Marriage and the Glory of God - Ephesians 5:22-32 - Let's Be Clear

All right. Hey guys, at all of our campuses, man, we just want to say welcome. I love that story.

I know you guys did. I love that story about Jim. Jim is actually probably going to go on a mission trip with me this year and just to see what God has done in his life and to see that that story has played out hundreds of times and can continue to play out hundreds of times. It can play out in your life if you jump in a group and start that process of doing life in community. Nobody was ever meant to be a disciple alone and to grow alone.

So we're really hoping that you guys will take us up on that. We're going to be in Ephesians chapter 5 today. If you have a copy of Scripture, you can take it out and turn with me there. Guys, Ephesians 5 is one of the richest texts when it comes to marriage that we have, right?

Now we're talking about this series. Let's be clear. There's a lot of confusion around the concept of marriage and today I want to try very hard to bring a lot of clarity to one particular aspect of marriage. And I want to tell you, it's not easy right on the front end, okay? Because what we're going to be talking about today is the specific design that God has for husbands to play and wives to play in marriage.

Today is a leadership and a submission sermon. And we're going to be very clear about what those things mean because, and I want to tell you why I'm excited about this, I know some of you guys think to yourself like, dude, this series like this, I mean, you're putting yourself on the hot seat every single week, and I'm the one who chose it, okay? So I know that. It's like, man, you're a little crazy.

I get that. But I'm going to tell you something. I also am very excited about a sermon like today because the myth of the world is that marriage is supposed to be bad and get worse all the days of your life.

I mean, this is just what we breathe, you know, the ball and chain, you know, the whole thing, just the whole thing. You know, you get married and people are like, you know, a year later people are like, well, how's it going? You're like, it's going great. They're like, just wait. You just wait, you know, it's like there's always, and they don't understand that actually what can happen in marriage. Let me ask you a question.

Do you want to survive or thrive in marriage? Right? And that's what we're going to get into. Hey, before we get into that, though, I'm getting ahead of myself here. I got to do this.

This is so awesome. All right? Port City Church. Now, we've planted five churches in the last four or five years and two of them have the exact same name. Okay, go figure. I don't know how we do that.

All right, but two, Port City in Norfolk, Virginia. Hey, guys, they're launching this weekend. Can we praise God for them? I want y'all to go ahead and put that picture up.

Hey, this was not their team. Okay, that's the wrong picture. Okay. That is the picture of our other Port City up in Halifax.

They've already launched. Okay, so we're going to figure that out. We'll get you a better picture. But the Norfolk team, I want y'all to know, guys, they took 20, 30 people up there with them. And we have a team from Mercy Hill of about 20 or 30 that are going up there this weekend to pray with them, to love on them, and probably to hold a bunch of babies in the kids ministry.

Okay, it's probably what they're going to be doing. But I just want to make you guys aware that what we're doing here, God is using ripple effect all over the place. And I want to connect this very intentionally. Okay, if you are a brand new person at Mercy Hill, we really want you guys to go to our first time guest tent and grab one of these bags. We have a gift for you in the bag. We want to hear how you heard about Mercy Hill. We want to give you something, we want to meet you.

But here's why I want to connect this. Because we have a vision at Mercy Hill to see 500 people leave our church and go be missionaries. Now that's two years or more, okay? Unless you're doing a gap year, which might only be one year, but we're not talking about a mission trip.

We're talking about leaving, okay? 500 missionaries by 2032. All right, and here's the thing. We have learned at Mercy Hill, for every sent one, we end up having seen about 10 baptisms. And for every one baptism, guess what? We have seen about 10 first-time guests.

So here's the deal. When we see that 500 missionaries go out, every one of those missionaries represents probably about a hundred people that walked through the door for the very first time. If I had the right picture of poor city up here, I'll tell you that we, you know, every one of those people in that picture, they had a first-time guest bag, right? At some point in their life, they were a first-time guest and we have it in our mind for you. Listen, this is a place where you can connect. God has a call and a purpose and a destiny for you in this life. And we want to help you get there and maybe even send you out one day, okay?

