Nathan Rambeck - The Christian Family: Husbands & Wives

[0:00] It's easy with that verse, you know, it's so common, right? It is the most popular, most well-known Bible verse in the Bible, and it's easy to overlook, but the power of that, that is the gospel in a nutshell, isn't it?

[0:13] God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And we need to get the message out. In fact, I, you know, just thinking about the power of that verse, I was listening to a testimony, a Christian testimony, and I'm trying to remember where I was, what the source was or who was I was listening to, but he talked about he picked up a Bible and started reading it from beginning to end, and when he came to that verse, that's when he realized what God had done for him, and he trusted in Christ by reading John 3.16.

[0:49] And I'm sure that's the case for many people. Well, we're going to get started. We do have a children's church class. If you want to take advantage of that, the kids can be dismissed at that time.

[1:01] But let's jump into the scriptures. So we're going to open up in prayer. Father, this morning, we're so grateful to you for your love and care for us. And we ask that as we go through the scriptures here and find out what you have to say about the family, that we would be encouraged, that we would be inspired, that we would be motivated to live lives, especially as families, for you.

[1:30] Thank you for your word and the wisdom that it brings to us in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay, so we started last week talking about the family.

[1:41] Last week we just had somewhat of an overview, talking about, well, what does a family look like? There's a lot of confusion today. What is a family?

[1:52] In fact, I googled a song by Sesame Street.

[2:03] Anybody ever watch Sesame Street? That's still around, right? Sesame Street's been around for what? I don't know, since the 70s? I don't know when Sesame Street started. But it was on when I was a kid.

[2:14] It's been around for a long time. And it's always been a pretty wholesome thing, you know, until the culture turned. And just like everything else, things get spoiled.

[2:25] But they had a song from maybe about 10 years ago, and it was a song, I'm trying to remember how it goes, but we're doing the family thing.

[2:35] And it's a cute song. But it says basically a family is anything that you want it to be. It's just people living together and loving each other. And to a certain extent, that is somewhat true.

[2:50] But you can kind of see, you know, 10 years ago, kind of where that was headed, what people were trying to open up people to, these different views of families that are not part of God's design.

[3:05] And so what is a family? And we talked a little bit about that last week. Today, we're going to specifically focus in on two specific roles in the family.

[3:17] And that's the husband and the wife. The husband and wife. So we're going to talk about marriage and husbands and wives. And just like last week, we're going to go back and look at the beginning.

[3:28] So let's open up to the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings. And by the way, as we open up there, we're going to look at Genesis.

[3:42] We're going to start with Genesis 2.18. We're talking about the Christian family. But when we talk about the Christian family, we're just talking about really the family in general.

[3:57] Did God design a Christian family and then a secular family? Are there two different types of families? You have the Christians are supposed to live this way and everybody else, you can just make up your own thing.

[4:10] Is that the way that it was intended? Actually, we're going back to Genesis. And Genesis is before Christ. It's actually before Moses. Genesis is the beginning, the way God designed things to work from the very beginning with the very first man and the very first woman.

[4:26] God's design for family is not just for believers. It's for everyone. And so even though this is titled the Christian family, really it's about how the family ought to be.

[4:38] And as Christians, we ought to do family the right way, the way that God designed and he intended. All right, we're going to look at Genesis 2.18.

[4:51] And let's see where we want to start here. Yeah, we'll start with verse 18. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

[5:03] I will make him a helper comparable to him. And then we'll skip down. Well, actually, let's just continue reading.

[5:14] And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.

[5:25] So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him.

[5:36] And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man.

[5:52] And Adam said, So this is the story, the account, of the first husband and wife, Adam and Eve.

[6:26] And God designed specifically a partner, a helper for Adam. So I want to look specifically at this verse 18. I'll read it again.

[6:37] And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. God did not design us as individuals to be alone, to be lone rangers, if you will.

[6:51] He designed us as social creatures. You know, it makes me think of NASA. You know that NASA, one of the things that they'll do to train astronauts is to put them in isolation to see how they'll do if they're by themselves for a long time.

[7:12] And a lot of people really struggle with that. And I think some of us are better with isolation than others. But I don't think any of us really do all that well just being by ourselves for extended periods of time.

[7:26] God didn't create us to be that way. He created us as social creatures. We see here that God, he talks about he designed the animals. Right? And, but among the animals, there wasn't that relationship.

