God Glorifying Husbands

Amen.

Well, hey, good morning, Sacred Mission.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and privilege to be able to bring God's word to you this morning.

As uh Michael already said, we're continuing our sermon series uh Till Death Do We Part.

And I think uh overall it's been a phenomenal sermon series.

This is one of the uh things that I love talking about most uh and encouraging the church in most because uh really uh marriage, the covenant between one man and one woman, uh is the best and most prominent earthly symbol uh of the heaven mystery of the gospel of Jesus.

Uh and we see at the beginning of the Bible uh the creation of all things uh culminating in a marriage between uh Adam and Eve.

But then we also see in the end of the Bible a marriage between the Lamb and his bride, the church, and we see the fullness of new creation uh coming down out of heaven that he ushers her into.

And so the Bible is book-ended by these two marriages and everything in between, right, is kind of the struggles and difficulties and triumphs of marriage and the covenant that God has made with his people.

And so our earthly marriages between uh our spouses is a representation of the gospel of Jesus.

And and what we've been wanting to do is to help us understand that the way that we love each other and the way that we are supposed to be united in covenant with one another as husband and wife is rooted in and flows from the gospel of Jesus.

It is a response to something that has been done for us in Christ rather than a call to action that we might earn a right standing before him by the way that we perform or the way that we uh work hard or the way that we strive toward goodness.

No, the way that we love one another is actually because of the way that we have been loved in Christ.

And so we see the radical self-sacrificing love of Jesus for his bride, the church.

And this is what Paul's going to use as the basis of which we as husbands, as men, are called to love our wives.

And before we dive into the text, here's what I want us to do.

For those of us in the room who are in Christ, I want us just to think for a moment about our life before Jesus.

What was your life like before Jesus?

I know for mine it was a wreck.

Uh and some of you, you might be like my wife Katie, who doesn't remember a life before Jesus.

She's just like, I think she kind of left in her mother's womb like John the Baptist, like as she went to church.

And then, like me, I was rolling cigarettes in my mother's womb, just ready to get out of there and be a heathen.

Uh but hopefully most of us in this room can remember or know a time where the love of Jesus made a huge impact on our life.

And I want you to think about the person you are because you have experienced and known the love of Jesus.

I think you're probably a better person because of it.

You're a stronger person because you're one of more faith, you're one of more confidence, you're one of more substance because Jesus' love has been shown in your heart.

And for some of you that might not know that love, that might not understand the gospel or how Jesus' love might transform you, I pray that this morning that you are transformed by it, so that you might know how to rightly love those in your life.

My prayer driving in this morning was this.

Not that we would see men work harder, try more, uh, do better.

Uh, what I hoped we saw was would be this.

Men, look at how beautiful and glorious the gospel of Jesus is for us.

And that extravagant love would cause us to be able and equipped and liberated to love those around us.

That's my hope this morning.

So let's dive into the text.

When we look at the very first portion of this in verses 25 through 27, I think we see this.

Husbands, husbands give themselves up for their wives' ultimate gain.

Husbands give themselves up for their wives' ultimate gain.

Last week, Paul started the text with wives, submit to your husbands.

This week, in verse 25, he gives the imperative command, husbands, love your wives.

Husbands, love your wives.

And here's what I want us to think through.

Uh, to love our life, to love our wife is deep work that we're called to as men.

Hard work that we're called to as men.

And if we look at the call to wives to submit, we'll see something.

We'll see that the wives called to submit entails deep trust, right?

It entails a deep trust that she can have toward her husband, but ultimately, Paul doesn't root her obedience or submission in the quality of the husband, but in the glory and magnificence of her King, Jesus the Messiah.

It is a deep trust in him that fosters an ability for her to submit to her husband.

In the same way, men are not just called to love their wives out of some inherent thing contained within them, but to love their wives because of the way that they have experienced and known Christ loving them.

