Transcript: September 12th, 2004« Back

Marriage Made in Heaven, Part 4CPA's

Ephesians 5:25-33

Jeff Noblit

 

The Loving Husband, Part 4

Ephesians 5:25-33a

 

     Let me ask you something.  Are you beautiful?  Are you glorious?  Just as a springboard before we look at Ephesians 5, look at Romans chapter 8 right quick.  Romans chapter 8, and look at verses 28 and 29.  Romans 8 verses 28 and 29.  I asked you are you beautiful?  Are you glorious?  Romans 8 verse 28.  I’m sorry verse 29 and 30 is where we need to be.  For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.  And these whom he predestined He also called, and these whom He called He also justified.  And these whom He justified He also glorified.  That’s what I wanted you to get. 

Glorified, that past tense word there where God says if you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ you’re truly one of His born again ones, in His eyes you are already glorified.  It is as if you are not the wretched, lost, self-consumed, sin-loving, law-breaking sinner that we really are in time.  But God’s above time.  He’s God of eternity.  So God looks at you even now, and in His heart and mind, you’re glorified.  That’s good news. 

     Now look at Ephesians chapter 5.  Ephesians chapter 5, where we’ve been studying through the book of Ephesians.  If you’re visiting with us, we’ve come to this last part of Ephesians that’s so practical and applicable.  All theology is practical and applicable if you understand it right.  But notice what he says in verse 26 and verse 27.  “So that He might sanctify her,” that’s Christ sanctifying His bride, the church, believers.  “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.” 

     Again, as God views His believers, His church, He says, “I’m sanctifying and cleansing.  I’m gonna make her holy and blameless.”  What is He saying?  “I’m making her beautiful in My eyes.”  You are glorious and you are beautiful to Christ.  Church, I want you to relish in that.  I want you to glory in that.  I want you to walk with your head held high in confidence of that.  “Well, Pastor, you don’t know what I’m like and you don’t know how woefully sinful I am and how selfish my heart can be and how corrupt I am.”  But if He’s done that work in you and you’ve repented, that is you’ve turned from a heart purpose of loving sin and self and you’ve thrown yourself on Christ with no hope but Him and His death for you, and your trust is in Him to lead you the rest of your life, not in perfection but as the new pattern of who you are, then you’re one of His.  And in His eyes you are glorious, and in His eyes you are beautiful. 

     Now we’re on the fourth and final installment of the loving husband.  We talked about the submissive wife.  It took two messages.  We got to the loving husband, it’s taking four messagesAnd that’s purposeful because there’s so much detail and expression about Christ’s love for the church.  And you’ll have to forgive me as your pastor.  I can’t get on grace, and I can’t get on Christ’s love without it doing something to me.  I just have to dive in and wallow in it and glory in it for a season when I see it.  But He wants husbands to do that.  Ladies, if your husband can glory in the love and grace of Christ, then he will be learning how to love you right.  But it always goes in that order. 

          So let’s look today at some conclusions for practical application for us husbands as we love our wives as Christ loved the church.  So the loving husband, actually session four, conclusions for practical application.  Now I assume I could come up with a hundred of these, perhaps.  I’ve only come up with a few.  And I’m not dealing with a lot of one, two, three how-to stuff because even though that’s good and there’s a place for that, I want you to insert the one, two, three specifics.  I want to give you practical principles.  You put upon the practical applications for your wife, because they would vary and be different marriage to marriage.

     Well, Roman numeral one, the loving husband does not hold his headship with an air of superiority.  Bible clearly teaches that the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church.  The Bible clearly teaches a line of authority for society to function with sanity.  The Bible teaches we’re to honor government authority as long as government does not violate scripture.  The Bible teaches we’re to honor employees in authority over or employers authority over employees.  The Bible teaches in the home that the wife is to honor the headship of her husband.  That is very, very true.  The scriptures command and make it very clear.  There’s no explaining it away, that wives are to line up under, it’s a military expression, submit to their husbands.  However, the loving husband whose heart has been apprehended by the love of Christ never views his headship with an air of superiority. 

It’s different than other lines of authority.  The wife is not his employee.  The wife is not his child, and she is certainly not his slave.  In love, he does not use her for personal gain.  That’s not why she’s to submit, for personal gain.  Listen to me.  Husbands, she submits so that in our relationship God would get glory, not for our personal gain.  Though certainly God gives us wives and they are a great gain, and I think that’s part of what’s meant by the wife being a helpmeet, though she’s not to be used for personal gain.

Now in First Peter chapter 3 verse 7, the Bible instructs husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way.  What does that mean?  How am I to lead my wife and exercise my headship in an understanding way?  Well, one Greek authority amplified it this way.  He said, “with an intelligent recognition of the nature of the marriage relationship.”  An intelligent recognition of the nature of the marriage relationship.  You know what that means?  We’re gonna have to study the Word so that we can intelligently understand what God means by leading our wives, having a headship, but never with an air of superiority. 

