The Woman's Role in Marriage, Pt. 2 (11/19/2023)

Yes, it is good to see everyone back, and it's good to be here so I can see everyone back.

But it is a joyous day. That was a great Sunday school lesson today, Ben, talking about how the

Lord Jesus himself will sing for joy, right? Opening the

Millennial Kingdom. And Ben is on the attack. He is on the theological attack.

He uses words I don't know now at this point, and I look them up quickly so that he thinks

I know them as we speak at home. So what's that word you were using in Sunday school?

Replacement theology. Well, I actually did know that one. But that is sort of a heinous error, and some seemingly good people have fallen for it, which is really difficult to deal with because I look at it this way.

You've got 10 basic rules of Bible interpretation. All the theologians know what those rules are, and if you don't cheat on the rules, you don't end up having blind spots like that.

So they cheat. And so it's hard to know how to deal with that other than just root it out of our church, just don't have it here, and also always be wary that if it's true that good men can have blind spots, then we could too, right?

Except Dave Huber Sr. up here doesn't allow it. He pretty well fixes my blind spots for me on the, what do you call it?

Like in real time, in real time. And I appreciate that.

I'm not messing with you. I appreciate that. That's how we do it coffee, right? If you can shoot it down, shoot it down with scripture.

And so that one needs to be shot down. That is a terrible theory. I've known about it because my mentor was a

Jewish believer, Dr. Freeman, and he told me about it, but you read about it. When you study theology, you read post -millennialism and amillennialism, and amillennialism in particular has to buy into that theory that the church replaces

Israel is what the theory is about. It's like the church is actually Israel now.

And it's terrible, but I do agree with what Ben said. If you were here in Sunday school, he said, if you look at it from the viewpoint of people who were writing in the 1600s, 1700s,

Israel did not exist as a nation. It had been destroyed in 70 AD, and they were scattered all over the world. And like Ben said, some of these reform writers probably never seen a

Jew. And so how could they conceive that it would become a nation and be there at the end?

And see, that's your problem, is when the Bible says it will, but your eyes say it won't, you need to go with the

Bible. Scofield, I love Scofield, this is a Scofield Bible.

99 % of what he says is brilliant, but he had a blind spot like that when evolution came into the world.

The theologians weren't prepared for it, so they came up with a thing called the gap theory. And so that, or they came up with the day age theory that the six days of creation were not literal.

It was actually six eons of time, six thousands of years for each day that it would take

God to create that because that seemingly fit evolution better. So the

Bible says, no, it's six days. The evening and the morning were the first day. If the Holy Spirit wanted to make that clear, how could he make that more clear?

But we went with our eyes and it appeared that there were geologic strata that proved that the earth was older than six or seven or 8 ,000 years old that the

Bible would indicate. So they changed things to help the Bible, right? Guess what?

You don't have to help the Bible. Like it's gonna be there when everything else is gone. You don't have to help it.

Science changes, theology changes, but the Bible never changes. So stick with it.

And I sort of studied under a lot of Dallas Theological Seminary theologians in the books they wrote.

And I don't agree with everything they believe either, but, and they don't believe everything I believe.

So it's, we're even. But the thing that I loved is how they would describe how to read the

Bible. Cause there are all kinds of theological words they will say like we believe in the verbal plenary inspiration viewpoint and all these things you read.

But what, I think it was Schaeffer that said, just,

I believe in reading it plainly. Kind of like you would read a newspaper. Like if it's plainly not allegorical,

I mean, it's just saying this is how it is. Don't make it allegorical. And he, his opinion was that where it is allegorical, the

Bible, the context will indicate that it's allegorical. And so I like that viewpoint because to me, like if it doesn't mean what it says,

I'm not smart enough to figure out which part's God's word and which part isn't. So I have to believe all of it's

God's word and that the Holy Spirit is very articulate and able and concise and able to say plainly what he means.

It only takes a PhD theologian to mess that up. So you gotta, like, you wanna get the education.

I'm not against education. Go ahead and get it and then get over it. Because the way you get over it is you let this be the sole authority.

Now, what's funny is these reformers that Ben talks about, even the modern ones that believe this ridiculous theory, they say they believe in, give me that big word,

Ben, solus, skip, skip, skip to the farm.

