Scripture says man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We are to desire the unadulterated milk of the word like a newborn baby. that we may grow thereby. His divine power has given to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which has been given to us many exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctified them by means of truth. Your Word is truth. So before we get into God's Word this morning, let's bow our heads together and ask His guidance on our study. Father, we are so very grateful, so very thankful that we have this opportunity to come together as a body of believers to encourage each other with our presence, but also to focus our attention upon that which has eternal value, to recognize that there is nothing more significant or important in this life than to take advantage of your grace in all the ways that you have provided for us, that we are to follow the mandates of Scripture, that we are to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we recognize that we are here to do that. We are not here to be entertained. We are not here to be emotionally stimulated. We are here to learn how it is to live in such a way that you receive the honor and glory, that despite the challenges and vicissitudes of life, we may have stability and steady hope because our hope is in you. So Father, we pray that as we study today and we learn more about what a biblical marriage is and what a biblical family is like, that we may come to recognize that we have an important choice in life. Do we want to just have a family or marriage like everybody else? Or do we want to have a distinctive marriage that focuses on your glory and honor? And so we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Open your Bibles with me this morning. To Ephesians, Ephesians chapter five, verse 21, where we're focusing on the husband's mandate, which is to love your wives as Christ loved the church. Love is a is in relationship to understanding grace. And so when you men it applies to women as well, are loving your wife or your children or anyone else that has to be grounded upon an understanding of God's grace. Without understanding grace, you cannot understand love. Without understanding humility, you cannot understand grace. So these are all tied together, and we will be developing that as we go through this study in this particular passage. So what we have seen already, just to go through a few things, is that in Genesis 3.15, when after Eve and then Adam sinned, God provides a curse, but there is hope. And the curse is not some kind of juju black magic curse. It is a judgment. That's really how the Bible uses that particular word. And there are manifestations of this to the woman and then to the man. And actually if you go back and look at all of the commands that are given to Adam and Eve that they are to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth, to rule over it and subdue it, there are five commands there in Genesis chapter 1 verses 26 and 27. And then they are to work and they are to guard the garden. and that there's only one thing they're not supposed to do. But because they disobeyed God and they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there are consequences in each sphere, the animal sphere, the sphere of women and men and marriage, And all these commands go back to showing how each of those mandates given in the creation mandate are now going to be difficult to pursue. And virtually impossible, but that doesn't mean we're not to pursue them. But there will be speed bumps. Sometimes there's roadblocks. along the way because of the corruption of sin. And so to the woman, God said, your desire shall be to control your husband. Now, no Bible translates it that way, but that's the significance of the verb that is there and how it is used in Genesis chapter 4. And so the woman is then told in the New Testament that she is to submit to her husband. See, there's a correlation between the command to the woman and a command and the curse back in Genesis 316. And the man has his flaws and sin because he seeks to dominate, to tyrannically dominate the wife. and not to love her. So the command for him is to love his wife. Notice the wife is not commanded to love her husband. She's a responder. I'll tell you guys, if you love your wife as Christ loved the church, there will be no doubt that she will reciprocate that love toward you. But if you do not, then there are going to be problems. The central issue we saw throughout all of human history is authority. It goes back to the original sin among the angels with the one who is called Lucifer, which is a bad translation. In the Hebrew it's Halel Ben-Shahar, the bright and morning star, son of the dawn. And his sin, that he wanted to be like God, that is the core of all sin. We want to be our own ultimate authority. We want to be God. doesn't work out real well for us because we are too finite and limited. There's no way we can even approach it. It is just arrogance. And arrogance is always self-seeking, and arrogance is always the enemy of biblical love. And so we have to learn to deal with that. And so this is why these commands are the way they are. We have looked at the commands for the wife, Ephesians 5, 22 and 23, wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. In Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, all of these passages, the argument always goes back to the order of creation. God is not instituting a pagan patriarchy where the husband is the dominating force within the home. In fact, it's just the opposite. When you look at so many people today will say, well the New Testament is just reflecting the values of the Greco-Roman culture at the time where women really had no rights and they were just in many ways treated as just more property for the husband. And