Ephesians, 5:25-27

I kind of wanted to open up with, many of us are married or are in various stages of that journey, but why else, why would it be productive to study what the Bible says about marriage, even if you're not currently married? Why is this passage important to study purely on its own? Well, when I have a newlywed brother in Cheyenne, I want to be able to key in on the things that make the couple tick. So it might be either hindering the growth process, or it could also not be I'll keep my own counsel until I can pray for a child. Fantastic. That's it. I think that was the first point that I was thinking of.

Even if you're not married or someone listening is not married, you know someone is married, right? Everyone knows someone is married at some point in their life. And at some point, you may be God's agent to speak His truth into their life. And we've also got this kind of misnomer in America which is really sad that you really aren't qualified to talk about something unless you're going through it too.

Right? Or you've gone through it. And I think there's great evidence of the fact that if you've had that experience, then you will be able to speak with greater wisdom, authority, and sensitivity on the issue. I'm not saying that our experiences aren't worth or useful. But nevertheless, just because someone hasn't gone through marriage with me doesn't mean that they can't tell me what the word says about it, and I can't be edified, right?

So that's one huge, huge thing. Obviously, it's primary application for us in our marriages if we are married. Any other reason why it might be valuable to look at this passage or For those who are unmarried, there may be marriage ahead of them, right? In more than a simple sense, it is an expectation of what God expects of a married relationship.

Let me tell you, I couldn't even begin to say how much it would have affected my marriage to come into marriage armed with this. We were both believers. We did premarital counseling and it was very modern psychology, or by a pastor, but very modern psychology oriented. came to Holly Hills during the, or heard the Ephesians study and, wow, that's in the Bible? There's that much instruction in the Bible about marriage?

Neat. I didn't know it was that important to God. So, great. Yeah, exactly. I think the final thing, and Jeremy will talk about this a lot next week, is this is the picture, or one of the pictures, that God chose or the Holy Spirit chose through Paul to give as an earthly picture for our relationship with Christ.

So this is, it's kind of like an open gate, it flows both ways, but it tells us, one, how husbands are to be loving their wives, or what the marriage relationship is supposed to be looking like, but also it tells us that it's based on because of what Christ did for us and what our relationship with Christ looks like as a body. So it's got a dual benefit in the fact that we see both of those, which is really cool. Alright, that being said, would someone care to read verse 25 to 27? As we love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Thank you, Karen. Awesome. So, after three verses of addressing wives, Paul immediately turns and aims his cannon at husbands. And he's going to spend nine verses talking to husbands. Bummer for us. Yeah, exactly. Peter... I agree, I agree. Oh, my. Yes. So... Yeah, enough said.

So, Peter actually spends more time addressing wives than husbands, so there's kind of a balance there, but this is a really exciting passage, at least it was for me as a husband, because I feel like the modern world in or modern America or whatever you want to call it, our culture, in stripping gender roles, in stripping all these things away, has stripped away all the beauty of the marriage relationship. Has stripped away all of the responsibility of the husband and the honor of the whole institution of marriage.

I'm actually just reading a book now called Alice Shrugged. It was written in the early fifties. And this, the author, Anne Rand, absolutely devalues the marriage relationship completely. And this is in the 50s, right? So this is something that's been going on for a long, long, long, long time. And I don't think she wrote the book to devalue marriage. But the reality is that's been going on for a while.

And here, this puts husbands in the light and says, hey, guys, this is what you're responsible to. I'm going to go back to how Bob started the class last week and just review the fact that this isn't going to be like a wake up in the morning and grit your teeth thing, right, husbands? Vern said when he taught this passage, he'll go through this with young husbands and young wives or people who are getting ready to get married and say, Cook, do you think you can do it? And if they say yes, then he knows they're in a lot of trouble. And it's really true. If you really think that you can do this and produce this out of your flesh, you're way out to lunch. So it's good stuff.

