So I saw a meme on Facebook recently. There it is on the screen. The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. We're going to put that to the test this morning. Yes, we are. We're gonna look at a text that has been called viciously attacked by our society, not to mention ridiculed, reinterpreted by assailants within the church. The text is Titus chapter two, verses three to five. So if you're not there, open your book, your Bibles to Titus chapter two, that's page 1100 in those blue Bibles, page 1100. Now, as you're turning there, I need to set the context for you of this passage, OK? The context that we need to look at first is our context in America. For the past 60 or so years, there's been an all-out assault on the truth that we're going to see in this passage. In our culture, it is done what Isaiah 520 says that lost people do. They call good evil. They put light for darkness. They put bitter for sweet. So today, we've seen a complete reversal in our cultural understanding of gender, in our cultural understanding of marriage. But it all started with a complete reversal of our understanding of femininity. Today, the good of our text is called evil. Today, darkness is exchanged for its light. Sweet truth in this text has been traded for bitter lies. And as a result, no biblical teaching is more attacked by our society and by the so-called church than this God created for our good, which is roles for husbands and wives in marriage. And here's the problem. If we're honest, most people in church this morning are more discipled by our culture than they are by the Bible. Right? They've spent hours a week consuming media, consuming social media, which is constantly discipling you. This is what you should believe. This is how you should live. This should be rejected. This should be embraced. And then for most Christians, this is the only exposure to the Bible that you get all week. So there's 30, 40 minutes here, multiple hours from the world, and that disparity is so strong that when you hear passages like the one I'm going to read in a minute, the natural intake of that passage as you hear it is going to be like, oh, wait, really? I don't know about that. So we're willing to follow Jesus when it comes to eternal life and loving our neighbors and feeding the hungry, but following him in Titus 2, 3 to 5, I explain that away as cultural, mock it as old-fashioned, hate it as patriarchal, and just silent the Bible. Silence it. And add to that leaders in churches and schools who are super concerned about what the world thinks about them and not so concerned about what God thinks about them. And as a result, much of Christianity today is in full-blown retreat, full-blown compromise, damage control, and rebellion against this text. Now for most people, you're here because you know every Sunday we're going to dig into the Bible and we're going to see how God wants us to live as a result of that. The point of the message is the point of the passage. So we go to the Bible and we say, what do you say? And then I try to encourage us to live in light of that truth. So for years now, we've been built on the promise that we're going to hold firm to the faithful word, regardless of the culture, regardless of the pressure, regardless of the temptation. It's preached the word in season and out of season. And listen, the truth that we're going to talk about today could not be any more out of season. But we don't cringe at this text. We celebrate this text because this text is God's word. We have a track record of telling you the truth here, and this text is not going to stop us in that. Christians are in fact are so poorly taught on Titus 2, 4, and 5 that we're actually going to spend two weeks on it. So I'll get two shots at you saying you're an idiot. It's just fine. This passage is not oppressive. It's for our good. It will help women thrive in a dying culture. That's what this passage will help us do. Now, in order to understand this text, there's a second ring of context that we have to know, and it's the context on the island of Crete. The dying culture on that island had infected Christianity. Christianity was there probably for 30 years or so. And so by the time that Paul and Titus showed up, the dying culture was actually being exported out of the churches. False teaching and disobedience was marking the churches on the island. And listen, Satan can't destroy your salvation, but here's what Satan would like to do, or his minions, your flesh, whatever. His goal, it can't take your salvation, but he can destroy your life. And he does that by getting you to believe ideas that are not in the Bible. And embrace them, live in light of them, and as a result of that, take you farther away from God, take your relationships, your understanding farther away from God, rather than cementing you closer and closer to God. Now you can tell when a culture is dying or under God's judgment when the things that the Bible places a high value on are being attacked and devalued. And this is what we're seeing in our world when it comes to what it means to be a wife and a mom. This means thriving in a dying culture, means making the most radical counter-cultural decisions. Not to please your non-Christian friends, not to please the world of rebellion which would be very happy for you to be just like them. No, we make those radical decisions in order to please our God. And none of us can do this. Nobody will be able to