Loving Your Wife - [Ephesians 5:25]

I was asked to talk about marriage tonight. And I'm like, well, I don't really know where to start because I don't know what you've already covered the last few weeks.

So I was given a suggested topic, you know, what you wish you would have known or done early in your marriage. And so I thought about what to share.

And I thought, well, I'll just share what I've been sharing with men in the Czech Republic and then in Virginia these last few months, where I started a men's group because I'm burdened for the men in our churches.

I feel like a lot of times we haven't had very biblical teaching. I've had pastors tell me,

I don't know how to lead my family in Czech Republic. I've never been taught how to lead my family. And so I thought, well,

OK, well, let's let's start with loving your wife. If you're going to be a leader in your home, it has to begin with love.

So anyways, we've had several sessions talking about leading your wives, leading your marriages.

And so I told Mike, well, I guess the text, if I have to give a text, would be Ephesians five. Not that the goal is to expound that tonight because we want to have it more interactive.

But that is the text that we'll kind of be looking at tonight a little bit. And so basically,

I'm going to skip a few pages of stuff that I have here because I have a whole message on leading your family.

Actually, two messages out of this one. And part of it is what we're going to talk about tonight, which is leading your wife with love.

When you look at Ephesians five, you can see there that Christ gives a parallel with the relationship of the husband and wife as a parallel with Christ and his bride, the church.

And so that tells me that our marriages say something about the gospel, right? I mean, if he uses that illustration, we're to love our wives as Christ loved the church.

And he gives parallels there. And that means our marriages communicate something about the gospel.

Even our relationship with our wife, even how we love our wife, communicates something about the gospel. And when you think about Ephesians five, you know, we're to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

That's not possible, really, apart from the gospel. Wives submitting to your husbands, that's not something that we see taught in the world today.

That only takes place because of gospel transformation in our lives. It's taken place through regeneration.

So tonight, I just want to focus in on what we as men should do to better love our wives.

Now, I don't know how many of you guys are here because your wife told you you should go. But if you're here, you're here.

So let's keep the tomatoes in our pockets. And I want this to be an encouraging time for all of us.

So, well, first, just open your Bible and we'll just look at Ephesians five. Some of what I say tonight is from my own notes.

Some of it I've got from the outline that I'm going to look at tonight is from MacArthur. And I have a couple of illustrations from Sproul and even from Wayne Mack that I think will be helpful for us.

So I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but just pull out some biblical truths that we can apply in our lives.

But Ephesians 522 says, wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as also

Christ is the head of the church. And he is the savior of the body. So already we see roles in the marriage relationship.

Wife has a role. The husband has a role. And you know what? In the Trinity, each member of the Trinity has a role.

And in Scripture, we see that the son always submits to the father. And it was the son who sent the spirit.

So there's roles even within the Trinity and there's roles within the family. Then verse 24, therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, let also wives be to their own husbands and everything.

So again, it gives an illustration of Christ and his relationship to the church and wives and their husbands. Then verse 25, husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.

So tonight, I want to start with what by first of all, we're supposed to love our wives. We have to understand, well, what is love?

What is love? So we look at society today and we hear people talk about love. How do we hear the world describe love?

A lot of times you hear people talk about their relationship with their husband and wives and things you see on TV.

How does that differ from what we see in Scripture? OK, so we see love is portrayed as an experience,

OK, expressed as a feeling, as an experience. Exactly.

In fact, a lot of times you hear people say, well, I've fallen in love. That makes it sound like an event, you know, something something that's happened to you.

It's something indescribable with some sort of an object or something out there. And so it's described also as a physical attraction.

Some people describe it as in a sexual way. You know, we make love. It's an activity or a benefit.

You know, when somebody does something for you that you like, you know, I love that person. Sometimes it's just words, you know, like love talk.

You hear people speak of love in that way, or it's in a state in which you are, you know, I'm in love.

They're like, it's like you're in some sort of a state.

And if things stay in a certain boundary, then you are in love.

