The Bible standard it sets is incredibly high. Last time we pointed out, and tried to do so quite clearly, that the wife's submission to her husband is one evidence of her submission to Christ—that for a wife to declare the lordship of Jesus will be borne testimony to within the fabric of home life in her submission to her husband. Now we come to the reverse of this, and we recognize that in the selfsame way, for a husband to declare that Jesus is Lord demands that he serves his wife, and by doing so makes it clear that he is serving Christ.
A love which considers the other before the self and then acts on that premise. Now, let me come to our words, and we'll do so quickly. Some of them we'll go faster through than others, but the first word is the word sensitively. Secondly, naturally. Thirdly, to love our wives is to do so not only sensitively and naturally but purposefully.
We'll just have a comment on this, shall we? And once again, you will see that the work of Christ in relationship to the church was a purposeful work. We're still in Ephesians 5. It is the most helpful correlative passage. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Why? Well, here's the purpose. To make her holy, cleansing her by washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any blemish but holy and blameless. Now, the simple and obvious application is simply this—that the Christian husband is to have a similar concern. That the Christian husband's role is not to suppress his wife but is to see his wife flourish. To see her flourish in purity and within the framework of her feminine identity, as established by God, to see her grow and mature and become, in every realistic sense, glorious—a glory that is related to that perfection of personhood which will one day be completed when our wives stand before the Lord Jesus. Many of us as men will predecease our wives. Therefore, when we go, our wives will stay for a while. As a result of that, we have tried to make certain plans, haven't we?
Financially and so on. But how will our wives do in progressing towards glory when we go? As a result of our purposeful commitment to them—to allow them, to encourage them, to coax them, to pray for them, to become all that they might possibly be under God in the fulfilling not only of their feminine identity but in the fulfilling of the purposes of God for them? Christ looks on his bride, and he loves her with a purposeful love.
It's a challenge. Remember C. T. Studd? But remember, C. T. Studd gave his wife that little poem that she was supposed to include in her day. He was vastly wealthy.
He was off to Africa. He had given up his fortune but kept back a substantial portion in today's money—a million, two million, three million—that he'd put in trust for his wife. She found out that he'd done that.
She said, What's the deal? You mean you can trust God, but I can't trust God? God'll look after you, but he won't look after me? Give the rest of it away, Charles.
So he took the final aspect of his fortune, and he gave it to William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. And off they went to serve Christ together. And this was what he had his wife say every day. Dear Lord Jesus, you are to me dearer than Charlie ever could be.
Dear Lord Jesus, you are to me dearer than Charlie ever could be. Now, we understand that as husbands and wives. We know all the things we say to one another. But we also understand the nature of it, don't we, and what it really means. How many times have you seen a husband and wife separated by death, and the spouse is just a complete emotional, physical, spiritual disaster?
And not in every case, because one must be careful of generalizations, but in certain cases, it is due to the fact that they had grown in on one another in such a way that neither had been an encouragement to one another to grow up into Christ, who is the ultimate goal of all our living and all of our dying. Well, forthly and penultimately, sacrificially, if a loving husband genuinely wants the very best for his wife and is prepared to work towards that goal, then he's going to have to do so sacrificially. How daunting is this standard? How would you like me to love my wife? We ask of the Bible, and the Bible comes back and says, Why don't you love your wife the way Jesus loved the church? Is it harder to be a wife or harder to be a husband?
Well, when you factor this demand, this standard in here, then you realize what a challenge it is. The model for the wife is the submission of the church, which is good but not perfect, but the model for the husband is the love of Jesus, which is both good and perfect. And that is the model, and that is the measure of a husband's love. The husband's standard for loving his wife is to be nothing less than the cross of Christ. Most of the material that I found in preparing for this, if I went out with Bible commentaries, I found material on marriage in books on ethics. I found that very interesting. I understand that there is an ethical-moral aspect to marriage, but I thought, Isn't it interesting that marriage falls in books on ethics? For example, a wonderful book on New Testament ethics by the late professor John Murray.
Very, very helpful stuff. And then while I was thinking on that, I came across a quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones and was gratified to discover that he'd been thinking in the exact same way. And he was actually able to articulate it.
This is what he wrote. How many of us have realized that we are always to think of the married state in terms of the doctrine of the atonement? Is that our customary way of thinking of marriage? Books on marriage are found in a library under ethics.
