1 Peter 3:1-7 "Wives and Husbands" | SERMON ONLY

Hi, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the lead pastor of Church of the Messiah. It is wonderful that you would like to check out some of the sermons done by Church of the Messiah, either by myself or some of the others. Listen, just a couple of things. First of all, would you pray for us that we will open God's Word well to His glory and for the good of people like yourself? The second thing is, if you aren't connected to a church and if you are a Christian, I would really like to encourage you to find a good local church where they believe the Bible, they preach the gospel, and if you have some trouble finding that, send us an email. We will do what we can to help connect you with a good local church wherever you are. And if you're a non-Christian checking us out, we're really, really, really glad you're doing that. Don't hesitate to send us questions. It helps me actually to know, as I'm preaching, how to deal with the types of things that you're really struggling with. So God bless.

Let's just bow our heads in prayer as we stand. Father, sometimes Your Word frightens us, and even maybe Father embarrasses us if our friends who follow other ways were to hear this. We ask, Father, that Your Holy Spirit would lead us and guide us into all truth, that You would bring a deep remembrance to us, Father, of who Jesus is and what He's accomplished for us on the cross, and to understand that the words You speak to us are words of love and words of wisdom for our good. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, Your Son and our Savior. Amen.

Please be seated. And I set my timer. So I've had the great privilege over the years to try to help different people learn how to do some, you know, not just some public speaking in general, but also in particular how to open the Bible, how to teach the Bible. And one of the things that we always say, it's just a very common thing in rhetoric, is you want to have an opening that grabs people, that makes either create some tension that has to be resolved or create some curiosity, which people are curious about what's going to happen next.

And you cannot beat, in terms of creating tension, saying in Canada in 2024, likewise wives be subject to your own husbands, which is immediately tension-inducing for many people and curiosity-inducing forever, for others.

The first time I preached on this text was, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, there was a coffee place down on Rideau Street that I'd go to between the services, and I was coming back, cutting behind the Ottawa Little Theatre to come into this store, and an older saint from the congregation looked at me, and I was wearing my Birkenstocks, and he said to me, no, you don't have your dancing shoes on. And I said, dancing shoes? He said, well, I always look forward to ministers speaking on texts like this, to see how they dance around the text and never deal with it.

And so, once again, I don't have any dancing shoes on, I have sandals, but I don't want to make light of a text which is so hard and threatening for many Canadians. So first, what we're going to do is, I'm going to read through the text, and then I'm going to, well, make a lot of different comments about it, and at the end of the day, I'm going to commend the text to you.

So if you have your Bibles, it's 1 Peter 3, verses 1 to 7. If you don't have your Bibles, those blue books over there are Bibles. You can get up of your seat and go and grab your own, or if you have a YouVersion, you can look at it on your phone.

So here's how the text goes. Likewise, so it's, he's earlier given some advice to slaves, and it's connecting what he's about to say to women who are married, Christian women who are married, and Christian men who are married.

He's connecting it to the whole general moral teaching that he'd given before in the first two chapters. So 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.

Now just pause here for two short little things. I spend time in academic commentaries as part of my preparation for a sermon like this, and one of the things I, in particular, am looking for is to see whether there's some translation issues from the original language into the modern language.

And sometimes, of course, there's multiple meanings or a range of meaning or something like that, and I could say a couple of things about the word be in submission or subject to, but at the end of the day, the word's actually, it's, all of this text is actually quite well translated into English.

It's not, I'm not going to be able, in a sense, to rescue some of the problems that we might have with the text by saying, well, in the original language, it's, no, that's not an option to us. There is a language thing which isn't quite caught later on, which I'll mention, but this is fairly well translated.

Verse 2, oh, sorry, we'll just go back a bit. So even if some do not, oh, by saying if some do not, it's implying that not all Christian women are married to Christian men.

So this is a word to Christian wives, regardless as to whether or not your husband is a Christian, and actually the same idea is there later on with husbands, but that's where I'm actually going to show the original language brings out a nuance that you can't get in English.

But the husbands, it's, once again, it's recognizing that not all Christian husbands will have Christian wives. So regardless as to whether your wife is a Christian or outside of the Christian faith, the command to the husband is still the same.