Things go outside of that or outside of your comfort zone, then I don't feel in love anymore. And so you hear people talk about it that time, that way.

A lot of times, in fact, this past year, I was in a conversation with somebody. And we were talking about the homosexual debate, homosexuality.

And and somebody told me, well, you can't help who you love. I was like, really?

You know, is this something that overtakes you? Yeah, so it's an example for how they should relate to their mother and respect her and show love towards her.

I want to talk about that a little bit more later. But, you know, the world describes love way different than Scripture.

In fact, I wanted to talk about some ways that the Bible describes love. And first of all, if love is something that you can't help, something that just happens to you, then

Jesus was a liar. Because Jesus gave a command, he said, we're to even love our enemies.

So it's a command in Scripture to love, regardless of how the other person may treat you or speak towards you or act towards you or to demonstrate love towards others.

So for somebody to say, you know, you can't help who you love, well, either that's true or that's a lie.

And obviously that's a lie, because Jesus said, you shall love your neighbor. You have heard it said that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who despitefully use you.

So there and persecute you. So there he even tells you how to express love towards them. You bless them.

You do good to them. You pray for them. Which is the opposite of what we see in society today.

But because love is a command, we express love even when we're not loved in return in Scripture.

And so we don't just love when our wife submits to us. That's not what Ephesians is talking about. And Jesus modeled this.

Second of all, we see love expressed as an action, as an act of giving. Our brother here said a minute ago and Solomon talks about how we love our enemies.

He said, Proverbs 25, 21. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.

So there we see love expressed in action. And then if you look at First Corinthians 13, how is love described?

Whole list of verbs, isn't there? Whole list of actions. Love suffers long, is kind, does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. So we see a lot of verbiage here, a lot of verbs and how love is exemplified, how love is lived out in our lives.

So when we look at Scripture, we see that it's focused on others and it's not considering ourselves, you know, doesn't think evil, it's not selfish, does not seek its own.

No, it's focused on expressing, expressing love and care and concern for others, even if there are enemies.

And only the gospel can cause us to love that way, right? I mean, who naturally loves their enemies?

Now, it's just not something that by nature we want to do, is it? We don't have that desire apart from the gospel.

The gospel is what causes us to want to love our enemies. Even when they're not very lovable.

So only those who first love Christ are enabled to to love in that way, because he gives us the ability to to love our enemies.

So when it comes to marriage counseling, a lot of times you'll hear people say, what do they say?

They say, well, you know, I don't love my wife anymore or I don't love my husband. So how would you respond to that if you heard somebody say to you, well,

I don't love my my wife or my husband anymore, based on some of the things we just read.

Or that you've just expressed, what's that? OK, she said, what reason does

God have to love us? OK, what are you doing to love your husband?

I thought I saw another hand somewhere. OK, yeah.

So when they come in, say I don't love my husband or wife anymore, I would say, well, you're not very obedient, are you?

Because it's a command, right? First thing we looked at is it's a command. It's something that we're commanded to do. And it's not a choice, it's not a suggestion, it's not optional, it's not based on how we feel, it's not based on what the other person has done for us.

No, it's a command in Scripture. We're to love Christ. We're commanded to love God, aren't we? We're also commanded to love others.

We're to love our enemies. And as husbands and wife, we're commanded to love one another. So first of all, first of all, if you're not if you say

I don't love my husband or my wife anymore, then you're extremely disobedient person. Because the

Colossians 319 says, Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. And when you stop loving your wives, you obviously are being selfish, you're being you have bitterness towards your wife.

So Paul commands the Colossian men to love their wives and to not harbor bitterness towards their wives.

You know, if their wives doesn't don't do something that they want or expect, that's no reason to not love your wife.

R .C. Sproul gives a great little illustration about how men stop loving their wives after they become married.

And I'm just going to read this paragraph. He says before the wedding, the man seeks to woo the woman and win her to be his wife.

And he is as zealous as an Olympic bound athlete. He gives her his undivided attention, makes her the center of his attention.