[7:42] Right? There wasn't a helper suitable among the animals. And can you, can you have a relationship with an animal?

[7:56] See nods or shakes? Kind of, right? It depends on what the animal is, right? Right? So, many years back, some of my kids talked me into buying a family rabbit.

[8:12] Has anybody ever had a rabbit? And we found out pretty quickly that rabbits are not very relational. You know, you think, oh, they're cute and fluffy, but they like, they're not, they're not your friend.

[8:26] I don't know if anybody has any experience with that. But there are a few animals that are friendly, right? Right? Dog. What's the dog called, right? What's the nickname for dogs?

[8:38] Man's best friend. Right? And a lot of times, actually, people will choose to make, have friendships with animals like a dog rather than people because they're less problematic.

[8:51] Right? And, of course, that's a mistake. We shouldn't do that. Right? We shouldn't prefer animals over people because, of course, with all the problems that come with people, there are all the benefits that come as well that God intended and designed.

[9:08] But God didn't want Adam to be alone, so he created a helper, somebody to come alongside him. It says, I will make him a helper comparable to him.

[9:20] So somebody to come alongside and be a helper. Not just like a business partner or something like that, but somebody who could come and be by his side to help him with his mandate.

[9:33] And what was the mandate for mankind? It's to take dominion. Take dominion and fill the earth. So a helper, to help him take dominion over the earth and also to multiply.

[9:49] Right? And we multiply through creating households. Last week, we talked about we're families, we each are families that are creating new families, new households.

[10:01] And those families and those households create more families. And through time, we end up multiplying and filling the earth. And as Christians, we want to raise not just any household, but we want to raise believers.

[10:16] And we want to raise believers that also raise believers. In this, it says, I will make him a helper that's comparable to him. Now that's the New King James. That's what I read out of, the New King James.

[10:30] But in the King James, it uses a different phrase. What is, what's the phrase it uses in the King James? Anybody shout that out? A help meet.

[10:41] A help meet. I'm going to create a help meet for him. And that word meet, it's an old archaic word. Of course, we have our modern day definition of meet. But the archaic definition of the word meet is something that's suitable or fit.

[10:58] I think Jesus talked about doing works meet for repentance. Also in the King James. You should do things that are suitable to show your repentance, he was talking about.

[11:14] And so, God created a woman to be suitable to meet the needs, the relational needs, the social needs of a man.

[11:27] There's also another translation that I really like to look at sometimes called Young's Literal Translation. Has anybody ever looked at that? I love Young's because it's not very readable.

[11:38] Like, I wouldn't recommend it for your daily reading because it's woodenly literal. And language is not meant to be woodenly literal. It's meant to be more of an art form, right?

[11:48] But sometimes, reading the literal nature of, especially because of Bible translations, it's sometimes difficult to communicate through translation the original ideas or intents of the original language, knowing what kind of the literal aspect of it can be helpful in fully understanding it.

[12:13] But in Young's, he says that God created a helper as his counterpart. As his counterpart. And so, man and woman fit together like a hand and glove, you might say.

[12:30] They fit together. They work well together. God designed man and woman to be different but also the same.

[12:42] And boys and girls are different, aren't they? And I think, I know there's a lot of confusion about that today but God created us to be different and he did it for a reason.

[12:55] He did it for a purpose. Let's go back down and read what Adam's response was to this woman that God gave him. And Adam said, verse 23, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

[13:09] She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. And that word woman, it's kind of difficult in the Hebrew but it's actually just the word man with a female additive to it.

[13:27] So, in English, we do things like we'll add like you have a steward and a stewardess, right? Or a host and a hostess, right?

[13:38] So, we'll use that at the end of a word to feminize it, if you will. That's actually the same thing done here in Hebrew. So, a woman is a man but the female version, the female kind of a man.

[13:54] So, one of the things that Adam is pointing out here, he's saying, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She's like me.

[14:05] Unlike, you know, these animals, the zebras and the giraffes and the fish and all these other animals that I just named or that God gave me to name, she's like me.

[14:16] But, it's also true that man and woman are very different. Anybody notice that? Yeah, we, it's actually one of the things I think that causes that magnetism between men and women, right?

[14:35] They're different. They're interesting. You know, they're not like me. Pastor Marv likes to bring up this verse but in Proverbs chapter 30, the, whoever it was, I can't remember who wrote Proverbs chapter 30 but says this in verse 19, he says, the way, I think I gotta look this up because I, I think I need to read two verses.

