Ephesians 5:25-32 | Marriage Is Not About You

Preacher: Scott Hollingshead

Text: Ephesians 5:25-32

Big Idea: God designed marriage for the mutual pursuit of conformity to Jesus Christ. 

1. Grace is at the base of your growth in holiness (vv. 25-27)

2. Issues are opportunities for growth in holiness (vv. 28-30)

3. The gospel is your vantage point for growth in holiness (vv. 31-32) 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Church, what a privilege it is to worship the Lord together. As we go to Him in prayer, why don't you bow your heads with me and we're gonna pray out of Psalm chapter 40 today. Father, we thank you for the privilege that it is to gather on your day, Lord's day, worship. And we thank you that you're the God that we can wait patiently upon and know that you incline your ear to us and you hear our cries for mercy. Father, we praise you that you are the God who draws people out of pits. We are the people who find ourselves in pits. Before Christ, we found ourselves in a desperate pit, a pit of destruction, a miry bog. But you, God, you by the work of your Son set our feet upon a rock, making our steps secure, putting a new song in our mouths. And Lord, by our example, out in the world, many will see and fear, recognizing that work that you're doing, and they also will put their trust in you. And God, this is what we do pray that as we gather as the people of God, there would be those who come in curious, inquiring, seeing what's happening here, recognizing lives change and looking to the one alone who can change a life. Lord, I just pray that we would be reminded that the one that's blessed is the one who makes the Lord his trust. Lord, you have not delighted in sacrifice and offering. Burnt offering and sin offering, you've not required. Rather, you delight in the one who says, It is my desire to do your will, O God. And Father, we recognize that we cannot have that desire apart from your grace in us. The want to do it, the power to walk in your ways, to love your word, to love your law in our hearts, to testify of the good news of the gospel, not only in the great congregation, but beyond that into the world, Lord. But it starts here. It starts with us treasuring the gospel, Lord. Help us to treasure the good news of the gospel. Help it to flow freely off of our lips. As the preacher, Lord, may I not restrain my lips from testifying to the good news of your faithfulness and your steadfast love made so freely available to us in Jesus Christ. Lord, be pleased to work in this place. What we lack, give. What we don't know, teach, and what we are not, make us into the people that you would have us to be more like Jesus, we pray. May all the seekers here, Lord, rejoice and be glad in you. And may they say continually, Great is the Lord. Father, we are poor and needy, but you, Lord, take thought of us. Meet us in the proclamation of your word. May there be two preachers up here: the feeble, broken man and the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, ministering the word to people's hearts in a way that I cannot, for the glory of your name and the good of the people here. We pray this in Jesus' name. And all God's people said. Amen. Well, let me have you stay standing as we come to the reading of God's Word for today. We're gonna come back to where we were a few weeks ago when I was preaching, and we're gonna be in Ephesians 5, looking at it from another angle and reading yet again, Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 25, and I'm gonna read down to verse 32. Such a blessing to hear God's word. We recognize what a gift it is to hear it read over us, and we receive it as nothing less than the word of God. Amen. 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 it 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 in the church. Love ones, this is the word of the living God for our time. This Lord's Day, Sunday. May the Lord write these eternal truths on your hearts, and with that you can be seated. Church, good morning. How are you doing? Excellent. If you have a copy of God's word, go to Ephesians chapter 5. And as you do that, um, want to introduce myself. My name is Scott, I'm the lead pastor here. It's really good to have you with us. If you're new, welcome. Sincerely look forward to hopefully getting to meet you at the welcome uh desk outside in the lobby when we are done. That would be amazing. And uh you're catching us kind of right in the middle. I don't know if you guys can uh wrap your minds around this, but we're already about halfway through this marriage series, right? And some people are like, oh, it's gonna be so long, and actually it's turned out to be quite quick. And we are halfway through, and uh the title of the series is The Grammar of Marriage because we're talking about rediscovering the building blocks of a biblical marriage and trying from the ground up to establish that. And so we've been going week by week doing that. We're about at the halfway mark of the