Men at Home

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I'm going to read verses 22 through 33.
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Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.
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For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church.
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He himself being the savior of the body.
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But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be subject to their husbands and everything.
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Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her with the washing of water with the word that he might present to himself the church in all of her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she be holy and blameless.
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So husbands ought also to love their own lives as their own bodies.
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He who loves his own wife loves himself.
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For no one hated his own body, but nourished it, cherished it, just as Christ also does the church.
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Because we are members of the body, his body, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.
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This mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
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Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see that she respects her own husband.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, I ask that you would clear our minds, that we would be prepared to hear what your word is saying to us.
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God, if you do not help us, we will not hear.
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If you do not send your spirit, we will not understand.
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So Father, I pray that I stand here before your men, opening your word, proclaiming your truth as your servant, that God, you would increase and I would decrease, that these men would be encouraged, that they would be exhorted, that they would be admonished, that they would be equipped, and where repentance is necessary, God, that you would grant it.
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Be honored and glorified in this moment, in Christ's name, amen.
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First and foremost, I want to thank Andy for asking me to preach this particular topic.
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It was an exercise for me, because normally I don't study in this manner, usually verse by verse, and it forced me to change a study habit, and I want to say thank you for that, Andy.
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It encouraged me to go in another direction in which I had to study.
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Another thing I want to say right off the beginning is I failed in my studies.
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I failed in every area that we're going to preach on today.
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So don't think that my call, you're standing up here, and that I'm the standard.
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Jesus Christ is the standard, and because we are not perfect, we trust in the perfect man, Jesus Christ.
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So I want you to understand that we're not standing up here to try to swing a bat and batter you of the things that you're doing wrong.
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We want to preach the word, and we want to encourage you, and let you know we struggle with the same things that you guys struggle with.
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I also want to begin by saying, when I say the most important relationship, let me begin and let you know, foundationally, the most important relationship you'll ever have is that with the Lord Jesus Christ.
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If you've not repented, turned from your sin, placed all of your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, all of this will be absolutely unable for you to perform.
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I want you to know that.
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So that is the most important relationship you will ever have.
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So when you hear me, as I move forward, speaking of the relationship between the husband and wife, when I say the most important relationship within the home, it's concerning the husband and wife.
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I read a passage here, and it was concerning the structure of the home, and there were several in there, and I don't particularly, not that the translator had asked me, chapter and verses breaks are not inspired, and I really do think that a better chapter start would have been at verse 22 and gone on down through chapter six, because what you have is the relationship between the husband and wife, the relationship between the father and children, and then slaves and their masters.
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And what you see is a pattern in those passages of the one submitted and the one in authority.
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The one submitted and the one in authority.
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So we see that God, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to Paul, is setting up a structure.
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But I want to focus particularly on one verse in that, and I know some of you are not husbands in here.
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I'm sure most of you, if you're not, your plan is to be.
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And some of you that have lost your wives, that you should revel in the love that Christ demonstrated to the church as an example for us to give to our wives.
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So I want to focus on chapter 25, verse 25 of chapter 5, which is, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.
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Husbands is the audience through whom he is speaking.
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He's speaking to men within the church for that specific reason.
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And then he gives, right after that, he gives an imperative, and it's love.
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Love your wife.
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And it's in the present tense, but it's an imperative.
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And then you go on down and you see there is a past tense of the same word, loved.
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So you have love as Christ had loved.
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So you have one imperative from verse 22, imperative meaning command.
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One command from 22 to 33, and it's husbands, love your wives.
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As we look at that command, we should be asking these questions.
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What kind of love is demonstrated here, and what are their characteristics? If this love is important enough that God, God commanding us to love our wives as Christ loved the church, we must know what type of love that is and how it is to be demonstrated.
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There are four types of love in the Greek language.
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Most of what we hear are the eros, the phileo, and the agape.
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There's one that we don't hear much of, and it's storge.
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It is the natural affection, and this is not mentioned in the Bible.
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The alpha privative part of it is where we have the A before that meaning, and as Pastor Keith has said many times, the negating of that, we would say atheist, meaning no God.