So buckle up. You're like, man, you got a big vision for my life. We do. We have a big vision for you. And I pray that you'll be able to find that destiny and calling that God has for you. So, if you're first time with us, man, we're excited that you're here. We'd love for you to check out.

Every one of our campuses has a first-time guest tent, so you can check that out. All right, Ephesians 5. I got into this a little bit. I want to go ahead and give you the big idea. God designed marriage in a particular way for His glory and for our good. Now, there's a lot we could talk about with marriage, okay?

And we talked about some things last week. We're talking about marriage roles. Today, I'm going to talk about homosexuality and that next week.

So we're hitting a lot of different things here in this little triplet within the Let's Be Clear series. But today, what I want to really get into is this concept of roles in marriage. Okay, now, I understand not everybody at Mercy Hills marriage, you count the kids, you know, married. You count the kids ministry and most of us aren't, okay, actually. So you might not be married. You may want to check out.

Don't. There is a lesson here for us that we're going to be able to see that helps us to speak clearly. You may not be married, but if you are a believer, you are facing a culture that really believes the things that we say about marriage are oppressive, misogyny. So we need to be able to know how to talk about this, and we need to see the beauty that it points us to in terms of the gospel, whether we're actually married in this moment or not. I said something earlier I want to say again, and that is that marriage doesn't have to get worse. It doesn't have to be more critique, more snark. It doesn't have to be more cattiness.

It doesn't have to be isolation. It doesn't have to be a growing cold. Over the course of our life, marriage can get richer, deeper. It can become sweeter. I think of that old country song.

There might be a little dust on the bottle, okay? But the thing is, there are things that get sweeter with time. Marriage can be like that. And I think we have to talk about it clearly if we want to help people see that, all right? I know that our culture doesn't like what I'm going to say today, but I'm going to tell you something like Proverbs 25. It is cold water to a thirsty soul. If it is truth, it is cold water to the thirsty soul. And the beauty is, marriage can get better over the course of our life, more impactful, deeper, richer, all of those things. But it cannot if we are convinced that being clever and coy is better than being clear. We've got to talk clearly about the roles that God has set up in marriage in order that we can get to that treating each other in leadership and submission, in unselfish leadership and submission that takes our marriage to a new place. We can only get to that place of thriving, not just surviving if we're anchored in truth.

And so we've got to speak clearly about these things. Guys, I met my wife, Anna, at 19. We were married at 21. OK, I was we got married right after my junior year of college. And so I still had a whole nother year left. And I know a lot of people don't do that these days, but it was a really cool time for us. I was kind of halfway a college student, halfway married. OK, so well, full married. OK, but you understand, you understand what I mean.

All right. And it was awesome. And so for that whole summer and Anna is a Southern woman. OK, so this is this is like I mean, you go from dorm room life. Now you're all of a sudden, you know, has one little bedroom apartment. But it was super awesome. She decorated super clean.

She was, you know, loved to dinner and would take walks at night. I mean, it was just it was just awesome. And three months in, I was still playing football for my college. They made an edict where everybody for football camp. You know, you go to camp two weeks before everybody else gets on campus. They made all of us, even me and one other guy that were married, moved back into the dorms with the whole football team.

It was disgusting. I went I went from I went from married, you know, to all of a sudden I'm sharing a dorm room with, you know, 75 football players. There's 10,000 pounds of sweaty man everywhere I look. OK, and I remember that first night kind of laying there on my bed after being married for three months. And now I'm I'm having to be back on the dorm and campus and all this stuff for football camp. And I remember thinking about what the Bible says. It really is not good for a man to be alone, you know. And I was I was sitting there thinking that here's why I bring that up. Guys, I'm talking to you this weekend. Yes, from the scripture, no doubt.

That's really all we're going to dive into the Bible. But I want you to know this from my own life. And I've been married for 18 years, four kids. You know, there was a time when even at Mercy Hill, I feel like maybe we didn't have the longevity to appeal to guys.

