Ephesians 5:22-23 | The Calling of a Husband

Text: Ephesians 5:22-33 

Big Idea: The husband’s calling is to image the love of Christ for His bride through sacrificially leading, protecting, and providing.      

1. The indicative of husbanding- you ARE head! (v.5:23) 

2. The imperative of husbanding- LOVE your wife! (vv.5:25-30)  

What kind of love? 

1) As Christ loved you 

2) As you love yourself 

-Caring Provider

-Tender Protector

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Church, it's always such a pleasure to worship together. As we continue in worship, would you join me in prayer? To come out of Psalm 121 as we pray. Father, it's an amazing gift to come before your throne with confidence because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And confidence that we have because we don't come on our own sufficiency. We come seeking, we come in need. We come because you are the all-sufficient one. And so we lift our eyes to you. We know where our help comes from, Lord. Our help comes from you, the maker of heaven and earth. You are the great keeper, Lord. You are the great keeper of your people. You hold fast to us. That is the good news of the gospel. We don't keep ourselves, you keep us. You will not let our feet be moved. You will not slumber. You never take a moment off. Your keeping is consistent. What a privilege it is, Lord, to know that we are being kept. To know that you are our provider, you are our protector, you are the shade on our right hand. We know that we will not be struck, for you protect and keep, Lord. You will keep from all evil, you will keep our lives, you will keep our going out and our coming in from this time forth and forevermore. Father, sustain us as a people. As we celebrate Father's Day today, sustain the men in this room who are fathers, grandfathers, aspiring husbands. God, we desire for your word to shape us and mold us. What we know not today, teach us, Lord. What we are not, make us. What we have not, give us. Father, would there as always be the request of a disproportionate impact through the proclamation of your word, such that there would be two preachers up here? Yet the word would go forth, but that God, your spirit would work in power. That's what we ask. The word would go forth in power today. In a way that only you can make it go. We lean on your word because it is the means by which you speak to your church, and it is the means by which you save and you transform. And so, God, we submit this time to you with great joy and eager anticipation for all that you have for us. And if you're in agreement with that, then we pray in the mighty name of the Lord Jesus and all God's people said. Amen. Let me have you stay standing for the reading of God's Word as we continue towards a portion of Scripture. Ephesians chapter 5 is where we're going to be this morning. And so if you have a copy of God's word, feel free to read along with us. We'd love if you did that. If you don't have a copy of God's word, couple things. It's on the slides. Also, there are Bibles that we love giving away every single week on tables next to the doors on the sides of the worship center, and would encourage you to pick one of those up. Keep it. It is our gift to you, and we will go through that book every week together. We do this every week. It's an amazing thing. And we'll continue to study God's word. So as we come to the word of the Lord, we're reminded it is exactly that God's word to his people. And so receive it as such. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Love ones, this is the word of the Lord for today. May the Lord write these eternal truths on your hearts, and with that you can be seated. Church, good morning. Ephesians chapter 5 is where you're going to need to be. And as you turn there, I want to welcome and wish, welcome you all here and wish a happy Father's Day to all the amazing dads out there. Can we just give a round of applause to our dads? We have a lot of amazing fathers out there. As Pastor Mike also noted, we have a lot of amazing grandfathers out there, and I just celebrate that. What a privilege it is to be a pastor of a church with a bunch of godly men, which I don't know if you know this, but there's not a lot of churches with a lot of godly men. And so I am thankful that our church is filled with them, and I celebrate that and trust that today will be an aid in some way to that, a fitting message for the theme at hand. My name is Scott, by the way, I'm the lead pastor here. It's a great joy to have you with us. And as Pastor Mike said, we'd love to get to meet you after the service. If you're joining us today, uh, you're joining us in the middle of a series called The Grammar of Marriage. And what we're doing is we're taking basically the building blocks, basic foundations from the Bible of what a marriage should be and look like in its ideal sense. And we're proclaiming that with a whole bunch of application. And so this is week four. Week one, we talked about the origin of spouses. God made them male and female in his image. Week two, we talked about that marriage is a gift from the Lord. It's a