live anything in any text of the Bible unless chapter two, verse 11, God has saved us by His grace, right? Like we have to be saved in order to live for Him because we won't even want to live for Him unless we're saved. And that's chapter two, verse 12, God's grace is, it will be training you. Once you're saved, God's grace is training you, training your thinking, training your actions so that you live upright, holy, and godly lives. And that's what God's grace is training you to do. Well, this, What we're talking about today is not gonna make any sense to you, let alone be obeyed unless you are saved, your eyes have been opened to the truth, your mind has been renewed, and you want to please God, that there's something deep inside your heart that says, I want to please Him so bad that whatever He says, I just wanna do it because I love Him, I can't believe that He would save me, and whatever He wants, I will do because He's Lord and King. Without that, you will hear this message today, and it will make you gag. you'll be repulsed, because it may be that in your mind, evil is still good, and good is still evil. Maybe pleasing yourself might be more powerful than pleasing God. We have to understand this context. And then there's a third context we need to understand, and that's the context surrounding verses four and five. How are we to understand verses four and five? What does the text say about verses four and five right here? Well, look at verse one. Chapter two, verse one. What is being said in chapter two, verse two, all the way down to 2.10, Paul calls sound doctrine. That word sound means healthy. So verses two all the way to verse 10, this is teaching that is meant to make your life healthy and strong and whole. It's teaching that shows that God's ways are best. His ways make your life better. His ways make your relationships better. His ways let you thrive when the culture around you is killing itself. Second, so not only is verse four and five called healthy, but second in verse three, verses four and five is called good. Good. This is the good that older women are to teach younger women. Good means this word means beautiful, advantageous, useful, giving a benefit. So so this this truth in verses four and five is healthy and beautiful and beneficial and good. And that's how God describes versus four and five. The world describes versus four and five is unhealthy, ugly and evil. So you will have to choose what's it going to be? What's it going to be? And notice verse 5. The reason that Titus wants the older women to teach this to the younger women, he says, is because, listen, if you embrace this truth, then the world that will watch you and look at you, they will have nothing bad to say about you because they will see your changed life and they'll go, wow, that Jesus must be pretty amazing because look at what he's done in your life. Look at how it's changed your life. The way you're living is so much more healthy. It's so much more beneficial. It's so much more beautiful than our lives in rebellion. That's what it says there in verse five. Do all of this that the word of God may not be reviled. And so this not only is meant to be a blessing to you, Your changed life becomes a way that the world is evangelized, where they see your good deeds. You adorn the gospel. So they hear the gospel, and they go, wait, I know changed people. I've seen changed lives. And that's Paul's goal. Now, there's a fourth ring of context that we need to understand. But that ring of context is what the Bible says about marriage. And in order to understand that, we need to turn to Genesis chapter one. Genesis chapter one. So if you got a Bible from an usher, that's on page one. Page one. And in doing this, my goal is to help all of us, point number one, understand and embrace biblical femininity. Understand and embrace biblical femininity. The dying deceptive culture tells us biblical femininity, listen, is evil, unhealthy, and a tool of oppression. Genesis chapter one says the exact opposite. Genesis one, God creates the universe and creates human beings. And what I want you to see as we walk through this text is that marriage and roles in marriage start before sin enters the world. Sin enters the world in what chapter, do you know? Chapter three. We are not gonna go to chapter three to make our case. We're gonna stay in chapters one and two, and we're gonna see all of these things. Everything I'm gonna say to you comes when the world, how did God describe the world after he created it? He said it was what? Good, and he said it was very good. This is part of the very good creation, what we're gonna see here, before anything unhealthy, before anything evil, before oppression. So take a look at chapter one, verse 27. 