series. What makes today particularly special is that I get to talk about marriage on the day that I celebrate marriage. I don't think this has ever happened in the history of the church. I am preaching a message on marriage on a day I'm celebrating our 17-year anniversary of marriage. So that's awesome. So I feel like I have extra juice in the tank. And probably, probably, if you were to ask Erin what is one of the major gifts that I could give her today, it would be me preaching today. So all right, enough of this gooey show of emotion. The title of the message for today is Marriage is not about you. How about that for a pivot? Marriage is not about you. Married couples, let me ask you a question. What were you expecting marriage to be and do for you? Can you go back and think about it? Singles, you're doing it right now. What are you currently expecting? Those singles that aspire to marriage, what are you expecting marriage to be and to do for you? And here's the thing: if you go back in the animals of history, you're like, we've been married for 30 years, it's gonna be hard to think back. It's not that hard. We had so many embedded expectations, didn't we? Ways that we wanted this to go. Ladies, come on, white picket fence, kids, you know, as the great theologian Taylor Swift said, want the whole block looking like my husband, right? That whole idea, we just wanna have a bunch of kids, and I'm running around in the white picket fence, it's gonna fulfill all my dreams. I've seen all the Disney movies, this is gonna be amazing, right? And we have all these expectations of what marriage is gonna do. Some of us, we couldn't even articulate what we wanted our marriage to be, but then we found out when our expectations weren't met, that there was something in there we were expecting that we didn't get, right? For some of us, it's like, man, I just wanna get married because I don't want to be alone. I am terrified of what it means to uh even consider the idea that I would live in a kind of solitude, or or maybe for you, you got married because you wanted this utmost satisfaction that you believe marriage was going to deliver you, and you were so excited. And if we could just sum up maybe all of these kind of things we're talking about, there's probably one word that kind of fits into what were you hoping for in your marriage, and the word was happiness. You were hoping at the end of the day, whatever it was, that marriage was going to make you happy. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, but here's the problem: lurking right under the surface of that word happy is that smaller word me. I wanted to make me happy. And so you get married and you go, This is perfect. I'm going to be really happy. And then it doesn't take long, or maybe it does until your personal happiness is somehow compromised, right? For some of you, you could have a story. It was my honeymoon, man. We had these expectations, I had these thoughts of how the honeymoon was gonna be, it was gonna be so romantic, it was gonna be so amazing, it was horrible. We both got sick, we were on a cruise, I was barfing off the side, it was just terrible, right? Honeymoon expectations. Maybe it wasn't that, maybe you just realized we thought we relationally were connected and we had so many challenges early on. Maybe it didn't take, maybe it wasn't early on that you had struggles, maybe it was later on where you started to realize there was a number of losses that you experienced as a couple, and it drew you apart, or you struggled in that way. Maybe it's the reality that when you got married, you're like, great, we'll be together forever, and you didn't think about responsibilities at all, and then you get home and you're like, oh, I gotta get a job. Like support myself, and then you gotta get a better job. Because you gotta have a kid, then you're gonna have another kid, then you're gonna have another kid, and your parents are gonna get old and you're gonna take care of them, and it's like all of a sudden the heat on your life just continues to increase step by step by step. And if you're not careful, what happens is you start to reel, right? You reel in kind of a resentment because you're like, this isn't what I signed up for. You start to get frustrated and it's a toss-up. Do I push this resentment out towards my spouse, or do I push this resentment out towards God? When I wonder if we take a step back and think about our situations, is it possible that the things that you start to resent about your marriage are the very means God's using to accomplish his purpose for you in marriage? Could it be that God has a different agenda for your marriage than you do? What I want to talk about today in this text is that God didn't design marriage to be about you. So the question is, what is it about then? And I can't say this enough, and I'll reiterate it, and it's in our text, God planned marriage in an ultimate sense to display the love of Jesus Christ for his church. By the husband in