God's Word to Husbands

Always so good to be together and literally adore Jesus together.

That's that's what worship is just coming and adoring him, and his name is everything, and then rocking out some amazing grace.

Where would we be without that?

Where would we be without the grace of God in our lives?

Knowing that he's merciful, knowing that he wants a relationship with us, he wants to walk with us.

No matter how much we try to run from him, he's always willing to just still walk with us and be in a relationship with us.

We need that grace, don't we?

I mean, we need it.

Um, I was actually just thinking this past week about how worship really is, by definition, just us coming and saying, God, we need you.

Man, we we absolutely need to be with you.

We need to be with you with our church family, and we need to hear your voice.

We need your mercy.

We need your forgiveness.

And uh as we dive into this message today, I'm gonna speak for all husbands on planet earth.

Lord, we need your help.

We need your grace, we need your forgiveness, we need your mercy because um I was thinking about this.

It's interesting.

Um preparing this message and knowing I was gonna preach it.

I'm like just kind of flashing back to back when I was younger, back when I was in high school, back when I was in college.

And I have to say, I didn't really sit around thinking, imagining what it would be like to be a husband who was married, married for five years, married for 10 years, married for going on and on and on.

I just didn't imagine it.

You just we're just doing the things, you know.

Um, in fact, my little backstory is that when I first went to college, almost pretty quickly into that, I'd still a fairly new believer.

I'd only been following Jesus for a couple of years, and I was reading scripture, and uh there was a great uh Christian artist named Carmen.

Y'all know who Carmen is anymore?

Okay, all right.

Yeah, it's Carmen, you know, he was a single guy and was just saying, I'm not married, you know, I'm fully devoted to the Lord, you know, and I was reading that there's a passage sort of about that in 1 Corinthians 7.

I'm like, that's me.

I'm gonna be fully devoted to God.

Don't need to be married.

And then I met Sherry Roy, and I was like, I got a different plan now.

I'm gonna chase after this gal and see if I can catch her.

And uh, but I never did really think, like try to even imagine what marriage would be like.

And part of me is like, if somehow, some way God could have given me like some kind of premonition, some kind of vision of the future, and say, here is what it's gonna be like.

Here are some of the uh parenting challenges you're gonna face.

And when I say parenting challenges, for the kids in the room, it's not like you're the challenges, like we are the challenge, like figuring it out, like how do we do this?

Uh we're in charge of humans and we got to figure this out together.

The challenges of just life circumstances and the things you face, the things that happen in your lives that make you sad or make you elated, and then all the potential miscommunications that happen.

Like, if I were to get a vision for that, I wouldn't be able to handle it.

I would have been like, whoa, are we gonna be okay?

Uh, we're gonna get through that.

Uh, marriage is work, marriage is hard.

And I've always been a little hesitant to preach a message like this because my biggest fear is everybody who's not a husband's like, I can just check out, you know, and play some candy crush during this sermon.

I don't want that to happen.

Uh, but I actually believe it's so relevant because it's in the word of God.

And whether you may even be in the mode as a young man like I was, where I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna do that, or maybe you're like, I definitely want to do that, or maybe you're like, I'm not even thinking about that, uh, and you're a kid or a student.

But I want you to know, I believe God wants you to know what it his word says to husbands, so that you can have a vision for that a little bit, at least his big picture vision for what it means to live that way.

Um, I have to confess, in preparing for this message, this is kind of hard, but it's kind of hard almost every week.

Um, I've been told by other pastors like, if you are preaching or teaching on a Sunday or whatever in your church, and you only preach or teach the things that you feel like you're really good at, then that's wrong.

You know, uh, you sometimes are going to have to preach and teach things that you don't always feel like you're great at.

And I think my wife, who's so sweet, would stand up and say, no, no, he's really great at that.

She would say that.

She's super sweet.

I feel humbled whenever I look at God's word and it describes what it says for husbands to do, how we should live, how we should be as husbands.

It challenges me and it humbles me every time.

So I don't stand before you saying, Man, I've been doing this great for a long time.

I stand up here saying, Man, I'm you might catch me not do great at this today.

And you'll be like, dude, practice what you preach, and that's okay.

But I also have to confess to you that I do believe my initial motivation to prepare this message is out of frustration.

Um, and I'm not saying recently, I've been thinking about this for a long time, thinking, Lord, when you want this message to come together, when you want me to preach it, let me know.