127 says, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And verse 28, it says, and God blessed them. So under God's blessing, you see this creation of a man and woman, humanity, mankind in the image of God. So when it comes to what a man is and what a woman is, we are equal in value, equally deserving of honor and respect and protection because we are equally created in the image of God, right? This is easy to see. He created them in his image. That means all forms of man-hating and all forms of woman-hating are automatically evil and rejected by God. automatically, because it denies the image of God in that person. It degrades it. It dehumanizes it. So the point here is neither man or woman is more like God than the other. We're both like God. We both represent God in the sense that in many ways, we are like God. Now, we are not deity, right? If anybody tells you that, they're satanic. Run away from them. We are not all knowing, right? That's like God, but we know things. We're not all powerful, but we can do things. God thinks and feels and he acts and he makes decisions, and so we can think and feel and act and make decisions. In many ways, we are like God. Now look at verse 28. Verse 28, we see the first reason for marriage. I'm gonna give you the five reasons that marriage exists, that God created marriage. So God creates, The universe, he creates humanity, and then third, he creates marriage before the fall in chapter three. The first reason that God creates marriage, the word says there in verse 28, be fruitful and multiply. The first reason is reproduction. Marriage was created for children to fill the earth with more and more images, more and more worshipers of God running around the universe, running around the planet, worshiping God, giving honor to him. Now turn to chapter two. In chapter two, the scene shifts from the big picture to a focus picture on God's creation first of human beings and then God's creation of marriage. Look at chapter two, verse 18. Then the Lord said, it is not good that man should be alone. The second reason we see that God created marriage was for friendship. for companionship, to fix isolation and loneliness. And if you think about it, well, he's, well, God's there. So what, he's not lonely. He's got a bunch of animals running around, right? He's got, he's got dogs, and I mean, cats aren't there yet, but there's dogs, and there's like, oh, right, like. Dog, like, he have, he has companion there, and he's got God, and God goes, no, there is no one like him. There's no one like him. And so marriage is created for friendship. Third, we see marriage created for completion. Look at verse 18. It's not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Adam was incomplete without Eve. That word fit means she was equal to him, but she's equal and a perfect fit. This helper is created to complete him, to help him, like two pieces of a puzzle coming together, perfect completion, complementary. So you see there in verse 18, our primary ministry, the focus of her attention and activity was helping him fulfill God's will for his life. He couldn't do it without her. He needed somebody to help him. She's a helper, but she's a helper who is equal to him, though different from him, different in ways that complement him. that fit him, that complete him. Fourth, we see marriage was created for joy. Marriage was created for joy. Look at verse 23. In your Bible, I'm sure that verse 23 is kind of separated from the rest. It's in a poetic organization because this is a poem. Now this is the first recorded words of a human being in the Bible. And do you know what it is? It's a love song. It's a poem. God brings the woman to Adam, and Adam is amazed, he is stoked, he can't believe it, and so he just bursts out in song. This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and we're like, that's one crazy love song. Right, but she'll be called woman because she was taken out of man. What is he saying with that? She's my equal, she perfectly fits me, she was made for me. And Adam is singing about this gift. He's just amazed at her. And fifth, we see that marriage was created for intimacy, for intimacy. Verse 24, they hold fast to each other. Verse 24, they become one flesh. Verse 25, it says that they were naked and not ashamed, that there was a closeness and an intimacy and a vulnerability and a freedom in being fully known. So marriage was created for reproduction, friendship, completion, joy, and intimacy. But I also want you to see what the text is strongly implying, which is that marriage roles were also created before sin entered the world, not as a result of sin entering the world. And I want you to see this. Look back at chapter 1, verse 21. How does the text imply, or as we're going to see even outright state, that marriage roles are part of God's good creation? Well, first in chapter one, verse 27, you see the whole race is called man. The race is called man or mankind, which you've noticed is not acceptable in our day anymore, right? Second reason we see that marriage rolls before sin is Adam was created first. Adam's created first. Now we go like, what's the big deal about that? Like, who cares who was created first? Paul in 1st Timothy 2.12 and 1st Corinthians 11.8 shows that being created first established his role as a leader. Third, Adam named Eve. That's the third reason we see that marriage roles were introduced before sin. And again, you might be like, what's the big deal about that? Well, look at chapter 2, verse 23. It says, she shall be called woman. There's only one other being in the first two chapters that uses that word, where what he does is described as called. And the only other being is God. And notice in chapter one, verse five, it says, God called the light day. And he called the darkness night. Chapter one, verse eight, he called the expanse heaven, and so on. See, we read that and we're just kind of always identifying it, but in Hebrew, what this is meaning is that he's exercising his authority over it by giving it a name. How do we know that? Because what happens when Abraham and Sarah come under the authority of God when they