The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Scott Brown with the message Gospel-Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church, Part 2. Welcome to a new day. We left off last night with Ephesians Chapter 5, 21, dealing with the whole subject of wives and their submission to a head. And we read, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church.

And he is the savior of the body. So that defines the issues that a wife has to grapple with when she considers getting married or actually being married. Then now, the subject changes and in verse 25, if you open your Bibles to Ephesians Chapter 5, if you have your Bibles, please do open, because we'll be walking through each phrase of this text. It begins with, Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water with the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that she should be holy and without blemish So that's what we'll be considering here this morning. Now, this section gives a definition of a new kind of man.

And it's the kind of man that is so desperately needed today in the midst of, I'm just going to call it the culture of the death of manhood. We live in that culture today. We're watching manhood being completely obliterated from the world because of the feminized, feeling-driven, limp-wristed kind of man that is being promoted today. He's known by his hair. Now in the midst of this culture of death, this passage is such a breath of fresh air because it completely redefines manhood and That's what we need to do in this culture that we live in.

We have to recognize that we have a responsibility in the world as Christians to create a new kind of culture. We create Christian culture wherever we go. It's part of the dominion mandate. And part of that culture is a culture of manhood. And of course it needs to be complemented by a culture of womanhood.

And we have to recognize how the devil is so desperately waging war against this culture that Jesus Christ has launched in the world. He is constantly battling against it. And so, this passage is about manhood. It's also about something else. It's about love.

And Lloyd-Jones said this, many marriages break down because people do not realize what love is at the beginning. And that, I just want to take that and say you who are single here, How you view love at the beginning of your marriage is pivotal for how you will view it after you are married. So this passage is going to define, particularly for a man, what love looks like. Because if you grow up in this culture, you think love has to do with some feeling or some kind of romanticized emotional jag that happens to you when somehow someone strikes your fancy. Usually however though, that happens because of something physical, something lustful.

And so love somehow just completely gets lost in the equation. Solomon said that a man just turns into a loaf of bread when he's presented with the lustful image. And so, because we live in such a highly sexualized culture, we're so confused about what love is, and this passage starts to sort of level set what love is. So this passage shows us manhood and what it looks like at the beginning and in the middle. And also it shows us what it looks like at the end.

Because this passage, if you look at it carefully, see that it's eschatological in nature. It has to do with a result. It has to do with the presenting of a bride. Now, notice also that the love that is spoken of here, it emphasizes obligations, not your rights. So right away, you learn that this whole vision of love that's here is completely different from the vision that you've probably been guided by your whole life.

So these verses show how a husband should love his wife, and it defines the activities and the objectives that he should have in his mind. It presents a visionary man. It presents a principled man who has a set of ways of living that are all really assumed under the heading of love. And here in this section is the highest concentration of the language of love in the text. We talked last night about it's very important to have God's language about love.

You need to learn from God about love. And the words of the Bible show you how to think that way. And so here, what we find is there's the word love. There's the giving, sanctifying, cleansing, washing, presenting, you know, without a spot or wrinkle. So The language of love is highly concentrated in these three verses that we're concentrating on here this morning.

Now, let's launch into the text. Husbands love your wives just as, there's that again, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. So the first thing that a husband must do is to love his wife, but it's a very particular kind of love. It's the way that Christ loved the church. So the husband here has a perfect model of love.

Now it's interesting to note that the wife doesn't have a perfect model to follow, does she? She has the church, The church is not perfect. It's interesting that God would do this. He would give a husband a perfect model, but on the other hand, he would give a wife an imperfect model. But what a wife does have is that she has perfect commands to follow.

So while she doesn't have a perfect image, she has commands to help her be formed after the image of a perfect church. We'll talk about this in more detail tomorrow as we go into the next section. But she is being washed and So there's a picture of justification here and also these theological categories that are here. Now, what kind of action does he take? It's summarized in one word, love, and then it's explained with other words, agapao, the term that is in John 3.16, and it is a sacrificial, selfless kind of love.

There are several words in the Greek language to explain love. This one is the highest, and it saturates all the other words as well in some ways. But what we learn here is that this authority, this headship that we talked about last night, it's tempered by love. In the same way that you would, when you're cooking a steak, you want to temper it with certain seasonings. It's tempered by love.