And I saw that opportunity here for today.

Um, but I get frustrated at times because I do get to talk to a lot of uh people uh in my job, and some of it's definitely in counseling, pastoral counseling.

I'm not a trained professional counselor by any stretch, but I get to sit with a lot of people individually and as couples, and I have witnessed a lot of husbands use God's word to justify their own non-Christ-like actions and words.

And it's hard to see that happen.

Like, oh my goodness, like we need to have a conversation about that.

We can't act that way and talk that way, and then say that is according to God's word.

Don't bring God into your non-Christ-likeness.

That's a frustration that I feel we as men, we as husbands can sometimes do.

I do believe the most pivotal watershed passage as it pertains to marriage, but especially husbands, is found in the book of Ephesians, chapter five.

We're gonna be right in the thick of that together today, starting at verse 21.

We'll go through the end of the chapter, verse 33.

Before I read this, my hope today is that we can all have what I would call a baseline of what God Himself expects of husbands.

And I believe we all need to have that, all of us.

It could be that there's a wife in the room that's like, well, this is what I desire and expect.

How about we line that up with what God desires and expects?

Um, we as husbands, we can be really guilty to just we're just trying to make it happen.

We're just trying to keep up with all the tasks that we believe we need to get done as men.

And for just a moment, what if we look and see God say to us, this is the actual most important things for you to really think about, for you to really do, for you to really lean into.

Kids, man, catch a vision for this students, catch a vision for the single people, people who want to stay single, people who don't want to stay single.

Like, let's lean into what God says is the baseline of what He desires for husbands to be.

And then once we catch a vision for it, we can pray for it, we can strive for it, we can expect it and provide accountability for it in our homes.

And as husbands, I'll say, I don't want you to feel a weight, I want you to feel an inspiration.

Like, let's go for it, let's do this.

That's what I hope we can experience together.

So let's lean in together, starting in verse 21 of Ephesians 5, and it's a very short, awesome verse.

It says, Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

And I want to pause there and say, in many of our English translations of the Bible, all those little headings, those are things we as humans put in the Bible to help us find sections of Scripture, and it's very helpful.

All too often I see in our English translations, the heading about marriage and husbands and wives comes after that verse.

I believe this verse should absolutely be included in talking about marriage and talking about our families and our homes.

God's recipe for an amazing marriage has one key ingredient: mutual Christ-like submission.

If you fall asleep in the next few minutes, I hope that's the one thing you do remember is that we as husbands and wives, we as the family of God, we as people who follow Jesus, we are mutual submitters.

We're seeking to continually co-submit to one another.

That's the recipe of a great marriage.

Now, the verse right after this one is one I hear men used all too often as a weapon against their wives.

So when I read this one, don't forget what we just read in verse 21.

That comes first.

And I would ask, what if husbands and wives together sought to serve one another like Jesus?

What if they sought to love one another like Jesus?

What if they sought to honor one another like they would honor Jesus?

That's what verse 21 leans into.

But here's what it says in the next three verses.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Now, as I said, I've seen this passage weaponize, honestly, misuse, in order for husbands to say, they just gotta do what I say, because that's what God says.

That's the way it's supposed to work.

I want to look at this and really look into the context of this, but I think it's fair to park here.

We see uh this kind of content in also 1 Timothy, another letter written by Paul.

The Apostle Paul wrote this, and he very much tended in his letters to the churches to speak directly uh to men and to women, to family members, and give them very specific instructions.

There is a word, I would guess it would be called a theological term, that is used to describe what we read here in this passage, and that word is complementarianism, and it's defined as the theological view that men and women are created equal in value and dignity, but are designed by God with distinct complementary roles in the home and church.

That's a very good definition, general definition for this theological term.

Now, I want to add to this definition another verse of scripture that I think is so important, a passage of scripture.

And to me, sometimes when you see a passage like this and you see a theological term like this, I can track with it, but I also can already see how people are gonna start taking that information and start making some man-made rules to go along with it that may not be in scripture.

So, as a as another foundational truth from scripture to align with this, I'm gonna read to you another part of another letter that Paul wrote in Galatians.

Galatians 3, 26 through 28.

So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And this really leans into the creation, the valued, dignified creation being completely equal between men and women.

And that has to be a foundational truth we lean into as we look at also how still yet, when God created male and female, created us very uniquely different and distinct as well.

Equal in value, equal in dignity, yet distinct in roles.

