This is the eighth message in the series,
Understanding Marriage, from Ephesians chapter 5.
The title of this teaching is, Oneness in
Marriage.
Let's join our teacher, Pastor David Guzik, speaking
at Calvary Chapel of Simi Valley.
Ephesians chapter 5, beginning at verse 28.
We're continuing our series, Understanding Marriage, from Ephesians
chapter 5.
And today we're going to talk about the
reasons for a husband's love.
And you'll see what I mean by that
title as we get into our study this
morning.
Ephesians chapter 5, beginning at verse 28.
So husbands ought to love their own wives
as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the
Lord does the church.
For we are members of his body, of
his flesh, and of his bones.
For this reason a man shall leave his
father and mother, and be joined to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
This is a great mystery, but I speak
concerning Christ and the church.
The book of Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25
through 27, sets the standard for a husband's
love towards his wife.
We talked about that last week.
How the standard is the love of Jesus
and the love that he has for his
people.
So first of all, that it's love based
on a decision, not on a feeling.
We know this from the very word for
love that Paul used.
This ancient Greek word we know as agape,
which is different than a feeling kind of
love.
The kind of love Paul's talking about is
love that's made by a decision.
That says, I'm going to decide to love
in this situation.
It doesn't wait for the feelings of love
to arise, though the feelings may be there.
It's not that agape love contradicts feelings, or
is without feelings.
It's just simply that it isn't based on
feelings.
We saw also that it's love in attitude,
that it's warm and affectionate.
And we know this from the description of
Paul's describing of how the love of the
husband should be.
In Ephesians 5.25, he said, Husbands, love
your wives just as Christ also loved the
church.
And when you think of how Jesus loves
the church, it's a warm love.
It's an affectionate love.
We saw that it's love in action.
That it'll sacrifice itself for the sake of
the beloved.
And we know this from Paul's description of
the husband's love again in the same verse.
He said, Husbands, love your wives just as
Christ, and then it says, gave himself for
it.
I mean, Jesus just didn't feel thoughts of
love towards the church.
No, he did something.
He gave himself for it.
And it was something that he did of
self-sacrifice towards the church.
So, we've seen what this love is about.
What I think is so great about God's
Word, so great about the way He speaks
to us, is that so often, God gives
us the why behind His commands.
He doesn't have to.
Isn't it really enough if God simply says,
well, now do it because I said to
do it.
That should be enough, right?
He knows us.
He's our creator.
He made us.
He gives us every breath that we breathe
as a gift from God.
It's enough just for Him to say, well,
because I said so, that's why.
God loves us so much.
And He wants us to share, He wants
us to catch His vision behind His commands.
But so often in the Scriptures, He gives
us the why behind it.
So, husbands, you have every right this morning
to say, listen, pastor, you're telling me that
the Bible says I have to love my
wife in a pretty radical way.
I've got to love her based on decisions,
not on feelings.
I've got to love her in my attitude,
and I've got to love her with self
-sacrificing actions.
That's a tall order to fill.
Why?
Why do I have to have such a
giving love?
A love that's so far beyond what the
world expects from a husband.
Well, I'll tell you why.
First of all, He's already described why in
one sense.
The first reason why is because this is
what love is.
I mean, He says, husbands, love your wives.
He used that Greek word agape.
Well, this is what it is.
It's just defined by that that's what love
is, and so that's why you should do
it that way.
Secondly, we should love our wives this way
because our relationship with our wife has a
pattern.
And the pattern for the marriage relationship is
the relationship between Jesus and His church.
And again, Paul indicates this over and over
again in our passage.
He says, love your wives just as Christ
also loved the church.
See the just as in there?
It means there's a pattern.
You have a pattern for the way that
you're supposed to love your wife.
And then he says, so husbands ought to
love their own wives.
So what?
So according to the pattern of Christ's love.
And then later on he says, just as
the Lord does the church.
As the Lord loves the church, that's how
the husband is supposed to love his wife.
So the first reason is just because that's
what love is.
According to the biblical definition.
Second reason is, is God's given us a
pattern for the way we should love.
And the pattern is Jesus and His love
for the church.
But this morning we're going to discuss the
third reason why.
I have to say this.
This really impacted me.
These were things that I have to say
in all my years of study of this
passage and understanding.
I never saw it the way that I
saw it in coming to an understanding of
it now.
