Okay, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for your great mercies to bring us all together at this place for this week and we rejoice in your goodness to let us have a time to be together and to learn together and to play together. We ask your mercies upon us throughout the entire week that we might be profited by your spirit strengthened and built up in the grace and in the knowledge of our Savior and conform to his image. For we pray in his name, amen. Wow, well, I'm really thankful for the opportunity to be here. Thanks for the invitation. It's always fun when you show up and do it. It's no fun doing this by yourself. So it's nice to have you all here, and I'm glad that you're here. So I hope it'll be a profitable week. The assignment to me this week was to talk about marriage and family, which of course nothing's been written on. You know, this is the kind of topic you just want to shoot yourself in the head and go, there's no way that this is going to work. Because there are two reasons for that. Everything that is good has already been said. And so what I've done is gathered up all the things that your pastors have said, and you've heard many times, I'm going to repeat them with a different accent so that you'll think, oh, that's really good. Wow. I've never heard that before. So I'm stealing wholesale. I mean, honestly, this is unbelievable. Taking everything I can from everybody. And I'm not always going to, every phrase deserves a footnote. You just know that. Every phrase should be a footnote. But I'm not going to take the time always to tell you who it's from. Sometimes I don't remember. But I'm certain it's from someone and probably someone you know, that's the that's the strange thing So you say you know that that was really good, but it seems like I've heard that before Yeah, you have you've heard it many many times And the other thing about this is that you know you the more when you first get married you think you know Everything about it. This is a snap. This is the easiest thing in the world. Why does anybody have trouble? I can't understand And when you think about having children, you think, man, what's the deal? I mean, my wife has a little trouble, but for me, it's just great. It's fun. And it's all simple, and all seems to be so easy, and you think you have all the answers, and then as your life goes on, you realize, boy oh boy, I don't know anything about this. This is, and you end up just realizing this is a great mystery. The whole business is a great mystery. It's hard to understand it, and sometimes you only learn things when it's too late. You know, it's after you've messed up your first three or four children. They have all these dents. I told someone, I just sat my oldest ones down and said, you know, all I can say is I'm very sorry for what I did to you. And I hope this will work out somewhere along the way. Trust God. I don't know what to tell you. So it's a very difficult business. And if there's anything that you can learn as a young person, as a young married couple, Realize it's a lot harder than you realize. And that doesn't mean it's dreadful or that you should be afraid or anything else. It just means you need to look to the Lord day by day. And I want to begin this morning by looking at, again, at the whole business, this whole mysterious business of marriage. The creation story of Genesis 2 ends with a wedding. And that's the way, in a way, that's a microcosm of all of history. That's the way history is going. God shows us in his word that history is fundamentally a love story. It's a romantic comedy. It's the story of how the love of the triune God burst out in creation and spread among men as the father sought out a bride for his son through the work of his spirit. And Paul tells us, and we learn elsewhere, that our marriages are to be a reflection of this grand love story that God is working. You see, the great story is above us, it's in us and through us, but it's not us, we're in it. We're in this great story and we're to show to the world what God is doing in the world as we live together as husbands and wives. fathers and mothers and friends and brothers and sisters in communion. And that's the way things go. That's the way husbands are to love their wives like Jesus loves his bride. Wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Jesus. Our marriages are to show forth the glories of Christ's love for the church. So the ultimate purpose of marriage is to provide a creaturely replica and reenactment of the gospel story, the great story of history. Our marriages are to portray the story of creation and redemption. So this is the grand romantic comedy that God is working in the world. It overarches and undergirds all of history. And as we strive to live happily ever after, we're giving the world a glimpse of where God is taking it. This is what God is doing. He is working this great thing in the world so that we may live happily ever after. So the ultimate purpose of marriage, and this is one of the great lessons you learn, sometimes you learn too late, or later than you wish you had learned it. The ultimate purpose is that marriage is not for you. It's not for your fulfillment. It's not for your pleasure. It's not for your satisfaction. Ultimately, marriage is for the world. And the sooner you learn it, the better you're gonna be. It is not for you. That's a message that's almost impossible for modern Americans to hear, much less to understand. They don't even wanna hear such a thing. Of course marriage