This is an umbrella truth of all the theology we want to create around Ephesians 5.

He made us, he made us distinctly male and female.

Thanks to the blood of Jesus Christ, we can all be saved by grace through faith.

And in Christ, there is no male nor female.

And that's how you build a complementarian view of husbands and wives, of men and women, equal yet different.

So getting back to this passage in Ephesians, God uses Paul to truly show us how to marry together two things that seem to contradict each other.

There is no male nor female in Christ.

But we know there is a very distinct difference between males and females.

What seemed to be innate and God created differences.

So how do we marry those things together?

Well, I mentioned another letter that Paul wrote kind of dives into this.

1 Timothy, you can go read it for yourself.

In that passage, he did a very similar teaching where he leaned into the creative order of God to explain those differences.

For instance, man was made first, woman was made out of man, Eve took the apple first, Adam took it next, and the rest is history.

Paul really leans into the created order, if you will, to explain equal but different.

But here in Ephesians, God inspired Paul to compare husbands and wives to Christ and the church.

And that totally gives an amazing vision of what marriage can be like.

Before we move into that, here's what I do believe.

There's a special God-created call on men to be leaders in their homes and in their church and in their community.

I believe that.

And even though Paul is very clear about this complementarian view, he built churches on the foundational leadership of all people, male and female, Jew and Gentile.

Just as it said, in Christ there are no distinctions.

So before we move away from this topic, let's make sure we don't isolate a few verses and miss the entire teaching of scriptures and the heart of God.

What we're about to read next, men, if we were to prayerfully aspire to become this, I would love to see what would happen to our hearts as men, and to the hearts of our wives, and the hearts of our kids.

And I would say many of us are aspiring to this, and that's great.

Don't listen to how anyone else tells you how you should do it.

Don't let reals and trends guide your way of being a husband.

Let's do what God tells us to do in this next passage.

Verses 25 through 30 of Ephesians 5.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

After all, no one has ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church.

For we are members of his body.

I'm always amazed at how much detail, poetic, beautiful, yet very real practical detail God gives things for us husbands to do.

When we're very tempted to go back to that previous passage and say, I kind of like that submission stuff.

That'd be kind of cool.

It's like, all right, cool, but then this is what you're supposed to do.

And it's like, that's a lot of big, awesome, huge, God, I need your help kind of stuff, isn't it?

And so let me re-summarize that.

God wants husbands to simply love their wives like Jesus loves us.

And that means this give yourself up for her, make her spiritual life better, care for her by protecting, providing, and nurturing.

I don't know if you've ever thought of those things before or ever heard someone say this is what we're supposed to do as men.

But let's lean into that for a little bit.

One of the things that first comes to my mind is when I see that providing in there, I think it's so easy for us as men to say, that's it.

That's what I do.

And I work hard and I provide a paycheck, and that's how I give myself up for her, and that's how I provide.

And I would say, for the sake of really thinking this through today, let's take that off the table and think about this.

In what other ways do you give yourself up for your wife?

And think about protecting.

Protecting means she feels safe with you.

She feels safe because of you.

I've learned that it doesn't take a man with muscles to do that, and I praise God for that.

Thank you, Lord, that that's not.

Although Sherry's funny, if I go out of town without her, she always says, Yeah, I was just a little scared while you're gone.

And I'm like, seriously?

Thank you.

That makes me feel great.

Um, that she would feel safer that I'm there.

But I do believe when I'm coming to still learn, I can't always put words to it, but I think there's a strength of character, a strength of leadership, and it looks differently by personality from every guy.

But I think there's that wives are saying, that's it.

I feel safe because of that.

And that it's a strength of character, it's a strength of leadership, it's a patience, it's a listening, it's a caring.

Honestly, I think that above all, guys, if we just love and we are actively loving, that's gonna take care of that.

I would also say, men, we don't always see ourselves as nurturers.

But you see that in this passage.

It talks about, you know, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and presenting her as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle.

You know, it's this holy nurturing thing, like making her spiritual life better, right?

Not being a reason that her spiritual life is more difficult, but actually being a reason it's better.

Not just because we give her prayer requests because of how we treat her.

We don't want that to be the reason her spiritual life is better, right?

But that we're actually elevating her in some way spiritually, if that makes sense.

And part of that is that we actually are nurturers.

I've learned that we tend to do that more than we realize, guys.

