Love Your Husband: By Liking His Manliness

Well, let's go back to the book of Titus this morning, Titus chapter 2.

Some weeks ago, as I was studying through the text, I got to this section in Titus 2 and begin to think about the world's lies and Satan and the world's attacks against God's design and God's plan. And I'll be honest, I just started writing and studying and researching and writing and praying and writing and researching. And I don't know, maybe I have 60 pages of notes. And then I thought, well, now what am I going to do with all this?

And so I've just put it into a series. And for you preachers who are out there listening, this is what I call local church-centered expository preaching. That is, when you come across a truth in the text, that is a truth that is getting particular attack and undermining by the enemy. A truth that is being lost because of the enemy. Then stop there and develop that truth. Help your church.

Don't just dot every I and cross every T of proper exposition. Take care of your flock as you're doing the exposition. So I'm pausing here to develop out from, let's say, a systematic overview of much of what the Scriptures teach about the home marriage and in our particular context, older ladies mentoring or teaching younger ladies.

All right. So let's look at it again together. Titus chapter two. And let's start in verse three and go through verse five to get the flow of the context. Now we're camping on the phrase, the older women teaching the younger women to love their husbands.

So last week under the broad heading in the sub-series will be love your husbands. Last week's message on love your husbands was the missing link that the older women must take the baton and must teach and mentor the younger women in God's church to be committed to these things. Listen, these truths, these doctrines that are essential in the women's lives so that their lives glorify God and therefore the church glorify God and that they be blessed with human flourishing. In other words, it glorifies God and it's better for the ladies. But isn't Satan the liar?

He's always the liar and he's always trying to undermine. Now when we come to that phrase in Titus 2, 4, older ladies teach these younger ladies to love your husbands. We have a word that's used only one time in the New Testament. It comes from two base words. Philos is the word for love here. And it's a word that has the idea of being a beloved or someone who is dear, someone you're friendly with. So the concept is it's somebody you naturally like, somebody you naturally enjoy and appreciate like your very family members.

Sometimes we don't like all of our family members, but generally we're bonded to, we're drawn toward, we're affectionate toward. So that's the word here. It's not the word agape, which often speaks to that supernatural Holy Spirit given potential in all of us that we received when we were saved, that God-like love.

Now it's dependent upon agape. If you're not, if you haven't had the new birth and agape love is not implanted into you by the Holy Spirit, you can't have this type love. Not in the way it's supposed to be lived out as a Christian anyway. But this is not agape and it's not eros, another Greek word for the sexual love that God's given to married couples to enjoy. But philos, a brotherly love, if you will.

And then andros is the second word and it means man. So love of man in this context, a love of your man, a love of your husband. So I've entitled this session today, Love Your Husband By Liking His Manliness.

Boy, this just goes right in the face of the trend of our culture, right in the face of the Barbie movie, right in the face of the prophet Taylor Swift. Teach the younger women to love their husband's manliness because you know who gave him his manliness? God did. Now in Roman number one, teach these younger ladies that your husband is manly for the glory of God. God made him this way for God's own glory. You know, your life is about God. Your gender is about God. Your marriage is about God. Matter of fact, it's all about God, even down to everyday things in everyday life.

First Corinthians 10 31, whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. This is what we call being God-centered. You see, the trend of evangelicalism and the trend of Baptist life for many decades now has been a very man-centered thing. Let's design our doctrines. Let's design our church programs. Let's design our teachings, our music so that men appreciate it and are blessed by it. But that's wrong.

That's upside down. We're to be God-centered, not man-centered. We don't love God because he helps men. We love God, and when we find God and we joy in God and we trust in God's salvation through his son Jesus Christ, we are helped as people, but we don't start with helping people. We start with glorifying God. It's all about God. Whether you eat, drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. I talked to one of our boys about the football season. Well, fellas, you play football for the glory of God.

Some of our kids are in the band. You play in the band for the glory of God. And wives, you be a wife, not by what you discern is writing best, but the way God says is writing best for the glory of God. So you might prove that the average fallen woman's wisdom about marriage is wrong, but God's wisdom about marriage is right. And then God gets the glory. Well, Matthew 22, 37, we're to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind.

