Wives

Wives

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. I want to start by telling you a little bit about my dad. He, my whole life, he's just kind of a large, intense man. He doesn't do anything slowly.

He doesn't do anything halfway. He just is. He's a very aggressive man. And like growing up with him, just crazy stuff that he was just like a, like multiple times. I've seen him fight a dog and win. Multiple times.

Like this is, and like, like, like you would think you wouldn't have to have seen that. Like big dogs, he's fought them and won. At one point he looked at me and said, hey, you ever get to fighting a dog? Choke them. Dogs hate not being able to breathe. And it's like, I think, first of all, it's a rule for like creatures.

But also, how do you, how many fights have you been in where you had to like learn this technique? Like he, um, I've seen him climb a tree to clear for deer stands. He climbed a tree using his hands, holding a machete in his mouth and then hung off of limbs, cutting them off like this. I've seen him, we were working on a car one time laying up underneath it and he was tightening a bolt and he was talking to me. And he was tightening and it goes, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. And he just keeps going and then he ping, just breaks the top of the bolt off and goes, not again.

And I was like, how, how often do you do that? And he's like, every once in a while. Like, I remember the first time, like he was, he's my goal for like, what, what is a man? What am I going for? I remember the first time I was working on a project and I broke the head of a bolt off. I think it's the only time I've ever done it.

I wasn't even mad. It made this, this is going to take way longer now. I was just like, yes, I don't care that it was rusty. I'm a man. Like I, but something about my dad that I've always thought like it just, every time I've thought about this, it just messes with me. But my dad, when he goes to weddings and he probably doesn't want me telling you all this, but when he goes to weddings, he gets choked up.

Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter who's getting married. Doesn't matter how well he knows him. And you ask him about it and he's like, weddings are the most intense thing ever. He's crazy. He said, they're like 22, 25.

And they're up there staring at each other and promising all this stuff that they have no control over. I'm going to be there. I'm going to do this for better or for worse. He's filling in all this information. He knows what worse looks like. He knows what sickness looks like.

He's filling it in. He's going, this is the, and if they do that, it's just, and then he'll just be like, stops talking because it's like it gets to him. It just grunt a little bit like, and that's the truth. And that's what we're looking at in Ephesians. We're in a section where they're talking about marriage. And what we're going to see today and next week is where Paul, and we've been, we've read it a couple of times and we've tried to zoom in on different things, but where it's Paul is saying, this is when you stand up, when there's a marriage, when you stand up and you're making promises, you're making vows, you're covenanting with one another.

You are making promises on behalf of yourself. That, that when you stand there and you're getting married, you're saying, here's what I'm doing. Not what you're doing, not what you're going to do. I'm not, I'm, I'm making vows. I'm not accepting yours. I'm not, I'm giving mine.

And what Paul's going to say is this is when you do that, here's what husbands ought to be doing promising actively living out. And here's what wives ought to be doing promising actively living out. And as we see in this text, and if you want to go ahead and turn there, it's Ephesians chapter five, it'd be on page 569. We're going to pick up in verse 22 this morning. As we see in this text, what Paul is going to say is that wives ought to submit and respect, submit to and respect their husbands and husbands ought to love their wives the way that Christ loves the church and the way that anybody loves themselves.

So that husband ought to love his wife the way he loves himself. He ought to love his wife the way Christ loves the church. And this picture that we're given in biblical Christian marriage is that it is a picture. It's an image of the gospel of how Jesus loves the church and how the church responds. And it's this beautiful, uh, when it's working well, when a husband's loving sacrificially, it's easy for a wife to submit and respect. When a wife is submitting and respecting, it's easy for a husband to love and sacrifice.

And it's this beautiful picture that feeds off of itself to, to grow and be healthy and to work well together. And that's the, the ideal and the design. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to look at verses 22 through 24, and then we'll jump down to 33 in a little while. And we're just talking to wives and it's because they come first in the text. Paul takes a little time just to address wives. And so we're going to spend time there this morning.

Let's read this text together as we get started. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife. Even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Okay. A couple of things as we get started.

We, we spent some time talking about this last week, where this idea of headship comes from. So, uh, if you are, um, a little bit confused as to why we're approaching this the way we are today, that should be online for you to listen to it. If you want to hear kind of the bigger picture where, where the idea of biblical headship comes from and how we think about gender and why this is assigned to male and female the way it is. Uh, we talked about that at length last week so that we could just kind of address this text as it's given to us. Um, also, uh, ladies, I am a man and a husband. There are few places in the Bible that just don't apply to me.

This is one of them. Um, so it will be easier today to take me, uh, for me to get in the way of the text. It'll be easier today for me to be hard to listen to because often we get to say we, and as this bears down on us, but today I'm, I'm just up here talking to y'all about y'all saying, I ain't gonna get something. I go home. I go to sleep. Like I ain't gonna have anything to do with this.