I read about a man that required his wife to log the hours she spent in her housework to make sure that she worked as many hours as he did.  That is sin.  That is an air of superiority.  This kind of arbitrary, selfish and prideful establishing of rules because we think we’re the head is not biblical headship.  Can I just go ahead and throw this in before I talk with my wife this afternoon?  I’m preaching to Jeff this morning too.  I have not attained, but I am striving and hopefully growing.

Well, he goes on in First Peter 3:7 and says, “Live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel that your prayers may not be hindered.”  This understanding, this recognizing she’s a weaker vessel, it does not mean inferior vessel.  It means made of a different kind of material.  God beautifully and wonderfully made wives out of a different material than he made men.  And we lead them and we are head over them not with an air of superiority, but with an intelligent, biblical understanding of the unique difference and the purpose of true, biblical headship and submission.

So here’s a real warning, men.  He says that your prayers may not be hindered.  If you do not love and honor your wife as a fellow heir, matter of fact if you could, Tommy, put First Peter 3:7 up there again.  As a fellow heir of grace, you grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered.  If you and I are strutting and strolling in the home with an air of superiority, we are not living with them in an understanding way, we are not viewing them as, as equal sinners and equal in the eyes of God, and God says, “I will not hear you if you do not honor her.”  That’s powerful, because, brothers, we don’t have anything if we don’t have God.  What a challenge to us. 

So God has infinitely honored and loved His bride.  Has He not infinitely and honored His bride?  He said, “I’m gonna make you spotless and blameless.”  He said, “I’m gonna make you joint heirs with Me.”  We are gonna sit on the throne with our Lord Jesus Christ as His glorified, perfected bride.  Has He not infinitely honored and loved us though He’s our head?  So husbands must so love and honor their wives who are equal sinners and equal heirs to the throne of grace because there is to be no air of superiority.  There are different roles.  One has the leading headship role.  One has the aligning under and submission role.  But there should not be that air or that spirit of superiority.  That is not the loving husband.

Roman numeral number two, the loving husband does not equate headship with laziness and disinterest.  Now I know this is getting our ladies’ attention.  With laziness or disinterest.  You know, there are some men that the most exciting thing in the afternoon is his family sits around and waits for him to cross his right leg over his left leg as he sits in the Lazy boy recliner.  And there’s a time and a place for that.  I know we get tired.  But what I’m really taking about is that men should not use their headship as a synonym for self-seeking power plays, for just our own comfort and pleasure. 

I read this in one of the excellent books I’ve been studying.  A wife recently said, quote, “My husband hasn’t made a decision regarding our family in two years.  He makes not attempt to discipline the children.  That’s left to me.  He never consults me about taking out of town work assignments.  He comes and goes seemingly without any regard for my feelings or our children’s needs.  They don’t even know him.  All he does is come home from time to time and break our routine before leaving again.  I don’t have three children.  I have four.”  Now that’s an extreme example, but some men view their headship as a divine permission slip for laziness and disinterest in the wife, the children, the affairs of the home.

Three or four years ago I received a phone call to come and preach at one of the seminaries in our Southern Baptist Convention.  It was a very honored thing to do.  They had asked me to preach two previous times.  And I told them, “Yes, I will come.”  I was so excited about coming.  I was so excited to be honored again, probably thinking about myself.  But I did not check my calendar until later.  And I realized later when I checked my calendar that I had already made a commitment to my girls and my wife to do something on those days.  It wasn’t a huge thing, but it was a commitment.  And I had a choice to make.  Possibly offend these high important people who could make me feel important or keep my word to my family.

I called the seminary up in North Carolina, maybe, and said, “You know what.  I have blown it.  I have double committed myself.  I have a commitment to my family those days, and I’m gonna have to cancel my speaking engagement at the school.”  They said, “That’s fine.  We understand.”  But they haven’t called me back since.  And that’s okay.  I learned a lesson, but I haven’t fully learned it because someone called me awhile back to preach at a missions conference in Lexington, Kentucky.  And once again I did not check my calendar.  And guess what?  Those are the dates when my children are out of school for fall break, and I blew it.  And these are the kind of things where we have to make sure that just because we’re the head of the household, we don’t have disinterest in the concerns and the cares of volleyball games or soccer games or basketball games or a day or two out of school.  It doesn’t just all revolve around us.  Now there are times when men have to do things they have to do.  I understand that.  But let’s make sure we don’t use our headship as a synonym for self-seeking and therefore laziness and disinterest.

Headship, loving headship does not equal me taking care of myself.  We must fight the temptation to be self-absorbed, self-contained and non-responsive.  In other words, help, headship, rather, does not mean nothing.  Headship doesn’t remean that I’m not to be bothered and I’m not to have to fool with a lot of stuff.  Actually it means right the opposite.  What did our Lord Jesus Christ do?  Look at Ephesians 5:25 again.  He says, “Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”  What did He do as He assumed headship and leadership for His bride, the church, believers?  What did He do?  He actively got interested and deeply got involved even to giving His life for us on the cross.  So He actively and passionately gave Himself up for His bride.  So headship should never be an excuse for laziness and disinterest.