But they do not belong there. We must consider marriage in terms of the doctrine of the atonement. Writes F. F. Bruce, By setting this highest of standards for the husband's treatment of his wife, Paul goes to the limit in safeguarding the wife's dignity and welfare. Now, you see why it is so important that the exhortation of verse 18 from last time, and the exhortation in verse 19 tonight, that not only are they read together but that they are understood together.
So that the notion of submission is not bowing to some kind of tyrannical force, but it is the melding of a life into the role that God has intended, emblematic of the submission of the church to Jesus and being met, being, if you like, preceded by the love of the husband, which has the very doctrine of the atonement, the self-giving love of Jesus, as the standard, as the modus operandi for the exercising of that leadership role. Now, there's nothing faulty or flawed with this mechanism—all the faults and all the flaws—in the husband's realm, because God intends for us to be lovers, not ogres. Finally. It's a great word, isn't it?
Finally. Fifthly, it means to love your wife exclusively. Exclusively. Because that's how Jesus has loved the church. The church is the object of Christ's exclusive love.
The church belongs exclusively to Christ. In the same way, husband and wife are bound exclusively to one another. The husband sustains a relationship with his wife that he sustains with no one else. Richard Baxter provided for his congregation six points for husbands and wives—I have them up the stairs in a file.
Number five reads as follows. To keep conjugal chastity and fidelity, and to avoid all unseemly and immodest conduct with another, which may stir up jealousy. Let me just read that again, because it's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? To keep conjugal chastity and fidelity, to avoid all unseemly and immodest conduct with another, which may stir up jealousy. And then he adds, and yet to avoid all jealousy, which is unjust. There's a tremendous amount of pastoral wisdom in that.
Bottom line is straightforward, isn't it? Our wives, gentlemen, are not to share us with anyone—anyone real or anyone imagined. Our wives are not to share us with the internet. Our wives are not to share us at all. The husband has a relationship with his wife which he enjoys and may not enjoy with any other person. The key is to make your mind monogamous. When you've promised to drink only from one spring, its water will be sweet. Surely when a woman knows that she is it for you, that she is the alpha and omega of your erotic world, she'll be emboldened by it. Now, that's not Richard Baxter.
That's Men's Health, January 1996. In a profoundly helpful article on monogamy, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we're to go all out in love for our wives, never taking advantage of them. So how do you feel?
Well, you feel like me, don't you? You say, Who is sufficient for these things? Well, the same God who calls us to this standard equips us in order that we might make an attempt at this standard.
And as in every other gain in life—whether investing, saving, training, exercising, putting together a beautiful garden—the real gain is the gain that is made consistently over the long haul. And the lies of the world are just that—lies. And the fixes of the world are no fixes at all. If you have not, husband, been taking care of business within your home consistently along the journey, there is no trip to Hawaii that is going to fix this.
There is no slick methodology that you can get out of a magazine to go and put everything back together again. But if you will get down on your knees with your wife and take her hand in yours and cry out to God from the depths of your being for his help and his grace and his restoring power, and then get on your feet and by his help do what the Bible says to do, and if you're prepared not to look for the short-term buzz but for the long-term blessing, then all of the encouragement of the Bible is that we might look to see a radical transformation with the same old you and the same old me living in the same framework. Now, I want to give you, husbands, a little primer, a little starter.
This is a PS, okay? And the wives are not really to listen to this very much, but I quoted from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and he was talking about how, you know, the only test of true husband's love is the doctrine of the atonement. That sounds like, whoa, way out there, you know. You say to yourself, I wonder what he was like when he came home, you know.
Oh, honey, pour me out some soup. I was just thinking about the doctrine of the such-and- such, you know, and so on. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.
No. That would be… We'd miss the man completely. Let me just give you a little flavor of one of the great preachers of the twentieth century, one of the great theological minds, one of the most austere leftover Puritans you could ever hope to meet. The day that I met him, and Sue and I met him together, he was wearing a black hat that looked like he came out of the seventeenth century. He had net gloves on, little black net gloves, and he had a black coat that buttoned right up here. He shook hands with the little net gloves.
Quite a guy. On the eighteenth of May 1937, it was his wife's birthday. Unfortunately, he wasn't with her. The reason he wasn't with her was because he had to go and preach on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and he was on a ship. Having gone on the ship, he determined that he would write to his wife, since it was a strange experience for him to be gone on her birthday.