So it'll be easier for me to get in the way. It'll be easier for you to want to dismiss what is being said because of how it is said or how my approach is or words I use. And I would just encourage you, uh, to graciously listen and try to interact with the text and the author of the text, the Holy Spirit, rather than getting caught up in interacting with me if I, if I say something that isn't, isn't quite helpful. Um, so let's pray and then we'll, we'll begin kind of walking through this together. God, we thank you for your word. Um, we thank you for the encouragement that you give, uh, and the, the correction and the coaching that you give for marriage, um, with it is as difficult as it is.

We need help. And so we ask that you would help us to graciously listen, um, and to trust you as we do in Jesus name. Amen. So in this text, as we just read it, there is a weight of leadership and responsibility that's placed on the man, uh, in the marriage, uh, which is headship. There's this, uh, weight placed on him and that there's wives are then to respond to that and to be submissive in that. Now submission is a biblical idea that is called of on all Christians.

All Christians are to submit in different roles and different ways at different times. So, uh, every Christian is called to submit to, um, to the government. That's in Romans 13. Children are supposed to submit to parents, wives in Ephesians five and Colossians and Peter are called to submit to their husbands, employees, to employers. That's all over the new Testament. But second Thessalonians, a good example, church members to elders.

That's Hebrews 13, all Christians to each other. That's, uh, Ephesians 5 21. That's the verse right above where we're picking up today. It says submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. And then the whole church as believers is to submit to Christ. And so submission is something that all Christians do at different times in different places, but is a specific role and a specific weight of responsibility on wives in marriage.

So that there is a specific type of, uh, submission called of, called to wives in marriage. Now at no point does the scripture treat this like that has anything to do with superiority or inferiority, ability or inability. Um, it is just the call that is given and the weight of God's design, uh, on men and women and his specific design for marriage. So that there is a deference, um, given and a difference between the genders. And this is what we're called to do. So let's begin looking at this, this, uh, verse, verse 22.

We'll start here. It starts with wives. All right. Husbands. Not for you. This is like reading somebody else's, uh, note that was written to them.

It's not your business. It's not your thing. So if you want to memorize a section of Ephesians, I know you're going to love this section. This isn't your section. This isn't the one you quote. This isn't what you get cross-stitched on a pillow.

This isn't on your mug. It's in for you. Next week is. So I would encourage you husbands. Don't, don't pull this mess next week of, I think I'm coming down with the black lung. No, you get here.

Don't do that mess. Show up. If there are guys that are in your group that aren't here this week, say, Hey, you should be there next week. Like, like the next week is us looking at the specific parts that talks to husbands. The inclination of all of our sinful hearts is for wives to be supremely aware of what husbands are called to do and husbands to be supremely aware of what wives are called to do. And both of them absolutely convinced that if the other person would just fix their mess, we wouldn't have problems.

That's not helpful and it's not biblical. So wives, this is for you today. Husbands, if you start, first of all, husbands, eyes up here, no cutting your eyes to your wife, no hitting, no tapping, no being like, Hey, write that down. None of that. She's not going to do that next week. Um, if you start getting way too excited, if at some point in here you start just becoming so immensely self-righteous, grab your Bible, start reading in verse 25 and start asking, how am I doing there?

Because if you want to say, Oh, she doesn't do, Oh, I hope she like, just, just slow your roll. Read verse 25 because the truth is you can't make her do these things the same way she can't make you do the other stuff, but you are both very, very responsible for your own obedience as you follow Jesus. So wives, this verse is to you. Submit to your own husband. So the submit, let's talk about it for a second.

That means a willing subjugation to that. You willingly lay down your own preferences, lay down your own desires that you do this to yourselves. It's a command to wives for their own posture. Not to be subjugated, not to be domineered, but to willingly do this. Also in the idea of submission, it includes that you would disagree. In some ways, what the biblical idea is here is that, um, there used to be a road near my house, uh, that had a road just cutting through and there were two stop signs.

And then on the other side, if you went that way out of my house, there was a four way stop. Um, and yeah, y'all, y'all live in South Carolina, you know, people can't drive, right? And I'm, I'm part of this. I grew up in this, like I messed stuff up too. But like on the road, uh, where it was just two stop signs, there was one road that just cut through and you could sit at that stop sign forever because it was a busy road and you would just wait and wait and wait and wait and wait.

So they tore that down and they put up a roundabout. So now we have a roundabout and a four way stop. Neither of them work well because people don't know what to do with them. And if I'm stuck at a four way stop, y'all long enough, when I get up there, I'm not, I haven't been paying attention. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, but my goal, my, my play is to just aggressively go as soon as I get a chance because this pump your brakes, wave stuff drives me crazy. I'd rather get in an accident than sit there and do that.

So I just go, but the roundabout, I know how to do their yield signs and it's a circle, but some of y'all are from South Carolina and you don't know what to do with these things. It's a circle. There are yield signs. You yield unless you're in the circle. Okay. But everybody that roundabout, when a roundabout is working, it works beautifully.

