Husbands, Love Your Wives - [Ephesians 5:25-32]

prayer. Father, we thank you this morning for the opportunity we have to gather, to worship you, to look at your word, to talk about topics that are difficult yet needful.

Father, I pray that you bless our discussion, strengthen our marriages.

Father, make the men here better leaders, better husbands, more capable, more

Christ -like, and conform us into your son's image, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, Taylor. Well, you know, this morning, I think before any kind of class where you may wind up getting sued, you like to give a disclaimer.

And, you know, what sort of disclaimer could I give? How about this one? Pastor Mike said, quote,

I believe Steve models his topic for his new series, Husbands Love Your Wives. Thank you.

Now, here's my disclaimer. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Thank you. And don't tug on Superman's cape.

What's that? Don't spin into the wind. John, don't eat cannolis on Wednesday.

Okay. All right. I'm going to guess because cannolis are made on Saturday, so therefore, you don't want to eat them on Wednesday.

I don't know why that is. And my final little caveat is don't fancy yourself the role model for everybody else.

It's difficult. You know what I can do, though? I can definitely tell you what not to do.

I can tell you what things are mistakes. I can tell you what things are awful to do.

And it's either because I've personally done them or I've seen them done by someone else. I know where the icebergs are.

I guess I could say that. Now, why a class on this?

Pastorally, it seems needful. We have a lot of emphasis on helping men to teach, to preach.

How about some practical implementation? Lots of opportunities to learn theology.

How about some practical outworking? And in the home, if you learn everything and you don't love your wife, then there's a real problem.

And during the course of this class, I'm going to give you some reports from experts in the field on loving your wife.

And who are these experts? Of course, if you read the email a few weeks ago, it's the wives.

They know the deal. You know what's amazing, though, is this morning when I got up, I'm not kidding.

I said, you know what I'd really like this morning? A whiteboard. I was just telling Bill this.

And then I look over here, you know, over to the side, and guess what there was? A whiteboard. Then I think

I said, the only thing I need now is a dry erase marker, which Taylor was nice enough to get it for me.

And you know why I wanted a whiteboard? Because I got up this morning, I'm going to have all these pages of notes. And I thought,

I don't want to start there. Instead, I'm going to start.

I'm going to start on one thing, and then we'll eventually get to what I what I'm supposed to be talking about this morning. What I want to start talking about is leadership.

Leadership. Because when we think about husbands, we often think about important things like, you know, loving your wife and all that.

And true. Loving your wife, what does the scripture say as?

Okay. And what is Christ to the church? He is the head.

Yes. Which means the husband and the leader.

And I was thinking about the way he treated the disciples. I mean, it's one thing to think about how he talked to the

Pharisees. How do you talk to the Pharisees? Yeah, not always all that great, but he did talk to one

Pharisee in a very kind, gentle, loving way. And what was that? Nicodemus.

So naturally, I'm going to turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3 after all that intro. And you say, well, 1

Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 to 7, isn't that about elders? Yes. But it's not because elders are,

I mean, they're not the norm in the sense of verse 1.

The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

That's not normal because nobody should want to be an elder. I say that with all love and respect. It's because there's a lot of downside with it, a lot of responsibility with it.

You know, let not many of you become teachers. Why? Because there's a stricter judgments, etc.

But reading on, we see that a lot of these things should be common in our homes.

They should be the kind of the standard for how our homes look and how they run.

Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach. The husband of one wife, a one man or one woman, man, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard nor are not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

He must listen, manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

Now, I just want to read that and just think, okay, how do you manage your own household well? How many of you are,

I'm talking to the men now, how many of you are leaders? I see like a handful of hands.

The rest of you are fired. The answer is you're all leaders.

Some of you don't know that, which is a little bit of a problem. How many of you in the real world, can

I say that? You know, in the outside world, in your Monday through Friday mundane work, how many of you are management, have been management, or would like to be management, or mid -management, or, you know, sub -mid -management?

