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  (EPHESIANS) CHRIST: THE HUSBAND'S ROLE MODEL
  by Brian Brodersen
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Summary: The husband's role in the marriage relationship is to love his
wife as Christ loved the church, and to prioritize her needs above his
own.

Duration: 51:46 Topics: "Marriage Counseling", "Servant Leadership"
Scripture References: Matthew 11:28, Ephesians 5:25

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of communication
and companionship in marriage. They highlight the need for couples to
listen to and pay attention to one another, fostering a deeper
relationship and love for each other. The speaker also addresses the
temptation to look elsewhere and offers guidance on resisting it by
having a deep commitment to Jesus Christ and relying on His strength.
They emphasize the importance of following the model of servant
leadership demonstrated by Jesus and the need to be filled with the Holy
Spirit to bear the fruit of love. The sermon also acknowledges the
challenges and attacks that marriages face, including the temptation to
become bitter or negligent, and encourages couples to depend on the Lord
and remain committed to their marriage.

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CONTENT
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Let's turn to Ephesians tonight, chapter 5. So we continue our study in
Paul's epistle to the Ephesians and our series within the series as we
are presently speaking on the subject of marriage and family. We come
this evening to a subject of the husband's role. We looked at in our
first study in the series, we looked at God in marriage last week.

We looked at the wife's role in the marriage and this evening we come to
the role of the husband. So let me read to you once again, Ephesians 5,
22 through 33. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the
husband is head of the wife is also Christ is head of the church and he
is the savior of the body.

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to
their own husbands and everything. Husbands love your wives, just as
Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might
sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he
might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or
wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without
blemish. So husbands ought to love their own 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 the Lord does the church. For we
are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this reason,
a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and
the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular, so love his wife as
himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. So we come
to the husband's role in the marriage relationship.

I believe the husband in many ways holds the key to the marriage
relationship. Granted, it takes two to have a good marriage, but the
primary responsibility for the marriage is on the husband's shoulder in
the marital counseling that I've done over the years. Not all, but the
majority of problems in marriages are traced back to the failure of the
husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church.

Now, as we've been discussing the subject of marriage, we see that with
God, marriage is a very serious matter. And God is calling men to take
marriage seriously. A tragic statistic is that women are generally more
serious about marriage than men.

Eighty percent of the books purchased on the subject of marriage are
purchased by women. Whenever there is a problem within the marriage,
generally speaking, the women are the first to seek help. This shouldn't
be the case.

How is it that men are so negligent in their responsibility when their
responsibility is clearly set forth as the primary responsibility in the
marriage? Now, the husband, according to the text that we looked at
tonight, and we're concentrating on verse 25, husbands love your wives
just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. What we
see from this is that the husband is to be the initiator in the marital
relationship and the wife is to be the responder. For the husband's
model is Christ, and Christ is the one who initiated the relationship
with the church.

We simply responded to the love of Christ, but he initiated. He's the
one who made the advance toward us, not the other way around. And so
Christ becomes the model for the man.

The man is to emulate what Christ does. Now, here in our text, we are
not only told what to do, but Christ is set forth as an example that we
can follow. So Paul, first of all, admonishes us to love our wives, and
then he gives us sort of a visual aid.

He says, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And so we
want to break down this 25th verse tonight, beginning with the first
part of it, husbands love your wives. Now, this word love is the Greek
word agape.

This is the word that is used most frequently in the New Testament for
love. And this is the word that speaks of a love that springs from the
preciousness of the object loved. This, of course, is the love that God
has for man.

This is the love that God has for the world. For God so loved the world.
It's that highest sort of love that the apostle is calling the husband
to have toward his wife.

It's a love that gives without expectation of receiving something in
return. A love that gives without expectation of receiving something in
return. So often we're not really loving because what we're doing, we
are doing with the expectation of receiving something in return.

And those things can be hidden very deeply within our hearts. But yet,
if we search down deep enough, we find that our motives aren't really
pure. In our relationships with one another, so often, this love is a
love that is centered in others rather than in self.

And it's a love that was demonstrated by Christ when he came. Now,
something that's important to realize about this love is that this love
is not a feeling. This love that we're describing here is really an act
of the will.