After marriage is achieved, he turns his attention to other goals. He figures the romantic aspect of his life is under control and now goes on to scale new heights.

He devotes less and less time to his wife, treating her as less and less important. In the meantime, the woman, being accustomed to the courting process, enters the marriage relationship, expecting that to continue.

But as the marriage progresses, she finds herself devoting more attention to her husband than she did before the marriage, while he is devoting less attention to her.

Now she is washing his clothes, cooking his meals, making his bed, cleaning his house, maybe even packing his suitcase.

At the same time, he is becoming less affectionate, though maybe more erotic, taking her out out less and generally paying her less attention.

Would you say this is true or untrue? I would say in my life it's probably pretty true, you know, because before before you get married,

I mean, you're like a laser beam focused on trying to serve your wife, opening all the doors, you know, doing special things for her.

And then after you get married, like you said, you know, you're you're focused on your job and things and and you stop doing some of those things.

I mean, how many of you still open the wife for your door, the door for your wife? I'm sorry. Yeah, I said that wrong.

How many of you still open the door for your wife? You know, so, you know, we should still be just as chivalrous.

I can't even talk tonight, chivalrous after we're married as we were before we were married.

And then so Sproul goes on. So then problems arise and he's wondering what is wrong. So he talks, he talks.

And so then he goes on and talks about men saying, you know, my wife is different now than what she was before we were married.

And Sproul says, well, who do you suppose changed her? Yeah, we'll have a little marriage cancel section here in a minute.

So he says, in a sense, the man has the wife a man has is the wife he has produced.

And maybe he's produced a monster. And you know what? I've seen men turn their wives into monsters.

I went to seminary with a guy. We were actually roommates in college and going to seminary together. And he turned his wife into a beast.

They both were in all kinds of sexual sin with other people and horrific things. And his wife, to my knowledge, wasn't like that before they were married.

But, you know, he led her into his wicked lifestyle. And so, you know, we can lead our wives to become prideful.

If we're prideful, we can lead our wives to become a lot of things that we wouldn't want them to be, because, you know, sin is unchecked in our lives and we're not walking with Christ.

So, you know, maybe your wife is like she is because she's a product of your own making, because you haven't led her.

You haven't loved her for a couple of decades. She's not used to you being sacrificial. And so she doesn't have high expectations from you.

And maybe you don't have high expectations of her. Or should I maybe I should say instead of high expectations,

I should say biblical expectations. And so people get frustrated when their expectations aren't met.

I want to talk about that a little bit. So love is expressed in actions.

And Sproul gives an illustration of how we can our our act, our acts of expressing love to our wives can grow cold as the marriage goes on.

And so we want to be mindful of that. We want to be aware of that. Another way we see love expressed in Scripture is that it's selfless.

And this is seen in Paul's description of Christ's love for the church, where his primary concern was not of himself, but he loved her and gave himself for her.

His primary concern was for his bride, the church. In fact, I don't know if you've seen this before as you've read through Corinthians, but 1st

Corinthians 733 says that one who is married is to be concerned with how he may please his wife.

So question is, how concerned are you about how you can please your wife?

Well, if we're concerned about how we may please our wife, well, that what does that require of us? I mean, it requires that we invest time in that effort, energy, thoughts, prayers.

Because we want to please our wives and there's many ways in which we can bring pleasure to our wives spiritually, emotionally, physically, verbally.

And so we want to talk about some of those things tonight. And I'm just going to jump ahead here.

But if we're serious about loving our wives, then it will be a great concern for us. And a lot of times husbands are like, well, you know, it's hard to love my wife because she's not very submissive.

She doesn't function in her role. And so it's harder for me to function in my role. Well, that's true.

I mean, when you don't love your wife as Christ loved the church, it's not as easy for her to want to be submissive to you.

And when she's not submissive to you, naturally, you know, with the flesh, you know, it's not you don't have the excitement maybe to express love to her as Christ commanded you.

So it kind of works both ways. But God wants us to be concerned about how we love our wives because he's commanded us to do that and given us a model that in Christ's relationship to the church of how he sacrificially gave his love for her.