Incredibly important to realize that this is this is something that's only Only possible as we abide in Christ only possible as he works through us just cool stuff So husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church so husbands Obviously begin the address here and if you read this section here the only thing that I really want to bring out again is, where's the qualifier so far on this? Where's the conditional element of this? It says, husbands love your wives only if, what? As Christ loved the Church. So there's not an only if, or an only when. Only love your wives when. No. Just like last week when we talked about wives, this is completely non-conditioned.

Pacing again, sorry. I've been told I make people seasick. I was born on a boat, and so I just... That's where I learned it. I thought it was an effective habit. Dizzy the audience, and then they will believe you. But maybe your mother was a dancer. But maybe. Or you were an animal farmer. Tom, we're going a little too far astray here. We've gone from amaranth to animal farm. George Orwell, any other great authors of the 20th century that we'd like to discuss?

So there's no condition. This has been something that's been really powerful for me in my marriage, is realizing that because my wife's behavior doesn't all affect what the Lord has to say to me as a husband. She can be having the worst day in the world, she can be You know, I've been walking in the flesh all week, and usually that's in my perception, which usually means that I'm seeing her through the eyes of someone who's walking in the flesh, and judging her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we'll take that all out of it, and realize the fact that no matter what she does, she could come at me with a knife, and still, the word, what's that? This applies. This applies, exactly.

To me, that's an incredibly exciting reality, is that We talked a lot about submission versus obedience yesterday. And one thing that I want to bring to light as we start to talk about husbands is that we've got this idea in the world of leadership as this authoritative, dominant force that makes everyone else knuckle under. And there's no command in scripture for the husband to make sure the wife knuckles under. The Lord says to her, hey, you submit. You under attach. He doesn't say, and husbands, you better keep her in line. Not in there. Not in there at all. Isn't that crazy?

His response, if she doesn't submit, is, oh wait, yeah, keep loving your wife. Keep loving your wife. Keep loving your wife. How cool is that? So as we get to love, this is agape love. Who can share some thoughts on agape love versus phileo or eros or any of the other loves in the world? Unconditional? Signal?

It comes from God. Well, except, you know, there's that one passage that says, don't let God be the world. That always was interesting to me, because I always thought that too, that it only came from God. But there's that passage that says... Love not the world, and it's agape.

But in John 3.16 when it says, God so loved the world, is that agape? I'm certain it is. But don't you think it's more of a, not only unconditional, but it's an all-consuming love? That's kind of what I think of it as. That's great. Since I discovered that passage that was agape. Well, I'd say there's also a lot of nuance to any word in any language.

Only agape love is said to be flowing forth from God. So at some level, we can truly say that this love, at the very least, can only come from God, for sure. However, in different nuance, if you wanted to translate, like you said, unconditional, we're all consuming love, without having it be sourced in God, you'd still be limited to the word agape for your word choice. Isn't it the world system we're talking about, rather than the people of the world? Right. If God of the world, not the world system. That's correct. In that passage, it is the world system. For sure. Mostly. Cool. So, love, back to love. 1 Corinthians 13, obviously we've all been to enough weddings to pretty much have it memorized, so we won't flip there now and read it, but is a great example of God's love, of the kind of love that God has and what that's all about.

I'd like to point out, and this is gonna hopefully not cut into Jeremy's lesson at all, but in this short, in these nine verses, we get four imperatives to husbands. Husbands, love your wives. Two, husbands, love your wives. Three, love your wives. And four is husbands, love your wives. In these nine short verses, Paul's gonna give them the command to love their wives four times.

What do you think he means? Oh my! In quadruplicate, is that a word? I'm making it a word? Great! In quadruplicate, We have this command to love our wives. It's really pretty fantastic that you could ever mistake what Paul's after. Do you think there was a problem there? Loving their wives? And that is a great point. Because the next one, kind of talk about the Greek and Roman culture at the time.