And I hope that I can live it
better and better in my own marriage.
As the weeks, as the months go by.
Because it's challenging.
The third and perhaps the greatest, the central,
the whole thematic reason here.
Why we should love our wives with this
self-sacrificing, absolutely giving all kind of way.
Why is this reason, it's explained in the
text.
It's because we are one with our wives.
Just as Jesus is one with the church.
It's this teaching of unity.
It's this teaching of the essential oneness of
the husband and wife.
Look at it in the text we saw
here.
Ephesians chapter 5 beginning at verse 28 again.
He says, So husbands ought to love their
own wives as their own bodies.
Now the little word in there, as, is
very important.
What does he mean when he says that
I ought to love my wife as my
own body?
Now he doesn't mean, and this is the
way that I understood it for quite a
while.
But I do some good study here.
I think that I've come to a different
conclusion.
I used to believe that what Paul meant
by this was, I should take care of
my wife after similar manners I would take
care of my body.
In other words, I look after the needs
of my body.
I make sure that it's fed and clothed.
I pay attention to the needs of my
body.
Therefore I should pay attention to the needs
of my wife.
Now we have to say that first and
foremost, this would be a huge improvement for
many marriages, wouldn't it?
I mean, there's no denying that.
But that's not the meaning here.
This is the meaning behind Paul's example, and
the rest of the context bears it out.
The meaning is, So ought men to love
their wives because they are their own bodies.
A man loves his wife as his body.
In other words, she is part of you.
When you are loving her, you're loving yourself.
You're taking care of yourself.
She's part of you.
There's a oneness here.
There's a unity that God has established.
And as you give your love towards her,
as you care for her needs, as you
take consideration of her, what you're really doing
is you're really taking consideration of yourself.
Now, you see, as a man loves his
body, he loves his wife.
No, that's not the idea.
A man must love his wife as his
body, as a part of himself.
You see how God has woven this theme
all since the very beginning?
When Adam was created, and then Eve was
created, where did Eve come from?
From Adam's own body.
What did Adam say when he looked upon
Eve for the first time?
He said, this is bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh.
You know what he's saying?
She's part of me.
And that was the essential unity that Adam
understood from the very beginning.
The apostle puts it this way, so that
the husband can see that he cannot, I'll
say it again, husbands, you might try, we
might try, but you cannot detach yourself from
your wife.
Just as much as you cannot detach yourself
from your body, so you cannot detach yourself
from your wife.
She's part of you, and so you have
to remember that always.
This means that you cannot live in isolation.
You cannot live in detachment.
And if you realize what Paul's saying here,
that she's part of you.
God has knit you together, God has made
you one.
Just as much as Adam could say to
Eve, she's bone of my bone, she's flesh
of my flesh, she's part of me.
So God's made you that way with your
wife in the marital relationship.
And if you understand that, if you grab
a hold of that, well then there's no
danger in thinking of detachment.
You don't wish and will and desire to
be detached from your wife.
Still less, how could there be any antagonism
or hatred if you realize that your wife
is part of you?
You may as well start trying to chop
off your own foot.
Or beat yourself in the face.
It's the same self-defeating kind of action.
You see, friends, this is simply any element
of hatred between a husband and a wife,
it's sheer madness.
It shows that the husband has no biblical
understanding of what marriage is.
Notice another phrase that Paul uses in this
passage.
Verse 28 started by saying, So husbands ought
to love their own wives as their own
bodies.
And we know what that means, right?
It means because she is part of your
own body.
And then he goes on, look what he
says at the end of verse 28.
Did you see that?
He who loves his wife loves himself.
Do you see how he just repeats the
same idea in different words?
Simply said, husbands, grab a hold of this.
When you love your wife, you benefit yourself.
Or perhaps it's better to put it in
the negative.
When you neglect your wife, you neglect yourself.
And it will come back to hurt you.
Now, we all know what it's like to
neglect something.
I'm speaking mainly or focusing my remarks towards
husbands this morning.
So let's take the example of your automobile,
right?
There it is, and you hear this noise.
And the noise is going on and on.
It's, well, forget that, who really cares, right?
And you neglect it, and you neglect it,
it doesn't matter.
In the end, we can all smile, we
can laugh at that, because we recognize that
man is just hurting himself, isn't he?