the role of loving Christ-like leader, and the wife in the role of the submissive church to the loving Christ-like leadership. This was meant to be the display of the glory of God and the love of Jesus Christ for the church. And the text that we're reading shows us that as Jesus loved the church, the church becomes lovely. Jesus loves them in a sort of preparation phase so that they're ready for the presentation phase to enjoy meeting the Savior. Like the bride is going to meet the Savior in consummate glory. Do we understand that's coming? And so we're aiming towards the presentation of the bride of Christ. We are the bride of Christ church, and we're excited for that day, but listen, in the meantime, there is a preparation phase for the presentation. We have this phase of Christ loving the church into loveliness. Loving the church into, let's use the word from the text, holiness. So if I were to give you the purpose for marriage, the ultimate one is to display Jesus Christ's love for the church, but if I were to give you the immediate sense, the more horizontal focus of the purpose of marriage in your relationship, here's what I would say the big idea is then. God designed marriage for mutual pursuit of conformity to Jesus Christ. This is what God's after. So if you're feeling like, man, my marriage dreams have really been wrecked, the truth is, no, they haven't. Every one of those little issues has been a blessing of the Lord who has sovereignly sovereignly crafted every one of the issues and trials and troubles and difficulties you face to conform you into the image of his son, Jesus. In other words, God designed marriage not merely to make you happy, but to make you holy. The marriage ends up being one of the greatest gifts in God's toolbox of sanctification in conforming his people, making us like Jesus, who is the standard of holiness. I remember one of the best books that I read as a young Christian. It was probably the first book that gripped my heart in a way that said, this isn't a book for beginner Christians. And yet it was, and it was C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. But when you read that book, your mind is blown. It is hard to keep up. And I remember as an 18-year-old boy, I was so excited, young adult, I was so excited about the hugeness of God, about the ability that C. S. Lewis had to describe God, and therefore, because God is so great and so glorious, we needed to have a life aimed at God. And here's what he said about that. Listen to this. He said, quote, aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in. Okay? Not far from Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and what? All these things will be added unto you. So C.S. Lewis says, aim at heaven and you'll get earth thrown in. But then he said this aim at earth and you'll get neither. Now, how do we translate that to what we're talking about today? Here's what I'm saying. If you aim at holiness in your marriage, happiness is often the byproduct. Happiness comes as a package deal when holiness is your pursuit. But if you make happiness your pursuit, and I mean happiness, a me-me-centered happiness, you will get neither happiness nor holiness. See, because holiness protects happiness. Holiness preserves happiness. You discard holiness to go after happiness, you'll start to go after happiness in unholy ways and actually forfeit the happiness you're trying to pursue. That's a lot there. Do we track with that? So what I want to show you today is how important this is, this framework that helps us understand the purpose of God in marriage, the ultimate sense to display the love of Christ for the church, the immediate sense, that preparation process for the presentation of his bride to the church, that making us holy. So how does that come? Well, here's what we see in the text. Here's the first thing. Number one, grace is at the base of your growth in holiness. In other words, you do not get to holiness by gritting it out, by just sheer self-strength, by signing up for a lot of Bible studies and just gritting your teeth. I'm not saying it doesn't come with a fight. I'm saying it comes with a grace-driven fight. I'm not saying your marriage doesn't grow by grit. I'm saying that marriage grows by a grace-driven grit. Watch this. I want to focus on the purpose clause in verse 26, but let's go back to verse 25. Husbands, love your wives. Here's the example, right? The parallel with Christ in the church. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Listen to this. This is the key. That, so what? For what purpose? That he might what? Big word, do we know what it means? If we're confused, he actually defines it for us if we'll keep reading. Having cleansed her, something about being cleansed, by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself. Remember, I talked about preparation under presentation, preparing us, making us prepared to be presented before the Lord in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Listen, here's the parallel to sanctify, that she might be what? Holy. And all God's people said, Because he lived a righteous life in perfect obedience to the law of God, and then he laid his life down for lawbreakers, for the penalty of a lawbreaking is death. He died the sinner's death as a substitute for you, and then rose from the dead, the Father's vindication of the Son's work on the behalf of all those who would receive the work of Jesus Christ on their behalf by as a gift of God's grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ, right? And in that you are delivered from the judgment deserving your sin. But the good news about the gospel is that the gospel doesn't stand and kind of put a period at the deliverance from judgment. God's not just content to deliver you from judgment. God actually wants to make your positional holiness, granted at the moment of your justification, a practical holiness. He wants to see the very holiness that you receive by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, an imputed righteousness, then flesh out in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit to make you progressively more holy. To say it another way, grace that saves, if you've been saved, one of the best indicators to know is that you're being sanctified. Right, you think about all the people, and this always drives me nuts every single time I turn on something about sports and you listen to an interview, and they've always found God, haven't they? It's always it's and you're like, oh, this is so great, this is so great. Here's the thing what's missing isn't the I found God narrative. What's missing is the, but where's the sanctification that proves the grace that saves is actually there. Right? You can't say I found God and then go on living in the exact same way you lived before. That would demonstrate to me that you actually don't possess the grace that saves because the grace that saves is a grace that sanctifies. Now, granted, this is about marriage, and we could have some snarky individuals in here that go, Pastor Scott, I'm looking at this, and from what I can tell, it sounds like husbands are the sanctifying tools, and the wives need the sanctification. Just look at the text. In fact, that's not been your message, but that's what I'm gonna go home and preach to my wife. I just want you to know there's nothing in here that says the husband needs to be sanctified. Sounds like I'm supposed to help you get sanctified. We could read it like that. There's enough snarky arrogance in our hearts to go that way. The issue in the text is before we go there, let us be reminded of something. Just because God doesn't sanctify the husband and the wife in the same role doesn't mean that he doesn't have the same purpose for both of them. Or in other words, the way Jesus Christ sanctifies the wife in her role, that's the means and that's how he does it. He sanctifies the wife through the husband's loving ministry. But, husbands, he sanctifies you through your role in loving as Christ. That's how. By the way, how's that going, husbands? Right? Your job is to love like Jesus Christ. Need some sanctification? Can I get a hallelujah? You are there just in a different way. It's not a one-for-one, but you are in need of it, and it will be exposed as you seek to love your bride as Jesus Christ loved the church. Let me say another thing. Singles. On that similar note, marriage isn't the source of holiness. It's not like, okay, if I really want to grow in my faith, I gotta get married. No, marriage isn't the source of holiness, Jesus Christ is. Christ is the embodiment of grace. You need to be growing in grace. You need to pursue someone who is growing in grace, who doesn't just speak about a grace that saves, speaks about a grace that sanctifies, who is demonstrably demonstrating that they are becoming more like Jesus Christ. Stick around without making any serious commitments long enough to see what they do when something rough happens that makes or breaks a demonstration of whether or not they hold Jesus Christ in high esteem. Stay around long enough to understand, you need to see this, singles. That the one you're into would rather offend you than offend their God. You need someone who's hungering for holiness. See, all marriage is is a crucible for God's grace, that's it. Marriage is just a woodshed for God's grace. Marriage is an opportunity to grow in God's grace, right? That's what it is, that's what I'm saying. And by the way, if you started thinking about your marriage in that way, how many problems would that help you frame? How much stress would that take off? You're in this like battle again, something's happened, a conflict's taken place, you're stressed out. What if you just paused in the middle of that? We're like, wait a minute. God is doing something here. He wants to leverage this moment to make us more holy, to make us like Jesus. See, if you start to think like that, all of a sudden the bad things you didn't want to take place