How to Treat Royalty

It's going to be the gospel that will make seismic changes in the value of a woman. The gospel commands a husband to love his wife like he loves himself, or better yet, like Christ loves the church. Ephesians 5.25, the gospel informs women that their inheritance in the coming kingdom isn't half what the men get, it is equal to what the men receive. 1 Peter 3.7.

I think everybody began to just whisper. This is staggering, shocking, new revelation. There are some Christian men who need to rethink the way they view and value their wives. The Apostle Peter treats this topic with great seriousness because of the way God views the marriage relationships. Our wives should be treated with honor, not just because they're women, but also because they're fellow heirs of the grace that comes through Jesus Christ. If we don't have the right attitude toward our wives, Peter warns us that our own relationship with the Lord will suffer because of that disobedience.

Here's Stephen Davey with a message for men called How to Treat Royalty. Now, if you've been with us, this is how Peter opened his first letter. In chapter one, he referred to our unfading inheritance that's been kept for us. It is reserved for us in heaven.

It's protected. But now, later in this letter, if you'll turn back with me to chapter three of 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter is going to bring this truth up again, the fact that we're inheritors, that we're heirs. Only this time, he's going to use it to challenge the thinking and the behavior of every married man in the body of Christ.

1 Peter 3 and verse 7, Peter has written to us and we've spent seven sessions in this paragraph, three in this verse. If you've been with us, you husbands in the same way, Peter writes, live with your wives. That is, make a home with them.

Be a home dweller. By the way, you can understand it in today's vernacular, you're a homemaker. Your wife isn't the only homemaker. You're husbands. You are homemakers with her.

Make a home with your wives. In an understanding way that is, as we've learned, with kindness and consideration, as with someone weaker since she is a woman, we in our last study talked about how Peter isn't writing that she's weak, but that she's weaker. We explored the glorious, creative act of God in creating gender, male and female. Now notice for today, where we conclude our study, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered.

It's easy to outline this last phrase. He's going to deliver to every husband a daily assignment, a prophetic announcement, and a serious advisement. Now the daily assignment, notice again. Show her honor. Show her honor. The present tense, by the way, tells us this is an ongoing thing. This isn't just on her birthday or anniversary or when she's a little down.

This is daily. And you can understand this to mean assign her honor. It's not just showing it. It is actually believing that she is worthy of honor.

In fact, this is the only time this compound participle appears in the New Testament. And it has the idea of assigning to someone something they are due. It carries the idea of making an assessment of her value. And with it, the implication that that assessment is really high, and this high assessment, by the way, isn't because it's a nice guy kind of thing to do.

It happens to be related to who she happens to be. We'll look at that more in a moment, but by way of illustration, as it relates to giving this assessment or appraisal, it's fresh on our minds. Some of you know that this past summer Marsha and I moved into an apartment for what ended up being four months while we put our home through some major first floor renovations that included adding a small elevator. We intend to live in this house until they cart us away and building a library space.

You can just kind of think of a big garage behind the garage. Large enough to house my library of 6,000 volumes and counting, I think it's about 6,500. It's the first time in 20 years I have all of my books at one location at my disposal, all of them.

The sermons are going to get longer because I now have all those books. Well, as a result of the added square footage, we had an appraiser come out yesterday as we prepared for refinancing. And this young lady who showed up with a tablet and a tape measure in her hand, she was very thorough, very careful. And for that I was grateful that this wasn't just a quick flyover, right?

Because the higher that appraisal, the greater the cash equity value in our home. And I was grateful she wanted to know everything. I made sure we were the first house she appraised that day.

It was in the morning. So she was fresh, alert, and I showed her everything. I mean, I pointed out everything. I had the architectural plans of the renovation there. I didn't want her to think it was a few nails and a board or two. This was a big job. And I pointed out the width of this and the height of that and look at this and look at that and look at this. We took those LED lights under. They're only $24.99, but we did, you know, 20 of them. That adds up.

Make sure you write that there and everything. I mean, even a new ceiling fan in the ceiling. I didn't know if I was getting in her way. My first clue was when she told me it would be okay if I went back to work.