Greek and Roman culture, I'm going to kind of run it all together versus giving a big long deal, but wives were Wives were at kind of an all-time low in the way that they were fancied by the world. One writer said, this will be in an exec quote, and I'm sorry, said, we have our wives to make legitimate heirs, and we have our concubines for pleasure, fun, and company. Another person said that wives should be kept so far put away and so far away from conversation, from social interaction, from everything, because that's the only way they're safe. is that they're absolutely secluded from the world. The less they know and the less they speak, the better wife they are.

Pretty harsh. That's the Muslim culture today. Can I say stupid American culture? Yeah, I think I can. I probably shouldn't, but I'm going to say it anyway. Here in our stupid American culture, we want to pretend that By stupid, I mean conflicting with God's Word.

We want to pretend like the Bible's, or at least I hear it a lot, maybe you don't, that the Bible sexist, right? The Bible keeps women down. Because that verse, that said submit, and that's the church abroad and throughout history has been consistent almost entirely of women. not entirely of women, but predominantly of women. Why? Because the Bible elevates the place of women to a place that in history they've never been before. Because God values women just like he values men. Right?

Paul's here saying, love your wives, love your life. Well, in a male-dominated culture, they don't have to love their wives. They rule their wives. Their wives are possessions, property. In Korea, women aren't allowed to take the family name of the family that they marry into.

So you've got Mr. Lee and Mrs. Park. And for us, we're like, wow, that's really forward thinking. She retains her identity. She retains her name. She retains her family that she came from. Wrong. She's not a member of the family. She's property of the family, is the view.

That's what the world gives you. That's what the world offers. You want to talk about our really forward-thinking feminist culture. That's what the world, that's what kind of natural order, if you want to call it that, really shakes down to. Men are bullies. It's just the way it works in the flesh. Might makes right. We have the power, right?

And the gospel goes somewhere else. The Bible goes somewhere else and says, hey, husbands, you're to love your wives sacrificially, which is the first kind of love that he talks about. Next, he starts to talk about, we're to love our wives in a way that is sanctifying, which are the two loves that we're going to talk about today. He also talks about the bonded love and the caring love. And that's what Jeremy will talk about next.

Can you make a comment? When Paul addressed in verse 22, he said, wives be subject to your own husbands? Somebody had mentioned before that the word own was there. And then on this one where it says husbands love your wives, it doesn't say love your own wives. I honestly had not put any thought into the specific placement of the word own.

We studied the submission of the subject last week. So, if you have a thought, we'd love to hear it. No, no, I just, because I remember somebody have, um, you know, commenting that when he taught, love your own, I mean, um, submit to your own husbands, because, you know, as women, you know, don't submit to some counsel from another man, but submit to your own husband. But, um, I was wondering, you know, how you taught that. In this culture where a man loves another woman, he doesn't say love your own wife.

Well, I mean, the uniform teaching of Scripture is monogamy, without a question, as is the way of life. Well, you said uniform teaching of Scripture? But I mean in Old Testament times that was the same. Well, I think from the beginning, when God designed marriage, He designed it to be a monogamous relationship, and yeah, people did lose the blessing as a result.

I mean, that's what brought it. But it wasn't said until, you know, all those years. never said that you can only have one. Yeah, that's true. It's God's plan, and that's what I'm saying, it's God's plan, not that God's going to punish well. Like I said, the negative consequences for having more than one wife. I know it's not so good, but... I think Solomon was an example. Yeah, a phenomenal example.

Yeah, that wasn't wrong in that day. It wasn't as if God was, you know, counting up on his little golf cart, like, ooh, Solomon, one more wife, that's three more sins. You know, it's not a matter to me of sin or not sin. It's a matter of living the life that God, the best life that God would have for us.

A relationship. A relationship. And, oh, by the way, I mean, one wife is enough, right? I've got one. That's really all I can handle. The very idea of marrying again is enough to give me a cardiac arrest. But... So yeah, that's... I agree that there is... One of the things that...