If the wife's call to submission entails or demands deep trust, then the love of a husband demands deep work.

What kind of love are we being called to?

It's the agape love of God.

Uh, this there's four common words within the scriptures that mean love.

This specific one that he's referring to is the agape love of God.

This is our kind of functional definition for what that means.

It's the steady intention of the will toward another's highest good.

What kind of love are we being called to?

A love that works itself out in the steady intention of the will for another's highest good.

And so Paul's establishing what this love should look like for us, but he's going to go even farther to help us see it more clearly in the person and work of Jesus.

Because he doesn't just leave us with a command, husband, love your wives, but he qualifies it and empowers it with this gospel truth.

As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for us.

So here's the love that we have to be called to and see is that it is first and foremost established on the bedrock of servanthood.

The love that husbands are being called to to express and display for their wives is based on the bedrock of servanthood.

Paul sees an inseparable reality between Jesus' love for the church and the laying down of his life for her ultimate good.

And I think that this is a theme that we can extract from the Gospels, but I'm going to use two specific verses to help us see how Jesus establishes a framework for what this kind of love looks like.

The first one is this, found in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verse 45.

Mark 10:45

Jesus says this, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So what does he see?

He sees servanthood and the laying down of his life as an inseparable reality of the two.

What does being a servant look like?

Well, it looks like him laying down his life.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 13, he says this greater love has no other than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

What is the epitome of love of which he is calling us to?

Is that he himself would show it to us in the laying down of his own life.

And so we see that the love that Christ has given to us is established on the bedrock of servanthood.

And that helps us shape and establish the framework of both the mode and the form of Jesus' love for the church.

The mode would be servanthood, a rejection of self-centeredness for the gain of another.

What did we read about in Philippians last week?

We saw that Christ, though he was God, counted equality with God as something not to be grasped, not to be white-knuckled and held on to.

And instead, he opened up his hand, laid it aside, that he might come and be with us and to be a servant among us.

Christ rejected anything that he could have demanded.

I mean, the king of the cosmos could have demanded anything that he wanted, and he could have rightly demanded it.

But he chose not to function in self-centeredness, rather, he functioned in servanthood.

Second, we see the form would be in the laying down of his own life, a willingness to forfeit everything for another's good.

To forfeit everything, even his own life, for our good.

There was nothing that Jesus grabbed onto and said, mine, except for us.

He said, This is my bride, this is mine, this is the church of which I will forfeit all things to obtain and to make glorious.

From this foundation of servanthood, Paul's now going to reveal the full benefit of being loved by Jesus and what it entails, because it was through serving the church by laying down his life for her that the church would know and receive the full benefit of being loved by him.

He says in verse 26, that he might sanctify her.

Why did Jesus love her so much?

Well, it's that he might sanctify her.

What does that mean?

It means that he might establish her as holy other.

Sanctify means to consecrate, to set apart.

And it was his love for her that made her distinct from all other aspects of creation.

It is the sanctifying power of his work in her and for her that caused her to become glorious in radiant splendor, to set her apart from the corruption and decay of this world.

He loved her that he might sanctify her.

How did he do it?

He did it by having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

Paul helps us understand that it's the washing that sanctifies her.

It is both the work of the Spirit and it is the ministry of the Word that sanctifies the church.

These two things together create a church that is holy and set apart in itself.

And Paul is relating Jesus' work of sanctification, Jesus' work of washing his own bride to the love that a husband should have for his wife.

I believe what he's helping us understand is that it is our responsibility, husbands, to make sure that the word of God is established within our home.

And what we're doing is not trying to shape and form a wife after our own desires, our own pleasures, our own image, our own expectations, but we are using the word of God to shape and form a wife into the glorious gospel of grace that she might be conformed to Jesus rather than conform to our sinful demands.

He points toward the husband's responsibility to support and encourage his wife in her own sanctification by making sure that the Word of God is present in the home.

