Dennis Tuuri

Last week we began a series of talks relative to husband wife relationships. We’ve talked a lot in this church over the last three or four years about the responsibility of parents in terms of their children. And several months ago I began to realize that we’d stressed that a lot. We really had never really discussed specifically and stressed the husband wife relationship as such. And since that’s so foundational to the Christian faith, it seemed good to set aside a few weeks here in the early part of 1988 to consider that.

Last week we began by talking about the creation of course of man and woman, the first husband and wife, and the difference of the sexes. I thought about this last week. You know that I have four children, two girls and two boys. And it’s interesting, both of my boys, now ages three and one, they’ll come up to me and they want to talk to me about something and they’ll put their face right next to mine. They will come up nose to nose and say, “Dad, I want to talk to you about something.” And you know, my girls have never did that. You know, they really want to just—what’s that expression of basketball in your face?

I guess they are real aggressive that way in terms of their communication. And I just bring that up to illustrate through a cute little example there about how men and women are different. They’ve been created different by God. And that’s good. Remember, we talked last week about that creation of Eve being a complement to Adam, not an identical person to Adam, but a complement to him. A helper fit for him.

Kind of like the opposite of him is what the Hebrew seems to imply there. And so the wife is seen as a complement to the husband, not to be looked down upon for the differences, but to be thankful to God for those differences.

Several weeks ago, I was listening to Dobson on the radio, and it’s a good show. But one of the things that was said on there kind of concerned me. A man said that a man who was—they were talking about his marriage and how they had patched their marriage up. This fellow that Dobson was interviewing, the guy has gone on to go into work going around the country and teaching men how to love their wives better and this kind of thing. And he said in there the wife is really the key to the home in their relationship, how key the wife was to restoring him back to God. And I know we hear a lot of that and I know that in a certain sense there may be some truth to that.

The scriptures as we saw last week really puts the predominant responsibility in terms of the covenant relationship of marriage upon the man. The man’s the covenant head because he is given more responsibility by God, he also is more accountable for what occurs within his covenantal unit. And so even though Eve was the first to take the fruit and to eat of it and then she gave it to Adam, yet when God came in the garden looking for Adam and Eve, he called out for Adam. He demanded an accounting from the covenant head.

And we took a great deal of time last week to establish that the man is indeed the head of that covenantal unit, that marriage is a covenant. The man therefore has a greater responsibility to protect God’s order. And so really it is the man who is the key to the covenantal unit. I think probably we think primarily of the wife being the key in this country because for years our society has become increasingly feminized and indeed the women have filled the gap as it were that men have left and so women have been very important in maintaining Christian families.

But it’s not the normative way. What we talked about last week the establishment of the male headship of the covenantal unit is the normative way of God’s work. And so that should be an encouragement to all of us to take that responsibility seriously.

I’ll just mention in passing there are several resource books you might want to look at in terms of the historical declension in our country of true manhood in the sense of the marital relationship or in other aspects as well. One is I’d mentioned several times “The Feminization of American Culture” by Anne Douglas, out of print unfortunately but some of us have copies if you’d like to look at it. There’s a new book out in the last 6 months or a year or so called “Missing in Action.” I have a copy of that and I’ll either be putting that copy or getting a new copy for the church library. I’ll probably get a new copy. It’s a very important book.

Very good book to read in terms of understanding some of the things we’re talking about last week and over the next few weeks as well.

It’s important to recognize that as we said last week, though there’s a functional subordination in terms of the roles of the marital relationship, there is also an equality in essence. I mentioned last week that one comparison is with the Trinity itself. Within the Trinity, all members of the Trinity are equal in essence, but there is a functional subordination. That’s been talked about in theological terms in terms of the ontological Trinity talking about the equality of essence or being and the economical Trinity about the differentiation of the functions within the Trinity.

And a verse that you might want to jot down is 1 Corinthians 11:3. That verse says that Christ is the head of every man, the man is head of the woman and God is the head of Christ. And so you’ll see there that comparison between the marital functional subordination and the subordination of functions in the Trinity as well. Historically, that’s a good verse to remember for that purpose.

