Ephesians, 5:31-33
Randy Peterman · Aug 2, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 31
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492614012453

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to be closing this Ephesians 22 through 33 passage today. We're going to be looking at 31 through 33. Paul has written about, and I've picked some of the details and nuances of the passages he's written about, submission, order within the household, sacrifice, sanctification, caring, support, and building up. And this morning we're going to take a look at unity independence and respect. That's a brief summary of what we've taken a look at. As we look at this passage, it's important to be reminded what type of writing is Paul putting together in this passage when he's talking about a marriage.

Is he talking about everyone's marriage? Is he talking about an ideal marriage? What kind of marriage is he writing about? I'd say Christian marriage. Okay, Christian marriage. What is his example? What kind of example is he presenting for us here in this text? Of our wives, because Christ loved the church. Okay. Is it an ideal and perfect example, would you say? It's hard one to follow. Yeah.

Well, you know, one of the things that I've been thinking about in preparing for this, I've known this has been coming for over a month, is that While the example we're given is an ideal and perfected example, there's no reason for us to look at this and perceive it as the impossible that we should not be looking for in our marriage.

One of the things we'll go over this morning is perspective and the impact that perspective has on our marriage. And that's not to play psychology games, but it's to remind us of what Paul is doing here. So, it's good to be reminded that Paul is speaking about the ideal marriage. What's the ideal marriage? Christ and the Church.

What we need to do as we take a look at this is ask, how do we reconcile this ideal marriage with our own earthly marriages and our conditional marriages? I'm calling them conditional marriages not because we put a bunch of conditions and prenuptial agreements on our marriage, but simply that we recognize that it's a marriage in the conditional sense and not a positional sense that we have here on this earth. The short answer is that we look at conditional sanctification. If you recognize that your spouse is in the process of being sanctified, of being grown and brought up in Christ, then you can see where there are varying differences between what Paul writes in the perfect versus what you're really living. You're going to see that there might be a few differences. In my own marriage, I'm sure that Jessica could help identify some of the variations. Although last night she did tell me I was a good husband, which was encouraging. I don't say that to build myself up. She did tell me that. I was like, oh good. Sometimes I don't feel like it. Especially when I'm studying for this, I go, man, I could do this better.

But we look at conditional sanctification and know that our spouse is in the process of growing. When you know your spouse is in the process of growing in the Lord, how does that affect your perspective? It's an encouragement. It allows you to look at that person and say, okay, they're there now, they're doing that now, but I know I'm growing and I know they're growing. And you have a biblical perspective, a heavenly perspective. We know that they're being perfected into the image of Christ and conformed into the image of Christ. So let's take a look at the passage. I'm going to go ahead and read out loud 31 through 33.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband." Alright, so Paul starts out what we're having as this section by quoting from Genesis, something that Moses brought in. Does anybody know the context?

We can go back to Genesis 2.24. What is the context for Moses' use of that passage. Anyone?

Genesis 2.24. Why does Moses use that statement for this reason? A man shall leave his father and mother. Does it go back to because we are members of his body? Well, we're looking at why Moses does this before we look at what Paul's doing.

So if we go back to Genesis 2.24, and we start looking at 2.22, it says, The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Okay, so we have a context in Genesis. Let's ask again, why did Moses say that the man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife? In the case of Adam and Eve, she was the beginning. And that set a tone for the way marriage should be looked. A unity, a oneness. There. And then, this is an interesting verse because that's Moses' context.

And then if you were to turn, and if you've got your Bibles, please do, to Matthew 19.5, we're going to find that same passage. used by Christ. Let's actually start at the beginning of 19 and not read just 5 by itself. I'm reading 19.1.

When Jesus had finished these words he departed from Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan and large crowds followed him and he had healed them there. Some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him and asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? And he answered, and he said, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And he said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

So when we see Paul quoting Genesis, we have some from a Jewish perspective, or from a Christian perspective as well, we have Moses being quoted, which means it's weighty. And then we have Christ quoting what Moses quoted for yet another intended purpose. And so when Paul gets here, we're going to see Paul has a different context. And yet all three of them are not only relevant, but valuable perspectives on what marriage should be.

