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Husbands and such
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Mike Abendroth here with Pastor Steve, Pastor Steve Cooley, the Tuesday guy. We missed you for a few weeks on Tuesdays. I was behind, you were ahead, and that�s just the way it rolls sometimes.
Hey. Más o menos. Weren�t you out of town or something? Oh, yeah. I was in Shepherd�s Conference, and then you stayed because you�re out of town longer than I was. Well, I was, I, well, I meant� Yeah.
I meant that you were� I was out of town. �in some family. Yeah, I was. Yeah. Are you the only evangelical in your family? No? No.
I�m, other than my brother, I�m the only Christian in my family. Okay. Okay. Christian, all right. I�m just rejecting the whole evangelical.
Are there such things as evangelical Mormons that be a radio show? It could be a Mormon.
It could be a radio show. I�m just kind of, you know, the Mormons just had their general conference, and one of my Facebook friends posted, you know, �Oh, the priesthood meeting was so inspired, certainly, you know, in� how do you put it?
You know, �transcendent truth, you know, handed down by God because they got, you know, they got a couple of new apostles. I did not know that. One is of Chinese ethnicity. He's actually from California.
And then the other one is, oh, from Brazil. So the first non. Sounds like what the Catholics are doing. Non-North American, you know, the first non-North American apostle, which is pretty amazing.
You know, they�ve seen the resurrected Lord.
Well, how many peyote pieces did they ingest? They're not saying.
All right. Yeah, they're not coming to the confession booth.
In 1963, Hasbro recalled its toy. Hasbo. I know. Flubber, because it caused irritation. Nevertheless, Hasbro took a chance the very next year on GI Joe reinvigorating the company. What low point can you remember that was followed by something wonderful?
Oh, that's so, that's so good. You know, I mean, if we're going to gospelize it, I mean, if you just think about it, think about a low point in the Bible, oh, I don't know, like the crucifixion, and then right after that, the resurrection.
Yeah, yeah. Theology of the glory, theology of the cross. Steve, you're a board game guy, and you know, you're an expert in some of these things. In hopes of licensing a board game that he invented, Charles B. Darrow took it to Bilton Bradley and Parker Brothers.
Monopoly. Both turned him down. Today, Monopoly is marketed in 80 countries and has sold over 200 million copies. And it's still a terrible game. Think of a time that you successfully stuck to your convictions.
Oh, that's so good.
Did you see the board game in the trash? No, I didn't. I didn't really look. I just went and got a cup of coffee in my little Star Trek mug. Look at that. Look at how politically incorrect this is. To boldly go where no man has gone before, and the word no men than man is the largest.
May the force be with you, Harry, said Gandalf.
I was reading about reformers and their wives, because, you know, Steve, you're doing the exemplary husband men's meetings on Saturdays here.
Jim's reading a book about the reformers' wives. They're not famous reformer wives. I think I know which one you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Calvin. Was he a reformer at all?
I think he started a reform school. He didn't really think you had to get married. He thought it was wrong to be forced to be celibate if you had a desire to get married. But you know, in the Reformation and Luther getting married and all that, Calvin didn't think, you know, I have to get married or else.
But you know, there are practical things in life and there are pragmatic things in life. And here's what I found. If I do it, that is get married, then it is to devote more time to the Lord and less to daily duties.
What? Did Calvin say that? So since that's true, I was reading this article on placefortruth .org and it says, if his friends were serious about finding him a wife, he handed them a job description. She had to be hardworking, obedient, thrifty, and willing to take care of him through his frequent physical ailments.
She also had to speak French. The last item was non-negotiable. He turned down a woman when she asked for some time to consider it.
I think that was probably smart on his part. If you have to think about it, no. No.
The article goes on, after he refused a second proposal, Did he refuse?
Wait, he had women running up and proposing to him? Maybe. Wow.
Most of his friends gave up the quest, except for Martin Busser, a renowned matchmaker. He suggested Adelette de Boer, how do you pronounce it? I don't know, the widow of an Anabaptist, who hosted Calvin on several occasions.
Calvin recognized she was one of a kind. They married at 1540, he was 31, she a few years older. One of a kind. Now, you know, Calvin did not write a lot about his own life. And when you read his commentaries...by the way, Calvin's commentaries, I think, are excellent.
