Turning with me in your Bibles
to Ephesians chapter 5. If nothing changes, this will
probably be the text I preach from at the wedding. I want to
preach from it tonight. This will probably be the last
message on marriage before the wedding. And our subject is the responsibility
of wives, husbands, and parents. Now let's begin here in verse
22. And he says, Wives, submit yourselves
unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. Now that tells us who
this is written to. That tells us this is written
to believers. To believers. Because only those
that have been given a new spirit by the grace of God, by the Holy
Spirit of God, only those that have been given a new spirit
know the Lord. And only those that know the
Lord are able to submit as unto the Lord. Only believers know
the Lord and only believers can submit as unto the Lord. Now
this Word we're reading here is the Word of our Lord Jesus
Christ. This is the Word of God. And to obey this Word is to submit
to Christ. It's to obey His Word. It's to
obey Him. And only those born of God are
made willing to do so. So that's one reason among many
that we see why professing believers are to marry professing believers. Because only believers understand
this word and can enter into this word by God's grace. Now,
this is God's ordained way to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. And God's way is the right way. You know, the only reason anybody
would feel contrary to this or feel like this is not right,
the only reason would be because all you know is what the world
has taught you. The sinful flesh that resulted
in Adam's fall, the transgression, Eve being in the transgression,
She usurped authority over Adam and he obeyed her voice. Remember
when the Lord said that to him? Because you have obeyed the voice
of your wife. Well, why was that so bad? Because
he did that rather than obeying God's voice. Now, only ones that
would object to this are those who are of the world. But this
is God's way and God's way is always the right way. Now, let's
look at the wives first. Verse 22. wives, submit yourselves
unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is
the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church,
and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject
unto Christ, So let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. God ordained a wife to be in
submission to her own husband because God ordained His elect
church to be in submission to Christ our Head. Christ is our
Head and He is the Savior of the body. And the church submits
to Christ. Therefore, God ordained it that
the husband would be head of the wife, and the wife and the
savior of the body, and the wife would submit to the husband.
Now, how much does the church submit to the authority of Christ? How authoritative to the church
is the word of Christ? Christ's Word is our only rule
of faith and practice. We do not listen to the Word
of anybody else. Only His Word. Only the Word
of our husband. That's how much the church submits
to Christ, our husband. Only His Word is the Word we
obey. His Word. We submit to Christ,
our own husband. So a believing wife is to submit
to her own husband as unto the Lord. Just as the church submits
unto the Lord, that's how the wife is to submit to her husband.
His word is to be her word. Not others. His word. His word. She is to do this constrained
in her heart by the love of Christ for her. See, this is not just
a carnal love we're talking about. This is a love of God working
in the heart whereby she is constrained by the love of Christ for her.
She's constrained to trust Christ to provide for her, for Christ
to provide for her, through her husband. She's submitting to
the government of Christ by submitting to the government of her husband.
Now, there's a false church. There's a false church. That's
not the true church. And that false church is not
in submission to Christ, the husband. Not at all. They say things like this, let
Christ save you. They say things like, let Christ
into your heart. Make Christ the Lord of your
life. You see, that is the harlot woman. The Scripture speaks of the whore
Babylon. That's the harlot Babylon, who
has a whore's forehead, who usurps the authority that belongs to
Christ. And it's very, very ugly and
it's very, very dishonoring to Christ. And that's why a domineering,
self-willed woman is very, very ugly and very dishonoring to
both her husband and to the Lord. Now that's just so. Now the true
church is in submission to Christ in everything because we depend
on Christ for everything. We do not let Christ save us. Christ has to seek us and save
us because we're helpless sinners that can't save ourselves. We
don't let Christ into our heart. Christ has to come and through
the Gospel, through the Holy Spirit, give us an entirely new
heart and faith and repentance or we can't repent and believe
on Him. Do you see the difference? You see one bride submitting
to her husband and honoring and glorifying Christ as compared
with that other harlot bride who says, no, I have the authority
to let my husband do if I want Him to do and prevent Him from
doing if I want Him to be prevented. See, the faithful bride, the
true church, submits to Christ because Christ is Lord and He
is life. And we depend upon Him to make
Himself Lord unto us and life unto us. And that's what Christ
does for His people. That gives Him all the glory.
He gets all the glory, all the praise, all the applause for
saving His bride. And His bride doesn't get any.