One of the things we have to consider is that when marriage takes place, it's not like back in the garden when God married two people. But the fall, you have to remember I remember when I counseled a lot of people, I told them, I said, when you really get married, you're marrying another person's sin nature. In a sense, you're combining them. In other words, you have two sin natures, you have one and one. Now you're going to, when people talk about you become one, that's true. But they forget that the fall affected our relationship to God. And the thing that gets in the way is our sin nature, our flesh.

And the thing about it is that the prerequisite for taking care of that is found in the very context. Be filled with the Spirit. Because in chapter 5, it says, be filled with the Spirit. It tells you what it means to be filled by the present participle. And then on the last one of them, he says, submit yourself, which is a middle participle. Submit yourselves one to another.

Then he goes into this marriage relationship. It seems to me that the Holy Spirit is the key because The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering. The Holy Spirit is what produces that. And He directed that. And so we have a prerequisite which is taking place, which is conditioned on being filled by the Spirit before this married relationship could even function. I know we couldn't even love one another as Christ loved us, apart from the Holy Spirit filling us and producing the fruit and then directing the fruit to the one that God, you combine, that's where it overcomes the flesh. That's why Galatians says, walk by means of the Spirit, you will fulfill the lust of the flesh. In other words, it doesn't say we won't have the lust of the flesh, it says you won't carry it out.

Exactly. That's beautiful. And it's only by our resting in Christ. Bob? Yeah, I was going to build on what Doug just said. I mean, the concept here, remember we mentioned last week at the beginning of this section, forward, is that the first part of Ephesians establishes us in our position in heavenly places.

And this loving your wives four times, or nine times, or whatever it is. If you think about it, the chapters four through six is what that life looks like, right? I mean, how can we agape our wives as Christ left the church? I mean, there's no way you work up to that kind of love, right?

So that the sin nature will always impair that process. But yet the Christ life lived out makes this really possible by faith through the power of the Spirit. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Great point. One thing that's interesting you mentioned, I think when you study, if you have time to do this, look at incoherence and incredible helps in Bible study today. And one of the words used that the Holy Spirit uses is the Aorist tense and the word loved. Have you ever noticed that? For God so loved.

Bill, I don't think we can talk about this right now. I'm sorry, we're running short of time. But I apologize. So, Christ loved the church. Christ still loved the church, here, is, I think, an umbrella statement. It's a statement that's going to umbrella everything else. It's the beginning. It's the model that everything else is going to flow out of. And then, out of that, Christ still loved the church. He gave himself up for her, is the following. So, first of all, we could talk in a general sense. How did Christ love the church?

What does it mean to love your wife? Sacrificially, I guess, moving on to the first comment, because we're running a little behind. What does it mean to love your wife sacrificially? Obviously none of us are going to be able to, or if any, very few of us are going to be able to jump up on a cross for the sake of our wives. It would be a challenge for us.

What about any other... What does it mean to love your wife sacrificially? Or wives, how do you know when your husbands are loving you sacrificially? Yeah, ask them. not fair otherwise. I mean, does it mean we have to go seek out situations where we can risk or sacrifice our lives for our wives?

Is that what you want, wives? Don't you think it just means sometimes, you know, maybe husbands will defer to what the wife wants right then. I mean, are we getting I mean, something as stupid as, I want to go to this restaurant, not that restaurant. I mean, you know, but it can be anything. But it's just deferring to them and not going with your own interest. That's really, I think, these days, that's probably more what it is.

I think that's a huge part of it. And isn't that great? I mean, here, this is the biblical view of what leadership should be like in the household. And what does it consist of? Submit all not submitting but putting your desires as secondary to theirs putting your wants as secondary to theirs I Wrote in here he needs to be setting aside his own dreams hopes desires selfishness with time and money to put her needs above his own I think that's one kind of practical way or one practical blanket statement that can cover a Another manifestation of love, I think, reflects on the verses of last week in terms of wives being in submission. And that concept is this, is that I think there's plenty of room to be making your wife first in terms of your decision-making process.

