In Relation To: Husbands

So last Sunday we started a new series called In Relation 2.

What we're doing is we're going through the book of Ephesians.

It's in the New Testament.

We uh we went through a lot of it last year.

We took a break for the holidays for the start of this year, but we're back in Ephesians, and we just so happen to be at this moment in Ephesians where Paul, the author, begins to describe what it looks like to be a Jesus follower living in some really important relationships.

Relationships that affect all of us.

It's husbands and wives, children and parents, and employers, and I need a six-finger finger, employees.

So you have these three three relationships, right?

Marriages, parenting, children dynamics, and then employers and employees.

All of these relationships affect us.

They touch every single person in some way, either directly or indirectly.

And the reality is, if you're a Jesus follower, what that means is that you have said yes to Jesus.

But we don't put Jesus in this category.

We don't like segment Jesus off from the rest of our life and say, I say yes to Jesus at church, but then my yes to Jesus doesn't affect my marriage.

It doesn't affect my relationship with my parents or my children, it doesn't affect the kind of employee or employer I am.

I'm a Jesus follower.

So my yes to Jesus should affect the way I treat my wife and my children, the way I do my job.

I want my yes to Jesus to extend to every part of my life.

And Paul in Ephesians, he helps us understand what that looks like.

How do we live in relation to each other?

Because let's be honest, it would be a lot easier to live in relation to God if we didn't have to live in relation to other people.

Because people are hard.

Like some people are really hard.

And obviously, none of you are the really hard people.

You're all just hard.

But like, people are hard.

And it'd be so much easier for me to be like, yes, Jesus, I love you if I didn't have to be married, have children, right?

Work with people, have people that I've worked for, or people that worked for me.

But living in relation with each other, it's it's a part of our relationship with God.

Jesus always, always connected loving God with loving people.

In his mind, there was no way to separate giving God everything and loving him with all your heart if you're not also loving others.

He always connected those two together.

Search the scriptures, read his teachings.

He never separates those two.

So we want to we want to live in relation to each other in a way that honors God.

And let's be honest, we want to live in relation to each other in such a way that it works.

That it works and it blesses us and it makes our lives better.

And God has that heart for us.

So we're exploring that.

And we're gonna start with marriage, because that's where Paul starts.

Now, I want to say on the front end, not all of us here are married.

Some of us have never been married, but we want to be.

Some of us used to be married and we never want to be again, right?

For some of us, marriage is it's the greatest blessing we've ever experienced.

For some of us, you hear the word marriage and it fills us with at times frustration.

For some people, it's guilt and it's shame at marriages that haven't worked out.

I want you to know, by the way, that after we talk through marriage the next couple of weeks, we're gonna spend some time talking about what does it look like when it doesn't work out?

Because God's in all of that.

But we're gonna talk about marriage, which which may be, maybe the most difficult relationship in life.

In fact, I feel pretty confident in saying that it is.

When I when I got married, I made a commitment.

And it was to be with my wife till death do us part, which means if you want to use different wording, marriage is such that you have to be married even if it kills you.

Right?

Like that's what's what you vow.

I will be married to you even if it's the death of me.

That's the commitment.

It's till death do us part.

Marriage is hard.

Can I get one amen?

All right, it's hard.

But what I want us to understand on the front end of this is that marriage is a blessing from God.

Marriage affects every single one of us, even if you're not married.

I I had a really good friend when I was in college.

He and I were really close.

And I went to college over a thousand miles away, and when I moved away, I thought we would keep uh, you know, we'd keep in touch, we'd see each other every once in a while, but life is what it is, and I haven't seen this guy since I moved.

The last time I saw him, I was a groomsman in his wedding.

And I'd been part of this guy's life for several years, and I was there when he met this girl, I was there when they went on their first date.

We were really close friends, and when I left 13 years ago, when I said, hey man, I'll see you soon.

It just never happened, he was he was at like the high point of his life, getting married to this girl, and I was like so excited for him.

I just found out a few months ago they got divorced.

And it broke it broke my heart.

Even though I haven't seen this guy in years, even it's just it almost was like in my mind, what happened?

Well, obviously, a lot can happen in 13 years.

But the last time I saw him, he was getting married to this girl and they were as happy as could be, and so it was almost like me hearing that the next day they got divorced.