And another text adds all of our strength. In other words, it's all about God. Now, in order to glorify himself and bless us, do good for us, God created humankind as male and female. And then he designed that we come together as husband and wife in marriage. Marriage is a holy and sacred institution designed and ordained by God himself. If I could just make a side note here without legalisms, but I would like to encourage our young girls to bring the marriage ceremony off the farm and back to the church. I'm not saying that's evil or wrong, but everything about your ceremony is about God before it's about you. And we want the marriage ceremony to be centered on the glories of God and the wisdom of God and giving us this sacred institution. It's not just a cute, fun, beautiful thing that's about us. That's secondary. It's a holy, sacred and righteous event that's about God.

See, God centered doesn't mean it can't be beautiful and all the things you girls want it to be. Of course it can, but things in their right order. Well, that's a side note.

That's not in my notes. So God designed that male and female then come together as husband and wife. And now the gender assignment to each person is given at conception by God, and it cannot be changed.

It cannot be erased and it cannot be reversed. The scripture reminds us that Satan is, quote, the God of this world, end of quote. Second Corinthians four four. This world hates God and this world hates God's truth. Satan is the father of all liars, and he has permeated the world with a myriad of lies. But the foundational lie that extends all the way back to the Garden of Eden is this lie that man can act as his own God. Man can by himself decide what is good and evil for him, decide what is right or wrong for him.

But that's a lie. You don't have your own truth. You don't have your own grasp of absolutes that are absolute for you, but might not be absolute. Look, truth and absolutes are objective.

They're outside of us. They came from the objective God. Man cannot decide these things for himself because God already has decided them.

They're settled from time and eternity. But this rejection of God, this believing Satan's lie and reject God as he's revealed himself, rejecting his truth, his absolutes. And we reject therefore his rule and his authority over our lives. That's the foundational lie that's behind all the other lies that are in our world and behind all the pain and the suffering and the sorrow that we have in our culture. And doesn't it seem that there is no depth of wickedness that Satan and depraved mankind will not go to as they dethrone God in their lives and establish on their lives Satan's lies. That's what we see all in our culture.

For example, this whole so-called trans movement is built on Satan's lie. You see, brothers and sisters, at conception, God assigns men and women with specific chromosomes. Men have the XY chromosome, males have the XY chromosome, women, females have the XX chromosome. And every cell of your body is marked either XY or XX.

Did you hear me? Every cell that constitutes your makeup is marked XY, man, male, or XX, female or woman. So this whole notion of this barbaric, ungodly notion that we can give our children chemical castration drugs and mutilate our babies' bodies and somehow make a man a woman or a male a female or a female a male, you can't do that because you can't erase the chromosome God stamped on every cell in their body just because you mutilate the body.

You cannot change the maleness or the femaleness of that person. So this is God's work. You are unique because once God marks you XY or XX, then there's DNA that is a matrix of it put together to form you and only you. You're very unique.

There was no one before you like you and there'll be no one after you like you. No one in the Bible says in Psalm 139, verse 14, For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. When God made you male, that's a wonderful thing God did. When God made you female, that's a wonderful thing God did. We should glory in that.

Get back to our text. Older ladies teach the younger ladies to glory in their femaleness, but also glory in their husband's manliness, because God did it this way for his own glory, to show his power, his wisdom, his beauty, his creativity, and making men one way and women another way. So the greatest difference between people is their God-given gender assignment as men and women, and men and women are vastly different one from the other. You know, our brains are formed differently. That is man versus woman. Our brains function differently.

Our emotions are significantly different, and our bodies are vastly different. God made and God still makes only two genders, male and female. Well, biblically speaking, let's think about this. Genesis 1 27, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. He created Adam and Eve, not Adamet and Eve.

Not Adam and Evan. He created Adam and Eve, male and female. 1 Corinthians 11 3 says, but I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. God has specific roles and functions, and that's why he designed men with their chromosomes and DNA makeup to be uniquely men and manly, and women to be uniquely women and feminine. As I've said many times before, men are immeasurably superior to women at being men, and women are immeasurably superior to men at being women. Older ladies teach the younger ladies to quit trying to confuse our motive issue and glory in the difference, because you see, it's hard sometimes for ladies to accept and understand that this thing I married is good. He didn't fit what I was thinking.