Roman number three, the loving husband understands that he is the initiator and his wife is the responder.  That’s a part of being the head.  You don’t wait for your wife to respond certain ways before you love her.  You initiate Christlike love toward her and watch God work on her so that she responds in positive and like manner back to you.  Isn’t that what First John 4:19 is all about?  First John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.”  Is that not a glorious truth?  I want to say something to you.  And I, I glory in doing this, and it gets me in some trouble.  But I glory in doing this.  And that is that our salvation is God’s initiation to us, and we respond.  You’re not gonna get any credit in heaven because you did something and God said, “That’s a pretty good guy.  Well, he had virtue and wisdom in doing those things.  I think I’ll take him on into heaven.  NO, God initiated.  God came to us.  We respond back.  He so loves us and we get in the Word of God and we begin to learn about this love and study about this love, and the truths of this love fill our mind and the reality of that love changes our heart, and we can’t help but love Him back if He’s really changed us through His love. 

Same way with husbands and wives.  We are like Christ in the marriage relationship.  And we love first and she responds back.  Romans 5:8 is another great verse on this.  But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, while we were opposed to Him, while we were against Him, while we were disobedient to Him, while we did not care about Him.  All we wanted about God was to use God for us.  That’s the way you are while you are a sinner.  OH, you might believe in God.  You may be religious, but you use God for you.  But while we were like that He took the initiative and died for us.  That’s powerful.  “Jesus sought me when a stranger wondering from the fold of God.  He who rescued me from danger interposed His precious blood.”  He came after us.  We didn’t come after Him.

So we think of Christ’s initiative to His bride, now, now I want you to think on this for a moment.  This is quite staggering and this is quite startling.  John MacArthur just wrote a book, I would highly recommend the book, the evangelical church needs this book.  It’s called “Hard to Believe,” where he lays out the incredible cost of following Jesus Christ, but he also lays out with the incredible cost the infinite value of following Jesus Christ.  I want to say to you, church, salvation is free, but salvation is not cheap.  If you’re gonna follow Christ, it costs everything.  But you get everything back better than before. 

So think of Christ’s invitation to His bride.  He said, “If you want to be My disciple, you’re gonna have to take up your cross and follow Me.”  Wow.  That’s tough.  “You’re gonna have to commit human execution of yourself if you’re gonna be My disciple.”  How you like that for an invitation?  Let’s sing that at the next invitation.  He said, ‘If you’re gonna come to Me and be My disciple, you’ve got to love Me so much that in comparison you hate your own family.  You hate your children.  You hate your spouse.  You hate your grandparents in comparison to your love for Me.”  That’s a powerful invitation.  I’m going somewhere with this, so hang on.  He said, “If you’re gonna be My disciple, you’re gonna be hated by all on account of Me.”  Now fortunately, He doesn’t, the all right there doesn’t mean every single human being on earth.  You have to understand what the word all means in scripture from time to time.  It just, it’s a phrase to let you know that many if not most are gonna hate you if you’re a real follower of Jesus Christ.  Don’t be shocked or surprised when that happens.  Who wants to get in on that? 

He said, “If you’re gonna be My disciple, you’ll be one who is blessed when you are insulted.  And all sorts of evil are said against you falsely for My sake or on account of Me.”  Now here’s my question:  why would anyone sign up for that?  One reason:  He first loved us, and so He has so touched us, so changed us, so captured us with His love we, with fear, yes, at times, with trembling, perhaps, struggling with courage to do these things perhaps, yes, but nevertheless we turn our face toward honoring Him and being His follower because His love has so changed us we can’t help but love Him back.  He initiated the love feast.  He came and He died for us.  He sent preachers or teachers to proclaim the gospel to us.  He convicted us through the work of the Holy Spirit and drew us to Himself.  He’s apprehended our hearts with love, and we respond back with love. 

Matter of fact, if you look at the word here for love, “Husband love your wives,” it the, that word agape.  And the word agape love is not emotion.  It’s motion.  Can I say that again?  Agape love is not emotion.  It’s motion.  Child of God, have you not matured to know you don’t do anything on your silly, fallen, flippant, fickle, ever-changing emotions?  Your emotions are not your God.  Jesus is your God.  You’ve trained your emotions to follow truth, not let your life follow your emotions.  So, husbands, we can love our wives because it doesn’t matter how we feel from time to time.  It matter what God’s truth says. 

OH, through the years how people have gotten aggravated and upset and mad at me because lovingly but clearly I would try to tell them, “I don’t care what you feel.  I do love you.  I mean I care that you’re hurting.  But you must discipline yourself to act on truth, not follow your feelings.”  Your feelings are not God.  God is God.  Don’t deify yourself.  Humble yourselves.  Deify God. 

