[0:00] I want to talk this morning about the glory of the ordinary. The glory of the ordinary. Or as I shared with Dennis before, the glordinary.
[0:13] Don't title it that unless you want to. I don't care. I blame it on Charles Spurgeon.
[0:24] Thank you, love. He said if you're not regularly creating new words, then what are you even doing with the English language? That's my paraphrase of him. So we have apostologic, which is Paul's way of thinking.
[0:40] That's another combined word. A man can't be an elder in the church if he can't manage his own home. Can't manage the house of God if he can't manage his house.
[0:51] That's apostologic. And then we have the glory of the ordinary. Well, let's pray and then we'll jump in here for a time.
[1:06] Our Father in heaven, we give you thanks once again for the grace that is ours in Christ Jesus. Lord, we thank you for the kindness that you have shown us, which we have not deserved.
[1:20] And your faithfulness, your steadfastness in keeping us and caring for us. Lord, we thank you for this church, for Christ's church. And we pray today that you would strengthen your people.
[1:33] That our faith would be strengthened. That our knowledge of you would be increased. That our affections for Christ and for one another would be raised. And that you would equip us for the work to which you've called us.
[1:47] We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I want to read first, before we'll get to 1 Peter 3, which will be the primary text today.
[2:01] I'm going to read a segment from Zechariah chapter 14. We've just come out of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It's now the Jewish New Year as of last week.
[2:14] Coming up shortly on the 11th, it will be Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And on the 16th, on through the 23rd, it will be the Feast of Tabernacles.
[2:27] I'm not saying that so that you will all go back to Jewish roots and start having some formal celebration of these things, though there can be some profit to that. I'm saying that to think about something that I want to begin with in Zechariah 14.
[2:43] Namely, that God is enthroned on high and remains a covenant-keeping God and means to display his glory on real terra firma on the earth.
[2:56] Tomorrow will be the one-year anniversary of the invasion from the terrorists from Gaza into different parts of Israel in which hundreds of Israelis were killed, little babies were killed, women were ravaged and raped in a rather makeshift operation of men flying over the border into Israel in little privately made paragliders with generators on them.
[3:29] And you have to wonder how such an elite military as the Israeli military could be penetrated by such rudimentary things.
[3:40] And the answer to the question, which is also the answer to the question as to why Israel is yet preserved, is that God is the God of Israel and has something to put on display of his glory.
[3:53] And he's displaying that through their judgments, and he's displaying that through their mercies. And that's something that we need to think about. Zechariah 14 gives us a glimpse into what things are tending toward.
[4:11] I'm actually going to read verses 8 through the end of the chapter and just give a few comments before moving to the main text. But I want you to understand that this is a post-exilic prophet writing here.
[4:26] So this is after the Assyrian invasion and after the Babylonian invasion. And therefore, what is being spoken of here pertains to the future. Just after there's been a great time of trouble in verses 1 to 2, just after God himself has planted his feet on the Mount of Olives in the following verses, verse 4, we have this description of a time that will come when God, the Messiah, will reign upon the earth from Jerusalem.
[4:58] Verses 8 and following. On that day, living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter, and the Lord will be king over all the earth.
[5:15] On that day, the Lord will be one, and his name one. The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Ramon, south of Jerusalem.
[5:28] But Jerusalem shall remain aloft on its site from the gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate. Some of this sounds unfamiliar or irrelevant to you.
[5:39] Just bear with me and walk through the text. He's speaking about real places here. This is part of my point. To the corner gate and from the tower of Hananel to the king's wine presses.
[5:55] Verse 11. And it shall be inhabited, for there shall never again be a decree of utter destruction. Jerusalem shall dwell in security.
[6:06] And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet.
[6:18] Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. Good luck explaining that to your children after the service. And on that day, a great panic from the Lord shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of another, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other.
[6:40] Even Judah will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance.