[15:00] So Proverbs chapter 30 and we'll start with, or let's see, do, I think maybe I just only got part of it.

[15:23] Oh no. Okay, yeah, verse 18. There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yes four, which I do not understand. The way of an eagle in the air.

[15:34] That's quite mysterious, isn't it? And very wonderful. The way of a serpent on a rock. The way of a ship in the midst of the sea. And the way of a man with a virgin or the King James I think says a maid.

[15:49] And so there's something very mysterious about this magnetism, this attraction between men and women. Even in Ephesians chapter 5, Paul talks about the relationship between the husband and the wife.

[16:08] And one of the things he does is he compares it to the relationship of Christ and his church. Christ and his church. But one of the things he says in verse 32, Ephesians 5, 32, he's talking about, he actually quotes about the man and woman becoming one flesh.

[16:31] The man leaving his family or his household and being joined to a woman and then becoming one flesh. And he says this, he says, this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

[16:44] He's speaking about both and he's saying just like this relationship between a man and a woman is a mystery, so is this relationship between Christ and his church. It's a mystery.

[16:55] There's something mysterious about it. There's something wonderful about it but something that we can't quite always wrap our heads or our minds around. And that's the way it is between men and women.

[17:11] You know, one of the indications that we have that we know that men and women are different and like I said it's the thing that draws us to each other but it's also the thing that kind of annoys us, right?

[17:25] After we're married, right? The differences sometimes. It's like, well, why can't she just think like me? Or he'll say, why can't he just think like me? Or, you know, we notice these differences a lot more and we have books out there.

[17:39] I think, isn't there a book called Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus or something like that? Right? I think that's from years ago. And I think there are probably dozens and dozens and dozens of books trying to explain, right, either to the man or to the woman how their counterpart is different and try to understand, right?

[18:02] And that's one of the, I think, important things in marriage or in any relationship but especially in marriage is try to understand the other person.

[18:12] If you don't ever take the time to try to understand how somebody thinks, how they're different from you, you'll always be, always be knocking heads. So, we, I think we see in the husband and wife relationship specifically that this is the greatest relationship that God intended.

[18:36] So, guys can have buddies, right? And women can have their girlfriends, you know, and go out and do girlfriend things and the guys can go hunting or bowling or whatever and the girls can go do, I don't know, the things the girls do.

[18:52] And, and that's all well and good but it pales in comparison to what can happen between a man and a woman who come together to form a household.

[19:04] and it's the, it's the greatest opportunity, the greatest potential for love that we have in this life, I think, as far as human to human relationships.

[19:17] On the flip side, it's the greatest potential for pain too, isn't it? The people who are closest to one another are the ones that have the greatest potential to cause the most pain.

[19:30] When you're on the road, you're driving and somebody like, maybe you, you do something somebody doesn't like and they get mad at you and they start yelling at you and maybe they, you know, give you a yucky sign or something like that.

[19:46] We actually, we refer to that, the middle finger, right? We refer to that as the international pro-choice sign because that, when you're doing pro-life work, I've done a lot of pro-life work and that's like the number one gesture we get from, from people.

[20:02] But, when you have somebody upset or angry with you who's a stranger, does that have a big impact? Does it cause you a lot of pain? It's kind of annoying and, you know, it's, it doesn't feel good.

[20:17] But that pales, right, in comparison to somebody you really, really love who can hurt you. Makes me think of Elizabeth Taylor.

[20:29] Elizabeth Taylor, she's a famous actress. I think she passed away some years ago. But she was famously married and divorced seven times. Married and divorced seven times.

[20:41] She just couldn't seem to figure out how to, how to stay married. And, I think during an interview, somebody brought that up and, if I remember correctly, just asked her about all these divorces that she had and if they get any easier.

[20:58] And she said, no, not at all. And she described it this way. She said, every single divorce that I've had felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

[21:10] My heart was being ripped out of my chest. And so, it didn't matter how many times that happened, but there's a lot of pain that can, can be, can come out of these deep relationships that we formed that God intended for us to have.

[21:27] We also see in this verse, back in Genesis, that God didn't create, obviously, a man. You know, there's a funny saying, God created Adam and Eve, right?

[21:40] Not Adam and Steve, right? And so, homosexual marriage, obviously, is becoming a thing that we have to deal with today and speak out against because it's so destructive.

[21:53] also, another thing to point out is that God didn't create two women and bring them to Adam, right? He didn't bring two or five or ten or a hundred and say, here you go.