And husbands, we can love our wives with motion or action regardless of when we don’t feel like they don’t deserve it or when we don’t feel like they’re appreciative or when we don’t feel like they’ve honored our headship or when we don’t feel like they’re doing their end of the deal.  You can still love.  It’s a powerful thing.  Why?  Remember we’re the initiators, and then God’s gonna honor our initiation if we do it for the right motives, the glory of God and because He’s changed our hearts.  And they’re gonna respond back. 

Matthew 5:43 through 44 says, “You have heard that is it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you love your enemies.”  Do you feel like doing that?  Love your enemies.  But you can, because you are not a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Three times, at least in the New Testament, disciples of Jesus Christ are called people according to the Way.  People looked at Christians and say, “They have a new way of thinking and a new way of approaching things.”  And you know what one of our new ways is?  We have an empowerment by the infinite God who lives in us to walk according to truth, not our feelings.  That’s our new way.  And since we can do that and not be absorbed and controlled by our emotions that change according to whatever experience we’ve been through last, we’re not controlled by that stuff, we can do what God’s Word says.  And God’s Word says to love your enemies.  And if you can love your enemies, you can love your wife.  Amen, men?  How big is your God?  Yes, you can. 

So the husband must love without regard to the behavior or the attitude of his bride.  Aren’t you glad that Jesus Christ loves us faithfully and unconditionally when we don’t behave or have the attitudes we should have?  He does.  God has ordained that the initiating love of the husband will reach the heart of His wife.  Now the love must be biblical.  We’ll talk a little bit about this in a moment.  You don’t love her by promoting or giving your blessing to things that are biblical violations or sinful, of course.  But you can love.  You can love your enemy, and you can if Christ lives in you and die to yourself.  I believe there are some professing Christians among us, it, it’s, you haven’t really died to yourself in so long, to you it’s a weird, abnormal thing to think about even doing when it’s to be the natural, everyday process that we’re striving to obtain and to walk in. 

Well, Roman numeral four, the loving husband exercises headship within biblical authority.  And that’s what I was alluding to just a moment ago, that we would follow scripture.  The Lord Jesus said to His critics, who didn’t like what He was saying and didn’t like what He was teaching, which by the way, was the religious leaders of the day.  He said, “You don’t understand.  I came not to do my own will, but the will of My Father.  So when you have a problem with Me,” Jesus was saying, “you’ve got a problem with God.  I didn’t come to do what I want to do.  I came to follow God’s Word and do what He tells Me to do.”  He even said He only spoke what His Father told Him to speak.  IN other words, He’s saying, “I’m completely under my Father’s authority.”  And that’s the way a husband is to be in his love.  He is completely be under the authority of scripture, God’s authority, and make sure his headship, his loving headship is exercised within biblical authority.  You see, the husband whose headship transcends the purpose of God, loses God’s endorsement.  You can’t just exercise headship the way you feel.  You must exercise biblical headship the way God says it’s to be exercised. 

I read about a man who demands that his wife sit in the corner while he abuses his children because he says, “I have that authority in the home.”  I’m gonna tell you, he does not have that authority in the home.  That goes beyond biblical authority.  It transcends biblical authority.  Christ loves the church, does He not?  But He would never lead, encourage, guide, command, ask the church to do anything that violated scripture.  He kept the word of God completely in His headship of His bride.  A husband must never demand his wife to regularly miss church.  That’s unbiblical.  A husband should never encourage or push his wife to go to some of these clubs and these honky-tonks.  Husbands should never lead or guide his wife to go to these gambling establishments or any other unseemly or inappropriate activities that would violate biblical authority.  That’s outside the realms of scriptural blessing. 

Now on the other side, the husband should try to give his wife as many of her wants as possible without sinning himself and without tempting her to sin.  There are those times when the man in the home, who’s the head of the home, has to be wise and lovingly lead His wife and say, “I can’t give you money for that,” or, “I can’t give my blessing to that because that’s sin and that’s outside of biblical authority.”  So the loving husband exercises headship within biblical authority.

Roman numeral number five, the loving husband practices forgiveness to display God’s grace to his wife and his children.  This is a powerful principle.  A powerful principle.  We’re people according to the way, the Bible says.  We have a new way about us that’s totally opposite of the way the world and the flesh would do things.  And one of the things that is the hallmark or maybe is the hallmark virtue of the way we live now that Christ has changed us is that we walk in forgiveness.  We’re just forgiving people.  That’s just who we are.  That’s just the way we are.  Can I say something to you, church?  We are woefully sub-normal as Christians in this area.  We have so exalted ourselves, we have so deified ourselves, we have so made idolatry out of self that we think if our spouse hurts us that gives us a permission slip to undermine, talk about, be critical, be unloving back to them, and we walk in that serious sin of unforgiveness.  But loving husbands must take that initiative to model forgiveness so that he’s modeling and illustrating Christ’s grace before his wife and his children. 