This morning then we’re going to turn to—having said it’s important for men to do what they’re supposed to do and that’s the primary responsible position within the covenantal household—that it is the most responsible position. We’re going to look this morning at the first of two aspects we’ll be looking at about how the man is to function in relationship to his wife. The Ephesians 5 passage we just looked at talks about how the man nourishes and cherishes his own body and that’s the way he’s to relate to his wife: to nourish and cherish her. And specifically this morning we’re going to be talking about the cherishing aspect.

This nourish and cherish reminded me of a quote from Zacharias Montgomery that we keep debating how we’re going to introduce it into our PAPC newsletter on education. He had set up a number of principles and this he wrote in a book called “Poison Drops in the Federal Senate” in the late 1800s and he talked about principles relative to the education of children and the very first principle was that all parents are responsible by God for the proper clothing, proper nourishing or feeding their child and educating the child as well. Clothing, food, and education of the child are the three primary responsibilities that parents have toward their children. And they’re the ones who are responsible to do that.

The implications for education are obvious that a parent then is primarily responsible, provides the education of his child, and he shouldn’t pick the pocket of the neighbor next door without children to pay for the education of his child. Well, that really applies to what these verses tell us this morning. The husband is to nourish—he’s to feed the wife and he’s to cherish or to guard the wife.

A garment is a guarding sort of a thing in reality, isn’t it? Our clothes protect us from the environment. Most of us when we got up this morning and we came to church, we put on a rain coat to guard ourselves from the elements. And so our manner of garb changes as we need to be protected in varying degrees from the weather and from hostile elements that our body will face. Garments are seen as protection in the scriptures.

In Deuteronomy 10, the stranger is said to be given food and raiment. Food and raiment is a common theme throughout the Bible in terms of the necessity and the necessary things for life. Raiment isn’t given primarily to guard the man against embarrassment over his nakedness. Raiment is given as a guarding of the man himself. The way that food is given to nourish him.

In Luke 10:30 there’s a reference in the good Samaritan story there about how the man was first stripped of his raiment and then he was wounded. See, the guarding portion of his raiment is removed and then he’s wounded.

In 1 Timothy 6:8 we’re told to be content with food and raiment. Nourishing and guarding are the two essential elements that we need for life itself. The third thing that Montgomery talked about and that as well is talked about in our passage today—we’ll get to that in a little bit more detail in a couple of minutes. But in essence, the husband is to guard his wife. He’s to feed his wife and within the context of that he’s to educate his wife in the scriptures as well. That teaching function of the man to the wife is important as undergirding both of those two elements of food and raiment or of nourishing and guarding.

So we’re going to talk this morning about that essential—one of the first, the first of those essential elements, the guarding element of the husband toward his wife.

Before we do that I wanted to point out as I have by way of introduction that the application of God’s word then is the foundation for both of those two functions of the man: nourishing and cherishing. And I also want to point out—faithfully. We won’t spend a lot of time on it this morning, although it’s a very important aspect of the text before us—that the manner in which that is conducted is a self-sacrificial matter on the part of the husband.

After all, Christ has given us the example for the good biblical husband and Christ sacrificed himself for his wife. That self-sacrificial aspect permeates both those two functions. Okay? Not just the guarding function, but although there it’s obviously seen as well. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes also. But the underlying manner then of the guarding function is the self-sacrificial love that the servant is required to perform for the one that he serves and we are to be servants in our homes. We said last week that leadership in scriptures is seen as service.

Okay, having given some introductory statements, then let’s get into our text. We’re going to talk about the necessity of guarding first of all. Then we’ll talk about the preparation for guarding. Then we’ll talk about the specifics of guarding and finally the goal of guarding in our summation.

So first we want to look at the necessity of guarding. We spoke last week about the necessity of guarding and I suppose that the first thing that I wanted to mention here in terms of this necessity are the incipient dangers that are spoken of both in our text here and also in other portions of scripture in Acts 20 which we’ll be talking about several times this morning. You might want to be looking at that occasionally as we give our talk this morning.