God-instituted, God-witnessed covenant. And we talked about that in week two, leading into week three, which is that the foundation for everything that you do in your marriage is what? The priority of a friendship, and not just any kind of friendship, but a best friendship, that that is the foundation for all of the duties. No other duty is done well in marriage if friendship isn't the first pursuit, isn't the foundation, right? Friendship, a best friendship, must drive all duties. Well, today we begin the talk of those duties. And we're gonna start with the husband. The calling of a husband. The title of the message is The Calling of a Husband. What a privilege, by the way, it is to be a husband. But I recognize as we enter into what it means to be a husband, there are some challenges in front of us, more than the ones I'm going to give. But nonetheless, here are two major ones that I see as we approach this topic today. The first one is that many of us have experienced broken households, which means that your example, men, was not the example that should have been set for you. You either had a bad example in your home or no example in your home. You perhaps saw one of two spectrum extremes, if you will. Some of you saw an example of your father abdicate responsibility in the home, right? And that's why you have terms like we say something like, Yeah, the wife wears the pants in that family, right? Then you've got the other side where the husband has absolutely made his mark clear, but in a domineering, tyrannical way, and you didn't see humble, sacrificial, loving leadership in the home. And so now you're out in the world, and we have all these young men that are experiencing various extremes. Some Peter Pan syndrome, they'll never grow up, right? Because they never saw an example of someone who was mature, and others who are looking to unaccountable Christian social media influencers. They're hungry for something, but they're looking to the internet to fill in the gap between what they didn't see in their lives. But then there's another issue that's very much present in our day, which is that leadership in general is under attack. Any distinction whatsoever is under attack. Any expression of any kind of hierarchical leadership is under attack. And so, as you can imagine, male leadership is one of those things that is under attack, that the culture around us would love to see the distinctions between men and women flattened. They would love that everyone would just be all the men and all the women in a blunder together, and out comes an androgynous mess of chaos with nobody leading anything. Now, I say all that to say those are not excuses for where we are, but they are some explanations as to where we are and how we got here. What we need to do is get back to God's word. We have got to anchor ourselves in the Word of God. When chaos is reigning, clarity has to be our focus. We need to get back to the original design. Now, one of the things we've said over the last few weeks is that before God had created any of us, he had already appointed a bride for his son. And so marriage for us is literally the privilege of getting to enact between husband and wife, this living dramatization. You get to live out the expression of the kind of covenantal love that Jesus Christ has for his church. That's the mystery Paul's talking about in Ephesians 5. And because God is not only the author of marriage, if we talk about our privilege of having this living dramatization of the gospel take place in your marriage, then really God's also the director of marriage. It's almost like a play, right? God's the director, and you guys have roles to play. And so when you think about it like that, it's like, okay, so God's leading, and he's going, husbands, you have these roles. Wives, you have these roles. So husbands are to take their cues and their role from Jesus Christ as the head to love like Jesus. And next week we'll talk about women, that they're to take their cues and their role from the church as the body of Christ to submit. Now you might be asking, why men first, Pastor Scott? I'm pretty sure Ephesians 5.22 starts with the ladies. Why not go in order? Don't you care at all about the Bible? Not like emails come on in like that. That's not at all how they ever come in. Nah, that's just me being lighthearted and jested with you. Let me tell you why. Um, the reason we're starting with husbands is because his role is assumed in hers. His role is assumed in hers. The foundation for the role of the wife assumes the reality of the role of the husband. You're gonna see it in the first few verses. Even as wives are the specific focus, the implication is because of the role of the husband. Second thing, by virtue of the role I want to start with the husband, there is triple the amount of time that Paul spends on the husband. Triple. Man, you ready for this challenge? And therefore, a good argument could be made that neglect of the responsibility of the husband is far more destructive. So I want to start there. Let me give you the big idea. This is where all the zone outs, the ADDs, the ones that can't pay attention for more