Matter of fact, matter of fact, how does Christ forgive His bride?  Does Christ say, “I tell you what?  You act the way you’re supposed to act.  You do what you’re supposed to do.  If you don’t hurt My feelings, then I’m gonna consistently love you.”  He doesn’t do that, does He?  He just pours Himself out for His bride.  And by the way, men, no wife ever meets all expectations.  Everyday you’ll have to forgive.  Everyday forgive.  Everyday forgive.  Everyday forgive.  “Well, how many times do I forgive?”  Now Peter thought he was doing good when Peter said, “Lord, you talk about this forgiveness thing, and this forgiveness thing it’s way outside.  I mean it, it’s far beyond the realm of any even gracious, giving, selfless human being.  What about seven times, Lord?”  Jesus said, “Well, try seventy times seven.”  We’re just forgiving people.  That’s who we are.  And husbands must daily forgive his wife.

Let me read this story from you from, uh, I think it’s from Lou Priolo’s book, which is an excellent book on marriage.  It starts out by saying, “She steals from him.  From the outside they appear to have an ideal home.  The house is beautiful.  The couple’s attractive.  THE kids are sweet.  Inside things are far from ideal.  The wife has a gambling addiction.  She’s been to counselors, clinics, and pastors.  Nothing helps permanently.  Periodically, she breaks into her own family’s bank accounts or pawns family valuables and gambles the money away.  Her actions have put her family on the edge of bankruptcy time and time again.  The debts accrued cannot be covered even by her husband’s executive salary.  The financial damage done to the family will take half a lifetime to repair, but the damage is not financial, it’s relational.  Can you imagine your own wife stealing from you, destroying your family’s security, and lying about it for months on end?  But this husband has not left his marriage.  Every time his wife has stolen from him and damaged his future, he has forgiven her and taken her back.  Even when she was ready to kill herself, ready to give up her own life, he has loved her like the biblical prophet Hosea who took back his unfaithful wife, Gomer.  My friend has accepted his wife despite her failures over and over. 

Once I asked this man why he had not ended this nightmare marriage.  His words were as courageous as they were simple.  He said, quote, ‘My wife’s a good mother most of the time.  My children need her.’”  Now listen to this.  “‘But more than that, they need to know their Savior.  How can they know of a Father in heaven who forgives them if their father on earth will not forgive their own mother?  How can my wife know the love of God if the spiritual leader in this home will not love her despite her faults?’”  Now surely there are other things involved here like the church should come alongside this man and help administer loving counsel and maybe discipline for this.  But nevertheless, he has the right loving spirit in walking the kind of forgiveness that models God’s grace before the family. 

You see, forgiveness should be the theme of the Christian home.  And the husband must lead out in this.  In Ephesians 5:26, Jesus loving His bride says, “So that He mighty sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”  He keeps forgiving and He keeps sanctifying and He keeps forgiving us and He keeps sanctifying us.  And that’s the way we husbands must do in our homes.  You see, the husband who represents Christ in the marriage relationship must lead in modeling forgiveness in that marriage and in that home.  And I am convinced that unforgiveness is the, unforgiveness is the major problem in marriage, and it’s the major problem in the church today. 

Let me say a few quick thoughts about forgiveness.  First of all, biblical forgiveness is not like worldly forgiveness.  It’s not like fleshly forgiveness.  Biblical forgiveness has to be learned and accepted and acted on.  It’s a different kind of forgiveness.  Matter of fact, it’s the only true forgiveness.  Biblical forgiveness is an active thing.  Forgiveness is an action.  Forgiveness is a commitment to do something.  It’s not a feeling at all.  Forgiveness is a commitment to do something.  It’s a commitment of my will not my emotions to not allow myself to remember the offense against that person for punishment.  I may not can completely remove the thought, but when the thought comes up, I’ll say, “Doesn’t matter what I feel.  Doesn’t matter how I’m hurt.  I’ve decided by an act of my will based on the authority of my Lord, who already forgives me, that I will not hold that against them as any kind of punishment ever again.  It’s over.  It’s over.”  So with your wives, men, you must determine as an act of your will to be a disciplined disciple in your thinking so that you do not play her faults over in your mind over and over and over and over again.   That’s not forgiveness.  You don’t let your minds go there.  “But I’m hurt.”  Get over it.  You offended God much more than your wife could ever offend you, and HE lives in you to enable you to forgive the way He forgives.  Forgiveness involves, number one, not bringing it up again.  Amen.  I’m not bringing it up again.  Once I say it’s settled, no problem between us.  I forgive.  No problem.  Won’t bring it up again.