In Acts 20 when Paul talks to the Ephesian elders, he tells them that part of their function is to take heed over the flock, to guard the flock. And the reason for that is that wolves shall come in. Paul is assured that wolves will enter into the church of Jesus Christ. And the elders have to guard the church from those wolves. Wolves will come from both inside the church and outside the church. And so Paul when he talks to the Ephesian elders tells them that part of their responsibility toward the bride of Christ is to guard her because there are incipient dangers that will occur.

This is important. It seems like a real simple point, but it’s important. A couple weeks ago, I made a joking reference to Talking Heads. It’s gotten me a few comments from various people, but the name of their one song “Life in Wartime” is important to recognize. The scriptures repeatedly say that there is warfare going on.

Now, we’re good postmillennial optimists—we’re all optimistic eschatologically—but that optimism shouldn’t lull us into some sort of sense of false security as if there’s no battle going on. That is, as Gary North says, we are involved in a mopping up operation. Christ has accomplished the victory over all time at the cross with his work on earth and we’re in a mopping up operation now. But it still is an operation and there’s still warfare and you still have to mop it up as it were. Mop up the enemies.

From Genesis 3, we looked at last week briefly where the serpent who was by the way the most cunning of all beasts comes into the garden and attacks the bride of Adam. From Genesis 3 all the way through to Revelation 12, we see the serpent, the dragon, whatever it was in terms of the specific use of that word in the scriptures—we see the devil manifested or possessing certain animals, beasts or people making warfare against the bride.

From Genesis all the way to Revelation, the whole giving of God’s revelation is bracketed by this theme of warfare by the serpent against the bride of the man. And so the scriptures talk about perpetual warfare going on. And it’s important for us to see that means there’s danger and that means that our own households will have dangers as well.

In Genesis that seed of the serpent that was to be at enmity with the seed of the woman is plural. And it is true that throughout the scriptures we see many different elements of and many different offspring as it were of the first serpent who attempt to attack the bride and attack God. We see this of course is pointed out in very vivid terms in the book of Revelation.

We talked about that a little bit last week that the serpent makes war with the woman. First he attempts to destroy the seed but having failed to destroy the definitive seed Jesus Christ—in Revelation in the account there the child as soon as he is born is taken up to heaven—but after that the dragon doesn’t just give up and go home. He then makes war against the wife, the woman herself, the mother herself and the offspring, the other offspring as it were as well, those who keep the testimony of Jesus Christ and obey his commandments.

They have war waged against them by Satan. So we have real warfare going on throughout history and that applies to our own families as well.

And these verses also tell us then about the tactic of Satan. The tactic is to attack the bride, the woman or children. And so we as men must be aware of the fact that there are incipient dangers in our family that are going to require guarding. As the serpent attacks the bride, we must be there to protect the bride.

One of the common expressions used about marriage throughout the scriptures is that—and used specifically of God’s marriage to Israel—is that a man spreads his garment over his wife when they get married. And that really has primary reference, I want you to realize this—that has primary reference to the guardian responsibility of the man over his wife. He spreads the wife’s raiment—guarding because he knows the wife will face incipient dangers.

In Hosea 2:3 we find out—I won’t read the reference now. You can look it up later—that without guarding our garden again becomes a howling wasteland. We said last week that the wife is compared to the garden in the Song of Solomon in several different verses. And in Hosea 2:3, the wife left unguarded, stripped of the protective raiment that she receives is now compared to a desert, to the holy wilderness. And so without guarding the bride becomes as it were cast back into Egypt and into the wilderness and no longer is in the protected environments of Israel.

So first of all there are incipient dangers that require our guarding. Secondly then there are specific biblical commands that we do this guarding function as men. We talked about this a little bit last week—the historical development of this or the revelation of this throughout the scriptures. In the garden of Eden Adam having two tasks over the garden: to till the garden and also to keep it, to defend the garden, to guard it, to hedge it about with thorns as it were, is one way to guard the garden. And that’s some of the etymology of that word.

