Husbands (Part 1 of 2) — 05/22/2021

[Music] foreign [Music] there are some marriages that suffer from neglect but that's not how god intends for marriage to be today on truth for life weekend aleister begg continues his series on the christian family by teaching us what marriage looks like when a husband loves his wife as christ loved the church [Music] well let's get straight to our verses colossians 3 19 husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them it's very straightforward somebody could readily say which part of that do you not understand uh peterson paraphrases it husbands go all out in love for your wives do not take advantage of them and jb phillips paraphrases it husbands be sure that you give your wives much love and sympathy don't let bitterness or resentment spoil your marriage and we noted last time that the authority to which we refer is none other than the authority of the bible itself that the mystery is that of the relationship between christ and the church the piety or godliness is equally to be on display in the context of the husband's role and the child's role as it is in the wives indeed piety is to be worked out in the context of home life where for better or for worse each of us are truly ourselves and it is true to say as someone has said that if our christianity does not work at home our christianity does not work and if our professions of obedience to the scriptures i do not find there out working in the interplay of human relationships within the home then of course we're in trouble and the fourth word was the word freedom or liberty and that liberty we said was to be discovered in obedience to the commands of god i came across a quote during the week on this very subject from c s lewis who wrote as follows if the home is to be a means of grace it must be a place of rules the alternative to rule is not freedom but the unconstitutional and often unconscious tyranny of the most selfish member identity write in a follow-up comment observes as in improvised music spontaneity and freedom do not mean playing out of tune so the freedom that is found in the fulfilling of god-given roles is a freedom which is founded grounded and bounded by the authoritative statements of scripture now we saw last time that the great temptation to the wife is to rule over her husband when you think of the responsibility of a wife to fulfill her role and the temptation that she has to rule over her husband allah what we discovered in genesis uh you perhaps remember the story of the fictitious story of uh the the individuals who had all arrived at the uh in the realm of of heaven and uh peter and some of the others were getting the men as organized as they could and the the fellow stepped forward and said now what i want you to do is i want you to just get yourselves organized here i'm going to put you in two groups over here on my left i'd like to have all the men whose wife's frankly dominated them in their earthly pilgrimage whose wives ruled the home and then over on my right hand side i'd like to have all the men who exercised leadership and jurisdiction in their earthly pilgrimage and there was a just a huge shift over to the left-hand side just droves and droves of men and when they had finally assembled themselves peter looked and there was just one man standing over here and peter said you're probably quite lonely over there how come you're there and he said my wife told me to stand over here well you're very gracious it really wasn't worth it but anyway last time we had four words for the wife tonight we have five words for the husbands in ephesians 5 paul addresses the wives in 40 words he uses 115 in instructing the husbands that might give us some hint of what's involved here we might also be tempted to debate you may have a coffee later this evening with your wife or someone and debate whether god has given the husband or the wife the more demanding role in fact you may already have begun to think that out last time we pointed out and tried to do so quite clearly that the wife's submission to her husband is one evidence of her submission to christ that for a wife to declare the lordship of jesus will be born testimony to within the fabric of home life in her submission to her husband now we come to the reverse of this and we recognize that in the self-same way for a husband to declare that jesus is lord demands that he serves his wife and by doing so makes it clear that he is serving christ let me just say this in case i forget later on children growing up in a christian home should actually be able to see the gospel modeled in the way their father loves their mother [Music] with a sacrificial love the love of jesus for his church and the way the mother submits to the father as an expression of the church's submission to the lordship of christ as soon as we put things in that framework taking them out of the realm of the superficial many of the preoccupations which are not irrelevant but are not really germane to the central issues then we realize what a high standard the scriptures call us too and particularly this notion for the men how characteristically new testament is this that husbands are commanded to love their wives commanded to love this is not unique here you'll find the same thing as true in 2nd john and in verse 6 and indeed in titus we studied it years ago now you'll remember that the older women are to help the younger women to train them how to love their husbands so in other words this notion of love is not the victim of human emotion it is rather the servant of our human will that the real issue for both the husband and the wife is whether we are going to bow our knee bend our will to what the bible says or whether we are going to try and go on our own now the word that paul is employing here for love is an important word it's not the word eros for sensual