Living out the scriptures, reading the scriptures, leading in family worship in your home, gathering around the table and opening the gospels and reading about the life of Jesus.

It is praying over her and over your family.

It's making sure that you are planted and rooted in a church that exalts the scriptures as preeminent in all things, that helps the church be formed and shaped by the authority of the truth of God's word.

It is a husband's responsibility to be a functional shepherd pastor in the home.

Why?

That his wife and that his family may grow and mature into the beauty of the gospel.

Why did Jesus love the church in such a lavish way?

Paul goes on to help us see more clearly, verse 27, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Here's the reality.

The radiant beauty that Jesus desired for his bride, he accomplished through the laying down of his own life.

Here's what Jesus didn't do.

He didn't stand over here and point a finger at his bride and say, You should be more attractive for me.

You should be more faithful to me.

You should be more A, B, or C to me.

No, Jesus came intimately near to her, and it was through the laying down of his own life that he made her into the radiant beauty he desired for her.

It was through the blemishes of nail-pierced hands and feet that he would present a bride without any.

You see, he submitted the fullness of his life so that the bride would receive the fullness of hers.

This is the type of love that husbands are being called to.

A love that requires deep work, a love cultivated through the grit and grime of laboring for the wife's good, a love that in its final act of display is able to present another as more glorious among its own casualty.

That's the love we're being called to as husbands.

And this love is a deep work.

Ultimately, the call to love our wives is a call to give ourselves up for her ultimate gain.

A husband should actively love his wife toward magnificence, the way that Christ loves his church, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor.

As we continue on in verses 28 through 30, we see this living in the reality of one flesh.

Living in the reality of one flesh.

Verse 28, Paul goes on and says, In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

Paul really reveals to us a primary reality of the gospel, of Jesus' love for his church.

The reason Jesus loves his church so deeply is because it is him loving his own body.

What kind of head would he be if that headship did not facilitate and produce fruit of a glorious body beneath it?

Why does Jesus love his church so much?

It is actually him loving his own body rightly.

It is the unity of Jesus in his body, the church, that establishes the reality of the one flesh covenant of a husband and wife.

You see, our love is not segregated or divided between two individuals, but it is a love given to the united, singular whole.

A man who loves his wife is a man who loves his own body also.

Verse 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

Paul uses two kind of uh uh descriptive words to clarify and qualify the type of love of which he is calling us to through the gospel.

He uses the words nourish and cherish.

The word nourish means to develop, to nurture, to lift up, for a husband to nourish his own flesh is for him to develop and nurture his wife into a more exalted state of self.

It demands an immense amount of intentionality, care, and attention to her.

It's to work in her that she becomes greater by your effort.

That's what it means to nourish your own body.

But then we have to cherish it.

And to cherish it demands a much deeper emotional intentionality.

And I think for many of us in this room, many of us as just men in the culture we live in today, this is where the work gets deep.

To be men who actually are able to cultivate and foster the emotional health, mental health, spiritual health of our wives.

For some of us, men, that seems impossible.

For some of us, we don't even know how to articulate or unpack or provide aid toward our own health in those areas, let alone someone else.

But we have to be men who strive to develop that asset within us because this is the work of which we're called to.

This is the hard work of being a husband and a father.

To cherish means to comfort, to warm, to soften as by heat, to make a wife's heart almost malleable within your hands as you seek and care to her emotional good.

It's where our word heartwarming comes from.

Paul uses the same word in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 7.

1 Thessalonians 2:7

He says, We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother, a cherishing mother, taking care of her own children.

This is the sense of which husbands are called to come alongside their wives, to tend to her, to show love toward her and caring for her, and intentionally laboring toward her healthiest person.

If a wife's submission is to receive, then a husband's mission is to give.

A wife's submission is to receive this loving labor from her husband, but it is the husband who is to labor to give it to her.

The one flesh reality of the husband and wife sets the tone for the way that he is to love her.