believe in him? What happens to their names? They get changed. Abram becomes Abraham. Sarai becomes Sarah. They are now under God and so actually he inserts part of his name into their names. That's the idea. Adam demonstrates his authority over the animals by naming them and does the same a thing when it comes to Eve. And then four, and really most obviously I think, Fourth, we see marriage roles before sin and that Adam wasn't created for Eve, but Eve was created for Adam. He wasn't created to help her. She was created to help him. And the men say, Amen. I heard that. And again, all of this happened before sin enters the world. So we see the purpose of marriage and we see that before sin enters the world, we see both men and women write 100% equal in value, dignity, deserving of respect because they're 100% equal in being images of God. And we also see husbands and wives having different roles. Genesis chapter two becomes the paradigm for marriage that then continues throughout the rest of the Bible. Now, if you've been discipled more by the dying culture through the media than the living Christ through the Bible, then what you've just heard probably offends you. This view has led to justification for abuse and oppression and capable women being chained to stoves and unable to fulfill their dreams and careers. No, this view has been twisted to do that, but that twisting happened way back at the fall. Sin entered the world and takes God's design for marriage and turns it upside down. And you see this in Genesis. Look at chapter 3, verse 17. Chapter 3, verse 17. There are a lot of ways in Hebrew to show that God is holding Adam accountable for this, that the accountability for what happened fell on him and him alone. But look at verse 17. God states it outright. He says, and to Adam, God said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you. God says there were two commandments coming to you, Adam, one from me, one from your wife, and you followed her lead and not mine. That word listened means to obey, to take direction from. This is the exact opposite of what God said, but listen, this was Satan's design. Turn this upside down, go after Eve, And that's where victory was. Adam followed Eve's direction, he eats the fruit. Now, sin enters the world, and notice what it brings into marriage, verse 16. Verse 16, to the woman, God said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing, and pain you shall bring forth children. Hey, thanks, Eve, that's awesome, right? And notice the next part, your desire shall be contrary to your husband. but he shall rule over you. That word desire in Hebrew means desire to control, to dominate, and to master. And in contrast, it says that he will rule over you, he will dominate you, be domineering towards you. Translation, the battle of the sexes begins right here. Who's gonna be the king of the hill in the marriage? Who's gonna be the one that's followed? Who's gonna be the one doing the following? Rather than embracing God's design, which was again, companionship, friendship, joy, That was the goal all along. But what happens? Sin enters the world and turns everything upside down. And you know what happens? Jesus enters the world and turns everything right side up again. You know why? Colossians 3, verse 18, specifically answers the wife's desire to control and dominate when it says, wives, submit to your husbands. And in Colossians 3.19, it answers the curse, this domineering tendency in husbands when it says, husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. This promotes intimacy, friendship, joy, and blessing. Listen, when marriages align themselves to God's created order, the result is joy and blessing. Now, what happens is we hear that word helper and the culture has discipled us so well on this that we interpret helper as inferior. You can't imagine that your purpose in joy in life could possibly come from helping somebody else to fill God's will for their life. You can't imagine that you could be both equal and follow the leadership of someone else, submit yourself to someone else's leadership. Someone that you don't perceive is as smart as you maybe. Some of you think, it's a stupid decision and I gotta follow that? Really? That's repression, that's oppression, that's not freedom. Equal in what you are and different in authority, that just doesn't exist. That's not right. God would never create something like that. Actually, God is that. You know that, right? God is that. God is equal in what he is and different in role and authority. That is the Trinity. Right? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equally God, fully, truly God. Neither one is more God than the other one. And yet Jesus comes and he submits his will to the will of the Father. The Spirit arrives and the Spirit submits his will to the Father and the Son. So you have submission, you have roles within the Godhead, and yet you have equality amongst the Godhead. As images of God, we would never, like, think about this for a second. So the Son submits to the Father. Well, that's gotta mean that he's just, he's an inferior God, he's probably some angel or something, right? No. Well, the Spirit submits to the Father and the Son, and so he must be like some active force. It can't really be God, because God's not gonna submit to God. That just doesn't even make any sense. No. No, that's the Trinity. And I want you to think about this for a second. This blew my