Love...True Love...
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Good Morning.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
We are so glad you’re here with us today, I know last week’s game was a bit of a disappointment for many so we’re not going to talk about that today, but I hope that your week has improved and that over all you’ve had a good week and I hope you’ve had an opportunity to share your faith with someone either at the game or sometime during the week. And I want to remind everyone that if you stayed home because of the weather or even if you’re here in person and prefer electronic notes we’re still posting all of those in the bible app for you to be able to follow along.
Let’s pray.
Ok, so, we’ve discussed some things in the past few weeks - mental health, financial health, sharing Christ with others for eternal health, and today we’re going to be on the subject of relational health - specifically marriage.
Im in a group on facebook of other pastors, and one of the pastors on there is preaching through the book of Luke and this week the scripture that just happens to come up is Luke 14:25-35. Verse 26 is going to be particularly interesting for him.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
We are not going to go that route today, but just for clarity’s sake you have to put that verse in context - it’s not actually telling us to hate our wives or any of the others listed there - it’s telling us to love Christ above all of these.
No, today we’re going to discuss the marriage relationship.
Now there are a lot of sappy movies out there on marriage and love, and if you have the hallmark channel well, I think they’re showing them year-round.
And I’m not going to lie to you, I really like some of them - for example, there’s a series out there called the Love Comes Softly series, and this past week Kristin and I watched all 6 of those movies.
Don’t worry men, I’m not going to be turning in my man card anytime soon, I’ve been watching action movies this past week too, and today I expect a full report of today’s NASCAR race from my younger two kids - all I’m saying is that I do enjoy SOME sappy love movies.
And with that I’m going to tell you my favorite movie about love and marriage.
How many of you have seen The Princess Bride? Best movie of all time.
For those of you that for whatever reason have not seen the movie, it’s one of the few movies that has action, romance, giants, conflict, and probably some of the best memorized lines ever.
So, what does The Princess Bride have to do with today’s message on Ephesians 5?
Love…true Love,… is what brings us… together… today…
Now the last time I did a message that involved The Princess Bride I had done some memes to go along with it, but now that we broadcast our services over facebook and everything our copyright permissions don’t really allow us to do that with a lot of the copywrited material, so you’re just going to have to use some imagination.
So first let’s look at the love that Ephesians 5 is talking about here:
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Now the love here is special – it doesn’t mean the same as I love my car, or I love nachos, right?
I mean, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I love my truck - but if it comes between my life and the truck, it’s yours. Same for nachos or pizza, it ain’t worth all that.
See, the love here isn’t Eros – the love of natural relationships
It’s not Philia – the love of friendship
What it is, is Agape – The active love of God for His Son and His people; the love of pure self-giving, that asks for nothing in return and that wishes only for the well being of the one to whom it is given. It’s TRUE LOVE
True Love
Ok, so what does this true love look like?
Well, lets break this down a little. Take the first part of the verse – Therefore be imitators of God.
First we have to know WHO OUR God is.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
God is Love. Agape Love.
Let’s look at the definition of Agape again:
The active love of God for His Son and His people; the love of pure self-giving, that asks for nothing in return and that wishes only for the well being of the one to whom it is given.
Notice some key words in this – active, self-giving, wishes – all verbs. This version of love – it’s a verb.
So if our God is Love, and that love of God is what we’re supposed to learn from and imitate and do, then our love must also be a…verb.
Love is a VERB.
And now if you’re anything like me or grew up in my timeframe you may just have some DC Talk playing in your head now. Love is a verb.
And the agape love that we are to imitate - as Christ demonstrated - it plays an important role in all that we are. But today’s valentine’s day, so today we’re really going to focus in on marriage and how all of this applies to our marriages. But it was important to touch on the fact that true love comes from God and that it is an action word.
But now let’s take a look at the roles that occur in a marriage.
1. Wives
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
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.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Now understand, the term submit here - it doesn’t mean cower and just get run over all the time, and husbands have their own guidelines as we’ll see in the verses to follow. What it’s saying here is wives are being told to submit to your husbands as you are to submit to the Lord, whom we respect and adore.
We are to submit everything to God as believers on Christ, and if you remember when you gave it all to Him the freedom that gave you - wives are told to submit in that same way to their husbands. Their safety, their security, their desires - submit all of that to your husbands.
But pastor, that’s so old fashioned, that’s outdated, why are you talking about old barbaric stuff, etc.
Well, the word submit - it tends to get a bad rap. And it gets a bad rap because of the way we tend to think about it and the way it has been described by the world to see it.
But there are things that we need to understand about the word submit.