And it broke my heart because I realized here's this friend of mine that I I loved and and I'm grateful that God gave me, and I it never even occurred to me that that could happen.

On that day, it affected me.

Even if you're not married, there's a marriage that will impact your life at some point in time.

What we have to understand about marriage is that God loves marriage.

Like he invented it.

He invented it, and not to torture us at all.

Like he invented marriage.

Think about this.

The common story of scripture, at least the beginning of it, is that God makes everything and he has a word that he calls everything when he makes it in the very first chapter of the Bible.

What is that word?

He he creates things and he says it is good.

You guys have read the first chapter.

Look at you, real Christians.

So he uh he says he makes it and he calls it good.

And then the story goes that everything's good, and then we mess it all up and he's got to fix it, right?

Kind of.

There is one thing that he says is not good before we ever mess anything up, and it's that man is alone.

He creates man, and then he looks, and this is before sin.

He looks and he says, Yeah, something's not right.

It's not good for man to be alone.

And so he creates woman.

He creates marriage.

It's an institution that he created, and he did not create it to deal with sin.

If you actually look at every other institution we have, they're almost all ways of us trying to mitigate our selfishness and sin.

Look at government.

Government would not need to exist if we could govern ourselves, right?

But it's our selfishness that that requires government to keep us in check.

There would not need to be a speed limit if I didn't believe that my need to get somewhere is more important than your safety.

Right?

That's why we have speed limits.

It's the government keeping us in check.

Even religion is so much rules and regulations to mitigate and manage the selfishness of humanity.

What I'm saying is this all these other institutions that exist were created to deal with our selfishness and our sin.

Marriage was not one of those.

Marriage was invented by God on the forefront of our sin.

That it was actually part of his perfect design.

That it's his will.

I'm not saying it's his will for all of us.

In fact, Paul says in the New Testament that some are called not to be married.

He was one of those people.

He actually said, I wish you were all called to be single like me.

It's a simpler life.

But he understood that for many, maybe even for most, marriage is part of the story.

God loves marriage.

He invented marriage.

And what I want us to understand is that God's view of marriage is revolutionary.

I think it's important before we read this, before what we read what he says in Ephesians, that we understand that this is not some old-fashioned, you know, part of a bygone era.

Sometimes when we read the Bible, we read the things that it tells us about how to live our lives.

We're like, oh, this is something super old-fashioned, and it's just some cultural thing we're trying to hold on to.

No, no, no.

When Paul wrote this, he was talking about a completely different way to live.

Because marriage in his time was not the way that he describes it.

In the Greek and Roman world, marriage was was it was bad.

In fact, it was very, very normal in Greek culture for men to say that you have a wife to raise your children and a mistress to have fun.

That was normal.

That was accepted.

A famous Greek philosopher said, Is there anyone you trust more than your wife?

And is there anyone you speak to less?

That was the view of marriage in the Roman world when Paul wrote this.

In the Jewish world, it wasn't much better.

Because marriage had been a big part of Jewish culture, but at that time, at the time that Jesus came and taught, marriage was in real trouble because there was a rabbi named Hillel, and he had interpreted this law in the Old Testament that allowed for divorce in a very liberal way, and had interpreted it to mean that men can divorce their wives for any reason.

A man meets another woman he's more attracted to, he can divorce his wife, and he didn't have to go through some court proceedings.

He didn't owe alimony or child support, that wasn't a thing.

You just had to have a witness and you were divorced and you married someone else.

And if you were a woman, you could not divorce your husband.

You did not have that right.

But he could divorce you like that.

And a divorced woman was was viewed as almost an untouchable person in the society.

So divorce was so rampant in Jewish culture that women were deciding not to get married.

Better never to get married than to get married and be divorced.

That's one of the reasons that Jesus spoke very strongly to the Pharisees, and he said, Look, men, unless adultery is involved or something like that, you have no excuse for divorce.

When he said that, he was taking a huge stand for women and a huge stand on marriage.

I say that because when we read this, what we're about to read, this is not some old-fashioned way that people used to live, and you know, it's in the Bible, and we're trying to live this way.

No, no, no.

This was revolutionary back then.

And if people would live this out, it would be revolutionary today.

You think about all the issues in the world, all the major problems that we talk about, statistics show that if you have if you have healthy marriages and people being raised in healthy, lifelong committed marriages, so many of the issues we deal with wouldn't even exist.

Marriage is it's part of God's plan.

