Ephesians 5:22-33

[0:00] Cool. We're live. We're being recorded. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. It's good to see you all. We're trying a new way to record audio.

[0:11] There's a knife taped up here. It's kind of encouraging, right? So if you're going to throw anything at me, I already have a knife up here.

[0:25] If I duck, I could impale myself. Let's turn to the book of Matthew in light of our passage this morning of husbands and wives.

[0:38] I wanted to share kind of how I got blessed with teaching this passage. Our elders have been kind of revealing to me new ways to make decisions.

[0:52] It's been kind of exciting, but have you guys ever done the nose thing? So I didn't respond quick enough with my finger to my nose, and therefore I speak about husbands and wives.

[1:06] So I hope this will be an encouragement and a blessing to you. Studying for this message has been very, very convicting for me. To see that I as a husband is supposed to love my wife as Christ has loved the church can do nothing but convict me.

[1:26] There's no way I could fill those sandals, so to speak. There's no way I could measure up to how much Christ has loved my wife and the way I should love my wife. But I think hopefully what we'll see today is how we're to relate to one another in our marriage.

[1:42] God does give us, He gives us very clear ways in which we can respond to each other in the most amazing relationship that we can really have with another individual on this planet.

[1:53] So the reason I come to Matthew is just to talk a little bit about communication. In Matthew chapter 28, the last thing Jesus really says to His disciples is He says, All authority has been given to Me on heaven and earth.

[2:08] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded.

[2:22] Lo, I am with you till the end of the age. Did Christ give His disciples a noble task? He gave them a very noble task. Was He clear in His communication of what He wanted them to do?

[2:34] Very clear in His communication. Did He give them something that if they followed through with this, there would be eternal ramifications in the lives of individuals?

[2:46] Is it a good thing to hear who Jesus Christ is? To be saved for all of eternity through faith in His work? It's a very good thing. And it's neat to think about that Christ was very clear in His communication to the church.

[2:58] And we'll tie that in later on, but I wanted to start off with that, with realizing what is the overall purpose of the church. And as we come back to Ephesians chapter 5, we're going to look, we're going to start off by talking about what is the responsibility of wives in their marriage relationship.

[3:16] And I'll preface this, that this might be an encouragement to some ladies and a discouragement to some guys, that there's no domestic issues that Paul talks about really in this passage.

[3:26] By domestic issues, I mean things like dishes, or laundry, or cleaning the house, or who goes to work Monday morning. Paul doesn't talk about any of that stuff really in this passage.

[3:38] Maybe you could allude to how we're to go about doing that things, but he doesn't talk about who has to do the dishes. Can we hear an amen? What he does talk about is how we're to relate to one another in the way that Christ relates to the church, in a way that the church relates to Christ.

[3:57] And when Paul starts off in verse 22, Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body.

[4:12] Therefore, as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject to their husbands in everything. So ladies, who are you supposed to submit to?

[4:23] Husbands. Husbands. Husbands. But, he does a good job. He prefaces how we are to submit to our husbands.

[4:34] Submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now does that kind of reign that submission in? A little bit. It does a lot. Because what does Christ ask us to submit to?

[4:47] Did he ask the disciples to submit to his vision of reaching the world with the gospel? Did he ask his disciples to submit to his vision of discipling the nations? Of baptizing the nations?

[4:59] Are those good and noble and holy things to submit to? Yeah. This verse is, this passage on wives submitting to their husbands has probably been one of the most misused and abused passages in all of scripture.

[5:14] Because sometimes husbands like to focus in on wives submit to your husbands, and then they leave off the important part of as to the Lord. Does God ask us to submit to sin? May it never be.

[5:27] God does not lead us into sin. And to highlight that, I wanted to go back to try to give us a historical understanding of why wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord.

[5:40] For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Did Christ come for a purpose? Did he come to save the church?

[5:53] Did he come to call the church out of this world? Did he come to set the church apart? So let's go back to give some historical analogy, because what I want you to hopefully leave here with is that submitting to your husband just as you would submit to the Lord.

[6:08] Acts chapter 5. So in Acts chapter 5, very early church, the church is growing and people are giving lots of money to the church for ministry, for needs to the poor, for taking care of widows, you name it, people are giving.

