The Man's Role in Marriage (07/16/2023)

Park Meadows Church

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Got my guitar stuck there. It is always such a blessing to be able to bring music into the church for the

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Lord, ultimately. And just, it's been a lot of fun. And I thank everyone who has stepped up and has helped me,

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Ms. Glenda, Brother Bobby, Maddie, Kenner, Betsy, I appreciate y 'all so much.

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And I love all you guys. Very nice, and that was nice guitar work too,

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Mr. Matt. Kind of impressed your father, who taught you how to play, but anyway.

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But now I need a lesson on the finger picking from you. That's beautiful, very nice.

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Thank all of you, the harmony was beautiful. Sounded great today, and thank you for that.

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Appreciate the work that you do to make that happen for the rest of us. And let's go to the

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Lord in prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for our service already today, and thank you for the beautiful music, for the wonderful Sunday school lesson we heard about King David and his heart for you, and your protection and watch care over his life, which is such a strong message for us.

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And we ask you to bless this portion of our service as well, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

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Amen, we're gonna be mostly in Ephesians chapter six this morning. We are talking about marriage and family for a little while until we pick a new book to go through.

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And so we kind of started out talking about the husband in the home, the man in the home.

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And just to review a little bit, the first point was the husband must understand and pursue spiritual warfare.

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That comes from Ephesians 6, 10, and 11. Finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, put on the whole armor of God.

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And then we talked secondly about the husband must understand his financial responsibilities under God.

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There's only one place I can find in the Bible where it calls a man worse than an infidel and says he's denied the faith.

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And that is if he does not take care of his family financially. And yet we don't hear a lot about that in churches.

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I know we have some TV preachers that misuse it and they teach it like it's an unconditional promise, but it's a conditional promise.

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Nevertheless, it's a very strong promise of God to take care of us. And we talked about the fact that if God holds us responsible in 2

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Corinthians 12, 14 and Proverbs 13, 22, to lay aside for our children and our children's children, then we have to create a certain amount of wealth.

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So why would God command that if he wouldn't show us how to do it in the scripture? So he did. And we went through a lot of those kind of passages as well.

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And we also looked up the word wealth. If you look at the oldest English definition, which is a very good translation from the

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Greek, it comes from the old English word wheel, which means wellbeing. And yet Hollywood likes to attach a bad meaning to wealth, especially with regard to Christians.

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They don't think a Christian should ever have that or even seek it, which is ridiculous because Satan is the author of poverty.

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God is the author of wealth and blessedness and wellbeing. And so we talked in pretty much detail about that.

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So that brings us to the third point now. And the third point is that the husband must be, must realize the

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God ordained role of the man in the family. He must understand what his role is as God ordains it in this book right here.

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It would be nice if government would study the scripture and see what God ordains government to do and what he doesn't ordain government to do.

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That would help. But we certainly are not talking about that today. We're talking about the fathers in the home. And I find that there are about eight points that if gentlemen would follow from scripture,

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Bible methodology, he could ensure a happy home. Would you like to see that gentlemen?

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All right. Well, the first one is in Ephesians chapter five, verse 18. So we'll be in chapter five, chapter six of Ephesians mostly and then we'll go out to some parallel passages too.

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But Ephesians 5, 18, be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the spirit.

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So my first point is that a man in the home is the spiritual leader of the home.

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He cannot accomplish that without being spirit filled. He's first of all, got to be saved, which means indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit. But beyond that, he needs to be filled with the

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Holy Spirit minute by minute throughout each day. And that is something that requires the man's will.

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He must choose to do that. It's something we have a choice every minute of every day of every week and every month and year is whether we'll hold

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Jesus' hand and walk with him or whether we just let our old man be God again, which he's not, he's actually already crucified, isn't he?

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He has no right to have control over us, but he usurps that authority when we allow it and we shouldn't allow it, we should walk in the spirit.

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So that's what this says. Now I have to mention, I mean, predominantly that's what point number one is, be spirit filled.

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But I have to mention the part about be not drunk with wine, because I take a cursory look at poverty across, especially in America, but I know there's poverty across the world that's caused by many things.

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But most of all, it's caused by their leaders and their nation not setting up their economic and political system according to this book.

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And so when they don't use Bible methodology, it's doomed to fail. And that's why so many people are starving.

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It's not America's fault, by the way, the world wants to blame America and yet we feed most of the world.

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And it's not America's fault. America has the ability to do that still, even in her sin, because she has been set up according to principles of scripture regarding capitalism versus communism and so forth.

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And so that has helped America a great deal to get to the place where she is. Now, unfortunately, she's done like the children of Israel did so many times throughout scripture.