in your marriage are the very things God's using to conform you to the image of his son. That will put good news on every bad thing that comes into your marriage. That will put hope into every situation that you come across in your marriage. This is God loving us into an opportunity to become more lovely. This is our opportunity to walk in a growth of God's grace. How serious are you about the pursuit of your spouse's sanctification? How much do you think about that on a day-by-day basis? Let me ask it another way. At what cost are you pursuing your spouse's sanctification? Where are you coming in and going, how can I prevent hindrances to God's grace? Where can I step in and help in such a way that I see that temptation lurking, but I'm gonna shut that down in this way? Or I see an opportunity here, and I'm not gonna give that opportunity for the enemy. We will worship corporately every week, we will worship as a family every day, like Lord willing, that regular rhythm. We'll be in community with God's people. We're gonna be celebrating God's grace. One of the best things you can do in marriage is look for evidences of God's grace in the other at any moment that you see it and celebrate it as God's work in their life. See, grace isn't just the grace that saves, it's the grace that sanctifies. So even if you see the desire to change, praise God for that. Celebrate that. Grace is the desire to change. When you see the power to change and someone stops sinning in a certain way, controls their thoughts instead of spewing their thoughts, praise God. When you see them putting to death the old man and starting to live in accordance with the Lord's word, self-right, controlled, godly lives, self-controlled, upright and godly lives, praise the Lord for that. Celebrating evidences of God's grace. If you by the grace of God grow in grace, what you'll do is you'll have the grace to endure being sinned against. You'll have the grace to be patient with one another, you'll have the grace to understand that growth is not this perfect trajectory. Is anyone's sanctification like, I just keep growing? It's just one step forward the whole time. It's like a dance, right? It's like two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, four steps back, five steps forward, hopefully, right? That's the motion. But it starts there. Grace is at the base of your holiness. Which leads to the second thing. Number two, issues in your marriage. I'm kind of leading into this already, are opportunities for growth and holiness. And man, what if you saw it that way? That issues are not, oh. It seems like every time I'm around you, there's issues. God's like, yes, there are issues. Every issue is an opportunity for holiness. What if you saw that as such? See, one of the things Paul does is he moves to verse 28, is he goes from the example of Christ's love to the example of loving your wife as your own body. That second example, and we talked about this, right, a few weeks ago, that that second example doesn't add to Christ. Like, love like Christ, and then, oh, for the cherry on top, love your wife as your own body. No, it's like we it's almost like the Bible knew you would make excuses. Well, that's Jesus. Well, like, how about this? You love your own body. Much more practical, love your wife as yourself. Love your wife as your own body because they are, as the church is the body of Christ, and you're to nourish the bride into maturity is the idea. That word nourish there is the word maturity or nourishing unto maturity in verse 29. And so the issues then in your marriage are opportunities to grow in maturity, opportunities to grow in holiness. So, man, I think this is what changes the mentality. For me, it's uh every irritation is an invitation. If you start thinking about it like this because you see the purpose of God over your marriage, it will change so many things. Instead of you getting mad at the things you're bothered by, consider every irritation is an invitation. That marriage issues function like a mirror. Please be let me be clear. Marriage doesn't create sin issues, marriage reveals sin issues. So when you get in your conflict, the Lord is surfacing, you have a control problem. When you get disappointed by something, perhaps the Lord is uncovering some unbelief. When you really struggle about those peccadillo differences with each other, and of course you're the better version, right? Whatever that subtly annoying thing is that the other one does that you for sure don't have, let me just suggest that would reveal pride. That you can't possibly get your mind around how they would do it like that, because you're thinking in your mind, I do it like this, and if there was a better way to do it, I'd be doing that. Perhaps that's God allowing you into an opportunity to confront pride in your heart. Missed expectations about what you wanted your spouse or your marriage to be and do. Perhaps it reveals an impatience in your heart that God wants to address. Here's what