It's a love that nourishes, exerts effort for her betterment, and cherishes one that warmly comforts her.

If Jesus loved the church because she is his body, then the husband is to love his wife because she is his body also.

A joy-filled responsibility of the head is to ensure that the body is nourished and cherished for its own glory.

This is what being the head of our families, the head of our wives, means for us.

Jesus being the head of the church, the church becomes better because of his headship.

If your headship, if your headship men produce a weaker semblance of your wife than what she was before your love came into her, you're not practicing biblical headship.

So here's what I think Paul's trying to help us understand.

Husbands love for the glory of their wife and the flourishing of mission.

Husbands love for the glory of their wife and the flourishing of mission.

Last week we said wives submit for the glory of their husband and the flourishing of mission.

Here we see the unique call to husbands to love for the glory of their wife and the flourishing of mission.

Oftentimes, and this isn't a universal reality, but oftentimes a wife does not grow into the fullness of what God has called her to without the care and support and strength of her husband.

Oftentimes, not universally, but often, we find with inside the presence of a great wife is a great husband also.

A husband who has loved her faithfully, who labors for her glory.

And we talked about what glory means.

Glory means substance or weight.

And it's the love of a husband that builds substance and weight into the presence of a wife.

When we think about the word husband in itself, we have this related English word that we use.

It's husbandry.

Husbandry.

Husbandry means to cultivate.

And so when we bear the title and label of husband, we are being called to cultivate in our wife the glory of which Christ has called her to.

This is a husband's joy-filled privilege.

This is a husband's responsibility to cultivate and to nurture his wife into the fullness of the radiant beauty that she is called to by Christ.

There's this amazing mystery of the gospel that I think really sets the tone and stage for us as men.

Hear this truth.

Jesus did not love you because you were lovely.

Jesus loved you to make you lovely.

There was nothing in us that wooed or attracted Jesus to come to us.

There was no beauty within us that He would desire us.

Jesus did not love us because we were already lovely.

He loved us to make us lovely.

And husbands, I hope we can see the grandeur of the gospel and what we're being called to in response of it.

He is the lover.

We are the beloved.

Author Michael Reeves writes in his book, Delighting in the Trinity, like the church, then, wives are not left to earn the love of their husbands.

They can enjoy it as something lavished on them freely, unconditionally, and maximally.

Christ so loves the church that he excites our love in response.

The husband so loves his wife that he excites her to love him back.

Man, think about your love for Jesus.

Think about the way that hopefully throughout your life, throughout your week, and when you come in here as the church gather, you're lifting your voice and singing songs, you're praying to him, you're reading his word, you're excited about serving him.

Why?

It's because you've experienced and known and realized his extravagant love for you.

And what does that do in us, in our hearts?

It causes us to be excited to love him back in response.

The more we mature and grow in the gospel, the more we realize how deeply Jesus loves us, the more we become worshipers of his glorious name.

It excites us a passionate worship of who he is.

Husbands, our loves for our wives should excite them to love us back.

How dare we demand our wives love us, and we've done nothing to excite that within them.

If a husband desires to be respected, we said this last week.

I think every man's inner desire is to be respected.

A wife's desire is to be loved.

I've never met a woman who didn't desire to be deeply loved by her husband.

Because it's in loving her that you place weight and substance into her presence.

She feels valued, known, seen, appreciated, honored.

Why?

Because you're loving her for her glory, not your own.

And like we said last week also, marriage is mission.

Marriage is a priest judge and a priestly helper coming into covenant to co-labor in mission together.

Marriage never existed for the greatness of the husband, nor did it ever exist for the greatness of the wife, but it existed for something greater than either one.

The glory of God is to put on display the beauty of the gospel and for them to co-labor in the work of new creation gospel ministry.

The husband's love for and toward his wife is for the flourishing of this mission, is because of his love for her that she should be empowered, she should feel strengthened, she should have confidence, she should walk with her head up high, she should be equipped by his hand into this priestly helper of which Christ has called her to.