And we said that the Levites in Numbers and various verses we gave you last week also have responsibilities then to these same two functions there: to perform service within the temple and they’re to guard the temple. And so we have this development then throughout the scriptures of a guarding and nourishing aspect to Adam’s work in the garden, to his relationship then to his wife as a smaller garden, to the Levites in relationship to the temple, and then in the New Testament to the elders in relationship to the church.

And we talked last week and made reference to Acts 20—mentioned it again this morning. In Acts 20 the elders have a responsibility to teach the church, to nourish the church, and also to guard the church against danger. And so you have that all the way through.

One particularly good reference to this is found in 2 Corinthians 11, in terms of the New Testament and the relationship to the church. 2 Corinthians 11:2 and 3. Paul says the following: “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through her subtlety, so your mind shall be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

Paul as a proper model and role of elder here talks about the church as the bride of Christ. He gives that same analogy back to the garden of Eden and he says that Adam was supposed to guard Eve. And Paul here is jealous for the wife of Jesus Christ. That he is betrothed to her and he understands he’s been given a responsibility by God to guard that church, to guard the bride of Christ as it were.

So there’s lots of direct references throughout the Old Testament about this responsibility and in the New Testament as well to guarding.

And this is the context then for the passage in Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5 is probably the preeminent passage in the scriptures to describe the responsibilities in marital relationships. We’ve talked about this before, again, but I’ll just remind you that Ephesians 5 says that Jesus Christ has reconciled all things to himself. He has reconciled the order that God had originally created and that had fallen through sin.

And so part of that restoration and reconciliation process is the healing of relationships. All relationships—children to parents, the husband wife relationship and the servant master relationship which covers all relationships that we have in the world. All personal relationships are reconciled in Jesus Christ and brought back into his correct order. And so Ephesians 5 gives us some detail then about how that affects the husband wife relationships.

And as we mentioned, it says specifically that the husband is to love the wife. Now that passage is repeated in several other New Testament verses without further explanation as to what that love is. But here in Ephesians 5, we have this central teaching and it tells us what the love of the husband is. And we’ve made reference to it already, but I’ll read it again. Verse 28: “Men ought to love their wives as their own bodies.”

Okay? So he’s going to tell us now how men are to love their wives. He’s not going to just say, “Love your wife.” He’s going to say, “Here’s how you do it. You love her as you do your own body.” Well, what does that mean? He goes on to say in verse 29: “No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it.”

So he tells us here that love is defined in relationship to how we treat our body. And specifically, he gives us what specifically we treat our body—that he wants us to see as the example for our love for our life. And that is found in these two elements that we’ve been discussing: nourishing and cherishing.

Now, we mentioned this last week. I’ll mention it again today that the word cherish doesn’t just mean to have some sort of emotional attachment to. The word cherish is only used twice in the New Testament. We’ll get to the second occurrence in a minute, but it basically means to warm by covering with one’s wings—the way a bird covers the young in the nest. It means therefore to guard the young in the nest.

In Deuteronomy 32, this is pointed out. Deuteronomy 32 verse 10 talks about God now finding Israel. “He found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about. He instructed him. He kept him as the apple of his eye. As the eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, bearing them on her wings. He guarded him.”

In other words, he kept him. Same word there, guarded. He protected Israel as the apple of his eye, a choice possession of God, guarded by God. And that guarding takes place—is pictured for us in verse 11 as the eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young. See, that same allusion then to God’s care for Israel as guarding of her—by cherishing Israel by fluttering over the young and guarding them as a result.

In Psalm 17:8, this is also referenced. There’s lots of other references, but just look at these two. Psalm 17:8: “Keep me as the apple of the eye. Hide me under the shadows of thy wings.” See, he’s referring back here to Deuteronomy 32. And he’s telling us again that the shadow of the wings, to be under the shadow of God’s wings, is to be under his protection, to be kept as the apple of God’s eye, to be guarded by God.

