Transcript: September 5th, 2004« Back

Marriage Made in Heaven, The Loving Husband Part 3

Ephesians 5:25-33

Jeff Noblit

The Loving Husband, part 3

Ephesians 5:25-33a

 

Turn to Ephesians chapter 5 This will be the third installment of the message entitled, “The Loving Husband.” God willing, there’ll be four installments. Uh, next we’ll finish it up with some very practical admonitions to us husbands. And, uh, from some of your comments I wonder if you’re receiving this right. Um, it’s almost like this is just impossible. Well, it’s, it’s not so much the measure of your love for your wife. It’s more the grounds and the basis of it because there’s limits and balances to the way you love your wife. But there is just no way on earth I could dive into Ephesians 5:25 through 33 where Paul so elaborates the wonders of Christ and the wonders of our salvation and not give it, uh, the full address and emphasis that it deserves.

But let’s continue with this and pick up in verse 25 of Ephesians chapter 5 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself.

First of all, we talked about how we love our wives the way Christ loved the church, and that has to include a self-sacrificing love. The first verse there, verse 25 says, “He gave Himself up for her.” Secondly, we pointed out that He cleansed her and sanctified her that He might present to Himself this bride, this church. It’s an intimacy-producing love. And, oh, that we would grasp with joy the glory of that truth that salvation is not so much about what you’re saved from, hell, but who you are saved unto, Christ. Intimacy. Intimacy. This is not a self-help society. It’s not how to do better. It’s not how to keep your kids out of rebellion, even though that is a part of the byproduct of true Christianity. It’s knowing Him and loving Him and fellowshipping with Him.

Now we come to Roman numeral three, and that is the loving husband has a love like one has for his own body. His love for his wife is the kind of love he has, for his own body. So Paul gives another metaphor here, and he’s gonna use the human body. But he’s also gonna emphasize again the church as the body of Christ and of course Christ as the head of that body. And we see that beginning in verse 28. Look at verse 28 with me.So husbands ought also to love their own wives, here it is, as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.

Now these verses are not so much teaching a duty as if he’s commanding, “Now be one body with your wife. Go on. Be one body.” That’s not what he’s saying. They don’t so much teach a duty as they state a fact. You are one body with your wife. You are one so much so that if you love your wife you are, in effect, loving yourself. And that’s what he says in the last part there of verse 28. He who loves his own wife loves himself. So these verses teach again, not necessarily the measure of the husband’s love, but the grounds of the husband’s love. He should love his wife because she’s his body. She’s an inseparable part of him.

Now look at verse 29. He says, “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.” So marital love is to be as natural as self-love. Let me give you this example. Here’s a man and he may wish that he had a better body. I have recently had to purchase some reading glasses, and I wished I had better eyes. And maybe some of you feel that way. Or wish you had better ears. Some of your ears stick out like this. And you may wish I wish I had better ears. Or maybe you can’t hear as well. I’ve noticed, uh, from my boyhood days of throwing fire crackers, and every now and then one would blow up when I had my hand right here, that I probably damaged my eardrums. And I do not hear as well as I used to. Plus shooting a rifle and a shotgun may have something to do with that.

But we may wish we had better bodies, better eyes and better ears, maybe better hair. My daughters say I need more hair because I like to get mine cut kind of short sometimes. But sometimes we want better hair or maybe better weight or maybe you need a better heart. You may have had one of those heart plumbing jobs done recently, and you say, “Man, I wish I had a stronger heart.” Or whatever it might be. But nevertheless, you know what? It is your body, and you do nourish it and cherish it even though you wished it were better.

Well, a man may wish his wife were better. You may wish she was more beautiful, more agreeable, more submissive, more whatever. But you know what? She’s still his wife. She’s his wife and one body with him by nature and by ordinance of God. So since she is that part of him he’s to nourish her and cherish her. Just like he makes sure he takes care of his own body. We’ll look at more of this in a moment.