You know, we have all these newer ones out, but he just cuts straight to the point. He can really distill a problem down into a few words and explain it. And when she died, he...and again, he doesn't really say much about his loved ones and his, you know, stepchild or anything else, but it said, I am no more than half a man.
That kind of summarizes it nicely, doesn't it?
About, you know, I wonder what if Eugene Peterson got a hold of that, what would he say Calvin's.
Words were about Adelette? I wouldn't even want to guess. But, you know, I think it gets back to, you know, we were talking about the exemplary husband before. And, you know, if the whole point of having a wife when Adam was given Eve was that she would be a helpmate, you know, someone suitable to help him.
You know, I think guys just forget that not only are women not like them and that this is a good thing, but there are things that maybe our wives are good at that we're not. This is a good thing, right?
So maybe Calvin's wife was good at some things that he wasn't good at. This is good. It's good to have that division of labor because it can help you. I say all the time that you, and you would know this, that you can only go as far in ministry as your wife will let you, right?
She's the anchor of your ministry. You know, guys want to say, well, Jesus is the anchor of my ministry. Well, theologically and spiritually, that's true. But in the real world, the anchor of your ministry is your wife.
If she can hold you back or she can give you great liberty by the things that she's able to do, and the more talented and blessed she is, the more you are enabled to do more.
When you think of young men who want to go into the ministry, gospel ministry, they ought to choose, like any other young man, their spouse wisely, but also with an eye toward ministry. Because some people are, I don't know if it's a technical category or not, but very high maintenance, and how are you going to serve in other ways if your spouse is high maintenance, whether man or woman?
It's going to be rough. Somebody asked, you posted that thing about Finney and vacations, and somebody said, what was Finney's wife like? And I'm like, I don't know, but my guess is going to be embittered.
Well, that was me when I said, where's Charles Finney's wife? Yeah.
I mean, embittered, because no fun, you know, man.
Heinrich Bollinger, 1504 to 1575. He wanted to go after and court and date and marry a lady named Anna Eilishweiler. Easy for you to say, huh? Okay. Well, he, according to this article on Place for Truth, began courting her when she was still in a convent.
So will you sneak out at night? That's harder than, you know, at a Master's University dorm room.
Let's meet for coffee at night. Do you have to go to the Mother Superior and ask for permission to court her?
How does that work? I don't know. You know, all the girls asking at the end of the night, you know, how'd the date go? How'd that work? None of your business. Okay. So he wrote to her a letter of proposal, and he was talking about uh, marriage and what it was going to be and everything else.
And here in this, uh... Letter of proposal. Letter of proposal on placefortruth .org recorded some of his... Whereby and therefore... And, you know, here's the funny thing, Steve. We often think of Puritans or Reformers or some of the great Bible teachers as very, they're scholastic only.
They are, uh, you know, they're kind of like Data or Spock or something like that. You know, they're immovable. They have no passions. So this is, he's the opposite of Calvin. Calvin was, you know what?
I wouldn't mind that. That'd be good. But, you know, I would need a lot of help.
Bulger was like, gotta find a wife. You ready? You ready for this? Well, I mean, obviously he was willing to go raid a convent.
So here's what he said. Here's part of the letter that's on placefortruth .org. Yes, you are young and God did not give you such a body and did not create you so that you would remain an eternal madam and do nothing so that fruit comes from you.
Let me tell you why you should marry me, because you need to have babies.
He said, read my letter three or four times, think about it and ask God so that he tells you what his will is in the matter. So is he becoming a mystic?
Sounds like, uh, yeah. Well, he was only 23 at the time. So he was going through his Christian hedonism phase.
Hey, that's a gospel issue. Okay, sorry. Is marriage a gospel issue?
Uh, well, it can be related to the gospel.
There's some kind of, like, tangentials.
Yeah, because at least from the Bible, I can actually make a case, right? If I go to Ephesians 5 and a few other places.
Placefortruth .org relates, quote, One month later he met Anna in church and she agreed to marry him. To avoid offending her elderly and invalid mother, however, they decided to keep their engagement a secret.
This was also unconventional because 16th century engagements required the presence of witnesses. Anna remained in the convent for almost two years until her mother died. Almost six weeks later, Anna and Heinrich finally married.
The wedding was celebrated simply at the dinner table of the home of Heinrich's brother Johann with Peter Simpler officiating. Far from being a dry and tedious ceremony, the wedding was livened by a love song written and sung by Heinrich for his beloved, Hasfrau.