First one, that God created Adam and then he created Eve from Adam and so they were one flesh. The second one, Christ takes that a further step and says God makes a man and wife one flesh just like Adam and Eve through the process of marriage. And then Paul comes here and what is Paul's context or reason here in Ephesians 5 for a man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife. Jeremy and Brad and Bob have all gone over some of that. So what are some of the context and reasons for that? Because we show the world the relationship of Christ and the Church through our marriages. That is definitely an application.

528 says, so husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. As he's building on already Christ being intimate with his bride, the church, and being one with his bride, the church. As I was studying this, it was hard not to think about Colossians chapter 3. I know that every time I teach it seems like there's at least one reference to Colossians 3. But being hidden in Christ is part of our oneness with Christ and us being the bride and Him being the groom. There is not a separation between us and Christ.

So, let's get back to here. We're going to talk about leaving and cleaving, or what I think should better be called cleaving and cleaving, even though that sounds redundant. I'm going to start with a joke, and I know you want to be careful with jokes at church, but I think this really illustrates things.

A husband and wife came back from their honeymoon, and this will represent 50s sexual politics, so I'll give you some context. They came back from their honeymoon, and Not long after being home, the wife called her mother, sobbing, just tears, and crying on the phone.

And her mother said, sweetheart, what's wrong? And she said, Mom, we got home and he's been using four-letter words, left and right. And this never happened before we got married. And the mother was shocked and aghast. little curiously, she said, well, what's he saying? And she said, he's using words like iron and wash. So, apologies, that is a joke, and it's not biblical. Well, I've always said ironing is against my religion. Apologies.

But the thing I want to bring out is not the joke, but what that represents is this daughter has not, and the husband have not left and separated themselves from their parents. They've immediately gone back to that which was comfortable and not had a leaving and cleaving type of relationship. In the text here, he says, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife. The word joined there would be like glued or cemented to his wife, separating himself from his parents and being joined.

A story from my own life, and I've got this written out here, but I'll just tell it to you the way I remember it. For the first nine months after Jessica and I were married, we lived in Carson City, Nevada, which is where Jessica's mom and stepdad lived and where my parents lived. My dad had said to me before we got married, are you ready to be a man? He just asked me simply.

I remember we were at the top of the stairs and my parents had a two-story house at that time. Now they live in a 12-story apartment, at least for the next month. So the top of the stairs would have been different. But they were at the top of the stairs and he said, are you ready to be a man?

And I remember being pretty much scared out of my wit because I didn't know what that meant. I mean, I roughly knew what that meant. It sounded really idealistic and neat. But the idea of actually taking that on scared the snot out of me. But my dad understood that I was going to be leaving his household and starting a new household. And he was verbally communicating to me, I'm cutting this relationship off the way that it has been with you as a son under my house. and you're going to go start your own household. And that relationship is changed and it's different. It's going to be different when you get married. And for me that was scary because I started to really realize what that meant to be leaving my parents' household.

The problem is that we stayed in Carson City, Nevada for nine months. I wrote here with exaggeration that the apron string was then two and five miles long instead of just down the hallway. We didn't really know what it meant to leave and cleave until we moved to Texas. Again, it was about nine months later. We moved to Texas and suddenly we were isolated from our family by thousands, 1,500, 1,600 miles, however many miles it is.

And we found ourselves suddenly needing to take care of our own things and not being able to borrow things if you get used to borrowing things. If you move to a place where you have no friends and you have no family, suddenly self-reliance is pretty important. And I realized that I had really left. And now it was time for me to cleave with my wife. And since I had no one else to cleave to and no one else to be attached to, it became really easy to do that.

In the first six weeks I was in Texas, I was sick almost every morning when I got up. Sick to my stomach, nervous, and on edge. Because suddenly I was realizing this. Two weeks into moving into Texas, the air conditioner, Two weeks into moving to Texas, the air conditioner went out on our car and drained the thousand dollars we had in savings.

And things got really tough. We were young, newlywed, in a place we didn't know, without money, and suddenly we got to do something really important, and that was cling to the Lord and cling to one another. And so that became a new, very deep and personal understanding of leaving and cleaving. I do want to point out one thing, and that was that my dad initiated the process of leaving. And if you're a parent and you have children, or whatever your relationship with your children is, make sure that that distinction is there between you and your children.

