Dennis Tuuri

To the end that our praises might be more joyful as we sing alleluia to God. He brings us to his scriptures today. The sermon text is 1 Peter 3:7. Please stand for the command word of God.

1 Peter 3:7: “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the gift of the Spirit based on the work of our Savior who takes this word and illumines it to our understanding, shines it forth to us that we might understand it. We thank you, Lord God, for telling us that this book is unlike every other book we read. It must be spiritually discerned. We thank you, Lord God, for the gift of the Holy Spirit to teach us things out of your word.

We pray that he might do that now, that our lives might be reformed and transformed by the power of your word and the indwelling Spirit, the work of our Savior to the end that you, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, might be glorified in and through your people. We ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please be seated.

We read in Revelation 21:2 that John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Last week we considered the first six verses of 1 Peter 3 and its statements as to how a wife should be properly adorned for her husband. This adornment is an ordering, a beautiful inward appearance of the bride that manifests itself in her actions. And we said last week that the model given to wives is the model of Sarah. We’re going to look in a couple of minutes at the single verse of instruction to men in the context of 1 Peter 3.

And then we’ll look at the life of Abraham as a model to us as sons of Abraham, to the men, to husbands. But I want us to understand that this is to the end that we might be properly adorned as a fitting bride for the Lord Jesus Christ. So there are aspects of these callings that are to be true of all of us, of course, but there are particular functional differences between men and women, and we want to look at those again today in the context of the life of Abraham and Sarah.

So let’s just review very briefly what we said last week about the role of women based in 1 Peter 3, verses 1-6. We said last week that Isaiah 51:1 and 2 tells us that we’re to look to our foundation, the stone from which we were hewn, as it were. Look to the hole from which you were dug—look to Abraham and Sarah, which are our forefathers and foremothers in the faith, so to speak. At least the scriptures point them out as that way to us.

So it’s good to know the life of Abraham and it’s good for our children to grow up knowing the life of Abraham and Sarah and what their life was like as a model to us of faithfulness and a model of God’s power of resurrection from the dead. Not just in the sense of the child, but in the sense of their whole lives being pictures of the grace of God in spite of some very serious sin on their part.

So we’ve been looking to them last week. We’ll continue to look to them this week. We said that the daughters of Sarah are those whose chaste conduct may be observed, and that this chaste conduct is accompanied by fear. So the daughters of Sarah have the right piety. They’re to be chaste. They’re supposed to be chaste with the knowledge and appreciation of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That work is pictured in the end of chapter 2 of 1 Peter, the second chapter.

We’ll look to that in just a minute as we consider the men as well. And they trust in God in their chasteness and purity and holiness and consecration to God. They are holy as the holy women of old were holy—set apart to God.

Secondly, the daughters of Sarah have the right adornments in their conduct. In other words, their adornment is not to be external only. It’s a good thing to be well-ordered in external appearance, but their adornments are to be the gentle and quiet spirit that the holy women of old also were adorned with.

And this is where we have the model of Sarah who obeyed Abraham and called him Lord. This adornment is a hearing and a speaking obedience. To call him master is to have a speaking obedience of the relationship of husband and wife in the context of the family. To obey Abraham means to come under his hearing, literally in the Greek. So it is a listening obedience that wives are to have, and a submission that indeed comes from a gentle and quiet spirit.

Gentle in the sense of meek, broken to harness, powerful and yet broken to the harness of God’s overarching requirements of the different vocations and callings we have. Daughters of Sarah are to have the right kind of fear. They’re supposed to have a fear, a proper reverence of God and of their husbands, but not to have fear in the sense of being terrified, of having an undue fear of men as opposed to a proper fear of God.

And in conclusion, daughters of Sarah are to be submissive as she was with an incorruptible beauty which is very precious in the sight of God. And Sarah is given as the example.

Now, 1 Peter 3 goes on then to give husbands some direction in the verse we have just read. And we want to take a couple of minutes to look at that. And then after that, we’ll look at the life of Abraham in a little different way than you’ve probably ever looked at it before.