And oftentimes in our relationships with one another, we really stumble
because we think of love as a feeling. And so we conclude, perhaps, that
we're no longer in love with the person because we don't have the same
feelings that we might have had 15 years ago when we got engaged or, you
know, when we first were married. And many times today, people are
coming and saying, well, I'm no longer in love or I've fallen out of
love.

But the moment a person says that, you realize they don't understand
what love is in the first place because love is not a feeling. Now,
going back to God as the one who demonstrates this love so perfectly,
when God looks at the world, do you think that God has some feeling of,
oh, I just love them so much? Look at those wicked sinners, how they're
rebelling against me. Oh, I love that.

There's not some feeling involved in that. It's just an act of his will.
He chooses to love despite the fact that the world is in rebellion to
him.

And so when we're talking about loving as Christ love, when we're
talking about the love that the husband is to have to the wife, we're
not talking about a feeling. We're talking about a commitment. Jesus was
driven by his love for us to the cross, but I guarantee that had you
asked him in the Garden of Gethsemane how he felt about all of this, he
didn't have a real good feeling.

But he wasn't basing what he was doing on his feeling, he was basing it
on a commitment. It was an act of the will. And that is so important
when we think of the love that we're to have for our wives as husbands.

It's a love based on commitment. It's a decision that we make to love
following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now Paul in two
different places in the New Testament.

He gives a definition of this word agape. And in a previous study, we
looked at the definition given in 1st Corinthians 13. And so tonight we
want to look at another definition that Paul gave and that's found in
Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23.

Now listen to what Paul says. He says, but the fruit of the Spirit is
love. Now, I want you to notice he doesn't say the fruits of the Spirit
are love and then a number of other things.

He says the fruit singular of the Spirit is love. So what that means is
that the remainder of the 22nd verse and the first portion of the 23rd
verse are now a description of that love that is the fruit of the
Spirit. And so this is the kind of love that we're talking about.

This is how this love is demonstrated or displayed. This love that we
are to have as husbands toward our wives, but the fruit of the Spirit is
love and that love is a joyous love. It's a love that's marked by joy.

There's joy in the relationship. It's not a burdensome sort of a love,
but it's a joyous love. There's a delightful aspect to it.

It's a peaceful love. It's a love that demonstrates itself in our
dwelling peacefully together. It's a love that's long-suffering.

A love that's patient. A love that's not easily irritated or provoked.
It's a love that's kind.

It's a love that's manifested in goodness. It's a love that's faithful.
There's that commitment.

It's a love that's gentle and it's a love that has self-control. This is
the love. Husbands love your wives.

With that agape love, that love that God has for us. That love that's so
beautifully defined here in this verse. Now, he says husbands love your
wives as Christ.

Love the church. If we look at the whole picture of the redemptive work
of Jesus from beginning to end, we see a number of manifestations of the
love of Christ. Beginning with the incarnation.

Jesus Christ in displaying his love for us. Jesus. He left everything.

He left everything. He gave up everything in order to save us. That he
did as an act of love.

And so when I'm called to love my wife as Christ, love the church. I
must ask myself the question. Have I left everything behind? Have I, in
other words, made my wife the priority in my life? You know, as a
Christian man, your wife is to be your highest priority next to your
relationship with the Lord.

That is the order in the scripture. God is always, of course, to be our
first priority. But our second priority is to be our wives.

So the question is, when I consider how Christ loved the church by
leaving everything, have I left everything behind for my wife? Have I
made her a priority in my life? You know, a lot of times problems exist
in marriage because of a failure to do that. The husband hasn't really
made the wife a priority. Sometimes the husband is still holding on to
family ties.

Still being controlled and manipulated to some extent by family
relationships. Maybe a domineering mother or a sibling who is, you know,
constantly meddling or, you know, wanting to interfere in the marriage.
And the husband has this sort of, you know, loyalty to the family that
he kind of keeps getting influenced by them.

And in doing so, he's not really loving his wife in the sense that he's
supposed to. Remember, the scripture says that a man is to leave his
father and mother and cleave to his wife. And there are those times
when, if we fail in that area, that can bring great difficulty into the
marriage.

And then there are those other relationships that come in. Some men hang
on to their childhood relationships, their old buddies, their friends.
And, you know, they want to spend more time with the boys than they do
with their wife.