I hadn't been able to fix him yet. And I'm going to elaborate on this in my latter messages, but ladies, what the world is presently telling us is not that men should understand women better. What they're saying is men now must become women.

That's what they're saying. Now they're even going a step further. Not only should men become like women, forget what God says about it, forget the unique role God designed them to play, and the unique way God designed their setup and their makeup.

Forget that. We want them to become like women, because by the way, we're our own God now. Not only that, but now men are inherently inferior to women. That's where it's coming to.

It's already there. Have you watched any sitcoms? Have you heard any clever little cute songs? Have you gone to any movies lately where the man is the buffoon and the idiot and unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, but the women rule everything? Oh, that's just fun. Oh, it's fun, but it's Satan's ploy.

If he can get you to laugh at something, he can get you to embrace something. Roman numeral two, understand, ladies, as we're teaching the younger ladies, not my job, I'm not to teach the younger ladies. Brother Matt's not to teach the younger ladies. Brother Steve, Brother Tim, Brother Nathan, or any of our staff, that's not our job, because it's inappropriate for us to be involved in direct teaching of the younger ladies.

But the older ladies have to teach the younger ladies. God made them unique, glory in their manliness. He made them that way for his own glory. Now, Roman numeral two, there's a primary purpose that he made them with this manliness. And that primary purpose is, well, let me back up this way. When we think about the purpose of marriage, let's say, I jotted down three things that I think are foundational. Love and intimacy, marriage exists for love and intimacy. And love, that love takes a lot of work. And maintaining that intimacy takes some striving and working, making that your priority.

So let's do that. And again, older ladies help the younger ladies to understand that sometimes the kids have to go, sometimes the laundry has to go, sometimes a lot of the, quote, essential things in her mind need to go, but loving her husband doesn't go. Love and intimacy. Secondly, societal order. That God has ordained that society have structure and order and purpose and meaning. Men just can't go out here and have sexual relations with any person and bond to any woman and woman. Women cannot go out here and just have relations with any man they want. That's chaos and disorder and leads to ruin and destruction.

And by the way, that's where we're headed fast. God meant for a man to have a woman and make a covenant bond under God and have a sane and seemly and proper and upright structure for society to flourish under. And then that naturally leads to the third purpose and that's procreation. It's the purpose of God that families, moms and dads, raise children who are disciplined, who are upright, who respect authority so that society can go on, again, with order and structure and harmony.

And we have seen very clearly, as the marriage breaks down and the home breaks down, juvenile delinquency explodes in a culture. But there's a purpose above all of those. Those are legitimate and foundational, but there's one above all. The primary purpose is that we might reflect the message of Christ's relationship with his bride, the church, to the world. That's the primary purpose, Roman II, that we might show this relationship of the way Christ relates to the church and the way the church relates to Christ. Ladies, when you do what God's called you to do, it's not about your husband being worthy of it.

It's about God's glory being deserving of it. And same way for us guys. Let's look at Ephesians 5, 22 through 28, and I'll just run through this.

We'll not just really unpack it. But notice the different roles here. Wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. And I love that possessive word there, your own husbands. Wives are not, it's just amazing to me how many professing Christian wives will grumble about submitting to their husbands, go out and take a job and submit to somebody else's husband all day long every day.

Hello? God has not promised to work on your employer's heart for your good, but God's promised wives, if they'll do what they're called to do, he'll work on your husband's heart. I think one of my messages is gonna be how to fix your husband.

Because God's got a way for you to fix your husband. But it's his way, not your way. Your way to just dig a hole. Your way will be tearing down your house with your own hands, as the Proverb says. But God's got a way that works every time. Wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.

Why? Verse 23, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is head of the church. God made him different for this headship.

We'll elaborate on that, Lord, we'll think a lot next week. He can't be like you because God's giving him a unique role. And that headship includes manliness. Because that reflects Christ. Do you think Christ has headship over his church?

