The Language of Love
Ephesians 5:25-29
An 80 year-old woman was recently married to her 4th husband. A reporter questioned the occupation of her newly acquired husband. She replied that he owned a funeral home.
Curious about the other husbands, the reporter also asked about their occupations.
The woman paused for a while and stated that her first husband was a banker. The second one she was madly in love with and he was a circus master. The third one was a minister.
Puzzled by her answers, he replied, “None of these people have anything in common! Why did you marry these?”
She stated that she married "number one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go, go, go!"
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25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
Ephesians 5:25-29 Amplified Bible
25 Husbands, love your wives [seek the highest good for her and surround her with a caring, unselfish love], just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify the church, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word [of God], 27 so that [in turn] He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy [set apart for God] and blameless. 28 Even so husbands should and are morally obligated to love their own wives as [being in a sense] their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own body, but [instead] he nourishes and protects and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
Introduction:
On July 29, 1981, one of the most highly publicized and glamorous weddings in history took place.
• Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana
• An estimated audience of 750 million people worldwide.
• 4500 pots of fresh flowers lined the route to St. Paul’s cathedral.
• 2500 people crowded that grand church where more than 75 technicians with 21 cameras worked to enable the world to watch this wedding.
• For many people, this was a modern fairy tale. A royal prince weds a lovely lady in a grand cathedral surrounded by adoring subjects.
• They were the envy of millions. They were rich, young, handsome. It was a "marriage made in heaven."
• Sadly, we know that the fairy tale became a nightmare. The couple grew more and more distant.
• Affairs ensued. The storybook marriage made in heaven eventually collapsed into adultery and divorce.
It takes more than a prince, a princess, and a palace to make a happy marriage.
• As someone said, "marriages may be made in heaven but the maintenance must be done on earth."
• For marriages to survive, they require regular maintenance. They require effort.
We are just three days away from Valentine’s Day and millions of Americans will be celebrating on Wednesday. The origins of this day started with Saint Valentine who was either a priest in Rome or a bishop in Terni, central Italy. He risked the Emperor’s wrath by standing up for traditional marriage, secretly marrying soldiers to their young brides. When Emperor Claudius demanded that Christians deny their consciences and worship pagan idols, Saint Valentine refused. He was arrested, dragged before the Prefect of Rome, and condemned him to die.
While awaiting execution, his jailer, Asterius, asked Saint Valentine to pray for his blind daughter. When she miraculously regained her sight, the jailer converted and was baptized, along with many others. Right before his execution, Saint Valentine wrote a note to the jailer’s daughter, signing it, “from your Valentine.”
Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs and stones, and when that failed to kill him, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269AD. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius designated February 14th as “Saint Valentine’s Day.”
Sparks are flying this Valentine's Day as consumers get ready to show their loved ones how much they care. Overall, consumers plan to spend $25.8 billion on Valentine's Day this year — an average of $185.81 per person, according to the annual survey by NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics. But no matter what we might spend if we don’t get the most important part right it will all be for naught. What is the most important part? Paul makes it clear that we are to “love our wives,” and in today’s message we will try to find out what that means.
I. The Exhortation to Husbands v. 25a
a. The fact of love – agapeo
Verb - To love (25) (agapao - see related study of noun agape) means to love unconditionally and sacrificially as God Himself loves sinful men (John 3:16), the way He loves the Son (John 3:35, 15:9, 17:23, 24). Note that agapao is a verb and by its verbal nature calls for action.
25 Husbands, love your wives [seek the highest good for her and surround her with a caring, unselfish love],
b. The focus of love – The wife
ILL: Soon after our last child left home for college, my husband was resting next to me on the couch with his head in my lap. I carefully removed his glasses. "You know, honey," I said sweetly, "without your glasses, you look like the same handsome young man I married." Her husband thought about that for a few moments, cleared his throat, and said, "You know, Honey," then he paused and said, "without my glasses on, you still look pretty good to me, too!"
Valerie L. Runyan, in Reader's Digest,
c. The formation of love – The work
Real love is a work in progress. It is active not passive. It is demonstrating our love daily in a thousand small ways.
Marriage is Work
Because of a shortage of maids, the minister’s wife advertised for a male servant to help around the house. The next morning, a nicely dressed young man came to the front door of the parsonage.
The minister opened the door and jumped right into the conversation. "Can you start breakfast by 7 o’clock?" asked the minister. "I guess so," the young man said sheepishly.
Can you polish all the silver, wash all the dishes, do all the laundry, take care of the lawn, wash all the windows, iron all the clothes and keep the house clean and tidy?"
The young man was speechless. Finally, he spoke out. "Look, pastor, I came here to see about getting married to my girl. But if it’s going to be that much work, you can count me out right now!"
II. The Example of Christ vs 25b-27
a. His condescension
The most important phrase in the 25th verse is that the Lord loved the Church so much that He “gave himself up” for it. The Kings of Kings “gave himself”! Think of it; He came down from heaven, was born in a manger, raised in a carpenter’s shop, never owned anything but the clothes on His back and gave His life for us, His church, His bride, His body.
