Building a Glorious Marriage - Ephesians: Born for War

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

Okay, if you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians 5.

We are going to the book of Ephesians if you're a guest with us today.

And we're coming in to a set of verses that I wrote my book on.

The Godwall Marriage.

So you can, if you haven't read this book, it's available in the lobby or it's available on Amazon and I think Barnes and Noble called The Godwild Marriage.

It's based on Ephesians chapter 5, 18 through 33.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

And over the last few weeks we've covered 18 through 21, but I want to kind of put things together a little bit for us before we move into the rest of the chapter.

And that is that everything we're going to talk about today is impossible.

You can't do it without the power of the Holy Spirit.

So that's the reason verse 18 is there.

Look at Ephesians 5.18.

He says, do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.

So unless you're filled with the Spirit, a powerful, glorious, beautiful Christian marriage is impossible.

For you that are single, and you're looking at the potential of marriage, or you're single, and God's called you to be single.

You can't do your life without the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's just not possible.

And Christ came to set us free.

Christ came to give us the power that we need to forgive, and the power that we need to love, and the power that we need to submit, the power that we need to walk in victory.

Because you're naturally, everyone in this room, you're naturally up to no good.

You just are.

And you should look in the mirror sometime and say, Steve, you're up to no good.

But in Christ, you're up to all things being good, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

And so you've got to have Christ.

So let me just put that big banner over everything I'm about to say is that this is not possible.

This is actually impossible.

But in Christ, all things are possible.

So that's the rubric.

Now, one thing I didn't write in the book that I'm going to start with here is this idea of oneness.

The idea of and the importance of and the power of unity.

So God created all the heavens and the earth, and he created all the animals.

And on the sixth day, he created man.

Now, man, Adam, is generic.

It's actually genderless.

So I'll read it to you, Genesis 1, 26 and 27.

Then God said, Let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness.

And I want you to notice the plural form here of our image.

This is the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit creating the earth according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is on the earth.

So God created man, Adam, in his own image.

He created him, male and female.

Now we have three labs, and I like labs, they're cool, and like training them.

And then we have two cats.

We had three.

We don't know where the other third one is.

It's wandering around the woods somewhere.

Maybe they'll come home.

Or maybe it was a meal.

I mean, we don't know.

Okay?

But they're beautiful.

And I think animals are cool, and I'm for animals, and I like to train certain kinds.

But you're created in the image of God.

They're not.

And all it takes is a little bit of working with a dog to realize that dog ain't created no image of God.

Okay?

But um so we're creating the image of God, but listen, we're created in the image of God for oneness.

And that's what I want to say.

That's how I want to begin with is this idea of oneness because now in Genesis 2, 23 and 24, we read these words.

Adam said, this is so Adam, you know, he names lions, tigers, and bears.

And he has no kinship to them.

And then God brings a naked woman.

And he goes, Hello, this is now bone of my bones.

So this is what he said.

This is now bone of my bones.

And flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Therefore, this is the part I want to camp on.

A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So at the very core, the rubric over a glorious marriage is oneness, unity, not roles.

Because we're going to read about some roles here, and sometimes we can overfocus on roles and forget that it's a partnership.

And different marriages, you do things a little bit different, and that's okay with God.

He wants us in oneness, like the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one.

Here's why I know that, because the word used in the Hebrew here is Ekad.

Echad is the word for one flesh.

Deuteronomy 6.4 reads, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

Same word.

So God wants a unified church and he wants a unified marriage.

So that's so underlying all that we're about to read is Paul lacing in a glorious church and a glorious marriage.

So look, if you're in Ephesians 5, look at verse 27.

He says he might present her, meaning the church, to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

He's talking about the unity, the accod of Jesus, or the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with us in intimacy with him.

Then look down at verse 31.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, the two shall become one flesh.

So now he's talking about marriage being one flesh.

So if you get anything out of what I say this morning, I want you to understand that the Christian marriage is about oneness.

It's about working on unity.

So everything we're going to read is lending itself toward being a unified, synergized, complementarian marriage.

Because what we want is we want the best of both.

You want the best of the husband, you want the best of the wife coming together to make this beautiful, glorious marriage together.

So it starts off in verse 22 as he starts to go through this, he's addressing that to wives.

Now, let's start with verse 21, though, submitting to one another in the fear of God.

By the way, verse 22, I've never seen this in a plaque in any woman's home.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

Pretty controversial these days.

It's not one that probably Oprah would have some real fun with this and make fun of Christians with this verse.

For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands.

So I want to give two definitions.

Two definitions for submission.

One is from the Greek, and the other is from Steve Holt.

Okay.

So here's the first, here's the first definition of submission.

It means to, and this is in the Greek, yield in love to love.

Yield in love to love.

So meaning that, if there's abuse happening in a marriage, you're not going to yield to that.

If you're being told to do things that are unbiblical and wrong, you're not supposed to yield to that.

Women, you're not supposed to be a doormat that your husband just walks over.

You're not supposed to let abuse happen in your mind.