is for me. Why would I ever get married otherwise? It's gotta be something that's gonna benefit me or I won't do it. But you see, the truth is marriage is not for you. It is for the world around you like everything else. You are not for you. You are here for the glory of God and the good of your neighbor, the good of the world. And marriage and everything around us has the same thing. It is for the world. And that tells us that if marriage is to flourish, It must follow the pattern of Jesus' love for his bride. That is, it's going to involve the cross all the time, every day. And we can say that marriages which deny the centrality of the cross will end up dying themselves. You either learn to die or you die. You either learn to die voluntarily or you die involuntarily. That's the way the world is set up to work by God. So marriages which deny the centrality of the cross will end up being destroyed. And so marriage not only illustrates the gospel, but marriage desperately needs the gospel in order to survive and prosper. And that really is what we're seeing all around us with the divorce rates. Why is it that people just can't make it? They can't make it simply because the gospel is not central to everything that they're doing and living every day together as husband and wife. Couples are not called to find their fulfillment in one another, but to enable one another to serve more fruitfully in God's kingdom. That's why God has brought you together, to make you whole, to make you more of what you ought to be so that you can serve Him more effectively in the world and bring joy and glory and beauty all around you. Marriage finds its true meaning and direction only as it's firmly situated then in the middle of God's kingdom, for the kingdom, of the kingdom, for the good of the kingdom. But this, as I mentioned, really sounds heretical in our day. It sounds, and I ought to know, I know about heresy, so this sounds heretical, I will label it. Our society has made sex and marriage and even children, the whole purpose of that is personal fulfillment. You hear about, now why do our starlets, you know, the 40-year-old movie stars, do God to have a child? It's because they haven't experienced that yet. And they say it openly, you know, it's all for them. It's all for them, and you see it, then the child gets shuffled around from this nanny to that, from this school to that. They never see them again, but it's when they want to see them, when they want to have a little fun as mom, then you call your little baby in and get them away from nanny for about eight and a half minutes. This is really the way everything is working now. Couples are encouraged through really what is in fact a pagan view of romance to find all meaning in each other. which is why they can so easily cut themselves off from the church or from their friends or their families. They don't think they need anything outside one another. You get these obnoxious wedding invitations. Come and watch us join into the new world as we, you know, go into a new universe ourselves off alone on the ship into baloney, you know? What in the world are you talking about? This is nuts, but they really believe it. All they need is each other. They don't need their families. They don't need the church. They just need to be together in love. And it works for about a week and a half. All the media, all the movies, books, music, I'm overstating, but just about everything around us brings that kind of view, and it enforces that view, and we soak it up in spite of ourselves. It's impossible to live near the paper mill and not smell like, you know what, that's just the way it is. And if you're living in this culture, you're going to absorb a lot of this stuff in spite of yourself, and that's why you have to beware and be aware of what's going on around you. We are naive sentimentalists in spite of ourselves, and I confess it. So yeah, I watch those stupid, sappy movies and go, oh, that was pretty good, wasn't it? Yeah, because I'm a naive sentimentalist who gets swept away by silly things, and it can be really deadly. It's not just innocent all the time, and this is one of those places where it can be deadly. that this perspective has created a new religion, a religion of coupledom, he said, in which the goal of every man and woman must be to live in an exquisite union that provides all they need as human beings. The defining moment in this religion is when they are alone in the bedroom. But this is utterly contrary to the biblical view. Sex is vital in the biblical view, but it's not the goal of our relationship. Rather, it's the means by which we become what we ought to be, a family serving God together for the good of the world. This author goes on to say, if my dear wife ever thought I could be everything to her, then she certainly knows better now. And, of course, if I think marriage is there to meet my needs, what do I do when it fails to meet them? Okay, good question. If that's the purpose of marriage, then what am I going to do when I realize, hey, this isn't working like I wanted it to? And the moment, he says, the moment I make my relationship the goal of my life, I doom myself to disappointment. Surprisingly, the key to a good marriage is not to pursue a good marriage, but to pursue the honor of God. Now that's the focus, that's what we have to have, and that's what we really have to understand that so many, I'm afraid, do not understand, and I think it's obvious they don't understand. Marriage is not to be an exclusively