And to those of us who are married, we want to do it right.

And it's not easy.

So with that said, let's let's jump into what this actually says and we'll we'll dissect it a little bit.

Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 through through 33.

Ephesians 5:22

Remember that the verse that preceded this, in fact, let's go back.

Let's Ephesians 5, 21.

Sorry, guys, I apologize.

Go back one.

And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Now, we read this last week, we talked about it, that this statement right here is like Paul's thesis statement for all the relationships he describes.

He says, submit to one another.

That's a two-way commitment.

So, wives, you're to submit to your husbands, but husbands, you're you're to submit to your wives.

And all the relationships he describes, parents and children, and bosses, employees, it's all about how we submit to one another.

That's not a weak thing.

That's a choice to be a servant.

That's a choice to put other people's needs ahead of our own.

And what he he then does is say, okay, wives, what does submission look like?

Husbands, what does submission look like for you?

And he goes on.

But submit to one another, that's the umbrella that everything else falls underneath.

And he goes on to say from there, wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church.

He's the savior of his body, the church, as the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands and everything.

For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church.

He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word.

He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish.

Instead, she will be holy and without fault.

In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies, for a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.

No one hates his own body, but he feeds it, cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.

And we are members of his body.

As the scriptures say, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

This is a great mystery, but it's an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.

So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

So we're gonna we're gonna jump into this.

Woo! Yeah.

And we're gonna start by talking to husbands.

I know Paul started with wives.

We're gonna work backwards a little bit.

By the way, he devotes a lot more time to challenging husbands than he does wives.

Like let's let's admit to that.

We're gonna start by talking to husbands.

Now, I've been married this year for 14 years, which is really, really exciting.

Um, yeah, that's that's worth a few claps.

If you knew my wife, you'd clap way harder for me.

You're like, wow, how'd you do that?

Um you wouldn't clap for her, but you'd clap that I've managed to, she's amazing.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Um, but here's the deal.

As I was praying about how to how to discuss this series, these topics, one of the things that became really clear is that I wanted to bring other people into the conversation.

Because yes, I can share you wisdom from 14 years of marriage.

For some of you, that's like wow.

For others, it's like, seriously, 14?

Come on, talk to me when you get to 30.

You know?

Next week we're gonna talk to wives.

I have very little experience being a wife, like virtually none.

And so obviously, I want someone else to be able to speak to that a little bit.

So we're gonna kind of combo together.

And I have someone that I've asked to come out and share.

I just said, hey, would you just pray about a word you would give to husbands?

Just something you would say to married men.

And this gentleman's been married for 41 years, so that's that's worth way more claps.

Um, and so, Lewis, if you want to make your way out, this is Lewis.

I know him really, really well.

He's gonna speak to the guys for just a few minutes and then we'll come.

And if he if he does great, I'll just stop talking.

And if not, I'll clean it up.

I'm just joking.

I have more things to say after he's done.

He's gonna do awesome.

I'm just filling space.

Thanks, Justin.

Appreciate it.

Well, by the way, all the claps before was for my wife Ruth, okay?

Because um, gentlemen, you know that uh 41 years, I'm sure there's probably people in the audience who've been married longer than 41.

Raise your hand if you've been married longer than 41 years.

That's what I'm shooting for, okay?

You guys, that's where I'm heading.

I'm looking for the next next years, right?

Because I know that God and Ruth are not finished with me yet.

And they equally work together.

And he often works through her to kind of sound round off the rough edges.

Um, men, I'm gonna I'm gonna speak to you for just a couple minutes.

I'm actually gonna give you two things I'm gonna invite you to do.

The first thing I'm gonna invite you to do is I want you to right now consider that I give you the challenge of I want you to stand in front of a church body like this and give some words of wisdom about what it's like to be married and to be a husband.

Okay, I want you to think right now about what you might say in that case.

And for the rest of this week, I'd like for you to think about that.

Talk to yourself in the car.

As you read your Bible or as you commune with God, think about what you would say.

And then imagine yourself saying that and your wife sitting on the front row.

Okay?

What's that gonna look like?

And what are what are the words you're gonna say?

That's the challenge I went through this week, and I can tell you that God is speaking to me as much as He's speaking to you.

So please, uh gentlemen, ladies, take all this as I'm actually speaking to myself.

God's worked with me this week.