And so basically I'm stealing MacArthur's outline for the rest of our time here. From Ephesians, where we see four ways that love is expressed towards the wife in Ephesians 5, 25 to the end of the chapter.

And it's not what we see on television. But we see it, first of all, expressed as sacrificial.

Verse 25, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself or there's a there's a sacrifice there.

There's a sacrifice of his own life. The question is, is how do we how do we sacrifice?

How do we sacrificially express love to our wives? And you have some examples or at least ways that we should be if you're not already should be sacrificially loving your wife.

Well, first of all, we're going to be waiting to hand over. OK. OK. You know that she likes help in an area you don't want to.

But, hey, I'm going to sacrifice, you know, laying on the couch or watching TV and I'm going to help her wash clothes.

Yeah, if you don't think it's work to stay home and watch your kids, then try to let your wife go away for a couple of days.

No, Lord. Yeah, I've done that a few times and it's it's a lot of work. Oh, my goodness. Cooking all those meals, washing the dishes or getting the kids to do their chores.

A lot of times it's not easy. But, you know, the natural tendency is to want to come home and think, you know,

I've worked all day. At least you can do is, well, no, the least you could do is help out with the kids or something.

So. But we need to realize that if we truly love our wives, then.

We're to be more concerned of how she feels than how we feel. So we set our hearts to loving our wives in such a way that we don't expect her to do things for us because we we demand it or we desire it.

True love in scripture doesn't place demands on the other. It's sacrificial love.

Christ didn't say, well, he didn't tell the church, you know, I'll die for you if if you do something for me.

No, it was he gave his life. Willingly, you know, there was no demands placed upon the church.

He came, he gave and he keeps on giving of himself to us, gives us grace.

So I love what Charles Spurgeon says. He says, a man who truly loves his wife has his heart set upon her, not merely with the eye, but with his soul.

She has a mansion in his heart from which she can never be cast away. She has become a portion of himself, a member of his body, part of his flesh and bones.

And so is the church to Christ. And, you know, it's hard to you can't love your wives that way apart from the spirit.

The world can't love that way. The world doesn't love that way. But we can because we have the spirit. We have the love of God poured out in our hearts.

We have the ability to love sacrificially, to give of ourselves. You know, Christ's love for the church cost him his life.

He purchased his bride with his own blood. And it was a willful sacrifice. It was a willful giving of himself.

He placed no demands upon the father. Father, I'll do this if my bride or the church does this.

You know, Christ placed no demands before the father, saying that he would give himself and pay and purchase the church with his own blood.

Now it was willful, sacrificial. It was it was giving his best for the best of his bride.

And so as we sacrificially love our wife, you know, we come home, we're tired. Sacrificial love responds to the wife.

Well, what would you how can I help you or what would you like for me to do? And maybe you don't want to do it, but she says, well, let's go.

I'd like to go shopping or let's go for a walk or help her to do the to the laundry or something that that sacrificial love in action.

And so at this point, you deny yourself, you deny your flesh and your desires for what.

We bring her pleasure, because why? Because for Corinthians seven says we're to be about trying to please our wives.

And my wife always tells me it's not the big things, it's the little things that speak the loudest.

And she said, if the little things are what screams loudly, I love you. A lot of times we think if we do some big thing for our wife, buy her a big present or something that that expresses our love.

And I don't know if you ladies are like my my wife, but she says it's the little things. I don't know.

Maybe some of you ladies can say something. OK.

OK, that's perfect illustration. OK, good. OK. Yeah, so we see the example of sacrificial love in scripture and and it's something that we are to model in our lives.

So I told the men in our church. I said, go home and ask your wife how you can serve her, how you can encourage her, how you can express your love to her, because I think some wives have been so used to their husbands, not sacrificially showing love to them that they don't even they no longer even ask their husbands to help them.

And we don't want our wives to feel that way. OK, we're good. OK, guys,

I hope you're taking notes. So, you know, I tell guys, if you want your your wife to get excited about you, then try going home and asking your wife, you know, how can

I serve you? How can I help you? How can I? How can I show love to you?