Verse 30, here, he says, “Because we are members of His body.” Now he’s going back to the, the metaphor, the analogy that Christ is the head and we’re His body and we’re all individual members of that body. And a couple of points I’d like to make here, just as Eve derived her life from Adam’s body, so as part of the new creation, we derive our life from Christ’s body. It is through His body and His death that life is given to us.And as Eve was a partaker of his life, so we are partakers of the life of Christ. That’s what makes us different. That’s why we view life differently. That’s why we have different affections. Let my heart, let my will, let my all be Yours. Let it all be Yours. We never arrive at that, but there’s a new affection in us because we’re partakers of the life of Christ. We’re one body with Him.

Verse 32, he says, “This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.” When he says, “This mystery is great,” that is how can we be members of His body and He’s this spiritual, mystical head and we’re this, in a sense, mystical body? Because we’re not all connected together like organs in a physical body.It’s just beyond human comprehension is what he’s saying. That’s what he mans by mystery there.

Then the first part of verse 33: Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife as himself. Though it is mysterious, that is how we’re one body with Christ, nevertheless it is true. And therefore for the Christian husband it renders an obligation to love their wife as their own body because that pictures and exemplifies how Christ looks toward and loves His own body, which is us, the church, true believers.

Now here’s what I want us to do. I want us to take a few moments here and think about how Christ cares for and loves His body, the church. What a securing truth this is for believers that we are members of His body. Because when you think about it, no sane person ever abuses his body. Oh, no. Quite the contrary. We don’t abuse our bodies. We protect them and we pamper them and we give pleasure to our bodies.

Think about what we do for our bodies. Think about the food we put in our bodies. Now it could be discussed whether or not we’re doing good to ourselves sometimes there. But we give our bodies the enjoyment of that food. Think about the clothing we wear and the money we spend on that for our bodies. We do a lot of pampering and protecting our bodies. Then there’s exercise that some of us do, and then there’s the cleansing of the body and the ointments we’ll rub on our bodies, and the perfumes, and the medicines, etc., etc. Just some of the things we do for our bodies to make our bodies happy. We’re literally doing to our physical bodies what verse 29 says Christ does for His body, the church, nourish and cherish it. We really take care of our bodies. And when he says, “Just as Christ does the church,” I think he’s making an analogy there saying, “If evil men, just the natural, sinful men of this world know how to care for their bodies,” here’s the thought, “how much more does Christ take care of His body, the church?” And what I want to challenge you to do is deepen your understanding of this and deepen your love and appreciation for God for this truth. And I want you to try to have a God-centered perspective on what it means to be a part of Christ’s body.

Let me just throw a few verses out there to show you how prominent this is. First of all, why don’t you turn back to Ephesians chapter 1 verse 22 and 23 to show you how thoroughly Paul uses this analogy. Ephesians 1:22: And He put all things in subjection under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body.

Then First Corinthians chapter 12 verse 13. Just listen to these. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all made to drink of one Spirit. First Corinthians 12:27: For you are now Christ’s body and individually members of it. Colossians 1:18: He is also head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that He might come to have first place in everything. So to the Ephesians church, to the church at Colossae, to the Corinthian church, Paul uses the same analogy, and that is that believers are a part of the body of Christ.

Now here’s the thing I want to point out to you that I think is so securing about this. When you look at the metaphors and you look at the analogies God uses, it is so securing if you’ll just naturally let it be what it is. For example, did your body have anything to do with becoming your body? I mean did your body pick your head? Did your body say, “Well, that’s the head I want to be connected to right there.” No, the natural analogy is that’s done for you. That’s a very securing thing. You never have to go through life with anxiety wondering if your body’s connected to the wrong head. Think about that.Then why do we do all of these man-centered contortions of the biblical imagery and we rob ourselves of the glorious security Jesus means for us to have in these analogies?You’re His body. You are so securely His. And if you evil, fallen sinners, though we are redeemed, do so much to take care of yourself and your body, how much more the infinitely wonderful, loving, perfect, good Lord of glory does He take care of His body?That is securing. That’s securing and encouraging.