How many of you ever had a team? You know, I mean, when you think about leadership, and that's where we're going to start this morning, when you think about leadership, what makes a good leader?

And that's why I wanted the whiteboard, because I'm going to write down some of your ideas, but only the good ones. I have to warn you ahead of time.

That's just a little asterisk, a caveat. What makes a good leader? Okay, cannot be blind.

He has to lead, right? He has to know where he's going. I mean, isn't that what you mean by vision?

If you don't know where you're going, you can't get anybody else there, right? So, I mean, sometimes that's a physical objective, and sometimes it's just kind of a more ephemeral thing, but let's move on.

Other ideas. Leadership, yes. Okay, so harness the motivation.

How about, what's that? Okay, yeah,

I like the encourage. That's good. Okay, and train.

I like that. Okay, that's good. Other ideas.

Yep. Interest, meaning, okay, interested in others.

I mean, well, that's good, because this is a very good one. Let's just think about, let's go to the secular place here, and then we can transition to the home in a second.

What kind of boss do you have if he doesn't know anything about you? Not a good one.

I mean, have you had bosses like that, where if they were pressed? I mean, I worked for one guy,

I don't know, maybe six, seven years, and if he was pressed, if they said, if you don't answer this question correctly, we're going to fire you, he'd be done.

If they asked him anything about me, because, you know, what do you know about me? Well, he does a pretty good job.

He's got a, he's kind of funny. That would have been it. They would have said, thank you for your service.

Here's your watch. See you later. In the home, right, and we're going to talk more about this.

How is a husband responsible to be interested in others? I'm sorry?

Good communication. Well, I mean, we could put that, but I mean, specifically,

I can spell, mostly interested in others, communication, yes.

Wait, just a minute. Okay, he's interested in his subordinates, okay.

He's responsible, okay, subordinate, but I want to get back to this, interested in others, if I can.

What does it mean, or what biblical principle is involved in being interested in others?

He's got to listen, okay, Charlie. Okay, well,

I guess I'm going to have to do this myself. That's part of leadership, right?

You let all the people below you try, and then you do it yourself, Janet. Thank you.

Man, what would I do without my wife, right? No, it's really, it's amazing.

You have to know. I mean, is there a biblical principle involved here?

Live with your wives in an understanding way, or according to knowledge.

You can't effectively lead what you don't know, or those whom you do not know.

If it's important, and I believe this, I think this is some Clint Eastwood theology. A man's got to know his limitations, right?

So, if I have to know my own limitations, what I'm good at, etc., in order to effectively lead,

I have to know what my wife is good at. I have to know what my kids are good at. Imagine this.

I tell my wife, I'm putting you in charge of the budget, and she looks at me and says, well,

I, I have to be honest, I got an F plus in mathematics. And I look at her, and I say, an

F plus? And she says, yes, I failed, but I tried, so the teacher gave me an F plus. I'm not going to put her in charge of that if she's not good at it, or if she says, you know, if I have any amount of money available to me,

I will spend it. I probably don't want to put her in charge of that, right? In our household, that would be the opposite of that.

So, okay, let's, since you guys were just skipping ahead and getting all good answers here, communication, a good leader communicates.

And that's part of knowing your, the people that are underneath you, right? And the more you communicate, what sort of things should you communicate?

Like, I mean, you could say, good morning, how are you? How's it going? How was your week? Those things are fine. Is that really communication?

Yes, Andrew. Well, I, yeah, I didn't mind that so much because,

I mean, I have another purpose and listener, but yes, it is important what Andrew said is right.

Let's think about, you know, communication. I will sometimes ask people, how's your communication with your spouse?

Oh, it's really good. I'll ask the spouse, how's it, how's the communication? It's not so good.

Why is that? Why is there this difference in their understanding of the communication level?

Because there's no reciprocity. I wanted to say recipe. I don't know why. What is communication?

Andrew said it in a roundabout way. So I'll just kind of repeat what he said more explicitly.