Skip, scriptura. And that was where the reformers believed that the

Bible was the sole authority and it contradicted what the

Catholics believe that they're, you know, all of the things the Pope says are just as authoritative. And so the

Protestants came up with this idea that the Bible is it. And yet in their theories, like they wanna keep sprinkling babies, which they got from the

Catholics, which it doesn't, I saw a great gospel tract once. On the front it says, everything the

Bible teaches about sprinkling babies and you opened up and it's blank, right? Oh, how do you say it?

Solus scriptura. Oh, they say they believe that, right? But it ain't in the Bible. So they have their traditions too.

The Protestants have their traditions and the reformers had their traditions in this idea that Ben was talking about so eloquently this morning about that the church has replaced

Israel. That's not in the Bible. No, that's in tradition.

And you know, they will go back and read reformers and say, look, they believe that, this one believed it, this one believed it.

They'll even say Calvin believed it, but he did, he talked about a literal Israel. And so they lie too.

They not only cheat, they lie. So, I mean, how do you deal with that? And some of these are good people. Like, I mean, one of them was one that MacArthur hung out with till the older gentleman passed away and just about everything else he talked about was right on, but there's blind spots.

I think that's a good warning for us, don't you Ben? We could have them. So that's why at this church, we invite you to come to us if we teach something that you think is not in the

Bible or even that's misinterpreted or out of context or doesn't fit some other passage of scripture, bring it to us and we will take another look at anything.

And Brother Otis was in his eighties or not quite there at this point when this happened, but he used to believe in the day age theory when

I met him. He had two walls full of theology books he had read, mostly out of print, old theology books.

And the problem is some of those old theology books had these theories in them. And so he had read them as a young man and bought into some of those.

And I said, it's not, I said, they're literal days. He said, no, I don't think so, Brother David. So I wrote him a 25 page paper on how they have to be literal days.

He read that paper and the next day, next week at coffee, he says, Brother David, you're right. I won't teach that anymore.

I mean, he would, if you could show him in scripture where he's wrong, he would change like that. Show me old men that do that.

Most old men are set in their ways. Like they don't change anything, but he would change it. Another one, he believed that the rapture happened at the front end of the tribulation.

I wrote him a 25 page paper. He comes back, Brother David, you're right. I think you're right.

I'll never teach revelation again because I can't see well enough to restudy it, but you're right. And he didn't, he didn't teach it again after that.

Ben was telling me the last time he taught it was 2005. And it was around 2005 when

I was challenged to rethink that and probably took me a couple of years to study. Really it's one year,

I think, to really change my mind and start talking about it here. And it was around that point that Otis never taught that again.

And even Bill had to go through and sort of change his beliefs. And I trusted him to do it because I knew he was honest.

He would not cheat on the 10 rules of Bible interpretation. I knew he would see it and he did. And the last time he taught it might be the best teaching of the book of Revelation I've read or seen in my lifetime.

Brother Bill, how are you doing up there, brother? We miss you. All right, so let's talk about marriage and family.

It's way more important than some of these huge big theological words because this right here is what it's all about.

If we can't keep our homes together and in unity, we can't keep the church in unity.

If we can't keep the church in unity, we can't keep the country in unity. And if we lose America, there's nothing left.

I've been in Europe, there's nothing left. Europe's gone. They're all socialists, they're all deceived.

I won't say all, but they're just so bad off. And America still has truth in some corners.

It still has capitalism in some corners. I would call that biblical economics in some corners, freedom in some corners, but America is dying fast.

So we have to be the salt and the light, don't we? Well, it probably needs to start in our homes.

So we've been talking about marriage and family for quite some time. And last time we started talking about the role of the woman or the wife in the home and we covered quite a bit of that.

So I'm not gonna review it. You can go back and check the, get online. You can hear last week's sermon very easily because Ben updates that usually by Wednesday, it's up there.

So I'm sure this one is already up there. So let me see where we're gonna start then. Let me just say that really the point that I was working on when we stopped last time was that when you see all these passages in scripture that talk about the woman submitting to the husband, the woman obeying the husband, the woman having reverence to the husband like Sarah did

Abraham, those are found in context, certain contexts in the scripture.

They're not just standalone verses. And so I sort of gave you the verses last time and then we talked about, well, we're gonna go more into the context.

