Husbands and Wives

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan. This is a message from Pastor Don Filsack from the series

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Ready for the Storm on 1st Peter. If you'd like more information on Recast Church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch

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.com Here's Pastor Don. The subject of 1st

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Peter 3, 1 through 7 has a ton of implications for Recast Church and for our culture at large.

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But to be honest, as a dude, I get to get up here and talk about correct behavior for wives, and I've never been a wife, and I get an opportunity to stand up here and talk about correct behavior for husbands.

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I have been one of those. So I want to point out, and I think it's probably hopefully clear to those of you who have been here for a while now, that the text is always my guide.

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That my goal is to walk through books of the Bible, and in walking through books of the Bible, to find what the original author meant, and to share that with you, regardless of how our culture feels about these things, regardless of how we feel about these things.

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We have a choice before us every time we come encounter, we come into contact and encounter

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God's Word. Our faithful Creator has communicated to us through the power of the

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Holy Spirit, in a written word, that shows us how to order our lives.

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And just as Peter telling Christians to submit to the Emperor a few weeks ago felt kind of tough, right?

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Like that whole idea of knowing that there was a brutal Emperor over the

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Roman Empire during the time, and Peter says, submit to that authority, and submit to the authorities that are around you.

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And then just as Peter telling Christian slaves to submit to their masters is hard to swallow, even in that Roman context,

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Peter, this week, is going to tell wives to submit to their husbands.

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I would suggest that that phrase, wives, submit or be subject to your husbands, has the power to eclipse all else that Peter has to say to us in these seven verses.

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It has the power to grab ahold of our minds, and we would, we wouldn't be doing justice to that text if that's all that we focused on, but we are indeed going to talk about that.

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And that's why I lead out with that in my introduction here, is to clarify that that is a part of this text. But remember that what

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Peter is driving for in this entire section of Scripture, in the entire section of his letter, is that Peter wants us to do good in the midst of our culture.

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He's talking about the interface of the church to the culture, the way that we look to the world out there, particularly preparing his people that he's writing to for the storm of persecution that is on its way for them, and he wants us to remember that the

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Christians role in our culture is to do good to those outside of the faith.

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He wants us to walk that careful line between not going over into sin, but still engaging our world for good.

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And so many churches have have swung the pendulum one way or the other, where there's a complete withdrawal from the world, a fearful attitude towards what is outside of the four walls of the church.

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And on the other hand, we could swing the pendulum the other way, and and sin and call it good, right?

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And so the Christian life somewhere walks in the middle of this, and that's what he's been talking about all of this during this section of Scripture.

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He wants us to walk that careful line. And in light of this, the way that a

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Christian considers and contemplates and works and lives and breathes in their home life matters in this culture.

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It matters in Peter's culture. It matters in our culture. So let's open our Bibles to 1

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Peter chapter 3 verses 1 through 7. We're gonna dive into this powerful,

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God -given, radical passage that I think challenges our culture.

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If you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand. I see Mark's got a stack of them back here, and we just want everybody to have a copy of the

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Bible on their lap as I'm reading along, so that you can follow along and see for yourself what is in there.

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And then if you don't own a Bible, you can just take that one with you when you go home. Follow along.

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Recast the words of God for us this morning. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives.

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When they see your respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

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For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed

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Abraham, calling him Lord, and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

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Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, we recognize your hand on our lives.

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We recognize your hand in your word. We recognize that you have the authority over your created order.

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And Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity this morning to come and sing praises to you, come and hear from your word, come and be challenged in our lives.

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Father, I pray that you would be strengthening families here through this awesome message that you have for us this morning.

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I fear that many of us have misunderstood this text, and there's an opportunity for some significant correction, and at the same time, it is a difficult challenge.

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It is a hard thing that you call us to do. But you are gracious. You are merciful.

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And I thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that makes it possible for us to walk with you, to be forgiven, and to be made whole.

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And I ask for that for our families that are represented here, for everybody that is here within the hearing of your word this morning, that they would be encouraged and strengthened as a result of gathering together.

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And that as we have an opportunity to praise you in song right now, Father, that we would lift up voices as a redeemed people who have been bought back from the curse of sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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Peter begins our text this morning. So we're in 1 Peter 3, 1 through 7.

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And again, I want you to have your Bibles open to that text so that you're seeing that the things that I'm saying, maybe even more so this morning than ever,

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I want you just kind of looking at the text and seeing that it's there, that the things that I'm talking about are coming from here.

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But the very first word we see in our text is likewise. That's a word that appeals to what has already been said, so that he's tying what he's going to say about wives being subject to your own husbands and everything that follows, he's tying it to something he has already said prior.

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Likewise means in the same way, just like I got done saying, and just like the previous illustrations, just like the previous examples.

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Well, what were his previous examples? Well, we go back a couple weeks in the messages, go back to last week, and I think what he's saying is likewise, in the same way that everyone is to be subject to, you see the word subject as our verb here, be subject to, and you could go back in the text and find the previous two times he's already used that phrase, and it's with intention.