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She's gotten so well off that she now has forgotten God. And that's going to end up in tribulation and trial and probably war and many discomforts of many kind that will fall upon America because of that,

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I think. But anyway, I'm just gonna look at America because it's a little different than the third world countries that are in poverty because of their lack of proper methodology.

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And they either are following Buddha or Muhammad or they're steeped in Roman Catholicism, which for many, many centuries hid the

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Bible from the common man, even burned people at the stake for reading the Bible. So that's why they're a little bit worse off than the nations of the world that were under Protestantism, which allowed the common man to read this book.

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That's the main difference. And I can't apologize for it. I have many Catholic friends, by the way.

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I don't have very many Islamic friends. I've met a couple. So, you know,

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I can't apologize for it. It's just a fact of life. If you look where the economies have flourished, it's been where the leaders allowed people to read this book.

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So anyway, but let's talk about America because we have poverty here too. And I would say that this is not data that I have mined from the all -knowing, always correct internet, but I've just observed it in my own life and in circles of life.

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And I have traveled the world extensively and watched human beings and how they turn out and so forth as opposed to those who maybe follow scripture and those who don't.

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But I've noticed this, that when you see a family that is steeped in poverty, I'd be willing to bet you you couldn't go back three generations without finding a man who was an alcoholic in that family line.

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So when you find a man, a father who was an alcoholic, one or two or three generations back, you normally will see poverty or digging out of poverty in that family.

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Someone had to start over to undo the damage done by that alcoholic. So that's mentioned here at the first part, be not drunk with wine.

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But the main thing I wanna talk about was be filled with the spirit. In Galatians 5, verse 22, it says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, which means patience, gentleness, goodness, and faith.

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Now that's not all, it keeps going. But can you imagine if you were in a home where the father had these attributes?

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He was full of love for his wife and his children and his grandchildren. He was full of joy in life because he walked with the

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Lord. He had peace and sought peace with others, including his family. He was very patient.

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He was gentle and good and full of faith. And then it goes on and said, meekness and temperance against such there is no law.

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So these are fruits of the spirit. And if a man is spirit filled, he will have these. Now we all have our own personalities too.

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And those show through because we are a triune being like God is.

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And so our fleshly part of us has inherited certain things from our forefathers and our family line.

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Some of us are more patient than others by nature. Some of us are more gentle than others by nature.

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Some meeker than others by nature. But all of us are moved more towards these things because these are attributes that Jesus Christ has.

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And we're moved more towards those and we more nearly have them depending on how much we walk in the spirit.

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Would you agree with that? All right. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh.

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That's have already crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts of it.

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So that gives us a headstart. When we're walking in the new man, the old man is dead.

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We cannot sin when we're spirit filled. It's impossible. We cannot nor will we when we're spirit filled.

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So that gives us a great advantage. Now, all we have to do is choose to be spirit filled, gentlemen, most of the moments of every day.

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And we will not bring demise to our families. We will not bring hurt to our marriage or to our children.

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So that's the starting place. And it's really the answer to everything. We could believe the other seven points out, but we won't because they're in the scripture.

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So let's look at the second one. Well, let me finish that one.

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I'm sorry. There's one more verse I left out. Look at verse 25 of Galatians 5.

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If we live in the spirit. You see why it says if? Because it's a choice. Now being in dwelth is not a choice.

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It's something that was done to us when God called us and saved us. And he did all that work.

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He inserted himself into our body while we were yet sinners and not desiring it.

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Except a moment before he did that, he changed our want to and caused us to desire it.

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Just a moment. It all happened in a, I don't even know if you can put it in sequence because salvation is of God who is outside, not bound by time.

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He's now all the time. It's just like, boom, he just did it. It's like a baby is born, boom.

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And you were just born and you had all these things that came along with it. But the indwelling of the spirit is one of those.

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It's not a choice. You have it. You can't change that. And however, verse 25 starts with the word if, which means it's a conditional, which means you can make a choice not to be spirit filled.

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Spirit filled is a choice. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.

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Now the living in the spirit is kind of like a rhetorical question.

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That part like, do you live in the spirit? Well, it's rhetorical because you do. You're indwelt by the spirit.

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So your life is such that you have the Holy Spirit. But the second part is the choice.

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And that is, let us also walk in the spirit. You must choose to walk in the spirit because you're indwelt by the spirit.

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So if we don't walk in the spirit, we're a hypocrite because who we really are is a saved person who's indwelt by God.

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And when we walk in the flesh, we're being hypocritical. So we need to walk the way we are. We need to do the way we be,

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Brother Dave. All right. We need to do what like we be.