And one of the first points I made last time is that before any of those verses happen in the book of Ephesians chapter five, if you wanna turn there, that's where we'll be,

Ephesians chapter five. Before any of those verses happen, verse 21 happens, and it says submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

So before it ever says that the wife is supposed to submit to the husband, it says submit to one another.

And most men that I've talked to in marriage counseling where that's an issue, they don't bring that one up.

And so when I bring it up, they don't have a clue what it means. It's nice to be blind on certain verses, gentlemen.

Isn't that true? Like, I didn't see that one. I don't know what it means. So I go with the one about the wife submitting to the husband, right?

But you have to take them all together because they're in context. So we talked about that last time.

Also Ephesians 5, 18 and 19 talk about being spirit -filled, that the husband needs to be spirit -filled, the wife needs to be spirit -filled.

So in the context of that, the wife needs to submit to the husband in the context of both being spirit -filled at the same time.

And then I got down to this last part where we're gonna start today. And that is, we have this little word as, and it's called an adverbial comparative conjunction.

See, Ben, I can talk big too. And this little word as is found throughout all these contexts.

And when you start looking at that little word, everywhere it's found in the phrase that follows it, you see some amazing context.

It really speaks to the men more than to the women. And if the woman is supposed to obey the husband and submit to the husband and adore the husband and revere the husband, then she is supposed to do it as some other things.

And that's what we're gonna look at. So the first one is found in Ephesians 5, verse 22.

Well, let me, yeah, let's start with verse 22. It says, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the

Lord. And I want you to underline the little word as when you see it throughout these passages in Ephesians.

So it doesn't just say that the wife submits to the husband. It says she does it in a certain manner.

That's what the word as means, right? In a certain manner, this is how it works. In other words, all right, for the wife to submit to the husband, this is how it works.

And the Holy Spirit is going to tell the men and the women how that works. Because I can promise you, having been married for a long time, there are ways in which it doesn't work, okay?

And then there are ways in which it works. And so as unto the Lord is the first time we see this little word.

Now, the word in Greek is hose, and it means in the matter, in that manner.

Let me say it again, because I messed it up. In that manner. So if the wife is to submit to the husband and it says as, and it tells you some information, it means in this manner over here, that's how she does it, or that's how it occurs.

This is how it happens. And so we see quite a few of those things here.

So let's look at the first one. The first as talks about in the context, the wife's submission to the husband is contingent upon the husband being like Christ.

Uh -oh. You mean it speaks to the husbands too? It's contingent upon the husband being like Christ, who is the savior of the body.

Now, when you look at the body, the picture that that makes for the marriage, when

Adam was created, all of the attributes of male and female were within him. He was human, he was man, which means he was the human being, the race of humans that God created was in him, all of it.

Only after he took a rib and created Eve from him and took some of the feminine attributes out and put them in her so that only with her can he be whole, at that point, he becomes the savior of the body.

The picture is that the man is the protector of the weaker vessel and together they are one man.

Now that's biblical. The Hebrews understand this way better than the church does because the church at this point is so predominantly

American and we're so ignorant of how kingdom works because we're a democracy and we're so ignorant of how serving others works because we believe in freedom of the individual so we don't serve anybody.

And I admire all those things. I don't wanna serve a king and I think that the American experiment has been awesome and God brought it to pass, did he not?

But it's a bad picture of a lot of biblical relationships. So we have to go to the scripture to learn those relationships or we wouldn't know about it as an

American. So America has a lot to learn about some of these relationships. So when you talk about that the woman should submit to the husband, that's like saying that Dave's remaining fingers should serve his brain, his head.

His fingers should serve his head. If his head says, get those fingers out of the way before that thing slams shut, then he should do it.

And he did, and it worked out pretty well. But what if those fingers rebelled and said, no,

I'm equal with the head and I'll decide when I move? Well, then they would be gone.

May it get sewed back on. They can do that in Mahalia, believe it or not. Paul, my son, Paul had that happen.

Yeah, you wouldn't wanna do it. Try it though, it's not fun. So this is the picture of this authority structure because of sin in the world.

This is the way it works, but it works in this manner. So the first thing it says, she must submit to the husband.

It's contingent upon the husband being like Christ and being the savior of the body.