None of that meddling, you know, mother-in-law on the phone crying because he's using four-letter words, as my joke earlier was. And you'll have to listen to the recording, Brad, because you missed it. And April, too. But there needs to be that distinction. Don't let those lines blur, because biblically we're called to have that distinction, and two, because it's going to help their marriage be healthier. I guarantee it. It doesn't mean you're not involved and know one another. It's that you make sure that there's the distinction there.

All right, let's keep moving on in this passage here. The error of not leaving was that the relationships were not defined where they should have been. The error of not cleaving is, again, a problem of relationships not being defined like they should. Being joined. Here, like I said just a bit earlier, it has the concept of being glued or cemented together.

How many of you have ever seen pictures of a house that's been through an earthquake or a tornado and you see broken and ripped apart lumber? It's rarely, unless bad craftsmanship is involved, it's rarely at the point of a joint. The wood doesn't break where the glue bond is, it breaks outside of where that bond is. So where the breakage takes place is not where they were joined, it's somewhere else.

The problem is that in a marriage, if you've been joined and you've been cemented together, what often happens is hearts have splinters on them. Hearts, after a divorce, after a terrible breakup, become damaged. Those have to be sanded down and resurfaced to be re-glued.

That's a bad analogy in parables, so please don't take that and do too much with it. As I was going through this, I began to think what every Sunday school teacher who teaches about marriage thinks, and that is, I need statistics and hopefully not actually. I was going to refrain but this morning as I was looking at some statistics to see if I could prove the seven year statement that I've got in here because I hate to do things without having some kind of citing or quotation.

Most divorces take place at about seven years. That's the median time that divorces take place. But the marriage rate in the United States as of 2002 has fallen nearly 30%. Since 1970, the divorce rate has fallen 30% and increased. I'm sorry. Marriage has decreased 30%. The divorce rate has increased about 40%.

That doesn't sound like joining and being cemented together. We've stopped looking as a culture as a marriage being a husband and wife being joined together and instead two individuals cohabitating with a legal document that we call a marriage certificate. The percentage of divorces due to irreconcilable differences in 1997 was 80%. What's an irreconcilable difference with someone that you're joined to and are one flesh with?

There isn't such a thing. But they've redefined in our culture what a marriage is and what being joined is. And so these kinds of statistics, I've got three pages of them, but I'm not going to read a fraction of them. But the statistics of fractions work well.

The majority of couples marrying today have lived together first. 53% of women's first marriages are preceded by cohabitation. And the number of unmarried couples living together increased 72% between 1990 and 2000. And the number of unmarried couples living together has increased tenfold between 1960 and 2000.

I'll stop there because we don't need any more disparaging and depressing news. But we need to take a look at one flesh. There is a problem where people don't understand one flesh and cleaving and being together. What does one flesh mean? If I say one flesh, I'm going to put this pen down, I keep grabbing it. What do you guys think about when I say one flesh?

When he was created out of Adam's rib. Okay. That's no fair, that's a biblical reference. I'm just kidding, that's good. Anyone else have any thoughts on one flesh? If you're the same If you're one flesh, you're going to think in a like-minded way, you're going to work together for things. We'll use the expression, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. When we're talking about things that are not coordinated and joined in, that's not what you want in marriage. You want the left hand and the right hand to work together. One flesh would kind of point towards that way. I've heard one flesh taught with sexuality on multiple occasions.

We're not going to spend a lot of time there. I actually asked Brad, I said, how much do you think I should go into? He said, you should go all the way. And I was like, my mom's going to be in there. It's not going to happen. I'm just kidding. It never fails. No, no. I have had to talk about sex in a Sunday school class in front of my mom a number of times.

So I'm getting used to it now. No, but the truth of the matter is that one flesh involves every aspect of the marriage. It's going to involve your emotional and, very importantly, your spiritual and your physical and your intellectual relationships. You're going to discover things. I'm trying to figure out how to share an idea without sharing a personal story. Let's just say this in the broad sense of marriage.