And I know for seeing people are going to say, well, what do you mean by abuse?

Well, that certainly is a debatable issue.

But what I mean by abuse in my case, I'm saying where you are taking advantage of that person, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or physically.

That's abuse, in my opinion.

That's why you can have spiritual abuse in a Christian home, where a husband might even use this against his wife to get what he wants.

That's not helping her yield in love to love.

That's yielding in love to sin.

That's why I say it's yield in love to love.

Now nobody's perfect.

Nobody's got it all together.

No family and no marriage is perfect.

But in the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, we're to yield and love the love.

And verse 21 says we're supposed to be doing it one to another.

So that means there are times, men, when you need to yield and love the love to your wives.

She's smarter than you on a lot of things.

And if you haven't figured that out, you need to spend more time in your wife.

Because I can tell you that's true.

And there's a lot of things that you that Liz actually leads better than me.

And so I've learned over time, 3 secure the marriage, to I come under her.

Now, the responsibility overarching of the home and marriage is to the man.

That's what he says.

He says it in verse 23: the husband is the head of the wife.

So we're the head.

But she's the neck, and the neck moves ahead.

Right?

So we need a head and a neck that are actually in sync together.

So the word I would use is symphony.

I think a good word here is symphony.

Support.

Supporting each other.

Supporting your husband.

And some of you women out there, you're bad at this.

You know, you're as selfish as anybody.

Because you're a sinner.

Alright?

Well, just as many men, same way.

So nobody's off the hook here.

This is you can't do it without the power of the Holy Spirit.

You just can't.

So we have to do it with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Second definition of submission, this is my definition.

Um mission.

Submission.

Sub to a mission.

What's your mission?

Every marriage needs to have a mission.

Why did God bring you together?

Why are you together?

Figure that out.

It's really important.

I mean, I know that my grandfather, my grandmother, they didn't know any of this stuff.

And we grew up in a Lutheran home and they didn't teach the Bible chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

So not a lot of Bible in my grandparents' home, but I'll tell you what, they knew their mission in that ranch.

And my grandmother had a clear purpose and granddaddy, and they worked like great together for probably, I don't know, 60 years or however long they were together.

And um so submission has the idea of sub to a mission.

And so, do you have a mission?

You guys have a mission for your marriage.

For you that are single, what's the mission of your life?

You're submitting to Christ.

That's your main person you submit to is Jesus Christ, but it's for the purpose of the glory of God in your life.

There's a mission.

Everybody's got a mission and a purpose, and we want to discover that.

Well, there's one, two, three verses for women.

Nine verses for men.

So here we go, guys.

This is for you.

We're the hard-headed ones in the room.

Husbands, verse 25, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself to her.

Babies, we've had seven of them, are very, very cute, beautiful, and selfish.

They cry in the middle of the night and poop in their pants.

They expect everybody to serve them.

And when they make any move, they're expecting that mom and dad are gonna just run over there and take care of them, right?

It's really cute when they're eight pounds and 21 inches.

It's not so cute when they're 180 pounds and six feet tall.

Okay, and called a man.

So what he's saying here is I want you men to love your wives in the same way that Christ loved the church.

Christ left his home.

He left heaven.

And he came to the earth in our sin-soaked, selfish world, and he came here because he loves you.

And he died at Calvary because he loves you.

And God's calling us, man, to leave our man world and enter into that woman world, which is super weird.

You need a passport.

I mean, they talk different, they think different, everything's different about that world.

And listen, if you start loving your wife by entering into her world, you will die there.

Because it is so different than our world.

But that's what we're called to do.

We're supposed to enter our wife's world, study our wife, know our wives, understand their habits, understand what they need.

It's not something we naturally understand.

It's easier to come to Tuesday morning, wholehearted men, hang out with some guys at that table, eat a great breakfast, study the word, right?

Right?

Than it is to enter our wife's world.

And yet that's what we're called to do.

That's the first admonition of a supernatural, glorious marriage is for us to enter our wife's world, study our wives, get to know our wives, and love our wives and die there.

In other words, it's sacrificial life.

It's agape life.

And it's hard and it's difficult, but it's worth it.

That he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.

That he might present her to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy without blemish.

So it's it's this world that we that we die to, that we come into with the word, with the word of God.

So it's washing our wives with the word.

Washing, not stabbing.

So it's it's that mutual respect and that mutual love.

And in our family, we've every it's been different every year because kids keep coming and going and going and coming.

And right now we have Josh and we have Mary's fiance with charity most of the time.

And uh, what was that all about?

Oh, it's charity back there.

Okay.

All right, calm down.

But what we do right now is we have when we have dinner together, which is most nights, we go into the living room and we open the word.

And we're in the book of Joshua.

So we read that chapter together and then we pray, we talk about it.

And so washing, we're washing each other with the word.

It's like it's like this shirt that I'm wearing, it was wrinkled.

And so I had to go into the laundry room where the ironing board is and everything, and I ironed it.

And I imagine if the shirt could speak, it would go, ah! Too hot, too hot.