One time I was working on my car,
and, well, I didn't tighten up all the
lug nuts on my wheels.
And so there I was, and I started
hearing this noise.
That's funny, it's a funny noise, isn't it?
Well, I just drove on right through it.
Pretty soon, here I was, I was on
a rush, I was on my way to
work, it was many years ago, and all
of a sudden I see, thump, the car
starts, right?
And I see a tire roll past me.
Now, you know, if I would have stopped
immediately when I heard the noise and addressed
it for what I do, I neglected it.
Really, it didn't really hurt the car that
much, the car ended up to be fine.
But it hurt me.
I was late to work, and it was
just to my own harm.
Friends, it's even more true regarding your wife,
because that car is yours, but it's not
part of you.
Oh, I know you think it is, but
it's not.
You see, that wife of yours, she's part
of you.
And it's even more true.
You neglect her, you mistreat her, it's going
to come back to hurt you.
Look at the next thing he says here
in verse 29.
Verse 29.
For no one ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the
Lord does the church.
Now, any man in his right mind is
going to take care of his own flesh,
even if it's just in the sense of
feeding it and clothing it and caring for
his body.
And he knows that if he doesn't, he's
going to suffer for it.
In the same way, once we know the
biblical fact of this unity, if we're in
our right minds at all, we're going to
nourish and cherish our wives because she's part
of us.
And look, he explains the same thing again.
Look at it here in verse 31 there,
where he says, For this reason a man
shall leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh.
Do you see how he's repeating this theme
over and over again?
I look back, oh, how could I miss
it?
This is like the major theme.
This is what he really wants to emphasize.
It's the unity between the husband and the
wife.
And just as the first man and the
first woman were one, just as Adam could
look at Eve and say, she's bone of
my bone, she's flesh of my flesh, she's
part of me.
He didn't say, she was bone of my
bone.
She was flesh of my bone.
No, he said, is.
Because he recognized that even though they were
two separate bodies, God had made them one.
Eve was taken from Adam and then brought
back to him.
And so it could be said of every
married man today, that he is joined to
his wife.
And God did the joining.
Husband, you can resent it, you can resist
it, you can ignore it, you can neglect
it, but it doesn't change the fact.
God has joined you together, he's made you
one.
Now, I think we've seen how our text
here teaches this principle of oneness, right?
So here's my first question.
How should this principle of oneness affect the
husband's thinking?
How should he think in his marriage and
towards his wife?
Well, first of all, it means that the
husband must realize that his wife is part
of himself.
I mean, that's it, right?
He should look at his wife and realize,
she's part of me.
There's an essential oneness, there's a unity there.
She is part of me.
Now, I'm going to say something that may
be a shock to some wives or may
not be a shock to you at all.
You may understand this perfectly.
But I need to say it nonetheless.
Your husband does not realize this instinctively.
He doesn't.
Now, wives do.
Wives have an instinctive appreciation and grasp of
the unity in the marital relationship.
Of course, I'm speaking in the general sense.
You can always find some wives who don't
and some husbands who do.
But I'm speaking in the general sense of
the genders and how they think and how
they act.
Ladies and gentlemen, wives have an instinctive grasp
of the unity, of the oneness of the
marital relationship.
Wives, let me tell you something.
Your husband does not.
He does not have this instinctive grasp.
And you've wondered and you've got angry and
perhaps you've even become bitter.
Well, why doesn't he think this way?
It's simply because it's just not in him
instinctively.
But it can be in him biblically.
God can show him.
God can teach him.
But wives, just don't go around with all
this bitterness or anger and resentment from your
husband.
Believe me, he's just like every other husband.
He doesn't realize this instinctively.
This is something that husbands need to grow
and they need to learn.
Let me say something else.
He can't be nagged into this.
He can't be guilt tripped into this understanding.
He has to understand it and believe it
and act upon it according to what God
says in the Bible.
The husband must realize that the wife is
part of himself and he has to be
taught it.
It won't come to him by instinct.
And the Bible, in all of its part,
teaches it.
That husband must come to the place where
he understands that he and his wife, they're
not two, but they're one.
And this means something.
Friends, let's grab hold of this.
That for success in the marriage relationship, we
have to think and understand.
Now, doesn't this set the Christian marriage miles
apart from the world's thinking of what marriage
is all about?
In the world's way of thinking, think and
understand have no place in the marital relationship.