When they first put it in, people were all stopped at it and just like terrified. But now people kind of started to get it. They know it's there and they know how it works. The yield sign in marriage is given to the wife. That's the biblical idea. And it's to avoid wrecks and it's to create speed, smoothness, helpfulness.

It's not a four-way stop. It's not just stop signs in a thoroughfare. It's a yield sign. It's a roundabout. That's how this is designed to work. But submission brings in the idea that you would disagree.

It's not agreement. Agreement's this whole other thing. And agreement in marriage is amazing. It's the best. When I look at my wife and I'm like, I think we should do this. And she's like, I think you're smart.

I's like, yeah. When she says, I think we should do this. And I'm like, that's why I married you. Yeah. There's no submission there. We're just like, that's just beautiful.

And that's what we want. And hopefully a lot of the time that's what happens. But when my wife has to go, trust Jesus, be obedient to the Bible, submit, is when she thinks I'm a complete moron. That's when she has to do it. So what I've found sometimes is that ladies in the church will read this and be like, yeah, I'm for that, except for he's wrong here.

And it's like, that's actually when submission just showed up. Because if you think he's right, you're not actually having to submit. If you think he's right, then you can say he's leading. And maybe he is, but it's just easier to follow. And so submission does bring into the equation the idea that you disagree. And God has graciously given marriages a way to move forward.

And we're going to see why in a second. And hopefully it is life-giving. We approach the scriptures believing that the Holy Spirit authored this through human authors because God is good and he loves us. And that what his word says, if we follow and practice it, actually brings about joy. It's for our good. It's for our thriving on earth.

There's a reason why the Bible says don't lie, don't steal, don't kill. All of those things bring harm and strife. And when the Bible gives us clear commands and instructions, it's for our good. And so we're going to approach this believing that God has us in here for our good, even where we disagree or even where it's difficult. And that's the case with the Bible. That because we're sinful, most of it is difficult and often we disagree.

But we trust that he's good and that he has our good in mind. And so we follow. It says submit to your own husbands. Okay, let's talk about that phrase. This means a couple of things. It means that comparison isn't super helpful because you have your husband and someone else has their husband and you don't submit to their husband and they don't submit to yours.

So your house will look different. Submission in your household will be different. You're different people. Your husband has different strengths. You have different strengths. You have different joys and dislikes and frustrations like you submit to your husband.

So that when you get together in community groups, you don't, it's not helpful to go with that. It's not how that would work at my house. It's like, okay, well, if she somehow marries your husband, she can walk through that. But since that shouldn't happen, the helpful thing to do is to kind of walk through and say, okay, well, that's like, let's figure out how you walk in obedience and that and how you find joy in that and how you, how you navigate that. So for better or for worse, you have the husband you have, and this does mean it'll look different.

So like in my house, my wife handles 99% of the finances. If I wanted to clear out all of our money and just run away, I would have to ask a thousand questions. Like, hey baby, how do you, how would I go about that? Which bank do you think I should go to? If you were going to do it, what would you do? Like I, I have a bunch of questions.

I actually know which bank we use because she works there. Um, like if, if she gets sick, like I'm going to be really worried about her, but I'm also going to be like, hey, when is like our electrical bill due? Like I need some help here or you're going to have to get better. Like I, I can't, that's how it works. Now there are times when she's carrying the weight of that and we don't have enough money.

And so she's very stressed out because she sees the Numbers. She knows that we don't have enough money. I think we're fine because I don't ever see them. I'm just rocking along, happy as a lark, spending money, like whatever. And she's, she sees like, hey bro, you keep that up. We don't pay our electrical bill.

Like she's, she's on that. And so there are times though where I've had to step in and say, okay, okay, okay. Pause everything. I'm going to make some decisions here so that you can follow decisions made and you don't feel the weight of what's getting paid and what's not getting paid. That I graciously step in and take the beating when things are bad and she gets to manage everything because she's really good at it all the other times. So this means if you watch us long enough, you'll see me pick up my phone and call my wife and ask for permission to buy things.

Hey, can I get this? And she'll say things like, no. And I'll say, okay, baby, and hang up the phone. And it's not because she's in charge of all of our money. It's not because she rules all of that over me. And I'm just, hey, I was hoping maybe that's not how that works.

It's that we've predetermined what we're going to do. She's just the one who knows that money doesn't exist. So no. And then I'll say things like, okay, well, when can we and how can we work that out? Like we were a team, but that may not be how it works at your house. My wife also keeps up with everything in our calendar.

And I call in and say, hey, can we do this on this day? If you ask me to do a thing, I'm like, that sounds great. But I got to talk to my wife because I have no clue what I'm doing ever in the future. The two people who keep up with my schedule are my wife and Matt Freeman, and they argue with each other. Sometimes I'm like, y'all talk to each other. I'm tired of talking to both of y'all.

Just give me a thing that tells me where to be. But that's me. I don't feel like, I feel helped when she calls me up and says, have you done this? I feel helped. I don't feel like she's trying to rule me. I feel like, thank you, baby.