than five minutes, and I'm already at that max, five minutes has happened. Let me give you the sermon in a nutshell. The husband's calling, men, is to image the love of Jesus Christ for his bride. Through sacrificially leading, protecting, and providing. That's your job. That's the responsibility, men, that you have been given. Through sacrificially leading, protecting, and providing. We're gonna break it down into two elements today, and I want to show you both of these. I want to show you what I'm gonna call the indicative of husbanding, and then I want to show you the imperative of husbanding, all right? If you know this language of what I'm using, when I say indicative, I mean a statement of fact. God is love. It's an indicative statement. You are his people. It's an indicative statement. Paul's letters, when you read any one of Paul's letters, he starts with the indicatives. This is who you are, this is what's true of you, right? Gets you to the foundation of the truth of the gospel. And then he goes from there to say, therefore, now walk in the imperatives. Because this is true of you, go and do likewise. Go and love your neighbor, go and serve one another, go and bear one another's burdens. So imperatives are commands, indicatives are statements of fact. God's imperatives always stem from God's indicatives, and I want to make sure we start there as we talk about husbands. There is a very important indicative to husbanding. I made up a word, husbanding. I even put it in our outline for today. So here's the first thing I want to talk about. Number one, the indicative of husbanding. That's right. Husband I-N-G. And here's the indicative. Husbands, you are head. Or the head. That's an indicative statement. You are the head. I want to show you that out of verse 23. This is essential to understand that woven into the fabric of marriage is this definitional implication of the husband that you are the head. Look at verse 23. This is so important to understanding the roles. For the husband, big word, is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is its savior. Okay? So not husbands should be the heads of their wives, but husbands what? Are the heads of their wives. So when you get married, you don't go, all right, how do we want to do this? Do you want to lead some? You want me to lead some? You want to kind of go back and forth? Maybe you do this, I do that. Listen, there's all kinds of those conversations in terms of practical things, but in terms of leadership, husbands, you are the head, period. Let me just be really clear. Nowhere in scripture is a husband ever commanded to be a head to his wife. He is the head. And sometimes people weaken the meaning of head. It means rule or authority. But what I'm trying to say is that whatever you have to do as a husband proceeds from the definition of a husband. That is, before you even get started, woven into the very design of God's institution, men were designed by God to be the head. You don't become the head, you don't work into it, you can become better at it. But God has woven this into the fabric of marriage. Definition precedes the duty of a husband. You are head. Listen, there's another part to this though. Definition not only precedes duty, but it precedes the fall. The definition that you are the head, men, precedes the fall. A lot of us go, well, that whole distinction between men and women, that's gotta be a result of the fall. God's cursed us, I tell you. Men with their leadership. Go back and read the book of Genesis, chapters one and two. Sin didn't bring distinction in roles between men and women. It was already there before the fall, which means it was a good thing. No, on the contrary, what you see is sin started with abdication of roles. The woman not knowing her place, and the man not keeping his. The issue is sin and how it affects things is sin has led to distortion in roles, not the creation of roles. It's led wives to go after the domination of their husbands and to seek manipulation as a form of control and authority. It's led husbands to either abdicate or dominate in some sort of a tyrannical kind of way. But what I'm saying here, men, is that it's not an issue of whether you are the head, but which kind of head you are. You're either a poor one or you are a faithful one, but regardless, husband or aspiring husband, every way you lead says something about who Jesus Christ is towards his bride. So think about every action that you do and you want to put it through this grid. Am I in every action that I put forth speaking truly about Christ, or am I slandering the name of Jesus Christ? Every action has that. So if you have a kind of distant, aloof, disengaged approach to your wife and to your kids, then run it through the funnel. Is this how Jesus Christ is with his church? Is he distant? Is he aloof? Is he disengaged? That if that's the way I'm living, then you are speaking slanderously about Jesus Christ. Everything you're doing is speaking about Jesus Christ. We must speak to what is true. When you're harsh with your wife or with your kids, you're saying Jesus Christ is harsh with his church. See, this is a