well. Colossians chapter 3. It is, when you do run a service like that, you do everything. So it's kind of like a, you do all the music, you sing, you lead the singing, and then you do the announcements, and you do all of the transition periods, and then you preach, and then you do it all over again, and then you do it again, and then by the time you're all done, your voice is shot. At least for me, that's how it is. But it's a great opportunity. Tonight we are going to, as was mentioned, finish up verse number 19 as it relates to husbands and the command here for husbands. Beginning at Colossians chapter 3 and verse 12, Paul shows us how putting on the new man should impact our relationships with one another in the church, but also here in our relationships in the home. Those who are believers have been chosen of God should be compassionate, and kind, and humble, and patient, and forbearing, and forgiving towards one another. And the love and the peace of Christ should bind us together in the body, which results ultimately in unity. Unity in mind, unity in spirit, all in one direction. in the church. Then Paul applies these qualities that we've looked at back in verse 12 and following, specifically here to wives and to husbands, to children and to parents, and then to slaves and masters. Tonight, I'm going to continue to address the specific role of the husband in the marriage. Ask many Christian husbands to summarize their biblical duty in one word, and many of them might say something like a leadership, there to be a leader. But God here answers the question with a different word, and that word is love. The word here is love. Now there's no doubt that it is God's design for you as a husband His design includes the aspect of leadership, but it is a leadership that flows out of a sincere love and is always tempered by tender, loving, caring affection for your wife. The husband's proper role as a loving, nurturing head is best epitomized in scripture by Jesus Christ himself, who took the servant's role, we see even in the book of John, washing the disciples' feet, serving his disciples. And then, just a word to the wives, as we mentioned to the husbands when we addressed the wives and their role in submission. Let's be sure that we understand that this verse is not addressed to you. It's addressed to husbands. It does not say, wives, make sure your husbands love you. Make sure that you remind them each and every day of this duty. This command is to husbands. Men, this is our responsibility. This is your responsibility in your marriage. You are responsible to love your wife. Now, the last time that we were together, we looked at this command here and we said that there are really two sides to the command. There's a positive side, and then there's a negative side of the command. The positive side is that husbands are to love their wives. And the negative side is that we are to not be bitter against them. This is really one of the more difficult commands in scripture. In Matthew chapter 19, when the disciples heard Jesus' teaching about the permanence of marriage, and really ultimately the sinfulness of divorce, the disciples said, if this is the situation between a husband and wife, then it is better not to marry. But here Paul ups the ante. Paul actually ups the ante and says, not only must a man live with his wife for the rest of his life, but he also must love her for the rest of his life. And we looked at Ephesians chapter 5 and verses 25 through 33, which really, really expands on the command here that we see in Colossians chapter 3. And we looked at four characteristics about love from that passage. First of all, we said that love is self-sacrificial. The self-sacrificial, self-sacrificing husband puts his own likes, puts his own desires, puts his own wants, puts his own opinions, puts his own preferences, puts his own welfare aside, if that is what is required to please his wife and to meet her needs. So what does he do? He dies to self in order that he might live for his wife, because that's what Christ's love demands. It's service. Secondly, we said that love is also sanctifying. Love sanctifies. A sanctifying husband's love does not seek to condemn his wife when she does wrong, but rather seeks to help her to be cleansed of the wrongdoing and ultimately restored. Third, we said that love is sympathetic. The sympathetic husband cares as much for his wife's welfare and his wife's needs and his wife's desires as he cares for his own. Treasuring her, nourishing her, cherishing her with tender and love and warm affection to provide comfort and security and protection for her. And then last, we said that love is shatterproof. Love is shatterproof. It's unbreakable. And that is to say that the husband and wife are no longer two, but they are one. And God's design for marriage is that it is indivisible and unbreakable. In other words, divorce in a marriage is not an option. And so tonight we will look at the negative side of the command, the negative side of the command to husbands. And that is that husbands are not to be bitter against their wives. Look at verse 