HUSBANDS LOVE YOUR WIVES

I'm just going to stand this one and sing this song. Lift up your voice. Lift up your voices and lift up your prayers. Join with the heavens declaring the wonders of His face. We have won victory, the hope of the world.

The Savior has risen. The Spirit has come to reign. Forever the sons and the daughters. We are the people of Eden, of hope in our hearts.

The Lord's Day Gathering. You can go ahead and be seated right now. I just want to welcome first and foremost our covenant members to this Lord's Day Gathering. Thank you as we try and remind you every week.

Thank you for using your gifts and your abilities that Christ Jesus has given specifically to each part of this functioning working body that Christ is the head of and is doing kingdom work through. Thank you for being used.

Thank you for walking in the Spirit and utilizing. I, for one, reap great benefits from you utilizing those gifts and I pray the same for you. And I want to remind you this morning because sometimes we forget.

We know it intellectually but we forget. You are loved. Saint, you are loved. You're loved by the Father who chose you before the foundations of the world. You realize that, right? Think about that for a second.

The Father loved you before He had even created anything in this whole universe. He loved you with a deep love. He was going to redeem you. He does so through the love of the Son, Jesus Christ who purchased you by blood ransom, laid down His life to buy you, to free you, to righteousness.

And you are loved by the Holy Spirit that right now at this very moment is in you. The power of the Holy Spirit in you as a seal, as a guarantee of that glorious inheritance one day that we will obtain.

I don't hear any amens. That's a big amen, guys. Right? Come on. The Holy Spirit is sealing you right now as a guarantee, guys, of this glorious inheritance that the Father's love set upon you and the Son accomplished.

Amen. Amen. So thank you. Thank you for being here to worship the great God that loves us so dearly and that we love. I also want to say thank you to our guests, those of you that are regular attenders or even first-time guests.

Thank you for being here. We are encouraged by your presence today. And we hope that you too would grow in the fear and knowledge of the Lord. And I want you to know that you are loved by the people of God because we are greatly loved.

You know, David declared in Psalm 122, he says, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. And as he was there in the house of the Lord, he went on to say, he said, For my brothers and companions' sake, I will say, Peace be with you.

Because those of us that are in Christ today, we truly have peace and rest. Peace with the triune God and each other through the blood of Christ. We have great reason to rejoice. And for those of you in here that may not be in Christ, you may not be in Christ, yet for some reason, you're here.

One reason or another, whatever it is, tradition, somebody drug you here, you think you may need to go to church, you've chosen to join us today. Be thankful. Be thankful. All of this may seem odd to you that we do for worship, but you're most certainly going to hear the only truth that there is, the truth that will set you free and give you peace.

So if you wouldn't mind, before we go into our worship and a call of worship, we always pray for another local church, right? This morning, I want us to bow and pray for Grace Baptist over in Perigold.

As a matter of fact, Pastor Jeremiah is currently there preaching now. Pastor Michael Selesky is the pastor over there, and he had surgery this week, so we need to keep him in our prayers. And he reached out and said, Hey, can any of you guys come and fill the pulpit?

And we said, Absolutely. And Jeremiah pounced on it before Keith could, and so Keith's a little upset. He wishes he could have gone to preach, but next time we'll get him to go. But Pastor Jeremiah is there.

We want to pray for them. I just want you to know, too, we have a deep, great relationship with Grace Baptist. We pray for all types of churches and differing theological persuasions and whatnot as brothers in Christ, but this one is unique because this one is another Reformed Baptist church.

They are the only other Reformed Baptist church in the whole of the area, and so you can imagine we have a great relationship with them. So let's pray for them this morning that God will be honored in their worship.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you. Lord, we thank you this morning that we get together, but we also thank you that our brothers and sisters elsewhere get together. We come on the Lord's Day. We give this day to you.

It is yours. It's a day of rest that we get to be reminded of the great rest that we have in Christ Jesus, who is the Sabbath. And Lord, we pray for our brothers and sisters at Grace Baptist this morning as they gather.

We pray that you would do the great work in them, that you are working in us, that you would sanctify them, that you would encourage them, that you would challenge them, that you would mold them, that you would continue to set them apart as a people unto yourself, that you are adding to their numbers saints that are found.

