The Woman's Role in Marriage, Pt. 3 (11/26/2023)

Park Meadows Church

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Thank you, Matt. Yeah, it's a bit of a problem. We still call this our new building, but it's not new anymore.

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And all of a sudden, the group was up here singing one day, and they stopped, and it got really quiet in the room.

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We could hear some other dude preaching. So one of these wires go from here up into the attic, back to there, and this one over here has become an antenna of sorts.

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Or else someone opened a new radio station on a new frequency. I don't know which, but I don't know how to fix it either.

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We'll have to get some help out here to get that fixed. But anyway, so we just had to switch this one.

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Sorry about that. Thank you, though, Matt, for taking care of all that. No telling what would have happened if I'd have tried to do it.

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So good to see all of you. Made it back safely from Thanksgiving. That's good. How many of you traveled?

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Yeah, not too many. So we had more stay at home today, I mean this holiday, than traveling.

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And we stayed home. And I would say we had a quiet Thanksgiving at home.

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But when we stay home, there's like 23 people, and lots of 13 grandbabies, and it's loud and fun.

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And so I need a nap right after church today. But anyway, we're glad to have all of you with us, and especially happy to have our visitors back here.

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Dave and Katie met, and he wasn't sure which Dave it was. But I said, was it the handsome one or the young one?

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So he said, I don't know. It was sort of both. So I'm glad you guys met, and thanks for the invite, and thanks for taking the invitation.

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We appreciate that. And they could have headed all the way home towards Houston, but they stopped for church.

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That is very commendable. Fits right in with your Sunday school lesson. And so according to Brother Dave, you'll get a few more prayers answered because of that righteous act.

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There is such a thing as experiential righteousness. And so thank you very much. And good to see all of our home folks.

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And we will get started here. Normally, we are preaching verse by verse through books.

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And we finished Romans after a decade or so. And so I'm in between books, praying about where to go next in the interim.

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I was asked by a few folks to talk about marriage and family and child rearing for a few weeks.

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So we've been kind of doing that. And we started out talking about an idea the

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Lord gave me a long time ago. And I use it with young couples that are about to be married.

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And I got to reading through mostly Ephesians and how the church is supposed to treat each other when we're here, when we're around one another.

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And I thought, well, if that's true, it's 10 times as true in the home, but not too many people apply it to marriage.

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And so we made that application. We talked about that first and be kind one to another, gentle hearted.

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I mean, it seems simple, doesn't it? And yet the ones we're the closest to, sometimes we let the guard down and we're not kind and all that.

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So we talked about that. Then we talked about on Father's Day, prior to that, we talked about the role of the father in the home.

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And so now we've been talking about the role of the wife and then we will talk about the role of the children.

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Then we'll sort of be done with this. And by then we'll be in another book. So today let's continue with this on the role of the husband in the home.

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Let's pray, Lord, thank you for a time to get together and study the word together. We thank you for the services already today.

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We thank you for our home folks and bringing everyone back safely from their travels.

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We thank you for our visitors and ask for travel safety on their way on home toward Houston later today.

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And thanks for bringing them our way. And Lord, we know that exactly who you want here, we're all here and we anxious to hear from you.

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So we ask you Holy Spirit to be our guide and our teacher. And we ask it in Jesus name, amen.

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One of the things I've spent time being the most thankful for is the word. Can you imagine if we did not have the word of God and if God had not promised to preserve it to the last generation, where would we be?

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You know, they've tried to burn it out of existence, whole groups of people have been persecuted because of certain, you know, manuscripts they thought were the best and then they would be killed.

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And then those manuscripts would attempt to be burned and yet we have it preserved for us today.

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And I thank the Lord for that so much because it takes two things. If you wanna look at it from the human viewpoint and even it's really the whole viewpoint, it takes two things for salvation to take place and it takes two things for growth to continue.

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And that is the spirit, the water and the spirit. Let's put it that way, the water and the spirit.

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And the water is the water of the word according to the book of Ephesians and the spirit is the Holy Spirit. And so we have to be thankful for that as well.

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I spent some time even back there while Dave was teaching, just thinking about when the Lord brought me out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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And I was in my car driving to work one day when I was 24 years old and everything changed inside my heart anyway, everything changed.

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And then the rest is a process, isn't it? The growth part. So I hope you all spend a little bit of time thinking about those kinds of things and I know that is the primary thing in our lives is our savior and our salvation.

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So, all right, well, let me get into this study that we've been in here and you might turn to Ephesians 5 .22.