In the world's way of thinking, the marital
relationship is just based on love, feelings.
No.
Thinking and understanding.
That's what it takes to form a biblical
marriage.
You see, the world never really wants a
person to think and understand about marriage.
And the mind hardly comes in at all.
And the result is that when they come
upon difficulties, they have no thinking to fall
back on.
And they don't know what to do.
The feelings are gone.
Listen, you're not feeling great when you're in
an argument.
And so if you don't have thinking and
understanding to fall back upon, you panic.
You rush to a separation.
You rush to a divorce.
And then you go and you repeat the
same situation again and again.
The reason is because there's an absence of
thinking, an absence of understanding, that marriage has
been built on the foundation of what the
world thinks of as love.
But really it's just feeling.
It's just emotion.
It needs to be built on a different
foundation.
So, understand this.
Husbands, you may not understand this by instinct,
but you need to learn it by biblical
truth.
Your wife is part of you.
I guess we could say, and another way
to put this, is that the wife is
more than a partner.
I know many wives just wish that their
husbands would treat them like partners.
Might I say that that's not a biblical
marriage?
That's not sufficient.
They are partners, but they're more than partners.
I mean, you can have two men in
business who are partners, who work together, but
that's not the biblical idea of a marriage.
The analogy goes much higher than that.
It's not a question of partnership, even though
that's included in the idea.
No, if you want a good phrase to
express it, it's kind of a quaint phrase
today, but when a husband would come up
and introduce his wife as his better half,
he kind of has the idea there, doesn't
he?
She's part of me.
And what he means is, I am incomplete
without her.
She's part of me, and without her, I'm
not whole, I'm only half.
That's the idea.
The two shall become one flesh.
The very word half puts the whole case
in where Paul is elaborating on it here.
Husbands, do you understand it?
When you love your wife, you're not loving
somebody else.
You're loving yourself.
You're taking care of yourself.
I think that this gives us an amazingly
positive conception of the Christian marriage.
This is a view of marriage which is
not possible, but within the Christian faith, it
lifts up the marriage from beyond the way
of the thinking of this world to illustrate
the relationship between Jesus and the church.
It's something positive.
The great danger is that we think of
marriage the same way that our world does.
And the only difference is that the two
people, well, they happen to be Christians, where
the other people, well, they're not.
No, if that's your thinking about the marital
relationship, you're going to miss it.
You see, there should be a great, great
difference in the Christian marriage.
Here's another point along these lines.
This is how to change the husband's thinking.
He first of all says, I've got to
think, I've got to understand, because this won't
come to me by instinct.
Secondly, he says, I've got to see my
wife as more than a partner.
She is part of me, not just a
partner.
Thirdly, as it works out in a marriage,
the husband must include the wife and her
welfare in all of his thinking.
You're not just thinking about yourself anymore, husband.
You have to think about your wife.
On a practical level, the whole of the
husband's thinking must include his wife.
He must never think of himself in isolation
or detachment.
The moment he does so, he's broken the
fundamental principle behind the marriage.
When the man thinks of himself in isolation,
he's breaking the principle upon which the marriage
is founded.
And husband, you don't have any right to
do that.
She's part of you.
Now, there's a sense in which you can't
do it.
I mean, she's part of you, and she
does not become part of you when you
don't think about her.
What it is, is you're just not making
the whole arrangement God has made.
You're not causing it to work the way
it should.
You're inflicting terrible damage upon your wife, and
it's damage to what you're doing to yourself.
You're acting against yourself, but you don't even
realize it.
You can't be individualistic.
You're only half, and you need to think
about the other half.
You must never have your desires just to
yourself alone.
Your desires must cover both of you.
You're no longer one man.
You're no longer free in that sense.
Your wife is involved in all of your
desires, in all of your aspirations.
You must never think of your wife as
an addition.
Or, it's even worse to say, as some
men talk about their wives as a burden.
No, she's part of you.
Don't we see by this what the real
cause of failure in marriage is?
I'll give you, it's a four-letter word.
The real cause of failure in marriage is
self.
When the husband starts thinking self, well, and
then the wife starts thinking self.
Do you see what they're doing?
Do you see what the principle of self
does?
It totally contradicts what God is trying to
establish in the marital relationship where the two
become one.
No, it says, no, the two, they're going
to remain two, and they're going to try
to get along the best they can, but
they're going to remain two.