Um, first thing I want to do is kind of get a scope of things.

How many men do we have in the audience who are married?

Would you raise your hand?

Okay?

You can put them down.

How many men do we have in the audience who are husbands?

Raise your hand?

And you're thinking, that's the same question.

Why are you asking the question?

The actually the question is different.

And this is what I want to challenge you to think about.

Being a husband is being married is different than being a husband.

Marriage and a husband is similar to if I was a father or a dad.

If I was employed or if I was a worker.

Because each of those first things, getting married, being a father, being employed, that's an event.

Okay?

All of you gentlemen who've married, one day you weren't married, the next day you were married.

It's just an event.

It happened.

Fathers, you know, with kids, one day you're not a father, the next day you're able to get Father's Day cards because you're now a father.

And likewise, one day you were unemployed, the next day you're employed.

These are just events that happen.

But what they do is each of these events gives you the opportunity, give you a responsibility to do something, to be a great worker, or to be a dad.

And I believe me, I could go for ages on that, but we're gonna back up into what's it like to be a husband.

Does anyone have any idea of where the word husband actually comes from?

What terminology is the husband term?

Anyone?

What's that?

Horticulture, exactly.

It has to do with cultivate.

To be a husband is actually to cultivate.

Anyone of you that happen to do planting or gardening or whatever, to be a husband is part of that job.

It's to cultivate.

Now I want you to think for yourself now that you have bought, you've purchased a piece of land, okay?

So you have you're now a landowner.

And on that piece of property, you actually have plants and vegetables and different things.

You got a garden.

Now, as of the event of you buying that land, you are a landowner.

If I came back from you, uh came back to you a year later and you were standing in front of that piece of property, and behind you was just plants that were all shriveled up and stuff was dead, and then fruit stank, it was just a horrible thing.

You could stand in front of that piece of property and say, I own this piece of property, I'm a landowner.

And you'd say, Yes, you are.

But if you were to say, I am a husband, I would doubt you.

Okay?

Because the husband is not just it's not an act, it's a way of life.

It's a it's a belief, it's an attitude that you have.

And so, what I want you to think now is husbands, I want you to think about what does a husband mean?

Let's go back to the plant analogy.

Does a husband mean, here's a nice plant, it's a rose.

I wish it were a pear tree.

Let me just talk to this thing and tell it why it should be a pear tree.

Let me shout at it and say, why should this be a?

I wanted a pear tree.

Why did you give me a rose?

The point is, God's given you a woman, given you a wife that is who she is and who she's going to be, and your job is not to turn her into something else.

Your job is to give space and to give place for her to actually grow into what God has for her.

Not what you have for her, but what God has for her.

Your job as a husband is not to pull on that plant to make it grow.

Your job as a husband is not to shout at that plant and make it grow.

Your job as a husband is just like you would in this soil.

You nourish it, you protect it, you guard it, you give it light.

By the way, I could go off on a long time just on what does it mean to give someone light?

Give it light, give it the environment in which it can grow.

That's what husbandry is.

So as you, the second thing I want to ask you to do, so as you men, as you go through this next week, as you look at things, as you see people coming out, as the sun starts coming out and people start working in their gardens, and you see someone gardening.

If you do your own gardening, you know, I one of the things I my wife actually does most of our most of our yard work.

Thank you, Ruth.

But, you know, I used to cut grass, and when you're cutting grass, a lot of times you're thinking, or when you're out in the yard, you're thinking.

I want you to, as you're doing that, I want you to think about how you can be a better husband to your wife.

What can you do that's similar to the work that you're doing with your hands?

As you pass the gardening tools at Home Depot, as you see these things, I want you to, I want God to impress upon you this concept that you are a husband and you have tools and you have things that you need to be doing in order to protect and raise your wife up, okay?

To hold her in esteem, to adore her, and to a place that she can grow and be what God wants her to be, okay?

And by the way, ladies, let me go back to gentlemen.

I can bet you that a lot of you can look at your wives, and sometimes your wives are better husbands than you are.

I look at my wife and I look at how selfless she gives, and how she protects young ones, and how much she gives of herself.

She's probably, in some cases, a better husband than I am, and that's a shame.

And I would ask you, gentlemen, too, to look at your wives.

Put them in a position to where you adore them, okay?

And I would uh it'll be good for all of you, okay?

So thanks.

I love that thought.