There are times in a marriage when sexual intimacy is not possible. After you have a baby, the doctors say you need to take X number of weeks before you have sexual intimacy. Things are healing up or whatever else. Guys who are living in a relationship that's driven by sexuality are going to suddenly find themselves in a crummy relationship. because their wife just had a baby, or their female partner, if you're going to use the secular concept.

But in a marriage, if one flesh was just sexual, that would be a problem. But you need to make sure that your definition of one flesh involves all kinds of aspects. The second paragraph I've got here One flesh means we have a heavenly perspective on our partner.

We're being conformed to the image of Christ and we have the privilege of watching our God at work. One flesh means that a husband spends a tremendous amount of time knowing his wife spiritually and making sure she's growing and knowing where he's growing. Okay, that's partially what's going on here, the spiritual aspect of Ephesians 5, 22-33. Paul keeps saying Christ knows his wife.

We're it that's that's a good deal Christ knows his wife and we're to know him this this should also be happening in your marriage that you would know Christ and Your wife would know Christ and you would know where he is One flesh means that the husband knows why the pants his wife is trying on work on her body type Because it's his type of body because it's hers and I'm being somewhat sarcastic there because not all men know about fashion but I found it tremendously amazing that once I started to learn a little bit about fashion, not that I was commenting on other people's fashion, but when my wife said, what do you think about this shirt or these pants?

I could answer her question directly instead of grimacing and trying to look at anything else and not answer because I didn't know. Giving her real answers said to her, I love you and that we're one. And I know that sounds crazy, but knowing that kind of thing is important. It says, I know you and I love you. One flesh means being quick to listen.

I love to talk. Working in a basement for hours upon hours during the week by myself, I love to talk. How many words in a day do most men speak? Isn't it something like 10,000 to 15,000 words a day on average? And women are like 25,000 to 45,000 or something huge. I don't get my 10,000 words a day in, so you guys get it on Sunday mornings.

But it's easy for me to talk to Jessica and not listen to Jessica. Especially when she's going through a tough time. I mean well as the prayer chain said we had a miscarriage While we were in California or we discovered we'd had a miscarriage while we were in California on our road trip this last month And you know what there weren't words I could say to Jessica that would just make it all better So I just got to hold her and listen if she had things she wanted to say That's one flesh. It's not easy. It's not like I go, yeah, what an opportunity. Really glad we had this miscarriage. Not at all. I'm sad we had the miscarriage, but I'm grateful that in that opportunity the Holy Spirit led me to be a good listener and not try to fix it and not use a thousand words or ten thousand words.

One flesh. It means loving reminders and not nagging. not nagging. That's one of those things that if you're listening, it's easy to hear a nag when you're being requested or told to do something you would not like to do. So the listener needs to recognize that. But it's also being gentle and kind. The fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn't going to lead us to that kind of a communication style. Love covers a multitude of sins and doesn't keep track of how many it's covered in the last 24 hours or 24 years.

1 Corinthians 13.5. I had part B because there are a lot of little clusters in there. Paul says that love doesn't count the sins. It keeps no record of wrongs.

That's a tremendous part of one. How can you be one if you're keeping track of the reasons why you're different and better than your spouse? How can you be one flesh when you're going, oh! Let's see here. This is all the things you haven't done the last week that are wrong, sweetheart. So being one flesh, it has a tremendous impact. The last thing I've got here is one flesh means that you're beholding the Lord together.

2 Corinthians 3.18 and I know I probably over quote that one as well but 2 Corinthians 3.18 and I'll turn there so you get the New American Standard Version instead of off the top of my head version.

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. We're beholding the Lord. Beholding the Lord together is a tremendous part of being one flesh. What happens when we behold the Lord? What did Paul just say? What happens when we behold the Lord? We're growing from glory to glory. Together, as a husband and wife in one flesh, we should be beholding the Lord. If, as a spouse, you find your spouse is not beholding the Lord, what do you do? Don't try what I tried, which was to say, you're walking in the flesh. Usually if somebody's walking in the flesh, telling them that, not a great strategy. Instead, I learned from that, I only did that once.