Because it is a loving head that labors for the greatness and glory of the body.

When Jesus came into our life, when Jesus decided to establish his church by the pouring out of his own blood, he did not present us as weaker than we were.

He uh supernaturally, uh uh, beyond our own understanding and imagination, strengthened us, gifted us, gave us confidence, empowered us that we might become greater than we were.

Husbands and wives have been brought into covenant to co-labor together in this new creation work.

And it's the husband's acts of nourishing and cherishing his wife that makes his co-laborer more glorious.

This is the deep work husbands are called to.

But many of us, honest, if we're honest with ourselves, I think we've fooled ourselves in certain ways.

I think we've fooled ourselves into believing a lot of the work that we do is hard work.

And that hard work makes us tired to do the real deep work of what the gospel calls us to to love our wives.

The work that many of us labor in is the easy work.

And what we do is we often misunderstand it or we misuse it as a reason and means not to do the deep hard work of loving our families the way that God has called us to.

I'm gonna help us walk through this.

I believe we find in ourselves a cultural epidemic, as it were.

Because here's what's happening with inside culture.

The very word love and the very meaning of being a man is contended for, and in its contention, it's being lost in the process.

Culture fails to establish any sense of authoritative truth on the matters, and it falls short to provide any significant critiques that we might be able to judge rightly in our endeavor of understanding.

Since true love and true masculinity are both rooted in and flow from the gospel of Jesus, we actually discover that culture is completely unable to provide what it claims that it can.

It cannot define for us love, it cannot define for us masculinity.

Only the gospel can.

And I see this reality working itself out in several ways, but I want to highlight two of them for us.

The first one is this we fail to love because we abdicate responsibility.

We fail to love because we abdicate responsibility.

To be the head means to have responsibility.

More than it means to have power, more than it means to have authority, it means to have responsibility.

And that responsibility is greater than a paycheck.

And we're gonna get to that in just a moment, but it's greater than your career, it's greater than you putting food on the table.

That responsibility is a holistic responsibility to love your wife and family, not just in providing for them in their the substance of life, but in their mental health, spiritual health, emotional health, physical health, all of these things we are supposed to bear responsibility for.

And what we see with inside culture is this men who abdicate responsibility will often do something that I think is very dangerous.

Often they lower themselves to a place that they shouldn't be, and they serve their wives in ways that they are not called to.

And in effect, they are working to masquerade the reality that they are actually unable or unwilling to lead and take responsibility in the ways that they're called to.

We see this happening throughout culture where men are lowering themselves to places in an effort, in a vie for virtue, that they are working to exalt their wife.

But what you see in the process of it is them heaping burdens that their wives were not meant to carry upon them, and the men abdicating their responsibility and masquerading their unwillingness to actually step up and lead in the way that God had called them to.

This is weak men.

And it looks like they're loving their wives well, but ultimately they're placing upon them something that they were never meant to carry.

You see, the hallmark of headship is bearing responsibility.

This is the hallmark of headship.

Because here's what we see Christ bore the responsibility to make sure that his bride was presented glorious.

When we look at what happened in the garden, it was an abdication of responsibility that got us into the mess that we're in.

It was Adam who did not walk in the leading role in the responsibility of headship that he was called to.

It was Adam who was right next to Eve who failed to cut the head of the serpent off, and his abdicating of responsibility, in him operating in unmanliness, sin broke into our world and death with it.

This is why we need a second Adam.

And what did we need a second Adam to do?

To bear the responsibility of the first.

But we don't just see Jesus as a warrior king who comes in and cuts the head off the serpent like Adam was supposed to.

We see Jesus, the servant, who not only bears the responsibility to put to death the serpent, but to put to death yours and mine's sinful rebellion against him.

How?

That he bore the fullness of our sin in himself on the cross.

Jesus didn't just take responsibility for Adam's failure.