really important thing. When you're loving and sacrificial and laying your life down for your wife and kids, you're saying this is the kind of love Jesus Christ has for his church. But mark my words, everything you do speaks. So the question is, what does your story of your leadership express about who Jesus Christ is and how he loves his bride? So one of the things that we have to remember is that duty, what you do as a husband, derives from definition. You are the head. You're either a faithful one or a poor one, but you are the head. And so what you shouldn't be doing then, in light of I've got to do my duty, I've got to be the head, because you are head by definition, your headship is not a right to demand. I demand you treat me like the head, is not the play, it's not understanding the role. Because the definition of headship is embedded in what it means to be in a marriage as a man, then your headship is not a right to demand, but a responsibility to fulfill. And again, it's whether or not you're speaking truly about Christ or not. And here's the thing we all fail in many ways, but the good news of the gospel is that Christ not only died to cover the ways that we have gone astray, but he has risen to new life and ascended to the Father so he could send his Holy Spirit to empower his husbands to walk in a newness of life. And so while we bear the effects of the fall, we have this beautiful privilege of redeeming what is our responsibility and walking in the ways that Jesus Christ both modeled for us and empowers through us by his Holy Spirit. You aren't going to get yourself on the right track. God will get you on the right track by the empowering of his spirit through the direction of the word of God. That's the hope that you have. Now, because of the effects of sin, Ephesians 5 guards against the abuses of headship. And I I've heard the stories. Headship, stewarded sinfully, can be devastating. And so Paul hems in what that headship should look like. It has a particular direction and kind, and it ought to look like this, which leads us to the imperative of husbanding. You start with you are head. The imperative of husbanding is this love your wife. Every single thing you do husbands flows from that. Now I gave some practical stuff in the big idea, right? You love, you're leading, you're protecting, and you're providing. Those are some big categories right there, right? But at the center of it is love. You love your wife. Everything flows from this. To borrow the language of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 16, 14, let all that you do be done in love. I find it interesting. One commentator picked it up like this the responsibility in terms of the commands of husband and wife, God gave commands to the genders, to the sexes, with consideration of their weaknesses. So what he means, what they mean by that is that there's a consideration of men's weakness and what they would give someone if they thought, what would my wife want? Have you ever had like a person who gave a gift to you and you could really tell they thought really hard about it based on what they like for themselves, but it's so not your thing? Okay. How many think that's what dudes would do if they're like, I'm gonna give my best to you, and they got you like a nine-iron, you know, and you're like, that's not what I wanted, you know? So I think part of what God's doing is protecting. I don't think men naturally would be like the first thing I'm thinking about doing is loving in a tender and nurturing way, my wife, in a protective and strong way, also, providing and protecting and leading. So what God does is he goes, I'm gonna give you a command to your weakness, just as much as the wife has a command of her weakness, but also the command that's given to each sex then corresponds to what the other needs. So it's not only to their weakness that I wouldn't naturally do that as a man, but it's also to the need of the other. In other words, men need to love, and women have a need to be loved. And so God says, love your wives. Now he gives us a kind of love that it's supposed to look like. What kind of love? And he gives two examples. The first one is this, as Christ loved the church. You don't get to define it, in other words, love your spouse, sweet, I will take a swing here. No, no, no. Jesus has displayed his love, and Paul has said, this is what the standard ought to be. Husbands, verse 25, love your wives as Christ, love the church, and gave himself up for her. How do you do that? Listen, just just process this with me for a second. Christ in, Christ out. This is how it's gonna work. So, how are you gonna love others? How are you gonna love, excuse me, specifically your wife? You should love others like Christ as well, but how are you gonna love specifically your wife as Christ loved you? You better be getting Christ into you. The first thing to ask yourself is have you been loved by him? The ones that struggle to love their wives as Christ loved the church is perhaps likely because they've not received and known the love of Jesus Christ for you. Men, do you know the love of Jesus Christ? Have you experienced his sacrificial love? I mean, think about it. If you have, think about how you've been loved. Jesus' love is a leading love, isn't it? In other words, what I'm saying is, men, you didn't go to Jesus first and say, Man, I'm really into you. I love you. No, no, no. The opposite. The opposite happened, right? Jesus Christ came to you first, 1 John 4, 19. We love because he first loved us. Christ was the pursuer. He didn't love you because you were lovely, man. He his love's making you lovely. He didn't love you because you earned it. No, your sin was very much present and your responsibility, your guilt, but Jesus made it his responsibility. Well, one of the first things we have to ask is do you know the gospel, man? Have you known and experienced the love of God? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever would believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Do you know the love of Jesus when despite your sin, despite your rebellion, despite your waywardness, despite your spitting in the face of God, so to speak, God so loved you, he sent his only son to live for you, to suffer for you, to die for you, was raised from the dead, ascended to the Father, to send his spirit through the proclamation of the truth to transform your life by the power of the Holy Spirit, gifting you faith and repentance and causing you to be absolutely transformed from the inside out. Do you know him? Have you received him through repentance and faith? That's where it begins. And then out of the gospel that you believe and the love that you enjoy, being united to Christ, with God's favor upon you, that he smiles upon you and sees you as he sees his only begotten son, then you begin to walk, as Ephesians 5, verse 2 says, in love as Christ loved you and gave himself up for you. So Christ in. Christ out. What you have to ask yourselves as you do anything in your life, men, husbands, is what I'm doing an expression of self-love or sacrificial love? And you gotta think hard about it. Was that play right there? Was that way I did something? Was that a passive comment? Was that an expression of self-love or was that an expression of sacrificial love? You think about how does Jesus love? Man, he loves in a long-suffering way. Was that an expression of long-suffering love? Was I being long-suffering? Is my love constant? Jesus' love is constant. Not fits and starts, not I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you. That's not how Jesus is. He's consistent, he's faithful, he's never changing his mind. He's not stewing in the garage. He's not easily provoked either. He's not coming unglued. They're not listening to me, they're not doing what I want. Do you know how much Jesus has to do with us not listening to him? Can we just acknowledge that right now? We're super proud, like just by default, all right? We. But I think we can all recognize that he endures a lot. How about Jesus seeking the others' best? How about Jesus believing the best about his spouse? How about contentness or contentment, I should say, with his spouse? How about your contentment with your spouse, not coveting others? How about contentment with your spouse men as your wives change? How about contentment with your wives as they are who they are versus who you would like them to be? But then you have all the butt-shees, right? S but space sh's. Just to be clear, when you say it fast, it's a little bit awkward. But she's. But she this, but but but she, but you you don't understand because she, but but she, but, but she okay. If she's unfaithful and wives do not at times make it easy. Let me just say, men right now, wives do you try to sacrificially love and you're like, but but but but wives don't always sometimes wives sabotage the love that their husbands extend. Can I just say that? Sometimes wives sabotage what their husbands extend genuinely as an expression of Christ-like love. If she is unfaithful, listen, she bears the guilt. But you still bear the responsibility to love her. Listen, even if you suffer along the way, men, you will never have done anything equal, even close to what Christ has done for you. Even if you've married a dozer, I'm talking wow. It's the one I go home and Aaron and I hang out late at night and go, thank you, Lord. Even if you've married a dozer, you will never marry anyone as estranged from you as you were from Jesus Christ. Ever. Let me put it a different way. Husband, you are responsible for the loveliness of your wife. Is she becoming more lovely? Is she flourishing? Is she becoming more godly? That is your responsibility. Listen to verse 26. You're to love like Christ loved the church, that he might sanctify her with the washing of water of the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor. You hear that loveliness? Without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Your love should be making your wife lovely. Men, consider this. Consider your frustration and your difficulty. This woman, I just can't corral her. She just consider this, men, that perhaps it's your example and your leadership that have formed the way that she is. Now I'm not saying exclusively on