That harlot church gets all the praise and glory for what she
did because she did everything. She saved Him, letting Him have
His way. See, that's backwards. But that's
the way of fallen man. So the heart motive of the believing
wife, it's a heart motive of a believing wife constrained
by the love of Christ. Her heart motive is that constraint. Christ's love for her. She wants
to glorify Christ, her heavenly husband, by submitting to her
earthly husband. Look down at verse 22. Look at
the motive here. Wives, submit yourselves unto
your own husbands, as unto the Lord, for for this cause, from
this motive, because the husband is the head of the wife, even
as Christ is the head of the church. Now, this order was ordained
by God to glorify Christ as our mediator, the mediator between
God and men. Scripture says Adam was first
formed, then Eve. Christ was chosen first by God
the Father. He chose His Son first. Before
the world was made, He chose His Son first and set Him apart
to be the mediator between Him and His people. And then He chose
by electing grace, He chose a people to be the bride of Christ and
espouse that bride to Christ in eternity. And Christ entered
covenant to save her, to save His church. That's how come Christ
is head of the church. That's how come He's the Savior
of the body. That's what was pictured in God
forming Adam first and then Eve. I'll give you another scripture.
1 Corinthians 11, 7 says, Man is the image and glory of God,
And the woman is the glory of the man. You see, God created
man in his own image. But then what did he do? He put
Adam in a deep sleep and out of Adam's side he created woman,
because she is made of a man. So man is the image and glory
of God and the woman is the image and glory of the man. And that
is to picture Christ, our Mediator. Christ is the express image and
the fullness of the glory of the Godhead in a body. And His
bride, who is formed out of His wounded side through His blood,
is the glory of Christ. You see why this is ordained
this way? And there is something else here.
This order is of God to glorify Christ as our Savior. He is the
Savior of the body. Go to 1 Timothy 2. I want you
to look at a few scriptures. 1 Timothy 2.14. The Spirit of God is moving Paul
here to give us a commentary on Genesis 3. Look here at 1
Timothy 2.14. He says, Adam was not deceived. But the woman being deceived
was in the transgression. She was deceived by Satan into
thinking there was nothing wrong with disobeying God, into thinking
that God was hiding something from her. And so she took the
fruit and then she commanded Adam to take the fruit. See,
she usurped the authority over Adam. But you see here, Adam was not
deceived. It was the woman that was deceived.
You see, Christ didn't fall. His bride fell. Christ didn't
need saving. You and I needed saving. We're
the woman. We're the bride. We needed saving,
not Christ. So after the fall, hold your
place here and go to Genesis 3.16. After the fall, look at
what God said to Eve. After the fall, How is she going
to be saved? Genesis 3.16, unto the woman
God said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. Let me get you to go to Genesis
3.15. God is speaking here to the devil.
And He says, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed. The woman's seed is Christ. He
calls Christ the woman's seed because He wasn't born of a man. He was of the Holy Spirit, born
of a virgin. Women don't have a seed. That
one woman had Christ the seed. He was His own generator. He
generated Himself. He conceived Himself in the womb
of the virgin through God the Holy Spirit. But God said here
to the devil, I will put enmity between thee and the woman and
between your children and her child. And it shall bruise thy
head and thou shalt bruise his heel. Now look at the next thing.
He told the devil that Christ is coming forth through the woman
and is going to destroy the devil. And look at the next verse. Unto
the woman, God said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children. Thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee. The church here pictured in this
woman, the church as she conceived and as she brought forth children
throughout the ages had much sorrow. because the devil was
constantly trying to kill her children to prevent Christ from
coming into the world. You see it in the Old Testament,
Pharaoh killed all the sons. Haman tried to kill all the Jews. When Christ was born, there was
a decree made that all the children two years old and under would
be killed, all the male children. Satan was trying to keep Christ
from coming into the world. And so it caused the woman much
sorrow and much travail. And the only way she was saved
was by looking to Christ her husband and His rule being over
her. That is the only way the woman,
the church, was saved. Go to Revelation 12. Am I just
making all that up? Revelation 12. See, you get in
here an understanding of why the woman is in submission to
her husband. He glorifies Christ as our Savior. Revelation 12.1. Revelation 12,
verse 1. There appeared a great wonder
in heaven, a woman. This is the church. This is God's
elect who make up the church. A woman clothed with the sun
and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars. And she being with child cried,
travailing in birth and pained to be delivered. And the one
she's delivering is Christ, the seed of woman. Verse 4, and the
dragon, he says there, look at verse 4, he says, look at the
second part there, the dragon stood before the woman which
was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as
it was born. And she brought forth a man-child,
who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron and her child was
caught up unto God and to His throne. That's Christ. See, the devil did not succeed.