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We'll sort of start there and have just a little bit of review. Ephesians 5 .22,

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it says, Submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. And so we've been talking about that.

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Now it's interesting because if you look at that word for submit, it's two little Greek words.

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The first one means subordination and the second one means ordained, which is interesting.

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So it's God ordained subordination and we know that it has to do with the fall. It came about after the fall because of sin,

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God gave us an authority structure that was necessary. And so we've talked about all of that.

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And so last time to me, we talked about some things that I'm not so sure are often taught in churches and I know

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I've done so much marriage counseling for 40 years with different people. And I like to talk to each spouse individually first and then put them in the room together and then that's where the truth comes out, right?

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Because there's always two sides to every story. But when I'm speaking with the gentlemen,

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I never hear what we talked about last Sunday and I'm gonna review that just a second for our visitors, but I never hear that part.

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All I hear is, well, the Bible says I'm the authority in the home and she doesn't seem to get that. And I get that again and again and have for 40 years.

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And so this information that I talked about last time and we'll review briefly, hopefully today,

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I think is information that a lot of men in churches don't understand and it brings a lot of grief to the women.

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And that's why a lot of times counseling takes place where you have to bring the pastor in because the man is just not doing right in the home and she needs help.

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And so she convinces him to come to the pastor or one of the pastors for counseling.

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And in reality, if everyone understood this information, that would happen a lot less because it would just get worked out in the home.

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Does that make sense? So let's take a look at that a little bit here. It's interesting before we ever get to the verse that instructs the wife to submit to the husband, verse 21 in the same chapter says, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

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And by the way, I mentioned this last time, I've never had a man bring that one up in counseling.

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I've never heard had a man bring it up because I don't think they've seen that one. And I shouldn't say they,

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I should say we, I am a man. So I understand how that is. Like this is not a favorite verse of gentlemen, verse 21, because it says submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

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But you have to remember in the context, everything has to be taken in context. You can't just take a verse like, let the wives submit to their husband and take that out of context and just post it on the wall.

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Say, here's our motto at our church. You have to take everything in context. And this is the starting context for this is that both need to be walking in the fear of the

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Lord and submitting one to another first. And then it goes on. Now it's interesting there because that's in the present passive participle, which means you could interpret it this way, being made subject to one another by someone higher than you, which is

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God. It's passive. So God is doing a work in the couple in their marriage, bringing them into more knowledge of himself and into submission to him first.

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And then the, to each other part becomes easier as we fear the Lord and walk with him.

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So that's, we've got to understand that comes first. The second point we made was in Ephesians 5, 18 and 19, is

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I call it, there needs to be spirit -filledness. Now I made that word up, but it preaches really good. Spirit -filledness.

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Both spouses need to know what it means to be spirit -filled. That, now I hear churches say we're a spirit -filled church.

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I have not found that in the Bible because spirit -filled is not a once and done thing.

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The indwelling is, but the spirit -filled part is something that is a moment -by -moment decision that we make every day of our lives.

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Will we be in the flesh or will we be spirit -filled? And we make that decision many times a day, every day, our whole life here.

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And God made it that way on purpose. There's a bit of a struggle going on between the flesh and the new man. The new man is the real us now.

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And the new man cannot sin if he is connected with Christ. And that's what being spirit -filled means.

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And so we must strive to walk filled with the spirit. Both spouses more often throughout the day to have a situation where we can submit one another.

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You see, now think about this a minute. Why do we have the authority structure? Want to take a shot at it?

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Why? Why does the woman need to submit to the man? There's neither male nor female, the

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Apostle Paul said. So why does the woman have to submit to the man in the home? Because of what, Dave? Without any of that chaos.

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But why? Sin. Sin, right? Because of sin. So now think about this.

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If 1 John says that the new man, when he's spirit -filled, cannot sin and will not sin, then if both spouses are spirit -filled, then they could submit one to another.

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Do you get it? Isn't that interesting? And all the men, gentlemen, if you need ammunition there, just say, you're in the flesh right now.

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And then you can put her under submission, right? I'm just teasing, but think about that though.

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If you're both filled with the spirit, more moments of the day and walking in the home, then you can submit one another and it works very well.

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When either one of us begin to get in the flesh, which happens also throughout the day, then you have to have the authority structure.

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And in general, you have to have the authority structure because we're on this side of the fall. That's the second.

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First point is the submitting to one another concept, but then secondly, we need to be spirit -filled and it's not what this message is about, but you understand what it is.