or sexual love nor is it either of the two words that would be used for brotherly and sisterly affection or for human affection storge or phileo but it is as some of you will know the word agape a love which considers the other before the self and then acts on that premise now let me come to our words and we'll do so quickly some of them will go faster through than others but the first word is the word sensitively husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them what does it mean for the husband to love his wife and not be harsh with her it means that first he must love her sensitively now romantic suggestions and sentimental expressions are easily come by indeed the phrase i love you is easily come by it can become just a routine phrase but those sort of sentimental expressions on their own will offer only the thinnest of disguises if there is a failure on the part of the husband to pass this most practical tests it is a practical test isn't it if it simply said husbands love your wife's full stop then of course that would be okay it would immediately let us off the hook in relationship to his correlative statement but when he says and do not be harsh with them he said oh all right or as phillips puts it don't let bitterness or resentment spoil your marriage and that notion of spoiling something is the spoiling that can so often happen over a period of time as a result of neglect few marriages disintegrate as a result of some cataclysmic moment in time most disintegrate like the leak in a tire on a freeway which finally the car is found rope pulled over in the center of reservation and something that has gone undetected over a period of significant time over a long number of miles finally has shown up and one of the ways that that can happen is so easily in the realm of neglect and as husbands if we are not careful and even if we attempt to be careful we may cultivate a harsh tone not only in our voices but in our attitudes which is fueled by bitterness a bitterness which often stems from disappointment a disappointment that is grounded in our wife's failure to live up to our unrealistic ideals how did you get that this is our harshness which is found in a bitterness that is tied to a resentment which is fixed in a failure on the part of our wives not to be good wives but a failure on their part to live up to unrealistic expectations established by mr harsh who holds his wife to a standard that he has no right to hold her to either emotionally physically spiritually or otherwise and yet so often we as husbands make huge mistakes when we think to replace love with fault finding and with nagging one of the pieces of work in andrew lloyd webber's orb of musicology is is the show aspects of love which i've never seen but somebody gave me a male voice choir from whales singing everyone in my home thinks it's a huge joke and when i put it on they go out of the room or just laugh but that's all part of the husband's role and the joy of being a dad but anyway and i'm not bitter about it in the slightest i refuse to say anything harsh about that at all but but you got this male voice choir and do you know the song love changes everything love love changes everything hands and faces earth and sky love love changes everything how you live and how you die love can make the summer fly or a night seem like a lifetime yes love love changes everything and now i tremble at your name nothing in the world will ever be the same love changes everything days are longer words mean more love love changes everything pain is deeper than before love will turn your world around and that world will last forever yes love love changes everything brings you glory brings you shame nothing in the world will ever be the same now that's written from a purely secular perspective there is a measure of sentimentality in it but when we take that and recognize that poured into the essence of that is the self-giving love of jesus in the life of a christian then surely we understand what a challenge and privilege it is to love our wives in this sensitive way all of that is in direct contrast to the insensitivity which has become a hallmark of so many a husband's life you remember the song by shel silverstein in in contrast to that no they said i don't remember it well that's okay because i'll remind you of it now do you remember this song put another log on the fire cook me up some bacon and some beans and go out to the car and change the tire and wash my socks and sew my old blue jeans come on baby you can fill my pipe and then go fetch my slippers and ball me up another pot of tea then put another log on the fire babe and come and tell me why you're leaving me now don't i let you wash the car on sunday don't i warn you when you're getting fat am i going to take you fishing someday well a man can't love a woman more than that am i always nice to your kid sister don't i take her driving every night so sit here at my feet because i like it when you're sweet and you know it ain't feminine to fight come on baby that's that's the average guy's attempter sensitivity right there secondly sensitively naturally naturally i struggled for a long time with this word and i figured it this is actually the right word go back to ephesians 5 and verse 28 and 29 husbands are to love their wives as their own body he who loves his wife loves himself in other words men are to give their wives the love that they naturally have for their own bodies the love a man gives his wife is the extending of his love for himself in folding her in himself if you like so in one sense it is entirely unnatural for a husband not to love his wife in this way now you see all of this again is grounded in the creation ordinances and what happened at the very beginning when god made man and woman and so much of paul's argument relates to what god did when he made woman and