Marriage Conference 2018 - 03 - Thinking Biblically About Marriage and Family — Ephesians 5-6

0:00 Well, there was a question that Ray passed on to me about, I think it's the last verse of chapter five, where the King James has it, let every one of you in particular so love his wife to the husband even as himself and the wife see that she reverence her husband or New King James I think has got it respects. And the word actually also means fear, her husband. And I think it's not fear in the sense of being modified kind of fear, but regard would be a good word. And I think part of the question that came along with it was that how do you respect someone who is worthy of it, who is acting like a jerk, which I think men are sometimes known to do that. So I think certainly we need to keep in mind that the whole section is being addressed to the believing husband and the believing wife.

1:29 That they are both under the authority and the Lordship of Christ. That they are both commanded to seek the infilling of the Spirit of God as an ongoing exercise. It is not be filled once and be done. The tense, the grammar would suggest that the command to be filled is present and it is continuous. There are certain commands that are to be observed once.

2:17 John two, we read the command from the Lord, fill the water port with water. The grammatical structure is fill it once and you're done. But in Ephesians five, the command is keep on being filled with the spirit. So tomorrow morning when I get up, that ought to be the prayer of my heart And I should be prepared to pay the price to be filled with the spirit of God. And then Monday morning it's the same thing.

2:49 And then Tuesday. As I was sharing with somebody at table, know, we every day as husbands and wives we need to show up to get our instruction, to get orders from him who actually is the one who does the commanding. Okay? So if you as a husband, you don't think that loving your wife like that is a lot of fun and it seems like hard work. Don't take it up with her.

3:32 Take it up with the one who is giving the command. And wives who might say, you know, you knew the man I am living with, you wouldn't think in these terms. Okay? But take it up with the Lord. Now I'm not saying that to be heartless, but my primary purpose is to kind of get us thinking again in really biblical terms about these things.

4:10 We all need to have the wisdom to think Biblically about our marriages. When the days are good and when the days are not so good. When the days are clear and the flowers are blooming and everything is going famously, as well as on those days that are dark and dreary. We need to have God's wisdom to help us think biblically about these things. So I think to speak to the question more specifically, Again, I think you know when Paul, and you may have noticed it in the reading, he keeps going back and forth between, you know, I'm really talking about a mystery, the mystery that has to do with Christ and His Church.

5:06 And lest we should relax and say, oh good, I'm glad you're talking about a mystery. Paul comes back at the very next verse. But you husbands make sure that you love your wives. That's not a mystery. That is real husbands and real wives.

5:27 Difficult and all that that might conjure up in our minds. Real husbands, real wives. Next verse he goes: But I'm also talking about this great mystery between Christ and the Church. Next verse, he brings us right back down to earth. But husbands make sure that you love your wives.

5:54 Real husbands love your real wives. You know, with skin and bone and all of that. With all of the foibles, of the weaknesses, all of the failings. With everything, love them. How do we do it when their behavior doesn't commend it?

6:59 So with that kind of bad looking resume, God loved me at the cross and He forgave me. And when God forgave me through Christ it was not as though God said, I'll wink and I'll sneak you in the back door and we'll pretend that none of those things are true about you. When God loved me and when God forgave me He did that in broad daylight, making no covering up. Actually my sin was exposed and Christ bore the penalty for it all. So the argument in Ephesians five is, if this is what God did for you and if this is how Christ loved you, then fill with His Spirit, this is what you do for one another.

8:23 In one Peter three, and I think I refer to that passage, Peter is addressing a situation where maybe two got married as unbelievers, and in that situation the woman, the wife became a Christian. And what's she to do now? She's now in a marriage where she is a believer and he is not. And Peter's inspired instruction to the believing spouse is: You conduct yourself in such a way with meekness, with humility, behaving yourself in such a way that you may win your unbelieving spouse without a word. Okay?