Lord, we pray for Michael this morning as he heals from surgery. Lord, we pray that there would be smooth and quick healing so that he could be back into shepherding that flock. Lord, I pray for Pastor Jeremiah this morning as he proclaims the truth of your word to those brothers and sisters.

I give him boldness and clarity. I pray that you would be worshipped in spirit and in truth there this morning and that you would continue to do that great work through your word. We thank you for them.

Bless them. Grow them. Work mightily in their hearts in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Let's stand for our call to worship this morning, which is adapted from 1 Corinthians 13. Very well-known passage. You hear it a lot in weddings.

But I want us to think in terms of a call to worship this morning as we think of this great love, where Paul says, If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, and if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, if I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, no, love bears all things, hopes all things.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and we only know love, and we have seen his love in and through Jesus Christ. God is love, and we are to be a people that reflect that great goodness of God as a people of love, and that is our call to worship this morning, is that we would be a people that reflect the love of God, not our interpretation of love, but the very love, that is one of the many attributes of God, that God is love, and we worship him as such this morning, and we are grateful for that love, we are recipients of that love.

Let's pray a prayer of adoration to that great God. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you once again, and we just thank you. We thank you for who you are. God, if you were just simply a God of wrath, we would all be without hope.

If you were simply a God of justice, how would we stand? But you are also a God of love. It's not that you just simply show love, God. It doesn't work like that. You show love because you are love, and we can only experience love because that is who you are, God.

We can only know love because of who you are, because of the great love that you are, and then it is expressed through your creation. It's expressed through the fact that we, rebels, rebels against your will, that were once in darkness and in our trespasses and in our sins, we are redeemed out of a great love and grace and mercy that you have bestowed upon your people, and we are so grateful for who you are, God.

You are good. You are worthy of praise, and we ask this morning as we sing these songs, as we sing about how great you are, as we sing about how great your love is, as we sing about Christ the true and better Adam coming to redeem us, and as we sing about how deep your love is for us, that our hearts would be stirred and awakened by that great truth, Lord, that we would grow in our knowledge and fear of you.

Be honored in our worship this morning. In Christ's name. Amen.

This next reading comes from Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verses 7 through 10.

It says, Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life, and in your toil at which you toil under the sun, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom and shield to which you are going.

At first, that seems pretty gloom and doom, doesn't it? But that is a great grace and truth from a good and loving father, that even in this broken world, we have great gifts. We have the gift of food.

We have the gift of wine. We have the gift of being able to be together. We have the gift of our spouse. We're going to be talking about husbands loving your wives today. What a wonderful, wonderful gift that is in this world.

God's love isn't just a love for the future. God's love for you and I is not just a future grace. It's a here and now grace. God's goodness, He is redeemed. To the lost world, all that they do, all the vain work that they do on the earth is to nothing.

It's to no avail. It is vanity of vanities. But to us, it has eternal meaning and purpose, and we can honor and worship our Heavenly Father and His good and gracious gifts and all God's people said. Amen.

I want to pray a prayer this morning, a pastoral prayer, of protection over our families. Pastor Keith actually brought this to the table and asked if we could do that this week. I thought, what an excellent idea, because as overseers, him and Jeremiah and myself, we are seeing, as we're going through this series, God's design for the family.

I can't tell you how many attacks right at the forefront of our families there have been over just a handful of weeks. It is overwhelming and obvious for anyone. And if you're feeling that, if you're feeling attacked in your family during this time, come speak with us.

Go talk to a brother or sister. Don't try and fight that battle alone. But what we want to pray for you as pastors that God would give protection over us during this time as we are seeking to honor Him with our families.

So pray with me. Oh, dear Heavenly Father, we bow before you once again, God. And now specifically, we want to plead with you. We want to come and intercede for each other on behalf of our families. God, your great love and grace and mercy has given us families.

It sustains our families. It allows us as husbands to love as we ought. It allows the wives to submit as they ought. It allows the children to obey as they ought to, Lord. But our sinful flesh continues to be at war within us.

You know that. That's why you've given us the Holy Spirit. And we ask this morning that we would be able to walk in the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, so that we can love as we should, that we can submit as we should, we can obey and serve each other as we should and honor to you.