I'm saying: every issue becomes an opportunity to see sin surface so that you can slay your sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think of it as your marriage is like a pot on a stove, and as God wants to shape you, he turns that heat up and draws that dross to the surface. And you can battle over it together, or you can align yourselves with one another and say, God wants us to put some sin to death right now. And by the way, it doesn't matter if it's her sin or it's your sin. Well, that's your problem. Hey, listen, you are one, y'all. Their issue's your issue, and vice versa. So there's no like, look what he brings to the table. Look what she like, that is. She is a tragic mess. That is your mess. Because you are one. It's kind of wild, isn't it? If you think about it, God has designed marriage and that the person who knows you the best becomes the person God uses most to effect effectively help you become more like Jesus. If you think about it, marriage often feels like God's like to your spouse, here's a scalpel. Do your best in your spouse. That is almost the idea of what's going on. That God gives you this scalpel or this chisel, however you want to say it, and you have this privileged position in the life of your spouse to be a sanctifying agent. You are not the sanctifier, you are the sanctifying agent that God is using in your spouse's life. Wield the scalpel carefully. In fact, there's ways not to leverage your opportunity as a spouse under your spouse's sanctification. There are ways to leverage your role as a sanctifying agent that you ought not to do, and there are ways to do it, and so let me just make sure we're clear on some of those ways. You have this prime position. You are to be precise and careful. Here are ways not to be a sanctifying agent in your spouse's life. Number one, a couple of them. Just want to throw these ideas down. Your role as sanctifying agent doesn't mean you're seeking to make them into your image. You are looking to be a facilitator of God by his spirit, making your spouse into Jesus' image, the image of Jesus Christ. The image of God. Which means, and oftentimes what happens is, one spouse has selfish desires that are cloaked in spiritual language. I'm just your sanctifier, baby. Sweet harsh, nookums. I'm just trying to, and it's spiritual language couched with selfish desires, and the standard is not your preference or your liking, but it's God's word. And you're to help in that way. You're not to make them into the image that you want them to be. You're to help them grow into the image of the Son. Here's another way that you ought not to exercise your sanctifying agency in the life of your spouse. Don't do it in a self-exalting way, but rather a self-denying way. So nothing is more nauseating than the spouse coming in going, hey, let me help you with your problems in a kind of holier than thou sort of way. Anyone just like, I can't even right now. I'm fighting my hatred towards your pride before I can even get to the issue, right? Like our best way to address things is that they should not be addressed in a way that the spouse feels embarrassed by, called out unnecessarily. They should feel cared for, they should feel supported, they should feel like ultimately you have godly motives in mind as you seek to be that God-given scalpel in the life of your spouse. Here's another one. Ways not to leverage that role of sanctifying agent. Not pursuing the other sanctification in an angry, nagging, or nitpicking way. Not to pursue it in a way where you're like, well, Pastor Scott said that uh I'm your sanctifying agent, so I just want you to know I have my eyes on you 24-7. You step out of line at all, I'm gonna make sure you feel the eagle eyes of death on you right now. It is over for you until you repent of that sin. And it is just like heavy-handed and it's over the top, and it's just like they're under surveillance, you know. And listen, let's just get it on the table. No one likes being called out, right? So there's a possibility that you could do it in the most gentle, wonderfully godly way, and in pride, your spouse can lash out at you, correct? That that is totally an issue, right? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the way it happens. When the reason the lash out happens is because of the way you approach it in an angry, nitpicking sort of hyper-surveillance kind of way. Let's ditch that. And then finally, this ways not to leverage your role as sanctifying agent. Can I just repeat it? To not do it. You've been given a role, and some people are like, you know what? I don't want to do it. I don't like what happens when I try to do it. I've tried to do it and my spouse flies off the handle at me. I've tried to do it, and so what? You know what? I've given up. I'm not gonna do it at all. And then there's the whole background thing, right? Like some grew up. Did you grow up like this? Some grew up sweeping everything under the rug. Right? You even watch it. Like you come