Number two, it means refusing to discuss it with others.  Let me say something to you.  Refusing to discuss it with others.  You could probably prevent ninety percent of adulterous affairs if people would not bring up how their spouse hurt them when they were talking to other people out in public.  All you got to do is open that little door, talk to that person of the opposite sex, “Well, my husband hurt me this way.”  “Well, my wife doesn’t appreciate this…”  And you talk about that hurt, and all the sudden Satan takes advantage of that situation, and he has some Jezebel spirited or some evil spirited man out there that knows how to walk through that door and begin saying, “Yes, and you deserve better.  You’re a real special person, and I understand you.”  And here we go.  What’s the sin of the whole thing?  The sin of the whole thing is you didn’t forgive and refuse to bring it up again and refuse to discuss it with others.  Somebody comes to you about something in your marriage, maybe you’ve talked with them in the past before, but you need to say, “I’m a child of God.  I’ve forgiven my spouse.  I’m not discussing that ever again.”  Amen, church?  Stop these adulterous affairs.  Be forgiving.  God in you can enable you to do that. 

Well, I don’t have time to dive in there, but jot down Romans 12 if you would.  Romans 12:19 through 21.  Romans 12:19 through 21 and Romans 12:2.  Would you jot those down because when you bring it back up again ‘cause you’re so hurt, you know what?  You can’t be hurt unless you think about yourself, and you can’t think about yourself and walk with Jesus.  Period.  See that’s why biblical counseling is tough for some people because they really don’t want to be counseled according to the scriptures.  Most people want to come to counseling to have people to pet them in their rebellion.  But God loves you too much to pet you in your rebellion, which will ruin and destroy you.  He loves you enough to give you truth, which will give you victory and be an overcomer.  Well, these are powerful good truths for marriage.  It’s a serious, serious sin to be unforgiving.  Now we’re man-centered.  We always think about, “Well, who hurt you and how deep are you hurt?  What did your husband do?  What did your wife do?  You’re so hurt.”  That’s a man-centered perspective.  Yes, have compassion for people.  I’m not saying be hard.  Not at all.  But speak the truth in love.  The truth of the situation is not how you’re hurt.  The truth of the situation is have you forgiven?  Are you forgiving?  Because if you’re bringing it up to me you’re not forgiving.  If you’re discussing it with others, you’re not forgiving.  It’s a serious sin to be unforgiving. 

Matthew chapter 6 verse 14 and 15 says, “For if you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”  What is he saying?  He’s not saying there’s a works thing going on here.  God’s counting up how you forgive to see if He’s gonna forgive you.  No, he’s saying this.  If you’ve been transformed by the regenerating power of God, you’ve become a true believe in Jesus Christ, you have so receive forgiveness from God that that God who lives in you now empowers you to walk in that standard of forgiveness.  And if that does not mark your life, you’re not His.  Or if it does get into your life, that unforgiving spirit, you’re convicted of it, you’re slain by it, you’re ashamed of it.  You ask God to forgive you for being unforgiving, and you strive again to walk in it again.  Amen?  That’s the child of God.  Jesus is pointing out forgiving others is the hallmark standard of the disciple of Jesus Christ.  And I’m telling you it’s the foundation stone of a long, good marriage relationship. 

Blessed are you if your husband or your wife has sinned against you and hurt you and some brother or sister comes beside you and says, “I do hurt for you, and I do hurt with you.  But I love you and I will hold you accountable to forgive and not bring it up again.”  You’re blessed to have a Christian friend like that.  Have any of us failed here?  Am I to be the first to raise my hand?  We blow it here, don’t we?  Why can’t we draw a line in the sand and go forward to do better from now on for our Lord’s glory?

Roman numeral number six.  Roman numeral number four, the loving Christian husband leads his wife and family spiritually.  I was shocked, uh, two, maybe three years ago when I was sitting in a meeting with pastors and, uh, the leading evangelist, youth evangelist person in Baptist life anyway, Jay Strack, he said, “Pastors, do you know that eighty-eight percent of our students in our Baptist churches stop attending church when they graduate from high school?”  I mean active kids.  Eighty-eight percent of the active kids stop going to church when they graduate from high school.  Now I haven’t researched this myself, but he’s sort of a guru on this kind of research stuff, and that kind of shocked me.  What he was pointing out is our programs in the church are not working.  Folks, churches are doing everything under the sun to try to reach kids, but it’s still not working.  You know what the problem is?  The problem is God didn’t ordain the church to reach the kids and train them.  God ordained fathers to train their children.  And if we don’t get back there, we’re not gonna do any better.  They’re doing the most ridiculous, extreme, bizarre, carnal, worldly, goofy things to try to reach kids.  And it just isn’t gonna work because God said, “Fathers must train their children.”  And you know I see in our church a turning toward that.  I see a growth in that area.  Got a long way to go.  But that really excites me.  Especially among our younger fathers. 

I mean, I mean basically if you’re not careful today’s world and the church seems to pat this on the back is, “I’m supposed to take my boy deer hunting.  I’m supposed to take my girl to the ballgame, maybe out to eat sometimes.  The church, the school’s gonna educate them, and the church is gonna have a program to reach them spiritually, and that’s about all I do.  That’s a lie from hell.  We’re losing generation after generation with that notion.  We can spend a million dollars a year on the greatest youth program you can ever have in the world, but if we don’t have fathers who assume the responsibility to do the best they can to disciple and reach and train and spiritually take responsibility for their own children we’ll keep losing them. 

