.
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He only did what he thought was right.
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Let me tell you something, ladies.
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In your marriage, if your husband has to tiptoe around everything because it's what you want that matters most and you get what you want always and if mom ain't happy, he ain't happy, there's a problem.
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There's a problem.
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There's a call to submission in marriage to the leadership of the husband.
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Are there qualifiers? There's always qualifiers for stupidity, but there's never a qualifier for sanctification.
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1 Peter 3.1.
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Wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if some of them do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct.
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Do you understand what that's saying to you, wives? That's saying that your behavior, even to an unbelieving husband, your behavior of submission can be a work of sanctification in his life and possibly even a work of justification bringing him to the Savior.
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So what if he's not a believer? Submit to him anyway because you're going to like this because when I get to the men part that I haven't got to yet, I'm going to tell them to love you even if you don't submit.
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Do you understand? That's how it works.
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You're to submit even if he's not loving and he's to love even if you don't submit because neither one of these commands is based upon the other person.
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They're both based on the Lord.
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You submit as to the Lord.
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You love as to the Lord.
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Neither one of them is based on the other person.
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It's based on your commitment to the Lord, not them.
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Pastor, you're giving me a hard life.
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I'm going to tell you something I'm not.
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I'm reading to you the text.
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I'm telling you what it means.
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I don't think I've diverted from it.
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I think I've been very fair to it.
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Now more than possibly any time in recent history the concept of submission in marriage is mocked and looked upon with suspicion.
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Almost couldn't say it.
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Though the Bible provides clear imperatives for wives to submit to their husbands because of the presence of the widespread abuse and hyper patriarchal movements there is an attempt on some to put this passage away and all the things that come with it.
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But just because something can abuse doesn't mean that it's wrong.
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Just because leadership in the home, male leadership in the home can be abused doesn't mean that it's wrong.
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But we do have to not abuse it.
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And this leads to the man.
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This leads to the man because what is said to the man.
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By the way, notice this.
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In Colossians it's one verse each.
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Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting to the Lord.
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Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
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By the way, the word harsh there comes from the word picria.
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The word picria means bitterness.
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Do not be bitter with your wives.
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Do not have a spirit of resentment or hatred towards them.
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Do not have a spirit of bitterness towards them.
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That's what we get in Colossians.
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But then you go to Ephesians and there is a paragraph to the men where the wives get three verses, the husbands get from verse 25 all the way down to verse 33.
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And you understand what your role is when you read this word.
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Hear this word gentlemen.
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Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
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Men, your job as husband is to give yourself up for your wife.
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And I know a lot of guys, I would take a bullet for my wife.
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I would stand between her and any enemy.
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That sounds great and that sounds tough.
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But those situations are once in a lifetime.
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What do you do in your daily? Are you daily laying down your life for your wife? Notice what it goes on to say, verse 26, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.
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Beloved brothers, how many of you are washing your wife with the word? Not using it as a tool to bludgeon her, but loving her with the word.
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Well the word is a sword.
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Yes, the word is a sword.
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But is your wife one that needs to be cut with it and bashed with it? Or is she one that needs to be washed with it as it were a shower of water? The text says to wash her with the water of the word.
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So that, and this is talking about Christ, 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.
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See that's what Christ does for us.
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Christ uses the word of God to wash us, cleanse us, sanctify us so that he might present us to the Father as this wonderful gift, the church, his bride is there in glory.
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Verse 28, in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
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He who loves his wife loves himself for no one has 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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Therefore, and he quotes Genesis here, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, shall hold unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
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This mystery is profound and I am saying it refers to Christ and the church.
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However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
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Beloved, that last passage is the most important part of this because here is what you need to understand.
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Marriage in all of its beauty and all of its social finery and all of the things that it does for us here, it does one thing even more important, it mirrors the picture of Christ and his church.
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Marriage is a picture of the gospel and therefore when we live out our marriage we are living out a picture of what Christ and the church are to be.
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Christ, think of this boys, Christ.
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According to Philippians chapter 2, though he was in the form of God, did not account equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing.
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Took the role of God, took the role of God and the role of the servant and gave himself up to death, even death on the cross.
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What kind of husband should you be? The husband that humbles himself and loves his wife as Christ loved the church.
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That is the kind of husband we are called to be.
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The kind that does not put himself on the pedestal, but rather divests himself and puts himself in a position of service to love his wife as Christ loved the church.
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And I am going to tell you something, I can't promise this in every case, but I will tell you in many, many cases it is so that when a man humbles himself and leads with a loving leadership that God intends, the act of submission on part of the wife is much more sweet and joyful.
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Men, you have a responsibility in your homes.
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My wife is not doing what I want her to do.
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Love your wife.
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My wife won't submit to me.
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Love your wife.
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My wife is not making me happy in the bedroom.
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Love your wife.
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My wife loves the church.
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I know that for every crime you can cry out against her, Christ could cry out ten times as many against you and He doesn't.
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He doesn't.
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Christ has loved you and He calls you to love your wife.
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And beloved, that is the picture of the gospel.
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In that But while we were yet sinners, while we were the adulterous bride, Christ loved us and gave Himself for us and became a picture of every man, the one man that every man should inspire to be, should aspire to be like Christ in our homes.
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Beloved, that's the gospel today.
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The gospel is to be reminded that we who are sinners have been loved by our Savior so much that He gave Himself up and died for us.
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And therefore He calls us to love our spouse and give ourself up for her.
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And here's why this is important for those of you who aren't married.
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Because some of you are not married.
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Some of you are children and not yet old enough to be married.
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Some of you are widows and widowers.
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Some of you are in the providence of God.
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You have found yourself separated from your wife or maybe even have gone through a divorce.
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But in any way that you sit today, if you are a saved person, you sit having been saved by the gospel which is pictured in marriage.
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And therefore, this message is still for you.
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This message is still for you.
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Because we have a gospel pictured in the blessing of marriage.
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And if you are preparing for marriage, maybe you're in that stage of life where you're preparing.
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Understand this.
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You're not preparing for a wedding.
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You're preparing for a marriage.
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And that's a lifelong thing.
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It's a lifelong thing.
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Beloved, we look at this text and as I said, it's about understanding authority and submission.
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The most important position of authority and submission we have is our King and we, His children.
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Our God and we, His people.
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And so today, may we submit to Him in every area of life, especially in our marriages, making Him the first place in all that we say and all that we do.
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And in areas where we need to repent, especially in those areas where we have failed, may we seek repentance today.
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And I'll say this one last time.
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We are not wives.
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Yes, you are called to submit.
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Husbands, yes, you are called to love.
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And wives are not exempt from submission when the husband fails to love perfectly and neither are husbands exempt from love when the wife fails to submit perfectly.
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Both of you are responsible to the Lord and both will fail at times.
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And therefore, your marriage must be showered with patience, mercy, and grace the same way your salvation continues by God's mercy, His patience, and His grace.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word today and I pray even now, Lord, that we have considered this call to submission and to love, that Lord, we would have a renewed vigor in the marriages in this place to follow after what Your Word commands.
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I pray that no man would go home today and point his finger at his wife and say, submit unto me.
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Neither would any wife go home and point her finger and say, love me, but rather that these things will come out joyfully in the hearts of those who love the Lord and that all things will be done in obedience to the Lord.
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Not out of duty, but out of love for Him and love for one another.
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In Jesus' name, amen.