Grace to fulfill our roles.

Reminder: The purpose of marriage is to be a living display of the gospel.

It is a simple thing to receive the gospel, but that doesn’t mean the gospel is simplistic.

It is a complex, multi-faceted doctrine.

That is because the gospel stems from God.

God is too complex to be fully comprehended by the minds of men.

We can’t comprehend is eternality.

We cannot comprehend His tri-une makeup.

We can’t comprehend His love or His mercy.

And yet, we accept that He is all of those things.

Why are we talking about the complexity of the gospel and it’s God?

If we are to live out the gospel and represent it’s author, we need to realize that there are limits to our ability to do this.

Humanity is distinct from the est of creation in that we possess the image of God.

God knew that one gender would be insufficient in representing His character and plan to the world.

When God said, in Genesis 2:18 that it was not good for man to be alone, it was not just an observation about man going solo.

He was acknowledging that one gender was incomplete.

Masculinity needed a complementary counterpart.

Someone that could display the traits of God that Adam could not display on his own.

So God made a woman to complete the human creation.

Eve was different from Adam; and yet she was the same.

She was an equal human creation just like Adam.

No less valuable.

No less capable.

But she was different!

Physically

Emotionally

Intellectually

These differences are good because they enable humanity, male and female combined, to demonstrate and emulate the characteristics of God.

Nowhere is this more evident than when a man and a woman come together and become one flesh in the union of marriage.

What we are going to do is take the next 2 weeks to examine the respective roles that each person in a marriage is supposed to fulfill.

Every conclusion that we make, must come from the perspective of husband and wife are working together to bear the image of their creator as only they can.

They must do this for the sake of their family.

They must do this for the sake of the lost world that is watching them.

We will start this week with the husband.

We could spend the rest of our time studying God’s command for Adam to dress and keep the garden.

All men are tasked with operating as

Providers

Protectors

These two words instill all kinds of purpose and meaning into the male life.

Tonight, I would like to focus on a different set of instructions that God gives that pertain to men and husbands.

We know from Ephesians 5 that we are to love our families, especially our wives.

But, what does that love look like in real life?

Most men I know are not super lovey-dovey.

How does God expect masculine love to present itself in real life?

To answer that question, I believe it is helpful for us to look at the qualifications of a deacon as spelled out in 1 Timothy 3.

The qualifications of a deacon deal heavily with a man’s behavior within the home.

Though not every man in the church holds the office of a deacon, a Christian man that loves his family and seeks to emulate the gospel and the God of the gospel, will develop these traits in his life.

Godly husbands must be grave.

To be grave means to be worthy of respect.

The one thing that most men need the most in their relationship is respect.

From their wives.

From their children.

Paul says that a man that desires respect in the church needs to behave as a person worthy of respect.

The same is true at home.

You can try to demand respect, but if it is not earned, it is not legitimate.

When you think about God, has been grave in His behavior?

Has God handled Himself in a way that is worthy of respect?

Of course, He has.

If we are going to emulate that for our families we have to be grave.

Godly husbands must not be double-tongued.

We may think this applies just to hypocrisy.

Praise the Lord at church

Bleepity blank blank at home.

It also applies to a man that is unpredictable in his responses.

You never know if he’ll blow up or be reasonable.

This is a good way to provoke your children to wrath.

It’s also a good way to commit emotional abuse against your wife.

What if God was unpredictable with us.

Godly husbands must not be given to much wine.

Don’t even start with me on saying this is a justification for drinking in moderation.

The wine that is being referenced in this passage and in much of the Bible is mixture of wine and water.

The ratio of that mixture, according to greek authors of the day, ranged from an 8 to 1 to a 20 to 1 mix.

That’s 4.7% or 11% wine to water percentage, not alcohol content.

Modern wine has about a 10-15% alcohol content.

Let’s be super generous and say that a mixture of water to wine is 80-20.

You’re still left with an alcohol content of .6%

To compare that with something, Kombucha has a 1-3% alcohol content.

So, in other words, if the Bible allows you to drink in moderation, I’ll say sure, as long as the alcohol content remains at or below the wine used in the Bible.

Do you think, maybe alcohol is a destructive force that men who love their families and are trying to emulate God to them would shy away from it?

Godly husbands are not greedy of filthy lucre.

Lucre is gain.

If you are going to gain much than a proposition is lucrative.

Lucre is not a bad word.

Put filthy on the front of it and now you’ve got a problem.

Filthy lucre is gain that is gotten by dishonorable means.

Remember, men, we are to be grave, worthy of respect.

If you are supporting your family but you are doing it in a disrespectful way, then what are you doing?

Filthy lucre doesn’t have to be criminal.

Filthy lucre could be gotten by sacrificing your family for the sake of money.

Filthy lucre could be gotten by sacrifice your relationship or service to God for money.

If you search the Bible, the only exception for spending long times away from one’s family was during times of war.

Godly men do not choose gain over the families and God.

What if Jesus took that same approach when it came to his willingness to leave the glory of heaven for our sakes?

Godly husbands are sincere believers, not just fake fakers faking compliance to appease their wife.

Godly husbands need to view marriage as a life-long commitment.

This does not belittle anyone who has divorced and remarried.

If you are currently married, this needs to be your mindset.

Unfortunately, people take the same approach to their spouse as they do to their church.

As soon as you stop meeting my needs the way I expect, I’m out.

How does that demonstrate God’s long-suffering patience and never-ending love?

Godly husbands rule their houses and their children well.

Neither as dictators nor as pushovers.

We steward and guide our families in the direction they are supposed to go.

Where is that?

Towards Jesus.

Everything Jesus did was to bring glory to His Father and to reconcile men to God.

The same is true for us as men, husbands, and fathers.

Let me tell you this, if we worked on all these other areas, we wouldn’t have any issue leading our homes.