19, it says, husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. First, some basic things before we look at this second part of this command. Number one, this command to love your wives, it really, ultimately, truly elevates women. Some people actually look at this passage and they see verse 18, wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, and they think that that verse puts down women. But the following verse here, where it says, husbands, love your wives, actually elevates women. We have the so-called women's liberation movement today, but that movement actually brings women back into bondage because it rejects God's view and model for the role of the women. Now, in the culture that this verse was written, It would have been, this statement would have been a very stunning statement, for husbands to love their wives. And when we say love, we need to think of what love truly is when we think of love. This would have been a stunning, shocking statement. When the Colossians read what Paul had written, love your wives, this would have been really a new thought, a new idea. A man in that day would have a few sheep. He would have a few cattle. He would have a few oxen. He would have a few donkeys. And he would have a few wives. It was no big deal. She was an object, like a slave. And in the Greek culture, the wife was despised and oppressed. She was there to serve her husband. She was there to fulfill his needs and his desires. Nowhere in the culture was this concept of a man loving his wife found. So when Christianity came along and said, husbands love your wives, that command elevated women. That command says, no husbands, you're actually to serve your wife. The wife isn't there to serve you, you're there to serve her. You're there to sacrifice for her. So one, this command truly elevates women. Second, this command is a Greek present tense imperative. That means that this command is in the present tense, which means you are to continually keep on making it a pattern and a habit in your life as a husband to love your wife and to not be bitter against her. And something that we must remember as Christians is that God doesn't ever command us to do something that he doesn't also enable us to do. He doesn't command us to do things that he doesn't give us the strength to carry out. He gives us the strength, He gives us the ability to fulfill this command, to be obedient to this command. People can come up, men can come up with all kinds of reasons why they don't love their wives or why a wife may not love her husband. We can come up with all kinds of these reasons. I can't do it, I don't have the ability. But we must remember that God doesn't command us to do something that He doesn't also give us the ability to do. if you will just trust him and step out in obedience and faith to follow his commands. So what do husbands need to do? They need to love their wives in all situations and at all times. And you can do it as a husband because God will enable you to do it if you're a believer. Now the negative side of the command here is that husbands are to not be bitter against their wives. Do not be bitter against your wife. Now again, this is an imperative. And there's a sense to this imperative. literally that you are to stop being bitter. Or you could say it this way, do not make it a habit of being bitter against your wife. And so there's a stress here that husbands are to not have, they're to constantly be preventing themselves from having a sour attitude against their wives. Whether it's the wife's heart or the husband's heart, When you let bitterness come into your marriage, you're heading for problems. And really, we could say that this is really true in any kind of relationship, any relationship. If bitterness creeps into any relationship, that relationship is headed for struggle. That relationship is headed for problems. If you allow bitterness to set into a relationship, it's headed for destruction ultimately. Which is why it is important that we get things settled with others. And we forgive one another when those things are settled. This really, this bitterness, this husband-wife relationship truly goes back to what we've seen back in verses five through 14, 15, 16. If we get all of that squared away, all those attitudes that we see in verse eight, put off all of these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, lying, those right there, those attitudes are attitudes that lead to bitterness. If we do not put those attitudes away, ultimately you will become bitter towards your spouse or towards another person. And if you don't put on the attitudes that we see in verse 12, bows of mercies, the idea is compassion, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, forbearance and forgiveness, our relationships are gonna struggle. This specific negative command here to men is a vulnerability for men. This is a struggle that men can face. Men have the tendency, if they are upset or if they're angry at their wife about something that she said or that she did, to become hard, to become unreasonable, and to become overbearing. But what