Of course he does. You think Christ is to be honored and submitted to by his church? Of course he should be honored and submitted to by the church. And the marriage relationship is to reflect that. He himself being the savior of the body. The husband doing his biblical role is a type of savior for his wife. Not in the eternal sense, I don't mean that. But in the sense that he is God's ordained person for that wife's leadership, for her provision, for her protection, her security in life.

To save her from so many oppressive and difficult and undermining schemes of the enemy. As old Bill Gothard used to teach, I don't agree with all he taught, but he used to teach a long time ago, you've got an umbrella of protection when you stay under your husband's authority. To protect you from all kinds of, excuse me, destructive influences that Satan wants to bring against you. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be to their husbands and everything. Now he made us different. We are equal as joint heirs of eternal life before God. We're equal humankind, we're equal, made in the image of God, but have very differing roles. That's why God made men different.

They have a different role. Older ladies teach the younger ladies when they're hurt or when they're disappointed and they're heartbroken and their feelings are rising up and their emotions are stirred reminding them again, God made this, he may not be doing everything right, but a whole lot of this is because you really want him to be like you. And he just needs to be a manly man of God, not like you.

Think that through, ladies. Verse 25, husbands, here's the other side of the coin, love your wives. Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, he's uniquely made the way he is because he has to oversee and lead you and love you in a way that you don't even understand. How can you comprehend loving your wife the way Christ loved the church? I think I know what the foundational principle is. That is, she has become your one and only. What did Christ do for his church?

Listen to me. Christ looked forward from eternity past before anything existed but God and he looked forward into eternity future and he looked forward into time in the future and he saw this host of people that he would come to the earth with a special love for and die for, that's his church. The church has always been his one and only. He came to the earth, he did what he did, he taught what he taught, he performed the miracles that he performed, he went to the cross, he died on the cross vicariously, specifically, effectually for his church. His church is his one and only. He rose again for his church's justification. He intercedes in heaven for everybody. No, only those who believe, only those who are the church. He intercedes for his church.

He's coming in for who? For his one and only. You see the Bible is written in the day when Jews, Greeks and Romans basically used their wives like property and they had a bunch of them, concubines and a lot of the Jewish and Greek men would trade out a wife every year and so this was a radical teaching. Even the religious authorities among the Pharisees and many of them had a practice of just swapping wives all the time. And so here Paul writes through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, now men, what did Jesus do for his bride? Now you look to your bride the same way, she's your one and only.

You get up in the morning, you go to work. Not for a new bass boat, might be okay to have one, I don't know. Not for a new tree stand, might be okay to have one, I don't know.

Not for a new set of golf clubs, I don't know. Primarily because you got a one and only to think about. You're gonna make sure she's housed, she's clothed, she's fed, she's protected. Wow, that pictures what Christ would do and God made men different from women, gave them a manliness for that leadership role, that teaching role, that protecting role, that providing role. Older ladies help the younger ladies to understand that this beast they married has different propensities, different temptations because God made him different because he has a different role.

Well we can go on and on. So our marriage is a display to all the world to see the relationship of Christ with this church and his church relationship with Christ. When the man plays his part and the woman plays her part, it's all to the end that God will be glorified and to the end of their well-being and of course their eternal happiness. And listen to me, God's will always is connected with our well-being. I'm getting ahead of myself, it's in my future notes but well just how does this work? You can't figure it out, you have to faith it out.

Amen? You'll never figure it out. Well if I can get my wife to this, this, this and this that I'll provide for her and care for her and she'll be my one. No, no, no, no. You just do what you're supposed to do and faith it out. Well if my husband would dah, dah, dah, dah, then I would. No, no, no, you don't figure it out.

You faith it out. And I think it's very helpful to back up and say God has beautifully, wonderfully, creatively made women different from men and men different from women because they have different roles and this glorifies God. In Proverbs 31, we see the godly wife centers her life in the home.

She's providing a home that is comfortable and welcoming and secure for her husband and her children. We see the husband goes out into the world that he might love his wife by facing the battle out there to provide the income and the provision that his wife and family needs. God made us different. That's why the genders are made very different.

All for the supreme purpose of reflecting, showing forth the relationship of Jesus Christ with his bride, the church. Roman numeral three, and I've only got three Roman numerals. Roman numeral three, science, and I'll back that up. True science exclaims his biological manliness. And I say true science because we have political science today.