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It's not only good King James, it's good Texican. Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking another, envying one another, which is what happens when we walk in the flesh.

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And we've had that in our church from time to time, not much, especially from the time Brother Otis came, we didn't really have it at all.

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The recent days, we had a little bit of it, but when people desire glory or provoke one another or envy one another, that's not of the

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Holy Spirit, that's of the flesh. And it will be revealed if any of us do it.

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It will be seen by everyone else and hopefully one of us will tell us and we can repent. Kind of like Dave's lesson on King David.

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Someone needs to let us know that we need to repent sometimes. Now, that is the first point, being filled with the

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Spirit. A man who is filled with the Spirit predominantly will have a happy home.

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Now, let me just throw this in. There are men who pretend to be godly and filled with the

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Spirit. And they talk about it a lot. That's how sometimes you can tell those men.

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They try to have a spiritual aura about how they speak. And ladies, the first thing those kinds of men will do is point out to you often that they are the leader of the home.

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And when you have a man that has to say that a lot, you've got a problem and you might wanna go talk to your pastor about it.

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Sometimes a pastor can help solve that problem or an elder in the church can deal with that gentleman and help you ladies out.

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I've seen that happen. I've been able to help people quite a few times in the last 40 years when they come to me and tell me what their husband is doing.

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So listen, if the man is always talking about how he's a spiritual leader, he's not a leader.

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So there's a clue, all right? Now, at the time he might remind you that he is, and that's okay.

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But if it's like a lot going on every week, he mentioned something about it, you might have a man who is pretending to be

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Spirit -filled when he's not. He might not even be saved, but what he likes is the Lordship over the home.

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And as we progress through our study on marriage, you're gonna find even today, if I get to it, in these notes, you're gonna find ladies that there's some things that are very different to what a lot of churches teach, especially the more legalistic churches because the more legalistic they are, the more the man gets to wear

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Bermuda shorts and the woman has to wear long dresses down to the ground and necks up to here and put your hair in a bun and all that.

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And so when you start seeing that happen or anything even close to it, well, you got a problem with the men and the legalism will kill.

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Spirit brings life, so we know all that. Well, it is important that the man be genuinely

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Spirit -filled, not someone who just wants to appear to be a spiritual leader. There's a big difference.

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And I love the Galatians 5, starting with verse 22 passage, because they can talk, we men can talk all day long, but love shows, joy shows, peace and long suffering and gentleness and goodness and faith and meekness and temperance, all that shows.

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And if you don't see that and it doesn't match the talk, you got a problem. You might wanna go to your elders or deacons and get some help.

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There's nothing wrong with that. The Bible says do that. And I'm preaching to the choir here. I know all you ladies have perfect husbands, so no need to come to me, but I'm just saying we need to teach our families how this works.

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Our children need to know, our grandchildren need to know how this works. And so do we. All right, so point number two then, is to be the supreme lover in the family.

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Really? I like the way that sounds. The supreme lover in the family.

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Ephesians 5 .25 says, husbands, love, and my notes have that in all caps.

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It's agape, agape love. Love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.

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Well, I said we could have left all of them out except number one, be spirit filled and everything would be fine.

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But if you are spirit filled, you have love. And here's point number two, but it's agape love. And there are three different kinds of love mentioned in the

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Greek. This one is the highest form because this form of love does not stem from the object of the love.

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It stems from the heart of the lover. Do you see the difference?

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So ladies, you can be treating your husband good on one day and he loves you and you can treat him bad on the next.

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He still loves you the same if he has agape because it comes from God. No man can do this on his own. This is from the

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Holy Spirit living in a man and he's also walking filled with the spirit. Then his first thought might be, if you treat him bad, his first thought comes from the flesh quite often with me.

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I can only speak from experience. The first thought might be not so patient, not so kind and loving and so forth.

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I'm working at trying to adjust that before I speak, make sure I do pull back into the spirit before I speak would be helpful in my marriage and I'm working on that.

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But gentlemen, we have to understand that when we are spirit filled, that love is agape.

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It does not matter how she's treating us, we love her the same. Now at the deeper level, we're all like that already, but we need to work it, like think before we talk, right?

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Gentlemen, think, you know what? Cause women don't forget your words. They don't forget your words.

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You can't take them back once you say it. So in my house,

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I still wear a mask. Charlotte calls it a muffle.

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I can have fun today cause she's not in here. Afraid she's got her phone on though back there.

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Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church. How did

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Christ love the church? He did two things. He lived his life for the church and he gave his life for the church, right?