that's a real distortion in the first place of the Greco-Roman system. But it trended in that direction in many ways. Women did not have any rights. But when you come to the Scripture, God is correcting that. It is. There's no comparison between these commands if you look at all the texts that are revealed to us, and that there is quite a difference. We've looked at 1 Peter 3, One and two, where the wife is, again, that text says she is submissive to her own husband. This isn't talking about all women are supposed to be submitted to all men. It's not a class statement. It's talking about in the home, the wife is under the leadership and authority of the husband. But that leadership and authority is what we're going to begin studying this morning, because it is not a domineering leadership and authority. And so we have to understand just what that says. And so this is what we've looked at this in the previous lessons in 1 Peter 3, 7, where husbands are likewise by dwelling with them according to the standard of knowledge of God's Word, giving honor to the wife, as the weaker vessel. That is part of the kind of love that Christ had for the church. So this is an example or illustration of one aspect of the kind of love a husband is to have for the wife. And so last time we looked at this topic of how does this work, and I developed the illustration from the doctrine of the dance, and we finally got everything working on a computer, but when we Sorry to put those videos up, I tested it earlier and it's just so choppy it's not worth it. So you can just look, I think Barb put it up on the website so you can look at that lesson from last week. But a couple of questions came up this week. One was a comment about point 10 that I went through that, and the key idea as I compared that to dancing is there's gotta be good communication in dancing between the man and the woman. The man is the leader, the woman is the follower, but that doesn't mean that he leads without communication. There's got to be a lot of talk and a lot of discussion, and if any of you have ever taken ballroom dancing or other forms of dancing where there's specific responsibilities for the man and specific responsibilities for the woman, it doesn't work if you break the rules. And in fact, when you look at any team sport, it doesn't work if one player breaks the rules. You have to learn what those rules are and operate within those those rules. But there's a lot of men who can't handle it. when their dance partner or their wife says, you know, you really need to work on this particular area in your life and they get all defensive and everything else. And so women, you have to be a little gracious and kind and generous, all part of grace orientation that we should exercise to everybody because he's got this tender, tender male ego. Another comment was made about, I think it was point 11, and did I get that? Yes, and point 13, that the woman must learn to let the man lead and to make mistakes he can learn from. Now, when I talk about making mistakes, I'm not talking about sin or things that are immoral. I'm talking about the fact that we go through life and we make mistakes doing things. We don't get appointments scheduled right, or we miss appointments, or we mess up the car, we have an accident, or lots of different things that are just due to the fact that, especially in a young marriage, we just make mistakes. We're growing, we're learning how to handle the details of life, and so you make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, and so the wife needs to recognize that, that her husband, I know this is a surprise to some of you men, but her husband is not perfect. and he does not have perfect ideas. But there are times, especially when men really go out of bounds, where they are abusive, especially if they are physically abusive or radically emotionally abusive. Those are the kinds of things that need to be dealt with in another topic. But the woman is to learn to follow and to graciously forgive when she makes mistakes because I think there's not a woman here who doesn't recognize that they make mistakes and they want their husband to be gracious and forgiving and kind to them in relation to any mistakes they may make. The twelfth point was the woman is unaware in dancing of where the man is going and of his plan, she must constantly be ready to respond. and shift according to his lead. But in most cases, the man needs to talk about it beforehand so it's not a surprise. And I used the illustration of this last time when I was talking about when I was with a large group and we did a lot of dancing together, is that some of the ladies would tell me, you know, I don't want to dance with him because he just expects you to know what he's going to do all the time. And you never do, and he can't lead well. And so it's always a problem. He won't listen. And I would hear these things and I said, I got to write this down because this really fits application to all marriages. And then the woman said, and then point 13 was the woman must continue to follow as best she can, no matter how faulty his leadership. And if he's a failure in his leadership, she can still be in a success in her role. Now that I'm defining failure, not in terms of of doing things that are illegal, immoral, or things that are unbiblical. And in any authority situation as we've studied many times before, when there's a person in authority you have every right to disobey when that person is trying to tell you to do something that God says to not do, or they tell you not to do something that God says to do. And so if there's any areas where there are expectations from someone in authority, including a husband, where that expectation is biblically wrong, then that is not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about the fact that in