9:26 Now if that is true, that God may use the quiet lifestyle, the humble demeanor of a believing spouse to draw an unbeliever to faith? Is it possible that maybe in a couple situation where they are both believers but one is acting unchristianly. Say the husband is not behaving like he ought, he's not loving like he should, he is not honoring the wife in the way that Scripture commands him to do. Is it possible that the wife could still respond, not to him and His behavior, but that she could respond to Christ and His grace in such a way that the Spirit of God uses her behavior as even a tool to get the man to think about what he's doing. Now I'm not saying that it's a guarantee, but is it possible that that could happen?

10:52 Now when Scripture again gives us these instructions, You've noticed two things. One, I think I commented on already that they are freestanding instruction. They are given to the husband alone. They are given to the wife alone. And the only linkage is to Christ.

11:13 As Christ loved, as to the Lord. The other thing to notice, and this is arguing from silence, But you will notice that the husband is not commanded to love his wife if it works. Had a young man once say this to me, know, did that thing that you told me about a couple of weeks ago and how long am I supposed to do that? I said, well, let's look it up. So I pulled out my New Testament and there it was and it does not have an expiry date on it.

12:08 You know it's not like an antibiotic. Know take it for two weeks or ten days or we'll kind of do a load up thing and we'll kind of do it six and then we'll kind of take it down to five, four, three and then you'll be good to go. No. It doesn't have a deadline nor does it have a condition which says, if it works you try that and if it doesn't work we'll go to plan B. There's only one plan.

13:13 The only way I can do it is if I'm looking to him. You see? See, when when my nerves are frayed and my wife gets on my last remaining nerve, My tendency is to want to give her a piece of my mind. You heard people say that? Man, I, you know, it just for me, I just wanted to give her a piece of my mind.

13:48 Guess I've lived long enough to say it's not a good idea to give anybody a piece of your mind. Because some of us have done it so many times we can hardly afford to do it anymore. Besides, giving somebody a piece of my mind doesn't help her or me. In fact, Scripture commands something very different. What it commands is, Don't give somebody a piece of your mind, but give somebody a piece of his mind.

14:29 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now we certainly think of it in terms of church life and that's the appropriate interpretation of Philippians two. But by application we can actually carry this into marriage relationship can't we? So that we are praying daily that God would give us His mind, the mind of Christ. Who was humble, who when He was reviled did not revile back, Who was, when he was falsely charged or accused, he left it all in the hands of God.

15:30 So I think you know as husbands and wives we need to get well schooled in Christ so that these instructions given to us can be understood and be carried out. I don't know if you've heard me, maybe in some other context you may have heard me share this little incident but there was this veteran missionary who was getting frail and leaving the mission field and a younger man was sent to that place and the old gentleman went to receive him and was taking him to the mission station. Along the way they stopped for a bit of refreshments and as their order was being prepared, the waiter came and served water and the man picked up the pitcher and filled the cup all the way to the brim. And then he banged the table real hard. It was a rickety old table, know, that fairly was holding up And the water splashed all over and the young man was starting to feel a little embarrassed to be found in the company of this really eccentric sort of fellow with Coca Cola bottle type glasses and doing this strange behavior.

16:55 Then he stopped and he said, did you see what I just did? And inside he's going, me? Everybody around here saw what you just did. Then he said, you know, on the mission field you're going to get banged up. And when you get banged up what comes out of you is going to depend on what you're full of.

17:22 You're full of yourself self will come out. If you're full of Christ Christ will come out. The same thing happens in marriage, doesn't it? We do get bumped. That was an unkind word that she spoke or He was cruel.

17:50 I mean things happen, we do get bumped. But when we get bumped what comes out depends on what you're full of. Hence, the instruction in verse 18, Be filled with the Spirit of God. Same knock, same bump, what comes out is what fills us. And brothers and sisters, let's not kid ourselves, you know.

19:38 We have to really ask ourselves, don't we? Have I been forgiven? I say to Christians all the time, If anybody can afford to be kind, it's you. Okay, you can actually afford to be kind. And why?