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So there gentlemen, we come into the be, do, have thing again that Dave and brother

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Myron talk about so much. I say the thought came from Myron and then Dave expanded it. Even Myron would agree with that, but you know, on the inside you are the

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Supreme Lord because you have Christ. You are that in the home. As far as doing and talking, talking is part of doing, right?

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What we say is part of what we do. The talking needs to fall in line with that and that requires thought before we talk, of course.

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And so the living life for the wife is not just talk.

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They know that we say we love them and I think they believe that we love them, but they like to see it acted out.

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So if you love me, why are you short with me when you talk? You know, if you love me, why don't you ever do romantic things with me?

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Not just other things, but like you did when you were dating me, why don't you do that anymore?

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And those kinds of things are the doing part. The B is there. The doing is important though.

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It needs to match that. And then it ends with he gave himself for the church.

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So we would be willing to die for our wives and sometimes that's easier than living for them. Would you agree, gentlemen?

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It would be easy to fall, jump in front of a bullet for your wife. I'd do it in a minute. I would even enjoy doing it because I had my pistol out shooting the other direction,

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Lord willing, right? But, or this, you know, it's all, it's all good.

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It's all, it's all good. So that's easy, but to not cut her with my words is harder.

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You see, men, we need to work at this and we shall, shan't we? It's interesting when you look at this word gave,

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Jesus gave himself for the church, his bride. It, it's a

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Greek word that means literally you surrender to yield up one's life for another, to commit to, to deliver up.

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You would deliver her up and set her free and to suffer hazard for her.

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All those things are in the meaning of the root word in Greek. So the first couple of things that I see here is he's the supreme lover in the family.

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The first thing is little a under that is he must love his wife like Christ loved the church. And, you know,

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I said you could get by with just point number one, but you definitely could get by with just point number two. Probably going to find that's true of all eight points.

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The second thing that I see about the man under this idea of the supreme lover is the scripture says the husband should love the wife as his own body.

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Now let's think about that a minute. Let's read it first. It's in Ephesians chapter five, verse 28.

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So all men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loves himself.

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That's quite philosophical, isn't it? We could spend a little time on what does that mean?

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Especially if we were at breakfast, just the men talking, right? We could spend a lot of time on what that means.

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But I remember a story brother Otis told me more than once. And it was always funny when

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Miss B was standing there too. And she would sort of help tell the story about their pastor when brother

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Otis was a young man, his pastor was named Dr. Barney Timms.

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And it was at Pecan Valley Baptist Church in Garland, Mesquite or Garland, I think

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Mesquite actually. I believe it was in Mesquite. Is that right Ben, do you remember? It's either Mesquite or Garland.

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Just take I -20 and go east, you'll find it. Pecan Valley Baptist Church is still there. But this was a marvelous pastor.

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He taught all, by the way, Otis was a young deacon at the time. But Dr. Barney, brother

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Barney taught all of them how to preach in case he was ill so they could fill the pulpit. He taught them all how to lead music in case the music director was ill, the deacons could do it.

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He was a wonderful pastor in the sense of a good Bible teacher, but also he knew how to duplicate and delegate to and build a church that way, really great man.

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And Miss B enjoyed telling this story as much as Otis did because I heard it more than once through the years, 13 years

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I was with them before they went to heaven. But a brother Barney would, especially he enjoyed doing, he and his wife enjoyed doing things with other couples in the church.

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And they might be with another couple and in front of the other couple, brother

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Barney's wife would ask him, Barney, who do you love most in the whole world?

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And he'd think for a minute, he'd say, well, honey, you know who I love most in the whole world, me, like that.

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And he said it that way every time. And Otis and B thought that was hilarious. They laughed every time they told that story.

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And they thought that was so funny. But the scripture says, men should love their wives as their own bodies.

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Well, we obviously love ourselves, don't we gentlemen? All humans love themselves. God put that within us to keep us going, to give us a drive to live and not die and all those things.

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We take care of our own body. When we get hungry, we feed it. When we get dirty, we wash it, all these things.

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We sleep when it needs it. I liked what Myron said last Sunday when he's talking about how the body will feed the brain by putting food in the mouth.

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Wasn't that interesting? And so we serve the brain. We got all that going, don't we gentlemen?

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And it says, just like we love ourselves, we should love our wives at that same level.

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And then verse 29 says, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it even as the

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Lord does the church. Isn't that interesting? So it sort of switched metaphors right there because first it was talking about Jesus loving the wife or us loving the wife, like Jesus loved the church.

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Then it switches and says, we need to love the wife like we love ourselves. And then it says, Jesus loved the church more than his own body.

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Well, that's clear, isn't it? Because his body was allowed to be butchered and killed and nailed to a cross for his bride sake.