For those of you guys who love cars, and I've got some friends who do.

Man, I've seen you how you were at that car.

You are a nurturer, you pamper that car.

That's how we can be, and we can be that in so many other ways with our hobbies, with the intentionality and the preparation for which we do the hobbies that we love.

And the list is endless, whether it's golfing or hunting or running or working out or whatever it might be, or you play a musical instrument, whatever.

You take care of your stuff and you take care of making sure you do that in a good way.

For my gym rat friends, you are good at nurturing.

You have a plan for your body.

You know what days are leg days, what days are arm days, and you're scooping that creatine and putting it in your body, and like you're you're good at all of that.

And I'm saying all those things as examples so that we don't let ourselves off the hook, men, for nurturing our wives.

We have so much intentionality and time and thought into nurturing in those ways.

We can't say that we can't do the same in our marriages.

That language of presenting a bride to himself as radiant, clean, holy, and blameless.

It's a beautiful picture of our bride on her wedding day.

It's a foreshadowing of the day of Christ when all Christians, the church, also called the Bride of Christ, will be presented before Jesus.

Holy, beautiful, and blameless.

And so, husbands, we go say this again the way we love our wives should not be a barrier to their spiritual growth and flourishing.

And I'm not saying men be perfect.

But I do think at times we say we aren't perfect.

We lean into our lack of perfection and man, we're just, you know, just trying to make it.

You know, we're not perfect.

And thank, thank God for his grace.

And then we just say that's it.

Why not aspire to do this better?

To mutually submit, to nurture, to provide, to love like Jesus.

You don't have to be a Bible expert to love like this.

I've learned that.

You just have to be more thoughtful and intentional, like we are with the other things.

Channel your passion for other things and make sure you're also channeling it to your spouse.

And once again, I would ask: are you a spiritual barrier or a spiritual encourager in her life?

The way you give yourself up for her and sacrifice for her and show up for her, that will be Jesus to her.

Incarnational spiritual leadership, being Jesus in her life.

Some men know the Bible well, but stink at being like Jesus to their wives.

You could be an expert.

You can have the verses memorize.

You can share all the theological terms like crazy.

But what she really needs is someone who would wash her feet, submit to her, sacrifice for her.

You were use words that protect her, that build her up.

So, husbands, I have two questions for all of us to think about.

One, how do my actions show the selfless love of Jesus to my wife?

Just think about your actions.

Think about what you do.

How do they show the selfless love of Jesus to her?

Secondly, is Jesus okay with the way I talk to my wife?

And that applies for so many of us in this room.

You can definitely put that on the other roles in our household, in our lives.

Children, is Jesus okay with the way you talk to your parents?

Wives, is Jesus okay with the way you talk to your husbands, to your neighbors, to your coworkers, to your friends?

Like, think that through.

God's word to husbands is for us to love our wives like Jesus loves his church.

And we're not going to do it perfectly, but men, why don't we fail trying?

When we failed putting out all the effort we can to be that way.

Let's give ourselves up for her like Jesus gives himself up for all of us.

Let's wield our words to infuse our wives with the undying, unfailing love of God.

Now, for just one moment, my fear today is how many wives or ladies may use all of this to shame or belittle their husbands.

I do have a fear of that.

Like, sermon for you, bro.

Like the moment we mess up at Skyline later today, there it is.

I'm calling that one out.

I'm putting in a prayer request on the app tomorrow.

Right?

I have a little bit of a fear about that because that's not it either.

That's that's not it either.

And I I don't let's not do that.

And you'll see why in a moment, when you see a word God uses that just fuels most every man, you'll see why that's not a good plan of action.

In too many marriages in our churches, we have two people who love Jesus but who keep throwing stones at each other.

And you remember what Jesus said about throwing stones, right?

I think we find it in John 8, where he said, he, and I would say, or she who is without sin, throw the first stone.

And you remember that when you're ready to throw one, man.

Keeping score.

So for these last three verses, you're about to see the bigger picture of marriage.

These are my favorite three of this entire passage.

I hope it blows your mind like it always blows my mind.

He quotes Genesis, going back to the creation of God, how he created us equal in value and dignity, but distinctly different.

He says in verse 31, quoting Genesis, for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

And here's what he says now.

This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

What I love about this passage, and I'll tell you not the most thing I love about this passage first, is how God knows already.

I mean, this sounds like such a dust statement.

God knows so well how distinctly different men and women are, how distinctly different husbands and wives are.