counteracts this tendency towards harshness? It's the first part of our verse. It's love. Love counteracts bitterness. Love preempts bitterness. The Greek word translated here for bitter is the Greek word pikrano, which carries the idea of something that is pointed or sharp, specifically of what is sharp or penetrating to the senses, like a pervasive smell, a shrill noise, or a painful feeling. So we think of bitter, and maybe a food that you've tasted before that was bitter. And I don't know too many people that like bitter tasting food. Some of you may have partaken of the fruit that's back here, the palmello trees. Anybody try it? I did. I gave it a shot. Very bitter, very sour, not very pleasant to the taste, okay? Most people don't enjoy bitterness, bitter tasting foods. Most people don't like just sharp smells, sharp sounds, like nails on a chalkboard. That's, a bitter person is the same way. A bitter person is the same way. Bitterness, the idea here has the idea of having a bitter resentment or hatred towards someone else. And it refers to something which is caustic or abrasive, something that is resentful or something that is sarcastic. The word itself, you can look it up in the English dictionary, Webster's says this, Webster's describes being bitter as one who exhibits intense animosity, one who is harshly reproachful, one who is marked by cynicism or rancor, and finally, one who is intensely unpleasant. Don't be a bitter person. Husbands, don't be bitter against your wives. You want to know why? Because they don't enjoy it. It's intensely unpleasant. The recipient of another's bitterness experiences an emotion that is distasteful or distressing. The person receiving the bitterness, it's like, oh, it's gross. It's disgusting. They don't enjoy it. It's unpleasant. So husbands, you are commanded in this verse not to be this way towards your spouse. Husbands are not to be caustic. Husbands are not to be bitter. Husbands are not to be resentful. Husbands are not to be sarcastic towards their wives. And these things, really, ultimately, men can be especially hurtful to women. I've been married for 18 years. Some of you have been married much longer than that. And over the years, you know the buttons that you can push to really get your spouse going, I'm sure. I'm sure that it's consistent across the board. We all understand that women are made differently than men. God created men differently than he created women. And you could be sharp with another man. You know, I have to deal with Derek every week. And then I just shrug it off and just, you know, push it under the carpet and I don't get too upset with it. All right, but if you do that with your spouse, with your wife, she may take it differently. It may cut her deeply, far more than you may even realize. So put off these traits of criticism and sarcasm and recognize this, that love preempts bitterness. Love her. Show her that you love her. If you have bitterness towards your wife, then at least in that moment, you are not loving her. You no longer have the capacity for love because love and bitterness are mutually exclusive. You can't love and be bitter at the same time. Bitterness is the response of a man or a leader who feels threatened. And then because he feels threatened, responds to that threatening, responds to that threat by some sort of force or coercion. And when his will is resisted, what does he do? He turns up the pressure, cranks it up. So Paul here, after telling the wives to submit to their husbands, what did Paul know? He knew that many men would try to help the wives obey this command by asserting their authority as husbands. But what Paul says is that harsh authority is wrong for the Christian husband. Harsh authority is not what God is looking for. You lead in the home by loving your wife and by being gentle and considerate with her. Being the leader, though, as a man, does not give you the right to be harsh, does not give you the right to be authoritarian, and it does not give you the right to trample on her emotions. Now, what is bitterness? What is this bitterness? Where does it come from? Where does it start? The bitterness comes from what I believe is not taking care of what is listed in verse number eight, the first one on the list, starts there. And that's anger. Bitterness is settled anger. It comes from settled anger. The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 12 verses 14 and 15, follow peace with all men, that includes your spouse, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you. So there's an idea here that bitterness is rooted in something. Bitterness is grounded in something. And roots don't just grow instantaneously. Roots take time. They are formed over time. And the longer the time that roots are allowed to form, the deeper the root and the harder it will be to remove in your life. It's very, we can use any kind of plant as an illustration. If you're a gardener, you know that if you have a weed in your garden, you wanna get that weed out as soon as you can, because if you don't, it's going to grow deeper roots, it could be harder to get out. And