I'm standing on the word, but I'm also telling you this stuff is real. And I know that I know that it can be better 18 years later than it was in the beginning. I understand that it could be more impactful 18 years later. Now, that doesn't listen. That is not to say that we've been perfect or I've been perfect by no means. OK, you've got to hear me on that. But I will tell you that one of the greatest marks in my own marriage and I think Anna would say the same thing, is that we have we have tried our best to answer the question that matters the most. And that is who gets to decide what this looks like? Because it's not me.

And it's not Anna. We decided early on to give that over to somebody else and to say, hey, the word, the best we can have not always done it right. I've had massive failures. OK, but the best that we can. The word is going to shape what this looks like, even when I don't like it, even when she doesn't like it. OK. And the thing is, is we just kind of bought into this concept. Man, it's God's thing. He made marriage and God doesn't make anything that's bad.

All right. And so what we're going to do is we're going to try very hard. And that's what I want to appeal to us and call you to do today. Look at verse 22 with me in Ephesians Chapter five. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to in everything to their own husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now, one of the ways that I want to start this, I want to make sure we say this first, is that this whole passage is marriage as an illustration for the gospel.

Now, that's important because it does go that way. OK. Church and Christ is not chasing down marriage. Marriage is sort of chasing down church and Christ.

All right. My point is this marriage is not ultimate church as it relates to Christ. That is what's ultimate.

That is what's permanent. Marriage is the metaphor for the ultimate reality that every single one of us as believers get a chance to experience. And why do I bring that up? I bring it up right at the beginning because I have so many brothers and sisters in this church that are single. Maybe that's because you're going to be maybe you believe you're gifted in singleness and it's a it's a mission. It's part of the mission for you. It's like, man, I'm denying myself this so that I can be more useful for the gospel. And maybe that's where you are. Or maybe you don't desire that.

Maybe this is a season for you and you don't desire it. I want you to understand that while we are talking about marriage today, marriage is not ultimate. Single person who is a believer, you already have the relationship that marriage is supposed to point us to.

You already have the relationship in Christ if you are a believer of what marriage is showing us. So I understand in a day in our day and age and I get it in churches. OK, you may feel pressured. You may feel like people are asking you all the time, all that kind of stuff.

I had a friend one time. He was so tired of getting asked at, you know, these he'd go to he'd go to a wedding. And the little old ladies at the wedding would always say, don't worry, darling, you're next.

OK, and he got so sick of that that at funerals he started walking up to the little old ladies. OK, that's terrible. OK, terrible. Horrible. That's horrible.

That's a true story, but that is horrible. OK. Maybe you have all of this pressure. I want you I want to tell you this. Man, stand firm in this. You have the relationship that marriage is pointing to. You have the reality of which the metaphor is built. Let's don't get it backwards.

OK. But having said that, let me say this. The relationship between Christ and the church is pervasive in how marriage is supposed to work. We cannot understand how marriage is supposed to work if we don't understand how the gospel works. And it's woven all through this passage. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. And it's going to go on to say that he loves and gives himself up and lays his life down. Now, I want to talk to wives for just a moment and then I want to talk to husbands for just a moment. Then we'll bring all this stuff together and that's going to be our time. Very clear.

Remember, I just want to be simple and clear. OK. Now, the one thing I want to say to the wives right off the bat is we've got to make sure we understand this. This passage does not say women submit to men. It says wives in submission to husbands. And that's very important because sometimes people can cloak, you know, they can cloak sexism in some kind of spiritual language.

We got to watch out for that. All right. This is not talking about who should be the president or if somebody could be a principal or a police officer or your boss has nothing to do with any of that. What it's saying is in the church and in the in a church in terms of elders and in the marriage, in terms of husbands, there is an equality among people. But there is an ordering of how things are supposed to work.

All right. That's important to know and equality among people, image of God. But there's an ordering to the way things work. And what he's saying here first is, well, wives, submit to your husband for he is the head. Now, what does this mean?

Let me speak plainly. Submission number one, submission is deference and ultimate leadership of another submission is saying in this dance you will lead and I will follow that in this dance. And I do think there are a couple of places where people are called to to dance. One is in marriage and the other is in the church where the church submits to elders. OK, but the idea here is that we would follow our husbands as they are laying their lives down for us.