The enemy is obviously attacking our families as we go through your Word and see it clearly laid out as to how we should live and function as your people. The enemy wants nothing to do with it. He wants to distort it.

He wants to destroy it. He wants to decimate it right before our eyes to seek to crush our faith and distort the gospel, the good gospel that the family portrays. We ask this morning for the protection to guard us.

We ask that you would guard us from our own flesh that is drawn away by its own desires and enticed in giving birth to sin. Oh, be gracious to us, Heavenly Father. Forgive us where we fail you. Forgive us, husbands, for not loving as Christ loves the church.

God, forgive us. Forgive the wives this morning that they have not been able to submit as the church is called to submit to Christ. Forgive the children this morning that are in you that do not obey their parents as they ought to.

Lord, forgive us. Help us. Convict us. Help us to rest in the freedom of the righteousness of Christ this morning. We thank you. Christ be with you.

Contempt ever sin. It just brings us back to life again. Reverse the curse and rising crush the...

Father, this morning for this amazing opportunity, Lord, that you blessed us with to come and gather as saints, Father, Lord, and worship you and praise you and proclaim these truths. These aren't just chords and keys and words on a screen.

These are truths that we're proclaiming this morning and worshiping you. How can we not get excited, Father, Lord? Lord, I pray this morning, Lord, as we just continue with this service, Lord, I pray that you would bless me.

Just be with Pastor Nathan, Lord, as he comes and preaches and brings your word, Lord. Lord, as we learn how a husband ought to be, how you should love his wife, Lord, Lord, I just pray that you'd bless this offering this morning, Father.

Bless this offering and bless the giver. We love you. We praise you. We ask all these things of your Son, Jesus Christ, precious and holy name and all of God's people said. Amen.

So far in this service, so it's etched in our brains. We only know love because he is love. And that deep abiding love expressed through the gospel is what we want to see this morning in his word. So go ahead and open up God's copy or your copy of God's word to Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians chapter 5 verse 25. If you have God's copy, we probably need to put that in the museum. Your copy of God's word. Ephesians chapter 5 starting verse 25 as we continue our study through Ephesians that we have really been in for well over a year now and more recently going into week five of our little mini series within this, God's design for the family.

Ephesians chapter 5, Paul starting in verse 25, he says, he says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that 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.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Oh, this mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

This is the reading of God's holy, inspired, perfect, clear word. Let's pray that we can understand it. Bow with me, Lord. We come to you once more. We thank you for your word. We thank you for its clarity.

We thank you for your precepts. We thank you for your law. We thank you for the goodness of it. Help us not to distort it. Help our sinful flesh to not get in the way of us hearing it and being doers of that word, not just hearers only.

Help us not to hear it in a distorted way and perceive it the way we ought not to. Help us to understand it as you have presented it to us and help us to obey it as your people. We pray that you were honored in this message this morning.

In Christ's name, amen. Well, last week we saw in the previous verses, verses 22 through 24, how wives are to submit to their own husbands. And that happened to land on Mother's Day. So again, I apologize.

That wasn't planned, but there it was. It happened. And wives are to submit to their own husbands for the husband is the head of the wife, as Paul says. And you see, this idea of headship is not a command.

We do not see male headship commanded anywhere in all of Scripture. I think I was going to say that, did you? You don't see it commanded anywhere. Here's the thing. This statement of a husband's headship is an indicative.

You know what I mean by that? It means that it's written as a statement of fact. It's not a suggestion. It's not an order. The husband is unequivocally and absolutely the head of the wife, either for the good or for the bad.

You see, the wife will either thrive under that headship and find freedom to use her God-designed nature to create a home and beauty for her, her family, her husband, and all around her, or she will suffer under that headship and be left susceptible to her own sin nature's desire to usurp that husband's role, leaving her to be deceived by the evil one, just like her mother Eve.

And that's through that man either trying to derogate his role of headship. Notice I say trying because many men will try. Many men will just give up and they'll say, here, here's the role on a silver platter and try and give it to the wife.

But somehow, every time the wife grabs it, he turns around and he finds it back in his pocket. He's like, I can't get rid of it. I try, but I can't get rid of the headship. I'm trying to get rid of it.