Am I a husband or just a married man?

That's a really ch that's really a challenging thing to think about.

And I'm super challenged because um the person I'm married to is his daughter.

And uh, you know, and uh we're actually in the process of moving right now, five minutes, five whole minutes away.

You know, that's a fun move.

Um, but we're having to stay with them for a few weeks while our house gets worked on and all that.

So he gets to see the kind of husband that I am really up close for the next few weeks.

I can't even put my best like face on, so I'm super challenged right now.

But I love that perspective.

You know, be be a husband, not just a married man.

And to those of you who who are married, men, think about that.

Or or men, if you're if you're not married but you want to be one day, are you gonna be are you gonna be a married man or a husband?

What it really means to cultivate, what it really means to to nurture.

I love what he shared because it lines so much up with with scripture, with what we had in Ephesians that we just read.

And what I want to do for the next few minutes is just kind of walk through that that scripture in Ephesians with a few words to highlight, or a few words I think that sum up what Paul is calling us as men to be and how different oftentimes it is from our experience.

The first word is service.

It's service.

Ephesians 5 25.

We read this a second ago, so we're gonna break this into chunks.

For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church.

He gave up his life for her.

He gave up his life for her.

One of the things I'm most grateful for in life is this time that I spent when I was in college at this church in Kansas City.

I interned there and uh I was kind of interning because it was the summertime and I didn't really have a lot to do.

I worked, but it wasn't like it took all of my life at that time, and so I wanted to hang out at the church.

And I really, really got to know the pastor Roy, who was a great mentor for me when I was in college.

And Roy was a guy who would just he would just tell it like it is.

Number one, he's a northerner.

Anyone here a northerner?

You're not from the South?

Yeah, you.

You guys appreciate direct communication, right?

You know, one time I was talking to Roy, and uh I was explaining this heart attitude that I had, and I was praying.

He's like, you know, it wouldn't really be any different if you just flip Jesus off.

And I was like, Roy, he's from the north.

Everyone in the south's like, you know, it's like northerners are like, no, he was just saying your attitude, you might as well just do that to Jesus.

And I was like, ugh, thank you for that.

Because he was telling me the truth.

Roy would just tell like it is.

Well, one day this guy comes into Roy's office and he's sharing this story with with some young guys that he was mentoring.

This guy comes into his office, he says, You know, I'm really struggling in my marriage.

And Roy said, Well, what's going on?

He said, My wife just doesn't make me happy.

And he looked at the guy and said, What makes you think that's her job?

Man, I want us to understand that I can I can make a biblical case, because to me, scripture is everything.

I can make a biblical case for how it's your job to serve your wife's needs.

I can make a stronger biblical case that that's your responsibility than I can that it's your wife's responsibility to serve your needs.

A lot of husbands have a hard time because they don't really want a wife, they want a maid they can sleep with.

And that's not what a wife is.

That's not God's, that's not God's perspective of marriage.

And as men, we've got to be careful.

Because when we start thinking this thought, you know, if my wife would just dot dot dot, you know, if she would just, if she would just take this off my plate, and I'm just, by the way, glad that Megan's not in this room right now.

She's in the kids' area helping out, because she knows that I struggle with this.

I'll just be honest.

I've had to pray a lot this week because that that thought comes in my mind sometimes.

You know, if if Megan would just dot dot dot, if my wife would just this, man, I would be no.

That's not her job.

But it's kind of yours.

Husbands, you should love your wives as Christ loves the church.

He gave up his life for her.

He gave to her, gave of himself.

So often marriages fall apart because on the on the men's side, not that there's only one side, it's it's a two-way street, but on the on the men's side, the man is consumed with what the wife should be doing to meet his needs.

And so the stereotype of a husband who's demanding, a husband who views it as his responsibility to make sure that his wife is attuned to all of his needs and wants and desires.

That is not the biblical view of marriage.

Men, you're called to serve your wives.

How?

As Christ serves the church.

And we have so many pictures of that.

There's a story in John chapter 13 of Jesus washing his disciples' feet.

John 13 · chapter mention

And in that culture, you would wash people's feet, that you would have a servant actually do that.

It was part of their custom.

We would think it's gross.

And it was.

They walked in in dirt roads all the time with open-toed sandals, and so you can imagine how gross feet would get.

Well, when you go into a home, you would have a servant wash your guests' feet, but you would always have the lowest ranking servant in the home do that.