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He says, in the same way that everyone is to be subject to civil authorities. And then later he says, in the same way that Christian slaves are to be subject to their masters.

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In the same way, likewise, wives are to be subject to their own husbands.

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Now a couple of things, there's a few things that I want to kind of walk through in this very first verse, and we're going to cover this entire text, verses 1 through 7, and we're going to unpack it.

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But as we cautiously unpack, carefully, delicately unpack this first verse, there's some observations.

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The first observation I want to point out, and it must be clear from this text, is that wives are to be subject to who, does the text say?

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Their own, their own husband. This passage does not place every woman under the authority of every man, as some have interpreted, as some have thought, as some have preached, as some have conceived this concept that every woman is under every man that they meet.

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And we know that that is not to be the case by the fact that Peter clarifies and makes it abundantly clear that what he's talking about is within the context of family.

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This is a family -oriented message that he is talking about here, and he says, every wife is to be subject to her own husband.

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There are some who reject the concept of the headship of the husband in the home on the faulty premise that Scripture teaches that every woman is to submit to every man.

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But the text clearly says, a wife is to be subject to her own husband. So that's the first observation.

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The second observation is to talk about what does it mean to be subject, which can be accurately translated as submit.

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And you'll see that in different translations and different verses, and there's really no way to duck and weave that the concept of subject or submit is to come under the authority of someone else.

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There is indeed a hierarchy that is being spelled out here in 1st Peter, whether we're comfortable with that or not.

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And the fact of the matter is, we live in a culture, how many of you have identified we live in a culture that doesn't like hierarchy, that does not like authority?

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A lot of what's going on in the news, have you guys noticed some resistance to authority in the news recently?

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Have you guys identified that at all? And there's a lot of that going on in our culture, a lot of that going on in our country, and I would suggest to you a lot of that going on in churches, and a lot of that going on in our hearts.

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Have you identified that in yourself? I know I see it. I see it in me. I see a resistance. I see it when

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I drive five over the speed limit, right? And if you like that, some of you are going, only five?

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And some of you are going, oh, the pastor drives five over. Do you know, you give a rule, and how many of you, when you see the rule, there's a little bit of kickback, like you're standing on the edge of a stream, and it says, no throwing stones into the water.

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What do you, what do you want to do when you see a stone? Like, what's the gut level response? And so there's a tendency for us to push back against authority, and this text, this section of 1st

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Peter, is spelling out authority structures in our lives to submit to, that there actually is some semblance of hierarchy to the created order in the way that God has designed things.

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So this word submit is important, obviously, for this text for us to understand. If a wife is being called to submit to her husband in the way that we are called to submit to civil authorities, if a wife is being called to submit to her husband in the way that a

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Christian slave is to submit to his master, then no amount of ducking and weaving is going to free me as your pastor from making it clear that this is a very culturally uncomfortable phrase that he is talking about here.

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The amount of submission in this text is not qualified. How many of you want it to be qualified?

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It, it is not, be subject as long as he's respectful, be subject if he pulls his weight around the house, be subject if he empties the dishwasher.

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Also, the phrase be subject cannot be explained away as some level of co -authority.

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As much as, as much as people have tried to actually wrangle it, you, you, you hear some people talk about this text, and eventually the wife is the leader of the household.

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Eventually, they're able to get to the point or, or this is just about mutual submission or something to that effect, and there is a text in Scripture that talks about mutual submission, and this is,

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I don't know if you've noticed that this isn't one of them. There's going to be some things that the husband is required to do that are very significant, that are going to affect a wife's ability to joyfully submit to her husband, and there's some keys that are on both sides of this equation, and I'm grateful that Peter gives both of these in the same text.

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He balances this out. By the time we get down to verse 7, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. But a third observation that we have, we may have missed in this text, because it's right there in front of our faces, and it really matters a lot.

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Peter is telling wives to enact their will in this effort. Now, if you were to study

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Roman culture, if you were to understand the culture of the day and the era where, where first Peter was written, where Peter is sitting down with a pen in his hand, and he's writing these things, if you could be there, you would be shocked and a little bit scandalized that he's speaking to the wives directly.

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That's the type of culture that he lived in. That's the, the place where he lived and breathed, and yet, he does not address husbands.

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This is key, folks. This is very important that you get this. Men, listen in on this.

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He does not say, husbands, subjugate your wives. It would be great, in one sense, if the men could plug their ears for a minute, and, and just the women could listen in to what

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God is telling them to contribute to their marriage. And then, the wives could plug their ears and listen, and it would be like the love dare all of a sudden, right?

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Like, they wouldn't know you're doing it, but you're doing it. They wouldn't know that you're just trying to love them lavishly and extravagantly.

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Are you getting what I'm saying in this? So, what is happening here is he is speaking to the wives, and he is not telling the husbands to get their wives in line or under control.

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He is speaking to wives, saying, you have a choice in front of you. If you're here, and you're married, or you're here, and you anticipate that someday you're going to be married, and you're a woman, then you're looking, and there's two options before you.