So you’re not His body through the arm of the flesh. You didn’t become a part of the body of Christ through some flesh means, through some man effort, through some feat or some activity or some deed or some project. You didn’t become a part of His body through some church sacrament. That’s the arm of the flesh. Our forefathers died to teach against that. They mar, they were martyred to stand up and say, “It’s Christ, and salvation’s by grace through faith, not the priest, not the pope, and not the church.”Amen? It’s not the arm of the flesh.

And I think with good intentions sometimes the Baptists and other evangelicals get into sacramentalism as they unintentionally put emphasis on flesh activities. Can you walk down the aisle? Can you pray this prayer? And by the way, if those things were essential parts of the gospel, you would have example after example after example after command after command after command in the New Testament telling people to walk to certain places or say, quote, the prayer that saves you. But it’s not there. And we have to be careful making some work of activity in the church, in a meeting, in a witnessing encounter the basis of how you become a part of the body of Christ. As I’ve said before, those things may have happened when you came to faith. You probably did pray a prayer. You should pray a prayer, but it’s not the exercise or the work of prayer that made you a Christian. You may have come forward. It’s good if you did. But it’s not the exercise of walking from one geographical place to another that makes you a Christian. It is Christ that saves you. Christ that cleanses you. Christ that redeems you because your body could not decide to be you, and you didn’t decide in and of yourself exclusively to be the body of Christ. If any of these things, any of these works, any of these rites or rituals or sacraments or performances, if any of these things are things like these things secured you in the body of Christ, then you are insecure. If you started it, you can mess it up.

Almost two hundred years ago some Baptist leaders in America began to look around and realized that some of the brethren were slipping away from solid Bible doctrine, were getting away from historic Baptist doctrine, and they wrote a confession of faith. That’s a statement of what we believe as Baptists. And that confession of faith was called the New Hampshire Confession of 1833. And in the New Hampshire Confession of 1833 they state that election is the foundation of Christian assurance. Election is the foundation of Christian assurance. What did our Baptist forefathers, who were very evangelistic and very missions minded, what did they mean by that? They meant the fact that though we can’t explain it all, the fact that God sovereignly elects those who are His breeds and gives the grounds for assurance that we’re always gonna be His. That’s what they believed and taught.

Now once again, I’d like to look back to Ephesians chapter 5 verse 29. And as we look at Ephesians 5:29, he’s, he begins talking again there about all that has been done for us. Matter of fact, jump back up to verse 25. And we see in verse 25 amplifying the first word but getting the con, the flow of what the last phrase is saying, “He gave Himself for her.” Verse 26: “He might sanctify her, and He cleansed her by washing of the water with the Word.” Verse 27: “That He might present to Him the church in all of her glory so that there be no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.” So the whole thrust of all that Paul is saying is that God did this. He’s made you a part of His body just like your body was made by someone else and became a part of who you are. And you ought to be secure in that and glory in that. That’s why we believe in the perseverance of the saints. Now we’ve dumbed it down a little bit to a phrase called “once saved, always saved,” which is not a good phrase actually. The good phrase is the perseverance of the saints.

Let me just read to you out of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith what the early Baptists of America said about perseverance. They said, “We believe that such only are real believers as endure to the end. That their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark that distinguishes them from mere professors. That a special providence, God, watches over their welfare and they are kept,” I love that phrase, “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” God keeps them. I want to ask you something. Talk about whether or not a person can lose their salvation, or be a child of God then not be a child of God, be a child… Do you think Jesus is losing His body? Think His arm falls off every now and then? His ear pops off sometimes? Has to stick His nose back on? Think of the analogy. No. You would never just chop your arm off and leave it somewhere. You wouldn’t just tear an ear off and lay it somewhere. Christ would never in His infinite perfection, which may be a contradiction of terms, but in His absolute perfection, how could He ever do anything but what is absolutely perfect and best to take care of His body? Is that not securing and encouraging? My goodness. Bill Stafford says, “I’m so saved it’s pitiful.” Well, you are because He cares for His body so thoroughly well. “Well, I might could mess it up.” Nope. You can’t mess up what He does. Can’t mess up what He does. So the point is, He made you His body. He keeps you as His body. He cares for you as His body. And that equals security.