And hopefully it’ll just sort of set up your own personal study of the life of Abraham as it correlates Abraham and Sarah rather to these models that are given to us in 1 Peter 3.

So, the instruction to the husbands begins by addressing them as husbands. And it’s important that we don’t just go right by that very quickly. Husbands have a particular relationship to their wives that in the providence of God has been handed down to us.

In the names that we have, the word husband comes from our English word that is a combination of two words: one from “hus” or “house,” meaning a covering, in other words, and the other being the “band,” which was a word meaning to till or to farm. So in the word husband itself we have this connotation of the covering or guarding necessity of the husband. But in the context of that home he’s not just covering; he’s also tilling, farming, and producing.

So what he’s doing in his own life, in the life of his wife, and in the life of his children is protecting them, but he’s also nourishing them again. He’s plowing them, causing them to be more effective. He’s causing them to grow in the context of an understanding of God’s word and a relationship of a correct response to that revelation of who God is. So he’s a husbandman. He has an obligation to nurture his wife.

The husband of a wife has an obligation to nurture her as well. His children himself as well. But very specifically here, when Peter talks about the correlary to the wives’ obligations, he talks of our obligations as husbandmen.

Now I also here remind you—and you’ve heard me say this before if you’ve been here very long—that the word Lord that Sarah calls Abraham Lord: the English word Lord again is another contraction of two words: “cloth” and “weird.” And the first word is an old English word meaning “loaf,” and the second word is an old English word meaning to “ward” or “guard.” So the Lord is one who provides loaf, he provides nurture and nourishment, but he also provides a warding off or a guarding of his wife.

And so we have this big picture that is now pictured for us in the life of Sarah by implication of her husband Abraham. He has to have a proper sense of his being a husband to guard and nurture his wife, to have a house, but also to till and farm and produce in the context of not just the land but the people who form the house as well.

He’s got an obligation, if he wants to be called Lord, to provide bread and to also to provide guarding in the context of his family.

One other point on this word husband: it really is the word that can be used generically to speak of men. Now earlier in 1 Peter 3, verse 1, it says that wives should be submissive to their own husbands, to their own man—is kind of the idea. You got one man in that sense of the term, and you’re to be submissive to him.

But there’s a generalized sense in which men and women have a particular relationship as well. So here we have the general term being used. It can mean husband, but it can also just mean man. And so men in general should have an understanding and a mindset of guarding, protecting, and also helping women. And so our young men should be trained to help our young women. And the young boys growing up should be trained to open the doors for their sisters, not just for the ones who are going to end up courting, okay?

Or their mom. See, you want to develop a sense of great respect and honor on the part of the men in the congregation. And that includes the little men, you little boys growing up to be men. Same term used here. You want to have this idea of husband and lord, not just in terms of your own wife, but having an obligation to protect and nurture the women in the context of the culture.

Now, a lot of times, you know, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t defend you physically as well as you could defend them, but the point is the order that God has provided in the church. Pastors have an obligation to defend the flock and also to nurture the flock.

Now, there are those of you in the context of the congregation who shoot a lot better than I do, but there’s a particular office I’m called to perform relative to guarding the flock. And I know it has a little specialized function to it, not just physical guarding. But my point is that there’s nothing demeaning about this to the power or ability or strength of women. It is the function God has called men to perform in the context of a culture in general—is my point.

Okay. So, husbands are addressed first in the context of being husbands, nurturers and guarders of women. And then the next word in the text in 1 Peter 3:7 is likewise. Men or husbands likewise—and then he’s going to give them an instruction. Now, what does this likewise go back to? This is a topic of conversation in the commentaries.

The women also in verse one said, “Women likewise be submissive to your own husbands.” Remember I said last week that could be going back to the other functional relationships. It talked about rulers, civil rulers. They talk in 1 Peter 2 about masters in a master-slave relationship. So, in like fashion, you are to be submissive like those different functions are being submissive. It’s not based in your gender, in other words, or your sex, rather, because we got male servants being submissive to male masters. Male citizens being submissive to male rulers in the context of the civil realm.