mind this week. As images of God's, we shouldn't be surprised that in our relationship, there would be equality and different roles. Listen, because at the very heart of the inner Trinitarian relationship of the members of the Trinity, there's equality and difference in roles. Each person of the Trinity, fully, truly God, neither is less than, neither is inferior. But God takes his relationship, the relationship between the members of the Trinity, and says, the source of your blessing. Let me back up from that even. God, I'm the greatest possible being. I'm the most whole. I'm the most good being in the universe. And this relationship amongst the members of the Trinity is the most loving and the most selfless and the most incredible relationship there could possibly be. And I want you to share in that in your marriages. So I'm gonna take the paradigm that is me and I'm gonna give it to you so that your life, so that your marriage, so that your inside, I'm doing what God wants me to do and this is fulfilling, this is joy and satisfaction. Listen, the lie in our dying culture that's been propagandized on us for decades is that different means lesser. But there is no lesser God, right? There's no member of the Trinity that is less than. Not at all. Not only should... Let me just say this. This is what Paul assumed Titus knew already. This is what Paul assumed in the lives of the people, the older women in the churches on the island of Crete. And this is what he assumed that they would be teaching the younger women on the island of Crete. We become so biased against this thanks to our dying culture. that we have to understand this or Titus 2, 4, and 5 makes absolutely no sense. We read it and we go, that is just, that just doesn't make sense. And it'll make us angry and make us think the culture knows best and God doesn't. Our suicidal culture tries to turn these truths upside down. Truths that God calls healthy, made for our good. Listen, because these truths are just like Him. the most healthy, the most good, the most wonderful being in the universe. So you'll have to decide, dying culture or living Christ? Whose training on femininity will you embrace? It's one thing to understand this stuff intellectually, but this passage in Titus chapter two assumes that you've embraced it. And we'll talk about that more in a second. And here's the thing, if you reject it, it's not like the world's going to be like, oh, you're so bad. The culture's going to be like, you're one of us. You believe just like we do. Welcome. And I don't really need your Jesus because you're just like me. Paul is terrified at that. So turn to Titus chapter 2. For older Christian women, which probably refers to women without kids in the home, maybe women probably 50s and up, This is the basis for the good truths that God wants them to teach younger Christian women. So look at chapter 2, verse 3. It says, older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good. And so train the young women to love their husbands and children. to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. As I said last week, older women in the church have a God-given ministry to the younger women in the church, that God expects you to take these truths and help younger women embrace them and live in light of them. for single women here, women who maybe will never be married, or women who will never be married again, or women who, like obviously some of those things in verses four, really verse five applies to you, right? But some of them don't. So you're like, well, what am I doing here today? You're here today because God wants you to be able to help the married women that you interact with. This whole thing, like we read the Bible and we read it so that it's like, what can it do for me? But the Bible is meant, pastors are meant to equip you to minister to others. So this truth for you may be like, this is how I help other married women or some single, this is how I can help them be more what God wants them to be. So Paul sets up this older women are in better position to teach things to younger women thing. Like he sets this whole thing up because he knows. Like if, yeah, if, if, The Bible taught that women should be pastors, which we don't believe here. If the Bible taught that, how much easier would this message be for a woman to do? She'd be like, we do this, and we do that, and we're supposed to do that, and us, us, us, we, we, we. What do I have to do? You, you, you, you. And that automatically creates this separation. And so Paul is so smart because God is speaking through Paul. And God's like, aha. Yes, there's the formal teaching of sound doctrine, which is what I'm doing right now. But then there's the informal influence that older women are to have with younger women to implement these things in their lives. It says in verse four, older women are to train the younger women. And that word gives us an insight into what's happening on the island of Crete. Because train is like what athletes do, but that's not what this word means. This word is only used here in the Bible. And this word means to sober someone up. It means to bring them back to their senses, which means that the Christian young women on the island of Crete were going like girls gone wild all over the island. That's what they were doing. Everything you see in four and five, they were probably doing the exact opposite of. And Paul's like, get those older women to grab those