No, I don't mean the political science class you take in the university or the major you got in the university. I mean politics spending something as science when it's not science. Wear a mask, wear a mask. No, don't wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. No, wear a mask. The vaccine is 98% effective.

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. We don't know if it's effective at all. But Pfizer and Moderna are $100 billion richer. We do know that.

Give me an amen, church. I'm not making up stuff. This is the kind of so-called science. That's not science at all. But true science exclaims the biological manliness of the male gender.

Science shows us the vast difference between men and women. Older ladies teach the younger ladies these very truths. Do you realize when you get to the judgment seat of Christ, the Lord will look at you and say, did you intentionally train the girls under you and the girls in your church the biblical truths about maleness and manliness and the husband's role and femininity and the caregiver gifts and the role of the woman in the church? And you'll say, well, my pastor didn't teach us that. And he'll say, who was your pastor? And you'll say, Jeff knobbed it and say, yes, he did, too.

You say, I'm handing this baton off. This isn't in that, you know, there's a book of the Bible called Optional. No, there's not one. I forgot, there's just not one.

This isn't optional. Science, true science, it's exclaims his biological manliness. Our physical bodies, for example, our physical brain organ is physically different. Did you know men's brains are bigger than women's?

I didn't know that, doesn't mean they're smarter. It's just a bigger organ. And I can't give you all the neurobiological terms, but there are parts of women's brains and men's brains that are different sizes, one to the other.

God made us different. And then there's been a study of 25,000 people. Well, they watched the blood flow and the firing up activity of a man's brain in contrast to a woman's brain. And lo and behold, you won't believe this. They found out they're very different. And we've been taught all this time, there's no real difference. First of all, we don't have eyes. I told you the best thing I like about a woman, she's not a dude.

And the best thing you ladies should like about a man is he's not a little effeminate woman. I like it to be clear up front, amen? Let's get this clear up front. So they do these brain scans and they monitor the activity in the blood flow. And here's what they found out. They found out that men's brains are a lot quieter than women's brains. They could bring the same subject or issue up and a woman's brain is boom, boom, boom, it's firing everywhere compared to a man's brain that's just about half asleep. It's in the recliner. And the man did nothing to cause that. God made it to be different. I can just imagine all the conversations and excuses and things that men will throw out now. Baby, you understand my brain's in a recliner right now.

I know yours is firing all over the place, but mine isn't. But jesting aside, brothers and sisters, this is neurobiological fact. And by the way, isn't God smart? You ever tried to raise three or four babies, keep up with everything, feed them, clothe them, help them when they're sick, take care of a husband, love your husband, keep your home? It takes a lot of brain power to do all that, amen? But a guy can be more single-minded and have no excuse for him not to care for his wife. We're not talking about that now, though.

There's no excuse, though, for guys not to have a caring thought for his wife, of course, but he's not designed to keep a home and raise babies the way a woman is. I'm amazed. My wife, my daughters, I think back to my mom, my grandmothers, the only way they could pull it off is they got a brain that's firing all over the place. Vicki Clopfelter may have two brains, I don't know. If you don't know, Lanny and Vicki, they're our best people and they've got 27 children. And all of them are good kids. If you can have kids like that, you ought to have a bunch more. I'm sorry, guys, I didn't mean to pick y'all out. Secondly, men's brains are literally wired to be more impulsive.

Just naturally speaking, put a man and woman together, men are gonna take more risk, get out on the edge a little bit more. You know why? Because God made him to provide and protect. Thank God, when it gets really heated, challenging situation, that the man doesn't look at his wife and say, well, baby, you're a big girl, you handle it.

No, he's just geared that way. He goes out in the workplace. He says, oh, me, if we have this third child, is this salary enough?

And so he takes a risk, takes a new job because he's a provider. You can take the same women and the majority of the women will say, I don't want the promotion, I want the time at home with my babies. That's not right or wrong, that's just God made us different. And science proves this emphatically.