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But when you hear storge, it's actually saying no familial love, and we see the alpha privative version of that in 2 Timothy 3.3 when he says they're without natural love, or they're unloving.
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But then you have the eros that's spoken of, and it's the sexual, erotic affectionate love that we have towards a person of, should be, opposite sex, and that is not mentioned in the Bible as well.
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But then you have phileo, which is the companion, fondness, normally a response to someone who's been kind and you're appreciative, that is mentioned in the Bible.
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And then you have the agape, or agape, and this is the love that is originated in the one that's giving it.
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It's not kindled, or by something that someone has done, and it's not deserving.
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We give that to someone, and most times it's called unconditional love, I particularly don't care for that, and the reason being because it's always conditional on the person that wants to give it.
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I prefer the word unmerited, without merit.
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And this is the love that's being demonstrated in this text.
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This is a love, according to this text, that originated, it's in the triune God, it's demonstrated by Christ on Calvary, because it says He gave Himself up for her.
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This particular type word, it's saying giving Himself up, has to do, because it's in the eros tense, meaning a completed, already completed event.
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So as Jesus gave Himself up for the church, completed action, we would point to the cross, in which Christ demonstrated His love.
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And that command is to be displayed from the husband to the wife.
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Now, if men are to love their wives as Jesus loved the church, you must see each of those characteristics, and there are more, but I will go with five.
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I'm not much on alliterations, but as I was doing this, four of them came with S's, so I changed another one to an S, so all these five points will begin with an S, okay? If you want to write them down, if you guys take notes, I don't, so if you don't take notes, I won't be offended, but if you are, selective love will be the first one.
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The second will be sacrificial love.
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The third one will be special love.
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The fourth one will be sanctifying love, and the fifth one will be sympathetic love.
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So let's look at this selective type love that God had towards His people.
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Now we have a lot of scripture we're going to look at, so if you don't want to turn to that, that's fine, you can write them down and look at them at another time, but I'm going to go back to Deuteronomy chapter 7, and this demonstrates God's selective love towards people.
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In Deuteronomy 7, chapter 7, I mean verse 7 and 8, it says, And the Lord did not set His love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any of the people.
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For you were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to His fathers, the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
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Now know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful, and He is one who keeps His covenant and His loving kindness to the thousandth generation, to them that love Him.
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And then He's saying here, you know why God loved you? Because He loved you.
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It originated within Himself.
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There's nothing in you and me that made God want to desire anything, matter of fact, what does create within God is the desire to smash us because of our sinfulness, but because God is rich in mercy and loving kindness, He withholds that judgment.
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But His love was selective in the sense that it originated within Himself.
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He loved the nation of Israel.
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Why? Because He loved them.
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Why does God love you? Because He loves you.
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That's why.
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It originated within Himself.
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And then if you go to Ezekiel chapter 16, I don't know if I will read all of this.
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It's very lengthy.
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See if I can't pick some of this out, but it's verses 1 through 20, and it's a very graphic description of the nation of Israel.
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I'll begin at verse 1, it says, Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God of Jerusalem, Your origin and your birth are from the land of the Canaanite.
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Your father was an Amorite.
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Your mother was a Hittite.
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And as for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with the water for cleansing.
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You were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in clothes.
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No, I looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, nor to have compassion on you, but rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born.
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But when I passed by you, I saw you, you were squirming in your blood.
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I said to you, while you were in your blood, I said, Live.
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And I said to you, while you were in your blood, Live.
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I made you numerous like the plants of the field, and you grew up and became tall and reached the age of fine ornaments.
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Your breasts were formed, your hair had grown, and you were naked and bare.
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And then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love.
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So I spread my skirt over you and covered your nakedness.
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I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you that you became mine, declares the Lord.
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And you can continue to read on, and it goes on through some of the sins that the nation of Israel done, and God continually remained faithful to them.
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There was nothing in Israel, God's people, that was lovely.
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Read the description.
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And what did God continue to do? Love them.
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The book of Hosea, we're not going to read that, but God tells Hosea to go marry a whore.
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You're going to marry her, and she's going to have illegitimate kids.
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And you're going to continue to love her, and cherish her, and take care of her, and then go buy her back when she runs off into her harlotry.