Instead, we're called to come alongside and gently draw their focus back to the Lord. Not in a rude way, hopefully. Okay? Because that would be what I did the first time. But instead, we're beholding the Lord and growing in glory to glory together. That's one flesh. That's a tremendous opportunity. Now, Paul, in his typical run-on sentence fashion, continues in 532. He says, this mystery is great.

Because one flesh between two human beings who physically have two fleshes, is that the plural of flesh? By people both with their own flesh being one, it's a great mystery. But he's not just speaking of that, he's speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Paul points out that the two being one is mysterious but not ridiculous, because the same thing can be seen with Christ and the Church.

Again, I reference Colossians 3, 1-4. Paul's use of Christ as the ideal earlier in 5.23-26 brings us to the need to understand our identification with Christ. If we don't understand our identification, then how can we see the example of a good marriage in the light of Christ in the church. But we're identified with Christ as the church and so that's why this illustration makes any sense whatsoever.

It's because we already understand identification. Before I understood identification I can tell you this didn't make much sense to me either. Because I didn't see the church as the bride identified with Christ, I saw the church and the bride as this mystery. It was just stopped at being a mystery, but without an explanation.

We need to understand also that the illustration shows the ideal of Christ and the church positionally, not the ideal of the church conditionally. Is the church ideal conditionally? No. Even if it was besides me, I've screwed it up for the rest of you. Conditionally, that's not the language that Paul uses. He uses positional language where he talks about Christ having sanctified the church and having washed the church with the word and having made her a pure and spotless bride. That's the ideal.

Nevertheless, in Ephesians 5.33, he says, Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself. Now, Jeremy went over this last week, where the groom is called to look at the bride as his own body, as his own being himself.

Paul has done a great job, logically, if you were to look at the flow of this. He's brought us back around. He started off with this concept of the husband and he comes back. He takes a little detour to talk about this Genesis reference, but then he comes right back to it.

So he wraps back around that we need to have this sacrificial love Now let me ask this, how many of you have seen in your own lives a sacrificial love displayed with any regularity? That's not in a lot of hands, I'm getting nervous. Sacrificial love is something that I didn't realize very clearly until I was in my late teens. Again, a lot of things happened between about 17 and 21 that really changed the direction of my life.

But I started to realize what an adult looked like and I had heard various times growing up how much my dad made annually as a salary. And I'm not going to say how much that is because that's neither here nor there. But I knew that he was making what to me seemed like a tremendous amount of money when you're making minimum wage. His not minimum wage was pretty awesome. But then I noticed my dad wasn't buying himself a lot of stuff.

The neighbors were always buying stuff. and the guy always had his new souped-up car, or somebody had this new thing, or that new toy, or the big screen. Well, the big screen televisions then were really crummy by today's standards. But there was always something, and the guys were always getting them to show off to their friends, and why don't you come over to our house and watch football, because our screen's bigger and better than yours. But my wife needs this, but we can't get it right now, because I've got to pay the payments for the big screen television.

But my dad would continuously make choices that were sacrificial love type choices for the whole family. I watched him do it for my mom and for me. My dad turned down an opportunity to make tens of thousands more a year by moving to Idaho because I was dating Jessica. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing that kind of information. That was amazing to me that my dad would turn down a job to make a lot more money and move up in the world as far as the world was concerned because he didn't want to screw up this relationship that he knew I had with Jessica. We were still in high school. We were young, I guess, but we were still in high school and he didn't want to take that away. It was a sacrificial love that when I found that out, I was blown away. How could anyone do that? You don't see that. There's always more opportunity for more money and why wouldn't you want to take that? Because you wouldn't want to screw up a relationship that could last a lifetime. I am really glad he didn't.

I'm happily married to Jessica and glad that she's my bride. Sacrificial love. Loving your own wife, even as yourself, means that you look to the love and the relationship that you have with your wife and say, I don't need this because I need her. I don't need to be distracted by these things because I'm really distracted by her and that's okay.