you, but I'm saying it's possible that perhaps your abdication of leadership, your negligent leadership, your evil example have formed your wife. And so a good question to ask is is she flourishing? Is she growing in godliness? Is she growing in loveliness? True beauty. It's interesting. You can really see, even on the outside, the ones that are loved well by a Christ-honoring, Christ-like loving husband. We're to love like Jesus. Love the church and gave himself up for her. But then he gives a second example, and this is interesting. He doesn't just give one, he gives two. Here's how you're to love. As Jesus, by the way, here's what I was thinking all week. Why do you need a second example when Jesus is the first? Love as Jesus loved the church, but also this example. As you love yourself. Anyone just like, I'm not sure why we need that? Why a second example? I can we just agree that the second one doesn't add anything. Can we agree on that? It's not there to add a second category to extend the love of Christ. Well, you know, love like Jesus, but for an extra amount of love, love like you love yourself. That can't be it. No, but I think here's what I think it is. I think it's less excuse-oriented, the second one. I think that's part of why this is here. I think it's less excuse-oriented. You see where I'm going on this, right? Because men see the standard and go, but that's Jesus. You ever made that excuse before? Well, what do you expect me to do, honey? I mean, he's perfect after all. I can't possibly love like Jesus. So Paul's like, sweet, do it like you love yourself. And you have no problem loving yourself. It swipes the excuse right out from under you, men. But that's Jesus. I mean, husband, you know, wife, I could quote Paul here, who is sufficient for these things? And of course the answer is no one. But no one's saying to do it in your own strength. In fact, you can't do it in your own strength. You can't love your wife the way Christ loved the church without the grace of God transforming you, right? Without the grace of God causing you to renounce ungodliness, understanding that because of the gospel, every command comes with a promise. That God's not going to call you to do anything in light of gospel living that He doesn't empower you to do. All of that is, of course, true. But I think the answer to why the second category is here is because it's more accessible. You love yourselves. You give great attention to yourselves, man. Think about when you have an injury, man. I see some of you guys walking in, you walk in like this. You know what you're doing? Limping. You know what that is? Favoring something that hurts. You know what I've heard from a lot of people about men getting sick? You know how certain guys come off as like the kind of tough guys? You know, like, oh man, man's men, they probably are like David, they're killing lions on their days off, you know. They're fishing and grabbing salmon like out of the stream with their hand, and you can just tell, you know what kind of guy I'm talking about? You know what I found that their wives will kind of give to me in counseling? That they're huge wusses when it comes to getting sick. Yeah. They're just they will nurture themselves. So they're tough on the outside, they got like tats, they're always wearing camo, right? But then, but when they get sick, they are such wusses. Because you're favoring it, right? You're not chopping off what's sick, you're tending to it, you're caring for it. It's kind of funny to the wives who are like, he is so tough in every other circumstance, but this. Here's just a humorous way of saying you tend to your own body. Your wife is your own flesh. If she's got a blemish, you don't call it out, you don't yell at it, that's not what you do. You tend to it. You pity that. You give it your best attention, you lean in to help, you make it your responsibility. Means her blemishes are ultimately your blemishes if you're one flesh. So the question is, how will you treat your wife? Now there's a couple ways that the Bible seems to make this clear in the text for us. One is a kind of provision or providing that the husband's to do, where we find this in the word nourishing, which Paul gives us. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes, there's the provider, and I think that's gonna come up on our screen, but then also we're gonna get to this as well: the cherishing, which is a kind of protective love in the end. And I want to break this down for you. Love your wife as you love yourself. You are to care for her as your own body. After all, she is one flesh, and then no one ever hated himself, but nourishes and cherishes your own flesh. So let me give you what this word nourishes means here. It literally means to feed or to bring up to maturity. Husbands, this is your role, and you can even hear in it there's implications for physical expectations of providing and spiritual expectations of providing. There's physical provision in here. You're to feed, you're to nourish, you're to maybe I could put it like this men bear the primary, not exclusive, but primary responsibility to work. You gotta hear