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You should read that book as a demonstration of God's love towards His people when we are unloving and unlovable.
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Then you have, we'll go to the New Testament passages of John 15, verse 16.
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No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his matter is doing.
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But I have called you friends, this is Jesus speaking to His disciples, for all these things I have heard from my Father, and I have made known to you.
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You did not choose me.
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I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit.
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Once again, we see the selective love of Jesus Christ towards His people.
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Well how do we apply this selective love to our wives? Well one, there's a big major difference between God's love in choosing you, and our love in choosing our wives.
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God chose you when you were unlovable, you were rude and crude, and nobody wanted you.
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God should have cast us into outer darkness, but He chose us in Christ.
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The difference is, when we chose our wife, she was beautiful, she was kind, she was something that we wanted, and we made a sovereign choice to attach ourselves to her in marriage.
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Proverbs 18 says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor with the Lord.
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So we should have a selective love with our wife, we chose her, we should cherish her and nurture her.
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Number two would be a sacrificial love, where it says that Christ gave Himself up for her.
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In John 15 as well, you can look at this, verse 13, he says, greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
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There is a sacrificial love that Jesus did in laying His life down for His people.
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The upper room discourse is constantly talking about His coming death, and that He would lay His life down.
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In John 10, it talks about Him willingly laying His life down for the sheep.
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John 10, verses 14, He says, I am the good shepherd, and I know my own, and my own know me.
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And He said, the fathers know me, I know the Father, and I will lay down my life for the sheep.
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Jesus Christ sacrificially and willingly laid His life down for the church.
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And Paul, even in his farewell passage, in Acts, and I'm going to read what he says, because he demonstrates this as well, Acts chapter 20, verses 27 and 28.
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Paul says, I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.
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So be on guard for yourselves, for all the flock, and among the, as the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church, for He, speaking of Christ, purchased the church, or purchased you, with His own blood.
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It's a sacrificial love that He laid His life down, that He made Himself of humility.
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And it's demonstrated too in the Carmen Christi, and Ephesians, I'm sorry, in Philippians, chapter 2.
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And I know many of you have read this, I'm going to read verses 1 through 8.
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Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in the Spirit, intent on one purpose.
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Do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another more important than yourself.
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Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interest of others, having this attitude in you which was in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant or slave, and being made in the likeness of men, and being found in the appearance of a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
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Jesus Christ gave up His rights, His privileges, and laid aside His prerogatives of deity for sinners to be redeemed, and then purchased those redeemed sinners, or redeemed those sinners with His blood.
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So we say, well, how would I apply this sacrificial love to my wife? I tell you this, you apply it in this way, sacrificial, selfless, self-abasement, non-self-satisfying love is what we demonstrate to our wives.
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Who's the most important person in your household apart from the Lord Jesus Christ? Is it you, or is it your wife? It's a question we should all ask.
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Now don't get me wrong, there are times that we do not spend time with her, and treat her in the manner in which she should be treated, so don't think we stand up here and that we've got it all together, but at no time should she feel as if there's no sacrificial love for her in the home.
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And by having that selfless, sacrificial love, that would lead us by necessity to the third type of love, a special type love.
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Special type love, I've made three parts to it.
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There's a unique type love, a one-of-a-kind, none like it should be to our wife, but it is demonstrated in the Old Testament in Exodus, this unique type love, as God is demonstrating his love towards the nation of Israel.
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Exodus 28, I'm not going to read all of verses 15 through 30, I will pick a couple of them out so you can kind of understand my point as I get to it.
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It was a one-of-a-type type love, and the reason why I keep going back to the Old Testament is because the nation of Israel was a picture of what the New Testament church would be.
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So if we look how God was going to demonstrate his love towards the church, we can go back to the Old Testament and see that he demonstrated in the same way towards the nation of Israel.
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So that's why I'll begin here in verse 15 of chapter 28, you will make a breastplate of judgment with skillful workmen hands.
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This is for the high priest to wear, he was going to make a breastplate that he would wear as he would be doing his priestly duties.
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And he says in verse 21 that those stones would be according to the names of the nation of Israel, the sons of Israel, the twelve sons, and according to their names they shall be like the engravings of a seal, each according to his name for the twelve tribes.