They want to spend more time hanging out with the guys and just being
one of the guys and having a good old time. Then they want to be with
their wives and take the responsibility. Now, sometimes when you're
young, you know, you have a lot of misconceptions about those kinds of
things.

And that's understandable when you're young, but it's important that we
grow up and grow out of these things. I see a lot of 40, 50 year old men
today running around, still acting like kids. Hanging out with the gang.

When I first got married, I must confess, I was 23 at the time. So I
can't be totally faulted, I guess. But I, you know, I wasn't quite aware
of the kind of commitment that I was being called to and the kind of
commitment that I was entering into.

And I sort of was thinking that Cheryl was just going to become, you
know, just another buddy, you know, and we'd just hang out. And I found
out real quickly, she wasn't into hanging out. I thought, well, honey,
you know, don't you want to just sit down on the beach and watch me surf
all day? Doesn't that sound fun to you? And I'll go out with the boys
and we'll surf for a few hours and you can just watch.

That didn't last long at all. But there are some who fail in this area.
They don't give up the friends.

They allow friends to come in and interfere with the relationship. And
in some cases, there are men that are still holding on not to childhood
friends only, but childish pursuits. And still involved in all of the
things that they were involved in, you know, as kids.

To the neglect of the family. Involved in all the different sports and,
you know, one sport comes for a season and you're involved in that and
then that season's over and you jump right into something else and all
of this. And there the wife is at home just wondering, you know, what is
this? She thought she was getting a husband.

She was actually getting a lifetime babysitting project. And that is
something that quite often occurs in marriages today. So as we're loving
our wives as Christ loved the church, we have to remember as we look at
Christ.

We see the first thing he did is he left everything. He gave up
everything. The church became his priority.

When Jesus came into the world, he had one mission, one goal, one
purpose, and that was the redemption of the church. The redemption of a
people for himself. Now, I'm not saying that as a man or a godly
husband, you can't have any hobbies or sport involvement or any of that
sort of thing.

But obviously that cannot be the priority. And one must be sensitive to
the wife's needs in making decisions about being involved in those kinds
of things. Secondly, we see that Jesus was a servant.

Jesus Christ was a servant to the church. Husbands, love your wives as
Christ loved the church. You remember Jesus washed the disciples' feet.

He took the role of a servant. We read in Philippians 2 that he humbled
himself and he was found in fashion as a man and he became like a
servant. And in loving our wives as Christ loved the church, that means
that we're to be serving our wives.

Many men look at their wives as slaves. But in the Christian community
and according to the teaching of the New Testament, if there's a slave
in the house, it's to be the man. The man is to be the servant of all
because Christ came as a servant and we're to emulate the Lord Jesus
Christ.

So in your marriage, are you thinking of your wife as your slave or do
you think of you as your wife's servant? You're there to minister to
her. You see, Jesus, he just flipped everything up on its head. He that
would be the greatest among you, let him be the slave of all, he said.

Now out in the world, Jesus acknowledged that those who are esteemed as
great, they're the ones with all the power. They're the ones that are
ruling over others, but it is not to be the case with you. And then he
pointed to himself as an example.

I am among you as one who serves. And so we are to follow his example in
that he is a servant and we are to seek to serve one another. As
husbands, we are to look for opportunities to serve our wives.

Rather than having that expectation of the wife serving me, I need to
look for opportunities to serve my wife. Now, when we were younger and
raising children, I came to the conclusion that as much as I hated to
admit it, my wife's job was much harder than mine. Being with those kids
all day long, taking care of their every need and at the same time, you
know, trying to maintain the household, trying to prepare the meals,
trying to make sure that I was going to be happy when I got home, you
know, it wasn't too long before I realized I didn't want to tell her,
but I was seeing it.

Boy, she didn't get a good deal here, you know, I've really got it made.
But as that was dawning on me just through observation, the Lord was
speaking to me at the same time saying, yes, that is the case and
therefore you need to be a servant to her. But I think a lot of times as
men, because we're more influenced by culture, we're more influenced by
tradition, this is the way our dads did it, this is what we saw in our
own homes or whatever the case, we go in with this mentality and we live
with this mentality, but this is not a biblical picture.