It is authority, but it's only a certain kind of authority. It's not an unbridled authority by any means at all. In fact, it is so significantly bridled that it's bridling is really defined by Jesus Christ and his love. So no man has ever given unbridled authority over his wife. It's bridled by Christ and his love.

And so here, a husband learns how to love by imitating Christ and his love for the church. And so that's the most pivotal issue. Now, what we find here is that the husband is the head, as we saw before, and he has a responsibility to love. Now, he's actually, a husband is given a greater responsibility. Because he has a greater role, because he has the role of preeminence, he has a greater responsibility.

More is laid upon his head. And all that he is doing must be governed by love. He's a king and a ruler and a shepherd, but he's a loving king and a ruler and a shepherd. Let me give you an illustration. I'm stealing it from William Gogue, an English Puritan.

He says that wives often provoke their husbands to rap. He talks about the fact that women are built differently. He says because they're the weaker vessels, they tend to get hotter, communicate hotter. And sometimes they come at their husbands like an angry cat. And so that happens to me.

Has that ever, don't raise your hands, Has that ever happened to you? When your wife just seems to have her claws out. You know, honestly, I have to say, it has happened so rarely in my own marriage, which is just a, it's an absolute miracle of God. I think it's probably because I'm so weak I couldn't take it. It happened.

But we have to understand that women are built with a different constitution. Can we just say they run hotter? Maybe there are other ways that we could explain it. But they tend to run hotter and they may allow that heat to be built up, concentrated like a great geothermal geyser being held in by the encrustations at the top and then at one point, bam, There it goes, splattering all over creation. And a husband is standing there, and he doesn't even know what to say.

He's so fearful of saying, I'm sorry, because he said it so many times. He doesn't know how to respond. If he's a fleshly man, he'll respond in kind and in the same way. Let me read to you the words of William Gogue because I think they're so insightful. And they really speak to this whole issue of how a man has more responsibility.

He has to rise above the occasion. Because wives, through the weakness of their sex, for they are weaker vessels, are much prone to provoke their husbands. Because of this, there is likely to be little peace between man and wife, but love covers a multitude of sins. He continues, Because Christ, by His love, provokes the church to love Him, so a husband, by loving his wife, should provoke her to love Him again, showing himself like the sun, which is the fountain of light, and from the moon, which gives what light she has. So he should be the fountain of love to his wife." So what Goudge is saying is that you men are married to someone who is very different and she's hotter and when she gets hotter you have a responsibility to rise above the occasion and not respond in kind.

He illustrates it like the sun, how the sun stands off from the earth and it warms the air of the sun and warms the earth and then it reflects back. That's how he explains this interchange of a husband and a wife. When a husband is provoked by his wife, he says that a husband should provoke as well. He should provide provocations to his wife, but they're provocations of love. A gentle answer turns away wrath.

He speaks with enormous detail about this whole problem in marriage. And What's plain is that a husband has the very, very best way of provoking his wife to love him again, where she may have lost it for a period. And that is by giving her the love of Jesus Christ. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ was supremely devoted to the church. The church with all of her spots and wrinkles.

And so this is the challenge that every husband has to face. He married a woman with spots and wrinkles. And now he has to grapple with that. And how is he possibly going to grapple with that? He has to learn how to provoke his wife to love him.

Now those of you who are single here today, you need to understand this is something that you learn through experience. You learn it when you are provoked by your siblings. You learn it when you are provoked by your father and mother, by your friends, and you have a responsibility to respond like Jesus Christ because he's our example in everything. So when provocations come to the single person, they need to understand how significant that is for the whole rest of their life. Because they're forming a pattern of acting under provocation, because we're constantly under provocation of some kind in the world.

God gives us that to temper us, to change us, to make us more like Jesus Christ. The provocations are good and they are designed to be worked out together for good. Now, one of the things we have to grapple with here that is an implication of this text, is that Christ loved the church when she was dead in her trespasses and sins. Christ loved the church before she was attractive. In fact, the attractiveness doesn't happen until way later on.

You young men who are looking for an attractive wife, you need to understand that you're not thinking like Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ takes a very unattractive bride, but he takes her for the purpose of making her attractive. That's his whole purpose. And so we often think so wrongly in our whole approach to marriage because we're looking for attractiveness rather than looking for how we might make one attractive. That's what it means to have a gospel-centered marriage.