[6:50] And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever beasts may be in those camps. Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come up against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the king, the lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of booths, or the feast of tabernacles, Sukkot.
[7:18] This is remarkable. This is a description. I'm convinced of the time which is called the thousand-year reign of Messiah, where Christ is ruling on the earth over the nations.
[7:32] Magnificent. Delegates from the nations are coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of tabernacles with the redeemed Israel. This is all happening on real terra firma, on earth, on land.
[7:46] This is not a symbolic picture with little Cupid angels, fat babies in heavenly diapers, shooting arrows at romanticists, and playing harps on clouds.
[7:59] This is the fulfillment of what God has promised upon the earth. Verse 17, And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the king, the lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them.
[8:15] So the prophet says that during this time, this millennial reign of Christ, the nations that will not honor the king, who is called here the lord of hosts, it's not some future merely human king, he's called the lord of hosts, if they refuse to celebrate the feast of tabernacles, then God will withhold rain from them, and their crops will not grow.
[8:42] Actual judgment from God in real future time. And if the family of Egypt does not go up and present themselves, then on them there shall be no rain.
[8:54] There shall be the plague with which the lord afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the feast of booths. This is one of the reasons we know that Zechariah is not speaking about the new heavens and the new earth here.
[9:05] Because there is still some recalcitrance and rebellion from certain nations. And we also know that it's not a statement of this age, because the lord of hosts himself is physically present in Jerusalem, ruling over Israel and the nations as king.
[9:25] This is a remarkable passage that Martin Luther arrived at in his commentary in Zechariah, and once he got to chapters 12 to 14, the first time he made a go at it, he wrote, I have no idea what this passage is speaking about.
[9:42] And the second time he made a go at it, he just gave up and didn't write anything. And so his commentary on Zechariah was never finished. And it's because he was fixed within an amillennialist frame of thinking.
[9:57] And there was no denying here that this was a post-exilic prophet who was not prophesying about the Babylonian exile. And there's no doubt that it could not either have been about the Roman dictatorship over Israel, or AD 70, because it concludes with Christ, or God in the text, Yahweh, planting his feet on the Mount of Olives and ruling right there.
[10:25] See? I'm still getting at something here. It's not an eschatology message. Might sound like it so far, but it's not. But it is, but it's not.
[10:36] This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the feast of booths. And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, Holy to the Lord.
[10:55] And the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar. I'm not going to get into whether or not, or what the nature of some kind of tabernacle, temple would be during this millennial time.
[11:10] That's for another discussion. You can wrestle through it. Like Adam said, wrestle through it for the next week and see what happens. But whatever this time is where the Lord himself is ruling from Jerusalem, it says every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them.
[11:38] And there shall no longer be a trader or merchant in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day. In other words, no more foreigners manipulating the worship of God in the lives of God's people.
[11:54] There will be no tables to overturn there. The Lord will be there, but he will not be overturning tables. He will be ruling over the nations.
[12:06] And for the first time in the history of Jerusalem and of Israel and indeed of the world, every pot, the most rudimentary elements of travel, of carriage, and of cooking, whether it's for ceremonial meals or whether it's house to house in Jerusalem, every one of them will be counted holy to the Lord.
[12:34] For the light of Messiah will permeate everything. Years ago when I was thinking about this passage for the first time and breaking my brain over what in the world it could mean, I consulted David Barron's commentary, which I commend to you.
[12:50] It was a student of Adolf Zephir, some of you know that name. And in David Barron's commentary, once I arrived at chapter 14, I found him writing that this idea of bells on horses and pots, ceremonial pots, and the cooking pots from house to house in Jerusalem being called holy, he said that concept is the glorious goal and climax of vision and prophecy altogether.
[13:20] And I thought to myself, what in the heck is he talking about? How could bells on horses and pots cooking meat be the glorious goal and climax of vision and prophecy altogether?
[13:35] And I came to understand ultimately what he meant was, in that day, the righteousness, peace, and joy of Messiah will permeate everything. It will all be regarded holy.