face-to-face relationship in which husbands and wives transform one another by their mutual love for one another. But rather, it's our face-to-face relationship is for the purpose of enabling us to stand side-by-side so that our love flows out into the world and brings transformation to others. We are transformed for the good of the world. Our love transforms us for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. Our marriages must aim at something then other than simply keeping one another happy and satisfied. Marriage is ordained by God to enable each man and woman to be of greater service in the kingdom. And that's precisely how it works in a faithful marriage. So where you have a husband loving his wife and a wife rejoicing and respecting her husband, then you have this joy that is dynamic and begins to transform and you feel the emanations of it all around the family. So this joy of the husband and wife relationship flows out in hospitality to others. And other people are brought into that circle. And they are transformed. And they do the same thing. They go out. And then you go on and you begin to serve your neighbor and you begin to care about others. You befriend those who have problems. and haven't ever had the opportunity to be molded and shaped by a good friendship in a normal sort of family situation. And you begin caring for those who have great needs and you begin to use your resources to extend the kingdom, giving generously and tithing not only to the church but giving in things so that things are supplied with the funds necessary. And you rear a new generation to take your place in an even more effective and fruitful way. So what you find is your children begin to see and do things and you sit back and you go, Wow, where'd they learn that? That's a great idea what they're doing there. I never thought of it, but they picked up and built and gone further and cast off all the bad things that I did, and they're learning how to do things better. That's the way it ought to be. That's the good thing. That's the way God has ordained it. And this doesn't mean that finding happiness and satisfaction in marriage is unimportant. It simply is to understand that in order to find happiness and satisfaction, you must not make your personal happiness and satisfaction the goal of your marriage. That's not how God's created the world to work. The chief end of marriage is like the chief end of everything. It's for the glory of God. the advance of his kingdom and the good of the world. And when you make that the chief end of your marriage, you find happiness and satisfaction. So how do you save your life? What's the gospel way? You save your life by giving it up, by losing it. He who saves his life We'll lose it, but he who loses his life will find it. He gets it back. And so marriages that glorify God and bring true fulfillment to us are marriages that are self-consciously patterned after the relationship that exists between Jesus and the church, which means then that they will have the cross at the center of the marriage. And that doesn't mean that marriage will be somber or sad or morose or intolerably serious. That would be horrible. But you have to remember the story we're in. To say that the cross is in the center of my life or the center of our marriage doesn't mean sadness, but joy, right? Because the story we're a part of, what follows the cross, What always follows the cross? Resurrection. Joy. So that sorrow leads to joy. Death leads to life. Your marriage follows that same pattern that God has ordained for the rest of your life. You find your life by losing it. You live by giving it up. You must be buried. He says if you're to grow and be fruitful, you gotta be put into the ground. You gotta have a funeral. And then you can bear great fruit when you die to yourself. A Russian Orthodox priest and scholar, Alexander Shmayman, makes this observation. He says, a marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not die to itself, that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery, or lack of adjustment, or mental cruelty. It's the idolization of the family itself. The refusal to understand marriage as directed towards the kingdom of God. And Sir Maidman goes on to say, the idolization of the family is the cause that makes the destruction of the family so easy. People think, oh, we gotta get back and just circle the wagons on our family and focus everything on our family. Okay, well that makes your family an easy target. You understand? When you make your family central to life and most important thing of everything, you're going to lose it because you've made it an idol. Your family cannot and is not sufficient of itself. It must draw its strength and resources from the family of God. Well, Sir Maimon says, yeah, when you idolize the family, it's easy to destroy it and no wonder that even in Christian families they're being broken apart because now they've made an idol of the family. If you're constantly focusing on your own happiness and well-being, you will never be able to sustain a marriage or a family at all. It's only when you look away from yourself and your happiness and give yourself for the good of your wife and family and the glory of God that your marriage begins to flourish. Our marriages are not for us. They are for the world. But if our marriages are indeed for the world, what will that require of us? Now, here's the next thing. What does this mean? Well, let's think of it just for a moment. First, it requires a commitment to love