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Two choices. And he dignifies the wife with the role of deciding to honor

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God by honoring her husband. Because you can, you can go your way, and you can kick, and kick, and kick, or you can submit to your husband, and see how that works.

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This is God's way. But, you have a choice.

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Do you see the dignity in that? I hope you see some, some semblance of dignity. You can, he's saying, I, I'm telling you what

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God's way is. I'm telling you what God wants. The fourth observation in verse 1 is that, and this is pretty obvious, he's speaking about marriage, and hopefully that's obvious, but without thinking carefully about what marriage is, this can turn into a very, like, a cold and harsh command of God, right?

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Like, we can hear it and just be like, a wife, submit to your husband. We're talking about marriage here.

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How do you view marriage? To say, wives, submit to your husbands, if the assumption is that a husband is a harsh and demanding man who rules over his household with an iron fist, that's certainly going to produce a desire to rebel, wouldn't any one of us, right?

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But, we're talking about marriage. We're talking about two people who, at one time, have stood before an altar and said,

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I do, and I love, and they gazed into each other's eyes and said, I love you, and I will give you all, and till death do us part, in sickness and in health, in, in plenty, and in want, in, in good times and bad,

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I will be with you till the end. Okay, if you're married, can you remember that day?

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If you're married, raise your hand if you remember that. I, I hope, men, hurry up, raise your hand. You remember it, even if you don't remember it.

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Remember the day. You remember that day well, right? I mean, some of us, how many, how many of you, honestly, if you're thinking back, it feels like it's a blur.

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You remember the day, but it's a blur. It was just kind of like, I felt like I was like outside of myself watching this whole thing unfold. And it was an awesome thing.

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But, you go back to that day, and you say, this is a, this is talking about a marriage here. This is talking about two people who want it to work.

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At least they did at one point. I know, you know that things can get pretty ugly in a marriage, right? We know that from our culture, and hopefully you don't know that firsthand, but I know some of us do.

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And so, things can get pretty ugly pretty fast. And so, but, at least at one point, you said,

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I'll, I want to do what it takes to please the other. I want to do what it takes to make this marriage work.

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I don't want to be one of the statistics. I want this to last a lifetime, and you said as much when you got married.

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And so, this command is in the context of that kind of marriage, where there is love, and there is a desire for things to move forward.

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But, my last observation in verse 1, is that he's speaking to all Christian wives. Look at, look, some people would, would quickly in your mind kind of think, well, he's only talking to the wives of unbelievers.

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But, look at verse 1, likewise, wives, that's all, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the

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Word, even if, even, even in the case where there are unbelieving husbands, or those who are disobedient, even if some do not obey the

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Word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.

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Linda told me she was going to be leaving. I didn't just offend her. Or maybe

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I did. That some might be won.

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Some unbelieving husbands could be won by the faithfulness of their wives, by their conduct, by the way that they act, by the way that they treat them.

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Notice that he says, even may be absent from words, not by the nagging of their wives to come to church, not by the nagging of their wives to behave properly, but by the wives, what does the text say?

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By their actions, by their conduct, by the way that they live their lives. I know many wives who have unbelieving husbands.

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It has been glorious. It's been an awesome thing. It's been one of my favorite things here at Recast Church to see the number of women who started attending this church alone, and now attend with their husbands.

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And not only attend with their husbands, but their husbands have given their lives to Jesus Christ as a result of their wives faithfulness.

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It's a beautiful thing. It's a glorious thing. There are some though that are, and maybe you're here this morning, but there are some that I'm still diligently praying for their husbands, that they're still coming here faithfully as wives who do not have believing husbands, and they're doing the best that they can to win their hearts.

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I know what a difficult thing Peter is asking for here, and I've had conversations, and I've walked through this with some of you.

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But Peter is speaking to those wives who have come to faith in Christ, and their husbands have not.

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That's part of this. There's a component of that in here. And that Peter speaks to them in this culture is amazing.

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It was a given during this historical era as I studied the history, that a wife followed the religion of her husband without question.

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That was the way in the Roman Empire. So that when Peter dignifies wives with this clear expectation that they remain firm in their faith while submitting to their husbands, that means that there is some things that submission doesn't cover.

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And this is very important because there is a sense of qualification in the history and the way that Peter rolls.

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In other words, what is one of the most likely requests that an unbelieving husband is going to put on his wife?

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Stop going to church. Stop believing that fairy tale. Stop praying.

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Stop reading the Bible. Stop poisoning the kid's minds with this Christian talk. Can you imagine some of the types of things that an unbelieving husband might say?

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And is she then supposed to, by Peter's injunction here, is she supposed to submit to that?

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I do not believe that Peter, that he says, like I've told you to submit to authorities, like I have told the

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Christian slave to submit to his master. That's the way. And then we actually can look into Peter's history and see

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Peter, who said submit to the emperor, submit to the authorities that are over you, actually practiced civil disobedience.