And if you were brought up with a model that's something other than the
model that Jesus set forth in the scriptures, you've got to throw it out
and you've got to get the scripture as your guideline for your
relationship with your wife. And that means that you are to become a
servant to her. And you are to seek to relieve her of burdens and things
like that rather than heaping those things upon her.

Many women struggle under the burden that the husband has placed upon
them to live up to, you know, some sort of a standard. Maybe because
your father was a domineering individual, your mother lived under that
tyranny. And so you're thinking, well, that's my wife supposed to do
what my mom did.

Which was virtually everything. But that's not the way it's supposed to
be. We're not to go, you know, around the house flinging our dirty
clothes anywhere we want and expecting the wife to pick them up.

Eating dinner and leaving the dishes there, expecting her to, you know,
just jump up and take care of that now after she's worked hard to make
the dinner. But those kinds of things, as I said, they come over,
they're passed on from generation to generation. But when we come to
Christ, Jesus breaks these things.

He wants to break these things in our lives. We're to love our wives as
Christ loved the church and he was a servant. And then thirdly, we are
to seek to relieve burdens rather than place burdens upon our wives.

Relieving their burdens emotionally as well as physically. We read
concerning Jesus that he took our burdens. And remember he said, come to
me all you that are weary and are heavy laden.

I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. He said,
for my yoke is easy.

My burden is light. For you, it shouldn't be a massive burden for your
wife to be your wife. It should be a delightful thing.

It should be a pleasurable thing. And that will be the case if we follow
the example of Christ and we seek to relieve them of burdens if we're
compassionate and sensitive toward them. Now, we all fail in these areas
at times.

I'm not standing up here as a person who's carried this out perfectly. I
failed in this in many different situations. But yet, this is what we're
striving for.

This is what we're seeking to arrive at because this is the picture that
we've been left by Christ and his example. You know, I have learned
things the hard way sometimes. Unfortunately, at my wife's expense.

Just recently, we had a situation where, you know, I could have. My wife
was under a heavy burden and I could have, with just a couple of words,
lifted that burden from off of her, made her life easy, pleasant,
joyful. But I chose foolishly not to do that.

Because at the moment, I was more concerned with my particular problem
than with her problem. It was a day when I was preparing to teach and,
you know, sometimes when you're preparing to teach the Bible, there's
this thing called spiritual warfare that occurs and you're kind of under
it. You just kind of sense, you know, that there's somebody who's not
really keen on what you're doing.

And there's this invisible sort of opposition you just feel. And I was
feeling that really bad. So I just had to get out of the house and go
for a long walk.

And I did that and it didn't seem to be changing the situation any. And
on my walk, I get a call from my wife. And she starts pouring out her
heart to me and laying her burden on me and telling me all that she's
going through.

And I'm thinking, wait a minute. It's my day to have the burden. I'm the
one who's under attack here, not you.

I'm, you know, I'm the one that's going to be teaching. And so instead
of being sensitive and instead of saying things that would lift the
burden off of her, as she was telling me how she was feeling kind of
like a failure in this area. Well, I just suggested that she ought to be
feeling that way.

Because I have noticed lately and I went on this tirade, you know, and
began to tell her all the things that I thought about this. And I will
tell you, God help me for the rest of my life never to do that again.
Because that set in motion a chain reaction that led to a couple of days
of absolute hell on earth in our home.

And I take full responsibility for it. And I remember the very moment
because we're on the phone and she's crying out and she's looking for
compassion. She's looking to have her burden alleviated.

And I know that I can do that. But I decide, no, I'm not going to do
that because right now I'm going to think about me. And I chose at that
instant not to do what I'm supposed to do as a husband, not to love her
as Christ loved the church.

But instead to concentrate on myself and my problem and, oh boy, I'll
tell you, it was miserable. And I hope and pray I never do that again.
But we can easily do that.

And I can look back over the years of our marriage and I could see so
many times where I have caused an explosion in the home just because I
haven't been sensitive. I haven't been sensitive. I haven't been
compassionate.

I haven't been loving. I haven't thought of my wife as the weaker
vessel. Now, I've concluded and I'm just going to be honest.

My wife is, she is the hub of the family. I mean, everything really
revolves around her. You know, Cheryl speaks a lot.

She's sought after as a Bible teacher. So she gets these invitations to
go and I absolutely hate to let her go because the whole house falls
apart when she leaves. Now, I tell her, look, honey, I'll travel around
the world.