It's beyond discussion. Men have to be impulsive, they have to take risks, they have to try to for more, it's part of what they do. You know, when you take full responsibility for the mortgage, the car payments, the health insurance, the home insurance, the automobile insurance, the life insurance, the disability policy, the groceries, the clothing, the furnishing in the home, eye and doctor visits, and a decent vacation or two a year, you better have a guy that's a little bit impulsive, a little bit driven to get things taken care of and try to think ahead. Another thought, women have more emotional brains. The neurobiologists and psychiatrists who looked at this said that the part of the brain that feels deeply or lends itself or connects to our emotions is just far more active in a woman than it is in the man.

Isn't that just like God? Women get pregnant. And by the way, absolutely only women get pregnant. Women just take these babies, and they birth these precious babies.

And by the way, they're not secondary items to be set aside for our purposes in life. That is your purpose in life, those babies. And she becomes this compassionate caregiver, and she has these deep bonding emotions.

A man bonds with his babies, I get that, I've done that, but not like mama does. God gave her a brain that triggers that element deeper in her. It's almost as if God designed our physical bodies to match the Word of God. Women worry more. It's a biological fact. The part of the brain that deals with worry and anxiety is far more active in a woman than it is with men. That's because they have a lot to be concerned about. And again, raising babies and taking care of a husband and keeping home requires a lot of concern.

Now, there's a downside to this, the scientists say. They're not careful. They'll get stuck on something and obsess on something, and then it begins to be sinful worry, not just good carefulness.

And it gets to be anxiety and depression. But brothers, that means we ought to live with our wives in an understanding way, understanding God gave them this capacity because it makes them wonderful caregivers for our babies, but also it gives them a weakness we need to be compassionate about in caring for our wives. Men have more physical coordination than women. The area of the brain that deals with physical athletic activities or coordination is stronger or more active in a man than a woman. And by the way, if you're going to be a hunter and gather and fight the wild beast and bring home the meat for the family, you're going to have to have more of that. Much less guarding your home and your domain. God made men for that.

Older ladies teach the younger ladies. God designed him that way because he has responsibilities you don't have. Men make sure your wives go to bed at night thinking this, whether I work or not, whether I provide anything of resources or not, this man will say to it that he gets it done.

God's geared him for that. Women have deeper and quicker intuition than a man. Part of the brain that deals with developing that gut feeling.

I got a hunch about this. It's just stronger in a woman's brain than a man's brain. It has to be because, again, she's raising babies.

I can't tell you the times. It's been several times raising our babies and now Pam usually going with my daughters when our grandbabies go to the doctor and hearing the pediatrician say, you know, the test doesn't tell me anything, but I've learned to trust mom's gut intuition on this. There's something here. And lo and behold, keep looking, they find mama was right.

She's just got a knack of just sensing something that needs attention when a man, not on the radar, just not there. Do you get mad? Do you say, why doesn't he care? That shouldn't be your first responsibility. Praise God, God made him a man. He has roles and difficulties and challenges and responsibilities.

I should not have. And I have those that he should not carry. Well, in addition to all of that, our bodies are vastly different. Men's bone structure and muscular structure is much larger and stronger. Women have more fat stores. They have to take care of those babies with their bodies while they're carrying them. Women have larger livers, larger stomachs, larger thyroids, larger kidneys, and women have lower blood pressure. They're going to need low blood pressure with those babies in the house.

I guarantee it. Women have faster heartbeats. Women have a longer index finger. Men are hairier.

That's our claim to fame in all of this. Men burn calories faster. And men mature more slowly. And that's not even to mention the radical, vast difference in our reproductive systems. So I just want to take a giant pushback against this ridiculous lunacy, idiocy, that men and women are equal. They are not. They're not alike.

Actually, not at all. God made the genders vastly different. Every cell in a woman's body is stamped by God with the imprint woman. And every cell in a man's body is stamped with the imprint man. And out beside that imprint on every cell of your body that says man or woman, there's the phrase, made in Eden by God himself. Nothing could be more foundationally irrational and contrary to the Creator's purposes and more detrimental to humankind's well-being and flourishing than for a man to try to act like a woman or for a woman to try to act like a man. Do you know what's second as far as being irrational and a foundational irrationality?