Because what God does, he uses the word and he uses our experiences and he uses hard things in our life to kind of burn up our wrinkles, to kind of burn them out.

Because he's making a spotless bride, he's making a spotless marriage.

We do that together.

Women, you can't do that alone if you're married, and men, you can't do that alone.

We do it together.

That's and that's through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So he's saying that we as a church, that's why you're here, is because we need each other.

You can't do it alone.

So the church is a picture of marriage, and marriage is a picture of the church.

So, really, the first church of our lives is our marriage and our family.

That's why integrity is so important.

Because you can pose and pretend at church so easy.

All you gotta do is, you know, put on the old Christian front, big smile, you know, act like you know everything and you know everybody for an hour and a half.

But there's 168 hours in a week, and that's when your family sues who you really are.

So we need we need continuity there.

And by the way, nobody knows this perfect.

And yet we can be coming, it sounds like from scripture, we can be becoming more perfect.

So we can be growing in this together.

It's exciting.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.

Now that's interesting.

Like, probably some people in the right now you're thinking, okay, are we going to Chinese food or Mexican food right after the service?

We're always taking care of our body.

Paul said buffet, oh, oh, he said, buffet your bodies.

One thing I like about going back to the South is there's so many buffets.

My brother knows every all-you-can-eat place in Athens, Georgia.

I can promise you that.

And most men in Athens do.

We love our bodies.

I mean, I don't I don't know if this is accurate with everybody, but at least in our room, there's a ton of mirrors.

I mean, there's a mirror in almost every room.

So some of it, so for some of us, we kind of like to, you know, check ourselves out.

And my family knows I like to walk around like this.

Amen!

In a jovial, funny way, but but I think the illusion here is actually to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.

In other words, what I think Paul is saying here is that the first neighbor of your life is yours.

Love her like you love your body.

Love her like you love yourself.

Like you look in the mirror and you do whatever you do to get ready for the day.

How about looking at her and loving her and taking care of her like you take care of yourself?

Does any woman out there have a problem with submitting to someone like that?

See, I don't think so.

So really the onus is strongly on the man to be a kind and Jesus-loving person.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but he nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does church.

For members of his body, his flesh, and of his bones.

And here we come back to this oneness theme.

For this reason, I think it's good.

So for this reason.

So this for this reason is everything we've read before, everything we've said so far about loving our wives, about presenting her as a spotless bride, about washing of the word, for this reason, a man shall leave his father, mother, be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So we all come from families of origin that have issues.

And I think the goal of marriage is to take the best of your family of origin and bring that in.

Not the worst, bring the best.

If you get the best of the wife and the best of the husband leaving their families of origin, coming, developing your own family, it should be better than the last generation.

In other words, the Christian home should be getting better and better.

That's my goal.

My goal for my children is they have a better marriage, they do better vocationally, they seek the kingdom more than I ever did, or Liz ever did.

We're trying to be a stepladder to set them up so that they can be more successful, more effective, more surrendered, and more powerful than we were.

But that's not what we're seeing right now.

And that's not what we're seeing in America right now.

We're seeing actually the opposite.

And so what's happening is a lot of couples are taking the worst of their family of origin and bringing that in, and it's just dismantling everything.

I challenge you here at the road, let's take the best.

Instead of pouting about or getting upset at the imperfections of your family of origin, how about looking at the best that your parents and your mom tried to do and try to bring that in and say, I'm going to take some of that.

That was good.

That was really good.

I'm going to bring that into my marriage.

And then you're going to be married to a local church so you can grow together.

Because it does take a church to make a happy marriage.

And so we learn from each other.

You start looking around and you see other couples that are stronger than you.

And Harry, why not take them out to coffee or something like that and learn from them?

Ask them some questions.

You see a couple in this church that's been married for 30 plus years.

I mean, probably they've considered divorce at least once.

In other words, they've been through the battle, but they hung in there.

And you gotta hand it to them.

You gotta hand it to them.

That's why we need each other.

You guys that are single in this room and you'd like to be married, you know, find a mentoring couple and hang out with them and try to learn from them and grow.

And then he concludes with this.

Nevertheless, verse 33, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself.

Again, going back to the Great Commandment, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

So, so love to a man comes through respect.

And respect to a woman comes through love.

So, guys, love your wives.

Cherish her.

Bless her.

Find out what she likes.

My wife does not care about flowers that much.

I mean, I think flowers are cool.

You know why?

Because it's just so easy to go buy them.

You just go and say, Well, you got it.

My wife likes cards.

She makes, she doesn't make me, but to love her it makes me.

Sit down, think through what I love about my wife.

That's a little harder than going to Safeway and paying$12.99 and getting a bundle of flowers.

But to write something means a lot to her.

So find out what is the love language of your husband.

What's the love, ladies?

Find the find the love language, the respect language.

Maybe we call it that.

The respect language of your husband, and men, you find the love language of your wives.

And it's a good thing.

So everybody just smile.

Don't be under the pile.

We're all growing together.

Nobody's got the perfect marriage.

And if they do, run, stay clear of us people.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast, is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.