ultimately, what ends up happening many times is the root just grows so deep that you can't actually get it out. Bitterness is similar in the sense that it's rooted and it's grounded. It's founded in anger and unmet expectations, unfulfilled expectations. Bitterness is rooted in a settled anger, which comes from disappointed and unfulfilled expectations that ultimately don't get dealt with. So people that struggle with bitterness struggle with bitterness because somebody has wronged them. Somebody, whether it be with a word or an action. And they've allowed that wrongdoing to fester in their life. And they've not gotten it taken care of. They didn't follow the scriptural process that we looked at in Luke when it comes to dealing with offense. When people offend you, there's a process. We're not gonna go through that whole process that we looked at months ago, but bitterness results from failing to take care of small offenses. When someone you love hurts you or disappoints you, and that ultimately is truly inevitable in the close relationship, the close relationship of marriage, you will be hurt, you will be disappointed. If you don't deal with that hurt or that disappointment, you will begin to build up in your life a reservoir of unsettled anger and hurt feelings and hurt emotions. And the more that that reservoir grows and the more that you blame your spouse for your problems and for your emotions and for your unhappiness in the marriage, both partners then become increasingly angry with one another. And they snap at each other and they fight with each other. And sometimes it's over the smallest, most insignificant, trivial things. But ultimately the real problem is the reservoir of bitterness that is set deep in a heart that hasn't gotten a fence taken care of. These unmet expectations that they've never ultimately dealt with. So why would a husband become bitter? Why would you become bitter? Well, in the context here, maybe it's because your wife isn't being submissive. Maybe she's not loving you the way that you think that she should love you. Or maybe she's just unresponsive to you. She doesn't listen to you. So you become bitter towards her. You become angry. You do not deal with the anger. That anger turns to bitterness. Husbands need to take heed to Ephesians chapter four, verses 31 and 32. Let's turn over there. Ephesians chapter four. We all probably know this verse. We've probably all memorized it at one point in our lives. But here it is. These verses, they are applicable to the husband and wife relationship. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." So what do we do? We got to put it away. We have to put away the bitterness. Can you do it as a Christian? Can a Christian husband put away bitterness? Yes, he can. Husbands must dwell with their wives according to knowledge. Get to know your wife and honor her as unto the weaker vessel, as Peter points out in 1 Peter 3, verse 7. Because if you don't, Peter says that your prayers will be hindered. This is one of several references in the Bible that tells us why our prayers as men can go unanswered. Here it is because a husband doesn't treat his wife properly. He doesn't dwell with her according to knowledge. You can't expect husbands for God to hear your prayers and to answer your prayers if you're not giving honor to your wife as unto the weaker vessel. You cannot be wrong with your wife and at the same time be right with God. Men, you can't come to church and you can't be all spiritual at church, but be mistreating your wife at home. Doesn't work. Jesus said in Matthew 5, verses 23 and 24, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember us that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift. This is really why communion is such an important ordinance of the church. Before we eat the bread, before we drink of the cup, what do we do? Before we worship the Lord in that way, we make sure that there's no problems, that there's no animosity in your heart towards someone else or that someone else doesn't have animosity in their heart towards you. So the key here to overcoming bitterness, men, is to recognize that your wife is not perfect, but neither are you. If you can grasp that and think of yourself in the right way and realize that, yeah, your wife is not perfect, but you aren't either. We aren't either. We have our own sets of problems. And she probably has a list of all the disappointed and unfulfilled and unmet expectations that she had for you. So you have to accept and love the wife that you have, not the wife that you idealistically wish that you had. Love her. This is the wife God gave you. Focus on her positive qualities and thank God for her. Thank God for the wife that he gave you. Now, practically, as a couple, you may need to talk honestly with one another about unfulfilled expectations. Some of these expectations that are unfulfilled, they may be actually true. They may be valid shortcomings that each of you can work on. Some may be personality differences that aren't going to change even with spiritual growth. But that's where mutual submission between a husband