into your spouse's family, and you know, you're hanging out for a night, and there's this blowout fight, and the next morning they pretend like nothing happened. Have you seen that before? Wild. I'm not suggesting anything about Aaron's family for the record. This is a play out of a hypothetical, just to be clear. You go back and you're like, oh, what was that about? No, no. I literally have no example of that. I know this happens. People sweep things under the rug, complete denial, act like nothing ever happened. So it's almost like God's given you a scalpel and you do nothing with it. You let the sin build up until it destroys. The other side of it though, some of you, you grew up with the kind of uh emote until you got to the destination, sort of reality. Was that the family you grew up in? Whereas like I'm mad, but I've pent up a lot of things from the past, and so I'm just gonna let that fly. Not sure if that's why I'm mad at you right now, but I'm gonna go ahead and go just annihilate you. Shrapnel everywhere, blood, the whole thing. And by the way, I don't think any of that's actually why I'm mad at you today. This is why I'm mad. You're like, oh, you just it's like uh taking your scalpel and prison shanking your spouse about all the issues that you haven't dealt with, and actually having none of those be the particular issue you're trying to deal with right now. Those would probably be the two spectrums going on. Both of those are dangerous. Again, think of yourself like a surgeon with a scalpel for your spouse's soul, right? This is the role you play. Matthew Henry told you about him before. If I were to get one single volume commentary, I would get Matthew Henry's commentary. Been there, done that, right? Go back and listen. We've already talked about that. Here's what he said: he said, a good surgeon needs to have an eagle's eye, a lion's heart, and a lady's hand. That's how you should pursue being the sanctifying agent in your spouse's life. Eagle's eye, lion's heart, lady's hand. In short, wisdom, courage, and meekness. That's how you should do it. So, how am I to be a sanctifying agent in my spouse's life? Wisely, courageously, and humbly. That's how you should approach it. Wisely, a couple categories for you. Right? Time, right tone, right tier. There's a time not to pursue sanctification, like in small group, getting really aggressive with each other in a public setting. Just saying. Probably the best thing is to take that on the road, respect your spouse enough to do it in a private setting instead of embarrassing him or her in front of a big old group of people. Is that fair? I don't know. Shot in the dark, think that's kind of wise. Second thing, write tone. How you talk matters. Sometimes you need to be told. They're like, no, I'm super happy right now. And you gotta be told, all right, man, just tell your face. Like maybe we'll do this, and I'll hold up a mirror right here. Right? No, talk to me again. Look at yourself while you talk to me and tell me how that looks happy, right? So tone and and and body language and those kind of things wisely matters. And then I would say tear, as in what's the tear level of this issue? Are you able to tree age it? Not every issue is a dire, crazy, oh my goodness, everything's falling apart kind of thing. If you are dramatic and prone to being dramatic, that one's for you. What are some things that just love can cover offenses and don't even need to come up? What are some areas in which you're like, man, I don't need to make that molehill into a mountain? Wisely, courageously, fear God more than man. Go to them, speak truthfully, clearly, humbly to them. Matthew 18 is so clear. Go to that person that you have a reconciliatory issue with and address them. If they listen, you've gained your spouse. You don't first go to your mom, you don't first go to your friend group, you go to them. And then humbly, always go with a magnifying glass that's apparent on your own sin, your own weaknesses, your own struggles. If it looks like you're walking with a limp as you go to use the scalpel on the sink, on the on your spouse, that that's the way to go. There are probably areas in this that I need to grow in, but here's one of the things that I see, right? Man, and if they can see that you have the magnifying glass on yourself before you're ever pointing it at them, that is a massive win. Singles, are we eyes wide open? What we're hearing is marriage is less about my dreams fulfilled, my dreams fulfilled, and kind of more like entering a pretty intensive discipleship program for the rest of your life to the glory of God to make you more holy, which by the way, in your flesh you are not always desiring to be. But it's absolutely for your good. Lastly, this. Number three the gospel is your vantage point for growth and holiness. The gospel is your vantage point for growth and holiness. So Paul reminds us that here's where it's all going. Verse 32 this mystery is profound. And