[22:08] He created one. And one of the, kind of confusing things that you might find in the Bible is there's actually a, quite a bit of this practice called polygamy. So, we have monogamy, which means where you just have one man and one woman, and then we have polygamy.

[22:25] Polygamy is not, in fact, it's not legal, right, in this country, but it is something that is still practiced. It used to be much more common in the past. Today, you see that maybe in some Muslim countries, I think in some African, some African countries still do this today.

[22:44] But in the West, if you will, it's typically illegal. of course, we have Mormonism that kind of repopularized that and then kind of did away with it and now there's a resurgence.

[22:58] I think of that in this country, especially as this whole idea of marriage, as God designed it, is becoming less and less respected, if you will. Polygamy is becoming more popular.

[23:10] But that's not part of God's design. And we see God providing some kind of allowance for it. And it's not always clear to me why that's the case.

[23:23] But God did tell the kings, especially, right, he said, do not multiply wives. Sometimes I think, you know, especially during wartime, who usually gets killed during a war?

[23:36] It's usually the men, right? And sometimes a lot of the men get killed, right? And what happens? You have this disparity. You have 5,000 women and 2,000 men.

[23:50] And isn't it interesting, right, with our genetics and how when we procreate, there's basically an equal number of men and women, right? And that's great, right? Because it means there's always somebody for everyone, right?

[24:01] And sometimes you think, you see somebody and it's like, I don't know if they're ever going to find somebody. And they do, right? People find somebody. You think, that person is kind of odd. And you know what? What they typically find is somebody just as odd, right?

[24:15] And I think we're all odd in our own ways, right? But there's always somebody out there for us. But anyway, I think, you know, during especially war times, and I think, as I think about certain prophecies, things that God talked about, you know, women just asking, begging men, will you, you know, make me your wife?

[24:41] because there's a lack of men. There's a lack of men. Especially back in older times, it was very, you know, if you were not married, or under a father's house, it was, there weren't many options for you as a woman.

[24:58] So God did allow polygamy, but that's not part of his design, and we see that with his creation. He didn't bring two or more women to Adam, he just brought one. And when we look at this term, one flesh, one flesh, that was, you can't make one flesh with multiple women, right?

[25:22] In fact, what you're doing is you're, instead of uniting a household, you're dividing a household. We actually see this, we've been going through the Kings and the Chronicles, in our family Bible reading time, and seeing, and this happens a lot with kings.

[25:38] Now, polygamy usually happens with people who've got a lot of money, right? And why is that? Well, because wives are expensive, right?

[25:52] That's a funny way to put it. But it takes a lot, right? And so, usually, you have to have enough money to be able to support multiple wives. Where was I going with that?

[26:03] I forgot what was I going with that. She said, I have no idea where you were going. I don't know either. Oh, division. So, we saw in the different households, even among David's household and so many other kings, you have, he'll have, David had, I think we read, listed six of his sons, and they were all from six different women.

[26:26] And then there were more sons. I can't remember the total number of sons that he had, but it was just interesting. But there was so much division in his household. We see with other stories in the Bible with Abraham and his wife Sarah and her maid servant, there was division there.

[26:48] It causes division, not unity. And what God wants in a household, in a family, is unity. There's that whole one flesh idea. marriage creates a union, a togetherness, from two people.

[27:04] So it's one plus one equals one, right? If you do it the math way. One man, one woman, equals one flesh to create one household.

[27:20] In Matthew chapter 19 verse 6, Jesus was addressing the issue of divorce. Somebody brought that up. And God provided, through Moses, regulations around divorce.

[27:38] Sometimes divorces are necessary, but that doesn't mean that that's how God created it to be. God created man and woman to be married for a lifetime, right?

[27:51] But because of sin, God has allowances for when things get bad enough that a divorce is required. So he was talking about this in Matthew chapter 19 verse 6 and he says this, so then they are no longer two but one flesh, just like it says in Genesis.

[28:11] Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. And he was just making the point that God didn't intend for there to be a separation except for what do we say in our marriage vows?

[28:24] Until death do us part. For the whole lifetime, God's intent, his design is for that marriage to last a whole lifetime. The other thing I think that one flesh points to is a union of purpose.

[28:46] A union of purpose. a family was meant to be going in one direction, to have one purpose, to be a husband and wife, to be working together towards one end.