Now she's part of the body because they're one, right? She's part of the body and the husband is the savior of the whole body, which includes him and her, and he should treat her like him.

They're one, he has to treat her exactly like himself. And that comes later. I'm getting a little bit ahead of the scripture.

So this is the first as, and you can see that it adds a lot to just the concept of the wife submitting blindly to the husband.

Like every husband I've ever counseled says, oh, that's what the Bible says. And I'm the man of the house.

God put me as the authoritarian structure in the house and she's not obeying me. And she's sitting over here miserable and I'm looking at her and she's just beat down and miserable and I'm thinking, oh, that really looks like he's been treating her like Christ loves the church.

Boy, and I'm thinking this while he's talking, right? Time and time again through the last 40 years of ministry.

So this is the problem is they don't, the men don't understand these things. This includes treating her as the weaker vessel, being willing to die for her, being willing to live for her, which is harder sometimes for a man than to die for her.

Oh, he can be the hero, right? But what about when just everyday life at home, can you live for her?

And it includes putting her first in everything over his own selfish desires, being

Christ -like in general. The one thing about Jesus, he was never selfish. He was always treating his disciples in a tender, loving, compassionate, forgiving, passionate manner.

Verse 23 in chapter five says, for the husband is the head of the wife, but it doesn't put a period there.

It says as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body in that manner.

So in what manner is the husband head of the wife? In like manner as Christ is the head of the church.

In other words, like Christ is to the church. In other words, how does he treat the church?

How does he love the church? The husband is to be head like that.

Now in the next verse, this is strengthened by that very words.

So in verse 24, it says, therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

But remember, everything I just said came before that. Everything I already said has to be in place and then this comes.

But what's interesting is the little word as in English, there are at least three

Greek words for that. So they're not the same. They might be, you might say they're somewhat synonyms of each other, but they are not the same.

So for example, the other one, hosai means in that manner, very simple, kind of like the

English word as, would very close to the same thing. But this one is the

Greek word hosaiper or hosaiper. And it means just as or exactly as.

Do you see that it's a little stronger? It doesn't just mean in like manner, it means exactly in like manner.

Little bit stronger word. So when it says that, therefore, as the church exactly in like manner, as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

That is very strong teaching, ladies. And it's somewhat lost in America and American society, but a very strong, exactly as you would obey

Christ, you obey your husband. Now, remember, before we got to this verse, everything prior to that said that he has got to be treating you exactly.

It doesn't say exactly, but it says in the same manner as Christ did the church, in love, in dying for the church, living for the church, teaching, instructing, and all these things, wanting the best for the church.

All that's in place already when this verse comes about. So the wife is to be subject to the husband exactly as the church is to Christ and for similar reasons, it would imply.

So the next verses list some of the reasons that Christ is happily,

I'm sorry, that the church is happily subject to Christ. So now think about that.

It says she is to be subject to the husband exactly as the church is to Christ, but then we have verses above that that talk about how before that happens,

Christ treats the church a certain way, but then after it, now we're about to come in to some verses here that are going to show us why the church happily subjects itself to Christ.

And it is a type, or excuse me, a picture of how it should be between the man and the wife.

If she's gonna be subject to him, then these things that are gonna come after the word as have to be in place so that she will happily be subject to him, like the church is to Christ.

That's what this is saying. So here in verse 25, let's look at this.

Let's see. Oh, this is interesting. I forgot to mention this. We're about to see a third word for as in verse 25 and it is the word kathos.

And it is kind of taking the same meaning for as and adding the

Greek word kata in front of it. And kata means exceedingly or over and above.

It's even a third, it's a little bit even stronger now than the other two words. Isn't that interesting?

The word as gets stronger and stronger. So it's in like manner. And then it's exactly in like manner.

And now it's exceedingly exactly in like manner. Isn't that interesting? So verse 25 has this word in it.

And here's what it says. Husband love your wives even exceedingly exactly as Christ also loved the church.

It puts the strongest word for as when referencing the husband's duty.

What do you think about that ladies? If you could say amen. I know you can't speak in church, but if you could, you would say it right there.

So like, you can actually do it with this pastor. You can get away with that. But if you're afraid, just go like this,

Glenda. Look at me. And then he'll go, amen. But you should do it like, amen.

So I know it's her, okay. Paula said, come on.

