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Pastor Ed Pruitt
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Ephesians 5:21-33
21 And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord.
23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior.
24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything.
25 And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her
26 to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s word.
27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.
28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife.
29 No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church.
30 And we are his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”
32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.
33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
Tina Turner asked that question in her 1983 hit song.
That question could very well have been asked by the husbands in the Ephesian church.
What has love got to do with marriage.
Let’s listen to what Paul was telling everyone.
Love your wife?
Hardly.
You loved your camel, you loved your son, but your wife if she was a good wife she didn’t annoy you, maybe.
If she was a bad wife then you got rid of her.
You can well imagine the shock waves that must have rippled through the congregation when Paul’s letter was read out loud.
"Did I hear right?
Did he really say that we were to love our wives?
Like Christ loved the church?"
I mean these guy’s were riding high, Paul has just told their wives to submit, like that was the type of preaching they wanted to hear.
I can just imagine the applause, foot stamping and whistling that accompanied that one.
But now, he had gone from preaching to meddling.
But Paul was serious.
I’m sure that he had seen the way that Christian husbands were treating their wives.
It was just as if there had never been a change in their lives.
The marriage relationship in the church was the same as it was in the rest of Greek culture.
Granted Christian husbands had given up the courtesans and concubines, but their relationship with their wives hadn’t changed.
And Paul was saying, "hey guys, not good enough, let’s make a change that is noticeable to everyone.
Let’s change our marriages."
Not only does Paul command the husbands to love their wives but listen to some of the ways he tells them to love their wives.
As Christ loved the church, as you love your own bodies, as you loves yourself.
That’s not just infatuation, or puppy love that is pretty serious stuff.
Paul, is saying that it was a giving love Jesus gave of himself to the church.
Jesus gave up a preferable life style for the church.
Think about it, if you had the choice would you stay in heaven where everything was wonderful, or go to earth to grow up in a third world country, to minister to hostile crowds, be arrested, mocked, beaten and crucified.
Not too tough of a choice is it, a choice that could only be made through love.
And Jesus did that he gave of himself for the church.
He said the only way that this will happen is if I give myself, me for her, and he put her interests first.
As husbands if we are to follow the example of Christ we will have to display a giving love to our wives.
"Oh right, here we go again, let’s talk about the flowers I never buy, or the chocolates I never get her."
Uh-huh not talking about that although those things are important, but sometimes we try to use things to replace us.
How much of yourself do you give to your wife?
Do you remember when you were courting, think back way back.
Back when you could talk for hours, back when all of your spare time was for your future spouse, back when you wanted to be with her all the time.
Seems like a long time ago doesn’t it.
By the way ladies what goes around comes around in all of these points.
What have you sacrificed lately for your wife guys.
When was the last time you gave her you.
Just sat on the coach with your arm around her and gave her "you" and your undivided attention?
We all know the verse in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives.”
But how can a husband do this?
Pay close attention to the Scriptures.
We must go back to verse 18,
“Be filled with the Spirit.”
That means be Spirit-filled, or be controlled or dominated by the Holy Spirit.
So the first key to loving your wife is being a Spirit-filled man.
Love is an overflow of the Spirit who is in you.
Husbands are told to love their wives 6 times.
In verse 28, Paul says, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies” and in verse 33, “each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself.”
(Wives are told to love only once, with the inferior word, phileo)
We love “as Christ loved the church.” This is a sacrificial, one way, I love you covenant love.
God created Adam with the passion to love.
When God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, He said in Genesis 2:18,
“It is not good for man to be alone.
I will make a suitable helper for him”
A family man accepts full responsibility for his wedding vows.
When did you last visit the vows you made on your wedding day?
You may be able to remember all the words, but you know what you meant.
You looked your partner in the eye and vowed, “I promise you that this new relationship with will always be the most important relationship behind my relationship to God.
End of story.”
Does your time and attention to your wife reflect that?
When a man promises to love a woman until death, he gives her security to become a woman of God.
Marriage is designed by God to begin at the altar and end at the graveside.
It is not designed to end in divorce court.
Between the altar and the grave, we knew that there will be times of conflict and anger and heartbreak and boredom and monotony.
That is why we singed a marriage license.
We said, “For better or worse, till death us do part.”
That means that marriage is a room in which there is no exit except the door that is marked “Death.”
If the Lord brought you together, He will see you through.
"I love you" not that tough is it just three one syllable words.
I have always loved the story of the old farmer and his wife, she said "you never tell me you love me" "well" he said "I told you forty years ago when we got married that I love you, and if I change my mind I will let you know."
Guys your wives need to know that you haven’t changed your minds.
And wives your husbands need to know as well.