I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Again, the whole pattern for your life is this is the stage for preparation, becoming progressively holy, so that you're ready for the presentation as part of the bride to the son, right? To the groom. The ultimate consummation of that love between Jesus Christ and his church. And so the greatest good that you can do in your spouse's life is to advance the salvation in them towards the consummation of that great love between Jesus Christ and his church. And when you think about it from our perspective, even as individual Christians among the body of the church, it's not just that every issue is an opportunity for growth and holiness, every issue is an opportunity to love the Son more. Every issue is an opportunity to be more fit and ordered for the glories and delights of heaven, which are profoundly and fundamentally rooted in your enjoyment of Jesus Christ. So one of the things I would say is every issue is an opportunity to love Jesus Christ more. I remember Spurgeon's line was so helpful in general, it's just a pattern. When you face trials and difficulties, he said this. He said, I have learned to kiss the waves that threw me into the rock of ages. Every wave in your marriage, if you can learn to kiss the waves in your marriage because they throw you, sometimes you don't want it to happen. Waves don't ask for your permission, they throw you into the rock of ages. But are you sweetening to that? Are you learning to love the waves because they throw you into the rock of ages? Because you love him. Because in beholding him, you are becoming more like him because he's so glorious, because you long for the day that you will see him face to face. See, if we have that mentality and we deal with these things humbly, then we magnify Christ greatly in the world. We end up displaying him in this awesome way. We end up receiving, if we can learn how to receive what our spouses say in a way that goes, hey, if this is a wave that will throw me into the rock of ages, I'm all for it, then we have something amazing going on. We can actually be a display to the watching world of the difference that Jesus Christ makes in a life, of how glorious and awesome He is. Man, if we can turn that frustration when we get confronted instead of at our spouse, and we can turn it to our sin, imagine what that'll do. How many of you have ever been frustrated when your spouse has tried to call something out? Again, we've talked about there's ways to do it. We've all been there, but what if that frustration, you were able to go, hang on, self-control? Let me take all that frustration right now and actually aim it at the sin, hate the sin until I see it go and be put to death. Man, that would be huge. GK Chesterton once said to the answer, what's wrong with the world, I am. It's a helpful way to think about it in your marriage. What's wrong with my marriage, I am. And what's the best thing in my marriage? That Jesus Christ is consuming me more and more. That every day I am submitting to a daily death, a daily death of my dreams, a daily death of my desires, a daily death of my design for what I thought marriage should be. And slowly, every day, ever increasingly, I'm adopting, I'm embracing the plan, design, desires of God for my marriage. I'm starting to embrace the fact that marriage was never designed to make me ultimately happy in the sense of without holiness, but to make me ultimately holy with a happiness that's a byproduct of that holiness. Loved ones, if we can go after that, then we will understand the very purpose for our marriage in this life on a horizontal level between husband and wife. Every issue and opportunity that God has crafted to conform you to Jesus Christ. And here's the thing to be like Christ is a glorious thing because there is no one more happy than Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the great gift of your word. Where would we be, Lord, if we didn't have your word? How lost would we be, God? How much destruction has taken place because we have not walked in accordance with what your word says, but how much hope there is in knowing, God, that you are a God of grace. You are a God who can transform what has been broken and you can restore it. This is what grace does. It restores, it empowers, it provides patience. It helps us to not just put the old man to death, but to live to that new life in Christ. Father, help us not to do any of this in our self-strength. The desire will be to grow by our own bootstrap effort. And we need to be growing by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Jesus, our enabler and our example, the one we behold and we become like by His power, by His Spirit, through your word. God help us to, in community, grow in these things. That we might have flourishing marriages, that we might have marriages that pivot and turn a corner because we now see what you're doing at any given moment. And God help us to hunger for holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.