younger women and get them back here and teach them, wake them up, bring them back to their senses and to the Bible. So he says, older women, get them back to their senses by training them to do these things. It means, by the way, that rejecting verses 4 and 5 is not only not healthy and is not only not good, but it's also insane. It is, your senses are not there correctly if verses 4 and 5 are just rebelled, rejected, devalued, debased. Now, if older women lived in rebellion against verses 4 and 5 in their marriage, If they hear verses four and five and they're like, I don't agree with that, then listen, you should never train any woman in the church. This passage assumes that you've embraced it, that you've lived it, that you're like, this is what I have done, this is what I've tried to do, and I'm gonna help some younger women live the things that God did in my life. This passage would not be encouraging you to be a hypocrite. It's not saying, hey, do things that live in a certain way that you don't even live. It would never do that. But for those who have sought to live, verses four and five, in their marriage and their parenting, listen, there is a desperate need for you in the church. There is a desperate need for your ministry, your experience. And some of you know this, because some of you have phones that are full of text messages from young women that are reaching out to you going, help me, please, I need to understand. And you know how fulfilling that is, and you know how wonderful that is. And the idea there is that that just spreads. just spreads all throughout the church. Because not only is there a desperate need for this in the church, but there's a desperate desire of young women who are like, I need this. And that's why God has you here. Well, look at verse four. Verse four. What's at the top of the list? What's the highest priority for a wife in marriage? What is her highest commitment? Verse four. Train the young women to love their husbands. Notice, love for husband comes before and is a higher priority than what? Say that with me. Love for children. Oh, ouch, that hurts, right? So you'll be an older woman who's thriving in a dying culture, and you're going to help younger Christian women thrive in a dying culture, when point number two, you train them to have a caring, affectionate, and passionate love for their husbands. Have a caring, affectionate, and passionate love for your husband. That word in verse four that's translated love their husbands is really one word in Greek. And that word, Paul took two words and smashed them together, husband and love. So it says older women train younger women to be husband lovers. And so for the older women in the room, you should be praying for and seeking out younger women to help them become husband lovers. Love in this text is very interesting. It's not the normal word for love, which is agape, that sacrificial, do what's best for your spouse kind of love. That word for love, listen, in the New Testament is only commanded to husbands. Only husbands are commanded to agape their wives. Now, in saying that, Christians are commanded to agape one another. Christians are commanded to agape their neighbors. There's no closer neighbor, no closer one another than the person sleeping next to you at night. But when it comes to the specific role, the specific command for Christian wives, it's a different word for love. This word means to care about, to have affection for, to treat kindly, to be connected to, to be loyal to. In three places in the New Testament, this word translated love here is used to describe a kiss. It means to befriend, to love as a relative. It's used for how people feel about their parents. It's used for the feeling that people have for their kids. It's used for the people that feeling they have for their friends. Actually, this word is used for how the father feels about Jesus. This word is also used for how the father feels about Christians. It's used for how Jesus feels about Christians and it's used for how Christians feel about Jesus. There's a care, a concern, a passion, a love, an amazement, this closeness and loyalty and devotion. That's the kind of love in verse four. This love was so prized that archeologists have found tombstones that when a husband has died, a wife has died before the husband, that this trait was so precious that they actually put it on her tombstone. She was a husband lover and a children lover, as we'll see next week. Well, pastor, you don't know my husband. He is a loser. You don't know my husband, he doesn't treat me the way that I want to be treated. You don't know my husband, he's not even a Christian. Hey, look at verse four. Does your Bible have any ifs in verse four? I'll love him if he does X. You don't need Jesus for that, right? That's how the world loves. That's the new vows in marriage, right? Till death do us part, till you stop making me feel happy. Right? That's what it is now. That's how the world treats marriage. I'll stay with you until you stop making me feel good, until you stop doing what I want. I'll love you as long as you love me first. I'll be a husband lover if he's successful, if he meets all my needs and gives me all my wants. I'll be a husband lover only if he's a Christian. Listen, no ifs, right? Also, look at the text, verse four. Does this come naturally? This is something that just, oh, well, if we do nothing, this is just gonna happen in the lives of young