In the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the scripture instructs fathers to train their children spiritually, not youth directors.  Now, I want to have a strong youth program, I want to have a strong children’s program.  And they do a super job.  But they are the bonus.  They are the compliment.  They are the extension of fathers.  It’s not youth directors.  It’s not programs.  It’s not activities.  It’s not more entertaining things.  It’s fathers.

Let me give you five statements here.  Number one, model discipleship before your family.  Model discipleship before your family.  I want to say this, and I believe this is absolutely the truth.  Men, if your children and your wife do not see you suffer some for your faith, they will not follow Christ.  Don’t go try to find suffering.  You live for Jesus and it’ll find you.  (End of side one)

…don’t agree with everything Bill Gothard teaches, but he had a big impact on my life.  And he said someone asked him one day why was he so committed to God and so committed to scripture and so committed to honor God and be biblical.  He said, “The turning point of my life was when I was a fairly small boy my father came in and he gathered the family around, and he said, ‘I’ve just quit my job.’  And they said, ‘Well, what, what are we gonna do.’  He said, ‘I don’t know.  I’ll look for more work.  We’ll pray.  We’ll trust the Lord.’  ‘Dad, why did you quit your job.’  He said, ‘The company I was working for started making some arrangements and relationships with an alcoholic beverage company, and it just went beyond what I could do as a man of God.  I could no longer be a part of blessing and condoning that.’”  Now these lines are different man to man.  But for this man, he said, “This is my conviction based on scripture.”  And Bill Gothard said, “When I saw my father do that, it showed me serving Jesus is worth whatever the cost.  Model that kind of discipleship before them.

Number two, mentor them in discipleship.  Mentor them.  Deuteronomy chapter 5 verses 6 through 9 says, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before Me.  You shall not make for yourselves an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.  You shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord, your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children of the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.”  So he says, “Put God first.  Make God your everything and mentor that before your children.”

The Bible tells us in the Old Testament that we’re to speak of the things of God, speak God’s truth and God’s laws when we rise up in the morning and we walk along the way, when we sit down, when we retire at night.  What he means is mentor in your lifestyle the truths of the Word of God.  Actively apply scripture as you live your daily life.  You know what this means?  This means fathers must be students of the Word.  Fathers, this thing of being a Christian disciple and a Christian disciple who’s a husband and a father is not a joy for the lazy man. 

One of the things that I try to do with my children is we’ll be going along down the road or we’ll be walking in the mall and we’ll see this young person who’s obviously a rebel.  You know when his hair’s colored more like a parrot than a person he’s probably in rebellion.  And I’ll say to them, “What does that say to you?  What’s the problem there?  Do they just want to be different?  No, the problem is they want to draw attention to themselves, and when they draw attention to themselves, what is that?  That’s self-idolatry or the sin of pride.”  And so we, we take the truths of scripture and go to the root of the things we see in life.  You’ll be shocked at how quick they can grasp those things if you know the truth and try to minister.  I do blow it a lot and I do miss a lot of occasions, but God knows where we are.  He’ll bless our efforts however feeble they may be. 

Number three, minister the Word of God.  Minister the Word of God in leading your families.  Open the Bible and instruct your families, but make sure when you open the Bible in the home it’s not a dead ritual.  I’m not real good at doing this as a pattern, but we do it off and on.  Of course, I’m a pastor, and Friday night I was sitting in the family room to be around the family. I was rewriting sermon notes.  And as I was rewriting sermon notes I’d occasionally throw a verse out and we’d talk about it a little bit together.  Well, that’s a unique thing that I can do that probably you can’t do.  But you can have a time to instruct your family from the Word of God.  Maybe just read through the Proverbs together.  Maybe read a Proverb every morning at breakfast.  But I would say this to you.  Make sure it’s not one of these things where you just turn it on and then turn it off and then it’s gone.  It’d be better not to do it than to teach your children it’s just a cold going through the motions.  But minister the Word of God.  And I might add, men, that we should have some personal times in then Word with our wives.  At least, maybe once a week have a quiet time with your wife.  Read the scripture together, pray together.  Some of you may do that everyday, and that’s wonderful. 

Number four under leading your family spiritually, lead in setting standards for family activities.  Husbands, you should lead in what movies we will attend, what movies we will not see.  Husbands, you should lead in deciding what novels or magazines can be in this home and what novels and magazines cannot be in this home.  Fathers and husbands, you should lead in deciding what programs will be watched in this home, what programs will not be watched in this home, what people will hang out and what people we will not run around with.  Lead in setting standards for family activities.  “Pastor, I don’t know what those standards should be.”  You seek the Lord, counsel with brothers in Christ, look at the Word of God.  It becomes clear. 