one another as Jesus loves us. Marital love does not consist in white hot passion of unquenchable lust, you know, seasons. And that's not to denounce those things. I think that's great. That's part of love. So it's not bad. That's wonderful. And to have moments and times of that are the way it ought to be. But that's not the way it can be all the time. C.S. Lewis said, oh no, I think it was Lewis. If it wasn't, it should have been. He said, you know, this kind of passion is a wonderful thing, but it's not everything. After all, what would become of the groceries? Yeah, what about other things? What about milk? You know, we can't live like that all the time, and that's a good thing. But biblically defined, marital love is really more of what we might call a covenantal love, as much as I'm now tired of the term covenant. I shouldn't avoid it altogether, but it's a love that's expressed in a commitment to do your mate good and not evil for as long as you both shall live. And that means that love is a commitment to act in a certain way toward your spouse, even when you don't feel like it. And that's, again, something Americans need to learn. Because we don't do anything we don't feel like doing. So if I don't feel like going to church, hey, why should you be surprised I ain't going? I didn't feel like it this morning. You all right? Yeah, I feel fine. I feel fine. I just didn't feel like going to church. And people are offended that you think, hey, that's not a good excuse. They go, hey, I told you I didn't feel like it. Are you praying? No, I didn't feel like it. Oh, well good, you know, fine to bow down to the golden calf just so you didn't feel like worshiping God. Really, come on, think about what's going on here. When you love, you're determined to act in the proper way regardless of how you feel because very often, since we're sinful, we don't feel like loving. We don't feel like loving someone. And you don't feel like loving your wife more days than you would care to be honest enough to admit. Because the truth is, she's aggravating. And she feels the same way about you, only maybe double. Because you're aggravating. And you don't even care that you're aggravating. She cares sometimes. So she's better than you. You see, sometimes What this means is you're committed to loving, acting in a loving way, regardless of feelings to the contrary. And I say this is inevitable, not only because we're sinful, but because of the closeness and the intimacy of the marriage relationship. It's inevitable. Your spouse can and should be your best friend. That's fine. But that sort of intimacy has the potential to make your spouse your greatest enemy. And that happens. And if you don't think it happens, you need to listen to some stories of some of the pastors. Husbands hate their wives in a way they've never hated anybody. Wives hate their husbands in a way they've never hated anybody. Because, in part, not only because of sin, but because of the intimacy of the relationship, if it's not handled properly, if it's not done properly, then it becomes the one you're most intimate with becomes your greatest and most fearsome enemy. You can be hurt by the one you love more deeply than you can ever be hurt by an enemy. And you know that. You've already felt that. C.S. Lewis defined love this way. He said, love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. This is the kind of love that makes marriage work, but it in no way means, again, that passion or emotional frantic attraction is sinful or unprofitable. It's good, it's quite normal, and we can say, and I will say, it's absolutely necessary to pave the way for learning to love. You gotta have this blind, fanatical passion for one another to get into the road of love. It's love in its immature stages. We could say, all right, that's fine. But G.K. Chesterton says, as no one but G.K. Chesterton could say, he said, this kind of love, he said, is very important and essential to function for the functioning of early stages of marriage. Listen to what Chesterton says. He says, the difference between a man and a woman are at best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be gotten over unless there's an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest. The sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron. If they are to be welded together, it must be while they're red hot. Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they're both in the story of the beauty and the beast. And every man has to learn and find out that his wife is cross, that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness. For every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is worth more considering than anyone else's sanity." It's beautiful, right? But it's right on. That's where passion, passion does that, that kind of fiery, I want to consume you whole, you know, that kind of stuff that just, you know, one match would blow you all to smithereens in half the continent. That's a wonderful thing and it performs a very important function that is not at all to be despised And I hope you don't despise it something's really wrong with you if you don't enjoy it but That has to mature. Of course, like I said, that can't be life. That's not normal for life. That kind of love must mature into a promissory love where we have those times of passion, but it's much more settled along the way. It's that kind of love that is exemplified by Jesus. Jesus isn't enamored by our looks or our sense of humor or our dimples. or our legs. His love