We would follow them as they are laying their lives down for us. I think it's important that we understand that he says submit to your husband for he is the head. That's why there is a submission there that we're talking about. Head denotes authority. You know, a few times in Greek literature, you can look back on this.

And what you find the commentaries will tell you is that over and over and over, when someone is called the head, there is a place of authority that is there. Now, listen, people have tried and tried and tried to do gymnastics around this text to make it say something that it doesn't say. And I would say we're a church that doesn't do that because we believe whatever God has told us is probably for our good. It's probably for the good of the home, is probably for the good of men, for the good of women, for the good of children, for the good of everybody.

He's a good guy. And so we don't feel the need to try to do a bunch of gymnastics and dance around and say something that it doesn't mean. All right. What it means is this.

Headship involves authority. We need to not be clever. We don't need to be coy. We certainly, as many people have, don't need to be cute around these things. We need to try to be clear.

And so this is clear. In the dance of marriage, God's design is that men would lead, a husband would lead, and a woman would follow that leadership. And in so doing, the reason I use that kind of idea of a dance is because in so doing, they're not stepping all over each other, you know?

And in so doing, there can be a thriving and a momentum, and there can be a shining. Now, one of the things that we've got to understand here is that our culture doesn't like what I just said. Maybe some of us don't as well, and I hope you'll give me a hearing throughout this.

You're going to see this because this is really important. We don't like this idea for a couple of reasons. Number one, we can't get around the idea that submission doesn't mean something that has to do with equality, even though in our own lives we fully understand that it doesn't. There are many areas of our life that we submit one to another.

Actually, verse 21 tells us that. We submit one to another in church, and there's areas we do that. There's areas that we submit to other authorities, and yet we don't see them as being, you know, of greater worth in God's eyes than us. So we don't need to apply that here as well. Submission isn't about worth. If it was about worth, then we would have a problem in the deepest levels of theology when it comes to the Trinity because Jesus submits to God the Father. If submission meant you're not actually equal, then there'd be a real problem with our theology, okay?

So that's one of the areas here. But I think the other area that we have such an issue with this is because we just don't understand the purpose for which a man leads and a woman submits or follows him. See, our culture has this concept of a tyrant who is bossing his wife around, and that's just not the picture that we get in any way. What we get is the picture of Christ and the church. The church ain't got no problem following Christ. You know why? Because he died for them. That's leadership. If he will lay down his life for us, then we will gladly, I mean, this is the Christian life, right, that we would try our best to follow him.

Why? Because he has demonstrated for us so convincingly that it is actually about our flourishing that we would follow him, that his highest concern is our thriving, that he wants to see us in all of our holiness. And that's what I want to try to get across.

If I can get anything across this weekend. The concept of leading and following is a unselfish love that leads and a submission that says, if you would do that for me, then I want to follow you. And there is a cycle that continues into depth and into more shining and flourishing and health.

All right. What does this look like in day to day life? Well, I've got a bunch of examples that I'll kind of go throughout the message. But one of the things I think that it looks like in everyday life is something like this. Okay, something like this. Man, there's agony in the home over where you're going to send the kids to school. Is a charter school, is a private school, is at home school, is a public school.

There's a thousand schools. Okay. And so we're agonizing, agonizing. And a man sees that it's actually beginning to take a toll on his wife.

And so what does he do? I'm going to make the decision. We've talked about this. Man, we've, you know, we've put it before other people. We've put it before wisdom. But we're having a hard time making this decision.

It's taking a toll on you. And I'm going to make the call. We're going to put it in God's hands.

And what I want to call our wives to do in our church, across all of our campuses, is to understand that the purpose of him leading in that way. And I know we don't get it right all the time. Okay, I know that. I don't get it right all the time either. I get that.

Okay. But the purpose in that, can you see that that is not for your good? That's the way it's supposed to work.

It's not lording over you, bullying you. I want it to be this way. I'm realizing that maybe we have a difference. I need to tie break this so that we can move on as a family here. And I'm going to make the decision. And I would call the wives of our church, follow him in that. That's what we need to do.