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And so there's a lot in this about loving the wife as our own body.

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And then it says, nourish and cherish. The word nourish in the

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Greek is from two little Greek words. One means to rear up and the other one means maturity.

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So it means to rear up to maturity. That is to cherish or even to train.

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I think in the context of this, we're not talking about training, but we're talking about cherishing and making sure that the body remains nourished and growing and healthy.

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And all of this is all connotated in the meaning of this word nourish. But mainly the best

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English word I think to translate this word is to cherish the wife like we do our own body.

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And then the word cherish itself in the Greek, where it says nourish and cherish, the word cherish in the

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Greek means to warm, to keep something warm or to brood over something, to foster or promote something, to advance something, to encourage something, to look after, care for, bring up and nurture.

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So all of these things are things that we do for ourselves every day when we get ready to go out into the world.

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Think how long it takes. It takes a long time to get this body ready to present it to the rest of you. And the older I get, the longer it takes, or actually it gets easier.

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There's less hair to comb and things like that. But ladies, I know that you like to take quite a bit of time to get ready to present yourselves.

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And we do all these things for our own bodies. And that is a picture of how we ought to put our wives, gentlemen, at that level.

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We should love them as much as we love ourselves. It says, even as we love ourselves.

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Now that's just that little word. You know, I love studying words in the Bible. That's why it takes me 12, 13 years to teach through a book, but because I don't teach the book,

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I teach the words in the book, right? But here where it says that he loves, we should love the wife even as we love ourselves, or in verse 29, we should nourish and cherish it even as the

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Lord does the church. Wow, there's a whole nother picture, isn't it? How does the

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Lord take care of us through nourishment and cherishing us? Like that is how we should do it.

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That little phrase, even as, has some added power to it, because it is this little word, hos, or hos, in the

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Greek, I should say, it is an interesting word. It can be a copulative word, which means it can take this phrase over here and join it to this phrase over here.

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This right here, even as this right here. So it's copulative. It joins two ideas in thought, but it's interesting because in Greek, it's not just copulative, it's also cumulative, which means it adds force.

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When you say this phrase and you got this phrase and you put that word in the middle, it multiplies the power of what we're talking about.

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So you could say that this says, you know, we should cherish the wife as we do our own bodies, even as the

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Lord did the church. You could say, as Christ does it in Christ or do that with Christ, or you could say, times

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Christ, multiplied by what we read about what Christ does as far as his love for the church.

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Now, I don't know that it's humanly possible for us to do more than he did, but we're supposed to try to multiply it because this little word, even as, adds a little power to it.

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So it's like that, but you need to work at it even harder. I would think that would be true, that it would take more work on our part to be like that than for Christ, because it's him, but we need to really work or multiply that effort to love our wives as we do ourselves, because then it goes on and says, if he loves his wife, he loves himself.

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You're doing yourselves a favor, gentlemen, when you treat your wife like Jesus would.

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And that's what it's saying. So that brings us to the third point here under the supreme lover, is that the husband should see himself as being one with his wife.

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The scripture says in verse 30, Ephesians 5 .30, for we are members of his body and of his flesh and of his bones.

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Now, the reason that that starts with the word for is because it's looking back at the previous two verses where it's saying we should love our wife as ourselves.

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For, and then it tells us this, which if you didn't have that, you'd think he'd changed the subject, but he's not changing the subject.

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He's adding more information. For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.

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And like that, we should see ourselves with regard to our wives. We should see ourselves as members of her life, her body, her bones, et cetera.

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We are one with her. And this little Greek word is the word sarx,

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S -A -R -X, sarx. I can hardly mispronounce that Greek word. I can butcher some of them, but that one's easy.

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In like fashion, we are members of our spouse, of their body, of their humanity, their sarx.

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So this word sarx doesn't just mean body. It means the life of the person.

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The fact that they are a living person. And we are one with that life of our wives.

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And we should contemplate that. So of their body, of their humanity, their sarx, of their bones.

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We are one, it's a oneness. We are no more two, but one human being, one sarx, one human.

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And don't let any man or woman ever split that asunder. Don't ever let anyone say, well,

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I'm gonna share something with you, but don't share it with your wife or your husband. Now I say, no, it doesn't work that way.

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We're one, so don't tell me if you don't think Charlotte should hear it. Now, it also says an elder and a deacon should not have a wife who is a gossip.

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And I don't, so I fulfill that role. That's the best role I fulfill as a pastor, is the wife part is exactly scriptural.

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Okay, so I got that one. I mean, I guess one was enough. The Lord let me preach, so.

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Anyway, you are in fact one. Verse 31 says, for this cause, shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.