And he will either try to do that, or he will implement his role of headship in an improper and Christless way. And both of these are equally destructive. They're destructive for that wife. They're destructive for their children.

It's destructive for the whole of society around them, and it's most certainly destructive for him. You see, his created nature to lead presupposes his role as husband and headship. Yet, as we've spoken about over the last few weeks, his sin nature, if unredeemed, mind you, has that man enslaved to unrighteousness.

He's enslaved to it. Leaving him thoroughly and completely incapable of carrying out his created design and role. He's hopeless. Meaning that that unregenerate, unsaved man, though he's still the head of his wife, cannot in any way lead her as he ought to.

Powerless to do so. And here's the problem. Those very men are often the men that influence our view of husbands and fathers the most. There's a lot more of them out there than there are us, right? And so the influence is heavy on our culture.

The influence of the husband in the movies. We've talked about this, right? Movies and television shows. You see a husband portrayed in those, and you've got to realize that in that moment, that portrayal of that husband, that picture of a husband, cannot in any way even scratch the surface of the actual role of a husband.

He's incapable of it. Thoroughly and completely in sin. Our neighbors, as we grew up and we hung out with our friends and went to our neighbors' houses and saw their families function, their fathers played a role in that.

Our coaches, our teachers, most of which are unbelievers that are trying to play house improperly. For some of you, even your own unbelieving fathers, maybe you didn't grow up in a household where your father was a believer, or he claimed to be a believer but obviously wasn't and didn't live as such.

And so this improper, imbalanced, distorted view, the way that they carried out that headship, has tainted this God-ordained position even within the church. The culture is constantly influencing the believers.

We are in this world. We may not be of this world, but we are still in this world. And Christian husbands often imitate the world and its version of headship instead of imitating the one that we should be looking to.

This goes for the whole of Christian life, isn't it? We often are influenced by outside sources, thinking that, well, that seems to function well, I'll do that, instead of the source in which we should be influenced.

After all, we do have this remaining flesh. We may be redeemed. We may be loved by God the Father, redeemed by the Son, and sealed with the Holy Spirit. But we, like Paul, say, oh, who will deliver me from this wretched flesh?

I do the things I don't want to do. I don't do the things I want to do. There is a war within us. So what is the answer to this? How do we combat the flesh and the influence of a broken system and a broken world?

How do we do it, guys? You all know the answer. You know what my answer is going to be. Come on. How do we do it? Through Christ. And how do we see Christ? Through the renewal of our minds by His Word, right?

We have to go back to the source. We have to continually remind ourselves, this is where our minds are renewed. This is it. I'm going to use the same bullet points that I used for last week's sermon with the wives.

And I want to show you a similar pattern that Paul is laying out here as he addresses the husbands in this particular text. And the first thing that we see in this husbands, love your wives, and number one is the decree.

Remember the bullet point from last week. We see a decree. We see a command. There in verse 25, husbands, love your wives. Notice it doesn't say, husbands, lead your wives. It doesn't say, husbands, domineer over your wives.

What does it say? Husbands, love your wives. This is the decree. What we must be careful not to do is to carry over our sinful, distorted understanding that has been influenced by the world and has been influenced by all of our entertainment, has been influenced by our own families and in our own flesh, right?

We have to be careful not to carry that understanding into our interpretation of what Paul is telling us here. Meaning, looking at a text like this and assuming that we even comprehend what Paul means by love.

We do that often. We say, husbands, love your wives. I know what love is. I'll do that while just imitating the world. We have no idea what Paul is actually meaning. Again, sin is seeking to distort everything, and it has most certainly distorted this idea of love.

Our concept of love, at least within the relationship of a man and a woman today, has been relegated to nothing more than an emotion. A feeling. Something outside of yourself, taking you over. That's why we use phrases like, falling in love.

Dad, I'm in love. I fell in love. We'll be married in the morning, right? We fall in love, and we can't control it. It has me now. It's something outside of me that just overwhelmed me. And then, what happens in the world?

They fall in love, they're all happy, everything's good, and then they wake up at the bottom of that pit that they just fell into, and realize, oh no, I'm trapped down here. That feeling of the falling is gone.