Follow him in that. I could give you other examples here. I thought about one example when you come to, you know, thinking about a husband who is watching his wife and realizing that maybe after a baby comes home, she becomes isolated. This happens a lot, right? And now it's all of a sudden it's her and the baby, especially first child. It's her and the child all the time, every day, all day.

And there's weeks of this. And next thing you know, he's noticing she's not texting people in her group. She's not seeing anybody outside of this, you know, of the home. And he comes to her and he says to her, listen, for the next four weeks, I want you to try to set something up with another lady from our community group to go on a walk or go get coffee. I'll help you support it any kind of way I can.

But I'm asking you slash telling you, I think this is important and I really want you to do this. Now, do you understand, if we can get that picture in our mind, it's different than the tyrant who wants to keep his wife barefoot and pregnant and bossing her around all day and all these tropes that come in from the culture about the way Christians think about these things. That's the way that it's supposed to work. And wives, I would call you, follow him in that. You know, I think about this for me and Anna, there have only been a few times over 18 years that I have brought up the word submission to her. Where I had to actually say, hey, I think this is a submission issue. Now, what she's going to do with that, and I might say something else about this in a minute. Whatever she's going to do with that is between her and God. It ain't really between her and me. I don't have authority. The only authority I have in her life is what she gives me. That's it.

It's the only authority I get. I mean, that's one of the reasons why, husbands, you better be winning that. Laying your life, right?

So she's going to do whatever she's going to do. But I remember, clear as day, and I shared this story before, that, man, our son, almost a year old, was waking up every single night. And I'm going to tell you why he was doing it, because he was snooker than his mom. He liked this idea. Oh, I get in here, and see, I get to snuggle up and all. That's what he was doing, okay?

And I know him, all right? And so, I mean, and listen, at that time, Anna was working outside the home. Okay, so I'm sleeping all night, and for a year, maybe not quite a year, but for months and months and months, she's waking up every single night. And then she's going to work just like I am and running the home and all this kind of stuff. And she's getting tired. And I can see it, and Anna don't get tired.

I mean, so she's getting tired. And I remember, hey, what do you think about letting him cry it out? Well, you know, next week, what do you think about letting him cry it out? Well, you know, and I finally had to sit down and say, look, I'm telling you, I think this is what we need to do. I think you need to let him cry. I know that's hard, but I think it's the best thing for your health.

I think it's the best thing for us. And, man, he cried 10 minutes the first night, two minutes the next night. Next night, been fine ever since, okay?

So it worked out, right? But I just, I think about, I want to give you a bunch of examples, because that's more of the model. And listen, if those aren't the models that come into your mind, it may not be because you got a bone to pick with the church.

You may have literally seen bad models of this. I know that, okay? I understand that. I can be sympathetic to that.

But at the same time, it's incumbent upon me to teach this text faithfully and to say, hey, this is what it is supposed to look like. And then, wives, I want to make sure you hear me on this. What you decide to do with his leadership is between you and the Lord.

It really is. I mean, what else is he going to do? He comes, he leads, this is where I think we need to go. But ultimately, husbands only have the authority that their wives give to them. And I think about as they submit to the Lord in this issue, okay?

I think about very much how the church works as well. Guys, you know how many people I've sat down with that have talked to them through crazy issues of marriage, or I've talked to them about different areas of sin in their life that were eating them up? And you know what, sometimes they told me I could go fly a kite, you know? I mean, it's so funny. Somebody requests a meeting with me because their life's falling apart.

I tell them what they should do from the Word, and they tell me I don't know them very well. I'm like, you called me. That's funny, isn't it? I didn't call you, right? You called me. But here's the thing. What am I supposed to do in that instance? It's like, hey, here's your life.

What am I gonna do? I only get as a pastor in this church, and our other elders are the same way as they're shepherding your community groups. We only have the authority that you give us, you know? And it's very similar when it comes to marriage. And so wives, I wanna call you, and I wanna say, wait a minute. If there's a dude in your home that keeps beating this issue of submission and submission and submission, it's like, man, maybe he needs to have it go through his mind. This is an issue between you and the Lord, and maybe he needs to stop trying to convince you to submit.