How can I help you? And and watch how she responds. But don't just do it once and think you've you've you've won.

No, it's something that we should be mindful of regularly on a weekly basis. And so I tell our guys, look, if you've never done it before, then don't just do it once, but do it.

Do it often until it becomes more habitual in your life that you're used to putting your wife and her desires and her needs and her wants before your own, not because of what she can do for you or not what you hope she'll do for you, but because Christ has commanded you to love her and you're going to care for her because of who she is and because you seek her well -being, you seek her happiness.

And second of all, we seek her purity. You know, the second aspect of loving our wives in Ephesians fives and verse twenty six and twenty seven where you see that it's a purifying love that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word that he might present to her, present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

So genuine biblical love for our wives is not just sacrificial love, but it's also a purifying love as we see her grow and sanctification as she's purified by the by the word, the washing of the word in her inner soul.

And so it's a love that seeks her spiritual benefit. It's a love that's focused on her inner beauty and the holiness of her heart.

And of course, Paul tells us here how it's done, it says, with the washing of water with the word. And so, you know,

I ask yourself, how have you been doing this in your in your marriage? I have

I've have wives tell tell me before that, you know, I've laid the laid the Bible on our kitchen table hoping that my husband will read it either for himself or us together.

I hope and I pray and hope that he reads it, at least for himself, not for both of us.

And we should never we should never allow that to happen in our lives. We want our wives to continually be exposed to the word, we want her to be continually influenced by the word, continually hearing the preaching of the word and to see her growing in holiness and sanctification.

We should want her to participate in Bible studies. I have a family member who doesn't like it when his wife goes to Bible study too much.

Like, really? OK, so and we should all continually be trying to teach her things from the word, if we truly love her and concern for her wants what's best for her, then part of that expression of our love to her is exposing her to truth.

To help her sharpen her spiritual sword. I know we're to be the shepherds and we're the pastors of our home, and so we are to pursue after her purity.

And to to help her grow spiritually, so it's a purifying love, I tell our guys in our church and I tell this to myself, you know, my wife is my first disciple.

I don't know, have any has anybody ever heard of the thought of the concept of discipling your wife?

I remember we were going through First Timothy in our men's Bible study and where we got to chapter two on how women are to dress modestly and things.

And I told our guys, I said, you know what, you are to teach your wives and your daughters what this means, how to dress modestly, how to adorn themselves with godliness.

If we're not teaching them, then who's going to teach them? How many sermons a year is the pastor able to spend on these type of things?

And he's preaching through books of the Bible. You don't hit on these verses regularly. And so we're to take leadership, we're to take responsibility and pursue our wife's purity.

That's even teaching them how to dress, how to adorn themselves with godliness, how to pray and not rely on the pastor, not rely on the church.

And I mean, what's what's Christ doing here? He's given a parallel between the husband and wife relationship and that in the church and Christ relationship.

So we're to we're to model or we're to we're to duplicate what we see between Christ and the church.

It's a sanctifying love, purifying love. And then thirdly, in verse twenty eight to twenty nine, it's a nurturing love.

Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the

Lord does the church. So we're to love our wives as our own bodies. How do we love our own bodies? You ever thought about that, how you love yourself, how you love your body?

Well, most people, they give utmost care to their bodies, don't they? Don't we want to be don't we want to feel good, feel comfortable, we'd be well fed, we want to be free of pain, free of stress, free of worries.

There's a lot of ways that we seek to bring pleasure and comfort to our bodies because we we care for ourselves, we love ourselves.

Well, the same energy and care that we give to caring and loving our own selves were to give towards our wives.

So that means, well, if I love my own body so much that, you know, I'm willing to take extra time to get more sleep or eat more or do something to make myself feel better or to be stronger, you know, a lot of people spend a lot of time in the gym.

Well, what time what kind of time are we investing and loving our wives and nurturing our wives and caring for them?