That's what it means to have a gospel-centered premarital relationship. So it means that a husband must have the mercies of Jesus Christ for his bride or to the one that he might be interested in. Because a wife, when she becomes distraught or angry or fearful or she just might be at the wrong end of her cycle. She might provoke her husband. And then he has a responsibility.

So the whole issue of taking authority in a situation is really critical when you're a young man or a young woman preparing for marriage. Now, for young men especially, I just want to address very specifically the young men in this room who are not married. Now, you have to realize that you were made a man in order to take authority. There's a new kind of man that's needed in this world. And it's a man who rises above the occasion.

He rises above the provocation of his life. Men receive so many provocations. They have to rise above them. In their work, in their relationships, in their life with the civil government, there are provocations everywhere. But they will also receive provocations from their wives.

And So a man has to understand that his calling as a man is to rise above the provocations. If you're a young man today and you're not learning this, please be put on notice of the danger that you're putting your spouse in and your children and their children's children. Men are built for war. They're built for rising above a situation and doing the right thing, even if it means that they die. They do the right thing.

They keep the law of God. They are faithful unto death like the Lord Jesus Christ was. This is the kind of man that's pictured here. He rises above the heat of the moment, the provocation that's coming at him, and he rides on the wings of the wind, the place where Jesus Christ is riding. So, young men need to be men of action in order to what?

To preserve love. That's the primary function of manhood, by the way. Manhood is fundamentally about the preservation of love, and he does this through his service to his wife. Now this is the opposite of the young man who's going nowhere, he's thinking nothing, he's doing nothing, he has nothing of leadership in his bones, he has no courage, he has no communication with his wife. And God desires his men to rise up to be proactive protectors of love in the world.

So if you're a single young man and you're not protective in expressing love to the bride of Christ today, then why do you think you could ever be a husband? Here's what I mean by that. There's so many young men who are just still acting like little boys regarding the church. They think, the church is my dad's thing. Or maybe it's not even your dad's thing.

That's an even greater tragedy. But when a young man thinks the church is not my thing, I'm going to be Mr. Passive in the church, he's really disassembling the whole fabric of his soul that God is trying to build by putting him in a church so that he knows how to love an imperfect bride. Churches are imperfect, aren't they? They're full of all kinds of strange people and As a result, it challenges a man to love a bride, because the church is the bride of Christ.

Your sons so desperately need to be in a local church in order to prepare them to love a bride. I don't know how I could appeal more strongly to you in this matter. It's so critical for a young man to be intimately and actively, passionately involved in a local church because that's one of the contexts out of which his understanding of manhood rises. As he faces situations in a local church, hypocrites in a church, angry people in a church, he learns how to rise above the occasion, pursue love, And to pursue the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. What happens in the church is what's supposed to happen in a marriage.

That's why the church is so fundamentally important for marriage. And I just want to so appeal to you with all of my heart and soul if you are not bringing your family into a local church do whatever you can to do that because the consequences are Enormous. What it means is that you will have your children in sort of a state of retardation relationally, because they don't know how to relate with a broad range of people, with a broad range of problems, and provocations that will come to them in the local church. People say, oh, I'm so disappointed in my church because they're provocations. Well, the Lord has configured His church to have conflict in order to sanctify you and make you a man.

And what men often do is they see problems and they run and they stay little boys. And it's a gigantic problem. We need a new kind of man in the church today who knows how to rise above the provocations and respond with the love of Jesus Christ. There's such a strenuous life that comes with being involved in a local church And it constantly demands that we rise above the occasion. So is marriage about finding the love of your life?

No. It's not. It's about becoming A beautifying presence in the life of a woman to take her when she was unattractive and then work for her attractiveness until the day she dies or one of you dies. It's not about finding the perfect match. It's about reflecting the likeness of Jesus Christ.

This is how we, why it's so plain from this passage that we have to have, we have to have an almost complete makeover of our minds in the way that we think about marriage, because we think about it so wrongfully. And this is that agape love. And then there are qualities to the love. And they're described in many, many ways. The one and others describe the love.