Now I'm trapped. I married this woman thinking she was always going to be sweet, with her makeup and her hair all done up just right all the time. I thought that's what I was marrying. Or the ladies, I married this man thinking he was different than all the other guys.

I thought he understood me. And he never belched at the dinner table on our dates. You know what I'm talking about? And this is when people either choose to stay in that pit, out of some type of commitment, maybe for the children, or they stay in that pit for social purposes, or just for the appearances of it.

They stay down there, and what do they do? They simply suffer through it. This is my life now. Or, which is often the case today, they find a way to crawl out of that pit, just to go looking for another pit to fall into.

And this is because love is nothing more than an emotion. And so, being affected by this distortion, Christian husbands, we read this text, we read this decree, and we're confused by it. It's confusing.

We as men, we are not usually controlled by our emotions. We like to consider ourselves very logical. Emotions don't play a role in this. Emotions don't have anything to do with this. It's just logic.

Give me the data, give me the information, and I will deal with that, and I'll just hide my emotions. I'll suppress them down as hard as I can. That's typically men. We can't just make ourselves feel what we want to feel.

That's impossible. You can't make yourself feel what you want to feel. Almost as if, well, I guess I have to figure out how to fall again. We read this text, we read this decree, we say, husbands, love your wives.

If love is an emotion, then I've got to figure this out. And we start using pragmatic means. We start thinking, okay, let's think of some practical things. I've got to take her out on some dates. We've got to go out on dates every week.

I've got to try to rekindle something from the past so that we can feel that falling experience again. After all, that's what Jesus says I'm supposed to do. I've got to love my wife. So I've got to conjure this up again.

Now don't get me wrong. Husbands do not go home and say, Pastor said I don't have to take you out on dates. We don't have to rekindle anything. Dude, I did not say that. Those things are good things. You must do those things.

Those are absolute essentials in a marriage. Take your wife out on a date every week at least. Woo her. The problem is, these things done wrong, and for the wrong motives, they're nothing more than bringing a bowie knife to a nuclear war.

You get what I'm saying? You think fixing this by taking my wife out on dates and trying to rekindle some old feeling is going to win this. It's like charging into a nuclear war with a knife in hand thinking that's going to do it.

It's wantonly inadequate for the task, guys. And often times when we've done these things and they don't produce the outcome that we want, what do we do? We lose hope. We give up. We think, well, that feeling is gone.

It's gone for good. No time to go to work. We suppress the emotion and we just go to work. Right? That's what we do. We leave our wives vulnerable in that moment, realizing I'm not being loved. We redefine what Paul means by love.

A lot of times in that moment when we give up, we just say, okay, I got to rethink this thing. Paul said to love your wife. So I swing the pendulum to another distortion. You know how I like to communicate.

I like to speak in, we often always do. Everybody's swinging the pendulum. Like if we're over here, we're like, we don't need to be over here anymore. And we swing it way over to the other side. And we go, that's the response.

We do to another distortion. And we think what Paul must be saying in this decree is simply commitment. When he says, husbands, love your wives, it's commitment. Husbands, be committed to your wives. I've heard this interpreted in this way before.

This is something us men can understand, can't we? We understand commitment. We don't understand feelings, but we know commitment. We are committed to our jobs. We are committed to our football team. We are committed to our families.

We go to work and we make sure that they're taken care of. We are committed. We're not going anywhere. We stand flat-footed and we think, see, I'm doing it. I'm loving my wife. And when our wives see through that facade and they know that something's missing and they say something like, I just don't feel like you love me anymore.

Hey man, have you ever heard that from your wives? I just don't feel like you love me anymore. That frustrates us and we think, of course I love you. I told you that and if that changes, I'll let you know.

We're committed, right? That's what God called me to be. Husbands, committed to your wives. That's how I love you. All the while, the wife and the children know something's missing. This isn't as it should be.

And again, it's because both of these are distortions. Both of them miss the mark of what the husband is being called to do for the wife here by bringing our preconceived interpretations into understanding the text.

But you see, the word that Paul uses here in the Greek, there's a word phileo, which is translated to love, okay? It indicates feelings of warm affection. It's a good word. There's another word for love that indicates more of an erotic, like kissing and that sort of thing.