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Did you know that? You study the life of Peter, you get into the book of Acts, they told him, civil authorities told

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Peter, do not go out and proclaim the gospel. Stop doing this.

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They arrested him. They brought him before the tribunal. They said, stop it, cut it out. He's arrested.

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He's put in the stocks. An angel comes and lets him out. And where is he the next morning? In the temple, doing what?

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Preaching the gospel. Peter here is not putting authority of the government over Christ.

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Over Christ. He recognizes that Christ has the supremacy, is to have the supremacy in a person's life.

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He is not putting the master over Christ in the life of a slave. He is not putting the husband over Christ in the life of a wife.

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But he is saying there is a gentleness in as much as you can do for your husband, in gentleness and in kindness, trying to seek to win his heart, do so.

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There's a spirit of kindness. There's a spirit of service and humility and grace and deference that Peter is saying is required of a

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Christian wife. Peter believes that the end result of a wife who responds this way with meek and humble service towards an unbelieving husband, very well might just result in that disobedient, unbelieving husband being won by her respect and pure conduct.

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And I have had a front row seat to see that happen here. It's an awesome, glorious thing to behold.

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But just a side note here, that I know that some of you wives are here alone this morning, and I know that some of you long to be here with your husbands, and you've been faithfully and graciously serving your husband for years.

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The only thing I know to say to you is that God is sovereign over salvation. First Peter 3, 1 through 7, isn't a magical passage that requires

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God to save your husband if you're respectful and pure. Now you might be doing a stellar and awesome and glorious job, and it doesn't seem like it's getting anywhere with your husband.

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And so then do we, do we do this for the result? Is that what it really boils down to?

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Submit to your husband so that he'll be kinder to you, so that he'll be more, um, loving towards you.

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Or do you do it unto Christ like he has said, likewise as he said to these others?

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Submit to the authorities as unto Christ. Still speaking to wives, but getting a little sidetracked.

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Peter now addresses a word picture to show the type of conduct he's talking about when he's talking about wives submitting to their husbands.

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He tells these wives that a focus on the external adornment is not the way of a

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Christian, but rather a focus on the internal dressing of the heart with an imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.

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There's an, there's a, there's a, an attitude, a focus, a way that we could put attention to the outside that has no focus and no attention to the inside of a gentle and quiet spirit.

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But at first blush, even as I say that, you might say, Don, are you, are you being honest with a text?

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You might disagree with me because doesn't it say she's not supposed to braid her hair? Doesn't it say she's not supposed to put on gold jewelry?

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Doesn't it say that she's not? What's the last one? I think we ought,

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I think we'd all agree that she ought to wear clothes. Right? We would all agree with that. And so all of a sudden,

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I think that with even the last word there, it kind of snaps a little bit into focus that obviously he's using a metaphor, a figure of speech here, about illustrating something.

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He's not just strictly lining out things. Well, thou shalt not braid your hair.

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Thou shalt not wear gold jewelry. Silver is okay. Platinum is okay. Just not gold jewelry.

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Just follow the letter of the text, right? It's more than that. He's not legislating specific external types of clothing.

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Like he's like, well, you can wear this brand, but you can't wear this brand, but you can do this with your hair, but don't braid it.

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Right? That's not the point that he's trying to make here. What he is doing is using the adornment of clothes, jewels, and braids, the externals that can be a very common focus that women can get very wrapped up into, and he contrasts the external with the internal.

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In other words, what I really believe he's saying is, don't be women who want to be known for the external.

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There's a way that you can roll in life. There's a way that you can live that focuses strictly to be known for your body, strictly to be known for what you wear.

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And I would suggest to you guys even, there's a way that you can push this over on your wives in a way that is unhealthy, and that is really so you focus that you want the trophy wife.

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You want her to wear all the designer stuff. You want her to look great around your co -workers. And it's really about you, right?

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Guys, you know this. You know that that happens in your heart, where you want to show off your wife to your work buddies at the

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Christmas party. And be cautious and careful about the things that you're pushing over on your wife.

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Enable her and allow her to be able to follow this to where the external isn't what it all is about.

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Think through that. Beauty, beauty is a nasty problem in our culture. Anybody notice that?

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Have you noticed it? No one? Two people? Four? Go ahead and raise your hand if you've noticed that this is an issue in our culture.

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Okay, a couple more. Beauty, fashion, jewelry, makeup is all really big business in America.

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Now I'm not all of a sudden, you know, like maybe you've got some Mary Kay consultants in here and you know someone's selling

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Silpata or something and it's like, okay, what's you know, what's you got with my business? Well, I'm not trying to shoot down your business.

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I'm just saying, you know, I think that this is an issue of focus. It's about the individual's heart.

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I can't tell, I can't tell by whether someone's selling jewelry or selling makeup that what their heart is.

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But I do know that there's an issue. And the natural question that every Christian woman needs to process in particular those of you that God has brought here this morning is what is the biblical principle of verses three through four?