That sounds great. I should have done that. When she tells me four or five times in a row, she's got to work on not being frustrated with me. But she married me. It's on her. Like she's got to.

I feel helped. But that's, that's us. She's married to me. We have to work out what that looks like with us. You have to work out what that looks like with you and how that plays out with you. And for you to talk to Anna and go, oh, so you do all that?

And then go back to your husband and say, I'm going to do it because that's what Anna does. It's a terrible, terrible idea. Okay. Submit. Oh, also, single ladies. If you get married, that is what's called.

That's what's asked of you, commanded of you. This is why Mill City Church cares if you're dating a clown. Because we're going to, in chorus later, say, submit to a clown. And we don't want to. I have to sit with couples and tell them, I think your obedience here is to let this run into a wall. And we don't want to.

Verse 23. Here's why. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Oh, I'm sorry. We skipped the ask to the Lord part. Submit to your own husband's ask to the Lord.

That means two things. It means, one, is that you're modeling what it looks like for the church to follow Christ. That's what we're about to get in verse 24. It also means that your submission to your husband is submission to Jesus. That you look past your husband in obedience to Christ. That the question for you as you follow Jesus in your marriage is not, do I believe in my husband?

Do I trust my husband? Do I have faith in my husband? Your primary question is, do I believe in Jesus? Do I trust Jesus? Do I have faith in Jesus? And am I willing to follow what he says is good for my marriage?

Even when that's extremely hard. Okay. Now verse 23. For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Okay, so there's this weight of headship that's placed on the husband. He will be held accountable and responsible as head of your household for your household.

That later your husband will go stand before Jesus and he will give an account for your children. Did they grow up in discipline? Did they grow up in leadership? Did they grow up in love? What was the household like? He will stand accountable for you.

Were you a well-watered vine? Did you flourish under his leadership? Was there joy in y'all's relationship? Was he domineering or was he helpful? Was he gracious? Was he sacrificial?

Was he long-suffering? He's going to stand before the king of kings and give an account for. If you belong to Jesus, see what's in this text. If you belong to Jesus, Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. When a husband stands before God and gives an account for his wife, he's giving an account for Christ's body if she belongs to Jesus. He's giving an account for Christ's bride if she belongs to Jesus.

He's giving an account for Christ's daughter if she belongs to Jesus. And let me tell you something. Jesus takes very seriously how his stand-ins act. But the weight of that lands on your husband, not on you. You'll stand before Jesus and you will not give an account for all that happened in your household and all the decisions that were made and all the things. You weren't the head of the house.

You won't give an account for that. You'll give an account for was there gracious submission? Was there respect? How did you carry the weight of the responsibility given to you? Now, if you are a wife, in the play of marriage, you've been cast in the role of church. That's your part.

So you figure out, how do I play the church well? If you're a husband, you've been cast in the role of Jesus. That's just what it is. Jesus in the church. That's our model. That's our this is to that is that is to this.

So when we when we went in and you got cast, you got cast in the role of church. So if you're playing Juliet and the person playing Romeo is terrible. Be the best Juliet. If you start saying his lines for him or mouthing him for him like it's just it just makes it worse. So that's that's kind of the role.

So my son, he dresses up like Captain America, puts his little zipper Captain America thing on, puts his shield on, runs around our house beating me up. He does this all the time. He's pretending to be Captain America and I let him beat me up because I always have to be the bad guy. I'm hoping Thanos whoops Captain America in this new movie. And I'll be like, this is how it works from now on. In my marriage, I'm I'm supposed to dress up and pretend to be Jesus.

Now, Jesus is the savior. When it says he is himself its savior, it's just talking about Jesus in the church. It's saying that Jesus is your savior. Jesus is your hero. Jesus is your hope. It's not saying your husband is.

But your husband's supposed to pretend. He's supposed to put that on. So he's supposed to I'm supposed to ask what are savior things? Where can I try to save my wife? Where can I try to be the hero? Where can I take the beating on her behalf?

Where can I try to be sacrificial? Where can I try to do what's harder and more difficult? Where can I play act to be Jesus? And her role is to say, how do I pretend? How do I put on the church? How does the church respond to Jesus?

How is there joy? How is there gracious submission? How is there some admiration? How is there some what's the response here? That's the role. That's the the call.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. I may have I don't know where we are if we've skipped. Yeah, just jump past that, David, and go to the one where it's church submits. Yeah. Should submit in everything. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

That is the posture of a wife in marriage. That's the the goal, the hope, the the obedient way to walk through is that you should submit in everything. Decision making. Decision making. I don't I don't know where the points of contact are in your marriage, but the point is to submit. So I don't know if it's decision making.

I don't know if it's leadership. I don't know if it's what you're doing with the kids. I don't know if it's sex. I don't know if it's money. I don't know. I don't know.

But the answer for biblical counsel, if you say, well, what if my husband? The answer is. You should submit. What if my husband? You should submit. Now.