There's another word for love in that. And so, okay, we can throw out our emotion interpretation. If Paul didn't use this word phileo or that other word, like, yeah, that he must mean commitment. See, wives, I'm doing what God told me to.

So hold up, husbands. The word that Paul does use makes this whole thing far more complex, a lot more difficult than you would imagine. This word indicates a direction of the will, right? A direction of the will, that's commitment, right?

It's, I am determined to love you no matter what. I am committed to you. And the husbands are like, see, it says it's commitment. Problem is, is that's not all the word encompasses. It also is finding one's joy in someone.

Emotion. Affection. This love is commitment plus affection. It made it more complex, didn't it? Now it just opened up a whole can of worms. Now, what do we do with that? And we see this truth actually in the next phrase.

Look at it, verse 25. He says, husbands, love your wives as, right, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. See, there is no other example of this type of love at this level. There are examples of a love of commitment.

There are examples of a love of affection. But nothing in the whole created universe exemplifies this decree of commitment plus affection like the relationship between Christ and his bride, his body, his people.

After all, remember what I said last week, that this entire relationship between the husband and the wife is designed and meant to point to this glorious reality, as he says in verse 32, right? Look at it again.

Hey, this mystery is profound. This relationship between the husband and the wife, it's profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. This is a picture of what the marriage is to be because that marriage is actually imagery of a greater spiritual reality.

So, husbands, this call to love your wives has already been defined for us. We don't have to redefine it. We are to do it as in the same way that Christ loved the church. And what did he do for the church?

What does Paul say there? He says he gave himself up for her. He gave himself up for her. How did Christ do this? Let's remind ourselves. Turn over to Matthew chapter 20. Matthew 20, 28. I want you to see Jesus' words here.

In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 20, in verse 28, we see this imagery of what Paul is referring to. Jesus, he's telling them, he says, even as, there in verse 28, the Son of Man himself, that's Christ, right, came not to be served.

Hold on just a second. Not to be served. I want you to, if you write in your Bibles, if you underline, underline that. Guys. He came not to be served, but to what? To serve. And to give, there he gave himself, right?

He gave himself to her. And to give his life as a ransom for many. Who are the many? Us, the church, the bride, his body. He gave himself for her. So how, men, are we to love our wives? Are we to love them by letting them serve us?

Come on, guys. We are to love them by serving them. This is the example. Was the church the initiator of that service? Was the church the one? Was each individual going up and saying, I choose Jesus? Or was it Jesus finding his sheep?

He's the initiator. He's the one that gave everything. She gave nothing. Nothing in return. He gave everything. Does the bride, does the church, perfectly serve Christ now? Now that she's been redeemed, now that we've been brought into glory, not to glory yet, but we've been brought into the promise of glory, we've been brought into new life, do we perfectly obey the head, Christ?

Of course not. Not even close. Not even close. We don't even scratch the surface. Over in Galatians chapter 1, in verses 3 and 4, Paul says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ, who, here it is, gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age.

He initiated. He gave himself up for us, for our iniquities. What did we bring to the table? To your salvation, you know what you and I brought to the table? Sin. Enmity. We brought rebellion to the table.

He brought grace. He gave his life for us. And this is the example, husbands? He says this evil age, he delivered us from it. This evil age that you and I were once part of. Remember when we were in Ephesians 2, right?

Paul actually, he talks about this in chapter 2 and verse 1. He says,. And you, you and I, each one of us that had been delivered, but is now brought into the household of faith, were dead in our trespasses and sins, in which we once walked, following the course of this world, the present evil age, right?

We were in this, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience. You see, we see this magnificent truth of Christ's great sacrifice and continual grace bestowed upon us, a imperfect, often rebellious, sin-ridden people that he calls his body.

That he has brought into perfect union with himself. And how we, as husbands, are supposed to imitate that? With our wives? That's a lot, isn't it, guys? That's the picture? We're called to be like the giving, gracious Christ who initiates and keeps and sanctifies and works in and through us, who is at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us at this moment, even in the midst of our rebellion, in which he had already forgiven and given his life for.