Number five, take responsibility for church choice and faithfulness.  I’m gonna tell you as a pastor I get exceedingly weary at visiting with men and they say, “Well, I’m just finding out where my wife’s happier or which children’s program my children like the best.”  You know what you are if you choose a church based on your wife chiefly or your children whether they like the program?  You know what you are?  You’re a girlie man is what you are.  You know why Paul said in writing to the Corinthians, “Act like men”?  You need to be the man of your household.  And if you move from here or you’re choosing a church, you find one that does the best job of training you, the father.  That’s the key principle because then you have to train your children.

We had a family visit with us sometime ago, and I was counseling with the father, the husband of the household.  And I said, “Are you coming close to making a decision about First Baptist?  He said, “I’m waiting to see, you know, if my children like the children’s program.”  I said, “Sir, we work hard at having the best student program and children’s program you could possibly find.  I’m confident of that.  But,” I said, “sir, that’s not the most important thing.  You must go where you’re gonna be trained and equipped because God’s holding you accountable to train your children.”  I haven’t seen that man since. 

There was a family some years ago who felt that they were dying spiritually and they were not getting fed spiritually, and they left their church to find a church where they could get fed and grow.  And all the family members said to the father, “We’ll go anywhere, but we will not go to First Baptist Church, Muscle Shoals.  We’ve heard about them.”  Well, he brought his family here and was gentle with them and sweet toward them.  And you know what?  One after one, God’s Word started speaking to their heart.  They’ve been here over twenty years, happy, faithful, serving the Lord.  One of the daughters married the pastor here.  But he led his family based on what he knew he needed and what God was doing in his life, and the rest, men, are you listening?  Men, the rest will fall in place.  Now I’m not saying wives can’t give some good counsel and advice.  Absolutely.  And here’s one thing I want to throw out there, because this is true.  The scripture warns about women being an emotional.  The scripture warns about women being vulnerable to false teachers and divisive people.  He, it says that very clearly.  But I want to say to you, that doesn’t mean women can’t be solid and mature and discerning because we’ve got a lot of ladies in this church that are way above some of the men in having a backbone and standing on what’s right.  And I want to commend you ladies, and I pray the men catch up with you. 

Well, that’s loving headship when you model discipleship, you mentor them in discipleship, you minister the Word in the home, you lead in setting standards for family activities, and you take responsibility for church faithfulness and church choice. 

Lastly, The loving husband strives to make his wife feel attractive and beautiful.  God help us men to do better here.  Ephesians 5:25, 27 says rather, 5:27, “That He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless.”  What is Christ saying?  Christ’s saying, “I did whatever it took to make My bride beautiful and attractive to me.”  He served her.  He loved her, us, His bride, and we even now are beautiful and glorified though we don’t see it yet.  But even in time and space history there’s coming a new dispensation when we will be perfected and beautiful and attractive to the Lord Jesus Christ, and even we will realize it and understand it.

But a husband that is chronically critical toward his wife may actually be trying to use that to control his spouse.  If he makes her question whether others would find her attractive, then he can isolate her emotionally to be controlled only by his comments.  Make her dependent on himself for his approval only.  But all this controlling and this demeaning to the end of controlling is abhorrent to God and it’s contrary to the purposes God has for a husband toward his wife.  A husband should work to build up those things in his wife that he finds attractive in her.  Now here’s what I want to tell you.  Here’s what I want you to get on this.  The loving husband cultivates, key word, men,  you may be in a season of your life and your wife may not be exactly the way she was when you were married, but the scripture teaches that us men should cultivate a positive attitude toward our wife so that he might make her feel loved and wanted.  Now this will become his desire as he honors his duty.  Now that’s a very important truth.  Now, the Bible says about Jesus, concerning His bride, that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him.  The cross wasn’t joyous, and I want to tell you something.  His bride was not attractive.  We were not attractive or beautiful.  But HE endured the cross knowing that through His initiating love He would cleanse her, sanctify her, wash her, make her holy and blameless and be the beautiful attractive one that He wanted her to be.  And so we men can take that disciplined perspective toward loving our wives, focus on what we do find beautiful and attractive, do our duty to make them that way as Christ did His responsibility or you might say duty to the heavenly Father by loving His bride, us, by going to the cross, and then she became attractive and beautiful to Him.  SO will your wife become beautiful and attractive to you if you do your duty and not follow your feelings.  And your duty is to strive to make her attractive and beautiful.

First Corinthians 7:4 and 5, I’ll end with this.  It says, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does, and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does.  Stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again unless Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”   

Now that’s talking about marriage sexual relations, but it’s much bigger than that in that Paul is saying, “You must so do your duty to your spouse,” we’re talking about husbands to wives here, “so that as you so do your duty to her, God will work on your heart and make her more attractive to you.”  Don’t ever make her feel pushed away or inferior or unattractive or unbeautiful as far as your affection and your sexual relationship.  And if you do that duty to make her feel beautiful and attractive, God will make you feel that she is beautiful and attractive to you.  Listen, in Christianity, duty always proceeds feeling, and God is faithful.  Let’s stand together in prayer…