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And then when you go to verse 29, it says that Aaron, who was the first high priest by law, Aaron shall carry these names and the sons of Israel on the breastplate of judgment over his heart when he enters the holy place.
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And he will do this for a memorial before the Lord continually.
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And you shall put the breastplate of the judgment of the Urim and the Thummim, and they shall be over Aaron's heart that when he goes in before the Lord that Aaron shall carry the judgment of the sons of Israel over his heart before the Lord continually.
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Aaron and every high priest never entered the holy place for anyone else other than the covenant people of God.
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Because that was the picture of who he would sacrifice himself for one day on Calvary.
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He didn't go in there and offer himself up for Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Amalekites.
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No one.
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He offered the sacrifices up for the Israelites only, a one of a kind, special type love.
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And in Isaiah 49, 16, it says that the people of God were engraven on his hands.
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That's a special type love.
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Psalm 17, verse 8, Zechariah 2, verse 8, both declared that the covenant people of God were the apple of his eye.
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That is demonstrating special love.
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Also, in John 13, verse 1, he is fixing to head towards the cross at the upper room discourse.
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It says John, who's writing that book, he says, and he loved his own even unto the end.
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John was saying that Christ loved his people, and he loved them in a special way.
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But it was in an exclusive way.
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And we see that demonstrated in the Old Testament as well, in Leviticus 16, when he would do the atonement.
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Like I was saying, when he would go in, he would kill one scapegoat, then he had the other scapegoat, both of them representing sin, expiation and propitiation.
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Who did the high priest do that for? Or did he do it for anybody else other than the nation of Israel? No, only, because it was exclusive type love.
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Just like we saw in John 10, who did he lay his life down for? The sheep.
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Look at Romans 8, verse 33, who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies.
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Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died.
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Yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of the Father, and intercedes for us.
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Who are the us? It's the elect of God, it's the church.
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This exclusive love can only be demonstrated and be unique in the atonement.
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The atonement to the people of God is exclusive and unique.
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Why? Because it was a covenantal type love, and that is the third part of this special love.
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It was covenantal.
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It was covenantal in the Old Testament.
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Hebrews 8 says that he had made a covenant with his four fathers that they did not obey.
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What was the Old Covenant? Was it conditional or unconditional? It was conditional.
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You do this, God will do this.
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You don't obey me, they're going to come in and take your land.
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If you don't obey me in these areas, I'm going to send people to come in and they're going to take your wives and your kids off into slavery.
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If you don't obey me in Jeremiah, what did he say he'd do? I'm going to put the yoke of the Babylonians upon you.
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It was all conditional on them doing what God required.
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The covenantal love under the New Covenant is unconditional.
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God does it within himself.
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God says, I will put my spirit within you.
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I will put my laws on your heart, and it will cause you to walk in my ways and obey my statutes.
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That was in Jeremiah 31.
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That was the promise of the New Covenant.
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Therefore, under the New Covenant, all the gifts and all the privileges that are in Jesus Christ, we have.
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Look, God looks at you and loves you no less than he loves his son.
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That's hard to swallow, but that's what the scripture says.
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How do we apply this? Well, I want to show you real quick on display in Ephesians 1.
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Ephesians 1, I'll begin in verse 3.
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Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
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I want you to see how many times he says in Christ, in love, in him as we read this.
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Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that he would be holy and blameless before him in love, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will.
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To the praise and the glory of the grace that he freely bestowed on us in the beloved in him, we have redemption through his blood for forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.
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In all wisdom and insight, he made known to us the mysteries of his will according to his own kind intention, which he purposed in himself.
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With a view to be an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven, things on the earth.
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In him also we have attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his own purpose, worked all things out to the counsel of his own will.
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To the end, we are who the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory.
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In him, and there it is again, in him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed that you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with the view of redemption, God's own possession to the praise of his glory.
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The covenantal language there in him continually demonstrating God's love towards us.
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Now, how do we demonstrate this unique, exclusive, and covenantal love to our wives? One, love her like no other.
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I am to love her like no other woman.