Okay, so that's how it works though. Charlotte's done that many times to me when other people are preaching.

And I am serious about it. So, husbands love your wives even exceedingly.

I'm giving you my definition of this word as, even exceedingly as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.

Isn't that interesting? You're getting it, right? That's interesting.

Now, that has to be in place before she will happily submit to the husband.

The church really, when we're spirit -filled, we do happily submit to Christ.

I mean, we know where we'd be without him, do we not? Now, when we're in the flesh, we don't. Sometimes we go our own way, right?

And hopefully we get back into the spirit -filled mode very quickly, or we can do damage to ourselves and our loved ones and everybody around us.

So, we can kind of identify with what it feels like to happily be subject to Jesus.

I mean, we're so happy that we are, because he freed us from every lesser Lord, did he not?

All right, so to be happily subject to the husband, he must be exceedingly, exactly acting like Christ did to the church with regard to you.

Now, that's difficult, gentlemen, for us to do, because we're not Christ, we're not perfect.

But what we have to do is strive to be more like him every day, every year, and our marriages should be getting better every year.

And if you're in a marriage where it is, it's probably because the man is growing more and more to understand what it means to love his wife and how to love his wife, and he has a better relationship with Jesus, so he sees that and he reflects that and loves his wife that way.

And she doesn't even have to think about, it's not like you're going around thinking, I'll submit to him. It's just like you respect him, and you may not always agree, but if it comes down to it and he's gotta be the tiebreaker, you just say, okay, let's go with it.

And if it's wrong, we'll learn from it together, and you smile, right? I mean, this is how this works.

Now, we see that the third as here is stronger, and look at verse 26.

I mean, it was in verse 25. It's also in verse 26. That he might sanctify and cleanse it, in other words, the church, with the washing of the water by the word.

So you have to read verse 25 and 26 together because they're not really verses. It's all one sentence in the word as, which means exceedingly as Christ did such and such.

It applies to both verse 25 and verse 26, the ideas in them. So the first idea was exceedingly as Christ loved the church and gave himself for the church.

And so there's two ideas. He loved her. He loved the church. He gave himself for the church.

And the third idea is in verse 26, he cleanses her. Now, think about this a little bit.

Think about how much of God's work he has accomplished through his word, through the spoken word.

Everything that you will ever see or feel or smell or hear was brought into existence by Jesus speaking it into existence with his word.

Everything that you will ever know about the essence and the being of God himself, you know, because it was placed in his word.

And the Bible teaches us in the book of Ephesians, right in this area here, that the word of God, in particular, the written word is that which cleanses the

Christian. Now, if the Christian is the bride of Christ, then there is a picture of how

Jesus, the groom, cleanses his wife with his words. There's your fly,

Ben. He's, he came up here now. You didn't kill him. Remind me, brother

Paul, let's get some raid. I need to keep it right up here. I don't like them. Satan is called the

Lord of flies. So he'll be around my head the rest of the morning probably, but I don't care too much.

So think about this now, the cleansing aspect with his words.

Gentlemen, what this teaches us is that the words that we say to our wives can either lower her love points towards us, which is the phileo love, the friendship love.

It can make them go down for a season, or it can make them go up. The very words and especially the actions behind the words, if we follow up with what we say we'll do and we'd actually do it, the words that we say to our wives can actually change the way she thinks about the world.

And I'm talking about when we study scripture together and scriptural concepts together and talk about them in the car, driving down the highway.

When we talk about them in the home, I'm not talking about a formal Bible study necessarily, but as you go, we're always talking about the

Lord together. The words that the husband says to the wife can in fact have a cleansing effect on her to keep the world from harming her or the flesh from leading her astray or even demonic activity from affecting her.

So the words of the husband are hugely important in the relationship and so therefore also important in her ability to submit when she needs to, when it gets to the point where, boy, she needs to do that, she needs to do it now.

If she's not already in that place, we're in trouble. You got to already be in a place where you have loved her exactly like Christ loved the church, where you've given yourself for her just like Christ did the church and you have cleansed her with the washing of the word of God in your home.

You talk about the Bible with her because the woman can be more easily led astray doctrinally and in every other way.

She can be more easily deceived and the man has got to continue to keep her thinking right.

I mean, that's just bottom line. That's what it's all about and that's what this is a picture of.