God says, no, you deny yourself, husband and
wife.
The wife has plenty of ways to deny
herself, right?
It doesn't seem that long ago, although in
the middle of this passage, it seems like
a million years ago that we're talking about
the obligations of the wife.
But she has plenty of ways in which
she must deny herself, doesn't she?
Well, husband, this is how you need to
do it.
The real cause of failure in marriage is
self.
Self, with all of its horrible ways it
expresses itself.
It always leads to trouble.
Self always wants everything for itself.
And so he says, hey, you've got to
start thinking, you two, you're one now.
Now, when the two are one, how can
conflict arise?
How can there be this dispute?
How can you have this knock-down, drag
-out argument?
Well, you may as well go around punching
yourself in the face, hitting yourself in the
chest, whatever you want to do.
You're punishing yourself.
You've forgotten this principle of unity.
Might I say as well, that when we're
talking about the husband's thinking, we realize that
this thinking of unity must influence all of
the husband's thinking.
This is a great commandment to married men,
never to be selfish.
And to deliberately remind himself all the time,
I'm a married man, there's someone else who's
a part of me.
She's not my partner, she's part of me.
And whatever I think of for myself, I
must also think of her.
My thinking must never be individualistic.
It must always bring in what's good for
her, what's good for us.
God has given me the place of taking
care of her.
All his thinking, all his wishing, all his
desiring, the totality of his life, the totality
of his activity, it must include her.
It's a high call for the thinking of
a man, but this is what God instructs
us to.
Now, how does this principle of oneness affect
the husband's actions?
We've talked about how it should affect the
husband's thinking, right?
How does it affect his actions?
Well, let me state two negatives and then
two positives.
First of all, one negative is, obviously, the
husband is never to abuse the wife.
Never.
Many men mistreat their own bodies.
Look around you.
We know how to do that, right?
But this is foolish, isn't it?
The same way many men mistreat their wives,
and it's the same as abusing their own
bodies.
When you look at a man who's abusing
his own body, maybe it's substance abuse, maybe
it's some weird form of self-mutilation, you
look at that man and you say, he's
either crazy or he's a fool.
Honestly, friends, I know it sounds strong, but
when we understand these principles, you can say
the same thing to a man who's mistreating
his wife.
He's either crazy or he's a fool, because
he's hurting himself.
I mean, apart from the inherent wrongfulness of
what he's doing, he's simply a fool.
Secondly, the husband is not to neglect his
wife.
I mean, you can abuse your own body,
right?
But then you can also have a different
kind of abuse, the abuse that comes from
neglect.
And many men neglect their own bodies, and
that's foolish.
Now, what happens when you neglect your body?
Well, every one of us men who are
getting on in age can tell that story,
right?
See, there's a time when you could go
out and do a lot of things, right?
You could go out and, well, you know,
you could surf in certain kind of conditions,
you know, and you go out eight-foot
day, and right, I'll go out there and
I'll charge on it, you know, and great,
wonderful.
Now you go out there on the eight
-foot day and you're terrified.
And you might surf it, and you come
back, what's the difference between now and then?
I'm older, I should be smarter, I should
be wiser.
You say, well, I haven't taken good care
of this body.
And you're out there and you think, I
want my body to do this, I want
it to just spring up at the right
moment, and with the right balance, and with
the right, you know, momentum, and just to
do exactly what it wants.
And what do you find?
You find that the spirit is willing, but
the flesh is weak.
That you want to do something, but your
body won't respond.
Why?
Because you've neglected your body.
Maybe in the same way, when you neglect
your wife, you may want to do things
with your life or as a married couple,
but it's not going to be able to
happen, because you've been neglecting your wife.
A married man must no longer act as
if he's a single man.
His wife should be involved in everything.
Doesn't this simply mean that man and wife
should do things together?
Now, of course, there's aspects of business, there
are aspects of other occasions when the man
has to be alone and do things alone,
but even in those things, he needs to
allow his wife to enter into those things.
Husbands, this applies to the work of the
ministry as well, right?
Don't leave your wife a widow because you're
out there serving the Lord, no.
Don't treat your home as a dormitory where
you just return to sleep.
No, there's to be an active, positive, ideal
relationship there.
And you need to keep that goal in
the forefront of your mind.