And remember what I said? Hey, if every husband was just like Jesus Christ, we wouldn't have an issue. I mean, you're right. I mean, we're like, I'm fine with submitting to Jesus. So maybe the guys, and I'm gonna get into this, maybe we need to try to focus our energy and attention on becoming more Christ-like so that this is easier for a woman to do. And I will say one more thing about this, and I'll move on. I've got a lot of young women in this church.

This is a great thing for somebody to tell you on the front end. You are choosing this. This is one of those things that you're choosing to walk in. It's God's way, it's His world, it's the way He created marriage. And if that's too heavy of a burden to bear, then I would say, hey, there's, I mean, Paul said it real clear, maybe it's better to be single sometimes for the kingdom. Okay, but I would tell you this too, from godly women after godly women in this church that have walked way longer in this, even than 18 years, like me and Anna, there is a sweetness to this. And there is something about seeing your husband come alive as a leader, so I'm told, that there's a depth in that that you may miss out on because of fear. Now let's talk about husbands for just a minute. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water, of washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. That she might be holy and without blemish in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. All right, now let's talk about men for just a minute.

Husbands in the room, and guys, same goes with you, okay? So, you know, some of us might be like, that's right, you know, they're supposed to follow us. Okay, you need to understand. She's called to submission, you are called to sacrifice. You're called to lay down your life. I want you to think about Christ. Do you wear a crown in marriage?

Yes, it's a crown of thorns. Lay our life down, this is the model. In unselfish promotion of a wife, she ends up responding to that leadership. Submission comes in response to sacrifice. Think about Christ in the church, y'all. Every one of us understand this if you're a believer because it's what it means to be a gospel-centered Christian.

That's why we keep preaching the gospel over and over and over. The more I see Jesus and His willingness to lay His life down for me, the more I feel that, the more I see examples of that, it makes my heart want to follow Him even in greater ways. When we are blown away over God's love for us, that He would send Christ to literally die for us, then all of a sudden we see, man, we must be some kind of valuable in His eyes. And when I feel that worth coming from Him laying His life down, now I want to follow Him.

And husbands, that's the model. She is worth your sacrifice. She is created in the image of God. She is beautiful before God.

She is equal to you in worth. Why do you think it is? And I know this is out of favor in our culture today, but this is just the reality. Why is it that the teachings of Jesus have done more to elevate women's status in cultures all over the world?

Why? Because He puts them on exact equal footing with men. Equal in worth and value. There is an equality in marriage. There is an ordering in marriage. And when we treat them with the worth that they deserve from God, what we end up seeing is a softening and a willingness to serve the vision that is being cast by the husband. This is a, I use this, I think the analogy for the church is the same way. You can see this in 1 Timothy chapter three. In 1 Timothy chapter three, you have elders, deacons, and congregation. Elders set vision, deacons serve that vision, and the congregation flourishes. And in that, I see the exact same metaphor as a church. You have a husband setting vision, leadership, this is where we're going. You have a wife that is saying, I want to be a helper of you in that.

And then we have children that flourish. In other words, I would say this. Guys, men, what you're expecting me to do for this church, you should do for your family. Whatever comes to your mind, when it's like fighting the wolves and being ready and leading in vision and laying my life down, whatever you think I should be doing and the elders of this church should be doing for us, that's what we are doing for our families and especially for our wives. The focus then is this idea of leadership and authority being channeled into her spiritual, physical, and emotional health.

That's what we're trying to do. Man, I'm leading for her flourishing. I want to be one who is pouring out, and yes, I'm expecting her to follow me, but the idea is this is supposed to be set up for her good. Look what it says in verse 26 again, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. The idea is her holiness, her flourishing, that she would thrive physically, emotionally.

Guys, another couple examples, okay? We don't run over mom so that the kids can thrive, right? We don't run over mom so that we can thrive, okay? I mean, this is a tough example, but I'm telling you, it's a good example, okay? If little Johnny's gotta go to private school means mom and dad both have to work, which is fine if she thrives in that, okay?