So the husband must make sure his wife is not only in the word, but knowledgeable of the great doctrines of the

Bible and is thinking about them daily lest she be deceived by the enemy, the world, the flesh and the devil.

And verse 27, that he might present it to himself a glorious church.

Now, gentlemen, if you want to have a happy marriage and a wife that's what you think a wife should be and all men have some vision of that in their mind, right?

And you want that, here's the formula. The scripture just gave it to us.

And let's say we're sitting here saying, boy, wish I'd heard this when I was 18. Well, some of you get the privilege of that, getting to hear it at a very young age.

Some of us didn't really. I wasn't taught this in my home growing up, wasn't taught it in the church

I went to growing up. So sometimes you have to start today and refresh these things.

And the way you start is you apologize and you say, I haven't been doing this and I'm sorry. We're gonna start today.

We're gonna start today and we're going to put these into practice. That's how you do it. You just start today.

Did you know that the most important time in your life is now? It's not the past.

Don't sit there and talk about how bad it's been in the marriage in the past. In fact,

Dr. Freeman and Pat Freeman had the largest family counseling practice Fort Worth for 25 years taught me in Charlotte when we were in our twenties.

When you get into an argument, you're not allowed to bring up the last argument or anything in it or any of the information that happened.

You got to start with this one and stay with this one and fix it before the sun goes down. And we've practiced that haven't we?

And we're still together. In fact, we were together a whole month on a ship in a room, not as big as these front views here.

And we're still together. In fact, we're more together than we were before the trip.

So these principles work and I thank God all the time for Dr. Freeman and Pat for counseling us when we were a young married couple.

But everything he taught us comes from these passages. And he taught us how to rear children and they never had children.

So where'd he get it from? He got it from this. It's phenomenal. So that he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle.

Gentlemen, you don't want your wife running around town with other men or being interested or looking or thinking about it or watching soap operas and thinking about other men and all this stuff that can so easily happen in the world.

I heard a pretty old time preacher. He's fat. What's the name of that YouTube channel you like so much?

Bad Preacher Clips. Bad Preacher Clips. Listen, look that up and listen to it.

And you'll say, yeah, I remember when Brother David was like that. Like y 'all can say that. Yeah, I remember when he preached like that.

But it's really funny. But I can just hear these old time preachers talking about the very things that we're talking about and they get it all backwards.

And they don't get it right. And I had a thought I was gonna tell you about it, but I forgot it. So I'm gonna try to cover that up very quick.

So that he might present her to himself without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.

So if you want your wife to be faithful, you do all these things that we're talking about.

And she needs that help. You're the one that's supposed to do it.

Not the pastor, not someone else. It's the husband that's gotta do it. And now sometimes the wife needs a pastor too when the husband gets off track and he's there to help the husband get back on track or to get rid of the husband, which

I will do if I need to. Because the Bible talks about who invented divorce was

God and what its purpose is. So most pastors would never agree with me on that.

But most pastors, I'll promise you this, have never studied divorce in the Bible. All they did took a little course on it in seminary.

They weren't interested in it because they would never get one and they knew it. So they weren't interested. They never looked at it through Genesis, through Revelation.

I have done that and it surprised me. So I'm just, listen, there's a covenant that's made in a marriage agreement and the two parties need to not break the covenant.

But when one of them breaks it, the other one's free from it. The Bible teaches that through and through. And the only reason that we don't lose our salvation is because in the

Abrahamic covenant, Jesus stepped into our place. And so when we broke it, he paid the price for it.

Otherwise that covenant, God would not have to honor it. And so it's a beautiful covenant relationship.

This study is so important because it shows each spouse how to treat the other.

And then it shows how the authority structure works properly and so forth.

So there we see verse 26 adds that third thing about the washing by the water of the word that very much needs to be part of every marriage.

They need to be in the word together. So the husband must make sure that his wife's not only in the word, but she's knowledgeable of the great doctrines and so forth.

Now look at verse 27, that he might present it, the church to himself, that's

Jesus, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.

So gentlemen, if you want your wife to submit to your leadership and you want her to be the loving spouse that you think you deserve and to be chaste and godly, then you must make sure she is in the word and that you love her and give yourself for her on a daily basis.

Now, the fourth thing that I see here as far as the word as, is it that we must love the wife as we love ourselves and nourish and cherish.