I'm beholding the Lord with her. I think actually the best illustration I can think of of beholding the Lord was the night of my wedding with Jessica. We were standing at the altar. Her dad had finally, it took forever, finally walked down the aisle with her. And I was looking her in the face. And I was amazed at this beautiful woman I was staring at. And if my grandpa had gotten in between us and the beholding we were doing at that point in time, it might have gotten ugly in front of a group of 500 people. Because I was beholding my wife.

But together we need to be beholding the Lord with that same attitude. When the flesh comes in, you go, whoa, I'm not beholding the Lord right now. When the flesh comes into your marriage, you can say to one another, whoa, we're not beholding the Lord right now. Let's be beholding the Lord. Let's do that together. Because as husbands, we're called to be beholding our wives and loving them sacrificially. Let's keep going. We may actually end up early, but that's okay. Paul goes on here, he says, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

What does respect mean in today's culture? Not in the marriage, anywhere in today's culture. How do people define or act when they see respect or say respect? If at all. At this point, respect means not ever talking to a challenger. Like if someone has an elite that you know is stupid, respect means not talking to them about it. So it really works when you're dealing with a Buddhist. You're just supposed to respect their belief and not challenge it in any way. It doesn't work with a white supremacist, obviously. here, you don't respect them. If you're a Christian, you definitely don't respect them, whatever it is.

Yeah, so relativism is definitely part of that. How about tolerance? Does the word tolerance define? I think tolerance is what that sounds more like to me. We use the word respect because it sounds nicer than tolerance, but it's what it ends up being. We redefined respect to be tolerance more than it should be.

Respect, looking at the Greek, actually involves, in some contexts, the word is used to define fear. The name Phoebe, if you've seen the name Phoebe, is actually the Greek word here. That's not the pronunciation. But the concept has to do with fearing and respect. Now, in this case, it's not fear for your life or wrath or things like that, but it has to do with honor and respecting the husband.

It's served. Everything's served. Yeah. The military is probably one of the last places where respect has any sort of courtesy involved in an order that's involved with the relationship. In our culture, that continues to decline, especially if you've ever eaten out at a restaurant.

It's amazing what service feels like as a customer when the person doesn't respect the customers. It's just a job. Versus when you go to a place where they say, hey, this is a customer. I'm going to serve them and I'm going to respect them as a client. And you're shocked. I always tip well when somebody actually serves me at a restaurant because it's amazing that it's actually happening because it's so rare anymore. Anyways, that's a side rabbit trail. Respect. Paul also wraps up the passage with a reference to the wife submitting to or respecting her husband. Another personal story from my life.

When Jessica and I moved to Texas, we went to seminary and seminary was going to make us better theologians or whatever else it was. But one of the requirements was to take a counseling class. So we just kind of, okay, let's go through it. Then we went to the counseling class. A couple weeks into the counseling class, the teacher talked about respect in marriage.

She had biblical grounds to do so, so that was good. And after listening to the class and being shocked by what I heard, Jessica and I both drove, well I drove, but we drove home from class crying and apologizing to one another because I had not been respectable on various occasions and she had not respected me on various occasions and we had not understood respect in the marriage.

When was the last time you watched a sitcom on television where respect existed remotely in the marriage? It doesn't exist. You can watch a drama and you're still not going to find respect in most dramas on television. It's not culturally prevalent. I watched it in my parents' marriage, but I didn't realize that I was being disrespectful and not respecting Jessica as though she was my own body.

The problem that we see here is that Commands exist for the woman, but those commands don't get negated by the fact that you're a husband. If you love her like she's your own body, you're still going to have to respect your wife. Mom? One of the things that Ernest said numerous times is this says that the wife is to respect her husband, but it doesn't say that the husband is to make sure she respects him.

I would restate that it's to make sure that the husband is respectable. Make sure that you are, and that's one of the things I've gotten here, as a husband, if you're a jerk, I know that nobody in this classroom is ever a jerk, but I have been, outside of this classroom, a jerk.

And so I was not respectable. And then I wondered why we got into arguments. I was just leading. I was just laying down the way things were supposed to be. Not so much. No, I was being a jerk and I was not respectable. And strangely enough, my wife didn't respect that. Yeah. I'm sorry. Can you say that again? I want to make sure I get through.