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What's the principle underlying? Not thou shalt not braid thy hair. Not thou shalt not wear gold jewelry.

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But if I can summarize, I believe Peter is saying focus on your heart.

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Focus on your heart. And look at the end of verse four. A gentle and quiet spirit is precious in God's sight.

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Gold jewelry, is that precious? Precious as in costly? Precious as in valuable? This is not, by the way, the word precious here is not the condescending.

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Oh, you're so precious. No, it's value. It's worth. Like precious stones or precious metals.

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It is precious in God's sight. When we exhibit a gentle, when a woman exhibits a gentle and quiet spirit to God, a gentle and quiet spirit is of value and use to him.

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And men? More and more we need to take on this principle as well. Getting caught up on the external is not just a woman's sport.

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Many men get up early to work out. They can exercise lots of discipline when it comes to p90x and getting their body all ripped and some men use more product on their hair than my mom did.

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I grew up in the Aquanet days. And if you remember Aquanet, I think I have lung issues, residual lung issues today because my mom used so much.

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I'm thinking like a can and a half a day. And I mean that was when your hair was like a helmet, right? Um, you get and then some anybody ever do the high bangs in the 80s?

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Any of you ladies here? Uh, some of you know what I'm talking about and that took a lot of hairspray. Um, but there are dudes now who are using product like that, right?

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Not going to call anybody out. You know who you are. But many men are very mindful of their bodies.

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Have you noticed that? And yet the same bears true for us. God wants us to discipline our hearts.

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He wants us to focus on the beauty of the heart. Not to the, I want to hear,

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I want you to hear me carefully. Not to the neglect of the, not to the neglect of the external. Not, I mean, you've got to take care of this body to some degree.

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You're going to have to put some clothes on. So look decent, right? I mean, but, but it's a question of focus.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? And, and you only you, only you can really suss this out with God about what is motivating you in the morning.

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And I mean some, some of you are like your checklist people and I, I don't like to throw you bones too often, but I'm going to throw you one here and just kind of a question that you can ask yourself to think through.

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And a reasonable question for you to ask yourself where you sit right now is how much time did you take to get ready this morning?

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And then contrast that answer with how much time did you spend in God's word and prayer this morning?

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Contrast those two and I think you're starting down the road of understanding what Peter is driving for here. He's not saying you shouldn't get, you wasted your time getting dressed this morning.

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No, thank you for getting dressed this morning. I appreciate that. Um, might be a distraction to the rest of us. But you get what

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I'm saying? I mean the external, you know, what are you, what are you spending your the lion's share of your time on?

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Is everybody getting that? Let's adorn, let's dress up our lives with a focus towards spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, evangelism, love, kindness, mercy, and truth.

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But to remind us that Peter is still speaking to wives, he uses the Old Testament as a model for wives.

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He appeals to a culture that is even more ancient than his own. I don't know if you realize, I mean some people want to just talk about culture when they get into these tough passages of Scripture, all they want to hone in on is well that was their culture and we're in a different culture now and we get to change what the text is telling.

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Peter here actually appeals to a culture as far removed from his culture as ours is from his.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? You go back 2 ,000 years, you get around the life of Paul. You go back another 2 ,000 years, you're getting around the life of Abraham and Sarah.

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You getting what I'm saying in that? So you kind of go they're just about as distant back as as anything and he goes and he appeals to Sarah, a very distant ancient culture from his time.

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And he talks about Sarah who called her husband Lord or Master. I do not encourage this. Don't try it ladies.

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It's not going to last very long. Um, uh that's not what the text is telling you.

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It's not saying so therefore to be a good wife you need to call your husband Lord. What? No, those wives who follow

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Sarah's example, those who are like daughters and sisters to Sarah, those who are following her good example are those who do good to their husbands.

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What do you have to do to qualify to be like Sarah in the Old Testament? Do good to your husband.

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Not you don't have to call him Lord. You don't have to call him Master, but you need to do good to qualify.

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Using Sarah as an example, I think really helps. I love it. I love it that Peter zeroed in on Sarah because we we just went through the book of Genesis and Sarah was not a subjugated woman.

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Read her story if you want to see uh wives if you want to see an example of what Sarah, I mean

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Peter's appealing to her so go back and look at her and look at the things that she did and the things that happened in her life. She had no problem letting her desires be known to her husband.

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She didn't struggle to let him know what she wanted. At the same time she can be held up as a woman who followed her husband and went with his decisions and was submissive to him.

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She did indeed respect her husband despite the fact that Abraham did not always act respectably.

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Have you noticed that in the life of Abraham as we went through that in the book of Genesis? Hopefully you picked up on that. We spent a few weeks talking about his life.

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She honored him at times when he made outright bad decisions. Remember that whole brother sister thing?

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Hey act, why don't you just act like my sister while we're in this foreign land? Twice. How many of you ladies might think that she was kind of like hey bonehead this didn't work the first time?

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Like you know you've thought it. You've thought it with your own husband, but how does she respond? She goes along with it again a second time.