Okay? So, it’s not just a gender deal or a sex deal here. It’s a matter of calling. And in the context of the family, he’s addressed the state in 1 Peter 2. He’s addressed the workplace by way of implication of master-servant relationships in the context of the family. Now we do have a sex or gender-related difference. But the therefore draws us back to the submission that’s required generally in the context of an ordered society according to God’s word.

So I think that the likewise here reminds us, husbands, us men, that we’re to be submissive to God. To abdicate this idea of leading your household is to not be submissive to the God who has called you to that function. He hasn’t given you as head of the household because you’re so well equipped or are so bright or powerful. That’s not the idea. He’s given it to you out of his sovereign calling for you to lead your household.

Doesn’t mean you’re smarter, more understanding of the word of God, none of that stuff necessarily. But God has chosen to work through you. And if you fulfill your obligations to lead your family, then you’re being submissive the same way your wife is being submissive. If she wants to and has a heart to follow your leading in the Lord. You understand? So the likewise here draws us, I think, to a consideration that the husbands, while it isn’t explicitly stated, implicitly are also to be submissive to the calling that God has given them.

Not based on their abilities necessarily. At the end of the day, men, fathers, husbands—I’ve said this before, but I think it is a critical concept for us to get down. I want you to, if you think, you know, test it according to scripture, but if you think it’s biblical, burn it into your psyche. Okay? God has called you to a function. You don’t feel equipped. Well, unless you’re prideful, but most of us have moments and sometimes days, weeks, or years when we don’t feel equipped in ourselves to lead a wife or children, to guard them from their sin, to know what to do in a particular context.

That’s okay. At the end of the day, God doesn’t want you relying on your giftings. Now, he gives you those, but at the end of the day, I’m convinced God doesn’t want you as much relying on your giftings as he wants you relying on your calling. You see, it’s submission to the calling that God has put you to.

Now, if you have lack of giftings and lack of ability and lack of knowing how to do it, talk to me. Talk to someone else. In our Sunday school class, we talked about the responsibility that church members have to communicate with each other. And it doesn’t just mean talk. It means communicate goods, abilities, spiritual giftings, but it also means to watch over one another. You’ve got a congregation here that’s obligated to assist you, husband, if you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing and you know what how to proceed in a particular thing.

Just ask, just call. Ask me if nobody else, ask your friend, ask your prayer group leader, talk to somebody to get your giftings in order. But recognize that at the end of the day, you rely upon your calling.

So likewise, husbands, be submissive to your God who calls you to function in this way. And secondly, the likewise takes us back to the end of chapter 2 to Jesus Christ. Look at verse 21. We mentioned this in passing last week. Let’s look at it a little more. Just pause for a moment to look at this in 1 Peter 2:21.

“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow his steps, who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth; who when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously.”

Now, in the immediate context, this is written to servants who are going to be beaten for no good reason. And Peter says, “Be submissive to that.” Well, you want to seek for your boss to do well. But if you suffer for doing what’s right, Christ finds it of great honor. And he gave us the example. He gave us the example to submit even when it’s very difficult—when you have an unbelieving husband, when you’ve got a master who beats you, when you’ve got a civil magistrate who stole the election—submit to God’s order.

Because the example, the likewise, is that Jesus committed himself to him who judges righteously. God sees. God acts. Humble yourselves under his mighty hand. Likewise calls us back to a life of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we having died to sins, might live for righteousness; by whose stripes you were healed.

For you were like sheep going astray, but now have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

Husbands, likewise—like the Lord Jesus Christ. Have faith in the God who judges righteously. To properly fulfill your function as husband, guard and nurturer, as Lord—bread and guarding guy—you must be men of faithfulness. You must be like Abraham. Abraham is the great example of faith. You must be men of faith like Jesus, having faith in Christ who had faith in the God who calls you to this task.

Okay. Likewise, husbands, dwell with them. First things first: before we get to specifics about how this is all going to work out, you have a command here to dwell with your wives. Okay? An obvious command, but one that needs to be reiterated over and over in our land because we have a culture that’s marked by not dwelling with wives—husbands who leave, who abandon the family, who either separate, divorce, or never get committed in the first place by way of marriage.