Just in what he says at the very end of this chapter, how he commands the wives to respect husbands, and how he commands husbands to love their wives, using the word agape love, which is the same love that is used all through the New Testament to describe the love Jesus has for us.

But he knew that men, we crave a different nuance kind of love.

We spell love the way Aretha Franklin spells it.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

We crave it.

Men just crave respect and honor.

When we as husbands know that our wives think we are the man, even if we think we're not, and we struggle with that.

But if they we believe they think we are, man, we can walk on hot coals.

We can do it.

So I'm just blown away how God ends this chapter with those two different nuances.

So, men, husbands, we are to give our wives agape love.

It's a selfless love, it's a sacrificial love, it's a love that keeps no record of wrongs, it's a love that washes feet.

There's something about the way he wired us that craves those things.

Our wives crave that.

Our wives need a husband who they know would die for them.

No hesitation.

Husbands need a wife who see them as the only man for them, a hero and a leader they want to follow.

So unfortunately, we all too often sabotage both those things.

Like I said before, by throwing stones.

I've seen how women can sometimes emasculate men without even knowing they're doing it, by just the way they speak to them, making them feeling small or incapable.

I've seen how men, in an effort to gain respect for their wives, sabotage it by putting them down, making them feel less than, and therefore losing all respect.

So we do this, we sabotage this.

Marriage is our work, friends, but if we do this right, here's what it looks like: Christian marriage is this husbands and wives trying to outlove, outserve, and out-sacrifice each other.

That's God's marriage.

That's what he's prescribed for us in Ephesians 5.

This is how we do it.

We outlove, out-serve, and out-sacrifice each other.

I want to go back to verse 32 because this is the mind-blowing part to me.

Paul, by the inspiration of God, wrote this This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ in the church.

Right before that, he quoted the oft-quoted passage in Genesis.

A lot of ministers will quote this verse at wedding ceremonies.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, be united to his wife.

He said, This was created because of Christ in the church.

Marriage has a very huge worldwide purpose that we miss.

And it's this a marriage like this shows everyone who sees it the gospel.

When we latch on to the mystery, why did God create it this way?

Why did he create marriage?

Why did he command us as men to be like Jesus to our wives, to wash your feet, to outserve?

Why did he command wives to have a very distinct role of showing respect that men really crave?

Why, why, why?

When we do this well, when we strive to do it, even when we fail, we strive to do it.

We are proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone who knows us, to everyone who is connected to us.

When they see us trying to do marriage like that.

That's why we do it.

We do it for the gospel.

We do it to shine a light in the world that this is how Christ loves the church.

When you see a husband laying down his life for his wife, that's why we do it.

It's not free of mistakes.

It can even have at times huge dramatic failures.

But when you follow that up with forgiveness, reconciliation, restoration, redemption, and a love that mutually submits, friends, that is the most amazing picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In fact, I would argue it's the imperfect forgiving marriages that show the gospel best.

So if you feel like, well, this ain't us, that's alright.

God ain't done yet.

Submit to one another.

Pray and ask the Lord to give you a vision to how to outlove, outserve, outsacrifice one another.

I'm asking you this.

I hope you can say yes to this.

Have you seen a marriage like that in your life?

And maybe you haven't.

And if you haven't, man, I pray that you meet and can encounter a marriage like that to give you maybe a real in-the-flesh vision for what that looks like.

But I am so blessed because I get to know so many people in this church that I've seen it with my very own eyes.

The mystery of the gospel.

The mystery of marriage is that it is the gospel.

Your marriage is part of God's mission strategy.

In fact, another way to say it is like this: your marriage isn't about you, it's about Jesus.

So I don't know about you, men, but I want my marriage to have a gospel impact on my kids.

I hope that one day they sit in a room and say, I really want my marriage to be like my mom and dad's.

I want people who may doubt that there is a God to be able to see how Sherry and I love one another and forgive one another and mutually submit to one another and say, Well, I know they love Jesus, and that marriage is different.

So maybe there is a God.

I want to see grandchildren consider the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ because they saw their nana and papa love each other so well that they stayed together for 50, 60, 50, and so on years.

Man, isn't that a great vision for marriage?

God can do it.

This isn't going to be on a slide, but I'm aware that like every time I get to stand up here and stand before you, man, I feel so honored to get to do it and I love getting to do it.