I saw a hand over here. Thank you. I couldn't have given a better illustration. Well, praise the

Lord. He should be up here teaching tonight. What am

I doing up here? Excellent. Yeah.

So we lay things, you know, how many guys I mean, how many guys are devoted to like hunting and fishing? I mean,

I know guys that every spare moment they're out of work, they're in a boat or in a tree stand or something.

And so I was at the doctor this past week and I mentioned something about hunting because I did some hunting in Virginia.

And she said in the doctor, she said, yeah, she said, I'm a I'm a hunting widow. And I was like, first,

I don't know what she meant about that, but now I understand what she means, like she's a widow during hunting season, like she doesn't have a husband during hunting season.

He's always out in the tree stand. And and then at church the other day, another lady said, yeah, I'm a.

I don't know, she named something, her husband's into sports or something, you know, basketball widow or something, and I was like, oh, during basketball season or whatever, her husband is coaching, you know, little, you know, little kids teams and he's watching and going to games and things and suddenly

I understood what they meant by that. But, yeah, some guys, they devote all their energy into themselves, you know, doing what they enjoy.

I know somebody who spent vast amounts of money on toys, hunting equipment, sports equipment.

Every toy you can imagine, any out every outdoor type of thing you can imagine. And I just tell my wife, well, what does he ever do for his wife?

He loves himself a lot. But what about his wife? It's to be a nurturing lover, to care for her. What does she need?

Rather than think what I need or what I want, we should be asking our wives, well, what do you need? What would you like? How can

I give towards you? And so to cherish her as you do your own self, your own comfort, your rest, your entertainment, strength, health, hunger, thirst, you know, your appearance.

And what about her? So we're to invest that amount of energy, if not more, into caring for our wives.

And we don't see anything in this text about the church giving back to Christ, we see

Christ giving to the church. And that's the model we have here. It's the husband to be sacrificially giving and nurturing and for his wife and nurturing his wife.

And then we see last of all, verse 31, 32, it's an enduring love. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery. But I speak concerning Christ and the church. And so what

Paul is saying here is this is an abandonment of the previous life. It's a death to self, the death to the former life that you, you know, when you lived in your singleness, did everything you wanted to do.

Now you're one with your wife, you're one flesh and and it's for life.

You're glued together for life. You're one. And so when the when the husband cares for his wife, he's really caring for himself because you're one flesh.

And Paul says this is a mystery, the union between the Messiah and his church. And then verse 33, the end of the chapter says,

Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

OK, so just as we just kind of. Touched on these verses here, we see four ways in which we can express love to our wives, it's sacrificial, it's purifying, it's nurturing and it's enduring.

So what are some ways, guys, that we can. Express love to our wives as we think about these things, don't all speak at once,

I said, guys, let's start with the guys. OK, OK, OK, well, it doesn't say it doesn't say wives love your husbands right here, does it?

But we know in Scripture we're to love one another. Right. We're to love each other as saints. We're to love our enemies. And so it's natural that if the husband loves the wife, the wife expresses love to her husband.

And we see how she expresses her love, even though it's maybe not stated in that way, as she respects her husband.

She gives honor to him. And I remember when

I when we had our premarital counseling, the husband is described as a learner, a lover and a leader and a wife.

They said as an honor, a help, a helper and a homemaker.

Those are the roles we see in Scripture, you know, and and in Genesis she's seen as the helper.

Right. God created Eve because he needed to help me. We see her as a homemaker in Titus two, and she's an honor here in Ephesians five.

And so those are ways that she demonstrates love towards her husband.

But, yeah, there's not the phrase, the terminology in this text, you know, wives love your husband.

Yeah. Yeah. They're to teach the younger women to love their husbands. Is that a question or a statement?

Yeah, the feminine, the feminist movement has distorted the makeup of the family, and it's always the husband that's often portrayed as the one who has to to do things and not really the wife.

I don't really think you really hear much about that. Do you on TV the way the family is portrayed? But like you say, the husband is often portrayed as kind of like the bumbling idiot and the one that everybody in the family makes fun of.