So it's like, hey, did you want some dessert? I do.
And there you go. You know, they're married right there. Now, he was talking about, you know, God didn't give you such a body so you wouldn't have any fruit that would come from it. They had 11 children in 18 years.
That's quite a few.
That's quite a few. Anyway, so…. So he had a prophetic word about her.
You know, I think that was very prophetic. Uh-huh. So anyway, that was kind of an interesting article. John Hutchinson and Lucy Apsley talked about what they did. And anyway, I was just thinking about those things, Steve, when husbands need to be thinking about their husbandry.
My biggest problem, I think, in my marriage, besides my own selfishness and sin and those things, it's when I'm not thinking about Kim in a proactive way and not thinking about our relationship in a, you know, investment way.
I'm investing time capital and thought capital and other things. What I do to my detriment is I'm just kind of coasting. Hey, things are going well now, so I don't really need to keep investing in any of that time capital or anything else.
Is that a common problem you see?
I think it's very common. That's what I was…. Actually, I mean, I started talking about a couple of shows ago. I think it is…. Guys are lazy, right? Let's just admit that. Let's just put that on the table.
And what women want out of a relationship and what guys want out of a relationship are not exactly the same. And when we start to think that everything is fine and that we don't have to do anything, that's when we start having problems.
So it's always good to, you know, think, well, what can I do to serve my wife? What would she like? You know, these kind of things. Because if we aren't proactively thinking about it, we'll just let it slide and eventually things are going to get problematic because what we think is fine is not what our wives think are fine.
It's just not the same.
What would be some practical ways that men could show, demonstrate, make conspicuous that they care for their spouses and love them?
Well, one of the things, I mean, I propose this, I actually just sent it out on BBC Announce, was I said during the class, I said, one of the things we did in seminary was we were assigned this homework to design a date that our wives would like, not something we wanted to do, but that our wives would like.
We had that Star Trek invention. Yeah, she would love that. And here's the purpose, you know, and the wives were supposed to give the grades, but here's the purpose. Oh, that's right. They graded us, didn't they?
And it went into Dr. Mayhew. Yes. And here's the point, you know, if you, and I taught the guys, I mean, I've had this experience and it makes me kind of shiver. I'm just like, how could this be? Well, what is your wife like to do?
I don't know. How long have you been married, man? You know, I mean, even a guy who has been dating a woman for, you know, a couple of months, if I say to him, well, what does she like to do? I'm not saying, you know, what is her end goal in life or, you know, what is the most important thing to her when she wakes up in the morning?
What's her first thought? I'm just saying, what does she like to do? And if you don't know that, turn off the television for a while and talk to your wife. You just ask her. Yeah. I mean, I know it's rough, but you know, something's got to go.
Turn off the weather channel.
Stop worrying about the dew point. And well, it could be when there's high tide or what the sets are going to be.
Although all those important things, you know, and actually talk to, I mean, it's a shocking concept, but talk to her.
Steve, a very influential man once said, sometimes I wish everyone were single like me, a simpler life in many ways. But celibacy is not for everyone any more than marriages. God gives the gift of the single life to some, the gift of married life to others.
I do, though, tell the unmarried and widows that singleness might well be the best thing for them as it has been for me. But if they can't manage their desires and emotions, they should by all means go ahead and get married.
The difficulties of marriage are preferable by far to a sexually tortured life as a single. That was Pope John Paul II.
I can see you've got his little book of wisdom there.
It's like the little red communism book. This isn't the burgundy Eugene Peterson, First Corinthians 7 take.
It's so close to the end so far. You know, that isn't the worst thing he ever did. I mean, he's had some really bad ones. No.
Well, you know what? To be fair, I think the application, his translation can be sometimes a valid application. But it's never, I can't think of a good translation.
I bet if we went through the entire, not that I would ever suggest that we waste time doing this, but if we went through every single verse and compared it, eventually we might find a phrase or something that he got right.
Well, I think they've used some of this actual chapter from First Corinthians in the Message Bible because they, if you ever go to the Cape or you go to a tourist spot, Bar Harbor, Maine, and they have those little wooden plaques with just short little snippets of wisdom.
Yeah. Like little memes. Yeah. Beach memes. Well, can you find the beach meme in this? And don't be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you.