And so, we have God and his providence using this term cherish to describe the—the secondary, the second function of the man—along with nourish. And that word in God’s providence was chosen as the word that indicates once more, reiterates one more time, this guarding of the young in the nest by the wings of the one who protects that family.

So God tells us specifically in the command to cherish our wives that we must guard them. Not only is it true that there are incipient dangers, we have a specific biblical command then to guard. And we know that is guard by the etymology of the word and the way that etymology is explained in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy in the book of Psalms.

But we also know that’s the meaning of that is involves one portion of the function of the husband because the other thing that Ephesians 5 does is it tells us to love our wives the way that Christ loves the church. Okay, he says as you love your bodies. And then he gives us the second example that as Christ loves the church.

And so that also is an example to us. And how does Christ love the church? There are two aspects in Ephesians 5 that it says in terms of Christ loving the church. It says that in verse 25: “Husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.” Self-sacrificial being the base for all this.

It goes on in verse 26 that “he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Two things—Christ’s love for the church is said to consist of two elements: sanctification of the church and then cleansing of the church through the washing of the word. And I believe that those two references are again to guarding or cherishing and then to the nourishing aspect that Christ performs toward the bride as well.

Sanctify here does not mean—most commentators would agree with this and I believe that the specific reference here in the text we’ll get to in a second—does not mean here a growth in righteousness as it does in other places of the scriptures. To sanctify something is to set it apart. You know when we have communion downstairs we pray that God would set apart the bread from common to sacred use. And we have baptism. We do the same thing. We ask God to set apart the water to a holy use.

And Jesus Christ here sets apart the bride. Now I thought about how in the Victorian era in America in the 1800s, wives are put on pedestals as objects of adoration, I suppose. But that was an unbiblical pedestal she was put on. I mean, she is a functional person. She’s not an accoutrement to the household. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

But the point is that there is a proper pedestal as well here. When God says that Jesus sanctifies the church, he sets apart the church. Okay? He sets the church on a pedestal to guard her from the dangers that might come upon her. He sets her apart. And so, we’re to set apart our wives.

Now, in this section, he goes on to say that she’s set apart, and we’ll get to this in more detail later, but I’ll mention it now. She’s set apart here that she might be—it goes on to tell us in the text—he might present it to himself a glorious church having no spot, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and no blemishes. He sanctifies her. He guards her and he nourishes her so that she might be an unblemished offering to himself.

Okay, that means that there are temple references here. Now, when I said that in Numbers 3 and in other places of Numbers, it says the Levites were to guard the temple as well as serve in the temple. One of the specific references in Numbers is to the guarding of the instruments. For instance, they were to keep the instruments, to guard them. Why? Because the instruments weren’t supposed to be blemished or impure or somehow used for a common purpose. The instruments were set apart to be used in the temple. The instruments didn’t grow in grace. The instruments were set apart.

Okay? And through that being set apart for that special use, they were guarded. And so when Christ loves the church and sanctifies the church—that he might present her unblemished to himself—at the marriage, he’s saying that same thing. There are temple references here that help us to understand what’s being understood by the term sanctify.

And what Christ does is he sets her apart, he guards her then from defilement, that she might be a proper vessel for him, a proper instrument as it were for his purposes. So the church is set apart by Christ, guarded by him, so that she might—that he might present her blameless to the Father.

Paul has no need then to elaborate in the verses in verse 29 where he says that the Lord—he says that man is to love his wife by nourishing and cherishing her. He says that’s our relationship to our body and it says even as the Lord the church. He tells us there specifically that’s the same thing that Christ does for the church—nourishes and cherishes her. In verse 29 he doesn’t go on to explain that because he’s already explained it a few verses before that in the statements about the sanctification of the bride and then the cleansing of the washing of water.

So, we have specific command here in Ephesians 5 to guard our wives.

One other reference I wanted to just look at briefly is 1 Timothy 5:8. You’ve heard this before. 1 Timothy 5:8. “But if any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.”

Now, it’s typical here to see a reference in the terms of provision to monetary provision for the household. Now, that’s obviously a primary reference here because he’s talking about the need for that—is the context. He goes on to talk about widows, okay, and the care for widows. And so certainly there’s a provision necessary for the material health of the household.