And you may resign from it already and
say, well, I know I can't fulfill it
perfectly, so why even try?
Well, no, you're right.
You're not going to be able to fulfill
it perfectly.
Do the best you can.
So, if he's a married man, don't behave
as a single man.
Don't do it for the name of the
Lord.
Don't do it in any respect.
Not for the name of riches or your
career.
There can be incredible selfishness at that point.
Now, a lot of times, it's really nothing
worse than thoughtlessness.
Honestly, man.
Oftentimes, that's how it is.
And the wives think it's sometimes part of
a great conspiracy of the man against the
wife.
He makes all these plans to avoid her.
No, oftentimes, in the heart or the mind
of a man, it's simple thoughtlessness.
But friends, in any case, a Christian should
not be guilty of thoughtlessness.
You might say, well, it's not as bad
as deliberate neglect.
Well, no, but it's still bad.
And the end result can still be the
same.
And the third principle here on how it
means a man should treat his wife is
it means that a man must always appreciate
his wife and never take her for granted.
He must think of what he can do
to nourish and cherish her.
I mean, you think about what you're going
to eat, so you should think about what
will help your wife, what will strengthen your
wife.
Man, you like to eat what pleases you,
right?
You nourish and cherish your own body that
way.
Well, think about what pleases your wife.
Nourish and cherish her spiritually.
You went out of your way to do
this before you got married.
Now you don't.
Nourish and cherish her now.
Exercise.
Man, you recognize, even if you don't do
it, you recognize, well, exercise is important to
a healthy body.
Well, in the same way, you need to,
so to speak, exercise with your wife.
And so often, you know what this means,
as simple as anything?
It just means talking with your wife.
You know, she wants to be involved in
your life.
She has an instinctive grasp of this unity.
And even though you don't have an instinctive
grasp of it, she does.
And so she wants to know about your
business, about your worries, about what's going on
every day.
And so bring her into it.
She's your body.
Bring her into it.
Speak to her concerning it.
Bring understanding to bear on it.
She's part of your life.
So bring her into your whole life.
Make yourself talk to your wife.
It's hard.
You come home from a long day.
Oftentimes, you just don't feel like talking.
I understand that.
But you have to do it nonetheless.
She's part of you.
You neglect her, you're hurting yourself.
So look at your wife and appreciate the
oneness.
Fourthly, I'd say this really applies to the
point how we have to always protect our
wives.
You protect your own body, right?
You're protecting it right now with clothing.
You protect when you drive, when you do
things to take care of yourself.
So you must protect your wife.
You know, that's Peter's whole point in this
passage where he talks about the wife being
the weaker vessel.
It means you protect your wife.
You know, infections come against our bodies.
And so sometimes we'll go get that inoculation,
right?
To protect our body.
You get a flu shot, why?
I'm going to inoculate myself with something so
that I won't get ill.
I want to protect my body.
And so inoculate your marriage.
Do things to protect it.
If there's some kind of peculiar, exceptional trial
or anxiety or problem, if something's testing your
wife to the uttermost, then go out of
your way to protect your wife and to
help her.
She's as the Bible says, she's the weaker
vessel.
So you go and you protect her.
Do everything you can to build up your
resistance in your Christian life, in your marriage
there, as you would build up the resistance
in your body so that you're strong against
outside infections and attacks.
Prepare yourself for the hazards of life.
You have to build her up.
Men, do we see it here?
It's not easy to see.
It's not easy to allow this to really
transform our minds and our thinking.
I think that if we give it enough
time, it happens.
Have you seen a couple that's been married
50, 60 years?
They're one, aren't they?
I mean, the unity that comes forth from
a couple like that, it's absolutely mind-blowing.
I mean, they just have such an instinctive
sense of their oneness so often.
I do think we can give something better
to our wives and say, you know, sweetheart,
in 30 or 40 years, I'll be there.
Let's give it time.
Well, it's not going to be an overnight
change, but neither does it have to be
30 or 40 years.
Men, do you see the biblical principle here?
Take it to heart.
Now, I wish we had time this morning
because there's something that I would really like
to talk about in regard to this, but
we'll save it and we'll start it off
for next week because this really shows us
a lot about our own relationship with Jesus,
doesn't it?
The kind of unity that He wants with
us.
We'll leave that for next week.
Let's just conclude with prayer right now and
ask God to make us better husbands in
this regard.