many cases, many of us were married when we were in our 20s, and we had a lot to learn about relationships and a lot to learn about life and a lot to learn about how to make a marriage work. and so we made a lot of mistakes and we learned from those mistakes and you have to learn how to communicate. Ultimately the goal in marriage is part of what is said in 1 Corinthians 10 31, therefore whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, and that includes everything including your marriage do all to the glory of God so that the glory of God is the ultimate issue that you have a man and a woman come together and The question is do you want to have a marriage like everybody else? Do you want to have a marriage that is just basically built on the customs of the culture and Or do you want to have a truly Christian or biblical marriage? And there are a lot of people, a lot of Christians, who just don't have a biblical or Christian marriage. they've never thought these things through. They're Christian, they're believers, they have all the right answers, they like to go to church on Sunday morning, but when it comes to the question of is the clear objective of your marriage that defines how you spend your money, how you spend your time, how you relate to one other, the glory of God, then if that's not in place, then it's not a Christian or biblical marriage. And so today we're going to start to look at some things related to the husband. And as an introduction to that, I want to stop and think a little bit about why I do what I do, the way I do it in terms of teaching, but what you should also do as part of your daily routine, I hope it's a daily routine, where you are reading or studying the Bible. It is so important that we get into the Word. Now you can't get bogged down, sometimes you get bogged down because you're reading something you don't understand it, That happens to me. That happens to any pastor you've ever known. You just learn to read past it, and I'll come back and study it later. Right now, I'm just reading through the Bible to understand the basic structure, the basic outlines, to be reminded of God's promises, of His principles, of His character, and to be reminded of all that the Scripture says. That would be reading the Bible. Sometimes we want to go a little more in depth and study the Bible. And when you're doing Bible study, you need to learn how to do that. And I've taught a series before on how to study the Bible, and that's up on the website. And I encourage you to go through that. You may not go through all of the more in-depth ways, but even just reading through our Bible, we need to understand some of those basic elements so that we can get more out of what we are reading. And so there's basically three steps in Bible study that help us understand what God has revealed to us. The first is to answer the question, well, what is this saying? What is the Bible saying? And that is basically a question of observation. What is going on here? And so you ask your basic questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how. to see what is in that particular verse or what is in that particular passage. We have the second category then goes beyond that, and that is interpretation. But if you don't understand what that text is saying, then you'll never get the correct interpretation of what it means. And that is very different from the third step, which is, what does God intend for me to do from this passage? And that we describe as application. And sometimes the application is really limited to the original audience. For example when God tells Abraham that he's to pack his bags and leave his home and leave his family and he's going to take him to a new land and God doesn't even tell him where he's going or what highway to get on or anything else and he makes the mistake of taking a nephew with him and so he goes to Haran. But when you read that and God says get out of your home, get out of your land and go to a land I'll promise you that only has application to Abraham. It didn't apply to anybody else on the planet. And you can't go to that and apply it to yourself. There's an implication, though, that when God tells us to do something, we should do it as God has told us to do it. And so there's a that may be a little over your head. It is for some people. There's a difference between an implication and an application. We know that we are to search the Scriptures and the Berean believers mentioned in Acts which was a city in central Greece. Paul went there, he had left Thessaloniki, he'd been in Thessaloniki for about two months and the people there basically ran him out. and they were rejecting what he was teaching in the synagogue. And so he goes to the synagogue in Berea and it doesn't say a lot about it, it just says that they respected what Paul said and they searched the Scripture daily to see that what he said was true. Now they're praised for that. Now we would think, well he's the Apostle Paul. What gives them the right to question what he said? Well they want to make sure that it's right. I mean you go back to passages in the Old Testament, that's what they were supposed to do, is to evaluate anybody who claimed to have a message from God. Go back to Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18. So they were honored in the Word by saying these people searched the Scripture daily. That was part of their understanding of their responsibility as believers. In 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 10 to 12, Peter says this, he says, of this salvation, talking about the salvation that was prophesied and promised in the Old Testament, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully. See, that's the ultimate goal in biblical study, is to ask questions of the text. I remember when I was just out of college and I was