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It didn't work so good the first time but you know what if this is what you want Abraham, that's where we're going. That's what we're going to do.

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How many of you think that was hard for Sarah? You think that was tough for her? This is not an easy calling that is being placed.

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This is not an easy role. We're going to get to what the husband's role here is in a second and before I launch into that, let me point out as we conclude kind of the first section on for the for the wives, that he tells wives to do something that is different than what he tells husbands to do.

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That in itself bears some significance. I believe that this is just one fraction of a common theme in scripture that shows that wives and husbands have different roles to play.

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We are created differently. We have complementary roles that when brought together and functioning well in a committed marriage with Christ at the center makes a beautiful picture of Christ and his church.

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We all know that a marriage that is working and functioning biblically well is one of the most glorious things in creation.

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But we equally know that when a marriage gets off track it can turn into one of the most hideous ugly things on the planet.

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We know that that which is capable of great heights is also capable of great depths as well.

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Great darkness. So Peter has clearly said that the expectation of a woman in marriage is a gentle and gracious submission.

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But that is now counterbalanced finally as we get down to verse 7 with the role of a husband. Like the wife is to be subject to her own husband, a husband is to live with his own wife in an understanding way.

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The word understanding is a deep word in Greek. It's not just some kind of head knowledge.

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It's not surface knowledge, but it's a relational kind of knowledge. One that doesn't come natural to most men just to be honest.

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So in English, I might ask you, do you know one plus one? Anybody got an answer?

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Two. Excellent. Good job. One plus one is two.

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You knew it. You knew that. But that's a very different question than asking, do you know your wife?

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Do you know your wife? Is that a different question? One plus one, one plus one doesn't doesn't change.

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It's pretty easy. How many of you like dudes, how many of you like that realm of knowledge? One plus one equals two.

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Did you like that? Pretty good. Pretty snap too. You got it. You figured it out. It doesn't take much more thought and away you go.

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But what if you apply that kind of knowledge to your wife? Shuckles.

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That's what happens. Laughter. You know what's going to happen if you try to apply that kind of knowledge to your wife because she's deep.

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There's a lot of things that are changing in her. I'm convinced that many marriages would gain a level or two right away, even this afternoon, if the husband would simply show an interest in his wife.

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If you just simply show an interest in her, to be a student of her desires, to be a student of her day, to simply ask her what's going on inside of her and listen, listen to the answer, give her some of your time, give her your ear, and actually let it get to your heart, men.

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Actually let it get in there. It's a common but actually pitiful joke if you think about it.

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Our culture has this ongoing theme of a joke about how hard it is for a man to understand a woman.

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Right? How often have you heard a man say women are just too confusing?

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And ironically, that is an abdication of our primary role in the marriage relationship, to understand your wife.

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There's a beautiful reality that I can be married to my wife for going on 19 years and I'm still learning stuff.

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This is the hard work of being a husband. Wives, you're looking at that going, that doesn't sound hard.

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It can be tough. You must be a student of your wife.

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A woman is a deep well. And the fact of the matter is, I said this earlier, she's changing. Just because you know what you used to know, it doesn't mean you now know what you need to know now.

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See what I did there? My wife didn't say that to me, but a good husband is a student of his wife.

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And the fact of the matter is, I think nod your head ladies, if what I state is true, a woman wants to be understood.

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A woman wants to be understood. A woman wants to be honored. Is that true? A woman wants to be cherished.

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Is that true? Certainly understanding is not the end result.

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It's not just living with your wife and understanding. Way as if to say, yes, I listened, I sat down,

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I listened, and I understand that you like flowers. Great. Check. Got that figured out.

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But there might need to be the purchase of some flowers and some delivery or something like that, right? Like it's to show honor is the end result of the understanding part.

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So it's not just understanding for understanding's sake. Although sometimes, how many of you have been in that conversation where she just wants you to listen?

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Be ready for that. Just sometimes that's, we can spend our entire day trying to solve problems.

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And then when she brings a problem to us, what do we want to do? We want to solve it. And she just wants us to listen.

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And so be ready for that. Communicate. Figure that out. But there's a phrase here that could easily get blown out of proportion.

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Peter says we are to honor our wives. We live with them in an understanding way, honoring them as the weaker vessel.

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Is that an insult? That meant to be an insult? I think of it like this.

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Like a teacup versus a mug. Okay, a mug is just a big old block of pottery.

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Stable. Functional. Not very ornate. Can take a couple hits.

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How many of you have a favorite coffee mug that's got a couple chips out of it? Still working fine. But it's got some hits out of it, right?

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And I think that's kind of like a dude, right? Okay, a bit like a mug. Not a lot to look at. Just a clunk and there it is.

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Yeah, a wife is like a teacup. Functions, it still works.

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It still holds liquid. No less useful. No less valuable.

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Matter of fact, in some contexts you could think of it as more valuable, but more fragile. More needing of delicate treatment.

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Now, this is where I'm on some shaky ground in our culture, right? Now I'm starting to talk about differences. Can we talk about the difference between male and female in our culture?