But those things that relate to a spiritual background, we're called to be spiritually mature, are we not, as husbands? So therefore that's a good yin and yang between what makes a sacrificial marriage that's based on scripture versus one of demand and self-centered interest. It's a beautiful thing and how many Once again, how many marriages, I've read a handful, not a ton, but a handful of leadership books, and leaders that lead like this, leaders that lead putting the people they're leading before their own, really do make an impact, really do inspire loyalty, really do change things. How many marriages would be changed if the husband were resting in Christ? Yeah, and I think the responsibility, I think, this is a broad statement, but I think most marriages fail because of men's irresponsibility to the word of God in terms of what their call is. You pointed out that the Christian... And I humble, I don't, I'm not reflecting on me at all here. Believe me.

Well, that's the beauty of all of this, right? I mean, if we have any success in our marriage, it's only because we rested in Him and He had success in our marriage, so we don't get any kind of arrogant play about any of it. So, cool! Yeah, it's really exciting stuff.

So, moving on to verse 26. "...to make her holy, cleansing her through the washing of His Word." So here we get the idea of the sanctifying love. And this is another kind of cultural image. Once again, maybe you're protected in this, and I hope you are.

But I think a lot of times, as men, and at least in our culture, we feel like it's our job to be a little bit rough and offensive, whether it's burping and farting or using foul language or watching whatever comedy that's really coarse or whatever. We say, oh, it'll toughen her up. It's good for her. that it's somehow a manly thing to offend the sensibilities of your wife, or to ruffle her feathers, or something to this effect. I don't know if that's a universal cultural trend, but I've definitely seen it at play. Oh, she's got to toughen her up.

But that's not the picture we see in scripture at all, is it? We see the idea of sanctification. being an intimate part or an important part of this process. So how did Christ sanctify the church? He gave himself up. Now, obviously, I have no power to die for April's sins and blah blah blah blah blah. So in the sense that Christ sanctified the church, I don't have the power to sanctify April in that way. I just don't. Sorry.

Here we see the Greek word cleansing is a Greek word for purifying from sin or defilement. It must be noted that this cleansing is not a police officer legalistic type of cleansing that points out every sin as often as she makes a sin, sorry, as often as she sins. So this isn't, husbands, pay attention because this will save you a lot of pain, save me a lot of pain. This is not going around with a little stick and saying to your wife, oh, you sinned again, you sinned again, you sinned again. We've got to sanctify you. We've got to get you cleaned up. Right? Right? That's not what this is about. It happens the other way around. Yeah, exactly. Dang it, Jigs. Kind of like the animal farm, right? Exactly. So why...

So if it's not going and, you know, and tittle-tattling around and following your wife around and telling her what she shouldn't do and what she should do and what she shouldn't do, you shouldn't do that, and you did that again, and I caught you in another sin. If that's not what it means to sanctify her, what do you suppose, what do you suppose that office is? What Christ wants to do in husbands, practically, to bring that to their wives?

What does that look like? That can be a big, big portion of it. The crazy thing, we'll get on to it through the word here, isn't the written word, it isn't the Logos, it's Ramah, it's spoken word. It's talking about, it specifically references through your spoken words. This is kind of wild, but man, talk to your wives. Crazy. But, reality is, is that this isn't specifically, now, is the word, is the Bible, the word of God, going to be a part of this process?

Unless you're crazy, of course it is, right? But what's specifically being discussed here is that in your discussion with her, it's supposed to be sanctifying her. So sanctification, who took Mike's Great Doctrines of Salvation? Or what are some quick definitions of sanctification?

