Sermon Tone Analysis
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This is the final sermon in our marriage series “Meant to Be.” What does God intend our marriages to be?
I’ve met husbands that tell me, I can’t even understand my wife.
How can I work on my marriage?
I heard a story of a who man found a magic lamp, rubbed it, and out popped a genie, who offered to fulfill one wish.
The man said, "I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, but I'm afraid of planes and boats.
I'd like you to build a bridge from California to Hawaii so I can drive."
The Genie said, "That's too much work.
Try another wish."
The man said, "OK.
Help me to understand women."
The genie thought for a moment, then said, "Do you want two lanes or four lanes?"
The good news guys is that God didn’t command us to understand our wives for your marriage to be successful.
For that matter, wives you were not commanded to understand your husbands for your marriages to be successful.
We started this series by making a revolutionary discovery that radically affects our view of marriage.
In Ephesians 5:31, Paul quotes Gen. 2:24 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
Then he said in v.32 that this “refers to Christ and the church.”
That’s revolutionary because now we know that our marriages are not primary for us.
They are for God.
God created marriages to be a running illustration to our world of the love relationship that he has with His people.
In this relationship the wife plays the role of the church and, therefore , her primary role is to submit to the Christlike leadership of her husband.
The husband plays the much more difficult role of Christ in this illustration.
Therefore, he must love his wife just as Christ loved the church. . .
a thought that is somewhat incomprehensible.
From that we said that Headship looks like love.
So last week we looked at how Christ loves his bride, the church.
Then we seek to emulate that love to our brides.
Today Paul shows us that Christ not only loves his church as his bride, but also his “Body.”
He is the head and the church is the body.
That metaphor promotes the idea of oneness.
That metaphor emphasizes a oneness that should be a reality in our marriages.
Therefore, Paul says that we should love our wives as our bodies, in the same way that Christ loves his body.
Let’s look at how connected Christ sees himself and his body the church.
Who was Saul persecuting?
v. 1 tells us: “The disciples of the Lord.”
That’s the church.
Yet Jesus says that he is persecuting him.
Jesus sees himself and his people as one.
This reality is true for Christ and the church, and consequently it is true for a husband and a wife.
They are one.
Think about this, Jesus is the head of the church, which is his body.
The husband is also the head of the wife.
That means husbands should see their wives as their very own bodies.
That’s what he means in v.24 that in marriage, “two become one flesh.”
In a marriage, a husband and wife are one organism in the same way as a lock and its key are one mechanism or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).
So how does that oneness between Christ and the church teach us how we are to love our wives?
We should love with a...
I. Natural Love (v.
28-29a)
For years what I thought these were words of sentiment.
I thought he was saying, “Husbands should love their own wives just as much as they love their own bodies.”
After all it sounds a lot like the 2nd great commandment, Matt.
22:38-39 “This is the great and first commandment.
And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Maybe in one sense this is true.
You shouldn’t love any other neighbor more than you love your wife.
And, you are suppose to love them as much as you love yourself.
No, the love that we have for our wives is a much deeper and intimate type of love than love we have for a neighbor.
He is not simply saying, “Love your wife as much as you love your own body.”
He says they should “Love their wives as their own bodies.”
Why?
Because she is your own body.
That’s why he goes on to say, “He who loves his wife loves himself.”
(v.
28b).
That is just a statement of fact.
You are one flesh.
If you love your wife, you love yourself.
That’s why loving our wives should be one of the most natural things that we do as husbands.
Why?
v. 29a “Because no one ever hated his own flesh.”
It is unnatural to hate your own flesh.
Self –preservation is a core need of every human.
Except of the few extreme cases, who would starve to death if a person had plenty of food to eat? Who would go cold if they had clothes to wear?
Yet many husbands have no clue that they are one flesh with their wives.
I’ve met husbands who act like they hardest thing that they do in the day is to love their wives.
But they don’t have any trouble loving themselves.
They do all the things that they want to do.
They make sure they are involved in all the hobbies they want.
They never spend any time with their wives.
And Paul says “That is completely unnatural.”
II.
A Caring Love (v.29b-30)
Christ doesn’t make the mistake of not loving his own body.
He recognizes the all of us, his people, as members of his own body.
And, as a result, he “nourishes” us and “cherishes” us.
27.
What does that mean?
Let’s first ask what it means for Christ to nourish and cherish the church.
The only other place the Greek word used for “nourish” here is in Eph 6:4.
This word is used to denote the whole process of leading up to an attained goal.
The Lord Jesus has a goal for his body.
Men can understand that.
We have goal for our bodies.
When we are hungry, the goal is to feed it.
When we are thirsty, the goal is to satisfy its thirst.
For some, there goal is to get strong.
Paul says that it is natural for a man to care for his body.
What is the Lord Jesus’ goal for his body, the church?
He told us back in v. 25-26.
Christ goal for his people is to fully sanctify us…to purify us…to make us sinless like he is.
He gives us everything we need to be sanctified.
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