[13:49] There will not be this sputtering of affections in God's people, the sputtering of secularism in our hearts, by which we function part of the day as functional atheists, and part of the day maybe in a devotional time, or when a brother calls us up to confess sin or something like that, as those who are eager to worship our God.
[14:13] And that day, according to the apostles, God shall be all and all, and Christ shall have the preeminence. And this is a picture of that.
[14:24] Did you see that thing? How long has that been there? Thank you, Dennis. Well, I really would commend a deep study of Zechariah, the whole book, but chapters 12 through 14 are remarkable in this respect.
[14:40] And I have never read an amillennialist, postmillennialist, supersessionist commentary on those passages that was coherent at all.
[14:52] Even the times of suffering described in Zechariah 14, 1 to 4 in Jerusalem, houses being pillaged, half of the city exiled, women being raped.
[15:03] It's a horrible scene. October 7th was a precursor, a picture of this time of Jacob's trouble about which the prophets and the Lord Jesus speak.
[15:14] Jeremiah 30, Daniel 12, Matthew 24, etc. One of the commentaries said, this description of Jerusalem is the description of global persecution against the church throughout the whole of the church age, which is one of the most ludicrous slights of hand that I've ever seen in exegesis.
[15:39] Anything to remove the issue of Israel from the consciousness of the church. Why is that, brothers and sisters? Well, I'm not going to answer that question because we got to get to 1 Peter 3.
[15:53] I'm not going to answer that at length. But let me suggest to you that Satan has a scheme by which to disfigure the person and glory and will of our God.
[16:05] And if in any way he can get us to twist what is in God's word, or to take, as Spurgeon said, to take God's meaning, to tear it from his own words, then to that degree will something of our worship also be disfigured.
[16:21] And if Israel and the land and Jerusalem and the Jewish people are no longer significant in any way to the purposes of God, then there are supernaturally promised prophecies that will find actual fulfillment for which we're not looking at all.
[16:40] We're not praying about it. We're not thinking about it. It's totally removed from our doctrine, from our prayers, from our expectations. And we may find, in certain respects pertaining to Israel or to other things pertaining to the Lord, that in the day of his coming, we are taken unawares, when we should have been discerning better.
[17:02] Jesus scolded the religious leaders for being able to discern when a storm was coming in, but not to be able to read what he called the signs of the times.
[17:13] Well, I'm going to leave that there and move into this glory of the ordinary, because I've just read a passage that is rather unordinary. This is a magnificent, terrifying, glorious, wonderful thing to think about.
[17:26] And yet there's a sense in which all of the cataclysm and judgments and remarkable mercies that are poured out upon the earth copiously in the last days are leading to something that is very ordinary, and yet full of glory.
[17:46] The glordinariness of the picture God gives us here. And I wonder if you are aware that you, being in Christ, have been swept up into that majestic narrative.
[18:01] And that we sitting here today is another page or two in the volume of church history, redemptive history. Here we are singing to the lamb that was slain together and hearing of him and loving him together and praying that God would sanctify us and teach us to discern the body and teach us to build one another up.
[18:25] This is a slice of church history. It is ordinary, and yet it's not ordinary. Do you see?
[18:39] There is new covenant glory that has come to us in Christ. If we could see who we really are in Christ, our mouths would drop open.
[18:53] There is a time coming when we shall be like him, 1 John 3, 2, where we shall see him as he is. But, brothers and sisters, we already are this.
[19:05] And the Lord uses the ordinariness of the ordinary very often to keep us in a place by which we must walk according to faith and not according to feelings.
[19:21] There's a glory to be displayed through the church. Paul calls it the demonstration of the manifold wisdom of God through the people of God in Ephesians 3, 10. It is the very holiness of God.
[19:34] It is the very love of God. It is rivers of living water. It is a testimony, a confession, a witness. It is the governance of God.