Let me amplify this by some points. Five ways He cares for His body. We’ll run through these and then make some parallel application for husbands and then we’ll go home. Five ways He cares for His body. Number one, He’s faithful to His body. He is faithful to His body. The Bible says in Second Timothy chapter 2 verse 13, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful.” Did you see that verse? For He can’t deny, what? Say the word. He can’t deny what? You’re His body. You’re His. He doesn’t just take His body off and put another one on.

Now you know what I’ve found? Even as a human being if my body lets me down, I still try to take care of it. I’m forty-four years of age, and I believe I’m prematurely aging. I hurt, I ache, joints don’t work right. Some of you know I like to hunt, and I know, I’ll never forget the first time one of my church members saw me out in cammo. They just freaked out. They, “I just can’t believe my pastor’s wearing camouflage.” Well, I’m trying to hide from you. Not really. But I have a, a rotator cup problem in this shoulder that I remember damaging it some in a football game one Friday night. And as I’ve grown older and I pull that bow back, this shoulder, it even hurts doing that. That right there. But you know what I did? I’ve taken anti-inflammation drugs for that shoulder, and I’ve gone to a bone and joint specialist for that shoulder and I’ve got exercises I can do for that shoulder. My shoulder has let me down, but I still take care of it. So does Christ.Some of you let Him down, and He takes care of you. He’s faithful to His body. Amen?Listen, when they start telling you that a, now listen to me, a truly regenerate child of God can lose their salvation, you know what they’re saying? They’re saying Jesus isn’t faithful to His body, and I’m telling you, He is faithful to His body. You wouldn’t chop your arm off if it was hurting. You might want to, but you wouldn’t.

Well, not only is He faithful, He perfects His body. He perfects His body. Verse 26 of our text says it this way: “He sanctifies her and cleanses her by the washing of water with the Word.” Jesus, from the moment He calls you to Himself and you repent and place faith in Christ, He begins this perfecting work in your life. He does a lot of stuff to perfect you.

I reread recently the little story or the little incident, rather, in John chapter 13 where Jesus is washing the apostles’ feet. And He went to wash Peter’s feet, and Peter always has to speak up, always speaks his mind and gets way ahead of himself far too often. But Peter said, “Lord, You, You’re not gonna wash anything on me.” And Jesus said, “Now, Peter, if I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.” Then Peter said, “Well, then if that’s the case, wash my head. Wash all over.” And Jesus said to Peter, “No, Peter. You’re clean. You just need your feet washed every now and then.” And that’s the way we are as we walk through this world, they wore sandals you know. We get dirty, and He keeps washing up on us. You know why? He perfects His body. If you’re His body, He’s gonna perfect you all the way to the gates of glory. He perfects His body.

Philippians 1:6: He who began a good work in you will perfect it, will perform it until the day of Christ Jesus. That’s why I say to you, dear friend, dear friend, make sure you’re conversion is based on the fact that God has done something in you, not just that you did something. God convicted you. God broke you. God made you see your lostness.God made you see your need. God made you feel aware. What’s the old song? It’s the Baptist, Baptist anthem. Grace taught my heart to fear. God worked and put fear in me that I was guilty before a holy God. Grace taught my heart to fear. You didn’t just wake up one morning and say, “I’m gonna be wise. I’m gonna be smart. I’m gonna start fearing this God.” You did not. God’s grace made you see that you needed a Savior and you needed forgiveness and only Jesus could give you that. It’s the grace of God that does that. “Grace taught my heart to fear,” Amazing Grace says, “and grace my fears relieved.” Isn’t that good news? That’s why I beg you and I plead with you and I urge you. Do you know you’re saved? Don’t tell me when I walk down the aisle. You can’t get saved just walking down an aisle. “I prayed that prayer…” You can’t get saved just praying a prayer.” I want to tell you there are people in this world that put your prayers to shame and they’re going to hell. If you tell me, “OH, but Pastor, God, God showed me under the preaching of His Word of in Bible study or when a friend witnessed, God showed me my lostness. God showed me my desperate condition. God showed me my neediness. God showed me I was lost, and I turned and put my all on Jesus, knowing that I could not forgive, cleanse, or save myself. And I’m trusting Him, Pastor.” You know what I’ll say then? “That sounds like conversion. And if that started in you, He who began a good work in you.” I telling you, the way some Baptists preach the gospel today you’d think we begin it, then He just takes us the rest of the way. I’m telling you, that’s not gospel preaching. He began the work in you, and He will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.You know why I don’t quit? ‘Cause you can’t quit what you didn’t start. That’s why put me in a ditch with a cardboard box as my home, and if there’s one other man there that needs to be saved or grow as a Christian I’ve got a purpose. Amen? He perfects His bride.