So verse 2, when they, that's referring to the wife's husband, when they see your respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and 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 God's sight is very precious.

And just before we go any farther, the text isn't saying that a woman shouldn't wear makeup or really beautiful dresses or anything like that. It's just really saying put first things first.

And the first thing is, in a sense, you work on you. And the second thing is you work on your clothing. I don't know how many of you, if you go into the self-help sections of libraries and you read books on how to have a good attitude or something like that, one of the things you'll see in those often is, they'll use the example of how much time a person might spend in the morning to look good, and then ask yourself how much time you spend to get yourself with having a good attitude for the day.

And a lot of people spend their time in the bathroom looking at the mirror, being grumpy about their day, and all their time to look good. And they'll say, you know, what attracts you to people is actually working on your inner self.

That's what attracts you. That's often what gets, you know, the promotions or etc. is that inner aspect of your life in terms of your attitudes and your thoughts and your habits. So it's actually, in some ways, this is no different than the self-help literature is just, in a sense, playing a riff on this old Christian teaching.

So it's not saying to women, don't put on makeup or anything like that. It's saying, make sure this is the first thing that you're working on. Verse 5, Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way or with knowledge.

It could either be translated as understanding or with knowledge. Showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. Yikes. We're going to talk about that in a bit.

Since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. And in the original language, that word, heirs with you, there's a bit of a double meaning in the original language.

And it's saying, so that someday they might be heirs or that they already are heirs with you. So it's once again acknowledging that the Christian husband might not have a Christian wife.

And as you'll notice, there's six verses spoken to the wife and only one verse that's spoken to the husband. And so some of you might say, whoa, that's way worse than I remembered when Emma read the text just a few minutes ago.

And it just seems very, very sort of wrong to us. Referring to a woman, the wife, as a weaker vessel. Every single one of us, like I could get up here and I could effortlessly go on a rant about this text.

And I could well imagine that if I was to read something like this at the University of Ottawa, if I was to, not only to, if I read this at the, if I read this amongst the conservative MPs or the liberal MPs or the NDP MPs, there'd probably be no difference in their reaction to it.

And people would tell me that I have blood on my hands if I don't repent of this text and tell people to disregard it. That telling wives to be submitting to their husbands will lead to the violence against women and literally death of women, that I actually literally would have blood on my hands.

But I'm not going to go, we all know, we all can easily fill in the blanks about how people would talk about this text. And I'm going to walk towards that. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to give two points.

I'm going to give a big picture explanation of the seven verses. And then I'm going to talk about some of the objections to it. And then I'll come back and help us to understand these particular big lessons.

And so if you could put up the first one, that would be very helpful. And the first one is from Jesus to the wife. Remember, if those of you heard my sermon last week on slavery, one of the things which is unique about this biblical text, which isn't obvious in the English, is that Peter talks directly to slaves.

He talks to them as if they have integrity, autonomy. I mean, they don't have full autonomy because they're slaves, obviously. In a very fundamental way, they don't. But internally, they have integrity. They have dignity.

They can do something even in their context. So he's talking directly to them. And in the same way here, we have a similar type of thing. For those of us who are husbands, we listen in while the text speaks directly to wives.

And then for those who are wives, we listen in directly as God speaks directly to the husbands. And for those who are not married, we all get to listen in to what the word of God says directly to each group.

So from Jesus to the wife, you have a quest. And I'm using the word quest because one of the standard ways of understanding a quest is it's a long endeavor that changes you.

It's a long endeavor towards a goal, towards an end that changes you in the process. Classic example would be in The Lord of the Rings and Frodo's quest to destroy the ring.

And it takes a lot of pages. It goes through lots of hardship. And it changes him in the whole process as he's on this long quest. And so how we should hear these texts is that in both cases, it's going to be a quest.

So from Jesus to the wife, you have a quest with three strands woven together to learn to submit to and respect your husband, to grow a deeply quiet and gentle spirit, to learn to live without fear.

And three strands that are complementary, three strands woven together will make it far stronger. And of course, if it's mixed with different colors, it will also be more beautiful.