[29:02] And I think too many marriages today, we have the husband and wife going in different directions, right? And it causes nothing but problem and troubles and a lot of times ends in broken marriages.

[29:17] I think one of the things that I think about in the past, sometimes we have romantic ideas about the past.

[29:30] What if we were just farmers? Wouldn't everything just be better if we were just farmers? And of course, that's not the case. But when you do live an agricultural or agrarian lifestyle, you have a family working together, eking out a living, doing it together.

[29:46] And that provides a lot of family unity. One of the risks that we have today is we have opportunities for careerism, right? We can build careers. And I've seen this many times.

[29:59] You see it in Hollywood, right? Because you have two Hollywood couples that get together. And do Hollywood couples tend to have awesome marriages that everybody kind of looks up to?

[30:10] Or is it the opposite? It's kind of, you know, you see in the, what do you call those magazines? The tabloids, thank you, the tabloids. And it's always about, you know, who just got together and who broke up.

[30:22] And there's a lot of breaking up. But you'll see, well, I've got my acting career, right? And then she's got her acting career. And maybe he's going to go film on his location over in New York, and she's going to go film at her location in L.A.

[30:41] And you have two people going in two opposite directions. I even remember reading about a family once, I can't remember what, but both of them were really committed to their careers. And there were some high, you know, demand jobs, like I think one was a lawyer and maybe I was running a business or something like that.

[31:01] But they had their own careers, and they were, one of them was based in New York, and the other one was based in California. And they settled, they bought a house somewhere in the middle, I can't remember where, and during the week he would fly to New York, and she would fly to California, and then they'd come back and have family together on the weekends.

[31:26] And that's just, that's a very extreme example. But I think we can find that in our own families. families. And it's not like it's wrong for a husband and wife to both have, you know, different jobs or anything like that.

[31:44] But we do have to be careful, right? We have to be careful that we don't find ourselves, the husband going in one direction and the wife going in another direction.

[31:56] Even if you're living in a situation where, let's say, if with our family, I have a full time job, and my wife, Jamie, she stays home with the kids.

[32:09] You think, well, that will solve everything, right? But it doesn't necessarily, right? Is it possible, right, even in those kinds of situations, for people to be going two different directions?

[32:21] It certainly is. So as husbands and wives, we need to make sure, do check-ins, are we going in the same direction? Are we going, do we have the same vision?

[32:35] I want to now turn over just one chapter over to the next chapter in Genesis, Genesis chapter 3. And we're going to look at the fall and how things change just a little bit regarding the family.

[32:52] We'll start with verse 16. So we had the fall, Adam and Eve sinned, and let's actually go back a little bit.

[33:13] Well, so there's some curses given. So let's start with the curse to the serpent. So the Lord, verse 14, so the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field.

[33:27] On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life, and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

[33:41] Then he gave some consequences to the woman. Right? And was this just Eve? Or does this carry through to every woman? To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception.

[33:55] In pain you shall bring forth children, your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Then he turned to the man, he turned to Adam, and he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat of it.

[34:13] Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it, all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.

[34:24] And you shall eat the herb of the field, in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

[34:38] So because of sin, things changed. Now things didn't change completely. When we look at the way that God designed the man and the woman, so the man, was the man supposed to work hard from the very beginning, yeah God put him in the garden and it was his job to tend to the garden, right?

[35:02] But it was kind of a, it was kind of a, not, it was kind of an easy job, right? If you look back, you remember how the water was gardened?

[35:13] Did Adam have to like pull out the garden hose and, you know, make sure everything was watered? There was actually a mist that came up from the ground every morning. It was amazing.

[35:24] It was just like built-in watering. What do we have to do today? You have to do all this irrigation systems. You know, if you're a farmer, you know how all this works. Irrigation and fertilizing and you have to plow up the ground.

[35:38] You got to really dig in the dirt. And so the man's job was to work, to build, but it was kind of an easy gig. But with this, we call it the curse, it became much harder.

[35:54] And God said, now the ground is going to be cursed and this is going to be really tough for you. It's going to be hard. You're going to have to dig. You're going to have to sweat. You're going to bleed.

[36:06] You're going to toil severely in the ground in order to make a living for you and your family. For the woman, I believe without a doubt that God intended for women to bear children, right?

[36:25] From the very beginning. But there was a change. It was going to be much more difficult to bear children. And so we look at this and it's called the curse.

[36:39] But really I think God was doing us a service. And the reason for all this was because of sin. Sin entered into the human race and God did something to help account for that.