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And then the third thing is what we started talking about last time. There is this little word as, and it's an adverbial comparative conjunction.

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It's really important because where it talks about the woman submitting to the husband, it says as this and this and this.

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And so God gives object lessons in various ways to teach us, well, how does she submit?

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Is it just blank submission like a slave to a master? Or what is it?

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And the word as points us in many places to what the Lord means and how that submission should work and what kind of submission it is.

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And it's really important if you don't know that, what you end up having is an unhappy marriage with the man and the woman coming in my office or sometimes your office, a lot of the young ones that have kids in the school and sit down and the man says, she's not submitting to me and that's where you always start.

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And it's because he doesn't understand these adverbial comparative conjunctions, which we started looking at last time.

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So in verse 22 there in Ephesians chapter five, it says, wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands and look at the little word as.

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I like to underline it in your Bible or bold it in your phone because it says as unto the

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Lord. Now that's the first one. And the little word as in Greek simply means in the same manner as or same as it does in English.

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And not always though, there are three different Greek words at least for as and we'll look at that. But the first one, the plain word is in that manner or like that or as that.

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So as unto the Lord. Well, that one is a little problematic if you don't have all the information in the context because it can lead back to the problem we've already discussed about the man saying, well,

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I'm just the authority in the home you gotta obey. And that is not how it works in this context, but that is the first instruction.

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So the first word as means that the wife submission to the husband is contingent upon the husband being like Christ who is the savior of the body.

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And look at verse 23, spells it out. For the husband, here is why she submits to the husband as unto

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Christ. See, if you only had that verse, it could be problematic, but you don't only have that verse. In fact, in the original, you don't have any verses.

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It's a letter. So you have to take the whole letter. You have to take the whole context. Context is everything so often in Bible interpretation.

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So look at verse 23. For the husband, now the word for refers to the previous verse.

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So how is it that the wife is to submit to the husband? And why is it? Well, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as like Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body.

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So Jesus is not just the head, he's also the savior. He's the protector in this case of the weaker vessel, if we think of the man and the woman.

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And the one who loves her life more than his life, Jesus thinks more of the church than himself.

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And he gave himself both while he was alive to the church, and I mean before his crucifixion, and then in his death to the church.

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And now he is living as our advocate before the father. He's still giving himself to the church.

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Now, if you understand that, gentlemen, she can submit to a man like that. And so it all has to come together.

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And these are some of the things we've been talking about. So here again, that in verse 23, the same little

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Greek word for as, just simply means what it does in English. Now, the next verse, all of a sudden, this little word as is a stronger word.

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

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And that word as has a little prefix added in front that means exactly.

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So now it's not just as, but exactly as. You see how that's a little stronger. So therefore, as exactly as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

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So the wife is to be subject to the husband exactly as the church is to Christ, but the man is supposed to take the place of, not take the place of, but act like Christ in the home and to love his wife like Christ loves the church and to take care of her like Christ takes care of the church and all of these things.

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So when we see that phrase exactly as, it's kind of makes it a little bit stronger, but then at the end of the verse, it says in everything, what does that leave out?

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So the next verse, we'll begin to list some of the reasons why the church is happily submissive to Jesus Christ.

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Now think about that for a moment, because it's gonna use that as an object lesson to teach us how it should be in the home with the man and the wife.

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So why is it that the church can happily be subject to Christ? Well, because he freed us from every lesser

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Lord, did he not? When he saved us, he freed us from Satan, from the world, from the flesh, he set us free and he set us on a new road.

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He took us out of darkness, brought us into light. And all of those things that we talked about the last couple of Sundays, we are so thankful for our salvation that we get to the place where it's quite easy to submit to Christ.

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I mean, you don't have to stop and think, well, should I submit to him or should we be equals? You know, we don't think that way, do we?

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With regard to Jesus. And so when it says that the wife should submit to the husband as under Christ, we start to see, okay, so let's look and see what are some of the things listed in this context that teaches us why it's easy for us to submit to Jesus.

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And then those same things may apply. So let's take a look. So we kind of took a look at that.

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Now, what's interesting is in verse 25, where it says, husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

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Now we have a third little Greek word for the word as, and it is the word kathos or kathes,

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I should say. And it adds this little prefix kata, and it means exceedingly as, it's even stronger.

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So husbands love your wives even exceedingly as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.

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Now, I don't think Jesus had to work on that too much to do that, it's what he wanted to do. I do understand his prayer in the garden, but still, nevertheless, thy will be done.