But I also, my brain goes a mile a minute saying, I there are so many different perceptions and experiences represented in this room and those watching, listening online right now.

There could be someone in here that's like, man, I'm encouraged by that.

There could be someone in here saying, I am discouraged by that.

Because I don't even know that I can do anything to make my marriage better right now.

It's bad.

And we are struggling, or I am struggling, or like, or I'm going through a divorce, or I've been divorced, or I've been her, I've gone through this.

Like, you can start naming it, like, don't try to give me the warm fuzzies about marriage, Bill, because I ain't got them right now.

That might be where you are.

And so, as I was thinking about this this morning, I jotted one more thing down, and I find myself saying this a lot to people when I get to have private pastoral counseling with people.

You cannot and should not control your spouse, I would say anybody.

You cannot and should not control your spouse or anyone, but you absolutely can and you absolutely should control yourself.

It's one of the fruit of the spirit, self-control.

So at the end of the day, no matter what you're going through, no matter what things are like for you in your marriage, or maybe you're not married and you're not really thinking that much about it right now, no matter what happens in the people around your lives and what they're saying to you and what they're doing, are they mutually submitting?

Are they showing respect?

Are they loving?

Are they sacrificing?

I don't know the answer to that question.

I know one thing, you can't and shouldn't manipulate it to happen, but you can do it.

You can control you, you can choose to still wash feet, you can choose to still spiritually encourage, you can still choose to be a safe place, you can still choose to do everything Jesus is telling you to do, no matter what's being done around you or even to you.

And because of that, God can still use you to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in just how you live.

You can control that.

Man, I hope that you hear that and I hope that you embrace it.

I don't know what next steps God might be encouraging you to take today.

Uh, husbands, I would just encourage you, you're married, pray and ask God to show you ways today and the next day and the next day.

Uh, how can I serve her?

How can I be a safer space for her?

How can I spiritually encourage rather than be a spiritual barrier?

And for wives, make a commitment to God today to pray for your husbands.

It's the best thing you can ever do for us, men.

We need it.

And maybe, maybe conversations happen like, how can we do this better together?

How can we mutually submit to one another together?

Because it's going to take both to make a good, godly, healthy marriage.

Singles, if you aspire to be married, ask God to help you to remember this.

This is what it's supposed to be like.

For anyone who's down on marriage, maybe you look at it through God's eyes today.

Not everyone's called to be married.

We never want to elevate marital status as it's if it's the be all in all.

That's not true at all.

But if you are, God wants to use it to show the world the love of Jesus.

And that's a beautiful thing.

And for all of us, the church, we are called to mutually submit to one another.

We're in this thing together.

We're the family of God.

And the world and this community needs to see us washing each other's feet, mutually submitting to one another, loving each other the way Christ loves us.

He said it to his disciples.

The world will know that you are my disciples, that you follow me by how you love one another.

And so even if you're like, I don't think I needed this marriage sermon today, I hope you walk out or saying, I need to love everyone around me with the love of Jesus Christ.

And God's going to use that to proclaim his gospel in this community, in my home, all around me.

So let's ask him to do that as we pray together.

Will you bow with me?

Father, I thank you so much for the grace you give us, the mercy you give us.

God, I specifically right now pray for all who are husbands.

This teaching, this passage, I think really, really shines a light on how you've called us to be Jesus to our wives.

And Father, we have failed many times, but help us to not settle for just accepting we're not perfect.

May we strive to do it better, God.

Lord, make us a safe place, and don't allow us to be a spiritual barrier for our wives.

Lord, help us to be Jesus to her.

Father, for the wives who are in the room, Lord, give them a vision for praying for their husband, for doing their part, whatever that might look like, God.

And I know you will speak to hearts and show the way.

Lord, help us to consider forgiveness and restoration in the marriages that are really struggling and suffering right now, God.

When two people desire to forgive and restore, beautiful, amazing things can happen that will show the world your love.

Father, for those who've been through a lot of pain in marriage and maybe they're divorced and single and not even planning on ever getting married, Lord, may you give them a vision for how they can encourage other marriages.

God, I thank you for our students and our kids in the room.

This world wants to show a lot of things about what marriage is supposed to look like.

May they forever remember what you say it is.

A husband and a wife mutually submitting to one another, being Jesus to one another, out serving, outsacrificing one another.

Lord, help us to show the world what that looks like in our homes and in our church.

By your strength, we know you can do it.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.