That's the posture. The question immediately becomes, well, wait a second. What about and you want to pull out some scenario and for hypothetical scenarios. I have a lot more grace and really want to address more the real scenarios than the hypothetical ones. If you were in a situation where submission to your husband becomes, I don't see how I can do this and to be following Jesus. When it says as to the Lord, it means that Jesus is supreme over your husband.

You're submitting to the Lord. Your husband is not Jesus. Your loyalty is to Jesus first. So here's what that means. There are a few places where it seems like the Bible says, not in that. Paul means this is the basic posture.

This is 95% of the time, 95% of the marriages. This is what you do. When your husband calls you to blatantly sin, you can graciously with a posture of submission say no. Your posture doesn't change. You're posture doesn't change. Your tone doesn't change.

They're just places where you say, I can't. You know I'm not trying to fight you on everything. You know I'm not, but I can't. We see this in Acts 5. Ananias and Sapphira was a married couple. They both chose to sin.

They both carry the weight of their sin. He doesn't look at Sapphira and say, well, you followed your husband. You're good to go. He says, no, you did this too. So there is an in call to blatant sin.

Your husband says, well, I want us to watch pornography together. I want us to have a threesome. I want you to help me commit. I want you like any, like where he's just saying, you've got to go join me in sin. You've got to, you say no. Now, when your husband is sinning, it's not your job to keep him from sinning.

You can graciously with a pattern of respect, try to point it out. You can try to correct the healthier he is, the better that goes. Sometimes you're in a completely unhealthy situation and you can't. So he's being selfish. He's being rude. He's being sinful.

There are going to be wives who say, okay, okay, but if I hand this over, if I let him do this, we're going to go bankrupt. And the response to that is, I think y'all should go bankrupt. And I hate that. But I want you to stand before Jesus and say, I tried to do what I was supposed to do. And I want you to know that Jesus is going to take care of your husband, hopefully here. Hopefully he corrects him here.

Hopefully he works on him here. But one day your husband will stand before Jesus. And that's the posture. The other one is I don't believe wives have to be in a situation where you accept abuse. I think you can graciously remove yourself from a situation. There are other authorities like laws and police officers.

You can call Lexington County. You can call Richland County. We see you on Live PD. I'll leave my house. I'll come on. You can call church family as a stand-in and say, hey, we're getting close.

I need y'all to show up. I need some guys to come talk to him. I need somebody to be here. I don't feel safe. That's fine. And there's a gracious, respectful way to do that.

It isn't lack of submission. So if your husband says, you just have to deal with this, that's not correct. And I'm sorry. Some of you are in some very difficult situations. And I want you to know that there is grace in the midst of that. That God empowers what he's called us to.

And where the ideal is lacking, grace abounds. So if you're in a situation where this is extremely difficult, you get to lean into Jesus. You get to lean into church family. You get to ask for help. And you get to set as your goal, following Jesus with a posture of submission. All right.

Jump to verse 33. Paul is going to sum this up. He kind of takes this idea. He gives instructions to the husband. He says, love your wives as Christ loves the church. Love your wife the way you love your own body.

Spend your time sacrificing, working to display the church and to make her beautiful. Like to do this with your wife. That's what he says. And then he kind of sums it up and he says, okay. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Okay.

So this is interesting. Wives. Easier to love your husband or to respect your husband? You can answer. Oh, don't. No, no, no.

Never mind. That would be bad. I'm sorry. Don't answer that. You shouted that out next to your husband. I heard his feelings.

It's easier to love for most wives. Husbands a lot of times have a hard time loving their wife. They have a hard time displaying that. They have to be reminded. You should be loving. You should be gentle.

You should care. You should cherish. You should don't. You should like, there's a lot of times husbands have a hard time with that. But wives, like that's, that flows so often.

Even in a situation where everything's terrible, you can still love your husband. But wives will say things like, I love my husband. I just don't respect him. But what's specifically called here is that wives ought to respect their husbands. And here's why. Husbands need, thrive on respect.

They feel loved when they feel respected. It's just a thing. There's a guy who wrote a book called Love and Respect. His name is Dr. Edgar Riches. And I want to show two charts that he has.

But he says this is often what happens in marriage. He calls it the crazy cycle. He says without love, she reacts without respect. So he reacts without love. So she reacts without respect.

Like that's the cycle. That happens in marriage all the time. He's unloving. So she's disrespectful. So he's unloving.

So she's disrespectful. So he's unloving. So she's disrespectful. And so he argues that the energizing cycle for marriage is the opposite of that, which is this. His love motivates her respect, motivates his love, motivates her respect. Now, when we talk to couples, we do what Paul's doing here.

And we just say, wives, do what you're supposed to. Husbands, do what you're supposed to. So that every time a wife wants to say, yeah, but my husband, we just say, can't control him. You got to do what you, you've got to break your side. Side of the cycle. The same thing we do with husbands.