And so I've used that analogy on purpose, that there are these three complementary strands, but they're different. And they're to be woven together, to learn to submit to and respect your husband, and to grow a deeply quiet and gentle spirit, and to learn to live without fear.

And now there's a direct word to the husbands. From Jesus to the husband, you have a quest. If you could put up the second point, that would be great. You have a quest with three strands and a solemn warning woven together.

The wife doesn't have a solemn warning. The husband has a solemn warning. What are the three strands? To lovingly know or understand your wife, to honour her as precious or worthy, to remember that she's your co-heir in glory, and to refuse this quest will mean that your prayers are hindered.

So once again, there's three strands. Complimentary, that have to be woven together. And it's still a quest.

The quest is, for me as a husband, is to lovingly know and understand my wife, to honour her as precious or worthy, to remember at all times, or in a deep way, that she's my co-heir in glory, and for me to refuse to do these things, means that my prayers will be hindered.

Now, some of you might say, okay, George, that's a little bit different than what I thought you were going to say and summarize, but, you know, frankly, it still sucks. Like, it's terrible advice, George. Like, how, this is 2024.

Like, you're in downtown Ottawa. You're minutes from the Parliament building. You're minutes from CBC. Your embassies all surround you. There's University of Ottawa's right there. How on earth can you still stand up here and say that's the summary of the text?

Like, first of all, why is it so terrible to women, and why are they having something which is so completely and utterly different? Like, why aren't they, like, maybe, you know, maybe I could accept it if it said, okay, husband, submit to your wife, wife, submit to your husband.

Like, I still think that's terrible, George, because, you know, surely you'd think that it's not a matter of submission. It's a matter of finding your power, learning how to roar, grabbing a hold of your own destiny, and expecting, honoring each other's quest to be more powerful, to be stronger, to roar, to be themselves.

Like, there's all sorts of, but, you know, it's terrible advice, and it's different advice, and George, like, frankly, George, I don't even know what to say to you. Well, there's a little bit of a pushback before we lose too much sleep over this.

And, by the way, if you're here outside the Christian faith, and you don't know much about Christians, texts like this terrify Christians. Like, if you watch this thinking that this is something that we beat our chest on all the time, and talk about all the time, I can guarantee you that if you go to most conservative churches in the city, they're terrified of texts like this, and they rarely talk about it.

I can guarantee you that that's the case. And if they do talk about it, they undermine the text. They say, well, well, well, you know, there's other places in the Bible that says that we should all be quiet, have quiet minds.

And there's other places in the Bible where it says we should all submit. And they all give you all these different Bible verses, and the end of the way is that they've erased the text. So if you're outside the Christian faith, you should understand that's a problem.

I would say it's a problem for Canadian Christians right now. But how do we respond to this and to the voices we hear in our head from our culture? Here's the first thing. For 55 years, there has been a consistent message in Canada, fairly consistent types of messaging in Canada about how to have successful marriages for 55 years.

And the marriage has all been not about submission, about autonomy, about a whole range of things like that. We could all effortlessly list, probably if we just sat down, what's the five pieces of marriage advice or seven pieces of marriage advice that our culture gives us?

And we'd probably put it all down. And at the end of the day, we'd probably come up with a list of 10 or 11 things that say we'd all agree that this is what Canadians would say. And here's the question we have to ask Canadians. How is it working?

After 55 years of advice, are marriages way up? Are there no divorces? Is there no abuse in marriage? Are all children wanted?

Are people open to even having children? Are people marrying early because it's such a good thing they want to get in on it? No.

Marriages are down. Abortions are up. Unhappiness is way up. Insecurities are way up.

We've had 55 years of consistent advice, and it is not making men and women in Canada happier. And it is not making us have better marriages. Einstein famously said that one definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, hoping for different results.

And that's our Canadian culture. So, you know, if in fact they could say, listen, you know, there used to be this old way of talking about things, and for the last 55 years, you know, we've taught a new and better way to talk about marriage.

And just look at how spectacular everything in Canada is. And then we might have to say, well, I don't know, maybe this text doesn't have anything to teach us. But that's not the case. In fact, I can tell you absolutely right now, if your marriage advice is to learn how to roar and be your authentic self, that is a recipe to ruin a marriage.