But you know what? I got to tell you, I hope she's not listening, but I'm convinced that our home is not going to get the appraisal it deserves. I'm just sort of setting myself up for that disappointment. I'm probably going to spend two months complaining to Marcia that, you know, she missed this and she missed that and she undervalued this and she didn't really add that in there. And it's not going to get the appraisal I know it deserves.

Here is the idea in this text. Is your wife getting the appraisal that God knows she deserves? Husbands, what might we be overlooking? What are we missing? Do we understand the value of that and how that adds up to that? Are we missing something? Not through the apostle. Peter is telling husbands to assign their wives honor. You could put it in terms of this analogy. Give her the highest appraisal in the neighborhood.

Don't miss anything. Show her honor to the highest degree is how one Greek scholar translated it. I get this. Peter isn't telling husbands to decide whether or not their wives have earned or deserve this high appraisal. He's telling husbands to give them that kind of appraisal daily and act accordingly simply because she is a believing wife, a fellow heir.

So what's the price tag of royalty? Let me change the analogy a little bit. This word for honor is also used in the first century outside of Scripture to valuing a gemstone or a treasure. So how do you handle the daily assignment of handling your wife like a valuable treasure? Well, for starters, if you have something you really treasure, it's going to be reflected in the way you talk about it.

Right? You're going to talk about it a certain way. So how do you talk about your wife at work? How do you talk about your wife to your friends? How do you talk about your wife on the golf course? How do you talk about your wife in front of your kids?

How do you talk about your wife to your wife? It's going to determine how we talk about it. Further, it's going to be reflected in the way you provide for it. You provide for treasure. One New Testament author pointed out the fact that this word honor in noun form gives us the word honorarium, compensation. It has a financial undertone to it.

Depending on the context, it has to do with money. The leaders are saying, I like where this is going. You know, preach it.

Wake up, honey. Be generous. Has an attitude of generosity.

One of the men in our church recently sent me this. Doug Smith is on his death bed, knows the end is near. His nurse, his wife, his daughter and two sons are with him in the bedroom waiting for his last breath. He suddenly arouses himself and asks the nurse to write down his last wishes he's going to amend his will. He begins, to my son Bernie, I want you to take the Mayfair houses. To my daughter Sybil, you take the apartments over in the East End. To my son Jamie, you take all the offices over in City Central. And to Sarah, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings on the bank of the river. With that, he breathes his last. The nurse was blown away by the generosity of these, you know, amundations to his will as she said to his wife, Mrs. Smith, your husband, wow, what a generous, thoughtful man to have worked so hard than to give you and your children all this property. The wife replied, not really. He just had a big paper route.

I probably enjoyed that more than you did, but. Peter's, in this context, is not referring to property or monies. He's referring to protecting and guarding and providing for her like you would protect and guard and make provision for something you treasure.

I mean, think about it. You keep expensive jewelry in cloth-covered drawers or in safety deposit boxes where you put deeds, important documents. You put important pictures behind glass so that it is protected from light and exposure. You keep perhaps your rifles or your tennis racket or your golf clubs or whatever, you know. You don't leave that stuff lying around.

You don't treat it carelessly. So how are you protecting and guarding and keeping and taking care of your relationship with your wife? And by the way, why does God believe that she deserves such honorable treatment? Why does God believe that your wife is inherently worthy of the highest appraisal? Well, Peter, who by the way is a married man, I think anticipates that kind of question.

It's as if he says, I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you why. Notice again. Show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. In other words, the high appraisal is not based on something she did or does or earns or deserves. This highest appraisal is based on who she is. Peter gives the husband a daily assignment and now he delivers this prophetic announcement. She is a fellow heir. She stands to inherit the full measure of the gift of life. Most evangelical scholars take this inheritance context connected with chapter 1 to determine that Peter's wanting every husband to look down the road to that moment when his bride is going to be crowned and bejeweled and robed and seated as a bride of Christ. She is a fellow heir. She is a joint heir of eternal splendor because of the grace of God. Brothers, you are not just married to a woman.