That we will sit down and look at a husband and say, I don't, I don't care. I do not care. I care about you, but I do not care what she's doing because your responsibility does not change. There is no place in the text in Ephesians five that says, but if she makes it really difficult, I wouldn't sweat it. If you feel at that moment, she's unlovable. I wouldn't love her that much.

Like it doesn't do that. And wives, it doesn't do. So here's one of the things you can go to the next slide, but here's one of the things that this guy argues for. And I thought it was helpful. And I'd never thought about this concept before. We read into this passage, unconditional love on the part of the husband.

And all of us are like, absolutely. And he says, okay, unconditional respect. Now there's part of us that's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's how love works. But respect is like an earned thing.

Plus this guy seems like a moron. So like, why would you have to do that? And he says, no, this is how it works. That there's unconditional respect. That's your posture. That's what you're called to.

That there is no, but wait, but wait, hold on. He, this isn't how that works. It's unconditional love, unconditional respect. So if you have a hard time with that, you can ask the question, who do? So like when there's a situation, I would ask, how do I act loving in this situation?

I don't have to go into the room and go, okay, is my wife being really lovable right now? I just have to say, okay, what does love look like? What does sacrifice look like? How do I do this? And so you get to ask, how would I treat someone I respect? How would I talk to this person if they were my boss who I used to love at that old job?

It was great. How would I talk to this person if they were my grandmother who I have supreme amounts of respect for? How would I act respectful in this zone? Okay. So here's what this means.

Wives, you need gracious expectation for your husband. There's gracious expectation. This means that you are believing in, showing respect to your husband. I'm trying to help you have an idea of a picture of what respect means because so often it's easy. Like wives will say, I love my husband. I don't respect him.

Is it okay for your husband to say, I have a lot of respect for my wife. I just don't love her. The same way that that feels is the way that feels to your husband. The same damage that does, the amount of time it would take you to get over that. So you have gracious expectation.

Often wives are saying things like, I'm drowning. I'm carrying the weight of everything. And he just doesn't even care. He just sits there. It's just, like you don't even notice. You don't notice that I'm doing all this.

You don't notice. You don't care. And she's wanting her husband so much to show that he loves and to hop in and begin to carry some weight and begin to lead. But if that is you, let me explain some of what happened. Your husband maybe was sinfully passive. It's also possible, personality wise, he just moves slower than you do.

Thinks slower than you do. He may be sinfully passive. I found a lot of times wives feel like the rabbit in Zootopia when she goes to the DMV and everybody there is a sloth. Like something happens in your house and your husband goes. And you're going, why are you still sitting there? I came up with four plans already.

Three is the best. I'm on it. And here's what happens. Your husband is supposed to carry the weight of being the head of the household. Supposed to carry this weight. It's good for him.

You keep jumping in front of it. You're carrying all of it. And you're turning around looking at him saying, why aren't you doing anything? He doesn't have a problem. None of the weight is bearing down on him. It's bearing down on you.

And also, just for the record, looking at your husband and saying, why are you terrible? Has never motivated him to do anything ever. Move out of the way. Intentionally slow yourself down. And let the weight hit him. Push the weight back to him when he tries to push it to you.

Now, some of you may immediately respond, if I do that, everything will fall apart. That's fine. Everything falling apart is not on you. Respecting and submitting to your husband is. Everything falling apart is on him. And if you actually want him to begin shouldering it and carrying it, let it start falling apart under his rule.

I think he'll step up. He may not. He's got a lot better chance than you doing everything and being mad at him. I have an example of this that I read in a book. It's by Kathy Keller. She's writing this book with her husband.

He planted a church. We quote him all the time. He planted a church in New York. But when they were feeling called to do that, they were living in Pittsburgh. They had a couple of young children. They lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh.

And they loved it. And he started feeling called to move to New York, to downtown, kind of Manhattan area. And so he went to her and said, I think we're supposed to do this. And she said, that sounds like the worst idea you've ever had. So if Jesus told you to do that, he's probably mad at me because that sounds awful.

I don't want to raise, like, why would we raise our boys in the middle of downtown New York? Like, we love where we are. We love, like, this is awful. She says, I don't want to do that. He goes and prays about it, thinks about it for a while. And he comes back and says, okay, if you don't think we should go, then we won't go.

And her response was, oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're not pushing the weight of this decision on me. I'm not holding the weight of this. That's not my decision to make. I told you what I thought we'd do, but you've got to lead our family.

She just pushed it right back. So he went and prayed about it. They moved to New York. She actually wrote in that book, in their book, The Meaning of Marriage, she said it was one of the most manly things she and her sons have ever seen him do because it was one of the hardest things for him to do. That's what I'm talking about. So your husband says, well, I don't care.

Just do what you want. And you respond with, no, no, no, no, no. He said, no, just I do what I want, household. That's not how this is going to work. I believe in you. I trust you.