[19:48] It is all things for us, slowly but substantially becoming communion with him. This is the fruit of justification.
[19:59] This is what is at work in this church and in every true church. The grace of God in these ways. Yet it appears ordinary very often and we can lose touch with its sacredness and power.
[20:15] In 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 9 and following, the apostle Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica, now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.
[20:31] For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
[20:54] What a wonderful passage. I cannot help but imagine the apostle Paul a week after perhaps having raised Eutychus from the dead or having the sense of triumph in a new church that had been planted in one of those pagan cities.
[21:11] And there he is in a season where the church is not supporting him financially, which he had back and forth, and spending 40 or 50 hours making canopies out of leather for buildings and interacting with centurions because he was a Roman citizen and interacting with them as he's making a canopy for the new station for the soldiers that are moving into this town, whatever.
[21:39] He's giving himself to mundane things. He's aspiring to live quietly. Everything for him in new covenant grace has become precious.
[21:51] And the glory of Zechariah 14 that will permeate the earth, the glory of God will cover the earth as waters cover the sea. That glory is already being tasted and demonstrated in the life of the apostle.
[22:04] This is what gives him the kind of heart and the kind of wisdom to see the church in the way that he sees it, to be able to esteem the weakest of members and not merely men who are elders or men or women who are most gifted, but to love the body of Christ.
[22:22] This all comes from Paul's awareness of the sacredness of that which the world deems ordinary. I'm reading a biography, a few of you guys in the Workman's Trust at least know about this, about an international ministry leader that was discovered to be in multiple affairs and even abusing minors and all of this really horrible, horrible story.
[22:47] But there was a point in his life where the man writing the biography who was his Bible college roommate and was the guy that helped him start the ministry in the 1980s was talking to another leader from a denomination that knew this man who eventually would be exposed.
[23:05] And that denominational leader asked the man who's writing this book years later, asked him, do you know what that leader's greatest fear is?
[23:16] And the man who believed he was so close to this man and helped him found the ministry and all of this said, well, I think, you know, probably drowning. He doesn't get anywhere near water.
[23:27] He's actually morbidly, morbidly, he's terribly afraid of drowning. And he said, well, that, okay, that makes sense. But that is not his greatest fear.
[23:39] And he said, well, okay, maybe you know him better than me, but I've been with him for the last 10 years. And the guy said to him, his greatest fear actually is that at the end of his life, he should be counted ordinary.
[23:54] That he would be ordinary. That he would not have a ministry that stands out. That he would not have a name that leaves a great impact. That he would have no biography written of him.
[24:05] That he would not have a special calling among those who are the holy ones, the saints. That he would not be regarded as gifty. That he would not be regarded as successful. That he would not in any way stand out in such a way that he could be regarded as more than ordinary.
[24:21] And in that fear, he did all kinds of drastic things and moved all kinds of chess pieces and manipulative ways that built a large organization that was known by many, built a semblance of devotion even in his life with fasting and prayer and study and all kinds of things when under the hood, there were piles of poison.
[24:45] And according to this man, much of what was fueling that was his fear of being ordinary.
[24:56] We're going to have to get over that if we're going to build the church in a way that pleases the one who is the head of the church. Because pots and pans and bells on horses need also to be regarded as holy.
[25:10] And the thing that makes anything significant is the presence of the only one who is worthy of being looked upon with worship. And that's going to happen, brothers and sisters.
[25:23] So let's just think about a few points and then we'll touch on 1 Peter 3. Let me think for just a moment and give comment on the glory of the ordinariness of this local church.
[25:38] The glory of the ordinariness of this local church. It really should be true of any local church, no matter how large or small, that the lives of the saints are treated with reverence and cherished and stewarded in such a way that even the things about one another's lives that don't seem impressive or that don't stand out are stewarded with reverence and with the fear of the Lord and with selfless love toward one another.