Live and obey and love and believe. Right there. God did not, God, not. Your marital status defines your life. Don't think I'm being harder on you than on the others. I give the same counsel in all the churches.
There's quite a few memes in there. And there's actually some decent advice in there. I just don't know how it stands up as a, you know, let's compare it with the NAS, a word for word, you know, translation.
All right. So much for the Message Bible. But right next to it, I could always pull out this. I bet you this would be better section on marriage. And that's the Book of Common Prayer. So Steve, what else is happening here in the future?
You're going to be preaching in John quite a bit when I'm gone and traveling and such. What are you going to be doing? Where are you? Chapter 17? I know not yet. Still 14. Seriously? Yeah. I not know that.
I don't know. Oh, because it was all the Holy Spirit talk. And I was thinking that was 16, but there's 14 of him.
Yeah. So that's why I'm like, I don't really know if I'll finish while you're gone. So, and you know, like when I was saying to one of our guys who just recently preached, sometimes, like when I did 14 versus 25 and 26, you know, I had a longer section planned.
But when I really looked at 26, I just thought, I really need to kind of mine this one, you know, and just sort of dig out because there are some pretty, there are some serious applications, you know, implications of the text.
You know, I do think the inspiration of Scripture is kind of underlined, underscored there in a big way by the words of the Lord, so.
Steve, I'm fanning through this book of common prayer. Literally. Literally, yes. And they have sections on private baptism of children.
I don't know about that. I think that's called taking a bath, a private baptism. A visitation of the sick. Solomonization.
Turning someone into Solomon. Uh-huh, of matrimony. Marrying them to a person that looks like Solomon. Okay. They have baptism for those of riper years. I'm not kidding.
That one's pretty, pretty ripe.
Confirmation. Here's one, though, that I never knew about, and I bet you didn't either, even though you would have known, should have known to look at it when you were in the jail. Visitation of prisoners.
You know, that's Hebrews 13. Don't forget these prisoners. You got a bunch of Christian people, and they lose their houses, and they're getting persecuted, and so let's remember the prisoners, especially in those days when the prison didn't feed you, right, you had to go feed them.
And now we have a whole section here, even with the prayer, Remember not, Lord, our iniquities, nor the iniquities of our forefathers. Neither take thou vengeance on our sins. Spare us, good Lord. Spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with the most precious blood, and be not angry with us forever.
You know what? We might be in jail, but at least we're not going to hell kind of thing. Yeah. Visitation of prisoners.
It is interesting. I do think that some men, probably women, get saved in jail. But, you know, the number of professors who then abandon the faith, for lack of a better term, is probably pretty high too.
You know, I'd say probably a third of the guys in jail would probably make some kind of religious profession or another. You know, the numbers when they get out, probably not so high.
Why do you think they profess in jail something to do, some hope God will do them a favor? What do you think?
Well, and I think they're pretty much not completely isolated, but they're somewhat isolated from sort of the pressures and the temptations that ensnared them on the outside. You know, there are no women on the inside.
So it makes it easier to kind of focus their minds. And sometimes they think they get saved, and sometimes they do. I think it's just a matter of wanting to belong to something other than, you know, say a gang or whatever.
But sometimes I think the Lord really does use that time because their minds are maybe clear for the first time in quite a while. You know, no drugs, no alcohol, for the most part.
But I even heard, Steve, that they take, or they know how to take a hand sanitizing gel and extract the alcohol out of that so they can drink it. Nothing.
Nothing surprises me. I mean, those men were endlessly inventive. They could turn almost anything into a weapon, into a tattoo kit, into a barbering kit, into alcohol. I mean, give them a loaf of bread, a little bit of fruit, and some sugar, and they would.
Brew something up. Now, you were not a prisoner. You were a guard. So what explains the tattoos that you got while you were in jail? How would that work?
That would have been an act of God because I never would have gotten a tattoo. I refuse to pay somebody to inflict pain on me for something I might regret later.
Oh, all right. Jail tattoos probably don't have a lot of—they're probably not that precise.
Yeah, they're not that well done. I mean, some of them are really quite bad, you know. And if you think about this, if you're going to get something done like that, the last place you would want to have it done is in a jail with amateur artists and amateur materials.
Well, today we talked about a whole lot of nothing, didn't we? I wouldn't say that at all. No, I would think all this marriage stuff— These were gospel issues.
We'll see you next time.