Reba Mcentire has a song out called "the greatest man I never knew" and in the last verse it says this:
The greatest words I never heard
I guess I’ll never hear
The man I thought would never die
S’been dead almost a year
He was good at business
But there was business left to do
He never said he loved me
Guess he thought I knew.
Your wife needs to know you love her, and your kids need to know you love them, no matter how old they are.
Love can never be verbalise enough.
Once every forty years isn’t enough, once every forty days isn’t enough, it is probably doubtful that once a day is enough.
Did you know that it has been proved that men who kiss their wives goodbye each morning live longer.
Start every day telling your wife that you love her, and finish it the same way, don’t let the greatest words she never heard be the ones she’ll never hear."
It needs to be an enduring love.
Psalm 136:1 1 praise the lord! He is good.
God’s love never fails.
That phrase, God’s love never fails is used twenty six times in the bible.
It doesn’t say "His love only fails sometimes" or "His love never fails during the good times" or "His love never fails when everything is going ok."
But God’s love never fails.
Your wife needs to know that you will love her no matter what.
Women need to know that our love is not based on what she is, but instead on who she is.
You might have fallen for her because she was pretty, had a knock out figure and all kinds of smarts, you ever wonder if she was really that smart what she saw in you?
Those may have been reasons for your initial attraction, but your love better go beyond those reasons.
And she needs to know that you love her, not her attributes.
Listen up, the facts of life, faces get old, bodies change, hair turns grey, love needs to endure forever.
Love needs to be love regardless of the circumstances.
Remember the definitions of agapao?
Which means value, esteem, feel or manifest generous concern for, be faithful towards, to delight in, to set store upon.
You need to do that for your wife, value her, not what she is but who she is.
Esteem your wife for who she is, delight in your wife for who she is.
It needs to be a selfless love.
Jesus primary concern was for the church not for Jesus.
When it got right down to where the rubber met the road, in the garden when Jesus could have said "whoa, stop let’s back this up, I want to go home.
Crucifixion doesn’t sound like any fun." Could have done what he told the disciples in Matthew 26:53
53 don’t you know that I could ask my Father, and right away he would send me more than twelve armies of angels?
The original word used for army here was legion and a legion was up to six thousand foot soldiers along with the support units on horseback and chariots.
"Hey guys I could call down more then 72,000 angels and say sic em talk about being touched by an angel" and he wasn’t talking the sweet della reese type either.
He was talking about those big arnold schwarzenegger terminator angels!
But he didn’t why because of us.
But what could we give him back?
Nothing.
So often we love people because of what they can do for us.
But that isn’t love that is infatuation.
Love says, "what can I do for you?"
Infatuation says "what can you do for me?"
I saw a bumper sticker that said "the more I get to know women the more I love my truck."
Man the more I get to know about women the less I know about women.
Men and women listen up, men and women are different, and not just physically.
We think differently, we react differently, we feel differently.
And because of that sometimes it is difficult to understand one another, let alone love one another.
But we are told that if we are going to make it we’re going to have to work at it.
Listen to that last line,
Ephesians 5:33 so each husband should love his wife as much as he loves himself, and each wife should respect her husband.
Write it down, engrave it on your foreheads, put it into action.
Men love your wives and respect them.
Woman love your husbands and respect them.
You say "it’s hard" of course it’s hard if it wasn’t hard everyone would have a successful marriage.
“Woman was not made out of man’s head to be dominated by him, nor out of his feet, to be trampled upon; but out of his side that she might be equal with him; from under his arm, to be protected by him, and from near his heart to be loved by him.”
I want to read a story in closing,
Some of you might remember the comedian Jack Kublesky.
He was from Waukegan, Illinois.
He passed away years ago.
His professional name was Jack Benny.
When Jack was a young man, he was working in the same studio as a young lady he wanted to date.
He thought she was beautiful, but he was too shy and embarrassed to ask her out.
He couldn’t get up the courage or the nerve so he started sending a single, red rose to her desk with no note attached to the rose.
Every day she received the red rose.
Finally one day, she asked the delivery man who was sending her the roses.
He said a guy named Jack who worked in the same studio.
She found out who he was.
Finally they began talking and Jack asked her out for a date.
She thought that after they started dating the roses would stop.
But they didn’t.
They kept coming…a single rose every day.
They were engaged and she thought the roses would stop.
But they didn’t stop.
They even kept coming after they were married.
Every day a single rose would show up for Mrs. Benny.
After five years and ten years and decades later a single red rose continued to show up.
Jack Benny died.
The day after the funeral, a single rose showed up for Mrs. Benny.
After several days Mrs. Benny went to the florist and said, “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but Mr. Benny passed away.
I know it is kind of you, but you don’t need to do this any longer.
The florist responded, “Mrs. Benny, you don’t understand.
Jack made provisions years ago to provide you a single red rose every day you are alive.”