And so he wrote to her, "'The authorities told me that there was no doubt that if I sent you a telegram it would arrive on your birthday. I had endless pleasure and happiness in sending it. I somehow felt I was in touch with you once more. In this awful distance of separation, a thing like that is a great help.
But, oh, what a poor substitute! I cannot describe the various feelings I have experienced since I saw you last on Waterloo Station. And I had better not try to do so.
Let me say just this much. Thinking of you gives me endless happiness. And I am more certain than ever that there is no one in the world like you, nor even approaching you, not in all the world. I don't know if I'm losing my reason like that poor Mrs. J.T.
in St. Brides, but I often feel that you are with me and that I could almost talk to you. I have at times tried to imagine where you all three are—his two daughters and his wife—and what you're doing. I would give the whole world if you could have been with me.
But there! I must be content to look forward to some four weeks today, when I shall, God willing, be back with you again, looking into your eyes and sitting beside you. I think I shall be perfectly content just to be with you and Elizabeth and Anne, just sitting with the three of you and doing nothing else. I've said in my letter telegram that I am sending you all my love, and here I am saying it once more. I have been thinking of eleven years ago tonight, when we went together to Covent Garden, and then back to Delosus. I thought at that time that I loved you. But I had to live with you for over ten years to know you properly and so to love you truly. I know that I am deficient in many things and must at times disappoint you. That really grieves me, and I am trying to improve. But believe me, if you could see my heart, you would be amazed at how great is my love. I hope you know. Indeed, I know that you know, in spite of all my failings.
I can do nothing but say again that from the human standpoint I belong entirely to you. That is not even a fifth of the letter. His next sentence is, forgive me for writing in English from this point on, having written all of the first part of the letter to her in his native Welsh. Now, husbands, you can find these letters in the bookstore, in volume two of the biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. You may be entirely disinterested in his life and ministry, but—not that I would give you any naughty advice or anything—but I could see slipping in there of an afternoon and showing a peculiar interest in volume two while I drank a coffee and scribbled down this letter verbatim, and then hope for my wife to forget all about it so that I could use it someday in the future. You don't need it.
Just write your own. Loving our wife the way Christ loves us. That's today's message for husbands from Alistair Begg on Truth for Life weekend. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close with prayer, so please keep listening. Our message today is part of a weekend series titled The Christian Family. We've been reminded of the sacrificial way Jesus loves us. That love is the heart of the gospel. At Truth for Life, we are passionate about that gospel message. It's why our mission is to teach the Bible in a way that is clear and relevant so unbelievers will be converted and believers will be strengthened in their faith. We're also passionate about choosing books that can help you share the good news of the gospel. That's why we were so excited when we came across our featured book this month. It's called The God Contest, and it teaches children about God's power, first in the Old Testament story of Elijah on Mount Carmel and then in the New Testament account of Jesus on Mount Zion. We love recommending children's books that are faithful to Scripture and books that spark conversations about the gospel between parents and children. This is a book that fits that criteria. The God Contest is a wonderful way for parents, teachers, and anyone who interacts with young children to present the gospel in a simple, understandable, and entertaining way. You can find out more about the book, The God Contest, when you visit us online at truthforlife.org, but please don't delay.
This is the last weekend we're mentioning this book. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. There's a reason why on the notice boards of old and outside of churches, they used to say that divine service was conducted at 11 a.m. and 6 a.m. in the evening, or 7 a.m. in the evening, and also that the minister was available for the solemnization of marriage. We recognize that there is something profoundly wonderful and yet significantly solemn, because marriage is capable of the greatest joys and the deepest sorrows. Even on our best days, it's a struggle because of sin. All of us are flawed. What would we expect? Two imperfect people, two sinners stuck together in the one room.
Forever. And so we cry out to you tonight, Lord Jesus, simply and humbly, forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. May your will be done in our homes on earth as it is done in your home in heaven. Save us from rummaging around in the garbage cans of the sins of the past. Help us in every realistic way to say with Paul, we are forgetting those things which are behind, our successes and our failures, and we're pressing on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus. Remind us, as we give ourselves wholeheartedly to the privilege of marriage, if we do, that there will actually be no marriage in heaven. And so we pray that, given the very temporary nature of this earthly framework, that we might give ourselves to Christ and to our marriage partners—body, soul, and spirit—to the glory of your great name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join us next weekend when Alistair explains why children should obey whether they feel like it or not. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-11-12 05:12:15 / 2023-11-12 05:20:18 / 8