We as a church submit to Christ - we surrender to His authority everything, but in that we free ourselves from the concerns and worries of this world. We know that our security is in Him.
Also we are told as the Church to submit our requests to Him -
do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
And that love, that agape love, it requires some submission, because if Christ had never submitted to death on the cross, we probably still wouldn’t know God’s love in the way that do now.
So yes, biblically wives are to submit all authority over to their husbands - financially, house rules, leadership, but they also are supposed to submit their safety, their livelihood, their desires and everything - because loving their husband means that they lay their very lives down for him in a way that is beautiful when it occurs because she has given all that she can to him as a gift of respect for his position God has placed him in. You see, God is telling wives that agape love is submission, because as we see back in Genesis 3, that’s her hardest thing to do.
To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
God knows what sin brought forth on women and He wants your relationship restored. That’s why He’s calling you to submit, but remember, it’s not get run over submit, it’s a healthy, non-rebellious submit where you share everything with him.
Now marriage takes 2 people and makes them 1, and the second person in a marriage is the
2. Husbands
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.
Husbands - love your wives. Christ loved the church and gave himself to the church. And that means listen to your wives, talk to your wives, love your wives!
Listen - you wife is submitting to you or at least is supposed to submit to you, but that doesn’t free you of your obligations to her. It doesn’t say demand obedience from your wife, it doesn’t say command your wife, it says love your wife as Christ loves the Church! Give your entire life to your wife! You are to be the provider for her, listening to her needs and desires of her heart and consistently pursuing her as Christ has the Church!
Look men, wives don’t have an easy task - they are to trust you and submit all authority and dreams over to you - that requires a lot of sacrifice on their part just to enter into a marriage relationship with you. Our responsibility as men is to lead the family, to love our family, to lay down our very lives for the woman that is laying down her very livelihood for you.
She submits as Christ submits, he loves as Christ loved. it’s the very perfect image that shows how we are to become one because that’s the image of our relationship with Christ - we submit to Him, and He loves us.
Christ layed His life down for us, men, we do all that we do for our wives to show them exactly that same image, that we would do everything up to death for our wives and families.
See, in our human eyes we see the words submit and we think only the negative, and we see love and we think only the positive - we tend to forget the flip side of both of those words.
But submitting to someone is surrendering to their authority and loving someone is not abusing that authority but surrendering your life over to them and it’s a beautiful thing when we see it all working together in harmony.
And with men it’s a similar scenario, God knows what sin changed in women and He also knows and addresses what sin brought forth in man, because the very curse that we are trying to avoid in Genesis 3:19 is how we are told to demonstrate that agape love for our wives:
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
And it’s true - there are very few men out there that enjoy work, and far fewer who look forward to death. But we demonstrate that agape love by laying our lives down for her.
Now a moment ago I said that marriage takes 2 people and makes them one - but what I want you to realize is that it takes more than 2, because there is a third person involved in marriage if we look at things with the correct perspective. God is who takes these two and makes them one.
3. God
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes 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 and the church.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
God created the very institution of marriage based on the relationship we are to have with Christ. See when we operate as one instead of as two separate people - that is when our marriages thrive, that is when we find joy in our spouse, their pain is our pain, their pleasure is our pleasure, because we are walking with Christ and in our marriage in a relationship as it should be.
All of those bible verses on bride and bridegroom, all of those are prevalent and used because that is the image that we are to see in our relationship with Christ, that is the image that we are supposed to bear in our relationship with each other, that is the relationship we truly desire because let’s face it - women you said yes because you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him, because you saw your needs being met by him, and men you asked her because you saw your needs being met by her and you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her.
But now you’ve been married for a while, and things seem to have been knocked out of whack, and it can be the same with our relationship with Christ. And there is a similar theme in our relationship with Christ - we have a tendency to stop focusing on the other person and start focusing on our needs. We quit pursuing, but church I’m here to tell you that God has not quit pursuing you.
He pursues us every day - He’s always there, waiting to listen, working in our lives to care for us - and many of us have started to take that for granted.
And when it comes to our marriages, we can do the same thing. We begin to take our spouse for granted because they are always there, and then we can begin to wonder why we’re married, and we can drift apart. He leaves clothes everywhere, she burnt dinner. He just comes home and plops down at the tv, she’s always yelling.
What happened? We quit pursuing, we quit surrendering to the will of Christ and what we saw at the beginning - him meeting her needs and her meeting his needs - they both quit meeting each others needs because they expected the other person to fulfil their needs.