You stay home and take care of business here because, you know, when I
travel, I come back and everything's just fine. When you travel, you
come back and we got to rebuild the whole family again. You know, it's a
mess.

But as I look at, you know, the years that we've spent together, I see
so many times where had I followed the example of Jesus and sought to
alleviate her burden and been compassionate and sensitive, oh, we could
have avoided so many difficulties. But this is what I'm to concentrate
on as a husband. I think it would probably be a good idea for us
husbands to read over these passages on a regular basis and to just sort
of ask the Lord to check us in areas where we might be lacking.

Are we really loving as is described in the scriptures? Are we loving as
Christ loved the church? Now, Paul then in that verse, he goes a step
further and he says, husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved
the church. And now he gives that prime example of giving himself for
her. Jesus gave himself entirely, completely.

He gave his life for the church. Now, by nature, I am more of a taker
than a giver. That's my natural bent.

And I think it's probably the natural bent of most men. You find rare
exceptions to the rule, but most men are more oriented toward taking
than giving. Now, you see, this is where we really need to be broken.

This is where we really have to have the power of the Spirit operating
in our lives because it goes against the grain of my nature to be a
giver. But Christ gave. And so if I'm going to follow the example of
Christ, I have got to likewise become a giver rather than a taker in the
relationship.

I have got to ask the question, what can I give into this relationship?
I've got to constantly be looking for opportunities to give of myself to
my wife. Now, you see, here's the wonderful thing about this, and we
don't do it for these reasons, but this is really the outcome of it.
When we do this, it really makes for a beautiful experience together as
husband and wife.

We talked last week about the wife submitting to the husband. And
although there are those occasions when there are women who are just
flat-out rebellious to that idea, most of the time, the struggle of
submission has to do with the failure of the husband to really love.
Now, we have already pointed out that that's not an excuse not to
submit.

You have to trust God to deal with your husband. But speaking just to
the husbands, if we would but love our wives as we're supposed to, then
we wouldn't really be struggling with this additional problem of the
submission matter. And I know in my experience, and not only as a
husband, but as a pastor and as a counselor for many years, you know,
just loving your wife goes so far to make things so smooth and wonderful
and beautiful in the marriage relationship.

My wife is a really easy person to please if I've covered this one major
base, if she knows I love her, if she senses I love her, if she can
sense from me that concern, that sensitivity, that compassion, the fact
that I want to give myself for her, even if I'm not necessarily working
it out into practical things, but yet she knows that that's my heart and
that's my desire, it just takes away any of that friction that might be
there. In giving, there are things that we should specifically
concentrate on giving. And I think one of the most important is giving
of our time, giving of our time.

Your wife married you because she wanted to spend time with you, and you
probably married her for the same reason. But as time goes on, we get
away from those things that we once were excited about in the early
days, don't we? But we shouldn't do that. We should strive not to do
that.

And one of the ways that we can prevent that from happening is by giving
time to one another. Doing things and going places with your wife that
she enjoys doing, or places she desires to go, those kinds of things.
You know, just giving her that option of, you know, what do you want to
do? I just want to spend time with you.

When we were young in our marriage, I was not good at so many of these
things, and still holding on to childish things. And whenever I had a
free moment, I wanted to go fulfill my own lust, and I wanted to be out
in the water surfing. I grew up doing that, and it was just something
that I held on to for so long.

And I would do everything in my power to get my way to be able to go do
that. I would, first of all, just ask, and I could sense that that
wasn't really what my wife wanted to do. And then I would start the
process of manipulating in order to get her to finally say, oh, just get
out of here and go.

So then I could say, well, you told me to go. Well, I drove her to the
point of telling me to go. It was obvious that that's what I wanted to
do.

But that's not the kind of love that Christ had. Christ had a love that
gave of his time. And as we look at Jesus again in the pages of the New
Testament, what did Jesus spend his life doing when he was here? He,
you're looking at the church as the bride of Christ.

He spent his life with the bride. That's what he was doing when he was
here. He wasn't off pursuing his own, you know, his own life.

Thing, whatever it might have been or could have been. But he had one
thing that he was committed to doing, and that was the preparation and
redemption of his bride and so forth. And so we need to give time to our
wives.