women. Is that what the text says? You just don't really need to do much. You just kind of live and just kind of float along through life, and this just kind of happens in your life. Is that what the text says? It's not gonna take any work. There's gonna be no misfires, missteps, no sin in this. That's not it. You know why? Because the text says that older women need to do what? Train them to maintain a lifestyle of tender, affectionate, and passionate love for their husbands. Train them to seek to be their friend. Train them to care about them and to enjoy them as God's gift. Well, hey, isn't he supposed to lead in that? That's his job. God tells him, right? He's commanded to love me. Absolutely. This is God-given responsibility. He's going to stand before God for the way that he has sacrificially put your good above his own, but your good according to what God wants for you. That's Ephesians 5.25. He's going to be held accountable for treating you the way that they treat their bodies, Ephesians 5.28. He's going to be held accountable for nourishing and cherishing you, Ephesians 5.29. But look at Titus 2.4. This isn't like, well, that's his responsibility, and I just sit back, and I just wait for him to do that to me. And once he does that for me, now I can love him like I should. Look at the text. It's your God-given responsibility to love him too. What if your husband hates you? Now, when I say that, I'm not saying that, like, what if he hits you? If he does that, love him by calling the police. I'm serious about that. Love him by calling the police and then call your pastors. The exception, the hard cases, the difficult cases don't make the rule. But what if he's mean to you? What if he hates you? What if he's sick of you? What if he constantly is leaving you because he doesn't want to be around you? Should you still have a caring and affectionate and passionate love for him? Let me answer the question this way. I think there's one command, I think, in the Bible that is the most difficult command to obey. And that most difficult command to obey is deny yourself and take up your cross. Because what Jesus is saying is not, well, your mother-in-law is your cross, or your bad health is your cross, or that person at work is your cross. What he is saying is this. Deny yourself even to the point of death, if I call you to that. So what do we do with people who, that's what they're facing. I'm either gonna deny Jesus and live, or I'm gonna stay faithful to him and I'm gonna die. What do we do with those people? Weaklings, fools, idiots. Just deny, you know, just cross your fingers, right? And just be disobedient for a second and keep living. No, we take these people, we call them martyrs, we give them the highest esteem in the church. We go, we talk about their stories for hundreds of years and go, that's what it looks like to be faithful, even when it's hard. That's what it looks like to obey, even when it feels impossible. So what if he hates you? Could you still have a caring, affectionate, passionate love for him? You should try. You should try. Not because he deserves it. No, his actions are so awful he does not deserve it. Again, Christian love is not love if. So you should try. You should try because it pleases God, because it's the kind of love that God showed you when you were in rebellion against him. He pursued you and won you back with love. What if I don't love my husband anymore, pastor? What if that love and feeling has been gone for a long time? Notice the text. Again, the text says wives need training to love their husbands and be obedient to this text. If you don't love him anymore, this text says that you must train yourself to love him, to care about him when you don't feel like it, to be affectionate when you don't feel like it, to be kind and loyal and treat him like family when you don't feel like it. But pastor, if I don't feel like it, I'm gonna be a hypocrite. No, you're gonna be a hypocrite when you say, I'm a follower of Jesus, but I do not follow his word here. That's hypocrisy. Listen, you should never, ever obey your feelings, ever. Your feelings are an expression of your flesh, which wants to take you away from God, not bring you closer to God. You should always, if you follow this rule, always disobey your feelings. You will live a great life. Do not wait for your feelings to obey. Your feelings will never want you to obey. When you feel the feeling to not obey, you go, I'm going to disobey this feeling. I'm going to honor God instead. And it's in that moment that older Christian women come along than younger Christian women along their side and say, I know what this is like. I've been here. I know how this feels. And here's what God did in my life. Here's the text that drew me closer. Here's the idea that I held onto. Here's the way that God changed my heart for him. This is where pastors come in. This is where the body of Christ comes in and comes around you and loves you and walks with you and helps you. And men, I know I had somebody out there that were like, man, you really beat up on the women today. I was like, were you here this weekend? 