It's a recipe to make it hard for you to marry. And here's another thing about this. Okay, well, okay, well, maybe you have something there.

Maybe we should listen. And now that I look at your points, there's a couple of good things in there. Like you said to the women, the wives, that they're to learn to live without fear. Okay, that's actually a really good point. I'm a little bit surprised that I actually have to say that that's actually pretty smart advice.

I'm a bit surprised it's in the Bible. I don't know, it's still making women a bit passive. I still understand why the men and women are different, and I think that's just completely wrong. And then to that, we have another time out. You see, our culture is incoherent about women.

Why are we incoherent about women? Well, here's four different messages we hear about women in our culture. Message number one, women are very, very specific and unique and different types of people.

And their voice absolutely has to be heard. And that's why whenever Pierre Polyev, if he wins the next election or if Trudeau wins a re-election, he should really make sure that there's at least 50% men and 50% women because you need to hear the very distinct and unique voice of women in cabinet.

And you need the same thing in university faculties, you need the same thing in boardrooms. Women have this very unique voice which needs to be heard. Our culture also says, might even be by the same blogger, a week later, a week later, men and women are basically the same.

The only thing that's different about them is their plumbing and they should be treated completely and utterly equally in all things. And then a week later, there'll be another blog. We all know that gender differences are a social construct.

They're just invented by our culture and generally they're oppressive. Okay, well, one moment, if that's the case, then why is it that you need the same 50% on the boardrooms? And our culture never asks that question. And really, you think men and women are so clear and distinct that you can be very clear and that's why you need 50% men and 50% women.

If men and women are so completely distinct, then why is it that I could declare that I'm a woman and you need to accept it? How on earth is that showing that there's actually something powerful and unique about a woman?

And once again, in our culture, you could have the same blogger writing each one of those points four consecutive weeks and never thinking that they've said anything inconsistent or incoherent.

In some ways, our culture has to pick a lane before you criticize this text. Pick a lane. But George, what about women being weaker?

Didn't it say that in the text? Like, George, George, that's just so wrong to say, well, actually, I think the Bible's actually pretty wise on this.

And in fact, actually, I think the Bible here is giving what we deeply want in our culture. It's subverting our culture, but at the same time, if you listen to the Bible, it's giving us what we actually really want and long for beneath our incoherence.

Why do I say that? Okay, women aren't the weaker vessel. I think Mike Tyson should be able to fight mixed martial arts with women.

I think whoever is the heavyweight champion of mixed martial arts man should be able to fight women equally. If you believe that, you will literally have blood on your hands.

Literally, you will have blood on your hands. The man would kill the woman, not on purpose, but he would. What about Leah Thomas?

What's the 146th ranked college swimmer? And he declares that he's a woman and he wins the woman's races? But here's the thing about this text.

On one hand, this is just saying anything, I mean, who knows, maybe we'll get cancelled because I just said this and it's on YouTube and somebody will find out. But we all know that's true and people just don't want to say it out loud.

Very few people want to say it out loud. But at the same time, this is not saying anything derogatory about women because of that text about developing a quiet spirit.

Who's stronger? A person with a chaotic spirit or a quiet spirit? Who's stronger? The person who cannot control their impulses, cannot control their greed, cannot control their lust, cannot control their anger, cannot control their power hungriness, cannot just, whatever whim strikes them, they want to get what they want and they have, in fact, a chaotic spirit.

Who is stronger? A person like that or a person who's quiet and calm? We all know that the person who's quiet and calm is the stronger person. Constant movies, constant novels, the person always flying, the boss, the husband, the wife, always flying off in rages and often the underlings are the ones that actually have the quiet spirit, can put up with the things and just quietly get things done.

We all know that in the event of some terrible tragedy happening and some of us completely and utterly come unglued and can't think straight and maybe we're crying and we're raging and we're worrying and then we're completely frozen and we feel afterwards that it's such a blessing that somebody who loves us and cares for us comes alongside and they're calm and they can make the decisions.