[6:25] And the way people are giving is they are selling their possessions and they are giving those proceeds to the church. Sounds like a very good idea. Well, we have in Acts chapter 5 this couple named Ananias and Sapphira.

[6:41] And Ananias has a very, very bad idea. And he asks his wife to fall in line with this very, very bad idea.

[6:51] And she submits to this bad idea. And we start in Acts chapter 5 verses 1 through 3. Sorry, 1 through 4 is where we'll start. It says, Now a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife, sold the possession.

[7:07] And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it and brought a certain part to it and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the price of the land for yourself?

[7:23] While it remained, was it not your own? After it was sold, was it not your own? In your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? Why have you not lied to men but to God?

[7:36] And then verse 5, Ananias, hearing these words, fell down, breathed his last, so great fear came upon all those who heard these things. Sounds kind of harsh, doesn't it? He bought land, he didn't give all of it, and then Peter says, why are, you know, why did you lie not to men but to God?

[7:55] And then Ananias breathes a laugh and last and then just kind of like dies, they wrap him up and they take him away. It does kind of sound harsh but you see here what happens later on in the passage when you jump down in verse 8, Peter goes to see Sapphira, Ananias' wife and he says, Peter answered her, tell me whether you sold the land for so much and she says, yes, so much.

[8:18] So we don't know how much it is but it's just so much and then Peter said to her, how is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out and then she falls down and dies.

[8:38] So did Ananias hatch this scheme to deceive the church, to deceive the church leadership, to hold back part of the property, the part of the value and to keep that and then he conveyed to the church leadership, we've given you all of the money that we got from the sale of our land.

[8:56] So he lied and then he led his wife in this deception. How did it work out for him? Not good. How did it work out for his wife?

[9:07] Just as bad. Did he lead his wife in righteousness? Did he lead his wife in holiness? Did he lead his wife in being conformed, being transformed to the image of the sun?

[9:20] The answer is no, no, no, and no. We don't know what Ananias was like, which you can imagine if you kind of read into the passage and you kind of think about who he was as an individual. Does he seem a little manipulative?

[9:32] Does he seem kind of crafty and scheming? That sounds like a good friend, right? It's not. But she was in this relationship. Should she have said no? She should have.

[9:43] It was probably really hard. And in order to get that courage to say no, she probably needed someone in her life to come alongside her and be an encouragement to her and to reach out to her and to be involved in her life and discipleship.

[9:55] That leads me to the fact that if you feel that maybe your husband isn't leading you in the right direction, start praying for your husband and start reaching out to those that might be there to help you out, to come alongside you and disciple you and to continue to be an encouragement for you and really to start getting involved in your husband's life so that your husband can be involved in leading you in righteousness.

[10:19] And what is neat in this passage in Ephesians is where it talks about that a wife is to submit to their husband as the church. In verse 23, for the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the Savior of the body.

[10:36] Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husband. So the question we need to ask ourselves is how are we supposed to be subject to the church?

[10:48] It's a great thing to think about. What does God, what does Jesus Christ want my life to be about? What does he want me to be doing? And I'm glad you asked that question because what we're going to do is I was just blessed with this looking back through Ephesians and seeing all the ways that Paul is asking us to relate to Christ.

[11:09] It's just a blessing. He asks us to do a lot of things and they're all based on what Christ has done for us which we're going to cover when we talk about the husbands later on. But if you go back, just flipping through the book of Ephesians all the way back to Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, Paul is asking us, he wants us to be holy.

[11:29] He says in the last part of Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. Isn't that amazing? God, because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, Paul wants us to respond to that by faith and to have a life that is holy and without blame and that we are relating to God in love.

[11:52] Jumping down to chapter 2 verse 10, we see in the beginning of chapter 2 how all that Christ has done for us, pulling us out of the kingdom of darkness.

[12:03] He has given us the gift of his grace. He wants us to respond to that in faith and because all those things that he has done on our behalf, he then says, Paul then says in chapter 2 verse 10, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we should walk in them.

[12:21] If we are Christ's workmanship, if we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, what should we do? We should walk in them. We should respond to God's love.

[12:32] We should respond to God's grace. We should respond. I mean, isn't it amazing the creator of the universe as individually working in our lives? That is awesome to think about.