But how do you recognize it? How do you recognize what love is? Well, Jesus Christ shows. He says here, Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. So we've examined this whole matter of loving.

Now it's the matter of giving. He gave himself up for her. This is another piece of the puzzle of the language of marriage. He gave himself for her. A wife might read this wrongly, and she might say, husband, you're supposed to do everything for me.

She concludes that the Bible tells her, it's all about me. You must serve me. And she completely misunderstands what this means. Because the husband is not the head of a wife in order to serve her simple passions. But it's to lead her away from her simple passions.

Which means that the wife won't always get what she wants. Because often what she wants is for her own fleshly desires. So this is not to say that a husband is required to give his wife everything she wants. That would be wrong. Well, Jesus Christ doesn't do that with us either, does he?

We often pray for things we never get. Because the Lord Jesus Christ knows that we should not get everything we ask for. So he's wise and doesn't give us everything that we ask for. Now this kind of manhood is not something that can be put on. A man just can't say I just want to be a better husband.

That is futile thinking. And it will only lead to what I'm just going to call a moralistic, empty, service-oriented Christianity that's not really real. A man must be born again. A man has no hope unless the power of sin has been broken in his life. And he loves the things that Christ loves.

And He sees Christ as altogether lovely. He has no hope if he's not converted to do this. So a man must be born again. It only happens to the redeemed. Over the years, I've met so many men who have come, and they want to be better husbands, they want to be better fathers.

And they come in and they're trying to grind it out, but they have no power to accomplish it because they have never been born again. They have never fallen on their face before God and repented of their sins and began to follow Jesus Christ. And as a result, they're powerless to become a better husband. And I've seen men just struggle and wrangle and finally, in the midst of their moralistic service they just collapse as a result. So a man must have his mind changed.

Hey, that is the beginning of manhood. Manhood is not about beating your chest and carrying guns. It's about becoming like Jesus Christ. It's about repenting of your sins. While Christ did say, sell what you have and buy a sword, it doesn't mean that somehow a man uses fleshly weapons in this world.

He has spiritual weapons of warfare that are given to him by the empowering of the Holy Spirit, which only comes through his repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, as he has finally come to the end of himself and found how absolutely inadequate he will can ever possibly be as a husband or a father or a man, that he has broken every law. And his only hope is to trust in the only law keeper, Jesus Christ. So all these things are impossible without conversion. And notice that the command is not conditional. The command is not love your wife only if she submits.

Nope. Don't get that one. You love your wife whether she submits or not. Like Christ loved the church. How often does the church not submit?

In the same way, husbands loved their wives as also Christ loved the church and gave himself a furry. Now then there are a number of things that go beyond this whole matter of giving. He gave that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water by the word." So these are the things that husbands must do. And husbands have many, many things to do. Again, a husband is placed in a role of preeminence, and so he has more responsibility, not less.

This just shows the absolute tragedy of women who are leading their homes. I want to see us return to the day where a man wears the pants in his family and he is ahead of his wife in every way. There are so many ways that Christ loved the church. Now I'm going to list many ways that Christ loved the church and I just want you to just settle in for a second and listen to these. I'm going to give you a really long list.

And as I give it to you, you men, I want you to just be asking the Lord to help you to understand what these things mean. Because these things are what has defined Christ's love for the Church. He is present with her. He said, I will never leave you or forsake me. He sends her another helper like himself.

He says, I will not leave you as orphans, but I will come for you. He comforts her. He says, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many dwelling places." He sent prophets to speak to her, rising up early and sending them, Jeremiah 29.

He was poor, yet making many rich. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that through his poverty, that you through his poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8, 9. He carries her as a man carries his son, Deuteronomy 1.30. He prays for her.

John 17, 9. He draws her with loving kindness. Jeremiah 31, 3. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you.

He sanctifies her from her former defilement. And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 6, 11. He made her alive together with him. He made her alive together with Him.

Can you think of a more compelling and wonderful role for anyone to play in the world and to do that for a woman, to somehow make her alive? That's Colossians 2.13. He nailed our sins to the cross, disarming the powers and principalities, Colossians 3.7. He holds together, He holds all things together, Colossians 2, 18 and 19. He hides her in God, Colossians 3, 3.