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So the exhortation of scripture is to be the supreme lover of the family.

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One of the things you have to keep remembering is you are one with that wife. You are not two individuals. You can't have a fight with yourself, right?

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You don't fight yourself. We'll fight her, right? So it's very instructive,

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I think. And I think that the fourth thing under being the supreme lover is a very logical conclusion after we made this third point that we just covered.

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And that is that the husband should love his wife even as himself, for sure. It's a logical conclusion of that.

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And that is in Ephesians 5 .33, nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

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So obviously, all those fit together.

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But let's think about this last little phrase, and we're gonna cover this more because when we're done with this, we'll have a whole section on the role of the woman in the family.

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And so we'll obviously cover some of this as well. But look what it says here. So the man is supposed to love the wife like Christ loved the church, and like he loves himself, and realize he is one with his wife.

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And so in the light of all that, it says, and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

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So the husband is to love his wife. And what's interesting is when you look at the grammar there in the

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Greek, the husband loving the wife like Christ loved the church, the husband loving the wife like he loves himself, the husband loving the wife because he's one with her, all of these are found in the present active imperative.

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Now in grammar, in case it's been a while since you were in high school, because a lot of these are the same in English, present tense means you're doing it right now.

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It's not like you were a good husband 10 years ago, you were a good husband when you were dating before you got married, it's like right now.

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Secondly, it's active, which means it's not something greater and bigger than you does to you, it's something you do.

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You're the doer of it. And it's imperative, which means it is a command from God.

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When it says for the husband to love the wife like Christ loved the church, and for the man to love the wife like his own body and the man to be one with the wife, it is an imperative, it's a command from God.

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But ladies, we'll get to this later when we get to your role. But I'll just throw this out because it's right here in front of us.

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It's interesting when it says, and let the wife reverence her husband, this is in the present, passive, subjunctive.

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Gentlemen, if you don't know what that means, you probably don't wanna hear this, but ladies, you will like it. So take your pens out and take note.

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Right? Present means it's now, that's the only similarity.

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Passive means it's something someone else does to you. What that tells me is that your submissiveness, your reverence, and I won't say submissiveness because we're specifically talking about reverence.

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So I gotta be very careful. But specifically with regard to the fact you're supposed to revere your husband, that's a strong word in today's society.

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Women, like if I were to preach this on the street corner out there, and of course, women today would not like to hear that you reverence the husband.

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Reverence, that's a strong word, don't you think? But you're supposed to. However, passive means that it has to do with how he treats you.

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How he treats you will make it easier to obey the Lord in this or more difficult.

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Gentlemen, are you hearing me? Because I'm not preaching to the ladies. Subjunctive gets worse, gentlemen.

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The subjunctive mood is the mood of possibility. She might reverence you.

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She might not. She is not commanded to in this verse.

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Or this is not all the verses, ladies, just we're gonna talk about the ladies. So don't go home thinking this is it for the ladies, but for this particular verse in this word, this is true, that it speaks of the possibility or potentiality of something in the future.

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The action described may or may not occur depending upon the circumstances.

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It is clear that the reverence occurs only when the husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church.

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Wow, it is a response to that.

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How easy is it, gentlemen, to do that? We would literally need to be thinking about this all the time when we're around our wives.

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We would need to be willfully thinking about how

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Christ loved the church before I speak, which we don't always do that, do we, gentlemen, but we should.

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We should be thinking about how that I should love her like my own self before I speak or act.

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I should be thinking about she is one with me, we're the same person, before I speak or act.

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And if we do that again and again, gentlemen, she will reverence us when it comes down to it.

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Oh, she may joke about it, and that's okay in certain circumstances around family or whatever, but when it comes down to it at your funeral someday, she will stand up and reverence you if you do these other things, if you love her like Christ loved the church.

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So there is the pretty good word study on that. All right, now let's see what time it is.

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Okay, so we covered what, two points so far about that and about the husband in the home.

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He is to be spirit -filled, and secondly, he is the supreme lover. The third point is, let's see who's in the room today.

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This'll work. I'm gonna use a big word that a lot of people don't understand, he is to keep a good sexual relationship with his wife, all right?

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So kids, if you wanna know what that means, ask your dad. Oh boy, every man in the room loves me now.

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1 Corinthians 7, three, let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence.

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I like the King James because you could preach that in front of every kid in the room, right? Okay, let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife unto the husband.

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We'll talk about that part when we get to talking about the role of the wife, but now we're talking about the man.

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This word, due benevolence, is actually three words in the

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Greek, ho means thee, and then ophileo means to be under obligation, and then eunoia means kindness.