You are married to a royal heir and heiress of the glory of God and his kingdom. While the husband, as we've studied, has been given greater authority and accountability to God as the head of the home, when it comes to the gospel, when it comes to spiritual privileges, when it comes to eternal importance and a crown and a throne and the coming kingdom, husbands and wives are co-regents with the redeemed. And I've got to tell you, for us, if you're old enough in the faith and you've read it, in our culture it's like, well, sure, certainly.

That's not all that surprising. We understand the gospel. When this is read in the first century assembly, I think at certain points, and this would be one of those points, that there is a commotion in the assembly. There is a stir. There is surprise.

There is excitement. I think women, their heads go together as they whisper in their excitement and they are mystified and shocked at this kind of prophetic announcement. The gospel has elevated women to an entirely new level they had never seen before.

But this is staggering about even their future. By the way, when anybody tells you that Christianity holds women down, they don't know history. You go back to this century and the Greek and Roman cultures begin there where wives led quiet lives of misery. They had no personal rights. They were without legal protection. They were exploited. They were treated like beasts of burden. They were viewed by their Greek and Roman husbands to be far beneath them in status and inerrant worth. The Athenian orator Demophanes just sort of summarized it all in that classic quote where he said that husbands in his day had mistresses for companionship and pleasure and wives for bearing legitimate heirs to the family name.

No idea or concept of friendship and companionship. Even in the Jewish culture during the days of the apostles, Jewish wives were treated terribly. They had no legal rights, divorce was rampant, and just for about anything that might displease the husband, all he had to do was walk out on the front stoop and clap three times, I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.

It's over. In fact, Jewish men would offer a typical morning prayer that included the phrase, blessed art thou, O Lord, for not having made me a Gentile or a woman. Who would want that terribly difficult demeaning life? Even today, cultures without a Christian influence such as Islamic countries, they continue the Greek and Roman view that women can be denied equal value and personal rights. The husband, in fact, has the legal and religious right to beat his wife for disobedience. Inheritance rights are half at best to that of male heirs.

And on and on it goes. It's going to be the gospel that will make seismic changes in the value of a woman. In fact, one historian put it this way, he wrote that the birth of Jesus Christ marked the turning point in the history of the woman. The gospel commands a husband to love his wife like he loves himself, or better yet, like Christ loves the church. Ephesians 5 25, the gospel informs women that their inheritance in the coming kingdom isn't half what the men get, it is equal to what the men receive. 1 Peter 3 7.

I think everybody began to just whisper. This is staggering, shocking, new revelation. This is causing men in the church especially to change their value system, to change the price tag they place upon their wives, to treat their wives like royalty as if it were, as of the gospel, a treasure discovered. She means that much to God.

What must she mean then to me? I read recently about a man who had inherited an old blanket from his aunt and he didn't really inherit it. He just, I guess, somehow ended up with it.

Never thought much of it. In fact, it was casually thrown over the arm of a chair in the bedroom where it stayed for years, years. His aunt had once told him that it belonged to Kit Carson but he thought she was, you know, not exactly gripping reality when she said it and he never did anything about it. But then the antique road show came through Tucson and on a whim he said to his wife, hey, let's take that old blanket and see if it's worth anything. According to the article I read, the appraiser almost fainted when he saw the blanket although he couldn't prove it once belonged to Kit Carson. There was no evidence of that. It did date back to several centuries old. In fact, he said it was an original Navajo creation and only 50 were known to be in existence and he valued that old blanket, that little throw blanket at $350,000 and they did what you and I would do, quickly auctioned it for a half a million dollars, that old thing. Yeah.

I have read that people arrive, by the way, at that antique show alone and they leave surrounded by armed guards. Why? Because they came in casually, you know, I got this little throw rug or blanket and all of a sudden it is something now to guard at all costs. We've got to get this thing to safety. We've got to get it home.

That's the idea. You've got to get your wife, as it were, home. Guard her along the way.

She isn't a casual throw blanket. She is a treasure discovered. This is giving us this prophetic revelation of her future.