teaching school here in Houston, but I knew that eventually I needed to go to seminary, and so I was beginning to collect some resources, and one of the books that I got was a book called How to Read. I think that was it, it's been so long since I've read it now. But it was written by the editor of the great books. And it was a great book to read because it talked that you have a dialogue with the author of the book. So we can have dialogues with all these great thinkers in the world. The book was written by Mortimer Adler. And you can have these conversations with that author as you read through the book. And so we need to learn how to do that, asking questions of the text. Well, what does this mean? How often should I do that? What are the limitations? All kinds of things, but we have to understand that text. So this is what the prophets did. They're inquiring, well, what is this passage saying about the Messiah? And how are we going to understand when the Messiah has gotten here? So they have inquired and searched carefully those who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Notice the prophets had the Holy Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was not like in the church age. It's very, very different. The Holy Spirit only had this kind of indwelling ministry with leaders in the theocracy of Israel. The leaders like kings, Saul was anointed to receive the Holy Spirit but then because of his disobedience the Holy Spirit was taken from him. But that wasn't for his spiritual life, it was to give him wisdom and skill as a king. He rejected that guidance. And then David, next, David received the Holy Spirit, and after he sinned, he prayed that God would not take the Holy Spirit from him. And many people misunderstand that God in the church age, the Holy Spirit functions in a very different way than he did in the Old Testament. And the Holy Spirit is never taken from a believer in the New Testament, it's a permanent permanent indwelling. But the prophets and the priests, some of the priests, were also indwelt by the Spirit for the purpose of being the mechanism for divine revelation so that He indwelt them and gave them guidance and direction as they wrote Scripture so that it would be written without error. Very important to understand that. So the Spirit of Christ in the Old Testament. That's what Peter is saying. That spirit in the Old Testament is the spirit of Messiah. So the spirit of Messiah who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that not to themselves but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel. So they were going back and searching the scripture so they would understand what it would be like when the Messiah came. But the emphasis here is this is God's word and we need to be diligent in studying and inquiring of what does this mean? What is God saying? 1 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, a verse that's familiar to most of you here, that all Scripture is breathed out by God. God is the ultimate source of all Scripture. And when Paul wrote this, there were maybe only four New Testament books written, so he's primarily talking about Old Testament Scripture. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for instruction, for doctrine. Those words all mean the same thing. The Bible is designed to teach us things. And when God teaches us about reality, And when it teaches us about reality, part of the things we learn in the first couple of chapters is that there are men and there are women, and men can't be women. And if they think they're women, then they're totally self-deceived and arrogant. And if women think they're men, then they're self-deceived and arrogant. That's just a simple contemporary discussion application. The scripture comes from God, so it's teaching us about reality, and reality is what God says it is. And when that happens, we're going to be reproved. In other words, God's going to step on our toes. He steps on my toes, and he steps on your toes. Sometimes he's about to break my legs. And we all know what that's like. So we have to humble ourselves because God's going to tell us you're just dead wrong and you have to correct things. So instruction comes first. That reproves us. and then we correct, and then it's designed to train us, to discipline us in righteousness. And if you've ever participated in sports, if you've ever been participating as a musician or as someone who sings, or in just about any other discipline in life, you have to be trained And that's what, the starting point of that is learning the Word, and that's the significance of what's happening in the pulpit in a local church, or what should be happening in the pulpit of a local church, but what is not happening in about 99% of the churches in this country. Because it's the Scripture that trains us in righteousness. for the purpose that the man of God, now this is not a sexist statement. It is talking about anyone who is a believer, male or female. So you could translate it as just the believer in Christ. That the believer in Christ may be fully qualified. It's only the words of God that qualify it. Not songs, not hymns, not choruses. It's the Word of God that is alive and powerful. It is not these other secondary things. That the man of God may be fully qualified, being sufficiently equipped for every good work. And that word that's translated equipped is a form of the same word that is used over in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11 and 12 that talks about the purpose for the gifts of pastor, teacher, and evangelist, that they are to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. What do you use to equip the saints? It's the Word of God that has been breathed out by God. So there's nothing more important in anything in life than our knowledge and internalization of the Word of