When I say something, is that communication? See, some people are already jumping ahead.

It might be. Okay. If I say something, it might be communication.

What determines whether it's communication or not? Whether it's understood, right?

That's a good portion of it. And if it's understood and that's the end of it, it might be communication, but it might not be.

Why not? No buy -in. Part of the whole leadership thing is getting the buy -in.

So if I say something and it's understood and rejected in silence, it's a form of communication.

Is it effective communication? Probably not. It didn't do what

I wanted it to do. There was a message. The message was rejected. Is that communication of a sort?

Ideally in communication, what do you want? I say something, the other person understands it, and they can either agree or disagree.

Okay. And if they disagree, what would I like? Instead of just like, forget that.

I'm not going to do it. What would I like instead? Maybe some feedback.

That's communication, right? I say something, the other person understands it, asks a question, says, you know what?

Maybe we could go a different way. And then we do that, right? Andrew. Collaboration.

You know, I don't know everything about leadership, as you all know.

But what I did find is that there are different management styles.

And that's kind of, you know, part of what I wanted to talk about for a bit this morning. There are different management styles. And I said, there are people who don't communicate well.

There are people who just dictate, leaders who dictate and expect everything they say will be done.

Okay. Can that work? Sure. It can work.

And then there's what Andrew is talking about, this collaboration. Collaboration involves cooperation, involves buy -in, it involves good communication.

And ultimately, it involves this iterative back and forth, where, you know, we get closer and closer until we agree, right?

And there were many times, I mean, what I found absolutely liberating, when

I was placed into mid -management, and had absolutely no idea what I was doing, because I'd never been trained for that, was to come to a place where I understood that if I worked with the people who worked for me, and set the expectations, but let them sort of, you know,

I put out an umbrella, right? This is what I want. You guys figure out the details.

It worked really well, right? The freedom to actually let them feel like there was, because there was, autonomy within my authority.

What happened? They took off. I mean, they did great work.

So much so that eventually they, you know, I mentioned a few weeks ago when

I preached, they broke us up because we were too good. That was one of the ironies of life.

Steve, you're too good for government work. Okay, well, moving right on. It wasn't just me, it was the whole team.

They were really good. They made me look good. And that's kind of the idea, really, of Christian leadership.

It's not that I demand things. It's that I set out the parameters, right?

I set the tone. I establish this umbrella of principles.

And then I allow, I give autonomy to those underneath me to accomplish what it is

I want them to accomplish. I don't micromanage. On the other hand, you know, there's a basic principle, and I like to repeat this one often.

You don't get what you expect, you get what you inspect.

Especially true, excuse me, when it comes to kids, right? Clean your room can mean a variety of things to a variety of different people.

I mean, when I was a kid, right? You know, the pile was smaller, therefore the room was clean.

No, sorry. Sorry, that's not good. All right, so communication.

Other thoughts on communication before I move on? I mean, that's a topic that you could spend a lot of time on, but I just wanted to lay that out there.

And kind of, there are different styles, but ultimately, communication is not, I tell you something full stop.

That's not communication. I mean, there's a word for a machine that we used to have, and they called it a dictaphone.

Why? Because it was a one -way device. You know, you spoke into it, it recorded what you said. Yes, we're always communicating something.

I think that's true, right? We communicate things by what we say, what we don't say, by our faces.

That's a bad one. Our body language sometimes can communicate, right?

Yes, I'm saying it's not necessarily the,

I think the best communication is probably always iterative. You know, it's always two -way.

Yes, communication can be one way, right? I mean, you know, you tell a baby hush up, and it does.

Well, then message received. Let's talk a little bit about leaders are subordinates.

What does that mean? I don't know.

Let's take a vote. Yes. You know, what

Vadim just said, we probably should like put that on business cards. You know, hi, my name is

Vadim. I am not almighty. And I'm not just saying,

I mean, I could say, hi, I'm Steve. I'm not almighty, because there's a tendency to think, right, if you're in a leadership role,

I am almighty, right? There's somebody, there's always somebody above us. If nobody else is above us, which generally speaking is not true, we're always accountable.