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So it means the act of being obligated to show kindness.

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Now, what's interesting about it, in the Greek language, this is a euphemism, which literally means what

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I just said, but it figuratively and symbolically, and to the Greek mind, it would mean, and be talking about the conjugal duty.

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That's another good way to say it in a mixed room, don't you think? The conjugal duty, and so there is that duty to the man because his body belongs to the wife, and her body belongs to the man.

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So that is, it shows that it is very important for the man to make sure that that duty is upheld, and so there you have it.

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The fourth thing that I see is he is to be the leader in the home.

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Look at Ephesians chapter five, verse 23. Now, I didn't mean to cut that short on that duty we just talked about.

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You may or may not know how important that actually is in a marriage, and the older we get, sometimes we may forget the importance of it, and that's not a good thing.

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So if you need to go get hormone treatment, go do it. Okay? Gentlemen in particular.

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Women too, but I mean, we do need to keep that in mind. I'm gonna discuss it further because after I talk about the husbands, and then

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I'm gonna talk about the women, later I'm gonna talk about, you know, I'm gonna do it kinda like I do counseling. When I'm counseling a couple,

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I always talk to them individually first. I'll talk to the man by himself, I'll talk to the woman by herself because there's always two sides to the story, but then

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I'll bring them in and talk to both of them, so we'll do that with this lesson too. Eventually, I'm gonna get where I talk to both of you together, and then come back to this topic about the due benevolence when we're talking to both together.

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Depends on if we have children's church that day or not. Dave says, well,

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I ain't teaching it, I wanna be in the room. I wanna hear what Brother David's got to say about this. All right.

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The fourth point for this morning is, he must be the spiritual leader. Ephesians 5 .23,

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for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.

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It's kind of interesting, ladies, that the idea of reverencing the husband, especially in the present tense, like everyday life, and you reverence the husband, is subjunctive.

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A lot of it depends on how he treats you. However, the husband's love for the wife is not subjunctive because it's agape, which means it has nothing to do with how she's treating you.

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So the husband has the higher command from the Lord, and the wife's response in that verse about reverence is subjunctive, which means it can depend on how he's treating you, right?

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But when you look at this verse in 5 .23, the fact that he is the head of the wife is not subjunctive.

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That's a fact. That is a fact that has been true since we fell from the

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Garden of Eden, and from that time, that fact has been the case, and I hypothetically believe that prior to sin, this was not the case.

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I think when God put the man in authority over the woman, it was a result of sin.

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It was not that way before sin. There was no head in the family. They were one. Adam and Eve were one flesh before the sin.

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They were co -equal. They were totally... There was no hierarchy as far as authority before sin.

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That was a result of sin. Now, I believe that's held up quite well if we go back into the early chapters of Genesis and read, so I think you'll find that this is simply a fact.

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It's not something that's subjunctive. I'm like, you can't change it. It's just how it is. Now, a lot of couples don't know it's how it is.

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A lot of times, it's the man that doesn't know, and he doesn't take the leadership role, and I've heard so many women, usually with regard to leadership in the church, you'll have a woman that's preaching, and you point out to them the

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Bible forbids that. God forbids it. A woman shall not have authority over a man, usurp authority over the man, nor teach a man.

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Bible absolutely forbids it, and a woman will say, well, yeah, but when the men don't step up, the women have to fill in.

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I heard that excuse once, and one of my mentors, Gary Plumlee, looked at that strong woman teacher right in front of everybody and said, you are unqualified to do it.

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By God, you can't say I fill in. You're not qualified to do it, and he turned and walked away, and that's pretty much true.

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Well, in the family, what if we take that excuse? What if the woman says, well, the man is just not acting as a spiritual leader, so I've gotta step in and run the family?

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Did you know that that will actually backfire because the more you do that, the harder it is for him to take the lead?

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So why don't you talk to your pastor about that one and get him to talk to the husband and say, dude, you need to step it up.

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That might be easier than you telling him, and the elders and deacons are there for that.

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That's why we have church. That's why it doesn't really work when you're not part of a church.

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It doesn't work as well. Forsake not the assembly of ourselves together as the manner of some is, especially if you see the day approaching.

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Now, so he is the leader, the spiritual leader and the physical leader of the home.

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He's the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. There's that little even as, okay?

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It's cognitive, but it's also cumulative. So we have to work at this, ladies. You have to work at this.

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It's easy for Christ to be the head of the church. And gentlemen, it's easy for Jesus to be the head of the church.

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You're supposed to be, but you gotta work at it. And women, it's easy for you to allow

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Jesus to be the head of you and the church, but you gotta work at it a little bit to let the husband be the head of the home.