He talks about Abraham, the way he treated Sarah. Do you remember the Old Testament situation? She had respectful behavior. She still reverenced him. Oh yeah, that's not negating that. And in spite of what he did. And that's a great cross-reference. I think that's a tremendous thing. The reason I ask that is because I had the privilege of photographing weddings for 22 years. And I can almost tell Even the ones that started right.

Many people were godly, they were spiritual, and within five years they were divorced. Why? Because you have enemies, you have a flesh, you have... The prerequisite to a successful marriage is being filled by the Spirit. Absolutely. When you walk in Jesus 5.18. Absolutely. Walking by the Spirit will carry out the lust of the flesh. So, a good marriage that we think is starting good can turn sour. Absolutely. Or a bad marriage can turn good. Yeah. I've seen both of those. Yeah. In a marriage you could have a person that they start off right and also one party becomes carnal and the other ones, in a same marriage, are fleshly and one is spiritual. Yeah.

Now how does all this work? You see, you've got so many scenarios that are, I think we have an oversimplification of what we're talking about. Because if you really analyze marriages today, 55-51% of Christian marriages are Christians are divorced, remarried, divorced, and so forth. How does this unity work? How does one flesh now come to play when you have a divorce and now you're remarried and then you divorce and you're remarried again? Because I was dealing with singles at one church and one girl was married six times and divorced six times. Now how do you deal with one flesh.

And so what I'm saying is that there's a lot more to this than just what meets the eye. Absolutely. If it's not for the Holy Spirit, this doesn't happen. If you're not focused on the Lord and abiding, then you've got No chance. The interesting thing, you mentioned 51% in the church divorce rate. The divorce rate is actually going up higher and higher in the church compared to the world, because the world is just stopping getting married.

They're done with marriage. It's an old institution. It's inconvenient. There's not the tax benefits that there should be or whatever else they want to say. Like Brad Pitt recently or in the last several years said he wasn't going to marry Angelique Jolie until gay marriages were allowed. I thought, what a scummy guy. Somehow she thinks that's great that he's standing up for human rights or something. He's like, I'm going to go be sleeping with this woman who's a sex symbol in culture, and then I'm just going to say that it's okay because I don't like the marriage definition. But the secular world has abandoned marriage.

You talked about being at a wedding and seeing a marriage. Last month when we were on a road trip and while we were gone for most of the month, my cousin got married. And it's amazing to see at the wedding The people in the seats who were married and who's married, who's not married, who's remarried and those relationships that fell apart. And then my uncle turned around and was doing the ceremony and he said, it's your job as believers, if you are believers, to be holding these people accountable and to be praying for them and to be involved with their lives and make sure they're growing together.

And being in the seat going, that's me. because I actually still have the same marriage I started with. And that's rarer and rarer. Coming back to Paul closing out this passage, he starts off with the wife submitting just like we are to be submitting to one another in the body. He moves into the wife submitting and then he comes back out bringing things to a close with the woman respecting her husband.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about marriage because I don't want to have a bad one. And just like Bill said, abiding in the Holy Spirit is the primary number one, walking in the Spirit is the number one thing that's the first prerequisite. If you skip that one, there's no hope.

The tremendous thing after that is that as a body, There are actually some pretty solid marriages here at Holly Hills. If you're one of the few of us in this room that happens to be from the younger couples, look around you and seek out those relationships with the marriages that are solid before you and get to know those people because you know what? They're going to have some stories and hopefully they'll be funnier than some of mine. But they're going to be able to share with you how the Lord has grown them and you know what? That sharing with you is part of their ministry to the body here at Holly Hills and may be a great ministry to your marriage.

Next Saturday there's going to be a husband's seminar. It's from 930 to 1130. If you are a husband here and you'd like to attend, I think talk to my dad. But spending time on your marriage, focusing on Christ together, is only going to lead to bearing fruit and equality in your marriage.

As we've gone through this passage in Ephesians, I said I was talking a lot with the headphones on while I was listening to the recordings away. Part of it was because there was so much that could be drawn out of this passage. We could spend an entire semester going over this passage and talking about all the relevancy to different marriage aspects. Physically, let me point out some things.