ILL: In the movie The Poseidon Adventure, the ocean liner S.S. Poseidon is on the open sea when it hits a tidal wave and tips over. Because of the air trapped inside the ocean liner, it floats upside down. In the confusion, the survivors can’t figure out what’s going on. They scramble to get out, mostly trying to climb the steps to the top deck. The problem is, the top deck is now 100 feet under water. In trying to get to the top of the ship, they drown. The only ones who make it are the few who do what doesn’t make sense. They do the opposite of what everyone else is doing and descend into the dark belly of the ship until they reach the hull. By going ‘down’, they reach the ocean’s surface. Rescuers hear them banging and cut them free. In marriage, the only way for us to find freedom is to choose what doesn’t make sense: lay down our lives for our spouses. We must go down to go up.
b. His consistency
ILL - ILL: A few years ago, the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, MO made public 1,300 recently discovered letters that the late President wrote to his wife, Bess, over the course of a half-century. Mr. Truman had a lifelong rule of writing to his wife every day they were apart. He followed this rule whenever he was away on official business or whenever Bess left Washington to visit her beloved Independence, Missouri.
Scholars are examining the letters for any new light they may throw on political and diplomatic history. For our part, we were most impressed by the simple fact that every day he was away, the President of the United States took time out from his dealing with the world's most powerful leaders to sit down and write a letter to his wife.
Sermon Illustrations
c. His care
1 Peter 5:7 Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.
We are to be willing to deny ourselves, and to bear toil and trial, that we may promote the happiness of the wife. It is the duty of the husband to toil for her support; to provide for her needs; to deny himself of rest and ease, if necessary, in order to attend on her in sickness to go before her in danger; to defend her if she is in peril; and to be ready to die to save her.
If a husband has the spirit and self-denial of the Savior, he will regard no sacrifice too great if he may promote the salvation of his family.
Barnes Notes
III. The Expressions of Love vs 28-29
28 Even so husbands should and are morally obligated to love their own wives as [being in a sense] their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own body, but [instead] he nourishes and protects and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
a. Recognition of the marriage union
A Godly man recognizes that he is one flesh with his wife. Not just a physical union but more importantly s spiritual union for as long as he lives.
“He who loves his own wife, loves himself; for, if he did not love her, he would hate his own flesh…
Meyer’s Commentary
b. Responding to this marriage union
There are two parts to this response. He is to “nourish” and “cherish” just as he would his own body. The first word means, “to nourish” (properly, to rear them up from childhood, as in Ephesians 6:4), and then “to cherish” (literally, to keep them warm), to provide all they need for health, and comfort, and life.
I don’t want my wife to think I’m with her only because God says I’m not allowed to leave; I want her to think my greatest delight is sharing life with her.
MARRIAGE AND GUNS: PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT
Charlie Shedd wrote his son a series of letters to give some practical advice about marriage. They were published in a book called Letters to Phillip. Here is one of the most moving chapters:
Dear Phil, I used to hunt ducks with a man who had a "thing" about his guns. He also had a "thing" about my gun. He polished his with some special kind of oil, which smelled like bananas. And he ate me out in the blind whenever the ducks weren’t flying, because my gun didn’t smell like bananas.
In fact, my gun even had some scratches on the stock. It also had some terrible stuff called "pitting" in the barrel, and he said this was because I didn’t clean it first thing when I got home after a hunt.
But there were some good reasons why I kept hunting with this firearm perfectionist. He was a member of the best duck lease on the river, and I wasn’t. He was also chairman of the board at our church, and we could talk business to and fro. The third reason wasn’t so good: He was having trouble with his wife, and I hoped we might be able to save the marriage.
But we couldn’t. Finally, she gave up. They got a divorce. It was one of those cases that would make a grown man cry.
There he would sit in his beautiful den--antelope heads, stuffed pheasants, lush white rug made from the hide of a mountain goat, cabinet full of beautiful guns all polished with oil that smelled like bananas.
He would stand there by the case taking them out and handling them with tender, loving care. Then he would remember the way my gun looked and take off again on one of his diatribes about the care of guns. This never failed to shame me, and I would go home determined to get out my gun and clean it like it had never been cleaned before.
But do you know what happened? When I arrived home, my wife would be waiting for me at the door. So we would sit down on our rocking love seat, hold hands, visit, and like that. In less time than it takes to look into her eyes, I completely forgot my noble resolve to love my gun with more devotion.
The other day as I was thinking back on all this, a great idea occurred to me. Funny, isn’t it, how we so often get these brilliant thoughts too late?
What happened was that my banana-oil brother would always include in his lectures at least one reference like this: "I just can’t understand how a man could invest so much in a gun and then let it go to pot!"
The thought that came to me was, "Why didn’t I figure up how much it cost him to get his wife? Courtship expenses - movies, flowers, dinners, gifts, postage, the wedding. All the food she’s eaten through the years, clothes she’s bought, medicine. It really would be a tidy sum, wouldn’t it?"
Then I could have said, "My dear friend! You are absolutely right! Let us now turn your brilliant observation to other things. Isn’t a man a fool to invest so much in marriage and then let it go to pot?"
He sure would be, wouldn’t he?
Carry on, Love Dad.
(From a sermon by Bobby Scobey, "Mother’s Day 09 - Honoring Mothers" 5/4/2009)
Conclusion: You are the only person in the world who can make your spouse feel cherished in this way. Others can love, respect, appreciate and praise him or her. But if you don’t cherish as a husband or wife should, your spouse will never be a cherished spouse. I believe God wants to raise the level of Christian marriages so that we’re not just gritting our teeth and hanging on but instead learning to celebrate and honor each other. The good news is that cherishing your spouse is something you can learn. God is more than capable of teaching us and empowering us to cherish our spouse the way He cherishes us. Cherishing is an attitude and an outlook. Since it’s not based just on feelings, it can be developed. Committing to the promise to cherish, adopting a cherishing mindset and then putting into practice cherishing actions creates a cherishing heart. These are all things that can be chosen.
Focus On the Family