Dwell with them. Live with them.

Now, I’ve said this before as well, but again, at this church, unless things are really horrific in your home, you’re probably not going to separate. But you might separate in other ways. You might separate sexually. You might separate emotionally. Men have a tremendous tendency to become macho about it: “I’m self-sufficient. I don’t need the wife. If she’s not going to cooperate, I’m all right.” And there’s a turning away that you do little by little by little.

So you’re not looking at the wife anymore. This is a very simple command with very important ramifications. Dwell with them. Doesn’t mean just be in the same house. Matthew Henry here says that it means this forbids unnecessary separation and implies a mutual communication of goods and persons one to another with delight in accord. No turning away.

Elder Mayar a couple months ago in one of our elder meetings said that God had just kept bringing to his mind the verse “Husbands, love your wives.” Now how many times have you heard that? But if you meditate on that verse—husbands, at night when you’ve had a little tiff, or maybe you’re just tired and don’t want to interact anymore, you’ve had a tough day at the job—that verse comes back: “Husbands, love your wives.” And you look at your wife. “Oh, love her.” Okay. And it’s profound. It is absolutely profound to simply remember these very simple commands of scripture.

“Husbands, love your wives. Dwell with them. Don’t isolate yourself off.” Okay? Dwell with them.

And then there’s some qualifications as to what this looks like. Dwell with them with understanding. Understanding. The word here is the word for knowledge. Okay. It has the intellectual component, but much more than that. You dwell with them with understanding, with meditation on the word and the woman. Not taking any, not taking each other for granted.

When we first got married, for a number of years—I hope this is okay to say this—you know, I didn’t think my wife would say things and I wouldn’t understand what she was saying, and I thought she just wasn’t very sharp, you know, as sharp as I am. The last two years, I’ve realized particularly last year or so, she’s like three or four steps ahead of me. And so now I know that if I don’t understand something she says, I finally learned in the providence of God to say, “Well, could you just explain those steps how you got there, because I’m a little slow?”

You see, that’s how our sin tends to color the relationship. We come into marriage, and even now, hopefully our children won’t so much—they’ve been trained from their earliest years that women are different from men, they’re a complement to them, they’re not a clone of who we are—but so often we try to make our wives into a clone of who we are, and they’re not that. They’re not that in giftings, typically, because they’re your complement, but they’re not that because they’re feminine and you’re masculine, and what that means I don’t know all of what it means. I know some of what it means. But I don’t know all of what it means.

Husbands, you have a real challenge here to fulfill this requirement to dwell with your wives with understanding, with a knowledge of the differences as well as the similarities of the gifting she particularly has.

Now, how are you going to do that? Well, you’re supposed to do it in the first year of marriage. You’re supposed to get off to a real big bang-up start. You know, Selmer’s supposed to this next year starting Saturday. He’s got a job. He’s on a mission from God for the next year. And that mission is to cheer my daughter up, to cause her to rejoice in the marriage. And that’s what the scriptures say. The case law says the first year of exclusion—the job of the husband: cheer her up. And I think one reason for that is to get men from the get-go to consider what this thing called woman is. It’s going to take a lifetime in some to fully understand the differences.

It’s a wondrous thing—viva difference. But it’s not easily ascertained. And so God puts men on a track: the first year of marriage supposed to do that. Now, most of you didn’t do that. I didn’t do it. Most of us didn’t do it. We got off on the wrong foot. We got off thinking, “She’s just like us, and I know how to cheer myself up. I know how to cheer her up.” Uh-uh. She’s different. She communicates differently.

Both because of her individual personality, but also because she’s feminine and not masculine.

Proverbs 20:5 says that counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. You see, that’s what’s supposed to happen that first year of marriage. The man of understanding, who has understanding based on the word of God, will increase his understanding of his wife by drawing that understanding out.