[26:10] That's what Seth was encouraging us toward during the Lord's table. But I wonder if you all get discouraged at all.
[26:20] I've known this feeling of discouragement many times in my life. We had a house church for about 11 years that we led and there were many times where I thought to myself, what are we doing here?
[26:36] Where I thought to myself, okay, is this really fruitful? And I thought to myself, man, are these guys ever going to become elders? Good grief. What's taking so long?
[26:47] And I thought to myself, are we, are we bearing fruit in such a way that glorifies Jesus? And I also thought, remarkably, partly owing to that one ministry that I mentioned earlier, to people that I knew from there who looked upon our little church in a condescending way, frankly.
[27:09] I have no other way to put it. That's what it was. I also felt a sense of inferiority at times. I also felt to myself, I don't know if I should be doing this anymore.
[27:21] Well, I don't think any of you are deeply discouraged about Christ's church. I haven't heard anything like that, though I'm sure you've had times where you have felt discouraged. And I want to just re-up you as a people to remember that there is glory in the ordinariness of this local church.
[27:39] There is glory here. What makes you significant is not your good looks, though you're all decent. Or your giftedness, though there's giftedness here.
[27:52] What makes you significant is the same thing that will make the bells on the horses in future Jerusalem significant. The very light of Christ, the preeminent one.
[28:04] And he is here with you by the Holy Spirit. You are being made into a temple for God's dwelling by the Spirit.
[28:16] Ephesians 2. There is glory in that ordinariness in this local church. Do not despise the day of small beginnings.
[28:27] And by which I don't mean Christ's church will one day be a mega church. I mean, do not despise the day when God is continuing to shape you as a people who know what it means to walk in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit together.
[28:46] Because what is knit in these days is what will be the foundation for who will come, who will be saved, who will be discipled, and whom you send out to plant and nurture churches in other places.
[29:00] What the timber and essence of your life together is, is what will be replicated as you go on seeking to build up this local body and ultimately sending others out in days to come by the grace of God.
[29:16] Do not despise or overlook the glory of what's happening here because, however ordinary it very often feels, it is precious to God and he shed his blood exactly for it.
[29:31] This is a slice of church history. This is becoming a new theme for me. Just making myself more aware, we just finished the church history course in the Workman's Trust and I couldn't help but realize a few things.
[29:45] Number one, that all of these figures in church history were notably flawed and that every one of them God sustained. every one of them that was counted faithful at the end of their lives with all their sins and weaknesses, God kept them and they went to the grave with a testimony of his faithfulness.
[30:07] May it be the same for every member of this church. There's glory in this local church. Number two, I have four. The glory in regular hardships.
[30:19] Well, we hear this all the time. We hear this again. Yes, you do. Yes, I do. Life is hard. Being a mother of little children is difficult.
[30:33] Being a single person who wants to get married is difficult. Being a man who is seeking to grow up and to eventually be appointed as an elder is chastening and sifting.
[30:47] Being a Christian in a fallen world that hates Christ is to live in a mode of resistance in one sense for all of our life.
[30:59] You must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of heaven, the apostles said. Life has within it sufferings. One Bible school president spoke to his graduates well on their graduation days.
[31:14] They were going off to pastor churches in other parts of the world by teaching them with a, what do you call it? What do you call it? A speech at a graduation thing? Yeah, commencement speech and the title of it was, to these men who are going to be pastors, thou shalt have spells.
[31:32] In other words, you're going to have sufferings, tribulations, things are coming your way that are going to humble you, sift you, reveal things in you that you didn't know could be revealed when you thought you were so sanctified in that area and now there's a new season upon me and why am I being proud?
[31:51] Why do I have envy against this other brother or sister? Why am I doubting God? Why do I have anxiety over this? What's going on? I thought I was already matured beyond this.
[32:03] And the Lord says, I discipline you because I love you. And I want your joy in me to be so full that it will spill over onto others.