[36:54] He made things more difficult. He made things more difficult for the man, made things more difficult for the woman. And why would he do that? Was it just to be kind of mean?

[37:06] I don't think so at all. I think there's a purpose behind it. And I think the purpose is when life is hard, it's hard to do things on your own, right?

[37:18] It's hard for a man to build a household to make provision, right, for the household to bring home the bacon if you will and also to raise kids.

[37:32] Can you imagine? That's even in today's world where we actually have it pretty easy, right? We got refrigerators and dishwashers and vehicles and gas powered machines and computers and all these things to help us.

[37:46] But even today, it's difficult to do all those things. We think about single fathers or even more so single mothers, right, who are trying to do it all. And it is so hard.

[37:58] It's overwhelming. God did something. I think he did this on purpose to bring, to make the man and woman even more dependent on each other than they were.

[38:11] because providing would be so hard, because bearing children would be so much more difficult. The man and woman would need each other.

[38:23] And when we need each other, it's a lot easier to stay together. It's a lot easier to stay together. there's a song, Barbara Streisand.

[38:38] And she had this song called People. Anybody remember that song? I think it's from the 80s or I don't know. People. But I don't remember where it's from.

[38:51] But there's a line in the song and it says, and it's, isn't it funny? I don't think Barbara Streisand is a Christian by any means. But even the world, right, you recognize kind of the nature of things.

[39:06] But the line in the song is, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.

[39:18] world. You actually see when there are people who have, I think about the lottery. You ever read stories about people who win the lottery?

[39:31] What usually happens when somebody wins the lottery? There are usually the two biggest outcomes of people who win the lottery, as far as my observation, I don't know statistically, but is they become addicted to drugs and they get divorced.

[39:45] It's like the most common outcome, winning the lottery. And so, you know, for that reason, I think it's kind of generally a bad idea to throw your money towards things like that.

[39:57] But, you know, I think it's actually, there's a bigger risk of winning the lottery than losing, you know, your money. Because if you win the lottery, there's a big risk.

[40:08] People who have come into windfalls, I remember there was a family that I heard about that got hurt at work and got quite a windfall from a, I don't know if a windfall is the right word to use, but a legal settlement.

[40:23] Thank you. Legal settlement. Millions of dollars. And this wasn't somebody that I knew, but I just heard from another family and they said they watched their family fall apart.

[40:35] Because people who need people tend to grow together, whereas people who don't, when you don't need each other, especially in a sin-fallen world, people who don't need each other tend to drift apart.

[40:55] So, I think that's relevant in our day when there is so much wealth and we think, well, I'm not very wealthy. Well, in comparison to the rest of the world, you know, most of us are.

[41:08] And there are lots of opportunities that we have where, well, we can just do things on our own or pay somebody else to do something, things like that.

[41:21] Because it's hard, right? Working together and doing things for each other. It can be difficult and sometimes it's easier to just pay somebody else. But I think in many cases, that might, you know, it's not like that's necessarily wrong in and of itself.

[41:36] But we, there's a risk there, right? There's a risk there that we stop needing each other as much as we used to. And so we can look out for those things. I look back at my own life and my own marriage and the times where we drew closest together was the times where we had our biggest struggles in life.

[41:57] Anybody else kind of resonate with that? Think about the times that we came together was times when we really had to struggle through difficulty, whether it was financial or other things.

[42:18] Let's turn to Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5.

[42:39] Ephesians chapter 5. Talks about responsibilities that men and women have, or husbands and wives, I should say, towards one another. And we'll just go ahead and read through this.

[42:51] Ephesians chapter 5, verse 22 through 33. It says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church.

[43:02] And he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

[43:18] That he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water by the word. That he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

[43:31] 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.

[43:44] For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bone. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

[43:57] Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respect her husband. You know what?

[44:12] Because we're out of time, I think we're just going to put this on hold. Because one of the things to talk about next is how God set up the order within a family.

[44:24] And there's a lot of controversy about that today. About this term patriarchy gets a lot of bad press, if you will.

[44:36] Patriarchy. I've even seen people at my workplace down with the patriarchy. Down with the patriarchy. Patriarchy means father rule. It's what it means.

[44:47] Father rule. And there's a lot of controversy about that. But I think we'll take the time to get into it maybe next week.

[45:01] How's that sound? Since we do have a few minutes, we have a few husbands and wives around here, don't we? Any thoughts or comments?