God. Because when you die and I die and we're face to face with the Lord, the only thing we're taking with us is our knowledge of God's Word and the capacity for life that that has given us. We're not taking money, clothes, looks, anything. We're taking only what we know of God's Word. And it is so important to study every detail. Matthew 5.18, Jesus said, one yod or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." Now the significance of that statement is that the word yod is referring to this letter in the Hebrew alphabet which looks like an apostrophe in English. And that's a really small letter. And if that disappears though it will change the meaning of a word. And in fact, that's very important in different verb forms, the presence of the yud. So you have that, and then a tittle is just a stroke. So it's the difference between an R and a P, or the difference between an O and a U, that little stroke. And that would change. For example, you might have the word bun. or bond, B-O-N, or run, or pun. And what makes a difference in those words is just one little stroke. And so that changes the word, and it changes the meaning, and it changes the significance of what is said. So you have to pay attention to every single detail in Scripture. That's what observation is, that first part of reading the Bible or studying the Bible. So in observation, we need to understand what the words mean. What does it mean to love? What does it mean when Christ gave Himself for the church? What does that word for mean? You have to do word studies. And you have to, as a pastor you have to understand how to do those in the original language. There are a lot of tools that you can go to, in fact a good friend of mine who's a very good Bible student and He's one of the few people I could say that has absolutely no professional training. He's never been to Bible college or seminary. He is just a man who devours the knowledge of God's Word. And yet the other day on Valentine's Day he posted something that somebody had written talking about the Greek words for love. And I said, what that? And I was pretty sure I knew where he copied that from, or the original author. I said the thing that that misses is that the word agape, we'll look at that this morning, is a word that can include all of the other Greek words for love. And the word phileo, which is often indicated as more, some people would say it's more emotional or friendship. It has that idea also of someone who is an intimate friend, a very, very close friend. And it does not exclude agape as part of it. But those refinements are what you get when you study a language and you go through every single use of a word in the Bible. and make your own conclusions from that and develop that. So you also have to ask, well, how are the words arranged? Why are they arranged the way they are? And you look at the fact that some verses are questions, some are commands or descriptions, some are statements. You have to look at their structure. This is all structure, grammar, and connection. Some of the most important words to look at are the buts and the ands. and the fours and the as and just as. And those are conjunctions, but they structure the author's thoughts. So that if you want to really understand what Paul or Peter or John was thinking and trying to get across, you have to understand grammar because that is the that's the skeleton of the ideas. And that's part of understanding God's Word. And so we have to look at those things. We have to ask, well, who are these people? Who's Barnabas? Who's Paul? Who's Silas? Who's Peter? We have to look at the locations that are mentioned, Mount Gerizim, Mount Ebal, Bethlehem, Nazareth. What are these places? Why are they significant? And we ask the question, when did this happen? Or when will it happen? When does this apply? Those are all questions related to understanding. And then why is this being said? Why does God say this and not that? And that's a hard question to answer, but it's an important answer. I know some of you are like me and you like murder mysteries. I love watching a lot of murder mystery shows. And what bothers me sometimes, and Agatha Christie is the worst at this, is that when you get to the end, you discover that Hercule Poirot got a clue that was never mentioned before. So you couldn't ever figure out who did it. Because he does it's not revealed until you get to the last chapter So you don't have all you don't not only do you not have all the clues you don't have the one that's the most important So it's it's hard to work your way through those things Another thing is there's only one interpretation only one and that's what the author intends to say and I'm going to give you a little illustration. We're getting ready to get into tax season and Now when you are trying to fill out your tax form, your tax return, and you say, it wants you to fill something into the little block. And you look and go, I'm not sure what that means. Do you think, well, I think it means this. No, you're going to go find the instruction book and read the paragraph because you know if you do what you think it means and it's wrong, then you're going to get in trouble. It doesn't matter how we feel about it. It doesn't matter what we think about it. It doesn't matter what we wish it believed it says or what we wanted to say. What matters is what the author is communicating. And so we have to think about that. What is being said here by the author and the ultimate author is God, the Holy Spirit. But there are clues all through the scripture as you dig down through the words and the grammar and the structure to be able to answer that question with certainty. It's not just a guess. And then we come to the question, well, what does God want me to do about this? And so we need to ask questions. Well, this passage says I'm