That's fine. But if you begin to notice the concept of running the home, little kids, working outside the home every single day is now beginning to drag and drain and there's a physical exhaustion and there's an isolation that's coming and spiritually there's an unhealth that is creeping in, then I'm gonna tell you something. You guys aren't parents promoting little Johnny. Dad, what you gotta do is tell little Johnny he's gonna go to regular school because it's not those kids over her.

It's her first that we pour out. I mean, the Bible says if mom ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Okay, the Bible doesn't actually say that, all right? But I think the concept here is what we see in Christ that he is pouring his life out so that we will continue to thrive and flourish and make an impact. You could say it like this.

Husbands do everything in their power to ensure their wife's holiness. That's good, that's good. You know, one of the things I said earlier that is really true about me is that, you know, Anna and I met at 19. I mean, when I say she's the wife of my youth, I mean that in a sense, okay?

We met at 19, got married at 21. I decided, you know what, I'm just gonna throw the picture up there. Look at that, okay?

So, you know, Anna has not changed a bit. I may have changed a little bit, okay? But here's the thing, y'all. You know the thing I've struggled with in marriage just very candidly? When you meet at 19 and get married at 21, you grow up together. And when you grow up together, you think you're partners.

This is countercultural, I know. No, we're partners, I get that. We're partners in marriage, I understand that. I am responsible for her in a way that she is not responsible for me.

I am responsible for her good and setting our life up so that she thrives in a way that she is not responsible for me, in a sense. And this is why I wanted to show you guys that picture. We all know wedding pictures. Man, the doors are flung open and bride is there and it's beautiful and the white dress and all that kind of stuff. Guys, here's what I wanna make sure you have in your mind. There is immense beauty, immense preparation, right?

The white dress, the whole thing, the doors fling open. The rest of your life in marriage is you continuing to try to promote that her soul would look like that. That her holiness would look like that. Fix that in your mind. Whatever that beauty was, man, how are we continuing to move our lives around so that she can continue to thrive in that way?

So yeah, I mean, it's as plain as day. Guys, we lead and we do it in an unselfish way. And the Bible calls women, follow that leadership. And in so doing, the family will thrive. So here's what I'm gonna call you to do today, all right? Glorify God in joyfully taking on your role in marriage.

I said this in the intro, I wanna say it one more time. Maybe the most important message that you have, maybe the most important question that you need to answer when it comes to marriage. Maybe you're thinking about getting married, you've been married for 20 years, whatever it is, okay?

Today is a new day. Maybe everything I'm saying has been so foreign, you haven't heard the teaching of the word. Maybe there's been so much strife and problems and dysfunction, and it's gonna take years of counseling to figure all this out.

And maybe that's even where you are. Do you know where the starting place is? The starting place is one question.

Who is the authority to shape what this is supposed to look like? Because it's not me being a husband, and it's not Anna being a wife. Marriage is God's idea and God never had a bad idea. So husbands, I would call you in accordance with the scriptures, as Christ laid down his life for the church, how are we laying our life down for others? This is what I wanna call you to do. My brothers, are you putting your needs before, are you putting her needs before yours?

Have you set life up? So that she has friendships and spiritual growth. Is her health a priority to you?

Understand that the Bible says women are the weaker vessel. So don't load her shoulders up in the way that you load hers up. Does she drive a better car than you?

I mean, practical things. Is the weight of a big decision hanging around her neck because you're not making it? Does she know that she's first even over the kids? What's the dating scene look like in marriage? I saw the meme the other day, it was like, guys are always trying to figure out what's the big date and they're like, man, Mexican and home goods.

Okay, you can't go wrong, all right? I mean, maybe there's counseling that needs to be done. Maybe deciding we're gonna go meet with a pastor and not seeing that as, not viewing that as weakness or something. You know, I thought about this illustration. You know, when you go into a gym and you see the biggest dude in the gym lifting the most weight, the fact that he's lifting weight to strengthen his body, you don't think he's weak for that, right?