I don’t have time, but I’m gonna take time. Hebrews chapter 12. You know what I sense? I sense a new anointing on this church. I really do. You say, “No, Pastor, you’re just screaming more than you have lately.” No, that’s not it. I just sense a new anointing on this church.

Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse 4: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” You know what he’s saying? “Shut up your whining about how hard it is to live for Jesus. You’re not bursting over and bleeding because you’re striving so hard to be holy and not sin.” All right? Now look what else he says. Verse 5: “And you have forgotten the exhortation which was addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor faint, ‘cause it’s hard and you’ll want to faint sometimes, nor faint when you are reproved by Him, for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines.” Now think about the twelve apostles. There’s one named Peter, and every time Peter opened his mouth, in effect, Jesus slapped his face. Or my Mama used to say, “I’ll mash your mouth.” You ever heard that? I never quite knew what that meant, but I’d felt it a few times. “I’ll mash, I’ll mash your mouth.” Well, every time Peter opened his mouth Jesus was, wham, rebukes him, disciplines him. You know why?Because he belonged to Jesus. But you never have one record of Judas being disciplined by the Lord. HE wasn’t His.

“Why is it, Pastor, that I, I strive to do right and I stand on the faith, and I’m not blown around by all the storms and controversies that blow through the church? And I try to do what’s right and raise my kids right and we suffer and we do without and we’re persecuted, and it’s hard at work, and I’m laughed at at times, and my marriage isn’t what it ought to be.” You might be because you’re His, and He’s disciplining you. Read Psalm 73. Read it when you get home and meditate on Psalm 73.

Verse 6, last phrase, “He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you’re without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” I want to say something to you. You show me that church member that can live like the devil, run their mouth, undermine, scheme, and live like hell and their life goes well and everything seems to be good with them and everything seems to be falling in place for them. The Bible says, “Good evidence, they’re illegitimate children, not children of God.” You know what? A child of God can’t get by with his or her sin. They sin, but they don’t get by with it.

He disciplines all His children. If you don’t have discipline from God, then you’re not legitimate. He makes a parallel with earthly fathers in verses 9, we won’t read all of that. We don’t have time for that. We’re getting way off of our purpose of husbands here.But we’re talking about Jesus perfects His body.

Thirdly, number three, not only is He faithful to His body and He perfects His body, He provides for His body, the church, His children. Matthew 6:31-33, He provides for His body. Do not be anxious, then, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “With what shall we clothe ourselves?” Are you anxious about that stuff? You wring your hands or at least in your heart you’re ringing the hands of your heart and think, “Well, what we gonna do? What are we gone do? What we gone do?” For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek. Well, congratulations. If you spend a lot of your time worrying about that stuff, you’re just like a lost Gentile. Congratulations. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.What does it mean to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness? It means you’re born again. It means you’re a child of God. That’s what child, children of God do. Sure, they work hard. Sure, it’s good to advance yourself. Sure, it’s right and pleasing to God to get an advance or get more education or do better. I’m not saying that. But what rules your heart? Is it just more stuff? More money? That’s like a Gentile. That’s like an unbeliever. No, the child of God strives. The child of God ought to be the best employee.He ought to get the greatest advances for his attitude and his work ethic and his diligence to work for his employer like working unto the Lord. But that’s not the driving principle of your heart. The driving principle of your heart is Christ’s kingdom and His righteousness.