supposed to do this. Well, how does that compare or contrast with what I believe? Maybe I disagree. Wait a minute, then that means that I have to go back and I have to change or refine what I believe. I have to think differently about it. And we have to ask the question, is this directed towards my attitudes or the content of my thoughts or the structure of my thoughts? Now, that's really hard for a lot of people to think about is how they structure their own thoughts, because that's that's not that's abstract. That's not real concrete. You know, and I had a seminary professor would say that it's hard enough for most people to think, but it's really almost impossible for them to think about their thinking. But we have to think about our thinking because you can structure your thoughts in a way that are unbiblical. Remember, logic begins in the brain of God, not in the brains of Aristotle or Plato or Parmenides or anybody else. So we have to learn that. We have to say, well, what does this say about my mental attitudes or my dispositions? Or how does this differ from my beliefs and opinions? Do I need to change some things to correct some things? And then, how should this impact the way I express myself through the words I choose? Lastly, what guidelines are there for my behavior? And how does this impact how I spend my time, my money, my energy, and my priorities? Those are the questions that you need to be working on, and we all need to be working on for the rest of our lives. Now, the thing about this is that And Howard Hendricks points out in his book, and he's absolutely correct, that most people pick up their Bible and they read it, and the question they're asking is, what does God want me to do? They don't stop and think, well, what does it say? And they just impute their own ideas and opinions on the text. And it says what they want it to say, or what they think it says, without any study whatsoever. So they spend about 3% of the time on observation, if that, And then they'll spend about another 3% or 4% of the time saying, well, answering the question, what does it mean? And then they spend 93% of the time trying to figure out, well, what does he want me to do? And the reality is, if you want to have accurate application, you need to spend about 85% of your time on observation. and then you spend 10% of your time on interpretation. Because if you do the job right in observation, what it means will be painfully obvious. And then you spend about 5% of your time figuring out, okay, how does this address the way I think? Because you've already been hammered as you go through observation if you're doing those stages right. The application is painfully obvious, and a lot of people don't even want to go there anymore because God's been stepping on their toes too much. So this is very important to understand that. Now when you come to church and you get a sermon or Bible class, first of all you have to understand what the Bible is saying and in some cases what it's not saying. I spend a lot of time on that because I'm spending a lot of time on observation. We have to understand what the text says. And secondly, this means that we must be taught in relationship to the words of Scripture, the grammar as it pertains to the lesson or understanding what is said, the geography, the people, the culture of the time, and the history. But you don't want to get so bogged down in that that you lose the forest for the trees. And then third, we must also understand the passage relationship to similar passages because God doesn't say everything about a topic in every mention. And that's really important because it... any teaching in Scripture has numerous aspects to it or numerous facets to it. And you only get one in, for example, in Ephesians 5.25. But God says other things in the Scripture about the role of husbands. And so you also have to compare and contrast with other passages so you get the full picture. And most people just go in and grab a passage and jerk it out of context and come up with the craziest ideas. And then fourth, by this time, God's expectations for us become clear, but illustrations and clarifications of how this impacts become clear, so we need to have illustrations and clarifications for how this impacts our attitudes, our thoughts, and our view of the world, our lives, our behavior, and how we relate to the people in our world. So we, and the Scriptures give those kinds of illustrations, and we're going to see this. The passage we're looking at in Ephesians 5 starts off, husbands, love your wives. Now if you're thinking and your mind is engaged, you're gonna, you have a command, you know that's a command, you're gonna say, well how do I do that? That's part of what I was showing last time, talking about comparing dancing to marriage. Husbands love your wives. Well how do I do that? Well, the Holy Spirit's not gonna leave us ignorant. He says it's just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. but it doesn't stop there. If you notice in the English there's a comma there. Now they didn't have punctuation in the original Greek, so the punctuation you see in your English translation that is provided by those who are good Greek scholars for whom thinking in Greek is almost as second nature to them as English, you can understand where the punctuation should be. And I've got several different Greek additions, and sometimes they don't agree where sentences end and where commas should be, because those aren't inspired. But they're about 98 or 99% the same. So you can, in a lot of ways you can do it, but when you get to the English text, now we don't have an example of that here, but you get into the English text, sometimes the Greek text, for example we saw this in Ephesians 1, 3 down to about 17, that's all one sentence in the Greek. But you look at a lot of Bibles