We're always subordinate to God. Always, all of us. And to have that mindset of servant leader, not only does it emulate

Christ, but it obeys the Bible as well. So yeah, that's a good point.

Yes, Charlie. Okay. Okay. You said broken.

I want to use humble. There needs to be a humility that goes with leadership, right?

And understanding that we are sinners, that we're not perfect. And sometimes it's kind of the way you can approach things.

A lot of times, you know, what do bosses in particular want to do? They come at you with sort of a hard edge and accusations and, you know, all these kinds of things.

A better approach, because it's less likely for you to fall into a giant pit, especially if you're dealing with your wife, is what?

Ask questions, right? Assume that you don't know everything. Think the better about her and think, maybe there's something that I don't know here that I need to be filled in on, because if I just attack,

I'm likely to get a stalwart defense. And I don't really want that, right?

It's about problem solving. And that's kind of one of the, I mean, I could put that down too.

A good leader is a problem solver. But I want to get back to this, what

Charlie mentioned, humble, humility. A good leader is quick to blame shift.

Why are you guys laughing? A good leader takes blame.

And you'll know this, especially, I mean, you know, I was in a paramilitary organization,

Sheriff's Department. And it more often than not, it was beneficial to me and everybody under me, if I said something, some mistake takes place, maybe it's not even something

I'm aware of, right? And I say, I got it, my fault,

I'll deal with it. Okay, good leaders take responsibility and good leaders do what?

They're quick to give credit to others, put others to the fore.

You know, well, thank you, but actually my wife deserves all the credit for this. What's wrong with that?

Why is that hard? You know, I really like your kids.

Thank you. I've done a great job. What we want, ultimately,

I mean, does it matter who gets the credit? Even if I, you know, which

I didn't, even if I had more to do with my kids than my wife did, why would I want to take a bow for that?

Put her on display, put the kids on display, put anybody on display other than yourself, because if you're always taking credit, then guess what?

A couple things are true. One is you start to believe it, you know, and the other problem is everybody beneath you, and this is especially true in the workplace, but everybody beneath you kind of gets what?

Yeah, a little resentful. He's always taking the credit, and in the home, you know, there are enough problems with being the leader of your home, so why magnify them by, you know, insisting on being the center of everything good?

Other thoughts about accountability, subordination, humility, that kind of line of thinking there?

Yes, Andrew, yeah, yeah, I mean, if you want to, like I said earlier, kind of what

I said earlier, if you want to start digging yourself a hole, talk to your wife like she's dumb.

That will really, that will go a long way. I mean, you should always give the benefit of the doubt the other,

I mean, isn't that right? You want to, as Matthew 7 say, when Jesus is, you know, prepping us for this whole, basically, confrontation of sin, what should we do?

We examine ourselves first, right? Remove the log from our own eye, and so when we go into a situation of possible miscommunication or misunderstanding or something doesn't get done the way we want it done, is it better to presume that I've made the mistake in the way

I communicated what I wanted, or is it better to presume that my wife made the mistake in the way that she carried things out?

I'm going to give you a hint. A lot of times, right, and this gets back to communication, obviously, but it gets back to that in the first place.

I said something and I knew exactly what I meant. Why didn't she understand exactly what

I meant? Well, a better question is, why didn't I verify that she understood what

I meant? Right? Again, you get what you inspect, not what you expect.

So if I say something and then I don't ask any questions and things don't get done quite the way I wanted, who is at fault?

Well, I could say it was the people who didn't do what I wanted, or I could say it was me for not making sure that they understood what

I wanted, and I like to take the blame instead. Ideally, I don't always take the blame, but again,

I am not the standard here. Okay, humble problem solver.

Why is being a problem solver important? Because there are problems in life. When it comes to solving problems, though, should

I always presume that I have the right answer? I mean, that's what

I, you know, I'll repeat myself for those who weren't here a few weeks ago, because I probably didn't go into any depth on it.