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And really, it's what he came to do. But gentlemen, it is not that natural for us to love our wives like Christ loved the church, to walk around the house spirit filled most of the time, it's not as easy for us.

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So we have to put more thought into it, more work into it than Jesus would, of course, and that's why I think it added that little exceedingly as.

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So we see that Christ also cleanses the church.

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Now, verse 26 says that he might sanctify and cleanse it, the church, with the washing of the water of the word.

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And if you remember last, I think that's the last thing we talked about last Sunday was that just as God spoke the universe into existence with his word, just as he's going to end the battle of Armageddon with his tongue, fire from his mouth and destroy the enemies, he'll do that again at the end of the thousand -year millennial kingdom.

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And so his word is what he gave us to show us about himself and to show us about ourselves and to teach us everything we know about the person and works of God.

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We wouldn't know that, we wouldn't know he exists, but we wouldn't know about him without that word. So he uses his word to cleanse the church, the bride, to make her be clean, to make her be pure, to make her grow, to make her be the wife that she is supposed to be.

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And the word of God is what does that. So what that tells us gentlemen in the home is that our words are extremely important to our wives.

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So we have to remember, first of all, everything you say, they will always remember it, okay?

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If you say something unkind, they will remember that you said that and they won't forget it. Now, if you say it again, it just multiplies.

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And they're not gonna forget it. They are not God, by the way, God can forget sins, right? Now they can forgive you, but they can't forget it.

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It's impossible for human. So be really careful what you say to your wives and how you say it's even more important than what you say.

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Say it with grace that it might edify her and always be thinking of edifying her, not of proving you're right all the time, that sort of thing.

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That's hard for us gentlemen, I know, but we have to work at this exceedingly to be exceedingly as Christ.

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So our words are extremely important. We'll talk about that more when we get sort of towards the end of the whole study and we talk about phileo love.

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There's three kinds of love that we have in a marriage. That middle one is like friendship love. That is not the same as agape.

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Agape, she will love you because of her heart, not yours. So like you can mess up, she still loves you if she's saved.

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That's agape, right? But phileo, the friendship part, it can go down a little bit based on the words you use on her and the things you do or don't do.

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And it can go down and down and down. You might need to build those back up a little bit by kindness and thinking of her more and listening more and all these things to make it go back up a little bit.

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It kind of goes up and down, phileo does. We'll talk about that when we get to it. But just let me say this, your words have a lot to do with that one.

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And so there we have it. Verse 27 says that he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle and so forth.

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And, you know, it's kind of interesting when you get down to verse 28, where it says, so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.

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He that loves his wife loves himself. Well, didn't the other scripture say that Jesus uses his word to cause the wife to be the woman that he wants her to be?

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Pure, you know, pure and spotless and without wrinkle and so forth. The word, his word accomplishes that.

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So our words and how we treat our wives in some big way, if we will love her like we love our own self, at least that much,

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I mean, that should be easier than loving her like Christ loved the church. That's a big order, right?

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But we can at least do that. Then it says we actually love ourselves when we do that.

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You know why? Because there's gonna be peace in the home. You're gonna have a response to that kind of love.

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You're gonna have a response to that kind of kindness. You're gonna have a response to those words.

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I will tell you one thing, women will respond to the words of a man. God has given that. Jesus is the example of he and his bride.

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The bride only can get saved if she has the water of the word and the Holy Spirit. She can't even become part of the bride if she doesn't have his word.

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So it's extremely important. But with the husband and the wife, the words of the man have an influence on the woman more than the man understands, unless he gets into this scripture like we're doing.

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And then once he understands that, then he can be more like Christ in the home and use his words for edification and so forth.

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Well, listen, I've heard women say in counseling, well, I know, Brother David, if you keep reading down in this passage, you're gonna find out where it says to honor him, to revere him and so forth.

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Well, how can I do that? He's not even living right. I've heard that so often. So, there is an aspect to which the honor and the reverence and the submission and the thing that she's supposed to do are somewhat dependent on you being who you're supposed to be.

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You talked about be, do, have at Sunday school. I mean, the man's got to be the man.

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I don't know a woman in the world that respects a man that's not the man. I know our society and television and Hollywood wants you to think the roles are opposite and so forth, but they're not.

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They can't change the word of how God made human beings. So, the man needs to be the man and he needs to understand that his words, his kindness, his actions influence her so much.

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It makes it very easy for her to submit when it comes to that time where he needs to be the tiebreaker.

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I mean, what if she thinks you need to do this in the home and the husband thinks you need to do this? What do you do? Do you buy into the world's concept that marriage is 50 -50?