The calm person is the strong person and it even goes further because when it talks about a quiet and gentle spirit, the quiet spirit is not a passive spirit.

The quiet spirit is the strong spirit. Simple example. Daniel Avitan, there's me, Daniel Avitan.

There's me, there's Daniel Avitan. Okay? Look at our arms, there's me, there's Daniel Avitan, right? How easy would it be for me to push Daniel Avitan over? Well, I mean, maybe, you know, just because I'm his boss, he'd let me push him a little bit, but the fact is if he just wanted to stand his ground, you know, or me and Andrew, or me and Patrick, how easy do you think it's going to be to push Andrew over?

He's going to just be quiet and calm. Same with Patrick. Wouldn't even be working up a sweat as I try to push them over. This is passive. Throw it away.

The chaotic spirit is the passive spirit, overwhelmed by passions, idols, fears, whims, insecurities, insanities. The quiet spirit is the strong spirit, able to maintain a course, able to see clearly, able to choose, able to love, able to serve.

This Bible text is actually warning is actually calling the woman to develop the strongest possible strength. And even the language of co-heirs, if you look at verse 7 where it says, you know, one of the things for a husband is to remember that his wife is an heir with him.

Ours just says, are heirs with you or it could be co-heirs. should I add a couple of other politically incorrect things to say in my particular sermon this morning?

But here's the thing. Increasingly in Canada, rights and the protection that come along with them are merely that which the courts and the parliament or the house of, the parliament decides.

But when the Bible here says that I'm to remember that Louise is a co-heir with me, this is saying something very profound. You see, because it's picking up on an idea that when Adam and Eve, you know, whether or not you believe in them literally, that's a whole other talk.

You can ask me about that at coffee. But that Adam and Eve, in a sense, they're created so that human beings would be the heir of all things. And that's squandered when human beings fall and they become proud and they try to become their own gods.

And so the whole message of the gospel is that God sees our profound and deep need and out of love for us and knowing that we cannot leave ourselves to fix ourselves, that he sends his son to come and be amongst us and to live the life that we can live, to die the death that we deserve, but that would unmake us, to face the judgment that we deserve, to bear the shame that we deserve, all which would completely and utterly unmake us.

And he does all of that for us completely and utterly out of love. And the purpose is to restore us to a relationship with him. And so when the Bible text is saying that Louise and I are co-heirs, it's saying that there's something about Louise and me and our dignity and our integrity and what it means to be human that is something that God created the entire universe with having human beings with this type of proper dignity and proper worth and proper integrity.

And so it's saying that there's something about human beings and their integrity that goes all the way into the very, very depths of time and ancient time and it's woven into our very, very nature.

And by the time the same language errs, it's saying that no matter how high a mystic goes, it goes right into the future, it goes into the new heaven and the new earth, that there's something equal that has integrity and dignity and a proper place that's given by God, not by the state.

The state will be judged by God in whether or not it recognizes the integrity and dignity of human beings because the state does not get to decide that and there's something that is of dignity and worth that goes right back to creation and goes into the new creation and that's what the Bible is telling us, that there is such a profound equality between men and women that goes right back to creation and into the new creation and at the same time the difference between a man and woman is mysterious and obviously it's going to work itself out in a different case in every particular person it's going to be culturally different but there's something there which is different.

There's something there which is different. Let's look at our two points and just try to listen to them.

If you could put them up again that would be very helpful. So the first one is from Jesus to the wife. You have a quest with three strands woven together. Woven together for strength woven together for beauty.

Now as I talked about before submit and respect is it to be a type of posture. It ultimately has to also lead into behavior but it's a type of posture.

I don't know why it is that he says respect for the husband rather than some other word but that's the word that's given to us. Submit and respect are like dimmer switches as I talked about last week not on and off switches and it's a relative word.

How a woman is going to play that out in the case of a husband which is very boorish very absent very autocratic uncaring and demanding is going to look very different than a husband who takes verse 7 very very seriously or at least it should.