When I ran a building, and I had a great team.

I mean, I remember the guy who was, you know, because there was a little bit of a hierarchy in the building.

So I selected this guy, and he was really sharp, and he helped me organize things, and I just kind of trusted him.

And then he had the temerity to move on and get a job, which bothered me greatly.

But we had developed somebody else who could step right into that role, and that's kind of important, right?

And I, oh, now I remember where I was going, but our building went really well, or it was running really well, and my supervisor, sergeant, came to me, because he had another building, came to me, and he said,

I want that building to run like this one. And I said, well, you've got a real problem then.

He said, what? I said, because it's the people here that make this place run, and you can't have them.

My message to you then is, your building, your home, your family, you need to think of those people as these are the ones that God has given me.

These are the best. He has, you know, if he's giving you, and we're going to talk more about this eventually, maybe even next week, but we'll see how that goes.

The wife God gave you is absolutely the best wife God could have given you, true or false?

Absolutely true. Whether you feel that way or not at a given moment, it's objectively true, 100 % true.

The people under your care are the best people that God could have given you.

You need to remember that. So when it comes to problem solving, you have a wife, and there's a problem in the home.

You go to your wife and say, you know what, we have a problem, and it's X. And she says, well, it might be

X, but it also might be a little X plus a little Y. And you go,

I hadn't even thought about that. Well, of course not. That's why she's there. She sees things a little bit differently than you, and sometimes that's a big help.

Sometimes it's not, but sometimes it is. And you have to be dispassionate enough, neutral enough, objective enough to see that, and not be arrogant, but be humble.

Take her advice, take it into account, and sort things out. Come to a, hopefully, as Andrew said earlier, mutually agreed upon solution.

Why are mutually agreed upon solutions better? Nobody knows.

Yeah, Sandra, you work harder on that. I was going to put it a different way, but that's a good way to put it.

And I'll put it the way I was going to put it. Which is better? You go kayaking.

Pastor Mike went kayaking here recently. Imagine that you're paddling like a and the people on the other side of the boat are going the opposite way.

What happens? You spin and you go absolutely nowhere. And I think a lot of our homes are like that.

Spin and go nowhere. When there's buy -in, you move forward. Dave, let me do the math on that.

Fifty to ninety -five percent.

Hey, let's pick two numbers at random between one and a hundred. Somewhere between one and ninety -nine percent of the troubles in our...

Would you say that again, Dave? I want to make sure I have this right. Okay. Okay.

Have to do with what now? I don't understand. Sorry.

Sorry. I couldn't resist. It was cheap, sure, but it was effective. I think a lot of the problem is, well, yes.

I mean, I think a lot of the... Maybe. I don't know. I'm going to go with 51 percent.

I think a lot of it is communication. And like I said, I think the biggest problems I've had in our home have probably been when

I jump to conclusions, right? When I don't have all the facts.

Communication is a part of it. I'm going to... Mark, I want to just kind of tag that for a moment because I want to say this, you know, what is...

And I've heard Charlie talk about this many times. What's the stereotype of the American male? Stereotypical American male.

Neanderthal, comes home from work and he does what? Sits on the couch, turns on the

TV, says, leave me alone, right? Doesn't know what's going on in the house, doesn't really care.

And if he's asked for anything, what does he do? Or says something stupid, right?

I mean, you can't watch a commercial these days without having the idea that the average American male is an absolute moron, right?

I mean, he just knows nothing. Now, that may be true in some households. Mine, maybe.

I mean, if you say, Steve, nail these two boards together, I'll look at you and go,

I really don't know how to do that. Whereas my wife will, you know, she can add something to her house, you know, like a whole wing or whatever.

Probably have it done by noon. It's just not my, it's not my forte.

What is my forte? I don't know. What's that? Yeah, that.