Setting apart. Isn't that great? I love this image. I feel like I've read it a lot on Randy Peterman's blog and I've heard Randy talk about it a lot. What a great call for husbands to get to be helping your wife behold Christ and be set apart for Him so that on that day the hand will go to Him. However the handoff works, but the reality is that as husbands Our big duty is preparing our wives and being a part of preparing our wives for their eternal unity with the Lord and continuation of their eternal unity with Christ. Constantly setting her apart. So how do we do that?

I mean, I think Tom, the sensitivity of not just going around saying, Oh, you sinned again, but actually say, you know, I also, I'm not wrestling in the spirit. That's where I am. So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think there's more to this that we can unpack. It's also by being an example. We see our husbands interact with their work, with people. It's watching them and seeing them as an example too. That's phenomenal. So maybe bring your spouse to work day. It could be. I think that would cause marital difficulty, but it could work that way.

I think also to that, I would add, how careful are we as we rest in Christ? Once again, it's all Christ's life and us. But how careful are we of the words that we use and the words that we say? Thinking of an Old Testament scripture that says, hey, talk about it. Talk about the word when you sit down, when you lie, when you eat, when you're going to bed. Talk about the word all the time. Talk about the Lord all the time.

We're so programmatic in the West. We love the idea of programs. We love the idea of just do it and formulate it and yada, yada, yada. and have a family devotion every Thursday night, whatever it is, those are great things. But really, Christ should permeate our whole existence every night at dinner. I've been convicted about this recently, the fact that I'll let our dinner discussion go far afield into something that's maybe not specifically bad, but isn't pointing us towards Christ. And so what could have been a wonderful meal where we were all gazing at Jesus together turns into just another meal. So yeah, I guess that'd be kind of a challenge, an application, whatever you want to call it.

But are you taking those opportunities amongst your spouse, with your spouse, to use your words wisely and powerfully? and to present her to himself as a radiant church. So this idea of presentation of a bride is something that's based on Jewish wedding customs.

So essentially a prospective husband would go to the father of the girl that he wanted to marry and pay this visit to the father and discuss the bride price, discuss all the things that would go into the marriage and then finally get permission for the marriage. And then they'd have this huge feast And they'd be waiting and waiting and waiting for the father to say to the son, go get your bride. You present that bride to her. I think in our wonderful ceremony that we have here in the West, the bride, you know, here comes the bride, music starts, and everyone stands up and looks to see the presentation. of the bride, and then she walks down to the husband, which is absolutely fantastic. So when the man was accepted by the girl's father, she would be called set apart or sanctified as being dedicated for only him. This was anticipation of the time when the father would say to the groom, go get your bride. At which point she will be presented to him as wholly his, and he wholly hers.

And this is the picture that we are being presented with here. The husband is preparing his wife for the presentation to Christ as we are in the Church, the Bride of Christ. So, um, yeah, that's awfully cool stuff. We'll be presented that way. Radiant Church here. Other translations like the Birkencroft's Radiant is glorious.

I don't know how much of modern pop Christianity you see. A lot of it makes it sound like we'll wash up on heaven's shores like a shipwrecked, you know, a shipwrecked person just barely escaped and we made it to heaven, just barely. We survived the earth, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it'll be this, just on the last cusp of life, Vision of entering heaven it'll be ah now I can rest.

That's not the picture really that Paul gives us here He gives us a picture of a radiant church Glorious because he's made her glorious sanctified because he's sanctified her Proudly as the bride of Christ walking through the gates of heaven Walking walking into the world, so it's not this This weak beaten beat up messed up sinners you know, washing up on heaven's shore, but rather the fact that when He comes and gets us as a church, that it'll be a glorious thing, a thing of strength, that He will not be, you know, fucking out all these little wimps and weaklings and people who couldn't make it. But because of His life in us, there is victory. There is that radiance and glory. So, it's phenomenal stuff. Okay, holy and blameless.

This is the truth that's based on the work of the Lord Jesus. What He did on the cross makes us holy, sets us apart and blameless, without occasion for conviction, is fully dependent on His glorious work. and are on the basis of His cross and His blood. So here we see that it is the job of husbands to spur their wives on towards the knowledge by speaking to them about the sanctification that is going on right now. Not only because they are ultimately set apart for Christ who is coming, and about how they are ultimately set apart for Christ who is coming.