[12:44] God is individually working in my life. That's encouraging. If you feel alone and hopeless, be encouraged that Christ is working in your life.

[12:56] And we are asked to respond to that. He says in the last part of verse 10 that we should walk in them. If Christ is working in our lives and it's true, we should be responding to that by walking in those good works that he's done for us.

[13:10] Verse 22 of chapter 2 it says, in whom you are being built together for a dwelling place of the spirit of God. We're being built up. Christ is working in our lives. He's adding things to our lives spiritually so that we can be built up in the spirit of God.

[13:27] In chapter 3 verse 16, we are strengthened through his spirit in the inner man. Christ is working in our lives, he's strengthening us. In chapter 4 verse 2, it says, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love.

[13:47] I think I wrote down the wrong verse there, sorry. Basically, we're to walk worthy of the calling with which you call, sorry, verse 1 is what I meant to say.

[13:58] We are called and asked to respond to Christ's love for us by walking worthy of the calling with which we have been called. Do we, as husbands, do we show our wives that love that makes our wives feel they have a tremendous desire to walk in the light of the love that husbands are showing their wives?

[14:22] It's interesting, you think there's, Paul uses this very great analogy of the church and of Christ coming together. We ask ourselves, who is the church made up of?

[14:37] People, right? What does Paul say people have all done in Romans? Have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God? Are we worthy of Christ's love?

[14:49] But did he just by grace, by his mercy, show us that love? And we're called to respond to that love by faith. I want to jump to chapter 5, verse 1.

[15:01] We're called to do what? Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children. In chapter 5, verse 2, we're called to walk in love as Christ has also loved us.

[15:15] In chapter 5, verse 8, we're called to walk as children of light. And in verse 9, he says, for the fruit of the Spirit is all goodness, righteousness, and truth.

[15:28] So wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife. I hope that we've seen in this first part how the wife is supposed to submit to the husband.

[15:44] Is the wife, or how the church is supposed to submit to Christ? Sorry. Is the church supposed to be yielding to the fact that Christ is working our lives? Is the church supposed to be walking in love as Christ has loved us?

[15:59] Is the church supposed to be manifesting the fruit of the Spirit? It is. And it's interesting is that wives, I believe what Paul is saying here in this passage is that wives are supposed to be submitting to your husband's purposeful love for you, and you're supposed to respond to that in the same way that the church is supposed to respond to Christ.

[16:23] Your husband should be working your life for your holiness, for your sanctification, should be working in your life, for your equipping, for your understanding of who Jesus Christ is, and as wives respond to that love just as the church responds to the tremendous love that Christ has for us.

[16:43] In the next section of the passage, it's the fun passage, it's the passage that was like convicting to me, because it's hard for me to teach a convicting message to my wife when I know how inadequate I am as a husband.

[16:58] So I hope that this is encouraging to you guys, as it was to me. I have many things that I need to work on in my own life as a husband.

[17:11] In verse 25 of Ephesians chapter 5, he says, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for her that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing and the water of the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and that she should be holy and without blemish.

[17:35] So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies, for he who loves his wife loves himself. No one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.

[17:50] For we are members of his body, we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bone. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

[18:04] This is a great mystery I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you practice his own, each one of you in particular, so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

[18:21] In these verses right here, in 25-33, there's over three different times, three or four different times where Paul encourages the husband to love his wife.

[18:32] Love his wife, love his wife, love his wife. Do you think it's important? Now, I have a couple of young ladies at home, six, three, and one, and the three and the six-year-old, they like to repeat stuff a lot, so much that it becomes annoying, but I know if they're repeating it, dad, dad, can I do this, can I do this, can I do this, it's probably very important for them, and they want me to listen to it.

[18:56] If Paul keeps repeating, love your wife, love your wife, love your wife, love your wife, do you think it's important to him? Do you think it might be, if it's important to Paul, how much more do you think it's important to your wife, that you love your wife, love your wife, love your wife, love your wife?

[19:10] It's very important. And how do we love our wife? How do we do that? Well, we do it in the same way in which Christ loved the church. Just as he so loved the church, verse 25, and did what?

[19:24] He gave himself for her. Was the life that Jesus Christ lived here on this earth, did he live that so he could be a sacrifice for the church? He lived so he could be a sacrifice for the church.