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If I was to say today I love every woman in Sovereign Grace Church, that would be an accurate statement, but man, if I said I love them the same way I do my wife, y'all should take me out and stone me, okay? I should have a unique type love for my wife.
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I should have an exclusive type love for my wife.
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My heart, my eyes, and my body are for her and her alone.
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That is special love demonstrated to my wife, and covenantal love.
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My love is covenantal to her, and it is not conditional.
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It is unconditional.
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I will love my wife.
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It is a command.
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There is no condition in Ephesians 5, 25 that says love your wife if you want to.
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It says you love her, for I am bound by Scripture to love her.
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I want you to look at the demonstrations in the Proverbs.
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You don't have to turn here.
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I'm going to read this.
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Some of you guys will know that I pray this for men.
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A lady came up one time after I had prayed this, and she said, that was so sweet.
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What's the Proverbs? It's what Solomon told his son, to stay away from the harlot.
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Drink water from your own cistern.
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Fresh water from your own well, and it's not talking about drinking H2O, man.
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Should your springs be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the street, let them be yours alone and not for strangers with you.
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Let your fountains be blessed, and he's not talking about a water fountain.
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And rejoice in the wife of your youth all the days of your life, and as a loving hind and graceful doe, let her breast satisfy you at all times, and be intoxicated with her love.
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Should you be exhilarated by an adulteress, that's what he's saying, our exclusive love and desire for our wife.
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He also says in the book of Ecclesiastes, about loving your wife all the days of your life.
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Pages are sticking together in this new Bible still.
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Be satisfied with the wife of your youth all the days of your fleeting life, for this is a gift from God.
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Song of Solomon, verse 3, chapter 3, verse 4.
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It says, my heart is joyful in finding the love of my life.
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And I know some of you may think that the Song of Solomon is speaking of Christ's love for the church, and I will tell you without hesitation, that is wrong.
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I don't care what the Puritans said, most of them thought that it was talking about speaking of Christ in the church.
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If you know anything about Hebrew euphemisms, there's some things that he says in Song of Solomon.
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If he equates that to the church, we have some major issues.
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He's talking about his wife, being exhilarated by her beauty, touching her, and feeling her, and tasting her, and being intoxicated with her love.
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If you want to go back at another time, you can read him, read Song of Solomon, chapter 4 and chapter 7, as they talk about peering at one another.
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I just was thinking about that, I remember the first time Andy preached, he stood in this pulpit, he talked about being married for 40 years, and he said he still peered out the window through his wife.
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I was like, man, that's an honorable thing, 40 years, and he's still peering and excited by his wife.
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That's what Song of Solomon, that was actually a quote from Song of Solomon, he was peeking through the lattice.
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We'll move on to the fourth, which is the sanctifying love.
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There's two parts of sanctifying love, one, demonstrated in the church, it's positional.
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First Corinthians chapter 6, it says, it gives these lists of sins, in which every one of us falls in one of those categories, and it says, but such were some of you, you were sanctified.
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That is a completed action.
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We are positionally sanctified when we come to faith in Christ.
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We are set apart to be conformed into the image of a son.
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But there is something that takes place after that, after our justification, that is our progressive sanctification.
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And how many of you have ever graphed your sanctification chart? Is it like this? Mine ain't, yeah, mine's like this.
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It's up and down, up and down, pruning and God, hacking off stuff that we don't need so that we can bear more fruit.
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So there is that sanctifying love that we're speaking of here, has to be that sanctifying, that's progressive, that's conforming us into the image of a son.
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And how does that happen? Through the word.
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In John 17, verses 13 through 20, you can read that at another time if you would like, but that's his high priestly prayer, and he says, God, I not only pray for these, but those that would believe because of them.
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He was speaking of his disciples.
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Sanctify them in your word.
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If you're not in God's word, you're not going to demonstrate sanctifying love.
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If you're not spending time in study, you're not going to be able to demonstrate sanctifying love.
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Why? Because we find those principles and that learning within the scripture, hey, we don't learn by not studying.
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We can't just lay the Bible on our forehead and learn, although I wish that was the case.
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Both of these acts of sanctification are demonstrated in Ephesians, in our, just the next verse down in Ephesians chapter five.