We need to give attention. You know, you can be in the same room with
somebody and not give them any attention. You can take a nice long drive
up the coast or something with your wife and not give her any attention.

You just pop in a CD or something, turn it up full blast, and there you
go. You're in the same car, but you're not, there's no communication
going on. There's no listening.

There's no conversation. There's no relationship. As we talked about in
our first study on marriage, the primary purpose that God has brought
people together is for companionship.

And in giving, we need to give attention to one another, listening to
one another, communicating, and we ought to be, ideally, growing deeper
and deeper in our relationship with one another, in our love for one
another, as we get older in the Lord. When we're young in life and young
in the Lord, we're going to have some of those foolish things that are
still a part of our lives because of immaturity and all, but hopefully
as time goes on, we're growing beyond these things. We're growing out of
these things.

But we've got to put forth an effort. We've got to take these things
into consideration, and we've got to seek to put them into practice. So
when we read that Christ loved the church and he gave himself for it,
and husbands are to love their wives in the same way, we've got to think
through the life of Jesus, as we're doing right here, and look at what
he did and say, okay, Lord, how do I now do this for my wife? Then
finally, when it comes to giving ourselves, Christ gave his life
entirely, and we are to give our lives, too.

You cannot give your life to your wife and to some other woman at the
same time. How miserably a man fails when he gives himself physically to
someone other than his wife, and God forbid that any Christian man
should do that. And an utter and complete failure to love as Christ
loved.

If we love as Christ loved, we give ourselves entirely. And even though
we're living in a day when marriage is no longer seen as something all
that special or important, and the commitment level is decreased
tremendously, if we are naming the name of Christ, then we have to
remember that when we said those vows before God and those witnesses,
God is holding us to those things, and he expects us to be faithful. And
when we give ourselves to our wives, we're giving ourselves to them
entirely and solely for the rest of our lives.

I was with a couple this week. They've been married 42 years, got
married when they were 18 years old. She's dying of cancer.

And to be with them and just to watch them and to watch the husband
loving his wife and taking care of her right down to the very end. And
to see her full of faith and full of excitement about going to be with
Christ, but yet also deeply concerned for her husband. How's he going to
do without her? They've been together for so long.

And him at, you know, one in the same time, thrilled for his wife's
entrance into glory, but yet, how's he going to live without his partner
of 42 years? And, you know, as I was there with them and looking at this
situation, I just thought how beautiful that is. That's the way it's
supposed to be. Loving, being faithful, committed all the way to the
end.

Christ gave himself. We are to give ourselves entirely. Now, as we look
at this, we realize, men, don't we, that this is this is really a high
standard.

To love my wife as Christ loved the church. Oh, how can I do that? Well,
it's obvious I can't do it on my own. I can't do it by just mustering up
my own personal strength and saying, I'm going to do this regardless.

I've got to have additional help and assistance. I've got to have the
power of God operating in my life. And what it comes down to is I cannot
really fulfill this command unless I myself am in that vital
relationship with the Lord Jesus.

And once again, this is where we see the initial failure in marriage
take place. It's when a person slackens in their commitment to Christ.
It's when they they lose the depth of that commitment.

You can't lose that. You've got to maintain that. You've got to hold on
to that because it's through that vital connection with Jesus Christ
that you're given the supernatural power to love.

With this high call to love that God has given. We have got to be
depending on the Lord. Now, remember the fruit of the spirit is love.

If you're struggling with love, it's because you're not full of the
spirit. And if you're not full of the spirit, it's because you're not
abiding in the vine. Because when a branch abides in the vine, it brings
forth fruit and the fruit of the spirit is love.

If you're struggling with love, not feeling love, remember that that's
not what we're talking about, but struggling with that commitment. What
do you do? Marriage is under attack. You know, it's under attack.

You've experienced that attack. We've all experienced temptation to
become bitter. We've all experienced temptation to become negligent.

We've all experienced a temptation to look somewhere else. What do we do
about that? How do we deal with that? How do we resist that and stand
strong in the face of that? We've got to have that deep commitment to
Jesus Christ and be calling upon him consistently and asking him, Lord,
give me the strength. Give me all that I need to fulfill your command to
love as you love.

