Love and Respect

Introduction

Adam and Eve Joke

This morning in our young adults class, we talked about the scary world that our we are raising our children in today. I suppose that every generation from reaching back to Adam and Eve has likely said the same thing.

And while I’m sure there have been generations that have had to deal with what we are dealing with today, it does seem like a rare occurrence where the culture actually tries to deny the existence of male and female to the point where we allow biological males to to compete against women in sports because the boy believes that he is a girl.

Because of this we are starting to see boys who call themselves girls winning professional womens sports!

Of course this is the natural end to the road to the lie that there is no difference between male and female. And though most of us look at boys defeating girls in sports events as a ridiculous outcome, that is the reality of the world we live in today.

Now as sad as this reality is, I happen to think that this is a great opportunity for the church to attract rational people back to Biblical truths. Because there are people out there who are just now for the first time seeing how ludicrous this idea of no genders is, and we as the church ought to be shouting from the mountaintops that God made us, according to ,

Mark 10:6 ESV

6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’

And by God’s design we are different in ways that extend far beyond the physical appearance only, but in fact we are different in the ways we think, in the ways we feel, in the ways we communicate.

Church I think when we teach those scriptural truths, the scripture starts looking like truth again to reasonable people.

So with that in mind, with the understanding of the mixed up and crazy world that we live, doesn’t it seem appropriate that the way we interact within our relationships would also be a living proclamation of God’s truth to the world?

Why Our Relationships Matter

You see its often easy to forget that our relationships, the way that we interact with our spouses on a day to day basis, is more than just for our mutual benefit.

And I have to be honest, I think this is a result of how we’ve often advertised marriage in the church.

We very often push marriage as necessary to having a fulfilling life. Or it’s pushed as merely a means to curb physical desire in a vast simplification of .

We often expect our children to grow up, to fall in love and get married and provide us with hundreds of wonderful grandkids for us to spoil.

But listen church, marriage shouldn’t be the ultimate goal that we have as parents for our kids, Heaven should be!

Now I get it, I know that God said that it was not good for man to be alone. And I am definitely not saying that being married is in anyway wrong.

But church, it’s not the end goal.

So our message to our children ought to be this, whatever way you believe that you can better serve God, go do that.

If you believe that through a marriage relationship with that man or that woman will better equip you to serve your God, then by all means, use that relationship to glorify God.

But if we ever get to the point where we take God out of our relationships and we start thinking about how they benefit us only, church we’ve lost the point!

And I certainly think we often miss this point.

Our marriage relationship absolutely should be used to glorify God FIRST AND FOREMOST.

Why? Because according to Paul said that

Ephesians 5:31–32 ESV

31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:32 ESV

32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

Our relationship to our spouses is to the world a reference, meaning it is like the relationship to Christ and the church.

Does that send you a wake up call tonight? If it doesn’t it should.

Does that not make you want to make your marriage better than it is today?

Does that not make you cringe at some of the things you’ve maybe said or behaved toward your spouse?

Are you not yet convinced that your relationships matter?

Turn with me to

Colossians 3:17–19 ESV

17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. 18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.

And by the way this goes for our relationships with our children as well if you keep reading, as well as your employees. Our marriages are not our own, don’t you think we should heed God’s advice on how to make them work to His Glory?

Love and Respect

Ephesians Chapter 5 is all about what it means to walk as children of the light.

Paul starts the chapter by saying that as followers of God we are to be imitators of God, meaning all indecent and ungodly activities are off limits. No sexual immorality, no impurity, no coveteousness, no crude joking or foolish talk, but instead thanksgiving.

And the reason we don’t do those things is because those that practice them have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.

So verse 17 tells us that as faithful children and servants, we seek to understand the will of the Lord.

And nestled here after telling us to understand the will of the Lord, Paul writes to the Ephesians how to interact with one another as a community of believers.

And included in that is instructions for Wives and Husbands in 22-33

Now you know that these scriptures have been under attack for centuries by those who fail to understand the deep importance of the marriage relationship to God.

People call Paul a sexist and dismiss many of his writings as outdated and non-inspired because of what he says here regarding women being submissive to their husbands as well as not having authority over a man.

But in reality what we have here is Holy Spirit inspired wisdom to making marriages something that glorifies God.

And we could spend a great deal of time on these verses this evening, but what I really want to focus on is something that I came to be aware of through a book by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs who is a marriage counselor and author who wrote a whole book about verse 33 titled “Love and Respect.”

So if you have the time, I highly recommend going home tonight and youtubing some of his stuff, he’s an excellent speaker and I promise what he has to say will bless your marriage.

But what he says that he noticed in his practice and in independent studies was that marriages that succeeded, marriages that were happy and joyful contained two main ingredients Love and Respect.

So he started studying the scriptures and wondered why here in that the Holy Spirit commanded husbands to love their wives and wives not to love their husbands, but rather to respect her husband.

It’s almost as if men and women are different. So what we have here is an often overlooked bit of wisdom from our creator as to how to make our marriages better and better give God Glory!

Dr. Eggerichs stated that after reading and studying this, he come to realize that what most people have fallen into who are having marital problems is what he calls the crazy cycle because we don’t know something as simple as men and women are different and communicate differently.

And it makes perfect sense when we think about it. Men operate very much on form of honor code and respectability. In fact, when over 400 men where polled and asked if they would rather be alone and unloved in the world or viewed as inadequate and disrespected by everyone? Over 80 percent of men answered that they would rather be unloved and alone than be disrespected. Those are crazy high numbers when it comes to polls! And I’d bet that every man in the audience tonight is thinking yep, that is the one one I’d pick, and most women are thinking you guys are crazy.

But that is because we are different.

Guys can get into heated arguments with our best friends and ultimately have to walk away because we don’t want to risk getting into a physical confrontation and the next morning be best friends again.

But when a man walks away from a heated argument with his spouse because he knows he’s getting too angry so he does the honorable thing before he says something he regrets, how does that make her feel?

Unloved.

When a woman constantly pesters her husband about something because she desires to reconnect with him but to him it feels like nagging and controlling how does that make him feel?

Disrespected

And so we get into situations where both good hearted people are doing what comes naturally |

]\o them thinking they are doing the right thing but it’s being interpreted wrongly as

She doesn’t respect me, she doesn’t think I’m good enough for her, so He acts unloving towards her

So she disrespects him

And he acts unloving to her

and around and around the cycle goes until one of them decide to heed God’s commandment.

and it’s amazing how well that works when one emotional need is met, when I husband loves his wife and speaks to her in her love language, which is another must read relationship book btw, she often times reacts in kind with respect for him and you can reverse the crazy cycle and start allowing our marriages to glorify God.

In fact, it’s interesting to not that this process is not exclusive to only Christian couples. Peter wrote in

1 Peter 3:1–2 ESV

1 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

Look at that, just by the respectful conduct of a wife toward her unbelieving husband he might soften to and ultimately obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Church, everything we do, in word or deed, we are to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.

That certainly includes the way we interact with our spouses and our families. For those of you who are husbands out there tonight, I pray that you’ll understand the importance of loving your wife.

For those who are wives, I pray you’ll consider the importance of respecting your husband.

And I pray that as we raise our children we will instill within them the importance of serving God to the best of their abilities, and how marriage should be considered as a God glorifying institution and not a means only to satisfy their own desires.

If there is anything...

Ephesians 5:21–33 ESV

21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

1 Peter 3:1–2 ESV

1 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

Colossians 3:19 ESV

19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.

Colossians 3:17 ESV

17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

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