Then He says, “All these things will be added to you.” Man shared with me the other day as he’s gotten his heart right with God, or God’s gotten his heart right that he’s working the same way he used to work, but he said, “It’s amazing how financially things are just so much better. I’m just so blessed in my work.” Well, God’s promised to add those things. You know why? Do you think for one half of one second Jesus is not gonna care for His body? Of course He is. Good care of His body.

Well, He beautifies His body. Second Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” There’s a glorifying process that’s going on, and it’ll be ultimately achieved when we see Him one day. And that’s what First John 3:2 tells us, that when we see Him we will be like Him. He beautifies His body. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be clothed in His righteousness and His glory. A beautification of His body.

I want to spend just a little time here, number five. He brings pleasure to His body. Yeah, you like that one, don’t you? He wants to bring you pleasure. That’s His desire. You see God made man with the desire and the capacity to know pleasure. I am convinced it’s God’s will that we seek pleasure and find pleasure. It’s good. It’s a God-given desire. After all, God is happy, and I think God is full of pleasure. And so being inseparable from Him and as His body, He desires that we have pleasure and we have joy. By the way, do you want your hands to hurt? Or do you want your stomachs to be upset? Don’t you do the stuff in your life to make sure your body feels pleasure?Jesus wants His body to have pleasure.

You see, my head knows pleasure when my body feels pleasure. It’s the way it’s designed. Listen to what He said in John 17:13. He says, “They may have My joy made full in themselves.” He says, “I want My joy made full in you.” Now listen to me just a second. His joy is the highest and most wondrous. It’s perfected joy. It’s greater pleasure than any joy you might know down here. You know as a young believer I used to struggle with John 10:10. John 10:10 is “That He came that we might have life and might have it more abundantly.” And I thought, “Now what is this more abundant life?” I’d preach it and didn’t know what in the world I was saying? What is this more abundant life that He’s come to give us? Well, the Bible says that word abundant, rather, in the Greek means excess or extremely or all the more. So Jesus said, “I have come that they gonna have an excess, an extreme, all the more life.” Well, I, I wonder, does that mean life of the same as I had before conversion? Am I gonna have more pleasure in boats and cars and clothes and friends? That kind of stuff? Is that what it means? I mean after conversion, isn’t it sin to have as my pleasure the objects themselves? Note my wording. After conversion isn’t it sin to have as my pleasure the objects themselves? Yes, but only because it lacks the foundation of all true and legitimate pleasure. And the foundation of all true and legitimate pleasure is the treasuring and cherishing love of God. If you get the treasuring of God, the love of God as the foundation in your heart, then all legitimate treasures are of and out of Him and they are good, therefore.

Uh, Mark 12:30 is a verse we need to look at right quick. Mark 12:30 says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart,” now the word heart there Jamison Faucet Brown says means all sincerity. “Love God with all sincerity, then with all your soul…” And they say that word soul means feeling or warmth. All sincerity and you feel deeply and warmly about God. Then, “with all your mind…” That means all your intellectual and reasoning capacity. All your mind. Then “all your strength.” That’s the whole energy of your entire being. That’s a command. Now here’s the neat thing about this. You look at that command, and you, “Oh, my goodness. I knew this was gonna be awful. Oh, this Christianity stuff is just so awful.” But here’s what you don’t understand. If you will throw yourself fully into that commandment, you will find the greatest pleasure known on earth because God wants you to have pleasure. And the greatest pleasure known on earth is God. You know that’s why the Old Testament has a verse that says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Most of you haven’t tasted enough to prove either way. Taste and see. Taste and see if the Lord’s good.

You see, conversion begins the journey of loving God supremely. You don’t arrive there initially, but it begins the journey, you might say, of learning to love God supremely. We grow spiritually to find out that our greatest love is Him. And then all legitimate pleasures – cars and clothes and deer hunting or whatever it may be – all legitimate pleasures are then viewed as of Him and from Him. And that increases, uh, increases our delight in those pleasures and in God at the same time. That’s how He pleasures His bride. He saves us, listen now, so that we can be weaned off the limited, passing, destructive pleasures of this world and might begin to enjoy the limitless pleasures of God. That’s why you were saved.