That was the work of the lowest ranking servant.

Well, one day Jesus washes his disciples' feet, one by one, including Judas, who he knew had betrayed him.

One of the disciples, Peter, said, Jesus, I'm not going to let you do it.

This is beneath you.

I will not let you wash my feet.

And Jesus looked at Peter and said, If you don't let me do this, then it means you don't understand what I'm doing at all.

Now Peter relented, and Jesus washed his disciples' feet, and then he talked to them after that.

John 13, 12, it says, After washing their feet, he put on his robe again.

He sat down and asked, Do you understand what I was doing?

You call me teacher and Lord, and you're right.

Because that's what I am.

And since I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet.

I have given you an example to follow, do as I have done to you.

Jesus always lived in service to those around him.

And husbands, we're called to serve our wives, to serve them as Christ loves the church.

What would it look like for you to metaphorically, or maybe like literally, wash your wife's feet?

Is there an act of service that you can think of right now that would be that big of a deal to your spouse?

And if there is, if something pops in your head that, man, if I could if I would do that, the humility that would show and the love that that would show, I'm gonna do that.

I'm gonna do that this week.

I'm gonna make that my priority.

So the first word is service.

The second word is something that Lewis actually touched on really, really well.

It's sanctify.

In verse 26, it says, He gave up his life for her, but for a purpose, to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word.

He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish.

Instead, she will be holy and without fault.

So sanctify, it's this word we have that means it means the continual process of God making us holy.

Okay, when Jesus died for you and you accepted him into your life, you were saved.

That's a moment.

It's kind of like what Lewis talked about, like getting married, having a child.

Your salvation, that happened in a moment.

In an instant.

But sanctification, it's a lifelong process.

Day by day, the Holy Spirit inside of you, if you're saying yes to God, the Holy Spirit is making you into the person you're meant to be, making you into that person he created you to be.

That's a process.

It's cultivation.

And the Holy Spirit is very patient.

Amen?

Like anyone like I'm a living example of how patient God is, right?

I am.

Like the Holy Spirit is patient.

And he gives us space and he encourages us, he sanctifies us.

And men, we're actually called to love our wives in such a way that it helps sanctify them.

It actually helps them be more the person that God desires them to be.

This is something that I have to think about.

And I don't always like this thought, but I'm not going to be married to my wife in heaven.

One day some people were asking Jesus about how marriage works in heaven.

They're actually trying to trap him with some silly question.

He said, Oh, you guys don't understand heaven.

It's not like earth.

There is no marriage in heaven.

And I don't like that idea because I really love my wife.

Some of you are secretly inside going, yes, but like.

But no, seriously, I love my wife.

She's my best friend.

We've been together for 17 years.

There is no one, even when we're having a rough week, even when we're not clicking, there is no one I would rather sit down and have dinner with than my wife.

And so I don't like the idea of not being married in heaven.

But the reality is marriage is a lifelong commitment, this side of heaven.

It's till death do us part.

But my relationship with God and her relationship with God, death doesn't change that.

It's eternal.

And so my wife, she's mine on this earth, mine to love and serve and sanctify and all that, but she's God's forever.

So one day I'm gonna present her back to the Lord.

But in what condition?

Like as a husband, I believe I'm gonna stand in front of the Lord and I'm actually gonna have to answer for the kind of husband I am.

And when I read this, what it challenges me to understand is that it's part of my responsibility as a husband to help my wife say yes to Jesus, to help her grow.

I read a quote this week that was challenging.

It's it's how many of you as husbands have wives who are closer to Jesus because of you?

Or how many of you have wives who are closer to Jesus in spite of you?

As a husband, I want to encourage my wife, pray for my wife.

Help her say yes to Jesus.

Never put her in a place where she has to say yes to me instead of saying yes to Jesus.

But oftentimes, men can do that, even unintentionally.

Never put your wife in the position of having to choose between you and God.

But do everything you can, husbands, do everything you can to help your wife grow in her relationship with the Lord.

That doesn't mean you dominate, it doesn't mean you yell, it doesn't mean you you push.

You know, that kind of like what Lewis said with being a gardener.

That's not how you grow plants.

You don't yell at them, you don't tug on them to make them grow, like just pull harder, come on, grow, get up there.

You know, that doesn't work.