[32:14] And for that to happen, you're going to have to go through my fatherly squeeze. And I am faithful to continue to squeeze.
[32:26] Well, that will include regular hardships. In a sermon called The Happy Christian, I was pleased to hear Daniel Bergthold teaching Sunday school this morning and went to the Sunday school class and then prayer meeting then came here.
[32:41] And he quoted out of this, although I'll have to tell him later if he ever hears this, he quoted the popular paraphrase. He didn't actually quote what Spurgeon says, so, but you know, but we're all growing still.
[32:52] In the sermon, Charles Spurgeon, sermon called The Happy Christian, Spurgeon said, the worldling blesses God while he gives him plenty.
[33:05] You ever heard an unbeliever thank God for something? I mean, I get a promotion or whatever, thank God in heaven. You know, God doesn't know the Lord from Adam.
[33:16] But the worldling blesses God while he gives him plenty. But the Christian blesses him when he smites him. The Christian blesses God when God smites him.
[33:29] He believes him to be too wise to err and too good to be unkind. He trusts him where he cannot trace him.
[33:41] Looks up to him in the darkest hour and believes that all is well. This is right at the heart of so many precious hymns that have been written throughout the years and this must be maintained and cultivated by the church an awareness that we will suffer hardship and there will be sufferings even in many places if not most by the time this whole thing is wrapped up persecution against the church and we must be able to discern our father's heart if we can't trace exactly what his hand is doing in every instance this is vital there's glory in regular hardships.
[34:24] Number three the glory in gospel grace the glory in God with us let us continue to return to the gospel there is glory in the gospel and if in your Christian life you can find glory nowhere else if God's glory is impossible for you to see the shape of or to feel the nearness of in every area then return to this that Christ Jesus was crucified for you and for this church for his church return to gospel grace over and over and over again almost every song was just gospel infused today which I love and I know you brothers and sisters fellowship over the gospel which I love and I say again in these early months of this church's existence keep that the foundation and return there always it will dispel our selfish sentimentalism our complaining our grieving and groaning our divisions our tendencies of pride that we have toward one another the gospel of grace cures all and therefore let us return to it constantly it might seem like a mundane thing to return there always but that's where the glory is last point the glory of the cross well there's the glory of Christ's cross of which we've been speaking but I'm speaking about the glory of the disciples cross just for an abbreviated encouragement you can go check the bellicose website some weeks ago
[36:10] I preached on a brother reminded me of it last night otherwise I might have forgotten the title the crippling conflation of Christian crosses there is the cross of Christ which has accomplished its purpose and there's the cross of the believer that we must carry we cannot justify ourselves as Christ's cross has done but we must carry our cross in light of his and in John chapter 12 the Lord Jesus said now among those who went up John tells us firstly among those who went up to worship verse 20 of John 12 at the feasts were some Greeks so these came to Philip who was from Bethsaida in Galilee and asked him sir we wish to see Jesus Philip went and told Andrew Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus and Jesus answered them the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified truly truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains alone but if it dies it bears much fruit he speaks about his own cross here but then he turns to the disciples and says whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life there is glory in the dailiness of the carrying of our cross if any man would come after me he must deny himself take up his cross daily and follow me now we close with 1st Peter the last two verses of chapter 2 and 9 verses in chapter 3 and we'll be done by noon so that's a 45 minute message that's a if you're if you're tending towards cessationism let me encourage you against it if Brian
[38:13] Pirtle can finish the sermon in 45 minutes that's miraculous I want us to think about the glory of the ordinariness in terms of our day to day lives and the governing that God is increasingly giving us as his people you know in the age to come whatever it means we're going to rule and reign with Christ okay it's a matter of stewardship and on that day we'll be able to do it in glorified bodies with no sin and no unbelief and no discouragement but he's already giving us stewardship of the gospel of fellowship with one another of our lives of our money of our relationships for those that are married of our spouses for those that have children of our children and these things are all vital and quite ordinary and abused all the time by people in and outside the church let us start with the gospel in 1st