But when Christ in the garden told the woman that she was going
to have much pain in childbirth and so she was going to be under
the rule of her husband, the way she would be saved is submit
to her husband and look to his rule over her. That was a picture
of the church. The Church, travailing to bring
forth children all through the ages, looking to Christ our Husband
to save us. It is a picture of us now, who
as we travail to bring forth regenerated children through
the preaching of the Gospel. How do we do that? By looking
to Christ, trusting Christ only and preaching Christ only. Go
back now with me to 1 Timothy 2. And I'll show you here that
he gives us that word here in 1 Timothy 2. He puts it a little
different way. 1 Timothy 2. He says this, 1
Timothy 2.14, Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived
was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be
saved in childbearing, if they, the church, continue in faith
and charity and holiness with sobriety. That's another way
of saying if you continue believing on Christ and preaching Him,
looking to Him, trusting Him. That's the same thing he told
Eve over there. It's a picture of Christ and
the church. Now let me ask you a question. Is this really that
important? Let me ask you a question. Will
the self-willed, self-righteous man The man who is religious
but he looks to his will. I believe I have a free will.
I came to Christ according to my will. And the man who is self-righteous,
he added some part. He made himself holy. He did
some part of it rather than Christ doing it all. Will that man be
accepted of God in the final judgment? No way. Absolutely
not. He will not be accepted. And
listen to me, a domineering, self-willed woman misses out
on the joy of full provision by her husband just as a self-willed
sinner misses out on Christ's salvation. That's so. God will see to it that's so.
I guarantee you. A self-willed, domineering woman
will miss out on the joy of the provision and love of her husband,
just like a self-willed sinner will miss out on the salvation
of Christ. But by submitting to her husband in everything,
the believing wife experiences that love and that provision
of her husband. He wants to serve her. He wants
to honor her. I guarantee you the wife who
submits to her husband, makes her husband want to provide for
her. And she will experience that
love and provision just like you and I do who submit to Christ
and experience His love and full provision for us. God will see
to it that's so. I guarantee you. And Scripture
says if two unbelievers marry and then the Lord saves the wife,
He says she is still to submit to her believing husband. And
I am talking here in all this as long as what he does is not
contrary to the Gospel. Submit to him. Because God just
might use that and he might see her good conduct and it might
lead him to come hear the gospel with her. And God just might
save him. Now, Christ receiving this glory,
this is why the God-hating world hates to hear of a wife being
in submission to her husband. This is why. The God-hating world
hates this message. This is why. Because the devil
hates this message. That's why. He's been trying
since the garden to turn God's order upside down. And with an
unregenerate sinner, the order is all turned upside down. Those
that are flesh and only flesh, they will not submit to this
Word. They won't obey it. But a believing husband and a
believing wife understand it. Verse 24, therefore, there's
the motive again, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let
the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Now, let's go
to the husbands. Now, it says, verse 25, Husbands,
love your wives. Love your wives. You know what's
interesting is he tells the wife to submit to the husband. And
he tells the husband to love the wife. Why? Why does he tell
each one of them this thing? This is what we have the most
problem with. The wife has the most problem
submitting to her husband. The husband has the most problem
loving his wife rather than demanding her to submit. He doesn't say
here, demand that she submit. He doesn't say, treat her mean.
He doesn't say, run all over her. He doesn't say that if she
doesn't submit, then you're not to love her. He says, husbands, love your
wives. What melted our hard hearts to
submit to Christ? What melted the hard heart in
you and me to submit to Christ? It was the love of Christ who
gave Himself for us when as yet the only thing our heart was
was enmity, hatred against Him. And that's what He showed us
when He taught us the Gospel. He showed us what we were. He
showed us how He loved us even when we hated Him. So husbands,
if we want our wives to submit to us, God says, husbands, love
your wives. Love them into submission. You know, everything about the
Word of God is true. Every word of God is true. Christ
said, with the same judgment you judge, it will be recompensed
to you again. And let me just give you a simple
illustration. Husbands, if you tell your wives, I demand you
submit to me, she is going to turn that same word back on you
with the same harshness that you gave it to her. Don't you
find that to be so? When you yell at somebody, they
usually yell right back at you. He says here, husbands, love
your wives. Love them into submission. How so? Verse 25, even as Christ
also loved the church and gave Himself for it. Christ loved
His elect alone. He loves His elect alone. And He loved His bride not because
of something in us. It was not because of something
in us. You know, far too often we act
like we expect, we look for something in the person And that's why
we love them. And that's usually always the
case. We look for something in the person, something they do,
say, or whatever, that makes us love them. Christ didn't love
that way. He doesn't love us because of
something in us. Because in ourselves, naturally,
and this is what Brother Todd said, He loves us in spite of
what was in ourselves. Because in ourselves we were
hatred toward Him. We were unrighteous and unholy
and unclean. We were everything God hates,
and yet God loved us. God commendeth His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Herein is love, not that we loved
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. So we ought not to act as though
we require our bride to become something in order to merit our
love. That's not how Christ loved.