We can't do it on our own, but the Lord is there to assist us as we draw
up on his strength and as we abide in him. In the church today,
marriages are falling apart at about the same rate as they're falling
apart outside the church, and that shows that there's something
drastically the matter. And I think the problem goes back to personal
commitment, but then it's also the problem of failing to take the word
of God seriously and to seek to obey explicitly what it commands us to
do.

You see, there are a few things in life that are really, really
important. Most of life is filled with trivialities that don't really
matter a whole lot, but we've always got to measure everything in light
of eternity. And in light of eternity, there are a few crucial matters.

Obviously, the most crucial is your relationship with God. Secondly,
it's the relationship with your family. It's the relationship with your
wife as a man.

It's the relationship with your husband as a woman. It's the
relationship as parents with your children. Those are the things that
are of vital importance.

Those are the things that eternity is made of. And these are the things
that we need to be giving ourselves to with a full and complete
commitment. There are a lot of things that you can do half-heartedly and
get by with it.

But you can't do this half-heartedly and get by with it. The powers that
be are too strong in opposing. And if you're not giving your self
entirely to these things, you'll get swept away.

Swallowed up by the opposition. This is something that we're called to
give ourselves entirely to and is something worth giving ourselves for
entirely. It's something worth it.

There's something absolutely glorious and wonderfully powerful about a
godly marriage. A godly family. There's something extremely powerful
about that.

There's something glorious about it. As I've been back here in Orange
County after being gone for almost 18 years, I'm having the opportunity
to meet over and over again old friends, people that I grew up with,
went to school with. And one of the things that's blowing their minds as
we talk is that I'm going on my 22nd year of marriage.

And many of them are already gone through a couple of marriages. And
they're wondering, wow, how? How'd you do that? You know, how could you
have stuck it out? And it's such a thrill to be able to take that
relationship and to use it as a basis to share, you know, God is good
and he blesses marriage and he's able to keep you together and do
wonderful things. Through you.

And for Cheryl and I, I speak for just us, but I know many others as
well and their testimonies. But, you know, it's, I look at all the years
we've been together and I think of all the stupid things I've done over
the years and how God has been faithful to, you know, just keep us
together with one another. And I look now and I think as exciting and
fun and everything as it was in those early days of marriage, it's just
getting better all the time.

It's getting more exciting. It's getting more thrilling. We know each
other pretty well now after 22 years.

And we see that God brought us together as a team, not just, you know,
to love each other and know each other and serve each other. But he
brought us together as a team to serve him. And that's a thrilling
thing.

That's an exciting thing. But I can't have that confidence or that
victory in service to him if I'm not loving my wife as Christ loves the
church. And if she's not submitting to me as unto the Lord, it doesn't
work.

But as we take these basic commands and as we commit ourselves to them,
we find that there is the blessing of God. And there's that enjoyable
experience that God had in mind when he brought the marriage
relationship into existence. And there's that blessed experience also of
partnership in ministry.

God wants to do that in all of our lives as husbands and wives. And men,
you hold the key. You hold the key to a God-glorifying marriage.

It begins with you following the model of Jesus Christ. That model of
servant leadership, you serve and your wife will gladly follow. And you
will know God's blessing in your home.

You'll know God's blessing in all of your activity. And you'll know
God's blessing in that relationship that just gets better and better as
time goes on. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that through your word and the power of your spirit,
you've given us everything we need to live God-glorifying lives in our
marriage. And Lord, help us and help us as husbands tonight, Lord. I
pray for each husband here tonight.

Each husband that's listening to this message from wherever they're at.
Lord, that each one of us would be fully committed as you were
committed, Jesus. When you stepped down from your throne in heaven and
came to this earth and gave yourself entirely that we would have that
same commitment to our wives.

To love them, to fulfill that command. And Lord, as we do that, that you
could in turn bless our homes, our children, our relations, and Lord,
our ministries. And Lord, we pray tonight too for marriages that have
suffered or are suffering presently because of a failure on the part of
the husband.

Lord, cause men to repent. And Lord, may we remember that we are going
to be held accountable for whether or not we obeyed you in this area.
Help us, Lord, to take marriage as serious as you do and to put all of
our energy into a marriage that will glorify you.

In Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/11/SID11701.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/brian-brodersen/ephesians-christ-the-husbands-role-model/
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