is a commitment to do us good and not evil for as long as we both shall live. And that's the kind of love we must have. His commitment to his bride is a permanent commitment. It's an eternal commitment. And that is what gives the bride the necessary security to give herself without reservation to him. Right? I mean, that's exactly one of the things that helps you to confess your sins, that you know he's one who's going to receive you in love. He's not going to despise you when you tell him the truth about yourself. And that is necessary in our relationships as well. So, if the feelings for your mate aren't present, then you act in love towards him or her anyway, with the expectations that the feelings will follow. And this is something that most, again, most moderns simply refuse to accept intellectually, even though this is the way their lives work. This is the way our lives work all the time. Because of the way God's put us together, our actions shape and mold our feelings and attitudes. What you do affects you. So that one of the things that counselors tell a woman who's depressed, they say, go home and do your ironing. Do it. Do it all. Or do the wash. Or whatever it is that you've been, you know, every time you look at it, you just go, oh. All right, go home and do that. And you will feel better as the wash pile goes down and everything gets folded and put away, the better you're going to feel. Well, sure enough, that's exactly right. That's the way we're put together. We're body-soul beings. Our souls do affect our bodies, as David tells us in the Psalms. Can be, yeah. sorrow of heart breaks the bones. And that's true. You can cause physical illness because of stress and despair. But our bodies affect our souls as well. And this is a vital biblical reality that we have to understand if we're to love one another. Throughout scripture you find that not only do inward attitudes shape bodily gestures and actions, but bodily actions stir and mold The inner man. So what you do affects how you feel. And when you sin, you see this plainly. Sin makes you feel guilty. And of course what you do affects those feelings. If you repent and bow down, then of course you are going to be lifted up. This is why you tell your children, I don't care how you feel. I told you to take the garbage out. And I want you to be happy while you're doing that. And I would always get the boys, and when we'd have our little spanking, you know, loving beatings, those kind of things. One of the things we would do is I said, now, I can't stop. You have to understand how this works. Daddy can't stop until you're happy. And that would always kind of confuse them at first. I said, so you know what I want to see here, when you repent, when you're truly sorry, I forgive you. And you must now be happy again. So let's see a smile. And it is amazing, in the middle of tears, when they would try to smile, all of a sudden, pretty soon, they're laughing. Do it. And you become it. And that's the way we're put together. So you know that to be true in worship, right? How many Sundays you get up and say, oh, I don't want to go. I know I should want to go. I just don't want to go. I think I wish I could have an excuse to stay home. But I know if I stay home, somebody's going to ask me why I stay. And then I can't. I have to lie. I don't want to get into it. So you go to worship, and you get into there, and they say lift up your heart, and you start getting into it, and you're saying amen, and you're singing the sanctus, and you're doing all these things, and all of a sudden, man, you're just as happy you're there as you ever, and you can't imagine staying home. You're saying, oh, I'm so thankful I didn't stay home today. It was such a blessing. Yeah, well, that's the way things work. Same with prayer, right? We often have to pray as a matter of discipline and routine. Calvin said, if I only prayed when I felt like it, my prayer life would die. That was Calvin. That wasn't me. That was Calvin. Calvin said that. And he knew this is exactly the way it is. We ought to want to pray, but we don't. And so what do you do? Well, you should do it anyway. You may not, you say, well, I don't know. I just kind of feel hypocritical when I do that. Why? Do you understand what hypocrisy is? Hypocrisy is pretending to be something you're not. You're lying to others and trying to fool them into thinking you're something you're not. But when a Christian prays when he doesn't feel like it, he is seeking to be what he is. That's not hypocrisy. When I come to worship when I don't feel like it, I'm not being hypocritical. I'm trying to be what I am. Christians worship, and Christians go to public worship with other Christians. And if I don't feel like it, it's not hypocrisy for me to go anyway, it's obedience and being what I am. I'm trying to be true to who I am because I am a Christian. And Christians pray, and Christians worship, and Christians love their neighbor when they don't feel like it, when they feel like throwing a rock through his window. That's the way this works. So in the same way, it's not hypocrisy. I've heard husbands say, you know, it would be hypocritical for me to act like I loved her. I go, wait a minute, what are you? Did you really get married? He goes, yeah, what are you talking about? Yeah, we got married. I said, well, then it's not hypocritical to act like you love her because you're her husband. And that's what husbands do. That's who you are. So you're just being who you are when you do that. Yeah, that's