This is a marvelous thing. Not only is this reality ours in Christ, but we have a greatest opportunity in the world to act out of this divine romance in our own marriage relationships. We have a chance to see divine passion and love and power at work in our own marriages and our own lives. To be on anything we could ever hope for. So here's a phenomenal opportunity we have. What I'd like us to do is if someone wants to, if someone can open up to 1 Corinthians 13. for us and read about that kind of love.

As April and I were doing marriage counseling with Vern and Nancy, one of the things that they brought up that was phenomenal was the fact that, I think Randy may have said it to Nancy, but when are people going to realize that their marriage isn't about them? We're going to talk next week a lot about how the marriage relationship is one of God's earthly illustrations, the Christian earth, earthly illustrations to the world as the great power of His love. as to the great power of what he's done. It's phenomenal. What our marriages are, are not, once again, weak and wimpy survival situations. Our marriages, as we rest in Christ, will be beacons of his love and his glory to a dark world. So, Bob, would you mind reading the first sentence? Just the love part.

I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am become a sounding bronze or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains that I have not loved, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, and profit in me, nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind. Love envieth not. Love bonteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails, but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, that when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and understood as a child. I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even also as I have known. And now by the faith, hope, love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. Awesome. So this is the love that we have.

I thought it would be fun if we finished on time, which we almost never do. But hey, we're early today. To have a little time to talk about application, specific applications for this. I think it was, it may have been Ellis Schaefer, it may have been someone else who said that every Bible should come with shoe leather on it. And we do a great job of teaching the Word, but one thing we rarely have time to talk about because there's so much depth and so much richness and so much light simply beholding Christ through the Word, is we don't always get a chance to spit out specific applications, like this week like to buy my wife flowers, which I am not going to do because we're going on vacation all week and I won't be apart from her long enough to go buy her flowers. Does anybody have any specific applications?

Every time you stop, go on your drive or on your trip past the Once a day. Okay, once a day. We're driving all the way down to Pueblo. That's a lot of flower shops. That's a great idea. I love it. I wish you weren't here to hear it, because then it would be really thoughtful. Take the vase and a bottle of water. Try to keep it alive for a bit.

Does anybody else have an application as you roll over these verses as you read through them? Or maybe a great anecdote of how this has been applied in your life, in your marriage, in the past? Well, I always think of consider others better than yourself, but there's something else that sticks in my mind. As you apply that in your daily work, you're considering the other person, not just yourself. One thing that I've noticed this week that's really been remarkable is that in the past sometimes I ask William to do something and he'd say, do I have to do it now or later?

And I think of him as the manana man. Somehow this week I've mentioned something and then I go off in the gym and I come back and it's done. And I can hardly believe it. And he's worked so hard. I mean, it's been like these past couple of weeks. I'm just really amazed and it's caused me to love him more.

And, you know, express it because I see that this is sacrifice instead of doing what he normally would like to do. He puts it aside and has done stuff that I would like and instead of saying, now what would you like to do tonight or where would you like to go today? And we've been, we've done things, I mean, we've We've gone biking two, three times in a week, and we've gone to the mountains on a hike, and we did a lot in a week. And, you know, I'm just really amazed, because normally, you know, I didn't think he'd have this strength in himself.

That's phenomenal. I think April's got a big thumbs up from Wayne. Yeah, are you guys paying attention? Yeah, seriously. April's waiting for me to come to that point. amazing I do the now or later thing every single time I get a test in this class of Ephesians right Yeah, it's awesome. Anybody else have any other stories? It can be second or third hand. This is in the courtroom.