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If you look what he says in 26 and 27, he says that, why did he give himself up, Christ gives himself up for the church, that he may sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word.
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The word is necessary for sanctification.
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You have to feed it yourself.
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You wouldn't go all week and then eat one meal, would you? No.
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He says a man that's smart would nourish and feed himself.
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Christ demonstrated this sanctifying love to us by being prophet, priest, and king.
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Jesus Christ is the final word from God.
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There is no other.
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Hebrews says, in times past God spoke in various times and in various ways through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us in son, through his son.
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There is no other word that's other than Jesus Christ.
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By priest, he intercedes on our behalf by offering up himself as a sacrifice.
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And here's the one we like, the king.
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He rules in truth, righteousness, love, and gentleness.
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That's how he demonstrated sanctifying love.
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Why do we apply this sanctifying love and demonstrate it to our wives? In the same way as being prophet, priest, and king.
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I'm going to explain this very quickly.
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You are the prophet in your home in the sense that you're not foretelling the future.
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And that doesn't mean if you don't obey me, kids, I'm going to whip you, all right? You are the prophet, meaning you are the mouthpiece of God.
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You should be the primary one in your home instructing your wife and your children in the word.
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Now, you may sit here and go, well, my wife knows more than me.
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Probably so.
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Study to show yourself approved.
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Study.
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If your job depended on it, would you study? Where do you work at? If they said, hey man, you don't know this book come two weeks from now, you ain't got a job.
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What would you do? They'd be like, eh, for two weeks, face in it.
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Your sanctification, you will stand before God and you will give an account.
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Who cares about your boss at that point? You're going to give an account.
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Be the mouthpiece of God in your home.
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And that doesn't mean stand up and preach sermons to them.
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It does not.
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I'm going to tell you right now, my wife does not want to hear the minute details of scripture.
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I've talked with Keith about it, man.
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But when I get into Greek and the syntax and all these details, I can look over my wife and she doing like this, like rolling up the window in a car, just like that.
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It just goes over her.
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But if it's practical living, man, we can talk all day.
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How do these apply to my life? I don't care about those little details, Mike, that I don't understand.
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Help me to be more loving to our kids and to be more loving to you and be more obedient to God's word practically.
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And as the priest in our home, we should intercede for her in prayer, specifically though, not Lord, I pray that my wife would keep the house clean a little better and I know she's running around chasing kids and doing all that.
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It's not.
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We should intercede for her specifically in ways that will make her honorable to God.
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Pray for her submission to God.
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Then pray for her to love Christ more.
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Pray for her and her desire to know God more, that she may know His word more.
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And pray that she would be given patience to deal with you.
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That hurts.
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And here he goes, everybody wants to be king of the castle, right? So how do we do it as king? We should lead with stability, gentleness, and humility because that's the way Christ leads His people.
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Not a self-dictatorial way.
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Our decisions should be made upon truth and facts, not emotion, and through much prayer and study of God's word.
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That's how we demonstrate kingship within the home.
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Not swinging the blade of authority of everything we don't like.
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I want to make a statement.
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As a king, we should protect our wives and that's a given, alright? Men that have older children, one day, listen to me clearly.
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You may have to protect your wife from your older children.
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Manipulation, anxiety, they may want to chase the world.
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Mama's not going to want to do that.
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I'm just telling you, you may have to protect them from those children.
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That's going to be difficult.
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Number five, sympathetic love.
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Our great high priest, Jesus Christ, understands our struggles.
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He is sympathetic with us.
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Turn to Hebrews chapter 4 and read verses 14 through 16.
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Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
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For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin.
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So therefore, let us draw with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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The writer of Hebrews did not have a way of bolding letters.
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He did not have a way of highlighting.
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So what they do is they use the double negative there.
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We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize.
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In other words, he's saying he sympathizes with us.
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Being tempted in every way just like you and me.
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When I say point, love to the flesh, love to the eyes, and I'm proud of life.
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Because if you've heard me said he was not tempted to wheelie a motorcycle at 140 miles an hour with his wife on the back, okay? So we must understand he was tempted at all points, just as we are.
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He learned obedience through suffering, and you can see that.