it. I'm not lying, I'm just seeking to be what I am. You really are her husband, and this is how you ought to act as her husband, so do it. That's being faithful to who you are. C.S. Lewis again makes a very helpful observation regarding this very thing. He says, our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves. It means that we wish our own good. In the same way, Christian love or charity for our neighbors is quite a different thing from liking or affection. We like or are fond of people and not of other, some people and not of others. And Lewis goes on to say that this is not sinful anymore than liking. or disliking certain foods is sinful. He says, what we do about our likes or dislikes can either be sinful or virtuous. And he goes on, he says, some people are cold by temperament. And that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having bad digestion is a sin. And it does not cut them out from the chance or excuse them from the duty of learning charity. The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you love your neighbor. Act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you love someone, you will presently come to love them. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. Good and evil, Lewis says, increase in compound interest. The more you act in love, the more you love. The more you refuse to act in love, the more you decrease in love. And let me give you one more quote from Lewis. This, he says, the difference between a Christian and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or likings and the Christian has only charity. He says, the worldly man treats other certain people kindly because he likes them and listen, and thus the circle of his kindness remains small and over time diminishes as the people he likes disappoint him. The Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people. As he goes on, including people he could never have imagined liking in the beginning. And so his circle gets bigger and bigger. You see how that works? That's a brilliant insight. I mean, it's real simple, and it's obvious when you think about it, but that's something we need to remember. Acting in love produces love. So what do you do when you find yourself really not liking your wife? You just, honestly, you just don't like her. And you sometimes get to falling into the temptation of thinking, yeah, you know, Mary was a lot better in high school, and I should have married Jane. I mean, she would love me. I know she would. I've seen her a few times. She actually cares about her husband. I should have had her as a wife. Well, you start thinking like that, you're about halfway down the road to adultery. don't even allow it because you're not married to her you chose this one and she is yours and She's the one who belongs to you and you belong to her and you give yourself to loving her And I don't care how you feel And it doesn't matter whether it's fun or not you do what you're called to do and And when you do it, what you find is that you grow in love. There's a beautiful, I hate to recommend movies, because I always recommend some, and I forget, some horrid scene, and everybody goes, oh, he's such a pervert. So here I go, you know, I'm going to get in trouble with this one, I know. But there's a movie with about 18 short films called Paris-Jeton. It's a French movie. And what they did is they had 18 directors, and they all said, you got 10 minutes, make a movie. And so they all made all these movies. And most of them are worthless. There are a few of them that are pretty good, but there's one of them that I wish everyone could see. It's such a beautiful story. This man is meeting his wife for lunch, and he's going to tell her he's leaving her for another woman. That's his plan. When she comes in and sits down he greets her and they sit down at the table and before just as he starts to tell her he's leaving her for this woman she says, I just came from the doctor and he goes, really what's wrong? And she goes, he told me I have six months to live and he's stunned and he realizes then I can't tell her I'm going to leave her. I'm going to have to stay. And so he says, it says in the narrator says, so he began to act as a husband. And he begins to care for her, and he begins to nurse her. And he begins to show kindness to her, and he brings her water, and he brings her breakfast. And he's caring for her, and he comes home to make sure she's OK, and he's calling her from work. And over time, he begins to love her so that when she dies, he's brokenhearted. And the last words you hear in the film is, if you want to become a lover, act like one. Something like that. It's in French. I don't know. It's a beautiful story. That's it. That's the story. That's the story we're in. That's how it works. And you keep sitting around waiting God to move you? Forget about it. God hates that prayer. God says, you move. You know what? You move. Get up and do what you're supposed to do and I'll bless it. You wait around to get that feeling, it ain't going to happen. Do what you're supposed to do. And that leads me. Well, let me say one other quick thing about this before we go. Taming of the Shrew. Just think of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. Petruchio treating Katharina. She's this monstrous woman. And he keeps saying, isn't she lovely? She's the most loving, sensitive woman in the world. And she goes, I am not. I want to rip you to pieces, you nasty thing. And he keeps saying, don't you just love her? She's so beautiful. And