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I think our culture has gone crazy with this, by the way. I think it's just completely lost its mind in regard to an actual ignorance about gender and what it means, what is feminine and what is masculine and all of these things and just completely trying to remove all categories.

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But the text is saying that we as husbands are to honor our wives as a weaker vessel.

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More fragile, more needing delicate treatment. Honoring the wife as weaker is not honoring the wife as less capable.

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It is honoring the wife as having a different design and function. Men tend to be faster.

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I say tend before all of these. They tend to be faster. They tend to be stronger. They tend to be braver.

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There's all kinds of biological difference from muscle mass. I read a chapter on this and I just kind of spit a couple of these things out.

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Men have 30 percent more lung capacity than women. That's a scientific fact. The average 18 year old male has 50 percent more muscle mass than his counterpart that is female at 18.

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50 percent more. There's physical differences and you cannot deny that regardless of whether there's exceptions or not.

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There's probably some ladies who could take me down, right? There are some other exceptions, but by and large we recognize that there's a difference between male and female, right?

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Getting aside from the obvious biology. Why? Why do men tend to be faster?

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Why do they tend to be stronger? Why do they tend to be braver, tend to be braver? Because they are by design intended to be protectors.

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They're designed to be protectors. Obviously the strength has often in history been used to be aggressors.

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Which is to abuse the very reason men have been designed with more strength. The privilege and the gift of strength has been abused down through the centuries, has it not?

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And yet it has been given for the exact opposite, to be protectors. Matt Chandler uses a phrase,

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I've been using this phrase in my family and some of the stuff that I'm taking here comes from him and I'm trying to give him,

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I want to give him credit for this. Matt Chandler is a pastor at the Village Church in Dallas, Texas.

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He just finished a series that I happened to listen into and then I'm preaching this and I can't help but adopt some of his thoughts here.

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But if you're interested, I'm obviously preaching through first Peter and I'm just taking this on the way through.

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But I know that some of these topics you'd like to just kind of dig in and I would love to do a series on this and I may eventually do a series on masculinity and femininity and kind of kind of tease that out.

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But for now you can go on, if you podcast, you can go to iTunes, type in the Village Church, find Matt Chandler and listen, he just did a fall series on masculinity and femininity that was fabulous.

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But he uses this phrase often in there, the boy goes down so the girl goes free.

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That's the masculine feminine tension.

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In other words, he takes the bullet for her. That's the design of things. He sacrifices himself for her and that's a theme in movies from, any of you see

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Interstellar recently? It's a theme in Interstellar. It's in Gravity. It's in Titanic.

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Oh, no, Jack. And he goes down into the water and then Mythbusters actually proved that both of them could have actually made it on the board and it wouldn't have sunk.

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So I mean, what was she doing? I mean, for real. For real.

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And not only that, they would have kept each other warm. Those producers. The boy goes down.

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It's a theme. It's a common theme in our culture. It's a common theme in movies. But it isn't just in our movies.

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It's in real life. Some of you remember the shooting in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

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Do you remember that horrible, horrible event? In that one event, there were three men.

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Three men who died in that event. Shielding. Not their mom.

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Not their wife. But their girlfriends. Three men pushed their girlfriends down on the floor, covered their bodies, and two of them had bullets go pass through them into their girlfriend and their body actually slowed the bullet enough that the girl survived.

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All three girls survived. All three men died. And sacrificed themselves.

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And that's what it means to be a man. To take the bullet. To be the protector.

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That's part of the design. As cherishing and honoring our wives as the weaker vessel.

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We've been created as protectors. And that is a part. And we need to redeem that function in our society.

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We need to redeem that in the church. That we actually take that on, men. I don't think there's any vision being given to men in our culture.

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Except maybe just sitting and watching TV and being master of the remote. What about cherishing our wives?

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What about understanding their needs and then meeting those needs and loving them and protecting them? That's what it means to be a man.

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Are we up for the challenge? This is a model.

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This concept of the boy goes down so the girl goes free is a picture that God wants to communicate to us.

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Because there's a deeper thing going on here. The man goes down and the woman goes free because Jesus went down so the church could go free.

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That's a cosmic concept. Not just something that I get up here and share my thoughts about gender and thoughts about the family in the way that it should be structured.

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This is God's order for things with intention to be a picture, a model of what

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God is doing in the bigger picture. And a husband who is doing what husbands do protects his wife as a weaker vessel.

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If any of you are struggling with this, maybe maybe you just are sitting there going, you know what, Don? I'm maybe a different generation than you.

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This sounds like unfair stereotypes. Consider an illustration. I've again lifted from Matt Chandler. But he says the rubber meets the road on this subject in the middle of the night.

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Imagine and I want to ask this in a specific way so that you have to answer the question about me.

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I'm laying in bed at night and I hear a loud crash in a door slam. What do you think of me?

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If as Lynn and I are startled in bed, I roll over to her and say, Honey, you go check it out.