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Hebrews 5 says that he learned obedience through his sufferings and was perfected because of it.
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Then he experienced the fragility of flesh.
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Did Jesus get tired? Yes, he did.
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Matter of fact, he was sleeping in a boat one time on a pillow in the bottom, and the boat was being thrashed around, and his disciples run down there to say, hey, help us, help us, help us.
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He's snoozing.
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They had to wake him up.
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Did he get hungry? Yes, he did.
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Did he get thirsty? Yes, he did.
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The woman at the well, he was weary, and he sat down.
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He said, give me something to drink.
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Did he experience emotional difficulty? He sure did.
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Matter of fact, his triumphal entry, when Jesus was coming up, riding on that donkey, he said, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I wanted to gather you unto myself, and you would not listen.
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And there's coming a day when these walls aren't going to be here, and you're going to be thrown down, and they're going to trample you like mud in the streets.
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That's what Jesus was saying as he was coming up and seeing Jerusalem the week before he was crucified.
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Did he deal with anger? Yeah, he did, but not like you and me.
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He dealt with anger.
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He cleansed the temple.
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His was righteous indignation.
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We might have some righteous reasons to be mad, but man, they're about that quick, and it turns sinful.
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Did Jesus deal with frustration? That's going to be one people go, I don't know, because we go, man, I got frustrated, and I get mad, right? I don't know about y'all.
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That's how I get.
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I go from frustration to anger real quick.
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Well, Jesus was frustrated.
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If you read Matthew 16, after he had fed the 5,000, and he told them to gather up all the fragments, and they get on the boat, and they're going to start riding across the, I think it was the Sea of Galilee, and he says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.
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And they all start going, oh, man, we left the bread.
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Jesus said, I ain't talking about the bread.
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And he goes, did you not understand what I'm saying? Have I not been with you all this time, and you still don't understand? Dude, that's a sign of frustration.
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Like, hey, man, you should know this by now.
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But his frustration, because he had an expectation that they would learn, and they weren't learning.
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So his frustration didn't come to unrighteous anger.
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Jesus endured for 33 years of humility and suffering in a human struggle.
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He was fully God, and fully man.
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Job would have loved to have seen that day.
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Job chapter 9, verse 33, he says, man, I need somebody to be able to put their hand on me and on God, for God's untouchable.
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I need an umpire between the two of us.
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If he would have only known that the Lord Jesus Christ would come and be that umpire, that mediator between God and man.
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Jesus Christ is our perfect mediator.
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He is gentle, he is kind, he is compassionate, and he comforts us in our weaknesses.
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So we all want to know, how do we apply that? We apply it in this way.
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Colossians 3, 18 says, do not be harsh with your wife.
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Do not be embittered to her.
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It also says in 1 Peter chapter 3, to live with your wife in an understanding way.
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How do you do that? I don't understand it.
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I'm getting instructions there on how to be understanding.
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Look at yourself.
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That's what I do, look in the mirror.
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I came up with these things right here.
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My wife struggles with the same things I struggle with.
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My wife's a sinner.
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She struggles with temptation, just like me.
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She fails in her walk with the Lord, in doing what God requires, just like me.
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She's the weaker vessel.
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How many of y'all have read that? It says, your wife is the weaker vessel.
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Well, by saying the weaker vessel, what does that say about us? It means you're weak too.
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It doesn't say you're an oak.
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You're weak.
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She's just weaker.
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Therefore, we should treat her like a piece of fine china, not an old skillet.
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And what do you do? You take an old skillet, you throw it on the ground, you pick it back up, you can reuse it.
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Throw a piece of china on the ground, watch what happens.
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We're not to manipulate our wives with any attitude or action to get our desired wants or outcomes.
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Did Christ do that for you? Did he do that to you? No, he did not.
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He said, come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
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He loves us in spite of our failures.
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He loves us in spite of our unfaithfulness.
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And he remains faithful and loving at all times.
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And we should demonstrate that to our wives through unconditional love.
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Selective love, sacrificial love, special love, sanctifying love, and sympathetic love.
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There are more, but those five are enough for us to chew on for years to come.