[19:39] He wanted us to emulate that same thing in our own life so that our life is lived sacrificially for our wife. He does. And to me, it's very humbling when you think about that.

[19:51] How am I going to live my life in a sacrificial way for my wife? And he states what the purpose of Christ's love was in verse 26 so that he might sanctify her and cleanse her by the washing of the water with the word.

[20:12] Sanctification is that aspect. I mean, we use that word all the time, right? Use it at work every day. Sanctification or sanctify means to be set apart. Christ wants us to be set apart from the world and set on a path of service for him.

[20:27] to change where we were at, the deeds of darkness we used to do, the things that he talks about, that Dave talked about in chapter 4, verse 25, all the things of lying and of anger, all those things.

[20:42] Christ wants us to forsake those and to be on a path of righteousness and service of him. Sanctification, being set apart. How does Christ do that?

[20:53] He cleanses us by the washing of the word. It's a very pretty picture. It's the word of God is coming into our lives just like a bath or a shower. It is removing the filth of sin from our lives.

[21:06] When we sit down and we pick up our Bible, should we be convicted about the truth that it reveals about our lives? We should be. And that's what Christ is doing. He has given us his word and he is using that to sanctify and to set us apart.

[21:21] For the purpose of that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing and that she should be holy and without blemish.

[21:35] Does Christ have a purpose for the church? He does. He wants us to be without spot, without wrinkle or any such thing and that we should be holy and without blemish.

[21:48] usually you want to put clean clothes on, right? When you get out of the shower, you want to put clean clothes on. They're free of dirt. All the wash cycle has done it.

[21:59] Everything has fully cleaned it and that's the picture that is going on here that the word of God is there cleaning us. So how does this apply to husbands? Remember what we read in Matthew?

[22:14] What was the purpose that Christ gave to his disciples? Make disciples. If we make disciples, are we working in each other's lives to help us overcome sin habits?

[22:29] Was overcoming sin habits in chapter four of removing lying and anger and stealing, was that important for Paul? Was that important for the church? To remove sin from our lives?

[22:43] Husbands, do you see a purpose for the love that you're supposed to show your wife? Do we want to partner in with Christ in the discipleship of our spouse? When you think about it, it's very intimidating that the person you are married to for the rest of your life, hopefully, is you are involved discipling them in the same way that Christ is discipling and leading the church.

[23:08] How does he do that? I'm glad you asked. In Ephesians chapter one, verse seven, I went through Ephesians and I just looked at all the things that Christ is doing specifically, just Jesus Christ alone, and he's doing specifically for the church and for believers as a whole.

[23:26] And in chapter one, verse seven, it says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. Think about that. Christ has given us, he has redeemed us, he has forgiven us, and he has shown us grace.

[23:41] In chapter one, verse ten, it says that for the purpose of that he might gather us all together, he wants to gather his church together. He has given us an inheritance in verse eleven.

[23:53] In verse thirteen of chapter two, he says he has brought us near to God by his blood. In verse fourteen of chapter two, it says he's our peace.

[24:05] In verse seventeen of chapter two, he preached peace. Peace. Think about that. As our dialogue with our spouses, are we preaching peace? Are we manifesting the same attitude and the same work of forgiveness that Christ has shown us?

[24:24] Imagine how that would affect our marriages when we have confrontation, if we just forgive. Did Christ forgive with strings attached, or did he just completely forgive? He completely forgave.

[24:35] If you want to solve conflict in marriage, forgive. Work in your lives, in the life of your spouse, with the same redemptive purpose that Christ had.

[24:46] He is our peace, he has reconciled us, he is right of the relationship. And you think about that, that he might reconcile us. Adam and Eve had a very close relationship with God. They walked with him in the garden.

[24:59] Think about that, walking with God on a daily basis. And that friendship, that very close friendship was broken because of sin. And Christ has come, as we read in 2 Corinthians, to reconcile the world to God.

[25:15] To fix that broken friendship that started back in the garden. Should our marriages be about reconciliation? Should we hold on to things when there's wrong?

[25:26] The responsibility that Paul gives here is to the husband. It's the responsibility of the husband to reconcile in the marriage. to not hold on to things. To completely forgive.