[45:15] We'll get my roving mic man, David. You want to run around with the mic? Since we have a few minutes, instead of trying to rush through the rest of this, some comments, some words of wisdom from husbands and wives out in the audience?

[45:34] I know I didn't give you very much time to think about it. going once.

[45:55] Going twice. Going twice. All right, David, what are your words of wisdom? That should have been on the mic.

[46:13] I just covered everything, huh? I just provided all the wisdom that there is on husbands and wives. All right, well, if there's nothing else, okay, we've got a taker up front.

[46:26] Come on, David, come up front. We've got Ron and Joyce up here. I think one. Yeah, you're good.

[46:37] He's on. One of the main things for folks in the relationship, you remember, is that God gave you two ears and one mouth. Two ears.

[46:50] So that's a communication tip, right? Two ears and one mouth. And maybe for the younger ones who aren't catching on, well, what does that mean? Two ears means you have two ears to listen with and one mouth to speak with.

[47:05] And so we need to be twice as ready to listen than we are to speak, right? That's good. Anybody else?

[47:15] Since we broke the ice, since Ron broke the ice? All right, Joe. Joe's going to go for it. Hi.

[47:28] This testing, one, two, three? Yeah, you're good. We should remember that in the Bible, Adam was not deceived, Eve was deceived, and Adam wasn't deceived.

[47:41] It says that in Scripture. I can't quote it right now, but he was not deceived. It's later in the New Testament, too. So you say, well, why did he sin then? If he knew he was going to be moved from this perfect environment, and he's going to have to go to work, it was going to go outside.

[48:00] Why did he go ahead and eat of the fruit that she handed to him? Well, the reason he did was because he loved Eve so much.

[48:12] He was so endured to her and loved her so much that he did not want to be separated from her. So he chose then.

[48:23] He chose. He made a decision almost immediately. I'm going to go with her. I'm going to eat of this fruit so that I can be with her, even though we're outside the garden and we're going to die.

[48:39] Death is going to come. He knew this. He wasn't deceived. He wanted to live with her, even though he knew he was going to die. That's how well and how much he loved her.

[48:50] And I think that's a lesson for us. That's how much we should love our wives. Well, I think that is the case. It's interesting. You know, men are obviously the, you know, we see this today with all this weird gender stuff going on in the sports that these men pretend to be women and then they, like, swim faster and run faster, all that, than the women that they're competing against.

[49:20] Men are so much stronger. And you think, well, you know, a woman doesn't really have much power over a man. But that's not the case, is it? In fact, there are plenty of songs that have been sung, right, about the power that a woman has over a man.

[49:35] It's just not, may not necessarily be physical power, but it's a different kind. We need to be cognizant of that, of the impact and effect that we can have.

[49:46] And you can have, in your marriage, as a husband or a wife, an impact for good or for ill on your spouse, right? So, any others?

[50:00] Yeah, I think, you know, I think it's conjecture what, all the reasons why Adam sinned.

[50:15] Very well, you know, his wife going that direction could have played into, right? We can be tempted by our wives, by our husbands, by anybody around us. And so, we need to be careful, right, of putting, in fact, one of the interesting things that Jesus himself said, right?

[50:37] And we love the family. And the family is so important. And we're going to be talking about how important the family is and family unity. But what did Jesus say regarding himself and your brothers and sisters and fathers and sons?

[50:53] He said that I need to be more important than even those family relationships. And he talked about some of the tightest bonds that you can have between a father and a son and a mother and a daughter. But he said, I came to bring division between father and son, mother and daughter.

[51:10] I can't remember all the other relationships he listed. But he said, I'm so important that even those tight family bonds need to be divided if necessary.

[51:23] And so, we should not idolize the family and put the family above the Lord by any means. We want to walk in the Lord together in unity.

[51:35] That's what we want our families to be about. All right, so next week, we'll get into this whole topic of authority, which is a little bit controversial, but it's important. It's important to the integrity, to the integrity of the family.

[51:51] So we'll look at that next week. All right, let's end in a word of prayer. Father, so grateful to you again for your word, for the instruction that it provides for our lives.

[52:03] Continue to open up the scriptures to us as we study and read it each and every day. I hope and pray that the things we spoke of here will make a place that will indwell people's hearts and their minds richly, as we want your word to do.

[52:21] That we would take seriously our roles as husbands and wives, our relationships towards each other, to build families that are honoring to you. In Jesus' name, amen.