You make a decision. Like, you push it back, and he'll begin to carry the weight of it because he's supposed to. Your husband is a goldfish, just so you know. Not that he has a bad memory. That may be true. He's going to grow to the size of his tank.

If you expect this much out of him, you'll get a little bit less than that. And if you've been expecting this much out of him for a while, and you suddenly just pull back to here, it's going to take him a while to grow to it because he thinks his walls, they're clear, you know. He has to run into them a bunch before he realizes they're there. Maybe he's been running into you a bunch in an area, and he's backed way off, but he's actually supposed to be leading there, so when you back up, he doesn't realize I should be going that direction. It's going to take a while, but he'll grow to it. You're going to get what you expect out of him, and expect is different from demand, just so you know.

You cannot demand your husband to lead. That is you leading and him following. As soon as you make a demand of him, he can no longer lead. You have destroyed it. It's just how it works. Here's what happens.

You say, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. In order to be a good husband, this is how you have to lead. You have to do this, you have to do this, you have to do this. He now has two options. He can submit to you and follow and not feel masculine at all, or he can sinfully rebel and feel like a great man because he threw off all of your rules and he ran away from his mama. Neither one of those is great.

Often they choose to sinfully rebel. Often they choose to follow, but neither one of them leads to what you're wanting to see and what God designed to happen. Okay. Let the wife see that she respects her husband. You're supposed to see to it. That's your job.

See to it that you respect your husband. Find a way to do it. Figure out what that looks like. Figure out where he feels that. Growing up, I loved the movie Peter Pan. I loved Peter Pan.

He was a boy who flew and fought pirates. Awesome. I'm on board. My grandma made me a little Peter Pan-like thing. I wore it all the time. I had an eyedropper thing.

I was probably for medicine, but it was in the shape enough of a little knife, and I used that all the time to be Peter Pan. Loved Peter Pan. I've gotten older and I have a confession. I don't like this as a confession, but I have. There are times when I'm more like Tinkerbell than Peter Pan. And here's why.

In order for Tinkerbell to do all the stuff she's supposed to do, you have to believe in her. She dies if you don't. She needs someone going, I believe in you. I believe in you. I believe. I believe.

She needs it. And there's so many places where I need my wife going, I believe in you. I believe in you. And it just swells me up. She can come along and say, I don't know why you're so terrible. I don't know why you don't know how to do this.

I don't know why you haven't gotten this together. And at no point has that ever made me, other than spitefully want to prove her wrong, go to the task. Like, I don't know if you know this, ladies. Have you ever watched your husband lose at something? How often do they continue to play that? How often do they continue to do that?

They don't lose long. They either decide, I have enough skill here to get better at it, or they quit. And if you follow them around, telling them they're losing at husbanding, they're losing at parenting, they're losing at everything, that's why they go off to work and they just work 60 hours, because they win at work and people don't talk to them like that. That's why they retreat to the room and play video games, because they're good at that. Nobody stands over top of them and tells them they're terrible. There's a way to have gracious expectation, where you stand next to your husband and go, I believe in you.

I respect you. My wife loves me. She does. She also loves cats. And they're useless. So when she tells me she loves me, I'm like, thank you, baby.

But like, find ways to show respect to your husband. So go to him. Don't just say, you know, I married you because I love you. Go to him and say, you know, I married you because I love you. But that's super difficult sometimes, by the way.

But it wasn't the only reason I married you. I married you because I thought, here's someone who's going to work hard. Here's someone who's going to get after it. Here's someone who's going to carry weight. Here's someone who's going to take a beating on behalf of our family. Here's someone I can hitch my ride to and we'll be fine.

You're not getting in my way of the good life. You're my ticket to the good life. I've put all my chips on you. Watch your husband go, okay. There's just something to it. Figure out the things that he's stressed over, that he's working in.

Figure out how to show respect. Let me give you some examples of where this shows up. I don't know where your husband's tender. I don't know where he needs you to realize he's Tinkerbell. Don't call him Tinkerbell. It's the opposite of what we're talking about.

Don't go, oh yeah, I forgot your Tinkerbell at work. Don't do that. Work is a part of the curse for men. There's a really good chance your husband needs you to encourage him there. Just like parenting and child raising and childbearing is part of the curse for women. I can't look at my wife after she had a baby and go, it didn't seem that difficult.

I don't know why y'all whine about that. I can't come home when she says, man, I've had the worst day and go, oh really? What did Netflix give out? I can't do that. First of all, that's not true. She has really hard days.

I've had to watch those kids. They're the worst. But husbands can't say those kinds of things. But husbands will come home and say, oh my gosh, work is killing me. And their wives will go, really? You answer a phone.

All you do is complain about that job. It's not that hard. I had a job that was way harder than that. Look at your husband and say, do you hate your job? Yeah, I hate it. Thank you.

Thank you for waking up every morning on time and going to a job you hate because you love our family. That's hero stuff. And nobody's clapping for you. Nobody knows, but I notice it. You ought to wear a cape. And let me tell you something else.