You know what's second to that? Second to that is for a husband to think he can be a wife and a mother and for a wife and a mother to think she can be a man and head of the household. That's as contrary to God's edict and to nature as men trying to be women or women to be men. I just happened to run across a woman on one of these liberal ladies on one of these talk shows and she said, well, now, look, if something happens to my husband, I can do the things a man does in the home.

No, you can't. Now, certainly, you'll change some things, but if you're raising a child by yourself, you keep telling that child there are godly men in our church and other places you can learn from and watch and I'll do all I can to be the godly mother God called you to be. And that's one of the brilliant things God's given us in the church. Every child in this church has, in a sense, multiple dads and moms and grandmothers and granddaddies and aunts and uncles in the faith. I was raised basically without a father. But God put in my life good godly men and good examples of men. But we don't need to try to think a man can be a woman or a woman can be a man or a man can be a wife. Just do those roles and a wife can be a husband.

Now, there's challenges and there's difficult seasons where we have to cover for each other. I get all of that. Of course, that's right. But not what this world is teaching us today. So Titus 2, 4 says that the older women must teach the younger women to love their husbands and that starts with loving the manliness that God's put in them.

I don't think we appreciate church just how much the leftist and the wokest and progressive religion with their doctrines have made inroads into saying that there's no difference and the roles don't matter. That's all just a social construct. It's not a social construct.

It's God's divine design. Men should not lose their manliness. They should be meek in their manliness. That is, keep it under control.

Don't show it off. Don't use their strength and force unless it's righteous to do so. They should be meek in their manliness. But they should not lose their manliness. We do not need the ladies to help the men become more like ladies. We need the ladies to help the men become more like godly men. Three quick conclusions for practical application.

All right, three quick ones. Older ladies teach the younger ladies to love their husbands by liking their manliness. And I didn't amplify that enough earlier, but I'll use liking because the word for love here is philos and it has the idea of having a fondness, an attractiveness. Help the young ladies develop a fondness, a respect for, and see it as attractive that their men are different, that they have a manliness that God did not give the women. First of all, ladies, teach the younger ladies to praise and thank God for their husband's manliness. Ladies, when it frustrates you the most, he may have blown it in some areas, but it comes from the fact that God made him different. He sins differently. You think he ought to sin like you sin.

No, he gets to sin his way and you sin your way because God made us different with different propensities and tendencies and different vulnerabilities to different temptations. But in every case, it gives you the place to praise God for the manliness of my man. That God in his perfect wisdom and creativity and power made men and women different and unique. Don't wait, ladies, until you feel like praising and thanking the Lord for it.

First Thessalonians 5, 18 reminds us, for in everything give thanks, for this is God's will. Now, just for a moment, to tell you how out of whack we are, to tell you how spiritually out of balance we are, when is the last time you genuinely praised and thanked the Lord that he made your man manly? He made him to be a man and not like you. You know what? You're delused with all this junk of make your man like a woman.

That's the input you're getting. It'd take three or four sermons like this just to get one third of the Barbie movie out of some of you. Such vile, ridiculous, stupid nonsense. There I go again.

Just nutty stuff. Look, I get it that girls just want to have fun. And there's girly things that girls can do and have fun, but isn't Satan subtle to put all in there these vicious, ungodly, God-denying, God-disrespecting lies right in the middle of girls having fun? Are you hearing me, church? And the prophetess Taylor Swift used to have sweet, fun music.

I liked it because my girls were teenagers and it made me think of them. Now she's become a prophetess. Blank the patriarchy, she says. In other words, all male leadership and all male headship is to be done away with.

Now she says she's a drama queen, and she is. But don't you think that stuff doesn't have some impact? Brothers and sisters, think. One man said with time, think.

There's so little competition. Not only praise and thank God for your husband's manliness, secondly, do a study on the unique design of each sex. And we've been doing that, but it might be something you want to do with a particular ladies or a few ladies that you're mentoring who are younger than you. And can I just remind ladies that when your husband does not react, maybe in the emotional realm, the way you think he should or the way you need him to act, it's possible that he might not being selfish, he might not be being mean, he might be taking responsibilities for things in his mind and heart that you don't understand. Because God made him different. He thinks about things you don't, he worries about things you don't. And by the way, if he's a man, he don't want you to have to worry about them.