My Illinois brother and wife celebrate monthly anniversaries. Wow, that sounds expensive. They'll take it to that end degree, but they make sure that at least in some special, even if inexpensive, I have to say that I always refer to Bob as my sweet husband and sometimes when I'm out at places You know, I'll hear people, overhear people talking about, you know, like if I'm at the grocery store or something, two employees will be talking about, oh, my husband is going to be on, you know, he's on vacation this week, so that means he's around every day, you know, and oh, I don't know what I'm going to do about that. And so, one time I was overhearing a conversation similar to that, and I said, I love it when my husband's home. I just, we're just best buddies. I love being with him every minute. So I think that's a reflection on how sweet he is to me. I want to be with him.

Let's build on that and let's turn to Ephesians chapter 2, 5 and 6 and maybe 4 too. The God who is rich in mercy for his great love with which he loved us. even when we were dead in sins, hath made us alive together with Christ, by grace are you saved, hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ. How can you not be encouraged by verses like that? in a sense it is a light that comes from above and anything that I would ever do that's viewed as appropriate or consistent with this is all by the fact that Christ has positioned me in that truth, right? Is there any reason not to be encouraged by these kinds of things? I mean it just I mean, again, this marriage relationship has to be wrapped up in heavenly places. That's where it begins and ends. And we can only be encouraged and not discouraged by that truth. The relationship God has given Margaret and Iris reflects this eternity of promise that God has given each of us. Again, we do work at it as an imperative because God said this is what Christ is like to his church, right? We fail. I mean, I fail constantly. Bill, I need to talk to you after class here. Get the secret. But Margaret is constantly lifting me up and encouraging me.

And I think when things come into a marriage that are kind of on the negative, I mean, they get resolved quickly. And that's the way the cross is, right? I mean, we confess our sins and move on. And that's really been part of a wonderful relationship we've had.

It's all biblical truth that makes it happen in the right way. It's kind of wild. You read the world's version of things that are supposed to motivate and encourage, and essentially it's positivism for positivism's sake. Positive because it's the best way to be, because it produces the greatest results. Correct.

And you read these things, and I even feel this way on the few occasions that I've read Norman Vincent Peale, and he's supposed to be a minister. I almost said he's supposed to be a believer, forgive me. He's speaking as a minister, and yet he just gets lost in this, hey, positivism for positivism's sake, often times.

And the reality is, is that our hope is really rooted in the truth, rooted in, if you're saying what Christ is saying, that's why our marriage relationships don't need to be this huge negativity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, really, we're rooted in what Christ has done on the cross. Bob was reading 1 Corinthians, but lots of times you get sucked into thinking you need to have conflict to make things grow, or that makes a relationship stronger.

It's easy to get sucked into sarcasm towards each other, but just when he was reading that, that's not love. Love doesn't act like that. So you know, everyone else might say that or you think that, We have to fight in order to grow closer, or I have to be sarcastic to you. That's not love.

I mean the world's view is each brings 50% to a happy marriage, right? I think it's really we each bring 100%. And that's all directed to the other person, right? And that 100% is all of another nature, right? We need Christ's 100% to make it happen. And the 200's still are 100. Yeah, that's two in one, isn't it? 200 becomes 100. Yeah, like Bill was saying before. I wish the NRS used that now.

So, alright, cool, well let's wrap up in a word of prayer and we'll go to the service. Heavenly Father, we praise you for the gift that you've given us in marriage, Lord. This picture, this living picture that you've given us of your love for us and of what you've done for us in the church. Lord, we thank you that you're the one who does this in us, that we choose to abide in Jesus.

And that's where all of this magnificent, glorious, and wonderful life comes from. Lord, I praise you for this body that we can look at each other's lives, that we can sit around for a few moments and tell stories about what you are doing. Tell stories about your glory. Tell stories about what it means to live this life out. Lord, we worship your name. And we worship you. Because we've done none of this. And it's all your grace. Lord, please keep us... Keep us resting. Keep us looking at you. Gazing at your son, Jesus. In Jesus' name. Amen.