There's funny brother Otis used to tell me a story. He loved his pastor. When brother Otis was a young man, he was a deacon under a

PhD, pastor named Dr. Barney Thames.

And I think it was called Pecan Valley Baptist Church in Garland or I believe in Garland or it could have been in the first Mesquite.

I don't, I think it's Garland, yeah. And so brother Otis grew up under this well -trained theologically, well -trained pastor before the seminaries were liberal.

And that pastor taught all the young deacons theology, doctrine, even how to fill the pulpit.

Cause he said, if I'm sick, I want one of you guys to preach. I'm not bringing in somebody you got, you're gonna preach. So he taught them all how to preach and how to teach the

Bible. And this is how brother Otis grew up. And he tells me a lot of funny stories about this pastor whom he loved very much.

But he said one time, often actually more than once, but quite from time to time through the years, he would hear brother

Barney ask his wife, I'm sorry, he would hear brother Barney's wife ask him, honey, maybe they'd be shopping or something and she wanted to buy a purse or something.

And she said, honey, who do you love the most? And he'd look at her and say, you know who

I love the most? Me. And that was the joke. First time

Otis told me that, I went, that's bad. You know, I went, wow, really? But that was a family joke.

And apparently he heard the couple say that from time to time. Well, you know, it's kind of interesting when you look at the scripture, we're about to look to verse 28.

It says, so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. So it's okay, gentlemen, if you love yourself the most, as long as you love her like that, you get it?

You love her as much as your own body. And he that loveth his wife loves himself.

What does that mean? If you learn to love your wife, like you love your own body and you nourish it and you keep it and all the stuff you spend on you to be what you wanna be and be happy.

And you love her that much and you're willing to do all that for her too. What does it mean that if he loves his wife like that, he loves himself?

It means he's gonna have a wonderful wife because her response is gonna be amazing.

And so God made the woman to be a responder. And so men, if you will pay attention to these things, they make a huge difference.

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife like that, as, as that, in like manner as that, loves himself.

For no man ever yet hated his own flesh. They've kind of hated a couple of fingers, tried to get rid of them, but.

No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes his flesh, even as the

Lord does the church. Did you see how that flipped? It flipped like, like it brings it back to Jesus and says, well,

Jesus took care of his body. He fed himself. He took care of his body, but he loved the church even more, made sure she was more taken care of than he was.

And then he died so that we could live. And now he lives so that we can live forever and be more and more like him.

We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.

So the man and the woman, both in the marriage are not only one with each other, they're one with Christ.

And just like the man should love the wife as he loves his own self,

Jesus loved us that way. And we all love each other that way. And this is what makes marriages really, really strong is this spiritual connection and understanding how all of this works.

It's not only that it works, it's not some mysterious thing, but God who created us and our brains understands the psychology behind men and women.

And he instructs the men to learn how the woman thinks, which is difficult. We can only read that in books, right?

But, or Bible. But anyway, oh, thank you. Oh, well, at least you scared him.

You said, no, that was fine. I'm rooting for you back there. She's swatting the flies. We get that can of rain, you come right on up here and spray right while I'm preaching.

Will you do that Ashton? Please. Yes. Swap, swap.

That's great. Yeah, the Lord of the flies. He won't rule here, will he? So all of this is not only a beautiful spiritual truth and picture, but it's also psychologically it works from the psychological viewpoint of how women think and how men think.

This information can make the marriage way, way better. Now, verse 31, for this cause, shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and the two shall be one flesh.

We're about out of time. So I'm not gonna go any further than this one but I'm gonna make my last point with this one. This verse,

I think has been greatly misused in some books that are written, especially the secular world loves to take this concept from the

Bible, but not understand it very well and teach it backwards or incorrectly.

And I want you to notice this. Let's read this scripture carefully. Before we read it carefully, let's look at the end here.

The two shall be one flesh. You see, I think that is the emphasis of this verse. The new married couple is now one flesh and they love each other like their own body.

His body belongs to her, her body belongs to him. The scripture says all of this. And that's the emphasis at the end of this verse.

But let's read the whole thing carefully. It says for this cause, for what cause?

So doesn't that refer up to all the things we've already talked about? Especially verse 30, for we are members of Jesus's body, of his flesh and of his bones.