He came to serve her, For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." Luke 19, 10. He came that she might have life more abundantly. John 10, 10. He illumines her, for he is the light of the world, John 8.12. He feeds her with living bread, John 6.51.

He flows living water through her, John 7.37. He guides her, for he is the way, the truth, and the life. John 14, 6. He is the door of the sheepfold. John 10, 7.

He is her rock. And all drank of that spiritual rock. 1 Corinthians 10, 4. He came to gather her as a hen gathers her chicks. He says, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Luke 13.34.

He took the sins and took them upon himself for her. 1 John 2, 2. He drank the poison cup of wrath of sin to the dregs for her. See Jeremiah 25, 27. He loved her when she was dead.

When I passed by you and saw you struggling in your blood, I said to you in your blood, live. Yes, I said to you in your blood, live." Ezekiel 16, 6. He died for her while she was ungodly. Romans 5, 6. He made himself her chief cornerstone, Ephesians 2 19 and 20.

He writes her members' names on his hands, Isaiah 49 and 16. He clothes her in white, Revelation 3 5. He places her members on his throne, Revelation 3 21. He honors those who love her, 2 Corinthians 8.3. He eagerly desires to dine with her, Luke 22.15.

He was obedient unto death for her, Philippians 2.8. He rose from the dead for her, 1 Corinthians 15.14. She is the apple of his eye, Deuteronomy 32.10. He finds joy in her, Zephaniah 3.17. He cleanses her, 1 Peter 4.17.

He sends her out with authority, Matthew 28, 18-20. He created a role for her to the intent that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known through the church. Ephesians 3, 10, and 11. He made her his workmanship and prepared good works for her, Ephesians 2.10. He will destroy anyone who destroys her, 1 Corinthians 3.17.

Do you see how Christ has loved his church? There is nothing like this in the world, out there for your wife except through Christ. So much of the dissatisfaction and the provocations of marriage arise from confusion about this principle that we're talking about. The whole world, man, is telling you that you need to get your needs met, but God makes you a servant. That's why Jesus said, if anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me.

Because the way that you get saved is the way that you operate to save your wife as Christ loved and died for his church. This is why it's so important that young men understand the centrality of the glory of God as the purpose of their lives, that God somehow must be the driving center or marriage completely falls apart. Because God is central, Marriage is secondary. What happens to couples is that they get marriage primary and Christ secondary. That's the problem.

That's always the problem. And the only way to fix it is to find things back in order again. For God is the head of Christ who submits to his father. Christ is the head of man who submits to Christ. And man is the head of woman who submits to her husband.

By definition, when she submits, she's submitting to God or father. Some of you are here, I suspect, and you're searching for a marriage. Maybe you're searching for a marriage for your son or daughter. That's actually a good thing. But you have no hope unless the gospel is the center of all of your activities in this matter.

So, again, the whole purpose of a husband is to give a living picture of Christ and his love for the church. Now, here are a few realities I think that we should try to tease out. Reality number one, If a man ignores his wife, he's saying that Christ should be ignored. If he refuses to nourish and cherish his wife, he's saying that the church does not need the nourishment of God. If he hates his wife, he's saying that Christ should be hated.

If he deserts his wife, he's saying that Christ is a deserter. If he commits adultery, he's saying that Christ is not satisfying to him. So he gave himself for her. Now that's a summary statement. When the church deserved wrath, she got a savior rather than a slanderer.

And I find that one of the most pressing problems in marriages is the way that couples talk to one another. And in my experience, there are very few couples who even know how to talk to each other without getting into a provocation mode. They find it almost impossible because they just let the flesh dry them. The reason is that they have not understood Jesus Christ and his love for the church. And they have not understood the bride and her responsibilities.

That's the root of the whole problem. But couples don't know how to talk to one another. They don't know how to disagree. They don't know how to raise a complaint. They don't know how to raise it.

And then they don't know how to respond to it. And so you have this powder keg, this volcanic activity going on that causes so much damage. And so couples often don't know how to talk to one another without slandering one another because they have taken on the image of the devil who is the slanderer from the beginning. When you rise up in provocation, you have to know that this is of the devil. This is the slanderer at work in your soul.

What a tragedy it is to take the seat of the devil in a marriage and to become a slanderer of the brethren and the cistern. Now Again, you who are single, you are looking for positive characteristics. You are looking for someone with the right personality and the right kind of life and the right kind of look for you. Generally that's what people are doing. But let me turn the tables on that for a minute.