But the word here for provide is not strictly speaking an economic term. It doesn’t mean give her what she needs economically. The Greek term here for provide is the same root as the word for God’s provision—God’s providence. Now, God’s providence means that God looks out for his people. He so orders things that all things work together for our good. God’s providence refers to all his actions in reference to his church or to the people that he has redeemed and elected in him.

So, if God’s providence, which is our model for his bride, refers not just to financial well-being—what this verse tells us is that when he says that if any man provide not for his household, he’s worse than an infidel—is that the man must look out for all the needs of his household. And if there’s going to be warfare, if there’s going to be the chance of our wife or our children being blemished, as it were, being attacked by Satan, either through internal mechanisms or external mechanisms—if there’s an opportunity for that to occur—then we as husbands have to provide for them by looking ahead toward that and making provision for that occurrence.

What I’m saying here is that 1 Timothy 5:8 is another verse that God gives us a holistic term used—that we must see it in terms of a specific command to men to also guard their household as well as to nourish her. It applies to all of our relationship to our families and to our wives.

And you know, just point out in brief there that it goes on to say if you don’t do it you’re worse than an infidel. Worse, then, because the infidel normally provides for his house. He normally feeds his family. He normally provides food but he also normally provides raiment. He provides a house, a roof over the children and over the wife. And so if a Christian man fails to do that he is worse than an infidel. He has denied the faith.

And so what we’re talking about this morning is not just something that I want you to tack on to your relationships. Guarding is something that is fundamental to what you are as men and as husbands and as fathers of course in your households. Fundamental to it. Without it, you’ve denied the faith. Okay.

So that talks about the necessity of guarding. Before we get into the specific ways in which we do guard, I want to talk about a preparation for guarding because I think that’s important in the context here.

**Preparation for guarding.**

First, we’re to prepare for guarding by assigning proper value to our wife. Now, my wife and I argued over that phrase, and I’ll explain why I put it that way in a couple of minutes, but don’t get offended yet. The husband prepares for guarding by assigning her proper value.

Point number one, there’s a recognition of God’s valuation of the wife. And this is talked about in Ephesians 5, of course, because Christ guards his wife because he has a purpose for her. He assigns value to her. She is to be his bride, and he guards her as a result of that.

Well, in 1 Peter 3:7, we read this last week. It’s important to see here the value, the valuation that God puts upon women in general and our wives in specific. 1 Peter 3:7 reads: “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered.”

Matthew Henry in commenting on this passage said the following: “Giving honor to the wife, giving due respect to her and maintaining her authority, protecting her person, supporting her credit, delighting in her conversation, affording her a handsome maintenance and placing a due trust and confidence in her.”

That’s a very good summation. We are told here by God to treat our wife kindly. Okay? Giving due consideration to her. Dwell with them according to knowledge, knowledge of God. Giving honor unto them as the weaker vessel. We are to honor our wives. To honor, as we’ve talked many times in this church, is to give weight to somebody, to see them as important or weighty. We’re to give due consideration to our wife.

And it goes on to tell us that due consideration is based upon her being a joint heir of life. So, we must treat our wives with respect. God’s valuation demands a respect for our wives that is co-equal with our respect for ourselves as creatures of God. We’re to be treated with respect.

Fact, I thought about Rodney Dangerfield. He always says he can’t get no respect, you know. But if you’ve ever listened to his monologue, you see the one who really doesn’t get any respect is his wife. He points her to be a very bad person. We’re not supposed to be that way about our wives. We’re not supposed to tell jokes on our wives. We’re supposed to treat our wives with a great deal of respect and reverence.

Our wives, particularly in this church, are very busy people. As I thought about this last night, a song kept coming to my mind by Hoyt Axton called “Bony Fingers.” It goes, “Work your fingers to the bone. What do you get? Bony fingers.” Well, you know, we have wives that work their fingers to the bones. They are active women. They’re not on a pedestal. They’re doing hard work. And their hard work should merit a lot more for them than just ending up with bony fingers. They should get respect and reverence from us as their husbands.