I mean, there's a lot of sitcoms like that. And my wife and kids were watching one of those one time. And I said, I don't like how they portray the family in this.

I don't even know the name of the program. And I pointed out to them and they're like, oh, yeah, you're right. You know, I mean, that's how this family is portrayed in this particular sitcom, whatever it was.

And so that's why we even have to be discerning what we watch, what we let our children to watch, because, you know, they're they're learning a certain behavior there that they may be expressing your own family.

So that's why we turn to scripture. And if we had more time, we'd go more into this text and even go into Chapter six of Ephesians that talks about the children's role in the home, right, honoring their parents and obedience and things.

So, OK, for the sake of time, ladies, how can men love you better?

I have I have a list of things that I want to I want to go through before we finish.

If nobody has anything that's good is his example brings conviction upon you, right, to to want to function better in your role.

Is that what you're saying? OK, yeah.

Not being critical, basically. Right. Yeah.

Be thankful for what she has done rather than what she hasn't done. OK, she said, finding out what is the heaviest thing on your wife's heart and seeing if you can help relieve that, see if what's worthy.

OK, OK. So for the husband to evaluate his own life and to ask himself, am

I worthy of being imitated? You know, we're to be imitators of Christ because, you know, we should be a model to our wives and children for them to imitate us as we imitate

Christ, which is saying, OK, very good. Well, I have a list from Wayne Mack that I want to read through because it's he's very good at these type of things, bringing practical application.

And so I'm just going to read through this list and we can talk about these things. We've got about five minutes left.

He said a few practical tips to show love to your wife, first of all, is communication.

We express love with words a lot of times and he talks about how a lot of men are afraid to tell their wives that they love them.

I mean, I know you've heard of the guy who is why I told my wife when we got married, I loved her. And if I ever changed my mind,

I'll let her know, you know. Well, that's not really that's not really communication.

That's not how we're to communicate our loves to our wives. OK, so, you know, don't be afraid to tell your wife you appreciate her, appreciate what you've done.

You've noticed how she's trying to how she serves you and cares for the kids. So express your love to her, express your thanks to her.

Number two, satisfying her needs, you know, physically, emotionally, intellectually, even socially.

You know, if you're a kid, your wife's home with kids all day. I remember my wife, you say, all I do is talk to babies all day. I want to talk to a person, an adult.

And so, you know, your wife wants to talk to you when you get home from work. You know, you've I forget I remember when

I was in premarital, they said, you know, the average man speaks, I don't know, 5000 words a day and the lady speaks like 20000 words.

Well, you've you've exhausted your 5000 words or whatever it is at work and you get home and she's got she's got 18000 to dump on you, you know, so just about being sensitive to that and trying to satisfy her needs.

You know, she needs to be able to communicate and express herself, so satisfy her needs even socially, recreationally, sexually, spiritually.

These are a lot of areas where we want to bring pleasure to our wife. First Corinthians seven, number three, we express love to her by protecting her.

We protect her physically. We want to protect her from criticism. We want to protect her emotionally, spiritually.

And even before the kids, you know, if your kid is mouthing off to your wife, I mean, that's a declaration of war in my house.

You mouth off to your mom. You've just declared war with me. OK, and so make that a rule in your home.

Your children see they need to respect and reverence and love their mother. And you know what? Children learn obedience by how the wife submits to their husband.

They learn honor and respect by how the husband loves the wife.

And so they learn those type of behaviors from how we love our wives, how they submit to us. And so don't allow your kids to to smart off to your wife.

Don't let them get away with it. Make them realize that if you do that, you now have a problem with me.

Number four, assist assisting her with chores and responsibilities. Watch the kids go shopping. Don't make the wife come across the house to care for the kid in front of you or in the room next to you to deal with the problem.

Now, you deal with this kid sitting right in front of you in the next room, she's in there making dinner or something, you know, you deal with the problem.

Don't expect her to deal with all this, all the challenges with the kids or chores. You know, if the kids aren't doing their chores, don't make your wife say, hey, you know, you haven't done your list of chores for the day.