Did Christ save you because of your appearance? Did Christ save you because you were so winsome? No, He saved you when you were dead in your trespasses and sins. That should be such a formational principle in your search for a bride and for your considering a husband. Do you see how Jesus Christ completely redefines all the terms of love?

He wipes everything away that you've been taught and thought and felt your whole life. And he replaces it with something so countercultural. And then we see the effectiveness of the husband's ministry in his wife's life. It's not only affectionate as we've been speaking of, it is headship, it is affectionate headship, but it's also effective headship. And we see this in verse 28.

That he might sanctify. So in order that, so all of these things happen, the loving, the given, all happen for a purpose, for an eschatological purpose. That he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. So the first term we run into is sanctify. And it has to do with setting apart for sacred use, to separate from evil.

And so this is the distinctive aspect of the fruit of justification. One is sanctified. It's a fruit of justification. So he sets her apart and cleans her with the washing of water by the word. So this cleansing, in terms of the way that the sentence is structured, it's what's called a modal participle that shows in what manner the sanctification takes place.

So it's the way that the sanctification works in order that he might sanctify, cleansing, cleansing it. So this unification, this sanctification that happens, is a cleansing kind of union. Jesus Christ, whatever Jesus touches becomes clean. This is one of the wonderful things about the healing narratives in the Gospels. Jesus touches and you're made clean.

He is not defiled. He makes clean. That's a parable, really, of a way that a husband ought to be operating. He heals and he saves. He makes clean.

The church was so polluted, cast in a field of her own blood. And so here, Jesus Christ is doing a work of cleansing. This is kind of what the Apostle Paul said when he said, I thank Jesus Christ in 1 Timothy 1-12. I thank Jesus Christ who has enabled me, who was a blasphemer, by his cleansing, by the touch of his hand. And this cleansing is washing up.

It's like, the word that's used is the word for a bath. Like a constant cleansing flood like a shower is. Washing with water by the Word. So he's purifying her by the Word. There's this washing of regeneration, and then there's the sanctification that takes place.

So that's the purpose of marriage for a wife, that it's a sanctifying influence in her life. That really is why she gets an imperfect husband, to sanctify her. She gets so fed up with her husband and she often forgets why he's in her life. Why did you marry this man? God knows.

To sanctify you. To make you different than you were when he picked you up there in the field. And even his sins have a sanctifying effect on you. It's such a beautiful thing to see this in a wife. I've seen it many times.

It's so wonderful when a wife understands that the sins of her husband are part of her own sanctification. And so she comes not with provocation, but gratitude. That's a miracle of God when that happens. Gary Thomas, in his book Sacred Marriage, says, what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? Well, I sort of like that statement because it is true in one sense.

But holiness always makes one happy. That's the only thing wrong with it. It is designed to make you holy. Not necessarily happy, but holiness is happiness as well. Somebody said marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egoism are extracted without anesthetic.

One of the greatest wedding gifts you can give was a full-length mirror called Your Spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, here's to helping you discover what you really are. One author says, any situation that causes me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value. And that's the sanctifying effect of marriage. So suffering under imperfect leadership is one of the things that God has built into his family in order to sanctify and humble his people.

He uses corruption to sanctify his holy people. And he's going to use the corruptions, the ignorance, the short-sightedness, even the sins of your husband to sanctify. You have to get that straight or you will never be happy woman. You can never be happy until you understand this. You will always be pining away with your claws out provoking and getting nowhere all your life long until you understand this principle, that these weaknesses of your husband are gifts from Almighty God to sanctify and cleanse you.

Now, some of you have wives who've been waiting for years to have a true Christian husband. And maybe you sit in church week after week, month after month. And it remains really hard for you because your husband is so self-absorbed. And you cannot even see how to get yourself out of it because you don't understand your role. Some of you have lonely wives.

Some of you are living separate lives. All these things are just contrary to what we're being taught here. Now then, there's an instrument of this washing. It is of the word. With the washing of water, by the Word.

That's an important statement, by the Word. So a husband has a duty of communication of the Word. Now, the word that the apostle uses here is the word Ramitai in the sphere of the word. It's not the word of God. It's not logos.