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Well, that marriage will last about less than probably three years, maybe five at the most.

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It just doesn't work that way. There has to be a tiebreaker and it's the man. And sadly, it's the man even when the man doesn't know this information.

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But if I were a woman in a situation like that, I would try to get him in a Bible preaching church and get him under a pastor that can teach him how

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God says to be a man. It's a big help. And a lot of the problems I see, the couple's not in church all that much or they're going to a church that just preaches some kind of little happy thing for 20 minutes, a little devotionette to make everybody feel good and they go home and nobody's growing.

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And they wonder why they're having problems. They never even get into this information that God has so graciously given us.

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I mean, he made us, he made our brains, he made our bodies, he made everything about us. He knows our emotions.

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He knows our intellect. He knows when he pulled Eve out of Adam that he took some of the qualities out of Adam, put them in her.

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So without each other, they're not even whole. God knows all of that. So surely he can teach us how to make that work.

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And he does. And so it goes on, it says, this is a great mystery.

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And you say, well, how can we even use this information that's supposed to be talking about how the church treats each other or how

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Christ treats the church to even make application to a marriage? Well, it's because the scripture does in the context.

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Look at verse 32. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

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It all ties it all together in the context. So the one is used as an object lesson for the other.

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We can understand more about our relationship with Jesus by looking at our relationship with our wife in a good marriage.

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We can learn more about our relationship with our wife by looking at our relationship with Jesus in a good walk and back and forth.

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And it works that way in the context. So this husband is to love his wife, where it says love the wife in verse 33.

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It's present active imperative, which means it's a command from the Lord that we do that, gentlemen. And it's also not him.

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It's not passive. So it's not him doing it to us. It's work we need to do. Like in your Sunday school lesson, you were talking about experiential righteousness.

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That's different than positional righteousness, right? Positional is things

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God did to us. Like he took our imputation. He took our sins and placed them on Christ when he was on the cross.

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And he died in our place with our sins in his body. And he also took his righteousness and purity and beauty and love and imputed that to us.

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And therefore we're saved. And that is a beautiful picture. That's positional righteousness.

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There is nothing you can do once you are saved. There's nothing you do to lose your positional righteousness. But there's also experiential righteousness taught throughout the scripture like you taught today.

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And how do you know the difference? By the context and the grammar and all of it. But experiential righteousness is okay.

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Now we're saved, so live like it. Don't be hypocritical. Don't live like a lost person, right? We're saved, so live like it.

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And so there's an effort that must be made. I was thinking about this, Katie. You know how in Tradeway, we talk about best practices a lot.

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Like any particular business that you're going to try to endeavor to start or run, you need to find everything that, all the information there is on that business on the best way to practice that business and then do it.

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Even when that's hard, right? And I was thinking, you know what I am? I'm kind of a, I am a five -point

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Calvinist who believes in best practice. So I'm a practical

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Calvinist, not a theoretical Calvinist. So when you're practical, what that means is, kind of like Brother Otis put it, like God's in control of everything and you can be sure that you need to make plans, but he's going to put you on his path and it's going to end up being his plan.

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It's going to be better than your plan. Your business is his business, your money is his business, all of that. You can be sure he's in control of everything.

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He is the sovereign God of the universe, but you can also be sure that he holds us accountable, that we do the best we can every single day with the equipment that we have on that day.

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The knowledge we have of him and the equipment he's given us, we got to do the best we can do and that's our job, right? So there is that, and some

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Calvinists don't believe in that part, but it's in the Bible. In fact, everywhere you see the sovereignty of God, you see responsibility in the same verse or the verse below it.

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I've never seen a place where that's not true. So it's both, it's both are really important. So when we want to talk about our marriages, there is a lot of effort that we need to put into it, gentlemen, to be better at being a man, be better at being the husband and the father.

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And we can't just say, well, I'm where God, I'm the perfect peach, you know, I'm right where God wants me to be. Yeah, you can say that, but he wants you to be somewhere ahead of that tomorrow.

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He wants you to be growing stronger and stronger and more and more like Christ. And when we do, then the submission of the wife is a response that's quite natural.

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All right, so nevertheless, verse 33, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

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So it's kind of interesting when you look at the word love where the husband is exhorted to love, it's imperative, which means it's a command of God for you to do that.

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So you got to put some experiential stuff in there. You've got to work at it. But when it tells the wife to reverence the husband, it's, let me find it here.

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It is present passive subjunctive. You know what that means?