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I'll be here hiding under the covers. What do you think?

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Don't want to say it? Don't want to say what you're thinking? I think I think you all recognize something that's skewed there.

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Something is off there, right? I think our culture believes in equality right up to the crash in the middle of the night.

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And suddenly everyone thinks the man has a distinct role when there might be a scary confrontation. And husbands should live with understanding towards their wives, honoring, cherishing, and protecting as Peter goes on to say, since your wife is an heir of the grace of life.

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That phrase grace of life has been a confusing phrase to some people who some scholars who have studied it.

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But I believe Peter is referring to believing wives and husbands throughout verse 7. And he's talking about a committed

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Christian marriage. And I say that because of his last assumption at the very end of verse 7 that it's going to impede prayers.

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He expects that the married couple will pray together.

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That's an expectation. When he's talking about prayers being hindered in this context, I believe that he is suggesting that husbands when you do not live with your wife in an understanding way, if you do not honor her, protecting her, and cherishing her as a valuable but fragile thing, you will not get very far in praying with her.

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For a long time, I assumed that there was some kind of mystical connection between my wife and my prayer life.

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You know, like if I don't treat Linda well, then God doesn't hear me. But instead,

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I think Peter is saying if I don't treat Linda well, we're not going to pray together at all. There's a logical connection between these two.

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How are we going to pray together if I'm not cherishing her and loving her and treating her well? That's the hindering of the prayers.

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So let me summarize. Peter is honestly calling wives to a radical submission to their husbands.

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And in some instances, this is evangelistic in nature. Not nagging them with words, but winning them with gentle and quiet submissiveness.

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Husbands are to be students of their wives, cherishing, honoring, and protecting them as joint heirs of the kingdom of God.

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God has designed the family. He has designed masculinity and femininity. He created us in his image, male and female, and he called it very good.

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But we know that in our rebellion, Adam and Eve sinned and the relationship between husband and wife has been strained to the breaking point.

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Now we live in a world where the effects of the fall clearly result in men abusing their strength by subjecting women.

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We live in a world where women reasonably struggle to follow when their husbands are not leading.

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We live in a world where women do not value a quiet and gentle spirit. And we certainly live in a world where external beauty is often, or often wins over internal beauty.

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And into that world, Jesus stepped. He who was never married has provided healing to marriages.

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He who was male has brought healing to male and female alike. And now as his followers, we can walk the road of sacrifice with him.

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Because he has paid the price to restore us in forgiveness to God's way.

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So if you're here and you're not married, God's restoration can still be yours. He knows that and he's had you in here listening to this with intention and with purpose and I don't feel like I've got to try to twist some kind of an application for singles out of this.

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For some reason God has brought you here and he desires for you to hear and to listen in on this.

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But if you're here and you're a husband, God's restoration is available for you.

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If you're here and you're a wife, God's restoration is available for you. And for those of us who are all in with Jesus Christ, I'd encourage you to come to one of the tables during this next song and take the cracker to remember the body of Jesus Christ that was broken for you to make you whole.

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Take the cup and remember his blood that was shed for you. And then as you sit back down in your seat, take pause and consider.

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Husbands, are you living with your wife in an understanding way?

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Are you still listening to her? Are you cherishing her? Are you using your strength to protect and to shield her?

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Wives, consider. Are you submitting to your husband with a gentle and quiet, kind spirit?

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I'm convinced that one of the most beautiful things on planet earth is a marriage where a man cherishes a wife that is subject to him in gentle kindness.

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And a marriage like that is very difficult to get up in arms about. Let's pray.

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Father, I thank you for your design. I thank you for the way that you have ordered things and I recognize that it's something that our culture kicks against with even just the concepts of the way that you've designed males and females and Father, just people going mad with the lack of distinction and thank you for your word that brings us back to reality, back to the place of the way that you designed things to be.

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Father, I pray that you would clarify anything that I've said that has not been clear in people's hearts.

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I know that each circumstance in each situation in each marriage is at a different place and Father, for every marriage that's represented here,

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I ask for your strength and for your courage to apply these things. Father, I recognize that it's a high calling that is placed on the woman to submit to her husband.

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It's a high calling on the husband to live with his wife in an understanding way to cherish her and to protect her.

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Father, I pray for healthy marriages here. I pray for those here who are not married.

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Maybe they've gone through hard times, they've been married before and they're not currently or for those who are have yet to be married.

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Father, I pray that you would be impressing on them biblical truth about the process of marriage and what that looks like and most importantly be preparing them.

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So many people have a list of what they want in a spouse with very little consideration about what they ought to be and so Father, I pray that you would be moving each one of us to consider our own own place and as we come to communion, let that be a starting place of humility for us.

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Let that be a place where as we come and we remember the blood and we remember the body of Jesus that it took his sacrifice to make us whole.

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Father, would you bring us to humility through that reminder in our lives throughout this week, hour by hour, moment by moment that we would be kind and compassionate and loving especially to those that we have pledged our love to the most.