150 of you got beat up all weekend, seven hours of beatings, right? Listen to me, husbands. You should make it as easy as possible for your wife to fulfill this command, as easy as possible. Don't you dare take this message and twist it to promote your own. Serve yourself and your agenda. You should never treat her harshly or disrespectfully in a way that demeans her. Do you remember my message yesterday? If you were here, 1 Peter 3, 7, you are going to answer to her dad if you treat her that way. You don't want that. You need to fear her dad and treat her with honor and love. I've already gone way over, but I had somebody in the last service say, who cares, pastor, just keep preaching. So guess what? It's 11 o'clock. There's nobody after, so I'm going to keep preaching. So what are some practical ways for you to love your husbands, to develop and sustain a friendship, to have a caring, affectionate, and passionate love for him that builds and grows and lasts for a lifetime? I'm going to give you five ways. Number one, Proverbs 12.4. Proverbs 12.4, honoring him is husband loving. In other words, don't complain about him to your friends, or your mom, or your sisters, or your brother, or your extended family. The text says, she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones. A wife that shames her husband, what that's saying is that that shame sinks deeply into his life, deeply into the core of who he is, and it hurts him at his core to be shamed by his wife. And men, the same is true for shaming your wives. It doesn't honor her. Second, Proverbs 19.21, being agreeable is husband loving. Being agreeable. The proverb says, it is better to live in a desert land. We know what that's like, right? We know that. It says, it is better to live in the desert than with a contentious and vexing wife. It's not loving, it's not caring, it's not affectionate to constantly be disagreeing, constantly trying to dominate and control and impose your will. It fills the home with strife and anger and bitterness and pain. That proverb that I just read is repeated about half a dozen times in the book of Proverbs. It's like Solomon really wants us to get this one. Number three, Proverbs 31 11, being trustworthy is husband loving. being loyal, being singularly devoted to your husband so that he knows it, so that he has no question about it. That loves your husband. Number four, Proverbs 31, 12. Doing good to him is husband loving. Things that are right and admirable and kind and generous that bless his life, that's husband loving. And number five, 1 Corinthians 7, 5. 1 Corinthians 7, 5. Let's just say 1 Corinthians 7, 5 says, there are children in here, conjugal visits are husband loving. Let's leave it there. OK. Look it up, 1 Corinthians 7, 5. Look it up. You'll see I'm not twisting that text. Proverbs 12, 4 says, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband. She makes him better, like a crown. She brings him honor and recognition. She's a blessing. She does him good. She is a helper to him, Genesis 2. She helps him become all that God wants him to be and accomplish all that God wants him to do. And as a result of that, Proverbs 31, 28, it says that the husband praises her saying, many women have done nobly, but you excel them all because God is honored, because your husband is loved. Now, next week, we've got 1145 service, and I'm gonna be saying this in the 1145 quite often, that I didn't get to say this in any of the other services, but I get to say that here, and this is one of those moments. Charles Spurgeon, I've talked about him before, had this incredible, incredible description of his wife. that you just have to hear. He said about her, quote, she delights in her husband, in his person, his character, his affection. To her, he is not only the chief and foremost of mankind, but in her eyes, he is all in all. Her heart's love belongs to him and only to him. He is her little world, her paradise, her choice treasure. She is glad to sink her individuality in him. She seeks no renown for herself. His honor is reflected upon her, and she rejoices in it. She will defend his name with her dying breath. Safe enough is he where she can speak for him. His smiling gratitude is all the reward she seeks. Even in her dress, she thinks of him and considers nothing beautiful which is distasteful to him. He has many objects in life, some of which she does not quite understand, but she believes them all. and anything she can do to promote them, she delights to perform. He concludes, such a wife is a true spouse, realizes the model marriage relation, and sets forth what our oneness with the Lord ought to be. Listen, that's not old fashioned. That's biblical. Older Christian women train younger Christian women to love their wives because it pleases God and matches how he made you. So let me just end by painting this vision for you. Imagine if there was a church of older women who are praying and seeking out younger women to take them through this text or take them through the Bible and show them, like, this is what God's word says for you. And imagine these younger women who aren't learning from mommy blogs and who aren't learning from each other and who are trying to figure things out and going to the internet. And some is good and some is bad. But they're learning from other Christian women in this room who are going, no, this is how God worked in my life. Let me help you with this. Not only, chapter 2, verse 5, would the world have nothing bad to say about us, but they would see a community of people where Jesus actually changes lives. And maybe, just maybe, God would use us to reach into that dying culture and rescue people from it through the changed lives that he accomplishes in us. That's what the text says. Let's pray.