Christ loved us and gave Himself to make His bride what He would
have her to be. Christ loved His bride and gave
Himself for His bride to make all God's elect into what God
would have us to be. Look at verse 26. This is what
Christ accomplished in all His people. This is what He does
by His blood and by His gospel. Look at this. He gave Himself
that He might sanctify and cleanse the church with the washing of
water by the word that He might present it to Himself a glorious
church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it
should be holy and without blemish. Christ, our husband, gave Himself
for each elect child of God that the Father gave to be His bride,
He gave Himself for us to sanctify us by justifying us before God
and His law and to sanctify us by cleansing us through the washing
of regeneration by the Holy Spirit and belief of the truth. This
is how He sanctified us. He set us apart by Him doing
all the work. by Him justifying us and by Him
cleansing us. That's how He sanctified us and
set us apart. Now, I realize that we cannot
sanctify and cleanse our bride. I realize we can't do that. But
I'll tell you what we can do. I can bring my bride to hear
the Gospel preached. I can bring my bride to hear
of Christ who can. And I can read the Scriptures
with her. show scriptures like these and
talk about Christ's love for His bride and for His church
and how that my desire is to love her as Christ loved the
church. I can treat my believing bride
as one that Christ has made all glorious and without spot and
without wrinkle and made holy. I can treat her as one that He's
done that for. Because this is what we have
to remember. Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of these,
the least of my brethren, you have done it to me. To dishonor my bride is to dishonor
Christ. To disrespect my bride is to
disrespect Christ. But to love her and honor her
as my queen is to love and honor Christ as my king. The reason is because just as
my bride is one with my flesh, she is one with Christ's flesh. Listen, look at verse 28. So
ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that
loveth his wife loveth himself. When He is loving her, He is
loving His own body because she is His own body. He is loving
Himself because she is His own body. Listen, verse 29, For no
man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth
it, even as the Lord the Church. For we are members of His body,
of His flesh, and of His bones. See, Christ loves His bride as
His own body because Christ is the head and every elect member
is a member of His body. Every redeemed member bought
with His blood is a member of Christ's body. I've showed you
scripture after scripture on this, but Ephesians 1 at the
end, it says, He raised Him to be the head of the body, which
is the church, the fullness of Him. Just like all your members
are in your body and that makes your body complete. Well, Christ
will not be finished until He has called all those He redeemed
to faith in Him so that every member is in His body and His
body is complete. Because His body is the fullness
of Him. He loves His body by nourishing her in the gospel
and cherishing his bride as the gift of the Father to him. That is what he does. He nourishes
her in the Gospel. He is nourishing you who are
his bride right now. And he cherishes his bride as
a gift to him from the Father. And if a husband wants to glorify
Christ, he is to love his wife as he loves his own body. He
is to nourish her in the gospel and he is to cherish her as a
gift to him from the Lord Jesus. That's what she is. And to not
cherish her and not nourish her is to look Christ in the face
and say, I hate the gift you gave me. That's true. That's what we ought to remember
when we get a little bit out of shape about
something. It is just that real. It is just that real. How else
does Christ love His bride? He loves her to the end. Look
at verse 27. It says, He loved her that He
might present it to Himself a glorious church. When is that? In the
end. In the end. In the end, Christ
is going to present His bride to Himself. Perfect. Perfect. That means he's never
going to leave her and he's never going to forsake her. Have you
ever noticed this? You read throughout scripture
and whenever an exhortation is given to someone to not put away,
to not write a letter of divorcement, it's always addressed to the
husband. It's never addressed to the woman. Anywhere you find
Christ speaking and exhorting them not to give a letter of
divorcement, He is addressing the husband. Moses addressed
the husband. Why is that? One reason could
be this, because Christ, our husband, keeps His bride until
the end. He will not give her a writing
of divorcement. Not even when we sinned against
Him in the garden, not when we came forth from our mother's
womb speaking lies, not when we ran away from Him all our
lives in rebellion. He would not give us a letter
of divorce. He wouldn't do it. And He didn't
just tolerate us. He loved us. He loved us. Nothing shall be able to separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Having loved His own, He loved them until the end. He loved
them until the end. Now speaking of His own inseparable
union between Him and His bride, Christ said this, He spoke of
a husband and a wife as one flesh and He added this, What therefore
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Marriage is for life. Don't ever
even let it enter into the equation. Not even the word divorce. Marriage
is for life. Why? Because the marriage between
Christ and His bride is for life. Now husbands, that's what we
need to remember all the time. We need to think all the time.