[25:38] To show the same grace and the same mercy that Christ has shown to all the world, to our spouses. Christ wants to be building us up in chapter 2.

[25:52] God has worked through Jesus Christ in chapter 3, verse 11, for an eternal purpose. And I want to hit on chapter 3, verse 17 and 19 of Ephesians.

[26:08] We're called to love our wife and he says, love your wife, love your wife, love your wife. Obviously, loving our wives is a very big deal. And I imagine that our wives would want us to love them more.

[26:20] I know mine does. My wife wants me to love her more. So how do I do that? What should my love for my wife look like? And I want to look at the love of Christ in Ephesians chapters 3, 17 through 19.

[26:38] It says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes all knowledge that you may be filled with the fullness of God.

[27:01] Can we know the love of God? In some aspects we can. We can experience and we can know God's love. But can we know the limits of God's love?

[27:13] We can. Is that encouraging to you? It's really encouraging to me that I can know God's love, I can experience God's love and to some extent I can measure various aspects of God's love but it is unsearchable.

[27:29] It's like trying to figure out how big the universe is. You can't really do it. You can kind of estimate the distance from our planet to the sun and you can extrapolate and you can figure out those little dots. We're out there.

[27:40] They're really, really, really far away. But then the universe is known to keep getting bigger. And it's neat when you think about God's love. If we experience situations in our lives, difficulty, tremendous loss, hardship, are we going to run out of God's love?

[27:56] If we fall into sin, are we going to run out of God's love? Imagine if our wives were encouraged with our love as just as much as we are encouraged with Christ's love.

[28:13] Would that be encouraging for our wives? Would they feel doubt? Would they feel discouragement based on our relationship to our spouse if they realized that our love, that we love our spouses, we love our wives as much as we can possibly conceive the love of God?

[28:32] I want to turn to Romans chapter eight. In Romans chapter eight, Paul does a good job of plagiarizing himself, which I guess you can. They tell us at work to plagiarize as often and as frequent as possible.

[28:44] I don't know why, but this is what they do. But Paul, he does the same thing to himself. And he takes what he has in Ephesians chapter three and he expounds on it, on just what is this love of God?

[28:58] In Romans chapter eight, we'll start in verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of God?

[29:10] Or from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written for your sakes, we are killed all day long and we are counted as sheep to the slaughter.

[29:24] Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

[29:50] Is the love of God, is the love of Christ amazing? Is there tribulations in our life that separate us from it? No. Is there sin in our life that can separate us from it?

[30:03] No. Are there mistakes that we can make that can separate us from the love of Christ? No. Imagine if our spouses could say the same about us guys. That there's nothing our spouse could do that could separate us from, separate them from our love.

[30:18] Do Christians make mistakes? Do guys make lots of mistakes in marriages? Ladies will probably say amen. Does Christ forgive us of our mistakes?

[30:33] He does. He does that because of his love. Let's encourage our wives with the same love and of the same depth as we can manifest, of the same height, of the same length.

[30:48] Let's manifest that love in our marriages. To me, the love of Christ is encouraging. If we manifest the love of Christ towards our wives, it would be very, very encouraging for them.

[31:01] I want to close kind of with this passage in our study of Ephesians.

[31:13] And I hope this has been encouraging for you. It was a very convicting study for me. Ephesians chapter 2.

[31:24] We saw a couple of weeks ago with Mr. Matt's leading. I'm sorry. Ephesians chapter 5. I'm in the wrong place. Verse 1 and 2.

[31:36] Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children. Does that apply to all believers? Imagine how little marriage conflict we would have if we were imitators of God. Would we be manifesting the fruit of the Spirit?

[31:49] Would we be manifesting love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness? All those fruits, if we manifested, if we were imitators of God as dear children, marriage conflict would almost cease.

[32:03] It would go extinct. If we imitated God on a daily basis. And I love that. How he says, imitate God as dear children. Lucy will, she'll see me standing here kind of like this.

[32:17] And she'll do the same thing. And she'll kind of like figure out how to do it. She'll get her arms in and she'll be like, you know. And then she'll be like, look mom. Standing like dad. And it's that same thing where they're looking.