Another song I thought about last night was an old country western song called “Behind Closed Doors.” And that’s important to remind ourselves—how do we treat our wives? Now we treat our wives with a great deal of respect and reverence I suppose in public because we know that it’s required. But what I’m saying this morning is that God’s proper valuation of your wife should lead you to deal with her honorably and respectfully, behind closed doors, not just in public.

Now, God tells us this in 1 Peter 3 for a very good reason. He tells us this because we need to hear it. We need to hear it because we’ve been placed in a position of responsibility and of leadership in our home. And it’s easy to abuse that leadership. The same way he goes throughout the scriptures, he gives lots of references about how civil magistrates are to rule and how we don’t rule after the manner of the Gentiles by lording it over people. We rule through service.

And so in the terms of the man himself here—now God gives us specific verses to tell us that we need to hear. We need to hear that the wife is a joint heir with the man. That is particularly important when we look at the wife because there is a sense in which she is a weaker vessel here. Certainly physically women are weaker and that physical weakness is not a cause for a lack of respect from us. It should be a cause for honoring the person involved.

Then God has created them for a specific task which is different than ours and so we’re to give we’re to give them the honor that God gives them. This means that our wives are not to be seen as living vicariously through our experiences. For instance, they are full-blown persons in every sense of the word. They are joint heirs of the great gift of life that God has given to us. Joint heirs of the promise. Okay? They’re not slaves. They’re not immature children. They’re not clinging signs. They’re not pieces of furniture like we said in that pedestal thing.

Our wives—it is not the primary purpose of our wife to be a good adornment for the home. It’s not in any stretch of the imagination what we’re talking about this morning. What this verse tells us is the wife is a joint heir of the great gift of life. We’re to treat her with that kind of respect and reverence.

The wife has gifts that God has given to her, then just as God has given you gifts. And the purpose for those gifts are the same as your gifts essentially: the purpose being to glorify God, to enjoy him forever, and as part of that purpose also the furtherance of the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our wives have those gifts.

In Proverbs 31:10 we read: “An excellent wife, who can find one? For her worth is far above jewels.” Our women—the women in scripture—the woman in scripture is seen as a complement to the men and our wives then in our families are to be seen with honor as excellent wives, as being valued far above jewels.

Now, Proverbs 31:10 says that all wives aren’t like that. But, you know, I’m convinced, and I know most of the families in this church pretty well by now, that in our church, we have—I’ve said before that the caliber of the men in our church is tremendous and outstanding. And I sometimes wonder why God is doing this. When we have our household heads of household meeting at toward the end of the month, we’ll talk about an elder preparation program.

And I’ve said before that probably at least half the men in this church, probably most men in this church can be very proper elders in almost any church in the state today and be better elders than the elders that are currently in those positions. And I don’t say that because I’m bragging. I say that because it’s something to recognize that God has done a great thing here. And I think that what God is doing here is preparing men to eventually some of you anyway to go out then into other portions of the state and to establish other works.

Well, if it’s true that we have that caliber of men here, we certainly have that caliber and better of women here as well. The women of our church have taken on tremendous responsibilities relative to homeschooling many of them and other responsibilities in the home. There are hardworking women understanding that they’re dominion women as we are dominion men. And so we have excellent wives in this congregation.

The scriptures say that God’s valuation then—that we’re to put on that wife—is to consider her worth far above jewels. That’s God’s system of comparable worth, okay? Of giving our wife comparable worth. And terms of what he tells us here in the scriptures. The governmental system of comparable worth is a satanic imitation of God’s true system of comparable worth and it’s important to recognize that it is a distortion but there is a reality behind it.

The scriptures tell us that God tells us specifically that they are joint heirs that we go walking together as it were into the inheritance that God has provided for us. Joint heirs.

In 1 Thessalonians 2:7 I said we’d look at this other reference to cherishing. That’s the other reference. 1 Thessalonians 2:7. “But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted to you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls because ye were dear unto us.”