We need to meditate all the time on how Christ loves His bride. He loved us to Him. He loved
us into submission. The goodness of God leads thee
to repentance. Not the judgment and wrath and
mean, ill treatment. The love, the goodness of God,
the long-suffering of God, the blood of Christ who laid down
His life for us, who loved us and gave Himself for us. That
leads us to repentance. We ought to always think on how
Christ loved us. Let me read this to you. Here's
something you could go and read sometime when you're Feeling
a little bit out of shape? Go read this right here. Ephesians
3, 18. That you may be rooted and grounded
in love and may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth
and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge. That you might be filled with
all the fullness of God. This is a love that passes our
finite knowledge. We can't even enter into the
depths and height and width and the greatness of Christ's love
for us. But we ought to always be thinking on that because that,
he says, is how we ought to love our bride. That's how we ought
to love our bride. Now, let's go to parents. Ephesians 5.30. He says, We are
members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. And for this
cause shall a man leave his father and mother. For this cause shall
a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his
wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery,
but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Now from eternity,
God's elect bride has been one with Christ, from eternity. But when the time came, our Lord
Jesus left His heavenly Father and He joined Himself with our
flesh. That's what He did. Because the
children were flesh and blood, He became a partaker of the same.
Because He had to have a body so that He could do the will
of God in the place of his people, lay down his life, justifies
and crush the devil's head. And on that cross, he left as
a man, he had an earthly mother and an earthly father. And he
left his earthly father and his earthly mother to unite himself
with his bride and on that cross he made his bride one flesh with
him, putting away our sins. And in the day of His power,
He came to where we are and taught us, and He entered in and made
us one with Him in the experience of His grace. And made us not
only leave our mother and our father, but make us leave all,
putting none before Him. That's what Christ did. And that's
the picture here. He says, I'm speaking concerning
Christ and the church. We're of His flesh and of His
blood in His bone, we are one with Christ. There is a glorified
God-man seated at God's right hand and our life is in Him.
We are one with Him. We are going to be like Him one
day. And I pray now that God will give me and Melinda grace
to heed this word. If my son is to leave father
and mother and be joined unto his wife and they two be one
flesh, if my daughter is to do the same, It not only means I
will have to let him depart from under my roof and from under
my provision, but I'm going to have to let him depart from under
my counsel. You imagine if a believer professed
to be one with Christ, but they reverenced and submitted to another. That would cause a problem, wouldn't
it? Rather than Christ's word being their only rule of faith
and practice, they submit it to somebody else's word. That
would be a problem. We see it in churches all around
us who prefer a creed and submit to a church's creed rather than
to Christ. That's a problem. And if a mother
gives counsel to a son contrary to what his wife is expecting
from him, she automatically makes it hard for him to love his wife
as his own flesh. Because somebody is going to
get offended. He is going to offend somebody. And if he is a faithful husband,
he will offend father and mother and cleave to his bride. And
the same is true of a wife. It is of utmost difficulty for
a wife to submit to and reverence her husband if her father is
giving her counsel contrary to her husband. It is so difficult. She loves her father. She does
not want to offend him. But to be a faithful wife, she is going
to have to. She is going to have to. Now as a pastor, I have authority
from God to give counsel to you that are pastors. I do have that
authority. But let me tell you something
I've learned, a few things I've learned. The same is true of
anybody giving scriptural counsel, even a mother and a father. The
same is true to giving counsel to married children. First of
all, we have to remember this is God's Word, not man's Word.