[32:30] She's kind of like looking up to me and she's trying to do the best she can to intimidate. Are we doing that in our lives as believers? Are we looking up to God and seeking to imitate Him?

[32:43] I use the word imitate. Imitate, sorry. Imitate. It can be intimidating that we are called to imitate God.

[32:54] But you know what? It says that one of the things that Christ has done is He has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. He has given gifts to men so that we might be equipped for the work of the ministry.

[33:09] Has Christ, has He left any voids in our life that don't allow us to do the things that He's asked of us? The answer is no. And that's what's neat.

[33:20] We have these things that can seem very intimidating. They can, they're really humbling for me. But Christ has equipped us to love our wives.

[33:31] He's equipped our wives to follow in and to respectfully submit to our discipleship in their lives.

[33:44] So if you were hoping today that you'd be able to solve the argument this morning that might have happened over who was going to wash the dishes, this is not, it's not in this passage. But what is in this passage is that wives are to be submitting to the spiritual leadership of their husbands, and husbands are to be loving their wife the same way that Christ loved the church.

[34:08] I was doing some research this morning, and I found a very, very staunch atheist in his website. And the web address was godisimaginary.com.

[34:21] He's a very, very belligerent atheist. I don't know what happened in his life. I'm sure something did happen in his life that set him down this path of total rejection to God.

[34:32] He's gone, websites, written books, probably buy on Amazon. Very, very sad. But one of the things that he uses for his circumstantial evidence to state that God is imaginary is Christian marriages.

[34:50] It's very sad when you think about that, that he has used Christian marriages to try to deny the existence of God. And he's very well read, knows a lot of scripture, and he says, breaking in the middle of a paragraph, it says, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder.

[35:10] You've probably heard that a few times if we've been to a couple of weddings, right? Very good purpose. If God has joined us together, let no man put asunder. And he says, now thinking about this, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, creator of the universe.

[35:24] If God puts something together, shouldn't it be impossible to break it? Pretty good, pretty true statement, right? It's a pretty well-thought-out statement.

[35:35] Isn't that what all-powerful means? And he doesn't fully understand who God is or all of what is in marriage. But then he says, given all of this, and given the fact that an all-powerful prayer answering God is supposedly looking over the lives of Christian couples, guiding them in the spirit, and so on, what would you expect the divorce rate for Christians to be?

[36:00] If you expect it, and that's what he says. Clearly, the Christian divorce rate should be zero. If we're living in life of what Paul teaches here in the book of Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter 5, and all the things that he says about the church respecting Christ, and submitting to Christ, and Christ loving the church, and how that is the best picture he can come up with, the best picture in the universe for marriage, and for understanding the roles and responsibilities that we have in marriage, divorce rate should be zero.

[36:33] But it's not. We go through conflict. We go through struggles. All because of sin. And this poor individual, he knows a lot of biblical truth.

[36:49] But it's sad to say that sometimes Christian marriages give the world a lot of ammunition to try to say that God is imaginary. Should our marriages give the world that type of ammunition?

[37:02] Or should the world see the same picture that is in this analogy, that Christ, all that Christ has done for the church, all that Christ has done for the world, and how the church respectfully submits to that, respectfully submits to his vision and his leading in our lives.

[37:23] We shouldn't give, our marriages shouldn't give the world any ammunition to deny who God is. If we are manifesting love for our wives, the world should see Jesus Christ in our marriages.

[37:41] Thank you. Let me close with a quick word of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for the example of your Son. We thank you that He has gone before us, Lord, and that He has paid the penalty of our sins on the cross.

[37:55] Lord, we thank you that you have done all of the work on our behalf, Lord. We pray that we would live in light of that, that we would just seek to respectfully serve you with our lives, Lord.

[38:07] Lord, that we would take the message of the Gospel, Lord, that would radiate in our marriages, that the world would see Jesus Christ in our lives. Lord, we pray that we would grow in our understanding of you, that we would be just washed in the water of your word, Lord, that we would lay aside sin and that we would cling to Christ, Lord, that we would cling to your purpose of discipling the nations and of taking the Gospel to the lost world, Lord.

[38:34] We pray these things in Jesus' name. We are in a season of the book of Ephesians that's probably the most challenging.

[38:45] Thank you so much, Rob, for this week. Let's pray.