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Now subjunctive is really interesting in Greek, also in English, but in Greek, it's very interesting.

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First of all, what does passive mean? Where she's commanded to reverence her husband, what does passive mean? Something bigger and stronger than her will make her want to be that way.

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That's God, okay? But what does subjunctive mean? It's very interesting.

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It's kind of, remember Dave, when I had the light on Romans 10, 13, as far as how the

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Greek reads, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And in the Greek, it's subjunctive.

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So it actually means whosoever shall desire to call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's a little better understanding.

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That's how it works with this. That subjunctive part means it's something in the future that may happen, but it hasn't happened yet.

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But the desire is there because God put it there. Now, isn't that interesting?

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So she is not given an imperative to reverence the husband. God has put a desire in her heart in the future to reverence her husband.

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It's been put there by God and it may or may not happen. That's what the

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Greek means. Now, have you heard that before? You don't hear men thinking that's what this is saying, but that is what it's saying and it's

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God's message. And so her ability to reverence that, now you think about that in today's society, ladies, do you see that anywhere in the world system that you should reverence?

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I mean, if you look up the word reverence, it's a really strong word in the Greek. It's revering the husband like Sarah did

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Abraham. Now, ladies, in this world system that you live in today, where do you ever even get the feeling that that should happen?

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In fact, if you watch television, I love the way brother Roloff, if you ever knew him, he called it

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Heli -vision. He was so funny. But if you do watch TV, you watch any, which

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I don't watch these. I mean, I flip and I see them and I know I'm aware of it. There are sitcoms and every one of them, the man is made to look ridiculously stupid, the father, and the wife is the strong leader and the kids are rebellious.

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Well, they would be in that situation, but so at least that part's true. But the father is made to be looked like a total bumbling idiot.

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Okay, so when you think of reverencing, even your own husband, if you've ever watched that or been influenced by it, hopefully before you were saved, hopefully now you're saved, you don't watch those, but in the back of your mind, you're saying, well, that's kind of weird to reverence my husband.

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I mean, he ain't Abraham, right? You can have that feeling in you and not even know it because of the society you live in.

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But the Bible says God has already put that in the passive sense. He's already put that in you to want to be that way in your home.

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And subjunctives means you may or may not be that way, but if the man will pick up his role, like we've talked about, you will be that way and it'll make it the happiest home there can be.

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Because I've said this, marriages are generally, and this is both from my own experience in my marriage, but also for counseling for 40 years with couples, is it's either a little bit of heaven on earth or it's hell.

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It's very seldom in between. Now, and I don't mean it has to stay either way forever, but it could be one of those ways now and you might need to change that.

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And I've said this before and I'll say it again, what's the best way to change? What if you're learning something from this series?

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You say, you know, I want my home to be more like Brother David's talking about. You know what?

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It can start today with an apology. It's that simple. You sit down, you apologize, say, look, I'm dad, father,

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I have not done right. I'm sorry, but tomorrow we're starting over. Or the wife can say that, you can both say it.

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You can say that to your kids. Did you know that your kids would admire an apology from the parents from time to time to admit they don't think they're right about everything and just say, you know,

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I hadn't been the right kind of parent, you know? I mean, I've seen people. You know how you hear psychologists say by the time they're three, it's too late.

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Their personality is totally done. And if you hadn't fixed them by the time they're three, it's too late. That's not true if you know the

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Lord and you got a Bible. Because I've told this before. So some of you heard this. I'm fully aware of at least one five -year -old who was a total mess.

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This was years and years ago. So it's not any of your kids, don't worry. This was years ago. He was a shaking.

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He was so much a mess. And his parents came into the church back then. Charlotte and I taught them what our mentors,

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Dr. Freeman and Pat had taught us as a young couple of years ago. Biblical child rearing. We taught it to them.

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They started practicing. The first thing they did was they apologized to that five -year -old. Imagine this little boy just all over the place, bouncing off the walls, everything.

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Sat him down, apologized to him. Said, mommy and daddy have not been right. You know, the Bible says that when you rebel or you lie, we're supposed to spank you and we haven't been doing it and we're gonna start tomorrow.

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First, the child forgave him, but he also knew we're going a different direction. And you know, within a year, he was a good boy.

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Now he's a policeman here in Corsicana. Think about that. Isn't that something? So the thing about three years, yeah,

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I know psychologists will say that, but that's like without a Bible and without God. So if you have those, they can be eight years old and you just now learn this, you can apologize to them, start right there.