my language. I didn't say exclusive responsibility. Because I know this is where the emails come in. We don't have time to get into all this, right? I was careful in the language because of course there are exceptions to the rule, right? Where the wife needs to be the primary provider. Something like a husband's disability and therefore inability to work, something like a seasonal switch where a husband is going to school to get a degree to work a job. In order for that to work, the wife steps in and is the primary provider. But as a general rule, the husband ought to be the primary provider. And I'm not dissuading the fact that there needs to be conversations about division of labor in the home, you know, who's doing what? Working inside versus outside, and all those kind of things. Get that. Finances, family vacations, who's planning those? All of that is conversation. But what I'm saying is they're the primary provider insofar as the rule is, husbands. And that means more than paying the bills. Sometimes husbands come back, they get back from work, and they're like, don't expect me to do anything. I'm supplying the funds for everything that goes on here. That is not where your job ends. You are the provider, but you're more than that. You're the provider of the family vision, you're the provider of the family culture, you're the provider of the family mission, you're the provider of the family reputation. All of that is built into providing. You do not merely pay the bills. The person who goes, now I deserve to be waited on because I worked all day. Like I said last week, men, the best hours of your day are when you get home. You are praying in the car, God, give me the strength. I know I don't have it, but I need it now to give my best to the very most important people in my life. That's the role and responsibility. And then this, you also have a responsibility to spiritually provide. Which means, men, you're leading out and following Jesus Christ. There are too many men waiting for their wives to lead spiritually. Men, you must go hard after God. You are the living expression of Jesus Christ your home. You are the prophet, the priest, the king. You're the prophet proclaiming to your family the truth of God's word. You're the priest caring and interceding for your wife and your kids. You are the king leading and guiding like Jesus would for your family. You have got to care more deeply than anything for your family, your wife, your kids' sanctification. Directing them in the means of grace. You're like, man, I have no idea how to do that. Then you need to get on the horse and figure out how to feed yourself. Because here's the secret to feeding your family. Learn how to feed yourself, rinse, and repeat. Worshiping weekly. Praying regularly with your family. Opening God's word together regularly with your family. And let me just say this too. This is kind of an aside, but let me just say this. Men, if you're gonna provide physically and spiritually, you can't fear your wife. If you fear your wife, she's leading you. You probably have heard that phrase, happy wife, happy life, right? How many grew up with happy wife, happy life? It's alright, you can raise your hand, I'm not gonna shred it entirely. I think it's awesome when your wife is robustly godly. I think it's devastating when your wife isn't. Because then what happens is you take your leadership and you come around just going, I hope she's okay, I hope she's okay. You leverage your leadership to spend your entire time hoping that she is not unhappy. You can't fear your wives like when they set certain unreasonable financial standards that she expects you to make. You can't fear your wife when she says something like, You're supposed to be a servant leader, how come you don't do the things that I'm supposed to do? And what you need to say, man, is listen, I'm a servant leader, serving by leading you to flourish in what God's given you. You to do. That we have different roles and responsibilities, and I need to be responsible to lead you in executing the role God's given to you, to make obedience and submission easy to you. I need to love you into your duties. And then if it's going really well, hopefully you're working for her rest as well, and she you. I think about on the regular, right? How can we work for one another's rest? You talk about naps, exercise, quiet times. Those are the big three in our home. How do I work in my time off to get my wife a nap, an exercise moment, or a quiet time? But then the cool thing is if you're doing that mutually, then she's thinking the same thing. How do I get you that time? I don't know if naps, exercise, and quiet time are your things, right? It could be, like I said, hunting and whatever else you're doing, which is great. But sometime where you're mutually serving one another. And that's the thing that's so cool is there's a ton of mutuality when you understand how God's arranged this whole thing to work. One of the joys that I have in watching this mutuality in my own home is I've literally said to Aaron, like, Aaron, it is so easy to lead you. You're so easy to lead. I've said that