and a wife really comes into play. Submitting to one another. If you don't face these expectations that have been unmet, if you don't deal with them God's way, then what can they turn into? They can turn into angry demands that ultimately will drive you apart as a husband and a wife. All such anger stems from selfishness, which we have to recognize ultimately is a sin that we need to confess to God as sin and get right with him. What often happens though is that a wife does something that hurts her husband. And since men often aren't too good at talking about their feelings, With with somebody and since it wouldn't be you know real manly or macho to admit how he feels The husband rather lashes out in anger Blames her for what she has done and then what happens there's a blow-up There's a big nasty argument and then she goes off crying and he goes and storms into the living room plops down the lazy boy and starts watching TV and wants to drown out all the noise with something and But then what happens? After a while, things start to calm down. You guys are looking at me like, how do I know this? How do you know such detail? After a while, there's a sort of calm that returns to the household. But he doesn't want to disturb that calm at all. So he doesn't talk about his feelings. He doesn't talk about how he was hurt. It seems easier to just let it go and just not talk it through. If I just let it go, then the problem will just disappear. But that is the problem, because it's not really let go. The root is growing deeper. That's really like not cleaning out a dirty wound, because it hurts too much. You get the wound, and you go, oh, I think I need to pour some hydrogen peroxide on that wound. But I don't want to pour peroxide on there, because it's going to hurt. So I don't. So then what happens? A scab forms, and the wound doesn't get healed, and then it gets infected. And then the solution to the problem is worse than it would have been had you just dealt with it in the first place. The best thing to do is clean it out right away, in spite of the pain. then it can heal properly. Now, I'm not suggesting that you need to, and we talked about this a little bit as we went through the idea of forbearance, but I'm not suggesting that you have to deal with every single little slight in your marriage, or even in the church for that matter. Often we ought to absorb our hurts. We ought to give our disappointments to the Lord, that's forbearance, without even mentioning it to our spouse. But I'll say this, if it's causing you a distance, if it's causing problem, you have to deal with it. You have to deal with it. And if you've done something wrong as a man, you must confess your sin to God. Confess it to your wife and control your anger and then talk it through. Men, we must always view our wives in the same way that we view our own bodies, so that our goal is to nourish her and to cherish her and not to wound her. And so the spirit-filled husband loves his wife, even as Christ loves the church, not for what she can do for him, but because of what he can do for her. The husband loves his wife so that he can serve her. And this is exactly how Christ's love works. He loves us not because of how great we are, not because there's something in us that attracts him to us, not because he gains any benefit at all from loving us, but simply because he has determined to love us and he delights to bestow on us his favor. So husbands, if you are bitter, If you are sour, if you are angry towards your wife, and really this is ultimately, could be in any relationship, you're on a dangerous path. So we must remember these commands that we've looked at in verses 15 through 17. These commands also govern the home. The peace of God is to rule. The word of Christ is to dwell in us richly. The name of the Lord is to be glorified. These three things ought to control, govern, and guide our marriage relationship. God's peace, Christ's word, and God's name being glorified in and through our lives. I'll close with this. A young man, recently married, came to a well-known Bible teacher. And he said this, sir, I want your help. I'm in an awful state. I am drifting into idolatry. The teacher asked, what's the trouble? He said, well, I'm afraid that I'm putting my wife on too high of a plane. I love her too much, and I am displeasing the Lord. The teacher asked, are you indeed? Do you love her more than Christ loved the church? The young man replied, I don't think I do. Well, that is the limit. That is the limit. For we read, husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Men, until we reach that limit, we have a lot of work to do. Love your wife and do not be bitter against her. Let's pray. Dear Father, we're thankful for your goodness to us. We're thankful for just your word and how practical it is. We pray that you'd help us in our relationships, that we would work at and strive at having the right kind of relationships that bring honor and glory to you. We ask that you'd be pleased with our time of fellowship after the service, and that you'd be honored and glorified in Jesus' name, amen.