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But we're expected to work at this on both sides. So the head means with regard to authority, not with regard to value.

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Did you hear that ladies and gentlemen? It's very important because these hyper spiritual men that tell you again and again,

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I'm the spiritual leader of the family. And so you and the kids gotta get down under that and you gotta do what

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I say. I don't even want you to leave in the house. I'd rather just have you stay home all the time. I know men do that.

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Thinking of one in particular right now, not in our church, but in a situation

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I'm aware of. So, you know, that right there is a faked leadership.

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It's not real. And I think it's important to know the difference, especially for our young ladies in the room as they go out looking for, you know, who their husband will be someday.

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He needs to be a real spiritual leader, not a fake one. So for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body.

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Now notice how it links those two things. Being the head of the family means you're also the savior.

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And sotere in Greek, it means to deliver. You're the protector, the deliverer of the family.

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And if you don't do that, you don't have the right to pretend that you're the leader either. And that is in the physical realm, but also in the spiritual realm.

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If you are not, remember what point number one the other day was we were talking about? You got to be well -versed in spiritual warfare.

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Remember that point? You can't be a spiritual leader if you don't understand that.

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And because the wife and the children are more susceptible to demonic influence and trouble from the enemy than you are.

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So you gotta be the strong one. You gotta be the one that delivers the family from that. And that's part of your headship.

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And the scripture makes that very clear. Genesis 3 .16, unto the woman he said,

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I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. And notice that this is after they fell into sin.

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He says, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband.

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And then it says this in Genesis 3 .16, by the way, Genesis 3 .15

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is one of the most favorite, favorite, famous verses in the Bible. It's called the

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Pro Evangelium and is the first mention of the gospel where it says that the serpent will bruise your heel but you will crush his head or your offspring will crush his head.

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That was a picture of the line of Jesus, right? That's right before this verse.

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And then this verse comes and it says, thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.

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And this word rule in the Hebrew literally means to have dominion over. It's part of the curse, but ladies always remember that the curse was part of God's perfect plan.

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And there was never a time when there wasn't going to be a fall. I had that debate recently with, in fact, last

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Sunday with one of our visitors. And there was never a point, at least not since time and space began, there was never a point, even in the garden of Eden, there was never a point where there wasn't going to be a fall.

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It was a fact, it was going to happen. It was God's predestined plan. Yes, God foreknew it, but he also predestined it.

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And the proof is the Bible says Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. Why would that be true if you weren't going to have a fall?

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And you can't undo it. Once it's done, you can't undo it. So there was never a chance there was not going to be a fall.

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So we have to understand there was never a chance that the man wasn't going to be the leader in the home.

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And that the woman would have to understand that the man has dominion over the woman. Now, here's where you have a problem is when the man's not truly spiritual and he's faking it.

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That's when you need to go see the pastor and the elders and the deacons. I should say the elders and the deacons, pastor is one of the elders.

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You need help in that case, ladies, you need help. And any friends that you have that you know that's the case, they need, you need to tell your lady friend, go see your pat.

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Now you got to hope they got a pastor and elders that understand biblical counseling and have the wherewithal to handle it properly.

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But that's the case. All right, so we'll stop there. That's half the points, four out of eight, it's not too bad.

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But these are just, these are so important to understand to set up the home properly so that there can be happiness and joy.

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And it can be, I've always said this, a marriage is either one of two things. If you're Christians, a marriage, well, if you're

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Christians, I know how it's supposed to be, but just at large, a marriage is one of two things. It's either a little bit of heaven on this earth or it's total hell.

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It's not in between, okay? So these are the principles on the man's side, half the principles, we'll talk about the other half next time.

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But these are the things how God's methods for making it a wonderful bit of heaven on this earth.

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I honestly, out of all the people that I've known, I don't know, I just know a handful that have the kind of marriage

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I'm talking about. So we need to strive for it, we need to be better at it, we need to make this happen, it's

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God's will. Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you so much for your word, thank you for how clear it is and thank you for how it fills us with power and your word together with the

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Holy Spirit are the two things that make us grow. And so Lord, help us to grow in our marriages and our abilities to be good spouses, but also to raise our children and grandchildren properly.

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Give us all of these wonderful, this wonderful wisdom that comes from your word.

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And thank you for it, we ask you to bless it in our lives, we ask you to bless our fellowship time and the meal we're about to have in Jesus name, amen.

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You are dismissed. If you have any questions, please come to me personally, rather than calling everyone else in the church and asking them about it, just come to me personally,

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I will share with you where I got it. Right.

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Right. Right. Right. Right.

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Right. Right. Right. Amen. How was the sound from your view?