[39:16] Peter 2 24 he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds you have been healed for you were straying like sheep but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls precious precious foundation Paul warns in 2nd Timothy 4 3 that in the last days men and women will acquire teachers for themselves that are self-serving and they will reject what he calls sound teaching sound teaching which word can be translated just as readily healthy teaching wholesome teaching I think when we hear sound as post post modernist people that are jealous for truth now we think sound we think accurate teaching which is true but it means more than that it's wholesome it's the life-giving teaching of course it's all accurate if it's according to
[40:26] God's word but it's tending toward the health of those who were dead and diseased in sin the building up of the church the transformation of the nations which is why in Revelation 22 the tree of life is seen as a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations so there's the gospel foundation let us ask in terms of our marriages those who are married here if we are seeing the glory of the ordinary or missing it verses three and following likewise wives be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the word they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct do not let your adorning be external the braiding of hair the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which in
[41:31] God's sight is very precious for this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands and Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening along these lines in Ephesians 5 33 Paul said let the wife see to it that she respect her husband let me just ask the wives directly is there any sense in which you might be slipping into the sin of disrespecting your husband are you making it your aim not only to refrain from saying the most drastically disrespectful things but in the positive sense are you seeing to it by faith that you are respecting him which is more than just not disrespecting him it's respecting him and I want you to know God has given you a gift a strength and a power in the life of your husband that if you by faith respect him with the
[42:40] Lord's glory in view he will be better helped by you to be a godly man and to do what God has called him to do as a man if instead you find yourself giving expression to the disappointments that he will bring to you you will find him more emasculated less likely to give himself this self sacrificial love less likely to walk in wisdom more likely to look elsewhere for satisfactions that are not wholesome and healthy it doesn't mean that if he does that it's all your fault he's responsible but I'm telling you there's a government of God at work here in terms of how we relate to one another and I want to ask are you seeing to it that you respect your husband you have to look to the Lord to do that it's not based on his performance it's based on the your children let me ask directly to us as men are there any ways in which we're slipping into a way of viewing looking upon the ordinariness of this covenant marriage that we have and twisting it in such a way devaluing it in such a way that we are not fervently loving our wives as
[44:26] Christ loved the church I'm not saying do you cut them down all the time do your voice if that's true then yes repent but I'm not saying bring it back to zero here brother I'm saying look to Christ repent of sinning against her in ways of commission and ask are there sins of omission ways I should be loving her that I'm not loving her because you will find that the less and less a woman sees and knows the love of her husband that is the more difficult it will be for her to respect him.
[45:09] I can't tell you how many times I've sat down with married couples who are having issues and the difficulty is the husband saying I don't feel respected and the wife saying I don't feel loved.
[45:21] And those feelings are not always entirely accurate but they've always got their finger at least on part of the pulse. And so we need for the honor of Christ in the ordinariness of our relations to be relating to one another in such a way as God has commanded are you are you doing that brothers and sisters because that will affect the worship of this church the disciples that are made the example that is set and on and on.
[45:50] Lastly verse 8 to the whole church married and single parents and children finally all of you have unity of mind sympathy brotherly love a tender heart and a humble mind do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling but on the contrary bless for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing.
[46:18] and so church let us love one another let us walk in the fear of God and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit in 1536 on this day William Tyndale was strangled to death tied to a stake and his body burned before the people of Brussels because he labored long painstakingly to do something that was massive in history but that day by day must have felt rather mundane translating the whole New Testament into English straight from the Greek and about half of the Old Testament from the Hebrew into English before he was executed it was the accumulation of William Tyndale's steady state obedience to God that produced fruit that would last forever and it's no less significant what we have with our spouses what we have with one another as the church each member what we have in the parenting of our children in the stewarding of all things may it be for us that just as in the age to come we experience more and more ourselves of what it means that Christ is all in all