man said after the woman had been given to the man man said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh the order of that is very important the sustaining of that is vital to a healthy marriage leaving cutting the cord cutting the apron strings moving on a new affection a new devotion not the absence of parental love or childhood love to parents but the changing of that love because of the explosive power of a new affection and it is in that leaving that there is then a cleaving and it is in that cleaving that there is then a union and there is in that union some profoundly mysterious dimension that takes place hence the monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside the framework of marriage as god intended it is it is a silly stupid ugly meaningless thing when it is removed from the framework in which god establishes it the one flesh union of a husband and a wife purity before marriage fidelity in marriage union in the context of marriage the freedom the security the delight that is wrapped up in that and at the very heart of it is this natural affection on the part of the husband and i'm not sure that i understand it all but somehow in some profound way the bible says that a man's wife is part and parcel of his living frame and vice versa i think this must be one of the reasons why people say as couples grow older they're starting to look like each other isn't that strange and it is more than just an observation there is a measure of truth in it i think somehow or another it is wrapped up with this very notion that the husband's love for his wife is both in christ supernatural and within the framework of genesis 2 it is also natural writes my good friend sinclair for her husband not to love his wife who has become one flesh with him is not only to be a poor husband it is to be a dysfunctional christian now once again it is at this point you will see there as we follow on from that in ephesians 5 it's at this point driving home this truth that paul references again this profound mystery and what is the mystery well it's christ and the church who is christ and the church well it's the ultimate couple the bridegroom and the bride and what he's saying is that when a husband loves his wife in this way they then as husband and wife as bride and bridegroom they point to the ultimate couple and that the interface between the bride and bridegroom christ and the church and husband and wife as paul moves back and forth between them is an unassailable point that needs to be bowed to in the 19th century charles hodge commented on this and this is what he says there's a fairly long quote so you can just listen up for a moment married love writes hodge is as much a dictator of nature as self-love and it is just as unnatural for a man to hate his wife as it would be for him to hate himself or his own body a man may have a body which does not altogether suit him he may wish it were handsomer healthier stronger or more active still it is his body it is himself and he feeds it and cherishes it as tenderly as if it were the best and most lovely in the world so a man may have a wife whom he could wish to be a better or more beautiful or more agreeable but still she is his wife and by the constitution of nature and the ordinance of god a part of himself in neglecting her or abusing her he violates the laws of nature as well as the law of god now when a husband treats his wife with disregard and disrespect it is frequently because he has hopes and notions he has projected and which he now expects her to subscribe to and to fulfill and if he's honest it is often a cover for his own sense of personal inadequacy and so instead of looking within to address the issues of his own heart life psyche soul body fitness whatever it is easier to do with what is unnatural and that is to abuse she who is one flesh with him [Music] we will return to this topic next week in part two of a message titled husbands you're listening to truth for life with alistair begg scripture teaches a lot about god's design for the christian family if you're looking to dive even deeper into this topic you can read the written transcripts that correspond with this series simply visit truthforlife.org click on the sermons option in the top menu bar then you can select sermons by topic or by scripture by other filters if the sermon has a transcript you'll see it right below the player box when you select a message or you can select the has transcript filter to browse all of the sermons that have a transcript available you can also supplement what you hear on this program by reading books that our team selects the book we're currently recommending is for preschool and elementary age children it's called the god contest it tells the exciting story of elijah and the prophets of baal and the victory of the one true god this is a book full of bright colorful illustrations expressive characters that will grab the attention of children as you lead them from elijah's contest with the prophets of baal on mount carmel to jesus ultimate victory on mount zion the god contest is a wonderful way for parents teachers and anyone who interacts with young children to present bible stories and the gospel in a simple understandable and entertaining way request your copy of the god contest today by visiting truthforlife.org i'm bob lepine hope you can join us again next weekend when alistair will continue teaching on the topic of marriage by explaining how husbands should love their wives sacrificially the bible teaching of alistair begg is furnished by truth for life [Music] where the learning is for living

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 5,884

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Biblical Manhood, Christian Thinking, Family, Marriage, Obedience

Id: hx8XM2nWcC4

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021