He took responsibility for all of our failure.

He didn't blame shift, he didn't point the finger, he didn't uh say, if you work harder, then I'll start accepting.

He didn't do any of those things.

He bore responsibility.

This is the hallmark of headship.

This abdication of responsibility was the failure of the first Adam, but it was the glory of the second Jesus.

I want us to be reminded that the fall of mankind did not come through cultural toxic masculinity.

It didn't come through some guy trying to flex and exert his power and strength over other people.

The fall of mankind came from someone acting very unmanly in that he did not bear the responsibility of being the priest judge that he was called to, protecting his wife, preserving that garden which God had placed him by eliminating the snake.

You see, to love our wives faithfully is to bear the responsibility of lovingly leading our homes.

And at Sacred Mission, we see this in three kinds of categories.

Men are called to pastor, protect, and to provide.

Pastor, protect, provide.

Men, we are the functional shepherd pastors of our home.

It is our responsibility to make sure that the Word of God is present in our home, that we're discipling our wives and our children, that we are leading in, teaching them about the gospel and helping them mature in Christ.

We protect our homes.

We build security and safety within our homes by our very presence.

We should be able to see wives feeling a sense of that safety behind the presence of their husband as they stand out in front to make sure that their home is protected.

And we provide for our families.

The scripture says that a man who does not provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever.

Here's what it's saying.

If you say that you're a man and you refuse to provide for your family, you don't even have the right to call yourself a Christian.

You're worse than an unbeliever.

You're marked as someone who has no hope because of the laziness you exhibit.

We should be men who provide for our families, but I don't want to see that in just a the Bible's not calling us to just provide financially.

The Bible's calling us to provide more for them.

And I think this helps us kind of segue into our second situation.

Many of us men, we fail to love because we live for self.

We fail to love because we live for self.

I think that if we're gonna slide into anything in this room, right, and the people that call sacred mission their home, this is probably where we're gonna be tempted the most, is to be men who live for self.

You see, these types of husbands tend to try and convince their families that they are working and striving for their ultimate good, but ultimately they're living for themselves.

They do not model the essence of servanthood, but of self-centeredness.

Because to truly love your wife, to truly love your family comes through your presence, not your paycheck.

And here's what I've seen too many men do.

I've seen too many men labor tirelessly in their career, making exorbit amounts of money, moving their families into better suburban neighborhoods, driving better cars, putting more food on the table, or not having to worry where the next meal comes.

I've seen men labor hard in that thing and come home exhausted.

And somehow now the presence of their wife and children is an aggravation, is an inconvenience, is a disturbance to them.

And they just want to zone out in front of some glowing screen, and then they won't want to be messed with, and they want to be waited on hand and foot, and then they want to go to bed and they want to start it all over again tomorrow.

Can I tell you, the work you put into your career is easy work.

It's the lazy man's way out for someone who will not come home and do the hard, deep work of being present with your family spiritually, emotionally, physically, so that they may have you instead of your stuff.

We have to be, we have to quit being lazy men who want to wave the flag of all the hard work that we do in our careers, yet we fail to do the real hard work of loving our wives, loving our families.

You see, I believe, and I've said this before throughout other sermons, that your family, I know for a fact, would have you over your stuff any day of the week.

Any day of the week.

And if you're sitting with us this morning, you say, Man, I don't believe that.

I don't believe that.

I believe that they want the things that I give them.

I believe that they want the paycheck, they don't really want me.

Can I just challenge you for a moment?

You believe that because you've built that culture for way too long.

Men, we establish the culture in our homes.

We're the ones that set the tone for how our homes function and operate.

If we believe that that's true, it's because we've built the civilization it exists in.

We have to do something radical to change.

But not just ourselves, but our whole families.

You see, if we fail to believe this, it's because we've formed the culture ourselves.

Let me submit something else to us, real quick.

Take this for what it's worth.

I don't really care.