20:03 You've had so much kindness shown you. And you know where it comes from. I run out. My supply is very limited. So as I come to get my orders in the morning, I also look to him for the resource to carry it out.

20:41 Well, that may be kind of a roundabout way of kind of getting to that question about how does a husband or a wife show love or show respect to a mate whose behavior doesn't particularly commend it. The way that Paul presents it that it is only possible if we do not predicate our behavior toward the other based on his or her last behavior. We are unable to do it if we are doing it as unto the Lord by his grace and by his spirit. Alright? Now I want to say a few things maybe about children which Paul introduces in chapter six.

21:52 Again, think it is under the same caption where he takes this idea of being filled with the Holy Spirit and then fleshes it out into these key relationships. Children, says Paul, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with you, that you may live long on the earth. And your fathers provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And then of course, there are instructions given to servants and masters which by application we can now see as employer employee relationship.

22:48 And you will notice just like in the first two, husband and wife, in the matter of children, instruction to them, it is in the Lord that children are commanded to obey. And it is in the nurture and admonition of the Lord that fathers are commanded to bring up their children. See how everything is tied to Christ. Okay? Now, there are no children, children, children here.

23:37 Everybody is a child in one sense or the other, but there's no little children in the audience. But I think it may then help us to think about those of you who are parents who have children under your stewardship now, or those who would one day become parents. This is actually instruction given to, parents, in the matter of bringing up children and teaching children to obey is a ministry that you perform for your children that is of great, great value. Because society is not very fond of the whole idea anymore. There's a lot of irreverence, I don't need to tell you that.

25:11 So is Frank? Oh, Frank's my dad. And so I'm a little shell shocked, you know. That's how you refer to your dad? Yeah, ever since I was 12, one guy told me.

25:31 But apparently this is quite accepted and kind of parents wanting to be with their children on kind of this body basis. If you have young children, give it up. Not a good thing. It's not good for your kids and it's not good for you. Teach children to mind authority.

26:05 Teach children to obey. It's common sense, but it is biblical wisdom. Parents then, and fathers in particular, are commanded not to provoke children, provoke them to anger, provoke them to irritation. And that's very easy to do, isn't it? Just nagging them about one thing or another, always on their case where parents can sometimes get in the way of children being obedient by simply creating that kind of an environment.

27:18 Keep obeying, Paul says to children, and in the Lord, Meaning, it's the Christian thing to do. It's in the Lord. And that in everything. Now here is maybe a good thing to consider because sometimes when we read passages like that, or even when we looked at Ephesians five where instruction is given to the husband or the wife, the temptation or the tendency, maybe it's a tendency not a temptation, tendency to always want to look at exceptions. Have people been doing that?

28:12 Usually, when I read a passage of scripture and my first inclination is one to look for an exception, maybe it's an indication that I'm having trouble being obedient. I want an out. Okay. So, of course, the question, you know, the question with which we started. Well, when it says, you know, you're to respect your husband, what if he is such and so?

28:47 Okay. What if he did this? But the simple statements are the simple statements of Scripture. And simple instructions are simple instructions. Commands are commands and they require obedience.

29:06 Now, when there are situations where a child being obedient to parents, it's immoral or sinful, then I think scripture does give some provision for that. It's more important that I obey God than I obey man. Okay. But the general trend, the general thrust of the instruction is fairly simple. Obey your parents in everything.

30:21 Or the righteous thing. And in Colossians, is the parallel passage in chapter three, it says, It is also pleasing to the Lord. So as parents, here is a great opportunity for us to help our children learn to live in such a way they can actually please God. We are always looking for some big thing we can do to please God, you know. When I am 35, I want to do this big thing and please God.

31:06 But Paul says, you know, can do that now. You're a child, you can actually do things that would please the Lord. And what a great stewardship on the part of parents to bring up children in such a way that they are helped to obey them, and in obeying them they're actually pleasing the Lord. It's a good start for them isn't it? When you are little children at home you can still please the Lord.