But you encourage and you fertilize and you cultivate and you pray, like you give it space.

So, men, service and sanctification, help your wife say yes to Jesus every day.

Third final word that phrase that we'll use to kind of encapsulate all this is second only to.

Second only two.

He says, as the scriptures say, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

This is a great mystery, but it's an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.

Here's what this says Men, you you leave your father and your mother, you cling to your wife.

That means your commitment to your wife should be your highest priority other than your commitment to God.

So we have service, we have sanctify, we have second only to God.

Your commitment to your spouse should be second only to your commitment, your commitment to God, even above your children.

I love my kids, I've got four of them, and I have an 18-year-long commitment to my children.

I do.

Now, will there be times that my kids need me when they're older?

Sure.

I mean, we're having to crash at my in-law's house because we need a place to stay as our house is getting sold and all this work's being done on it.

So there's gonna be seasons like that, but I think any of you who have children, I hope you would think this, that you really hope that they don't need you that much.

Not because you don't want to have to deal with their problems, but because you hope that you raise them in such a way that they're prepared for life without you.

I don't want my 35-year-old son or daughter one day to have to constantly need me to fix their problems.

And if that's the truth, what that means is somehow I missed it.

I mean, obviously they have responsibility too, but but I want to raise them in such a way where they they're okay without me as adults.

I have an 18-year commitment to my children.

It is a catch and release commitment.

You know?

That is not how marriage works.

It is not catch and release, it's lifelong.

I say all this knowing that some of us have been married and it didn't last for our lifetime, and things happen, and again, we're gonna talk about that.

There's grace for that.

But if you are married today, you've made a lifelong commitment to that person, and that that means your relationship with them should rank above every other relationship.

I meet lots of people struggling in their marriage, and oftentimes it's because when I'm talking to men, their wives just don't rank that high on their priority list.

You know, their wives, their wives might even be beneath like they're maybe beneath their kids.

They're maybe even beneath like their boss.

Because if the boss calls, everything shuts down.

Answer the phone.

If the wife calls, it's like, eh.

Sometimes they rank beneath their buddies.

So if if their wife needs something, but they've got some friends that want to hang out, it's like, ah, I just I go to that.

Your wife is your top commitment other than other than God.

So, husbands, if you want to have this marriage that's awesome, passionate, full of companionship, it's exciting, it's it's rewarding, it's enjoyable.

I'm telling you, God is showing you what to do.

It's so easy for us when we're married to be frustrated with the person we're married to.

Amen?

Right?

Both sides.

It's so easy.

It's it's because it's another human being that isn't you.

And you can try to make them into you, but you don't want to marry yourself.

And if you want to marry yourself, you have a problem.

I don't want to be married to me, but sometimes I just try to make Megan act and think like me.

Like I want my marriage to be a highlight of my life in so many ways.

But sometimes we struggle to know how to how to walk that out.

Men, what I'm saying is that if you want that kind of marriage, here's what to do serve, sanctify, and commit second only to God.

Do that, do that for a few weeks, see what happens.

If you catch yourself thinking, man, you know, if only my wife would, or if this would just change, no, no, no, just shut up, stop that.

And I tell myself that, by the way.

Justin, shut up.

And just spend two or three weeks living this way.

How can I serve my wife?

I want to be creative this week.

God, show me something I can do to serve my wife.

How can I how can I help cultivate her?

God, how can I help her know you better this week?

What do I need to do?

And Lord, I'm gonna commit to her above everything but you.

If you do that for a few weeks, see what happens.

Seriously, see what happens.

Your marriage, it will grow and it will grow healthily.

Because God knows what he's doing.

He invented marriage.

And worship team, you guys can make your way out, we're gonna wrap up.

But I want to say this in closing.

Sometimes I think the hardest thing for us to do as men when it comes to being a good husband is to have an example to follow.

Because not all of us grew up with the father that was the kind of husband we want to be.

Some of us have, by the way, and that's amazing.

If that was your story, then well done.

But a lot of us, we walked out of our homes growing up thinking the last thing I want to be is that guy.

And the reality is it's really hard to hit a target when you don't know what the target is.

Like it's one thing to know what you're trying to avoid, that's okay, but it's a lot better to know what you're trying to strive for and actually achieve.

But what I want us to understand, and this affects both the men in the room and the women, is that we do have a target.

Men, you have a target.