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Things should be okay. So wherever you are, you can start with an apology, get things more lined up with these scriptures and life goes on and gets a whole lot better really quickly.

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All right, well, let me see. In verse 24, therefore, as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything.

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And I just point out the thought that really the husband is sort of like the tiebreaker.

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And if the woman knows that going into the marriage, it's a lot better. If she doesn't, then you have to get in scripture together and see that together.

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And she has to see it for the God said it, not the husband didn't say it, God said it. And she has to receive that because you're never,

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I mean, you're always going to have some times where there's a strong position that's the opposite by the husband and the wife on something that's sort of major.

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And if you just can't resolve that, the husband has to be the tiebreaker and ladies, he won't always be right.

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So let him make some mistakes, especially if you're a young couple, let him make some mistakes. He's got to grow in wisdom and guess what's the best teacher is mistakes.

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And brother Otis used to tell me, David, it's not a mistake. God sent it so you would learn, but when it left

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God's hand, he meant it for good. Don't call it a mistake. Well, you can do whatever you want on that, but I'm just saying.

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So this is the fact of what God is teaching here. Now you might say, why did

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God make the man? If he had to have an authority structure, why didn't he let the woman be the ruler? And the scripture answers it very simply and very quickly and briefly.

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It just says, because the man was made first and the woman from the man. It's an authority structure.

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Now, as far as if we keep going in scripture, as far as the roles of the wife,

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I would love to finish this today because we need to move on. But if you look in 1

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Peter 3, 6, most of our scripture was in Ephesians, but there's a few other places.

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1 Peter 3, 6 says, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, object lesson, right?

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Calling him Lord. Now there's a funny one to think about in today's society. You go around your house, calling your husband

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Lord. I would forgive you if you left that one out.

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Ladies, you don't really, I think the husband would be a little uncomfortable if you did that. But that's an object lesson, right?

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It's an object lesson. Like that, whose daughter you are, you're the daughters of Sarah, as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement.

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I think that phrase is interesting. Who knows what that means? Ladies, like you treat your husband kind of like Sarah did

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Abraham. First thing you're thinking, but he's not like Abraham, but don't think that. It's an object lesson.

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You treat him like that. And it says, and you'll do well with that as long as you're not afraid with any amazement.

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What does that mean? I've got kind of a scary proposition for a new young lady going off into a new marriage when she understands these things.

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Really? I'm supposed to act like that? Okay, that's enough of that. But that's my theory on what that means.

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If you can come up with something better, tell me after the sermon. Titus 2 .4

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says that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

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Whoa, what does that mean? That's very serious because if Christian homes don't learn this information and the man doesn't play that role right, and it makes it more difficult for the wife to play her proper role and she doesn't, then the world sees that and they say, well, they're no different than we are.

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Look at them. They got as many divorces as we do. God's not real. If God was real, they'd have a perfect marriage.

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They'd have perfect children. That's how the world looks at us, right? Even the news media, if they wanted to interview us in our church, they'd come and they'd look for the problem areas and say, well, isn't that kind of like the world does it?

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And we'd be embarrassed. And so, that's interesting that it says so that the word of God be not blasphemed.

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So we are responsible to have really good marriages because the world is watching us.

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Your neighbor is watching you. The kids at school and their parents are watching your kids and you. And it is a witness to the

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Lord when we have a really, really good marriage. People will talk about it. It's so uncommon that people will talk about it.

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Wow, they had such a wonderful marriage. It's kind of uncommon, but it doesn't have to be because you can apologize today and you can start over tomorrow.

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And you can have this kind of marriage because God offers it to every Christian couple and it is a testimony to the world.

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All right, so that kind of covers that little part. I'm only rushing because you guys sang and prayed so long.

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You didn't leave time for the important stuff. Okay. The wife should reverence the husband.

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We covered that in Ephesians 5 .33. She is to learn from her husband. I think that's really interesting.

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In 1 Corinthians 14 .34, let the women keep silence in the churches for it's not permitted to them to speak, but that they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.

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And if they will learn anything, let them first ask their husbands at home. So why have

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I done marriage counseling for 40 years with women coming to me asking me what stuff means in the Bible, because their husband didn't know.

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I told you gentlemen, when we got to this stuff about the role of the women, it'd be mostly preaching at you, didn't I? Was I right?

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Yeah, okay. So when we take a look at that, it's really important here to understand this and I'd have to admit most of my life in the ministry,

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I did not understand this until fairly recently, actually, last few years, where it says let her keep silence in churches as under the law.