regularly for years. And she turns around and looks at me and says, That's because you're so easy to follow. And I look back at her and I say, No, that's because you are easy to lead. And we just keep going. Rinse and repeat. That's the health. When this is working well, and you're providing, and you're caring. Then he uses this other word. That's the last thing we're gonna look at. Cherishes. Right? Which is to keep warm. It has this idea of cherish with tender love. In your looks, compliments, affirmation, esteem. When you think of tenderness towards your wife, there's a flip side, isn't there? There's a protective side. It's where we get that idea of protector, a protective love. You're a tender protector, right? Which implies there are some things. If you're going to tenderly uh love her, then you're going to protect her against anything that's not tender towards her, right? So when you think about physical protection, when the Louisville slugger needs to come out for the scary noise downstairs, you're not saying, sweetie, would you go ahead and check that out, right? But like the framework for us is I don't know how many bad guys are coming to your house. So here's my framework for physical protection for guys. You're responsible for everything from bad guys to bugs. I am killing, I am slaying a lot more bugs in my house than I am bad guys, so I'll just tell you that. I am slaying, but I am slaying a lot of bugs because that's the agreement. I will take care of our home. It's silly, right? But that responsibility bears its weight on you. But it's also a spiritual responsibility. And it's not just family worship and all this stuff, but it's it's you keeping certain influences out, making sure certain influences come into the home. It's men taking lead in reconciliation. When things are broken in relationship, you are the one to first lean in to repent. You are the first one to pray. You are the first one to look the other in the eye. Isn't it interesting with sin that it kind of acts as a separation thing, right? Sin creates this separation. You don't want to look at each other, you don't want to hold each other's hands. Men, you're the first one to humble yourself despite your frustration and grab a hold of your wife's hand. You're the one to lead in that. You're the one to say, I'm sorry. You're the one to say, I, by the grace of God, I will be and do different. No matter what your wife's responsibility is, you bear some at any given moment. And I find it interesting with some husbands that some husbands won't tolerate any crud towards their wives at all. But then miss that they treat their wives like crud. Somebody else does it and they're heightened in awareness. You do it and you don't even see it. You to be a tender protector of your wife. Husbands, no doubt. The bar is high, the bar is high. The bar is high, isn't it? You feel overwhelmed. The bar is high. The pattern is here. It's to direct us towards Jesus Christ. It's to provoke us in the way that we ought to go. But here's the thing about men. Here's what I love about you, men. Here's what I love about men in general. We love challenges. We love to take hills. We love to grind it out. We love to overcome. Men, this is the greatest moment of your life. This is the greatest hill you will ever climb. This will define you more than any other thing in your entire life. And so you go forth, not in what you aren't, but what in by Christ's example and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit you can be by His grace. And it's not gonna look perfect, but it's gonna look better every day. It's gonna look more like Jesus every day, and you're gonna fight for that, and you're gonna repent like that, and you're gonna humble yourself like that. That's the hunt. Wives, let me finish with this. The sermon's purpose for today is not to be a battering ram to bash your husband's head over on Father's Day, nonetheless. Did you hear what Pastor Scott said? Here's what you need to do. Here's the only thing you need to do. You need to not do that. You need to not do that. You need to help him to be what God calls him to be and to do. That's what you need to do. You need to help him to be what God calls him to be and to do. You are called to respect your husbands. We'll talk about that next week. So help urge him towards respectability. That's your job. Singles. Don't settle. Don't settle. It is not worth it. Ladies, I'm working hard for you to get some more godly men going, alright. Godly young men, marry a woman you're willing to love and lead like Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the privilege that it is to hear it every single week. God, we recognize how far we fall short, but by your grace. And so, God, this isn't going to get done in our own strength. It is going to get done by the strength that you supply, by the power of your Holy Spirit. Oh, God, do what we cannot, make us what we are not, not by our own strength, but we have died, and there is new life in us by your spirit. And so help us to walk in that newness of life by your word guiding to the glory of the name of Jesus Christ. We pray this in his name. Amen.