Sexual physical behavior, if you're not abiding in the Holy Spirit, is not all that it could be in fulfillment. The fruit of the Spirit, strangely enough, still applies to intimacy in bed. Emotionally, the fruit of the Spirit, kindness, gentleness, all those things, they apply. Patience. I have children. I need to be a patient husband in front of them so they know what a godly man looks like to marry.

Intellectually, What are the intellectual things that stimulate? Do you talk to your spouse about it? If they're from E! Online and entertainment news, that's not going to be as intellectually stimulating as some of the things you could pursue. If you're spending time doing things, be intellectual with your spouse.

I missed one of them. It's all right. We'll keep going. We're almost done. In the body here, let's be praying for one another's marriages. Let's be praying for one another in our marriages, but then other marriages. If the statistic, as Bill said, is 51%, and that seems to be the number I've seen again and again more recently, There needs to be some prayer there. There needs to be some involvement and some relationship aspects. I don't say that to be legalistic. It's not like I'm saying, if you don't do that, you're wrong. I say that because I believe we're called as a body to be praying for one another anyways.

This is just one of the ways that you can be praying. Any other thoughts? We're done with this passage and yet I have a feeling that we'll be back here eventually for something. Jeremy? You mentioned beholding Christ together. It seems as though when you are by the power of the Spirit, have that strong marriage, and all these things are true, that marriage itself is a way of beholding Christ.

When you're sacrificing for your wife, and as husbands, when we're caring for her, understanding her needs, and when we're focused on each other, and having that you know, mental and spiritual and physical intimacy, that in and of itself seems to be a way of beholding Christ. And God created marriage, and it's one of the many ways that He's given us that we can draw closer to Him and understand more about Him. We can understand Christ and the Church through marriage. I think Or we can understand more about marriage by looking at Christ and the Church. I think we can understand a lot about Christ and the Church as we grow closer in our marriage. To me that's amazing that God's given you this other person that you can love and get tremendous joy from. And from that relationship you can also draw closer to God and know more about Him. It is a tremendous revelation of God's work on our lives. One of the things that this passage doesn't address is how single folks... Sorry, I'm pointing at you. They can't hear me. No one will see that on the recording.

It's been a tremendous blessing to be in this body and have interaction with single folks and not have to worry about Let me just start back, step one back, and say this. I've been to other churches where people have been carnal, and having single people in the church was a difficult thing to deal with. Because they didn't know how to fit in. Because it was like, ooh, you're different. You're not married. Rather than, that's my brother or sister in Christ.

I could spend time with them. Now I've got to be careful, because it's not appropriate for me as a married guy to go spend a tremendous amount of time with a single, unmarried gal. But I don't worry about it in this body because there is such a great involvement between people who are married and not married and people who are spending time together because it's the Lord working in our lives.

So it's a tremendous thing to see how this can happen. And lastly, and I said this during the lesson during the main service back when I taught on Titus, your marriage is reflecting the life of Christ and what a marriage should look like to your children.

Remember that as you have children, that they're watching you. I'm sure that Abby and Evie are picking up a few bad habits by watching us. Hopefully not a lot. But it's a tremendous responsibility before the body and our children that we would set that up. Again, Bill talked about being at a wedding and watching this new marriage happen right in front of you.

What did the parents set in place as the example for each one of those kids that the kid would look and say, oh, my dad said, are you ready to be a man? I don't know that I was ready mentally. I wasn't ready psychologically prepared to be a man. But I knew what that looked like because I'd watched him do that. I knew what it looked like. I knew that Jessica was going to be a good wife because I saw things about my mom in her.

And I hope that doesn't make you too weirded out. But there was qualities of a godly woman that I had seen growing up that matched what's in Ephesians 5 in my wife. or wife to be. And that's a tremendous thing. So as parents, be aware that these things are impacting your kids. Alright, let's close in prayer. That was the second bell, I think. And I need a cup of water, something fierce.

Heavenly Father, we just ask that you would continue to bring these things to mind as we live out our marriages or our daily lives. If we're married, that we would remember that we need to be beholding you as we behold our partners, our spouses. And if we're single, Lord, that we remember that we are the bride of Christ and that you are exampling this for us no matter what. And we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.