You were saved from that stuff to be saved unto the deepening, infinitely wonderful pleasures of knowing God and loving Him and being like Him. As we enjoy God and find God to be our pleasure and seek Him as our most valued treasure, then He is most pleased and most glorified in us. You see, listen, folks. God does not get anything out of this woeful, dreadful, duty, drudgery spirit. He wants you to express to your wives, your husbands, your family, your neighbors, your classmates, the world that there are joys in God. Pleasures in Him.

So, verse 29 of Ephesians chapter 5: No one ever hated his flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church. So Christ’s love for His body, the church, is to the end that we might obtain the deepest pleasure, that’s pleasure in God, which brings Him the greatest glory. Now that’s one of the glorious ways He cares for His body. Does it not just crank your tractor to know that God deeply desires for you to be pleasured. I don’t know if that’s proper grammar, but it’s good theology. HE really, really does. But for lack of a better way of saying it, He just has a hard time of convincing you of what He knows is true, ‘cause you’ve become quite satisfied with the polluted, corrupted cisterns of this world, and you haven’t drunk deeply enough of the sparkling, clear waters of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, husbands, let’s bring this down to us. That’s where He’s going with all of this. He’s building an analogy here to challenge us husbands to say, “Husbands, in like principle,” now listen husbands. The husband strives to so love his wife that she finds deep pleasure and joy in honoring and submitting to him. That’s the analogy. Husband so loves his wife with Christ’s love that she finds the deepest pleasure… Now, wives, let me give you an exhortation. Your deepest pleasure is in God’s will, and God’s will says submit to your husband. But the husband can walk in such a love that submitting to him is where you find your deepest pleasure. Now isn’t God neat? HE doesn’t just give you a command to show how deep He can drag you through the drudgery of self-denial. No, He gives commands that you might glory in the wonder and the pleasure of His will so that your countenance, ladies, and your radiance reflects to the world our God is all wise and superior to the gods of this world that would contradict our biblical truths we stand on.

So the husband so strives to love his wife that she finds deep pleasure and joy in submitting to that husbands. Husbands love their wives because they are one body together. He loves his wife like Christ by being faithful. Remember we talked about Christ’s faithfulness to His body? I want to say something, men. There’s no greater abhorrent sin than unfaithfulness to your wife because your love and faithfulness to her is to be the purest earthly image of Christ’s love and faithfulness to His body, the church.I’m telling you what you do. You kill yourself before you commit adultery and break the faithful covenant of marriage. The awesomeness behind our covenant love for our wives.

Well, the husband’s love is to be a perfecting love. Your leadership, where you join as a church member, the pastor you put your wife and family under, the way you lead her at home and guide her, you are perfecting her spiritually and of course in other ways.Providing for her, of course materially, spiritually, emotionally, and other ways.Beautifying her. As you show her the love you’re supposed to show her your wife will glow with radiance. Now there’s some exceptions, but there is some strong truth to a wife’s countenance often reflects, maybe most of the time reflects the spirituality of her husband. The beat down, sad, depressed, submissive wife is not a picture of God’s submissive wife because Jesus beautifies His bride. And a loving husband beautifies His bride.

And then the husband pleasures his wife. They are one body. And just as Christ can, now listen to me, listen to me, I love this, Christ cannot seek His own pleasure without seeking the pleasure of His body, us. Is that not good news? I don’t know about you, but if I’m the almighty, infinite, eternal God, if I want something to be happy, I’m gonna get it. Amen? And every time He wants something to make Him happy He fully considers us, because we’re His body. So we get in on it to. Matter of fact, the Bible says He’s gonna reign in glory one day, and what does the Bible say? We’re joint heirs and will reign with Him. Everywhere the head goes the body goes, last time I checked. Is that not good news? Christ cannot seek His own pleasure without seeking the pleasure of His body, us, the church. However, husbands, in like manner, the husband cannot find his own pleasure and joy apart from seeking the pleasure and joy of his wife, for she is inseparable to him, she is a part of him, they are one body.

So laying out the doctrinal foundation, the husband’s love is a self-sacrificing love. It is an intimacy producing love. And it’s a love like one has for his own body. Let’s stand together in prayer…