Now, we as husbands need to be proactive in that. Number five, sacrifice for her.

You're tired. You want to rest on the couch, read the read the newspaper or TV and she wants to go shopping or something.

So deny yourself and do what she wants to do. Don't make her coerce you, but willingly say, OK, let's go.

Number six, allow her to share your life. You know, be part of each other's lives, talk to her, ask questions, open up to your wife and make her a part of your life.

You know, when I go home tomorrow, she's going to ask me, how'd your weekend go? And if I say, oh, it went great.

That's not enough. She's going to want to know the details because she wants to be part of my life.

And if I love her, I want her to be part of my life. And so, you know, share your life with each other, share your thoughts, desires, questions.

You know, you're one, you're one flesh, and so you should know those things about each other. Number seven, don't compare her with others, especially other women.

Don't show her how some other women is better in some other way, in some way.

This can cause the woman to rethink another woman is more attractive to you or that she doesn't please you.

It tears her down and doesn't build her up. So don't tell your wife, oh, do you see that lady at church or that lady, how she spoke to her husband?

Or, you know, we don't want to compare our wives with other women. We want to compare our wives in scripture. We want to challenge her biblically and we're not out comparing our wives with other ladies.

Oh, that's a nice hairstyle or or whatever. Number eight, she must have first place in your life after your relationship with Christ.

So she's before your desires, your hobbies, your job, your parents, the children. And how many how many husbands and wife put the children in front of each other?

She's more important than your house, your car, the church, everything in life. She's the companion that God has given you.

She's one flesh with you. And so she should not be in competition for your attention. And when she knows this, she'll be secure.

She knows this. You'll have her trust in her heart. Number nine, showing her tenderness, respect, chivalry and courtesy.

You know, never use your wife for a laugh. I remember when I first got married, sometimes I would I grew up in the South were around guys who would kind of make jokes out of their wife.

And sometimes I would say something and kind of make a joke out of my wife. And, wow, that didn't go very well.

And I learned really fast. Never use your wife for a joke. Never speak negatively of her in front of others.

If she does something that looks foolish or silly, talk to her privately. Speak to her gently and with respect.

Treat her as a treasure rather than as a brick or a garbage can. And last one, number 10, express appreciation and praise generously in enlarged doses.

Observe her attempts to please you. Never laugh or belittle the things she does for you. Express appreciation and respect for her insights, ideas, questions, prayers, character, opinions, fellowship, cooking, cleaning, satisfying your physical needs, et cetera.

So express appreciation for the things, even the little things that she does for you. So this is just a list of 10 practical tips from Wayne Mack that I think are really good ways that can help us to better express love to our wives.

Mike said right at 630 and it's right at 630. So let's go. One last question. That's a great testimony.

Thank you. OK, let's pray. Father, we thank you for our time together tonight. Just looking at this important role that we have as men to love our wives.

Lord, we thank you for your word that gives us an example of how we're to relate to our wives. And we're thankful the example that you've given us about how

Christ sacrificially loved and gave himself for the church without placing any demands upon the father or the church.

He just he willingly loves. He willingly sacrificed. He willingly gave.

And God, may that mark the love that we have and express towards our wives. God, may you use some of the things we heard and talked about tonight,

Lord, to help us to be more sensitive to our wives and to love them as Christ loved the church and gave himself for.

And God, may that be a testimony to the world, Lord, because how we love our wives communicates something about the gospel.

It's it shouts out to the world that our love is different and it's all because of Christ. We don't love this way.

Naturally, we don't love this way because it's already within us. We love this way because you poured out the love of Christ in our heart that gives us the ability to love others this way as Christ love.

And we're so thankful for that. God, I just pray that we'd be faithful in seeking to love our wives as Christ love the church.

And I just ask your blessing upon each marriage. We thank you for the men in this room that are loving their wives.

And we thank you, Lord, maybe even for what you showed us tonight in ways that we can be better at it. We just give you thanks for that.