he just keeps calling her and treating her as if she's the submissive, wonderful, sweet wife. And she becomes that, you see, over the story. That's the way this works. Shakespeare knew it. But the best way to make your wife or your spouse into the person he or she should be is to treat them as if they are that person now. In a way, you see, in Jesus, they are definitively that person. are to love disrespectful wives and wives are to respect unloving husbands. And this is simply an application of the Golden Rule to marriage. It's imitating how God treats us. He loves us and provides for us and defends us so that we will become the people that we are meant to be one day. This is our pattern. Rich Lusk has said we should love others into their futures. I really like that. Love one another into their futures. That's what you do with your children. That's what you do with one another. Love them into their, that's what God does for you. He loves you. into your glorious future. All right, well, let me leave that now and go to the next thing real quickly. Marriage, if marriages are to be for the world, then it's going to require a willingness to seek forgiveness and grant it. Sin divides, sin hardens. If we refuse to deal with sin properly, we're going to find ourselves increasingly distant from one another, increasingly indifferent to one another. And since sinning against one another is inevitable, you can't survive if you're not going to ask forgiveness all the time. It's a practice. It's something that must be done every time you sin. I remember Doug Wilson said something Drop 3,000 things on your carpet. But if you keep picking it up, it's all right. But if you don't pick it up, it's a mess. Now, he didn't put it that way, but that's the way I would put it. Yeah, it can get to be a real mess if you don't pick up what you drop. Well, if you don't ask forgiveness for your sins, you're going to have a real mess and there's no way around it. So it's critical that you keep short accounts with one another. Don't go to bed angry. That's that old thing that everybody's heard, but it's absolutely the case. Curb your tongue. Don't say it. Control your anger. Restrain yourself so that you don't cause wounds that take years to heal. And words can cause those kinds of wounds. The less damage you do in the heat of the moment, the less repair work you'll have to do later. Don't allow grudges or bitterness to take root. So that means you be reconciled as soon as possible. Swallow the pride and humble yourself and seek forgiveness of one another. Grow in humility. And that's the next thing. If our marriages are to be for the world, it requires humility. Paul begins the section on marriage in Ephesians 5 by saying, submit yourselves to one another in the fear of God. And see, husbands just ignore that a lot of times. They say, my wife won't submit to me. OK, well, are you submitting to her? And you go, what? Well, it says, you know, it starts off here that you submit yourselves to one another. Now, I understand you're established as the head of the house. I understand that. Not arguing about that. My question is, are you learning to be a head by submitting and dying for your wife? Because that's what the head of the church does. How do you exercise headship? It's not by stomping around the house saying, I want people to respect me. You hear that, children? You've got to respect your daddy. You hear that, woman? You've got to respect your husband. Anybody that's always commanding respect doesn't understand how you get it. You don't get it by stomping around making the windows rattle. You get it by dying for your family, by giving yourself up for them and letting them know that you're there for them, that that's your job. You're just like Jesus who gave himself for the life of his bride. So this means that you've got to understand that you desperately need your wife and she desperately needs you. If you're married, that means you're not able to live by yourself. See, a guy that can live unmarried in a happy way, as we'll talk about later on, that shows that, well, he doesn't need a wife. God's gonna give him the gifts to be able to be fruitful on his own in connection with the family of God, in connection with the church. But when I'm married, it shows, no, I need her to be able to be fruitful. I need her. I'm not sufficient of myself. God gave Adam a helper because he needed help. Wow. Get me a... Men's attached. Man, I'm brilliant. You see this obviously most clearly in childbearing. You can't bear children by yourself. You need help from someone else. Nothing will prosper in your relationship until both you and your wife understand you need one another. And of course, that doesn't mean that if one dies, you've got to commit suicide since you can't live anymore or anything crazy like that. Obviously, God makes up for it. But the point is, we're not intended to fulfill our callings alone. We can't do it. And since this is so, I have to have this attitude. Out of love for my Savior, I give myself to the duty of loving you, seeking your good, doing everything possible to make you what you are called to be. So if you're looking to your marriage in terms of what you can get out of it rather than what you can give, you will have nothing. That's for sure. You will always be focusing on your expectations of your mate rather than your duty towards your mate, and you will have a poverty-stricken relationship. And this is precisely where most marriages are. Both husband and wife are waiting for the