Christ pursues you constantly, and if we are surrendering to Him we are pursuing Him constantly. Wives, submit as Christ submitted, Husbands, love as Christ loved, because we are members of one body - two become one -
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
love your wife, respect your husband, it’s a Christlike giving it all to each other.
You want a great way to revive your marriage-there’s an opportunity to do just that starting today with a banquet and going over the next few weeks - the art of marriage is starting here and I want to encourage you to join in and participate in that as we strive to make our marriages better.
Kristin and I try to attend a marriage seminar every year or so - because it’s a great refresher for our marriage and our relationship with each other and with God - and even if your marriage is healthy and running on all cylinders we can all learn and fine tune our marriages. Sometimes we have to rebuild the engine, and sometimes we just need an oil change - it’s going to be a great time of marriage growth and encouragement.
if you can’t join us because of the time or the distance, we’ve got rightnow media, and Randy and Ginger have resources for that as well - you can still participate, and if you’ll talk to them they can steer you in the right direction as well.
I can’t tell you how much of a blessing marriage books and marriage seminars and marriage classes have been in our lives, not because we feel our marriage is failing, but because we are consistently needing reminded of the pursuit God has for us and the pursuit we need to have for one another and for God. Husbands, love your wives. Wives, submit to your husbands. Honor God in your marriages by placing Him first every day and in all things. This is true love.
Let’s pray.
God, I pray that in our marriages we surrender to your design for marriage. Lord that we can submit as Christ has submitted for us and that we can love as Christ first loved us. Lord, we give our marriages to you, as it is you who can heal and it is you who shows us the design of marriage and it’s through your faithfulness that we can have a relationship with our spouse that reflects you.
As you keep praying today, I want us to really take a moment and just reflect on our marriages and our relationships. Would you say that as a couple you reflect that design of marriage and that it’s bringing glory to Christ? Men have you submitted to Christ and do you love your wife as Christ loved the church? Ladies have you submitted to Christ and shared everything with your husband in a submissive way?
God want’s us to have successful and joyful marriages, and He lays the constructs down for us to follow in a way that leads to just that. But first we have to allow God to work in us and through us in our marriages and that means surrendering to His authority and the freedom that comes from submitting and loving.
Husbands and wives, how’s your marriage? Are you married for the kids, are you married for show, is your marriage thriving the way God intended it to, or is it just a front that you put up when you leave the house?
Father I pray that those that maybe their marriage is in a rough spot, could be simple, could be complicated, and Lord, you know the hearts and Lord we just ask you today for marital reconciliation, Lord that we become that one flesh, according to your Word, Lord we ask that you heal our marriages, heal our relationships, Lord help us to see you in our marriages as we return to you and to each other, loving and submitting the way that only you can show us, so that others can see your glory and that we can have the marriage you desire for us to have, so that we can have joyful families that rest in your Name.
And as we remain in prayer there’s a group of marriages that are represented that are only two party marriages.
Either one of the spouses or both of you don’t know God relationally - so you didn’t know of the relational design for marriage.
And there are those of you who recognize that you really don't know God and you want to. Let’s take care of this today. Call on His name Jesus, born the perfect Son of God to a virgin so He didn't inherit the sin nature, so that He could be our Savior, becoming sin on the cross, shedding His blood, dying, and being raised to life so that anyone who calls on His name will be saved. That's why you're here.
If that’s you, if God is calling to you to draw into a relationship with Jesus, answer Him today. If you don’t know how to start, you can simply pray something like this:
Dear God, I know that I am a sinner. Lord I believe that you came to free me from the bonds of sin and hell, and Lord I thank you for what only you could do. Lord I choose you, to follow in all that you are and to walk in the Spirit in a relationship with you, and to spend eternity with you. In Jesus name, amen.
Father, thank you again for this body, and Father as you are speaking to those here today, I pray that they will follow your example in marriage, that marriages can be healed and Lord that our marriages glorify you leading others to you.
Questions for the Week:
Do you know that unconditional true love that only Jesus gives? Are you an imitator when it comes to that love?
Wives - have you submitted everything to your husband? Have you surrendered to the call of the wife, as Ephesians calls you to do, or are you still holding on to a part that you haven’t shared with your husband?
Women - if you were to plan on getting married, have you considered the cost of that marriage when it comes to submittal?
Husbands - Have you loved your wife as Christ loved the Church? Have you truly been able to say that you would lay down your life for her? Have you pursued her in the same way that Christ continually pursues you?
Men - if you were to plan to get married, have you considered the cost of marriage when it comes to love?
Have you surrendered your marriage to God? If you aren’t married yet, have you surrendered your future marriage to be faithful and true to become one flesh?