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I ask you this question, men that are married in here, and those who desire to be married at some point, is your wife more like Christ because of you, or in spite of you? It's a question we should all ask.
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I'm going to read something, and I'll close with this.
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Some of you may have never heard of this guy, but his name is John Chrysostom.
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He was in the end of the third, fourth century, one of the church fathers.
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He was a great preacher.
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He said, you have seen what's necessary in your obedience.
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This is him concerning this matter.
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You want your wife to be obedient as Christ is to the church, as the church is to Christ, I'm sorry.
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Then be responsible for the same providential care for her, for your wife, as Christ is for the church.
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Even if it becomes necessary for you to give your life for your wife, you say yes.
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Even to endure and undergo suffering of any kind, do not refuse.
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Even though you undergo all this, you may never have done anything equal to that of what the Christ has done for you.
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You are sacrificing yourself for someone whom you are already joined to, but he offered up himself for one who had already turned her back on him, hated him, and in the same way then as he honored her by putting her at his feet, they turned, she turned her back on him, who hated and rejected him, had disdain towards him, and he accomplished this with no threats, violence, terror, or anything else like that, putting through his untiring love to her.
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So you also should behave towards your wife.
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Even if you see her belittling you or despising you, mocking you, still you be able to subject her to yourself through affection, through kindness, through your great regard for her.
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There is no influence more powerful than the bond of love, especially for the husband and the wife.
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Suffer anything for her sake, but never disgrace her, for Christ never did this with his church.
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Your obligation is to love her.
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This is your duty.
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Even when you don't receive our due from others, we must always do our duty.
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If your spouse doesn't obey God's law, you are not excused.
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You love your wife.
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A wife should respect her husband, even when he shows her no love, and a husband should love his wife, even when she shows him no respect.
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Then, they will both be found to lack nothing, since each has fulfilled the commandment given to him.
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That was from an old dead guy, 1,500, 1,800 years ago.
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That, preaching this passage.
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We have a high call as men in the home, certainly, directing and honoring and instructing our children, but I'm telling you what, if you're a man of God and you do not love your wife more than you love your kids, you are in sin.
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Sin.
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If you sit here today and your wife is not desirable to you, repent.
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Your wife should be the most attractive person to you.
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She is a gift from God to you, and then on top of that, you mistreat her, you're mistreating God's daughter.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, thank you for your word.
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Thank you that, and while we were yet sinners, you sent forth your son, Christ Jesus, to die for us.
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Unlovable.
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God, you should not have done what you did, but you did.
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You sacrificed your perfect son for imperfect people.
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You sent your son into the world, and to his own, and his own did not receive him.
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He came into darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend the light.
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God, we should revel in your love that was demonstrated on Calvary, that you sent forth the Lamb of God to take away the sins of your people.
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Father God, I pray that if there is a man in this room that does not know you, that God, he would have seen today through the proclamation of your word that the sacrificial love that you laid out for the elect is the greatest love of all humanity, demonstrated in the greatest crime, heinous crime, of the crucifixion of your son.
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God, thank you that you rose him up from the dead, conquering death, hell, and the grave.
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And I pray that if that man is here today and he does not know you, that Father God, you would send forth your spirit to convict him of sin and unrighteousness, and that you would grant him repentance that leads to life.
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God, I pray for the man in this room that's struggling in his marriage, struggling in his fatherhood.
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Father God, I pray that you would undergird him, strengthen him.
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I pray that he would find someone in this room or another man to come alongside.
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Father, you say in your word, it's better for two to walk together, for if one falls, there's one to pick him up.
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Father, and I pray that men through this conference would find other men to walk this life out with.
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Father, this is a community effort.
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We cannot do this alone.
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That's why you gave us the church and men gifted to walk with one another.
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That's why we all don't have the same gifts and the same talents, Father.
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We were all the same.
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We'd fight all the time, but Father, we need to be encouraged by other men's gifts, and we need to be wrapped around one another.
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Father, we may be sharpened by one another.
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God, thank you for this day.
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Thank you for this opportunity to proclaim your word.
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I pray that it was honoring.
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I pray that, Father, you were glorified.
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I pray that your men, God, were instructed correctly.
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In Christ's name, amen.