31:40 Okay? And it's different a thing than just kind of stomping around and threatening kids and slapping them around and all of that. No, that's not what's being called for. It is living before them in such a way that they have the opportunity to clearly understand what obedience is and what obedience does. Okay?

32:20 And fathers are given a special instruction in terms of not goading the children, not provoking them, not to exasperate them, not to discourage them. Because children do have delicate personalities, And we need to be careful, tender, loving and nurturing. And there are two different words used to this whole idea of bringing children up, which is itself an interesting thing because children are never told anywhere to bring themselves up. Do you notice that? And you know, I hear it sometimes from young adults who says, you know, when we were kids we just kind of brought ourselves up.

33:27 And obviously not very well. The iPad is not commanded to bring up your children for you? Now, is going to really get me on the whole because I don't know how many of you follow this, there are all kinds of articles now getting written about the screen time problem. People, children are on their screens way too long. There's a study that came out of the University of Texas just a couple three months ago where they demonstrated that people can actually drop IQ points from excessive time on their devices.

34:32 Certainly it inhibits them socially. Some weeks ago I was at a restaurant having lunch and four individuals came in and occupied a table right next to me and they were all wired when they walked in. You know, they had stuff in their ear, they had stuff in their hip pocket, they were and they had things in their hands. And they sat and our lunchtime kind of overlapped the entire time. The stuff didn't come out of their ear.

35:18 And they were quite adept at this thing. They could work this thing and still eat their food. I was watching this with some kind of entertainment, you know. And wondered if they're really texting each other about, is the food good? What did you get, you know?

35:42 And it has really become a problem for marriages. I have couples whom I've recommended that they park their devices outside the bedroom door. Because they get into bed and they still got their devices on because they cannot quite sleep without checking the latest news feed or whatever the thing is. And I said to them, you know, the marital bed is for two people. Anything more than that is a crowd and you've got quite a crowd going on.

36:54 You're teaching him bad lessons, you're teaching yourself bad lessons. Because that thing can become so reinforcing in no time. I've seen young parents whose children won't eat their dinner unless some cartoon is on. You know, make your mealtime more enjoyable than that. Bring up children.

37:31 And nobody else is given that responsibility, you know. It's yours. Some years ago some prominent person wrote a book about it takes a village. It was not God's idea. The village is not charged with bringing up children.

37:57 We are as parents. And I believe this with all my heart that one day we will give an account to God for how we handled this stewardship, the stewardship of our marriage and the stewardship of our parenthood. If God gave us our spouses then He's going to call us to account about how we handle that gift. And if God gave us children then God is going to call us to account about how we've done with our responsibility in bringing them up. And this also requires a lot of prayer and waiting on God and seeking His mind.

39:03 Genesis 24 we looked at as to how prayer was such an integral part of this whole Isaac finding Rebecca. And parenting is no less an exercise that requires prayerful waiting on God. Let me just turn you to one verse in Judges chapter 13. Judges chapter 13 and verse eight, It's talking about a man from a place called Zorah at day night. His name is Manoah, and he is childless.

39:55 And one day an angel appears to his wife and makes a promise, You will bear a son. And then some accompanying instructions were given. And on hearing about all of this, Manoah starts to pray. And look at his prayer in verse eight. And I'm reading out of the King James this time.

40:21 Manoah entreated or prayed to the Lord and said, O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst sent come again unto us and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born. That's an interesting prayer, isn't it? The child isn't even here yet. And the man is praying that God would teach him, show him, what we shall do with this yet unborn child. And the idea behind what we shall do literally means how we shall fashion this child not yet born.

41:17 That's a good discipline, isn't it? Even before the child arrives. What that means is, when the Lord puts a child or children under my care, I am not free to fashion them according to my whims, to make them what I want them to be. But if children are a gift from God then I need to be in communion with the one who gives them to me to get His mind on things. And where does the mind of God get revealed to us?

42:45 That God's Word, inspired, without error, authoritative and sufficient is what we go to, to seek the Lord's mind in how we are to bring up children. So God has order. He has order in every phenomena of life. Order in the universe, order in society, order in the church, order in marriage and order in the home. And God has put order in place so that it's not so that we'll feel so constricted about everything.