When we think about going to counseling or getting into a, maybe let's meet a couple of times with a pastor and just do a little bit of a check on things or whatever. That's not weakness. That's a sign of trying to get really, really, really strong. I've had failures in my life in this area. And if we were one-on-one, I could tell you them, Anna could tell you them, okay? But here's the thing. I will say for me and Anna, one of the things that I think has led to whatever levels of success that we have seen is the ability to say, man, I don't get to shape this. You don't get to shape this. Something outside of us shapes this.

And so this is what we're gonna try to make it look like. And wives, I would say this to you guys. Are you following the leadership of your husband? Does he know that you were behind him and believe in him? Does he know that if he fails at work or fails even at home at times, that a failure is not fatal?

That you're gonna be there to pick him up and to help? Man, are you nay-saying every single thing he's trying to do? I understand the world that we live in and the world that we live in is gonna call pretty much everything that we've said in this sermon to be sexist or whatever. And listen, to the women of our church, I preach this at every generation. We've got to just have the courage and backbone to stand on the word and say, no, it's not. We can't be so scared of being called to this or being called to that.

We've got to have the courage to just say, no, it's not. You know, the thought of, the thought of, man, this, you know, serving that vision in the home and being willing to follow. Man, I'll be whatever the world says that I got to be, but I want to be faithful to the word.

Are you following him? Listen, many, I'm gonna close with this. Many of our marriages are doing awesome, okay? I mean, awesome. You guys are eating stuff up like this and I praise God for it. And here's what I want to tell you. A sermon like this is always good to say, man, okay, great, let's go to the next level. Man, we're doing awesome, let's max out, you know? Let's take some things from the word and how can I serve you more and how can you follow more and how can we have a more flourishing home and make a bigger impact and man, that's awesome, okay?

You're maxing out, you're going for it, great, I love that. But not everybody's there. And as I close, I would say this. Some of us may even be a little bit in the doom loop. And here's what the doom loop is, okay? The doom loop is that a wife would say, well, you don't love me, so I don't respect you and a husband would say, well, because you don't respect me, I'm not willing to unselfishly lay my life down in love for you.

You kind of see that? I mean, you saw what the scripture was saying, right? Like that a woman would follow to respect and follow and that a man would lay his life down. Well, you got two people in the home that are like, nope, not doing that.

This is what happens. Some of us end up saying about the time he starts laying his life down for me, that's about the time I'll start respecting him. And of course, the other way is like, well, about the time she starts respecting me, that's about the time that I'm gonna start laying my life down. And it's a doom loop all the way to divorce. I mean, we are the divorced generation, right? Fatherlessness, all this kind of stuff.

Okay, what do we do? We got to turn to the gospel. And here's the question that I have for you. Did Jesus Christ not lovingly lay down his life for you even when you weren't willing to follow him?

And this is my point. Somebody's got to break the cycle. And whether you're a man or whether you're a woman, whether husband or wife in a situation like this, the only way that you're gonna get the power and the only way that you're gonna get what's needed inside to break that cycle is to look to Christ and realize he broke that cycle for me. Jesus selflessly loved us even when we didn't respect him, even when we didn't follow him. Man, in our sin, we were so far running from God, no respect, no submission, no following at all, and yet Jesus Christ went to the cross for us and literally laid his life down, you know?

And died for us that we could be brought back in. So let me ask you a question. Husband, wife, maybe there's some problems. Maybe you're hanging on by a thread.

Maybe divorce stuff's already in the proceedings. I don't know where you are. But who's gonna be the one motivated by the gospel to say I'll go first, I'll break the cycle, I'll go first, and I'll do, listen, I'll be unto you not as you have been unto me. I'll be unto you as Christ has been unto me. Let's pray. Father, we come before you now, and Lord, I just ask, God, that you would move in our church all over the campuses this weekend.

People that are not even gonna hear this message, maybe they're out of town, they hear it later. Lord, we have marriages that are doing great. We have marriages that are in trouble. Lord, I pray that we would come to your word and realize there is a flourishing, there is a thriving that is to be had because of what you have done in your great design. Give us the motivation, the power, the strength to take steps in the direction of your calling. In Christ's name we pray, amen.