And as I talked about last week with slaves the Bible is designed in such a way that it assumes that there's going to have to be communal discernment and prayer in the reading of the Bible as maybe all the moms in a church where they have groups together of moms or women and they talk about these things and they struggle with them and they pray with each other and they weep with each other at the hard things that some wives have to go through or they rejoice with other wives with the wonderful things that they're going through and there's a rejoicing and there's a commiserating and there's a deep prayer and there's a studying of God's word as these things are figured out in terms of what it means but that's a fundamental type of posture.

And then the second thing that is to be in a sense part of their quest is to grow a deeply quiet and gentle spirit. Well that's a wonderful thing to grow. Why is it not the same for the husband and the wife?

I don't know why it's not the same. You can't go behind the text to figure that out but that's the quest which is given. And then finally to learn to live without fear. Like why is that bad advice those last two?

And if those last two are part of the advice then maybe that first piece of advice is also something which is needed. And then look at the second one from the Jesus to the husband.

Now here is where Bible Christians nowadays quickly lose their mind because they try to jump in and fill this text with all sorts of things that aren't there in the text.

So here's the thing that you would expect. Our culture would expect. And here's the things that we worry about with this text when it comes to what the Bible is saying to me, a husband.

At the earlier service there's a fellow who comes regularly. He used to be a speechwriter. He would write speeches for the prime minister and for cabinet ministers regularly. He made his living writing speeches. So I said to him, I said you must have had lots of times.

He's just at 8 o'clock service there's like there's seven people and me. So we have a bit of a conversation. I said there must have been lots of times when you were writing speeches where you'd sit down with the cabinet minister or the prime minister as advisors and they'd say we'd like a speech on this.

And then you'd go back and you'd say to your wife at the end I don't really know if they know what they want me to write. I have no idea what they just really told me to do. Like it wasn't very coherent or straight.

And I said that to him. He said that happened about like almost 100% of the time. They actually didn't really know what they wanted me to say. But they wanted me to write something to say. Anyway, so I said you know so normally if you hear this first bit what you're going to expect with the second bit is the lesson to the husbands is this.

George, you need to learn how to speak clearly. You need to learn how to speak strategically. You need to be clear and give very, very clear easy to follow commands to your wife.

And that's what the Bible says, right? No. It's not there. In fact, the husband is given a completely different quest.

You see, all of the advice to leaders, obviously if you read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders because ultimately there's a lot of just common wisdom, one of the pieces of advice for highly effective leaders is seek first to understand.

But generally speaking we don't like that bit very much and what we work on is how to explain ourselves more clearly. And often in marital conflict what we think is what we need is for me to explain more clearly.

And if I finally just nail the right words the problem is gone. But the Bible here says, George, don't think of all the things you should have said or could have said better.

Work on understanding your wife with clear-eyed knowledge. Clear-eyed, lovingly understanding your wife.

Work on that. Clear-eyed means she married a sinner, I married a sinner. It means there's strengths and weaknesses, there's glories, there's wounds from the past, you know, whatever.

There's dreams and desires and try to understand your wife. And try to understand your wife with love. And the second thing is, and this is similar to the first one, is George, you need to figure out ways to honor your wife.

That she's worthy or she's precious. You need to figure that out, George. That's your task. That's your quest in your marriage to figure that out. Now once again, in this text it's very, very interesting.

The Bible doesn't say, wives, you get to determine when your husband is honoring the way he should. And husbands, the Bible text doesn't say that you get to control when the wife is submitting as she should.

No power is given to either of us. If you say, well that makes absolutely no human sense, then the Bible would say, right. Yes, we agree.

and then finally, the third one is that I'm to work on remembering at all times that she's my co-heir. She will be in heaven with me and she has this dignity and worth.

And then finally, there's a warning to me that if I refuse this quest, my prayers will be hindered. This works itself out.

I'm almost done. Just two very brief things in closing. Another way to look at these two quests is in terms of what a husband and wife should do when there is conflict or unhappiness. So let's say there's conflict and unhappiness and maybe we decide let's just give this 48 hours because I don't know, we're just not getting anywhere with it.

And in general, in our culture, it would say, okay, go work on how you love each other more or how to communicate better or all that. And you know, I'm not saying those are bad pieces of advice, but the Bible would actually give us different advice.

It'd say, you know,