It's this other word. And it conveys a nuanced meaning. It's a different meaning that does include some of the other meanings of the other terms of word. But the word has to do with communication. It means that a man is taking the word and communicating it.

But it's more about his own words. He's using words to sanctify his wife and cleanse her. It's not just by the word of scripture, but the things that a husband says about scripture. So the words that you speak to your wife should be sanctifying in that they are words that have the word in them. But it's more than just the word.

In other words, You can't get by just by reading the word to your wife. You have to talk about it. The young man who says, I'm not good at communication, I'm just not good, I'm a quiet kind of a guy. You need to be really gripped by the severity of how different your attitude is compared to this. Because it is sin to be a poor communicator to your wife.

You know, men often say, I'm not a very good teacher so I'm not going to teach my children. I'm going to give them to the Sunday school teacher. That is a simple attitude. God has charged you to teach. It doesn't matter how good you think you are.

It's a command of God. Here, you must wash your wife by the word. In other words, you have a word-driven life. You know, there's so many statistics about how women say more words than men in a day. Well, that needs to be balanced.

Men have to try to resist that gravitational pull. It's not a joke, really. It's something that needs to be corrected in men. So the young man who says, I'm not very good at communication, he better get good at communication if he's going to get married. He better start being a man and quit just being a victim of his own passions and saying, I'm not a very good communicator.

You have got to fix that. You have got to be able to communicate words that include the words of God. In other words, you have to talk to her with the washing of water by the word. A couple years ago I wrote a book called Preparing Boys for Battle, And 16 things every son needs to hear his father say. And it's so important that boys are prepared for battle.

One of the ways you prepare boys for battle is you prepare them to communicate. They must know how to write. They must know how to talk. They must know how to communicate well. God forbid that we raise a generation of men who are not communicators.

God is commanding husbands to be communicators. And we cannot let the education of our sons Be blank of that. It's a critical responsibility. It's very interesting that God has commanded husbands to communicate. The apostle Paul says, let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.

And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak at church. Now I just take that at face value. I think that's the way that we ought to consider it. This is, the words are very plain. But notice what happens here in this admonition.

Let your women keep silent in the churches for they're not permitted to speak. But they can speak of their husbands. And the way they speak of their husbands is they ask them questions. It almost seems like the apostle is saying, forget. Don't even go to the elder.

Go to your husband. Get unified with your husband. God so values the theological unity of a husband and wife, he actually prioritizes it in this sense, over the asking of elders a question. He prioritizes a husband of all things over the elders in their relationship. I don't think that applies in every single case.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, this is the way it is. God has wives communicating with their husbands. He wants husbands to talk to their wives. And one way that he gets husbands to talk to their wives so that they can be washed in the water by the word is by communicating to them. So communication is an enormously important principle.

The tool that Jesus Christ uses to sanctify his church is the exact same tool that a husband uses for his wife. Except, he uses more of his own words. He needs to become a wordsmith. God forbid that we do not raise up a generation of wordsmiths in this place. You know, in many ways, it's amazing to me, this gathering, It's very much like a family gathering.

Someone just said this to me in the hallway. I just feel like I'm with my family. And we are. We've made many connections over the years, and it's a beautiful thing. But let's covenant together as a family.

We're going to train our sons to communicate. And we as husbands, we're going to do a better job than we did before. So marriage, finally, is a journey into holiness. If you want to marry, then remember that it's a life of increasing holiness and increasing the holiness of your spouse. And how do you be a wise husband who is working to cleanse his wife?

There's so, so many ways, as we've just outlined. There's much more to say about this text that we'll pick up in the next section. But let me just say this about this section as we close it off. This is manhood. The world needs a new kind of man.

Incarnations of the Lord Jesus Christ, which can only be accomplished when men fall down at the feet of Jesus Christ and repent of their sins and say, Oh Lord Jesus Christ, make me like you. And that's the heart of this text. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, how short we fall in all these ways. And now, we recognize our need of help.

And I pray, Lord, that you would come and pour your spirit out upon us, that we might be shepherds after the manner of our Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd who lays his life down for his sheep, who gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in his bosom and gently feeds those who are with Him. The Church and the Family to the Word of God. And for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.