other to do something for them. and to fulfill their expectations and so as a result everything that you know you start out here. Blockhead does something and separates himself here, and she says all right I'm gonna wait for him to come and you know really show he's sorry for that well He doesn't so she goes well if he thinks he can get away with that I'll just show him and she goes he goes what in the world what a crazy thing for her to do and she goes man, Mr. Stubborn and they keep backing away until I mean they can't make a long-distance call They're so far apart That's what happens because you're both waiting for the other to fulfill your expectations and neither will make the first move to serve. And so the situation is worse. So we have to change that. You have to change your focus. Your focus must be to serve her, to please her, and to delight in her. And she finds then, when you're doing that, she begins to want to serve you and please you and delight in you. That's just the way it is. Our marriages flourish to the degree that we practice mutual submission to one another, but that requires humility. But you see, that's exactly how Jesus loves his people. He humbles himself and he became obedient to the point of death, even to death on the cross, Paul says. So Jesus won his bride and secured his marriage and secured the allegiance of his bride by humbling himself to serve and that service meant giving up his life for his beloved. It was through his willing submission to serve That in the service of us that he was glorified in life And we will be glorified with him and this is how your marriage will flourish if you ignore this This is why it will die and that leads to one last thing if our marriages are to be for the world we must be increasing in the fear of God ourselves unless I've committed, I'm committed to serving the Savior and pleasing Him. I will never be able consistently and perseveringly to submit myself to my wife or my husband. You say, oh, but I love my wife. Oh, I love my wife so much, I'll do anything for her. I'll do anything. Whatever she asks me to do, nothing's too much. Yeah, that's the guy that's just off the honeymoon, right? I felt like that once. Yeah, that is the voice of inexperience in a way. Now it's not to say it's bad, it's just that's the voice of inexperience. After a few years of seeing sin and being sinned against and sinning yourself, it's easy to become selfish and self-centered. You begin to feel, if I don't look out for myself, I'm never getting anything out of this. And that's the way women have said, men have said the same thing. And so both of them are frantically seeking to satisfy themselves no matter what. This dear lady once told me one time, she said, when I first married, I loved my husband so much I could have eaten him up. Now I wish I had. Yeah, well, I knew her husband. I wish she had too. What can enable you to love somebody like that? What can enable you to love you? Why would somebody love you? You're a mess. You just, look at you. Why would anybody love you? Jesus loves you because he loves the world. He wants to have you and be with you. And it's the fear of Jesus that makes us love one another. When the fear of Christ is my motive, I never have the right to sit back and wait for my wife to take the first step. It's always my move. Always. I don't have the right to say, yeah, but she did this, and she needs to straighten that out. I mean, well, OK, she does need to deal with some things, but it's your move, right? Your move. Always your move. And this is true regardless of the situation or the present attitude or the condition of your mate. If they need to repent, nothing is more calculated to bring them to repentance than you going to them in love and showing them your love and your esteem and your desire for their good by talking to them, confessing your own sins, and calling upon them to do the same. It's not the worthiness of your mate that requires you to love. It's the worthiness of Jesus and the good of his kingdom that requires it. The man who refuses to love and esteem his wife is simply saying that Jesus and his work aren't enough to warrant my obedience at this point. Do you really want to say that? The answer, of course, is no. And the same thing is true for the wife who refuses to respect her husband. She's basically saying that Jesus' love is not worthy of honor at this point. I'm not going to obey. He doesn't deserve my obedience at this point. You see, marriages fail for the same reason men fail in life. Unless you love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself, you will perish. Unless you live according to this rule, you'll remain barren and lonely and fruitless. You'll shrivel up in your bitterness and you'll become hardened and cynical in your anger. But when you give yourself in love to the Lord and to your neighbor, you become a life-giving stream, a fountain of life to the world. Your life promotes life. And that's what your marriage is to be. Marriage is not for you. It's for the world. Let's pray. Father, help us to learn this basic lesson. It's not complicated. We've heard it before many times, but we pray that you will teach us these things. Help us all to be faithful in living as you've called us to live. Loving one another. Caring for one another and seeking your glory in our relationship. So that we can see your love flow from us to our neighbors and to our communities to the world. Hear our prayers and uphold us so that we can glorify you for Jesus sake. Amen.