You have a target, you have a person, an example to follow as far as what it really looks like to be a husband and wives or even ladies who aren't married, you have a target in what you're looking for.

And it's Jesus.

Because for all of us, and for some of us, this sounds really weird, but he's your husband.

He uses that analogy.

That he's the groom and we're the bride.

He calls his church the bride, and he's the groom.

And so every every word that we just went through, you know, service, Jesus serves us.

He serves you.

Do you realize that right now?

That Jesus serves you right now.

Hebrews chapter 7, verses 24 through 25.

Hebrews 7:24–25

But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever.

Therefore, he is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through him.

He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf.

Right now, Jesus is interceding with God.

He's praying for you, he's serving you.

Because he's like the perfect husband.

He serves you, he sanctifies you.

His grace and his forgiveness and his blood and the sacrifice that he gave and his spirit in you, it is daily sanctifying you, making you into a better version of yourself if you'll let it.

And second only to God, that's the way he feels about you.

He is committed to you, second only to the Father.

So if you're looking for an example to follow, Jesus.

Ladies, if you're not married and you're looking for the kind of man you want to marry, just marry Jesus.

And you're not going to find a man who measures up to Jesus.

But if you find a man who just wants to, that's a good place to start.

If you can find a man, I'm talking to ladies who aren't married right now.

If you want if you can find a man who just who loves Jesus and wants to do everything he can in his power to be like Jesus, I'm not saying marry him right away.

Like give him some time, like check him out.

You know, but that's a good place to start.

Men, if you want to, if you want to see an example of what it looks like to be an amazing husband, look at Jesus because that's what he is.

He is the groom, we're the bride.

And he serves us and he sanctifies us, and his commitment to us is second only to God, and he lives that out.

Live like Jesus.

Men, husbands, live like Jesus and watch what happens in your marriage.

Just watch what happens.

It all begins, by the way, by saying yes to Jesus in the first place.

And as we close, I just I always want to say if there's anyone here that has yet to do that, if you are spiritually unwed, then there is a husband waiting for you.

Like Jesus, seriously, though, he loves you.

And he's real and he's powerful, and he's changed my life.

And he's changed the lives of countless people here.

And if if you want to live this life, if you're married and you're like, God, I you can't be like Jesus if you don't have Jesus in your life.

I'm just gonna say that.

You can try, it will not work.

You actually need Jesus in you to be Jesus around you.

So, like, you need Jesus, just give him your life.

It's a prayer where you say, Lord, I believe in you.

And I'm maybe you're a husband right now and you're here and you're going, I am a far cry from who I want to be as a husband.

I need help.

Praise God if that's your attitude, by the way.

That's called humility, and God honors that.

And if you're looking for where that help comes from, it comes from him.

And so you can't be the kind of husband that you want to be unless you give your life to Jesus.

It will not work.

But if you start by submitting to him and saying, Lord, I submit to you, teach me to be like you, because I want to be like you are to my wife.

You start with Jesus, he takes care of so much.

So I would encourage you today to give him your life if you haven't yet.

Just surrender your life to him.

Just say, I believe in you, I give my life to you.

And the first thing you do after that is you get baptized.

That's the first step of obedience.

If you want to sign up to get baptized today, if you've made that decision today, don't hesitate, don't wait.

Don't create an artificial waiting room in your relationship with God.

Just go sign up to get baptized, and we'll baptize you next Sunday if you're available.

We'll do it.

In fact, we have a couple people right now that are about to do that very thing.

So I'm gonna pray, and we're gonna we're gonna sit together for just a few more minutes and celebrate with some amazing people giving their lives to Jesus, and then we'll wrap up together.

So, Lord, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you so much for every person here.

God, thank you for loving us enough that you care about our relationships, you care about our marriages.

So you give us these words to live by, and you give us this example and your son to follow.

Jesus, I know that this is not our normal vernacular, but it's something that you used in scripture.

It's an analogy that you created.

So I'll say this as a man.

I'm grateful.

I'm grateful to be the bride of Christ.

And God, you know this, you know my heart.

I want to be a better husband this week than I was last.

I want to be more patient, more compassionate, more understanding.

But I can't do it on my own.

I've tried.

So, Jesus, I'm asking you to live through me so that I can be the kind of husband to my wife that you are to me.

And Lord, I just pray this all in your name.

Amen.

Let's celebrate with some awesome people.