So be mindful. He may be carrying things because of God's role in God's design of him that you don't know of. He's designed to provide. He's designed to be responsible for his woman and for his family. And he loves you by finding solutions to make sure you're all okay. He just does not get that we can fix this just by listening and talking.

He just doesn't get it. Now he might need to move a little bit there, but he don't need to become just like you either. Sometimes we beat men up for being insensitive to their wives and their children, but it could be that that day he's focused on losing his job. He could be focused on I need to find more work.

We're not making ends meet. But you will never get a man to understand you and connect with you like a close female can. He's wired differently. He's wired to be a man, which means he has on his shoulders and in his heart a burden about leadership. And by the way, men, one of the most powerful ways you lead your family is get them in a solid church.

Leadership. He's burdened about provision for the family. He's worried about protection for the family. What does he want from his woman? He wants respect.

Respect that he carries that load and he has that heart. That's not nothing. Providing for the mortgage and the car and the insurances and the doctor's bills and the clothing and the provisions, that's not nothing, ladies. A man just wants to know. Somebody said a woman's love is feelings.

Do you feel in your affection toward them? And a man's love is respect. There's a lot of truth to that because God made him manly.

Thirdly, we're done. Third CPA, look to other godly ladies for some of your emotional needs. No wonder Paul tells Titus and Titus tells the church, the older ladies got to spend some time with these younger ladies. There's an emotional need ministry there, lady to lady, that I am 100% convinced, our culture's convinced us, no men ought to do that. I don't think that's right. I don't think it's biblically right.

I don't think it's biologically right to put that load on a man and tell him that you have all these other responsibilities too. I remember a Christian teacher early after my conversion, and I don't know why I remember this, but he just hit me. I thought, that makes perfect sense. And he was talking about the difficulties in marriages and men understanding women and women understanding men. And he said, you know, it used to be in our Bible believing churches, women got together a whole lot more. They'd have tanning parties in late summer and putting food up together and quilting parties or whatever it might be. And they would get together and the younger ladies would complain and the older ladies would give some guidance and there's an emotional connection and help and ministry one to another, which we're hoping that will keep growing here at Grace Life Church.

And they strengthened each other. I guess ladies, if there's one thing I could say, you got to literally understand that his brain is not wired to receive, process rather, and respond emotionally anywhere close to the way yours is designed to. At the end of a long day, for the husband to be able to bond with you emotionally, listen to me, takes at least three times the energy it takes you. So if he's trying, he deserves a little credit.

Physiologically, brain organ wise, it just isn't there like it is for you. He's had a tough day at work. He may have already spent 120% of his emotional capacity. And there is something to ladies loving their husband to say, I want him to come home to a world of peace if he's out there taking care of us. Satan is in an all out attack against God and against God's glory. Satan's attack is against the church. It's against the family.

It's against the marriage relationship. But Satan is especially focused on the women. He's changed nothing since the Garden of Eden.

Who did he go to? Eve. I can get Eve. I can get Adam.

And I get this whole thing crumbling down. But now, the second Adam has come. And the second Adam is saving his children. And the second Adam is building his family, his local churches. And they are reversing the pattern of what happened with the first Adam. And we got a new Eden coming for us. As we follow back and backtrack and find the in Christ perfection. Oh, I can't wait to unpack this next week if God lets me. Find the perfection of marriage that only can exist in committed Christian relationships.

Not perfect, but a perfection that Adam and Eve lost for us in the Garden of Eden. Satan is especially focused on the women. It's still his tactic today. And one element of his strategy is to discredit and demean the concept of manliness. Older ladies must join the fight against Satan's forces. He is clever.

I mentioned the prophet as Taylor Swift in movies like the Barbie movie that unrelentingly attacked God's truth. He's clever like that, but the older ladies know better. The older ladies must fight back against this attack with an unrelenting counterattack and resolve. Older women teach, train, encourage the younger women to love their husbands by liking, by being fond of, by being attracted to his God-ordained manliness. God made your husband this way for his own glory and for your good. Our Father's way may twist and turn. Our hearts may throb and ache. But through it all, we notice true, our God maketh no mistake.