If you decide you need to find another Job, I'm with you. You're not going to do anything to wreck this family. You make good decisions. Let me tell you what your husband does. He swells up. I don't know.

I don't know if it's work. I don't know if it's sex. I don't know if it's that he asks you to do stuff with him all the time that you think is stupid and you ought to just say yes and go to Lowe's. I don't know. Just so you know, your husband makes friends doing shoulder-to-shoulder stuff. If he invites you to do a thing with him, he's saying, be my friend.

Your husband does not go meet with his friends just for coffee. Not usually. If he's hanging out with a friend, they're not usually sitting right across from each other, staring at each other's faces. They're looking at other stuff. They go to a place and they talk about what the walls look like. They just, anything that keeps us from not having to look at each other.

And then they're friends. He builds a new deck with his neighbor and then they're best friends. And he says to you, will you go to Lowe's with me? And you say, that sounds dumb. And what he just said was, hey, will you be my friend? I just need you next to me while we do stuff.

Will you take a ride with me? He just wants you sitting next to him so he can talk because staring at your face is difficult. Well, didn't mean it that way, you guys. But sometimes it is when he wants to talk about something real. Does your husband get hurt? Does it turn into an argument every time you talk about money?

There's a good chance that you are just wanting to talk about money and he hears you talking about his value and his ability to lead and his ability to carry weight and his ability to be the head of the family. And you need to figure out a way to be very respectful because if it melts down into a fight every time and you're like, I don't know why this is such a big deal, maybe you fail to understand that you need to approach that with a lot of respect because he needs it. There's a story in 2 Kings chapter 5 of a general named Naaman who's from Syria. He has leprosy. He's told that there's a prophet in Israel so he goes to Israel to meet the prophet.

The prophet does not even come out to talk to him. He just sends his handler person, walks out and says, what do you want? He says, I'm the chief of the armies of Syria and I want to speak to the prophet. And he says, he knew you were coming. He said, go dip yourself in the Jordan River seven times and you won't have leprosy anymore. And the prophet gets very, or not the prophet, Naaman gets very upset.

He turns around to leave to go back to Syria. He tells the people with him, there are better rivers in Syria than the Jordan. And his people with him say, if he had asked you to do something great, if he'd asked you to do something big, if he'd asked you to do something that took strength, would you have done it? You're looking at the Jordan and you're saying, it's not real big. It's not real powerful. It's not real tall.

It's not the smartest. Yeah, as far as rivers go. And you're telling me, just go dip myself in that. Just go, trust you there and you'll do something great. And I think so often for wives, if God had looked at you and said, he's not doing well, take over. If he'd asked you to take the weight of being the head of your family, if he'd asked you to do something great, you would have immediately felt like, yes, this is fitting for my call and you just stepped in.

But what he says is, why don't you just submit and trust me and it's hard to take. But what he's saying is believe. Believe that by obedience, you'll bring about his obedience way more than disobedience will bring about his obedience. And believe that in the midst of this, you're trusting me and not yourself. That you get to take the position of the church, which is Jesus is my savior. So your husband doesn't have to be.

And then you get to walk that out daily, reminding yourself, Jesus is my savior. I take on the part of the church who's already saved, who's already cherished, who's already loved, and who's already walking in obedience with Christ. And then you allow Jesus to work on your husband. Here's what I'd like to happen. Matt and Bianca are gonna come back up here. Here's what I think needs to happen.

I would like for wives to take a minute to prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit, is there anywhere that I'm lacking submission or I'm being disrespectful? In a goal to be obedient to the word of God. Because so often, it's like you're treating your husband like a child and you wanna respond, yeah, he is a child, but that's not what it says. It doesn't say if, it doesn't say but, it says this is your role. Ask the Holy Spirit, where am I doing this? And then I'd like for you to take the time to begin, if you're the person who writes, if you can just think this up, but start thinking about a respect list and where you can tell your husband, I respect you here.

I'm proud of you here. I believe in you here. I'm trusting you here. So you might begin to pour into him what he really needs to hear. So where you are, if you'll take a minute to do that, and if you're not married, realize that your dad runs off of respect, if you have the chance to do that, realize that the men in your life, the guys in your group run off of respect, that there's an appropriate amount of getting to say I respect you, that they appreciate that.

But this is supremely for wives. Called to this in the text. That if they hear from the world, they're a failure. They shouldn't hear it from you. And if there's anybody that can come along and swell them up and put wind in their sails, it's you. That they married you because they wanted you among everyone else to chiefly believe in them.

Do that. And then take communion when you're ready. That's for everybody. Husbands, repent where you need to repent, where you're right now sinfully just frustrated with your wife, or where you have spent some time reading the other part of the text and realize you need to grow, where you've been demanding, or where you've lacked the weight, carrying the weight of headship in your marriage. Take time to repent, and then we'll take communion together. They're going to sing this song.

We're just going to sit, reflect, and pray, and then in a minute, we'll stand and sing together. Thank you for 에�bulus. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.