This is God's order, not man's. So not only must we obey God's
Word and let them leave, We must make it easy for them to do it.
Make it easy for them to leave. Leave our house, leave our provision,
leave our counsel. Number two, we have to remember
God is sovereign. He is the master of His believing
child. He bought the believing child
with His own blood and He is the master of His believing child
and He is teaching His child through their mistakes and their
stumbles just like He is doing us. You have to remember that. Experience sanctified by God's
grace is a far better teacher than any of my counsel would
ever be. Experience, making mistakes, falling down, sanctified by God's
grace and made them to look to Christ is a far greater teacher
than I could ever hope to be. Who art thou that judgest another
manís servant? To his own master he stands or
falls, yea, he shall be holding up, because God is able to make
him stand. Hereís number three. Counsel,
no matter how scriptural, will rarely be heeded if we offer
it while the problem is fresh. I can assure you of that. If
thereís a problem here and I get up and preach towards that problem,
It causes more problem while it's fresh. You have to wait
a while till it's forgotten. And then you can preach on it
and everybody will receive it. But while it's fresh, you can't
preach on it. You're going to make it worse.
You're going to make it worse. Number four, counsel unasked
for is rarely heeded. Rarely. But it does do this. It makes us look like busybodies
in other people's business. You know you wouldn't be very
happy if your pastor went around meddling in your business and
giving you counsel on things when you hadn't asked for it.
It's no different for a young married husband and wife, no
different. And number five, if we offer up counsel, now this
is important, if we offer up counsel, We need to first be
prepared not to be offended if our counsel is trampled underfoot.
Some people offer up counsel and they expect you to heed their
counsel, and if you don't, they get offended. And I'm talking
even if it's the Word of God. Don't be offended if they trample
it underfoot. Just because we offer it up doesn't
mean somebody's got to take it. And if I'm going to be offended
when I offer it up, then don't offer it up. And if I'm going
to be tempted after they ignored it and they fall, if I'll be
tempted after I've offered up my counsel, if I'll be tempted
to say, I told you so, don't offer it. Don't offer it. Because more than likely, we
offered it in the flesh anyway. We tend to do that. We tend to
use Scripture as a sword to win a battle. rather than for others'
help. And let me give you this other
thing. The very best counsel of all. I'm just speaking as a pastor,
but this is true of a parent to their son or daughter who's
a new husband or wife. The best counsel is, seek the
Lord. And you too work it out. That's the very best counsel.
Very best counsel. It's one thing for me to preach
the gospel to you. That's one thing. It's another
thing if I start meddling trying to make it effectual by my wisdom
and my strength. It's gone from being the grace
of God to works. And we can't get in God's way.
We just can't get in God's way. What takes place between Christ,
your husband, and you, His bride, is personal between you and your
husband. And it's not for me to interfere. It's not for me
to interfere in another husband and wife's business. That's not
my business. Christ, your husband, will work
it out, and you, His bride, will be brought to submit and reverence
Him. That's just true. And this doesn't change when
we're talking about a husband and a wife who's my son or my
daughter. It doesn't change any of that. Now here is the seventh
thing. This is the last thing. God's
Word. Now watch this here. God's Word
here tells me to mind my own business, not another's. Now you read this as a parent
who is a husband and a wife. Okay? Read this again now. Ephesians
5. Look here. Hold on, let me get to it. Ephesians
5. Listen to this. Verse 33. Nevertheless,
let every one of you, in particular, so love his wife even as himself,
and his wife see that she reverence her husband. If I'm a parent,
I'm a parent, I'm a husband, she's a parent, she's a wife,
that word right there tells me it's my business not to be meddling
in my son or daughter's business as a husband and a wife, but
it's to be loving my own wife and her reverencing her own husband.
You see what I'm saying? It's like that old song. There
used to be an old song that said, mind your own business and you
won't be minding mine. That's what that's saying. You
mind your own business, you won't be minding theirs. You love your
own wife, you do the responsibility you're to do towards your wife,
and she do the responsibility she's to do towards her husband,
and you won't be minding theirs. And then help if help is asked
for. If you can do it with staying
out of the way, help if help's asked for, but otherwise, that
every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself,
and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Now you think about
it. If those three words were taken, wife submitted to their
husbands, husband love their wife that Christ love the church,
and parents love their own husband and their own wife, wouldn't
majority of marital problems be solved? I believe they would,
because that's God's way. All right, we're there.