And so it's going to now emphasize that just like the Christian is one with Jesus, like the

Holy Spirit lives in your brain somewhere. That's my theory on where it could be anywhere in your body, but I'm guessing brain.

Your spirit dwells in your brain. They're both in there and the two can become one. That's what being spirit filled is.

And when you're spirit filled, the Bible literally says you become one spirit, you're not two spirits anymore.

Think about that. So it's a picture of marriage too. The marriage relationship, the two become one, right?

It's all a picture of each other. The little word as is there all the time. This works as that does and that works as this does.

And so you have this oneness and that's the emphasis. So because of this, shall the man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto the wife and then they become one flesh.

A lot of people take that verse to mean that a young couple needs to live in New Zealand if the parents live in Texas, they need to get as far away from that parents as they can.

And that's what the verse teaches. Verse doesn't teach that. All you gotta look at to understand that is

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who lived together on a big ranch, all right?

I mean, the Bible doesn't teach that. What the Bible does teach is they need to probably have their own house.

Certainly to have their own room in the house, but better to have their own house, but it can still be on the same ranch, so to speak.

If you have a family business, it's a cattle business like Abraham did, then what you know, they're gonna live in proximity.

And the thing about this, they lived in tents, didn't they? So, I mean, they lived in a tent, a football field away from the parents' tent.

It didn't mean they left the mother and father in the sense of not wanting to be near them or around them. It doesn't mean that at all because it talks too much about the influence of grandparents on babies and grandbabies for it to mean that they need to be, is that the door?

No, it wasn't, was it? I thought someone was knocking. It doesn't mean that because then logically that grandbabies would never be around the influence of the grandparents if that were true.

So that's not what this verse is talking about, but so many people misuse it. But young couples need privacy.

They need to have that time together and get to know one another.

And, but they don't have to be in New Zealand to do that. It's nice if they're not in the same house.

Sometimes they have to be though for economic reasons, right? But normally they're gonna have their own place.

So I thought I would say that because a lot of Americans in particular, see if you're from the Middle East, you'd understand that that's not what this means because they live in tents and the whole family roams around with the goats and the sheep and the cattle and wherever they go, they move their tents, but, and they're all kind of close, you know, walking distance to each other.

And the grandparents have huge influence on the kids. That is so biblical. So try to make that happen in your family if you can.

And if it's, if it's, if you're older and that didn't happen, that's okay. You know, that's okay.

Cause sometimes it just doesn't work out, but when it can, it's good. And in Bible instances, there are times when it didn't work out.

I mean, look at Joseph. He got thrown in a well and taken away and was far away from the family for many, many years, but they came back together, didn't they?

Eventually. And so it's a biblical principle. And I just want to make sure you understand verse 31, what it teaches and what it doesn't teach.

It teaches the importance of the fact that when the young man is married, his wife should be more important than mama.

Like if she can't make the rolls as well as mama, he don't need to tell her that, right?

Anybody ever experienced that in a room? No, don't raise your hand. I never have cause Charlotte makes it all better than my mama, but anyway.

And I'm just going to say, I don't remember if she did or not when she was like 18 or not, but I do remember my roommate hit one of her rolls with a tennis racket across the room once.

That never happened to my mama's rolls, but anyway, I just got in trouble. So let's end the sermon right here with prayer.

Let's stand together. All right, Lord, thank you so much for your word and how it does cleanse us.

It cleanses our minds. It corrects us from the false philosophies of the world that we grow up in, even the society and the time period we grow up in, which are all fleeting things that change from year to year.

And thank you that your word never changes. And these principles are always true in every society and in every time period.

So bless us as we study your word, bless us as we become salt and light and teach others your word so that might be a help to their families as well.

Bless this school that is teaching young people many of these principles at a very young age.

And hopefully, Lord, you will help to raise up leaders for this poor dying country that maybe we could get some new leadership from some of the very children in our school.

That'd be awesome. And thank you, Lord, for our teachers, our elders, our deacons, our church members, our parents, and our husbands and wives.

And be a special blessing to our husbands and wives as we go home later today and thinking about these things that you could build really, really strong marriages in this church.

And Lord, thank you for the time of fellowship and the food we're about to have. We ask you to bless it in Jesus' name, amen.