because Americans are so undereducated so that they can read it at a fifth grade level because they've been uneducated. They break that sentence down into seven, eight, or nine sentences. But if a sentence is the basic unit of thought, which is how grammarians define it, then what you've done is you've broken it down into nine, 10, or 11 thoughts instead of the one thought that the Holy Spirit had. So this is important. So this is why I broke this down and color-coded it for you so that you could see where the sentences are. So we have Ephesians 5, 25 to 27 that is explaining what that means to love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. And then there's a purpose clause, that, the purpose that Christ did that for the church. So we get into Christology, the doctrine of Christ, and we have to understand something about ecclesiology, which is what the Bible teaches about the church. So he loved the church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify and cleanse her. Who's the her? It's the church. It's not the wife. We're not talking about the husband and wife anymore, we're talking about the example of Christ's love for the church. That He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Now an implication of this that the husband, he can't sanctify his wife. He's not there to purify her, but he is there in order to provide that oversight, leadership, and motivation in the spiritual life. The implication here is the husband is the spiritual head of the home. He is the spiritual head, and every husband is going to be held accountable. for how he carried out that responsibility in this life. Now it's not an accountability related to eternal destiny, it's related to rewards. So that's your first thought, and there's lots of ideas there that we're gonna have to deal with. And then verse 28, so husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. So that's your second thought. Third thought, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body. See, in most translations, they'll put a period there, but not the Greek text. I'll put a comma there. So 29 and 30 go together. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Then there's a quote from the Old Testament, the end of Genesis chapter two. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. What's the reason there? We're going to have to ask that question and answer it. The reason is because you set up an independent home away from the parents. And now the husband is the new head of the home. In Greek or Roman culture, the paterfamilias, which may be the husband's or the wife's father, is still the head of the home, and many would stay in that home. And so the ultimate authority in the home was no longer the husband, it's the father of the husband or the wife. So this is, Paul is constantly correcting the misunderstanding of marriage in their culture. He's not being influenced by the Greco-Roman culture. And then in verse 32, he says, this is a great mystery. This has not been revealed before in human history because there was no church until Christ ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit. There's no church in the Old Testament. Jesus told Peter, when he asked him, he says, who do men say that I am? And Peter said, well, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah. And Jesus said, well, who do you say that I am? And Peter said, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. And Jesus said, on this rock, I will build my church. Future tense. So the church didn't exist when Jesus said that. It was yet future, and the church is given birth to on the day of Pentecost when God the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father to permanently indwell all believers. And so Paul concludes this paragraph by saying, nevertheless, let each one of you in particular, so he's individualizing this to every husband, so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. So when we look at this text in the first three verses, we see how the main idea is given there in verse 25, that husbands love your wives, and then the rest of it is subordinate to explaining just what that is. And so you have a comparative statement, a simile, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. So we have to understand, how did Christ love the church? and give Himself for us. What is that all about? And then there's a purpose for that. Jesus died for the church as a substitute for the purpose that He could sanctify, that means to set us apart, and to cleanse her with the washing of water with the Word for the ultimate result that he might present her the church, the body of Christ, present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish." That's going to take at least a couple of weeks. There's so many complex and significant ideas in there. So I'm going to conclude with just some initial observations to think about. First of all, husbands are to love their wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. That's the pattern for every husband. That means you have to really get into the Bible to understand how Christ loves the church. You have to understand the dynamics of the crucifixion, what happened historically, what happened physically, what happened spiritually, how it impacted the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Second, husbands ought to love their own wives as their own body. That's the second main sentence, that husbands are to love your own wives as your own bodies. Then he goes on to say, for no one hated his own flesh. That means nobody really has a low self-image. No one hates their flesh. That's from the Word of God. Third, there's an illustration. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Husbands are to nourish and cherish their wife as Christ does the church. That means you have to understand how Christ is doing that. That's part of his role as the spiritual head of the home. And then fourth, we need to understand the mystery of Christ and the church to improve our own expression of love for our wives. We have to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ or you'll never be a decent husband, not a biblical one at least. Six, the husband's responsibilities are emphasized more than the wife's. Some people go, oh look at Paul's on my side, he's always down on the women. Let me tell you, he's down on the men even more than he's down on the women. Not by a lot, but a little bit. So you have the responsibility of the wife in this chart on the left and the responsibility of the husband on the right. The responsibility of the wife in Colossians 3.18 is covered in nine words in the Greek. And in Colossians 3.19 the responsibility of the husband is covered in ten words. In 1 Peter 3, 1 through 6, there are 97 words for the wife, and in 1 Peter 3, 7, only 25 words for the husband. But in Ephesians, there are 40 words for the wife and 116 words, but in the majority text, which I think is a more accurate text, and the Textus Receptus, there's 125 words. One verse has a few extra words in it. So that's 40 words versus 116 or 125. So this gives emphasis. That's one part of observation is where's the emphasis. Seventh, in describing the husband's responsibility, love is mentioned six times. Love is not mentioned for the wife in any of the passages. But in this passage, love is mentioned six times. So what are these verses about? They're about love. And if you don't understand the biblical concept of love, you'll never get there. And it's very important to understand that biblical concept. So we have in this passage husbands, the command, husbands love your wives. The analogy to the church, as Christ loved the church, then husbands ought to love their own wives. Then the observation, he who loves his wife loves himself. Finally, let each one of you in particular so love his wife as himself. So apparently the Holy Spirit thinks this is something extremely important. So here's the first part. We'll spend probably two or three weeks here. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish." Now the only point that husbands can follow is to be a spiritual leader. The husbands can't sanctify the wife, they can't wash her spiritually, they're not going to present her as glorious and without spot or wrinkle, but they can be the spiritual leader in the home and encourage that environment and recognize that if they have children, He is the one given the ultimate responsibility to raise children in the admonition and nurture of the Lord. It is not the wife's, the mother's primary responsibility. Now, often that's delegated because of time factors, but the husband needs to make time so that he is the one who is seen by the kids as the spiritual leader in the home. In my first church, I heard a kid in a Sunday school classroom say to the teacher, I don't know why I have to come to church. My daddy doesn't come to church. And that is true in a lot of Christian homes. And it's a failure on the part of the father and the husband. So we have to understand this, and it starts with the Bible, not with sociology, not with psychology, not with what everybody else is doing, but what does the Bible say? with our heads bowed and our eyes closed. Father, we thank you so much for this opportunity to be washed by the water of your Word, that we may come to understand truth as you created it and not as we would like it to be, that we may understand some of the failures and flaws that we have in our own thinking about marriage, about the roles of husbands and wives, that we may then have them corrected, that we may align ourselves with your revelation and with your word and your divine purpose for marriage, that we may become mature as believers, and that we may glorify you in our marriage. Father, we pray that you would give us great insight into what you have revealed in scripture. And Father, we pray that as we read this passage, we see the references to the importance of Christ and understanding the cross, that Christ died for our sins, that you loved us in such a way that you sent your only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. It is that love that is demonstrated in the time when we were rebellious sinners. that you sent your son. to die for us. And we pray that if there's anyone here, anyone listening now or later to this message, that they would understand that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sin. It is a free gift of God. And if you accept it, there's no strings attached and you are given new life in Christ, eternal life. But if you reject it, then there are eternal negative consequences in divine judgment. And so, Father, we pray that you would make this great news clear that anyone can accept Christ as Savior. We are all sinners, and so we all come to the foot of the cross realizing that there's no reason that we should be given this great gift on our own part We're given it because of your love for us and your complete provision of salvation at the cross. And so we pray the Holy Spirit would make that clear. And Father, we just pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen. Please bow with me as we close our service in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning. We thank you for the privilege of gathering to hear your word taught. We thank you for the revelation of your word in our language and that we can freely and openly gather and study you and worship you in giving and singing and study of your word. We ask that you would help us to take the things that we've learned this morning and to apply them to our lives as we go forward to love each other. As husbands, help us to love our wives, Father, and to love you. In Jesus' name, amen.