Um I believe that many of us uh are addicted to the opiate of our culture called busyness.

Busyness.

Here's what I see a lot of.

I see a lot of men who will uh foster and cultivate a busyness within their family.

And yet it's removing them from the hard work, deep work of cultivating gospel with inside the lives of their family members.

We may convince ourselves that we've got our kids in all of these programs and sports and things that won't even matter because your kid's not good anyway, and uh and all this busyness, busyness, busy.

We might say we do this for our kids, we do this for our family, we do this for this, but let me tell you something.

I believe there's more men who have no comprehension or understanding or own confidence to do the deep work of pastoring their homes, shepherding the hearts of their wives and children, that they'll continue to go after the opiate of culture and remain busy, to numb themselves, to continue in the simple, easy work that they are endeavoring in, rather than being able to just be still and silent and have to deal with the reality of what you're called to as a man to take responsibility for in your home.

We need to stop being so busy.

It's an opiate that's numbing us from doing the deep hard work that the gospel calls us to as men.

And I can tell you where your idols lie.

Number one way I can tell you where your idols lie, let me see your calendar.

Let me see how you're spending your time.

Let me see what you're sacrificing your minutes and hours and days and weeks toward.

I'll show you where your idols are real quick.

Men, we have to strive to bear the responsibility of which the gospel has called us to.

The opiate of busy busyness numbs us to the fact that we're exchanging the labor of deep work for simple work that bears no real fruit.

What fruit is all these sports programs providing in your family?

What?

I don't know.

You tell me, right?

What fruit are all these extracurricular activities and things and stuff and clubs and blah blah blah blah blah doing?

What bearing, what fruit bearing is that having?

And can I tell us something?

If we if we think that we can uh take our children out of gospel community for years on end to do all of this other stuff, do you think when it will ultimately fail them, right?

None of your kids are probably gonna play college sports.

I've seen your kids.

They're not playing college sports more than likely.

My kids definitely ain't.

Uh when they hit 18 and they don't have that anymore, you think they're gonna fill that hole with gospel community?

They're not.

More than likely, they're not.

Can we consider that for just a moment?

Can we pause and just reflect on that?

And then here, let me say this.

Neither of these realities, men who abdicate responsibility, men who live for themselves, neither of them make much of a man.

Ultimately, they far more resemble a child.

You see, to be married to a man who won't lead, or to be married to a selfish man, in effect creates one more child in the house.

And for any wife, that is a great burden to bear.

But a Christ-like, gospel-formed husband makes her burden joyfully lighter.

But men, our hope is not in how great we are.

Like how how some of you are killing this, probably, right?

Some of you are doing awesome.

You're going to multiply your own household and church plant out of it.

You're just doing great.

Some of you, your Bibles have so much dust on it, right?

You can just start scratching it like a semi-trucks back window.

It's not in our performance.

Our hope really is in the gospel of Jesus.

Because Jesus loves the church for her glory and the fulfillment of mission.

Men hear this.

It's because Jesus loved the church through the servant's sacrifice of his own life that we are able to love our wives in the same manner.

The gospel liberates us from fearing the taking on of the responsibility we are called to, and it frees us from the entrapment of a self-centered life.

It is because Jesus has already bore and carried every single one of my mistakes that I don't have to live in a life of fear of trying anymore.

And it's because he poured himself out, the fullness of himself for my benefit.

Am I able to walk around empty-handed for the good and betterment of my own family?

The gospel frees us.

Because Jesus has already bore our responsibility of sin in his own flesh and has sacrificed himself for our ultimate good.

We are free to love our wives and families through the servant sacrifice of gospel love.

This is what we are freed to do.

Many of us men, I've never met many men who are unwilling to love their wives in this way.

I'm not saying they don't exist, but I haven't met many of them.

Or lead their families in this way.

I have met numerous men who have no idea how to do this.

And more than being entrapped in rebellion, they're entrapped in shame.