Okay, so communication is a key and part of it and goes back to what

Mark was talking about listening. You know, when I listed listener, one of the reasons why I wanted to have listener up there is because it's not just in the immediate context of, you know, feedback.

I say something and then I listen to the response or something is said to me and I analyze it.

Sometimes it's picking up, especially for parenting purposes.

It's picking up little snippets of conversation that don't seem quite right.

You hear your kid saying something on the phone, just a little snippet of a conversation. You think to yourself, that doesn't sound like something

I would agree with, or that doesn't sound like they're talking to that person in a way that they should be talking to that person.

Or, you know, you hear, you hear just discussions between siblings and you go, there's something wrong there.

Now, there are two ways to go about things. One is to do nothing, right? Again, prototypical, stereotypical,

I should say. American male, until it's a conflagration, until there's a massive problem,

I don't want to know anything about it. Proactively, proactively, what should

I do? If I hear something that's untoward, it's questionable, it makes me think there's something amiss in a relationship in the home.

I like that so much that I'm going to write it down before I forget it. Open -ended questions. You know,

I open the door, as it were, for communication. I throw out a vague, kind of vague, but an open -ended question, something that gives them a lot of space to run in.

We do this a lot of times during the course of investigations. Why do you do that? Because you want to hear some kind of confession.

And if you do it with your kids, guess what you're going to hear? If there's something going on, you're going to hear some kind of confession.

If you do it right, if you come across accusatory, though, then what happens? They invoke their

Fifth Amendment rights. That's exactly right. That's when you have to break out the bright lights and get tough, you know what

I'm saying? Yes, sure. Good. Thanks, Sharon. Yeah, one of the things

I had actually in my little handwritten notes, because I was doing that this morning, I mean, I have all these pages, and then

I go, I want to talk about leadership. So it's being patient.

Good leaders are patient. Patience is important because, see,

Brian's bragging about his wife already. She's very patient with him. It is non -stop, incessant questioning.

Yes, yeah. You have to be patient while asking a question, patient to listen, patient to eventually get where you want to go.

Andrew. Yeah, sometimes, although I will say, and we'll get to Charlie in just a second here, and I will say that sometimes, depending on the skill of the dissembler that you're speaking with, dissembling, by the way, is lying.

Some people take a very circuitous route to answer a question, and sometimes there's a reason for that because they're stumbling on something, you know, they're stumbling around for something that they think that you'll believe.

Oh, there we go. I found it, you know, and I only say that out of experience.

I mean, it's true, right? This is our default, is we like to be defensive and all that, but you're right.

We have to be patient in letting somebody answer the question the way they want, and not just go, can you just give me an answer, please?

Not the best route, Charlie. You know, if I could just, I mean, we have to close, but if I could just repeat one thing that Charlie said,

Elaine doesn't want a father. I mean, it sounds funny, but let me tell you something, no wife, you know, she didn't go up to the altar to marry a daddy.

Your wife is not your child. Yeah, one more comment, and then we'll, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, sometimes, a more extensive conversation, I guess we could put it that way, a more extensive answer, you know, is to be anticipated.

Sometimes it's not, you know, like if I said, what time is it? That doesn't really, you know, you can't write an essay about that.

I mean, you can, but it's really not going to make for fascinating reading. Let me see if I have anything else

I want to put on. Oh, yeah, I do. I had team first, responsible, decisive, but decisive and forgiving, too, that I also had on there, but we'll talk more about those next week.

And Daniel, did you have a comment you want to make? Yeah, well, and that's what

I was getting at with forgiving, so thank you. Yeah, I mean, probably the key problem in our marriage and in our homes is, has something to do with sin, either our sin or the sins of others.

So it's important to deal with those with grace. Well, we have to close. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for our time this morning. Thank you for the interaction, for the ability we have to discuss important things and even to do so in a lighthearted manner, but underscoring some very serious truths.

Father, I pray that you would help our marriages in our homes better reflect the truths of Scripture, better reflect the glory of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and better reflect the relationship between Christ and his church.