And so you see here that Paul talks about the cherishing of the church, the cherishing of the Thessalonians that he had. And he goes on to talk but one of the aspects of that is that they were very dear to him, precious. He assigned proper value to them. And so if we’re to cherish our wives as Christ cherishes the church and as the elders are seen as cherishing the church, then they must be dear to us. They must have proper value.

And now secondly, the husband then adopts God’s value system. And this is why I phrased it that the man assigns proper value to the wife. God has already assigned proper value to the wife. Her value isn’t contingent upon the man’s assignation of that value. Her value or putting that value upon her. But the man is called upon by God to accept that value system. It’s like many of us are doing with gold and silver. We put value upon gold and silver for economic reasons, but primarily because God puts value on them. And if God tells us here that he puts this kind of high value upon women and upon our wives, then we move in ethical obedience to God by assigning that same value to our wife.

It is an act of will. It is an act of our ethical nature. Now, Adam in his unfallen state did just that. We remember we talked last week when Eve was brought to Adam and he said, “Aha, this is it.” The expression there doesn’t really come out fully in most of the translations, but it’s like I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Now, finally, now I receive my helpmate. Okay, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

And there’s a real exultation there of Adam that takes place. Now, it seems like—I mean it’s it seems from the text that Adam here has been without Eve for less than 24 hours. It’s still on the sixth day apparently from the text. There’s some dissension about that, but I believe that’s the case. And so, what you have here is Adam for a very short period of time in terms of hours being without his wife. And yet being without that helpmate for even in that short period of time built up a desire and a proper valuation of a wife within Adam so that when she was brought to him, he assigned proper value to his wife. He needed a helper and he knew he needed a helper and he knew that helper had now come to him.

We’re joint heirs. As I said before, we march together into the inheritance that God has provided. The wife is not just an incumbrance to us. She’s not at all an incumbrance. She is a necessary complement to what we are as men and to the dominion task that God has called us to.

It’s important here to recognize that Satan, one of his descriptions is as the accuser of the brethren. And we don’t want to help Satan do his work. We don’t want to be accusing our wives of things. We want to be building them up. And when they fall short, we want to assist them the way that when we fall short, they assist us.

So, it is important in terms of preparation for guarding to put the proper value on the wife. I can’t say enough about that. But it obviously is an important part of the scriptural admonition to husbands is to assign her value to assign her honor and worth and respect as the joint heir of life. Okay.

Secondly, the husband prepares for guarding by knowing his wife. If there are incipient dangers to the wife, we ought to be aware of what those dangers are. There are some general ones, but there’s also specific ones in terms of the people that God has brought us into marital relationship with. This necessitates a communication between the husband and the wife. It is an almost essential thing that you talk to your wife alone apart from the children on a daily basis to evaluate how the day has gone for her, to tell you problems that she has had, concerns that she has, specific areas that she has problems with.

You have to get to know your wife. You got to spend time with her communicating with her. That’s part of your guarding function. How can you even pray for your wife if you don’t know what her problems are? And you’re supposed to do a lot more than just pray for her. You’re supposed to help her with those problems. And so, you have to get to know her. You have to communicate with her.

The recently released Hite report, although if you read references to the Hite report, you should know that it’s not an indicator of what’s really going on in America. I think they sent out 100,000 questionnaires. They got 4,000 back. Not exactly a good representative sampling. And the biases of the authors who wrote the evaluation of those reports are very strongly feministic in an improper sense. But even so, 98% of those respondents—the women said that they desire deeper communication with their mate, deeper communication.

Now, 98% is a lot of them. And I think that probably if you ask your wife, would you like me to talk more with you? Would you like to have deeper communication in terms of talking about the word of God as it relates to both of our lives, our dominion calling? I think you’d find you try that this afternoon at home. You ask your wife, “Do you want to talk more often with me?” And I will bet you that most of your wives would want that very much.

We need to communicate with our wives. We need to be listening to them and to their concerns and to the areas then of their possible need for guarding.