Because if they mess up, what does that do?

It hits their pride.

It hits who they are as men.

And so in that shame, what do we do?

We become fearful.

And when we become fearful, what do we do?

We try to protect ourselves above all things.

And we won't take the risks that the gospel calls us to because we're so focused on self-preservation.

Can I just say that the gospel frees you from shame?

The gospel frees you from that fear that the gospel allows us to take crazy risks and mess up and it be okay?

And you have a community of men here that not only are doing this, but they're learning how to do it even better, and they're stumbling through their own efforts of trying to understand what it means to love their own families like Jesus loves them.

If you're sitting here and you're sit and you're being surrounded or flooded with shame this morning, that's not the message.

We're allowing the enemy to play his old tricks on us once again.

Here's what shame stands for: should have already mastered everything.

You haven't.

And that's okay.

You still are really bad at doing this, like me.

But we have a gospel community that we can walk in grace with one another, that we can encourage and strengthen one another to live this out as faithfully as we are able to by the power of the gospel in us.

Jesus loves the church for her glory, but he also does for the fulfillment of mission.

Jesus, the loving head of the church, completes and fulfills the glory of his body, the church.

When Christ returns, at the consummation of his wedding day, there will not be one part nor one member of the body incomplete or missing.

He will present to the Father a complete and whole bride in the fullness and fulfillment of his mission.

John 6, 37 through 38 says, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

Jesus will totally and completely accomplish the mission and will of the Father.

And by doing that, he's presenting to him on the day of his return a whole, complete bride.

That's good news for us.

That's glorious news for us.

Let's close with this gospel vision this morning.

That we would be husbands who love our wives through sacrificial servanthood.

Let's look at these two things one more time.

Servanthood is this a rejection of self-centeredness for the gain of another.

Remember, the love that Jesus shows for us as church is established on the bedrock of servanthood.

He became a servant to serve us the church.

Men, we have to lead in this.

If we're always demanding that other people serve us, we've got this whole thing wrong and flipped upside down.

We're called to serve our wives, we're called to serve our families.

We have to reject any sense of self-centeredness so that others might gain.

But it's not just servanthood, it's sacrifice also.

Laying down our own life.

And sacrifice is known in a willingness to forfeit everything.

Can I help us understand another way we we see idols?

We identify idols in our life.

Let somebody try to take something from you, and your response is going to identify that idol in your life or not.

Right?

When somebody tries to take something from us and we grab hold of it tightly and we pull it back into our chest and we take a step back because we're feeling attacked in this moment, I can almost guarantee you we've just found an idol.

Man, what things, men, are in your life that maybe your wife has tried to put a finger on or a hand upon and maybe try to remove, and you've white knuckled that thing and brought it more close, and you said, no, no, no, no, no, not this.

Right?

Man, for some of us, like we we give whole days to football.

It doesn't mean you know football means literally nothing.

And the scope of the entire world, of all meaning and purpose, no philosopher has ever emerged from culture and be like, football, that's the answer.

They haven't done it yet.

I don't think they're gonna ever do it.

Like, what stuff do you pour money into?

Like hobbies and collectibles and stuff, that when you die, it's not it's not going with you.

You're gonna find that stuff at some table at Traders World?

Some hillbilly's gonna come up and like tray a raccoon skin for it.

I don't know what's gonna happen.

But that stuff, it doesn't mean anything.

Anything?

Do we understand that?

That these things don't mean.

And here's the reality, men, Lord, are we should never be in a position where we feel like our wives are taking something from us?

We should foster a position and a posture within inside ourselves that we find the joy in laying it down for her.

Your wife should never have to take something from you, you should be the one that lays it down for her.

And so, like everything, all of my interests, all my hobbies, all my collections, all my whatever, they can be burned, they can be tossed out, they can be laid down for the good and betterment of my wife and my children.

Men, this and nothing short of it is the love that we are being called to, amen.

Amen.