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Well, when you go and you examine how it is in the law, that's talking about in the synagogue or back then in the temple.

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And this is talking about in the church. It's not talking about in the home. I mean, women can disciple men.

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It's examples of it in the Bible. If it's in their home and the man is there with her, there's no reason she can't. But in church, it's not allowed.

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In the congregation, it's not allowed. The men are supposed to be the leaders. And the scripture is so clear on that.

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Today's churches reject it. I talked to a really wonderful young man, a new friend I've got, who's in the word.

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He understands so much, but I think he thinks you can sort of excuse these parts and doesn't have to be that way.

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It'd be kind of okay for a woman to be a preacher. It's not okay. And the scripture says two reasons.

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She can't be in authority over a man because the man was made first. And she can't teach the man because she was deceived and he was not.

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He goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. It has nothing to do with Paul's society that he lived in. And Paul was just a chauvinist because of his society.

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It has nothing to do with any of that, like they teach in the seminaries now or on YouTube. So it has to do with Genesis and the creation of the man and the woman taken from the man.

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And the fact that she's the one Satan went to and the man knew exactly what he was doing when he sinned.

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He was not deceived. He willfully sinned. The woman, however, thought she was obeying God when she did it.

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So she is not the best to lead in the doctrinal study of the scripture because Satan could come in the home or the church and introduce error more easily through her than the man.

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And if you don't believe that, just read the scripture. If you don't like how it sounds, I didn't write it. Don't blame me.

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And I always love it when people can come to me and show me where I'm wrong, because I'll change.

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I'll correct it, apologize for it, fix it. I'll do that on this too. So if I'm wrong, come show me, please.

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But I think if we really understand this is how God has lined it out, after sin happened and the authority structures and it all works more smoothly,

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God's way rather than our way will be happy homes and a happy church.

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All right, so let's see. My next point is, we'll not get discussed much.

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I'll let you read this one at home. The wife is to make sure that there is a good, let's say intimate relationship at home.

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And we already talked about this on the role of the man. This is found in 1 Corinthians chapter seven, verses three through five, homework, okay?

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And then that's it. I also had a note that it would be helpful when we're studying the role of the woman in the home and the church to read

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Proverbs 31 and understand what the Proverbs 31 woman is, because it's vastly different than what most of the men who come into counseling with me think marriage is supposed to be and the man's in control all the time.

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Read Proverbs 31 and see what the woman is supposed to be doing too, and can do the privileges that she has and the amazing things that she can accomplish in the world and in the home.

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You got to put it in the context of that too. So we finished what we will do next Sunday. We'll pick up the last point on this study is the role of the children, and that won't take up the whole time.

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And then next time I'm gonna have a handout for every couple, every married couple. And it's gonna talk about, we're gonna talk a little bit about the three types of love, and especially, we kind of know a lot about agape because we teach about it in a lot of sermons.

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But phileo, we don't study that a lot, but in marriage, it's really important to be friends too, to also be friends.

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And how kindness and words and all that can affect that. So I'm gonna give a handout to you to take home.

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It's got like emotional needs of humans, okay? So I want each of you to have two sheets, one for the husband, one for the wife.

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They say the same things on them, the same basic emotional needs all humans have. But what I'm gonna want you to do is the husband over by himself, not together, but individually, to put them in order of importance to the husband.

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And then I want the wife to take the same list separately over here and put it in order of importance. And then after that, when you're done, compare notes.

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That is a fun exercise. So we'll end with that maybe next Sunday or Sunday after. Okay, so that's where we're headed.

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And after that, we will dive back into a new book, verse by verse, and a new decade.

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Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you that you not only let us know you're there by your beautiful and amazing and powerful and awesome creation, and all the design that you put into the universe, every little tiny thing under the microscope and every massive thing under the telescope and everything in between, but you also gave us your word and told us about yourself and about us and about salvation and about the fact that Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world for your people.

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And we thank you so much for that. We thank you also for these practical teachings throughout the whole of the

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Bible that it's such a practical book. It's speaking on everything that you teach us about economics and finance and getting along with other people and about ourselves and about how to have a happy marriage and how to have good, obedient children and all the things that you teach us in this very concise book that we hold in our hands.

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Thank you for that book. Thank you for preserving it to the last generation. We ask you to go with us in our time of fellowship now, bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus' name, amen.

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If you're visiting, we have food every Sunday and we have plenty for visitors. If you can, I know you gotta get to Houston, but if you can stay, if you like, we have plenty and it'll be ready in about 10 minutes.