43:41 No. The order is in place so that we may live with a sense of freedom and that things may work as He intended for it to work. So in that regard, the Father is to preside in the home. That's how the home is ordered. He is to preside in the home.

44:08 Now, that presidency is not, I think, mean that he just kind of sits on his throne and, know, wags his finger and tell everybody how it is. No, that's when Scripture uses that word, when Paul uses it in one Timothy, for example, about how he used to rule, He says, if a man doesn't rule his own house, how can he rule in the house of God? The word rule literally means to stand before, in front of. It's a protective leadership that is really in view. So as a father I really stand before my children.

45:04 As a husband I stand before my wife, so that by my life I'm bearing witness to something bigger than myself standing before. That's what God is calling you men, as husbands and as fathers to really stand before your family. To take care of what is entrusted to your care. You know, taking care in the sense of the good Samaritan who took this man who was wounded and left him in the care of somebody and said, you know, here is, take care of this man for me. And if you spend, you know, I'll take care of it.

46:05 That is the idea. You stand before, you take care and you provide. Providing in the sense of thinking beforehand to foresee. Okay? So the father is not someone who is kind of flying by the seat of his pants, but he's actually one who looks ahead and starts to provide.

46:38 Certainly it includes providing financially and materially, but I think it also means providing spiritually and emotionally. In all sorts of ways, anticipating the child, his needs, circumstances that comes down the pike, and be able to foresee and to provide accordingly. When, you know, mothers have a responsibility in this respect as well in that they provide tender care at home. They train their daughters as they grow up how to carry on in the responsibilities of home life. And it is particularly challenging in the situation in which we find ourselves because we train our daughters much more for their professions than we do for how to manage a household.

48:00 And where are they going to learn that? They're not going to get that in the chemistry lab. They get that at home. And parents, fathers and mothers have this unique opportunity to fashion children according to the will and the ways of God. Abraham was a friend of God, we are told.

48:40 And one of the commendations that God had for Abraham had to do with his character and his place in the home. God says, you know, I know Abraham, he's my friend. He will command his children and his household after them, and they shall keep the way of the Lord. It's an awesome responsibility isn't it? But an amazing privilege That we can actually by the help of God do something that would help the generation that comes after us to help them to know and to keep the ways of God.

49:35 Colossians three tells us that we can help our children to do things that please God. Genesis 18 tells us that we as parents, we as fathers can command our children in such a way that they will keep the way of the Lord. Okay? One more verse and this will be the last verse that we will use and then we'll close. In Deuteronomy six, we have that great Shema, where Moses says to the children of Israel, here O Israel, the Lord your God is one.

50:24 That's the indicative. Then there is a command that follows it. Says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. And then he goes on to talk about how these words shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children.

50:44 You shall talk of them. So the order is really important, isn't it? This is the indicator. The Lord your God, He is one. Then he says, This will be what?

51:01 In your heart. And then you will teach them to your children. When you are going out, when you're coming in, this becomes a conversation. But it's not hung on like Christmas ornaments. This is like organic.

51:25 This is first in your heart. And then you use words to communicate it. So to think biblically about our marriages and about our families, we need to really dialogue with this book. The Word of God has inspired inerrant, authoritative, sufficient Word has been given to us. And we need to come to this as the Word of God.

51:59 That it is His to command us and ours to obey Him. In the matter of being a husband, in the matter of being a wife, in the matter of being parents, and in the matter of being children. These things need to be first in our hearts. And then we speak and teach them through our words. May God grant us grace to stand before our wives, our children in such a way that will bring glory and praise to Him and blessing to those with whom we live.

53:48 We pray Father that the encouragement of the Word of God will refresh our hearts and give us an uncommon joy in participating with God in His work, in building godly homes for the glory of God and for the blessing of those with whom we have the joy of living and serving. Receive then our thanks, we pray in the name and for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.