Treat her that way along the way. Now finally, he gives a very serious advisement. Show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered. The expression your prayers can certainly be broadly understood to relate to prayers in the household or prayers of the couple, but in this text your prayers has a direct reference to the prayer life of the husbands themselves and Peter is assuming that every believing husband is interested in praying. So he attaches all of that to this warning so that your prayers will not be hindered and maybe you guys, you know, I certainly thought about it.

It's sort of, hey, wait a second. There's no stern warning given to women. You know, if they don't submit, if they don't give their husbands due, respect, if they fail in their responsibilities, there's no and if you don't, here's what's going to happen.

Wind them to husbands. Peter doesn't explain it, but as I thought about it, when you track the marital relationship through the New Testament, you understand that the wife represents the mystery of the church united with Christ, but the husband represents the mystery of Christ united with his church, which means that at her best, the wife is like the church. She represents the church, but at his best, the husband represents Christ.

Just let that sink in. The husband represents God in the home. So the stakes are much higher. I mean, his faithfulness is that much more foundational and a reflection of the faithfulness of God. His influence is all the more critical.

His failure is all the more devastating, understood, rather bluntly, husbands. If you then do not care about your wife, God does not care about your prayers. Stop praying.

It's just pinging all over the walls. Your prayers will not be hindered. Wow. The word Peter uses for hindered is a term used for making a road impassable. Enemy soldiers would haul boulders onto roadways and create obstacles and blockades. Paul will use the same word to explain that he had been hindered in visiting the Roman believers, Romans 15, 22. He also tells the Thessalonians that he's been hindered more than once in his efforts to see them. 1 Thessalonians 2, 18.

He also uses the word to rebuke the Galatian believers. When he writes to them, you've done so well in your progress, who is now hindering you? Who's blocked the road of spiritual growth and progress? Who's gotten in the way? The word also carries the idea of being interrupted or cut in. Who's interrupted you? There isn't any more serious, divine threat to our growth than this, that there could possibly be the interruption of all of the promises of prayers being heard and answered.

Imagine the implications. The man who sins against his wife in knowingly refusing to show her due consideration and honor and kindness finds a barrier between him and God. In other words, don't go to God as if everything's all right if you don't care to go to your wife to make things right.

That's an incredible warning. If you're not interested in listening to the needs of your wife, God isn't interested in listening to the needs of your life. So your marriage becomes a barometer of the reality of your Christian growth. In fact, the reality of your Christianity.

It doesn't matter what people say out there. He is a Christian. Wow. I've seen him in the lunchroom.

He bows his head before he eats lunch in front of everybody. What a godly man. It's wonderful, by the way.

Hope you're doing that. It doesn't matter nearly as much as what your wife says about you in the home. What's your wife's assessment of the reality of your Christianity? Peter's drawing a connection between that and your assessment of the value of your wife. See, according to Peter, your fellowship with God is related to your fellowship with your wife. You see, you get out of fellowship with God and it's possible you'll be out of fellowship with your wife, right? We men know that all too well. We get out of fellowship with God that didn't long before the whole household knows about it.

We come home and bark at the dog and kick the cat. That's actually it. Well, never mind. But here's Peter's point. When you act sinfully and proudly and selfishly and you don't care about living with your wife with the courtesy and kindness due her, you get out of fellowship in that way with your wife. You are, in fact, out of fellowship with God. Guaranteed. You hear what he's saying? When we offend our wives, we offend God.

This is a bigger deal than we thought. Is your wife, your servant, placed on the planet to meet your every need? Or do you view her as a fellow heir of the coming kingdom, someone God is allowing you to chaperone, as it were, with kindness, home? Well, men, I hope you've continued to treat your wife as God's special treasure. And if you haven't, today's message is a challenge for you to change your attitude and your behavior. With this message, Stephen concludes his series on marriage called For Better or For Worse. Visit wisdomonline.org or call us right now at 866-48-BIBLE. On our next broadcast, we begin a brand new series called Into the Spotlight. It comes from the Gospel of Luke and you won't want to miss it. Join us next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. .