Okay? And man, this is why again the patience of Abraham is such a model for us. It requires patience to dwell with our wives according to understanding. So easy to put the things that we don’t know, haven’t understood, and know are kind of a problem on the back burner. We got all these other busy things we’re doing at church and at the workplace—we’re doing voters guides and all this stuff. We’re getting ready for the elections, all this stuff, getting ready to lobby in Salem, whatever it is.

And it’s so easy to put that on the back burner, but it’s so critical that you don’t do that. You obey this command to husbands, likewise in the faith of our Savior, to dwell with your wives according to knowledge, to knowledge. Matthew Henry here says that not according to lust as brutes, nor according to passion as devils, but according to knowledge as wise and sober men who know the word of God and their own duty.

Colossians 3:19 says, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.” One of the ways you will avoid bitterness is to understand your wife.

I’ve used this line before and I, you know, I know people don’t like it, but it’s an illustration that I think is useful. I saw Mort Sahl on TV years ago, and he was quoting Nietzsche. Now, whether it really was something Nietzsche said or not, I don’t know. Mort Sahl is kind of a comedian sort of fella, but I think he was serious. He had just gone through a divorce and was having real trouble after that, and he said that Nietzsche said that if it wasn’t for the physical relationships between men and women, there’d be a bounty on the head of women.

Now the reason he said that is that men who are not motivated by the Spirit of God tend to look down on women, denigrate them, degrade them, and see them as necessities for childbearing. And that’s about it. Now, that’s the way pagan cultures typically look at women. And it’s ironic that the women’s liberation movement, so-called, has been so anti-Christian, because nothing really exalts the state of women as a complete, compatible but separate entity to man—that jointly we bear the image of God as husband and wife together—nothing has so exalted women in terms of that position as Christianity has properly understood.

Christianity says: understand the difference, meditate on it, draw the differences out of your wife, understand who she is. And when you do that, that’s when you’re doing a good job of being that husbandman, that Lord, protecting and nurturing your wife.

So dwell with them according to understanding. You know, this could be said week after week after week. It needs to be heard by men repeatedly: “Dwell with your wives according to understanding.”

Fifth: giving honor to the wife. Okay, so we’ve moved to just dwelling with them, and you’re committing yourself in the context of that, and you know the general obligations, and you know that it’s got to be based upon a life of faith in Christ. And then we’re supposed to understand that we have this knowledge aspect where our women, our wives, are different. They have to be understood for who they are, the glorious creatures God has made them.

And then, but on top of that, then it’s to the end that we might honor them as wives. Okay. Now honor is the word here for pay or valuation. It means to put a proper valuation on our wives. And it’s a high one. It’s a high evaluation. A high valuation of what they are in the sight of God and also what they are in the terms of the marriage.

Now the wives should also, of course, put a high valuation on their husbands, because we bring complete completeness to one another in the context of what God has told us. But a proper valuation, a giving honor unto the wife. Listen here. Be thankful. I say: why do I say that? Because you may say, “Yeah, I know my wife’s really important for our house.” And then she begins to tell you something, and you cut her off, or you’re reading something, and you don’t hear her.

That’s the sin that I frequently engage in. I get distracted and I don’t hear what people are saying on the periphery of me. Most important thing I should do in those situations is to stop what I’m doing and listen to this one that God has provided me to help me mature in wisdom and understanding of the word and in application to life. That’s giving honor, weight, glory to the wife.

Yes, it’s important. I think that again, in the opening stages of marriage, you know, Mike and other men in the context of this church and other places are a step up on us because they’ve done this dowy thing to some extent. And that dowy has begun to establish in their mind this proper valuation of the wife. You see, it helps them properly set that value in mind. Now that’s got to—it’s just a picture though of the whole process of marriage.

And the process of marriage should include a giving honor to our wives in terms of their opinions, their what they have to represent to us, what corrections they bring to us, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Very important to do that. Very important to be listening, hearing. Does she—the feminine one—witness to this in your life? Okay. And the word wife here really is not the typical word for wife. It means the feminine one.

And it draws us back to remembering that creation of man and woman, and man and woman together being in the image of God. It draws us back to that complementary nature. Again, very explicitly, our honoring is tied back to an understanding that this person is given as a complement to us, that we might by way of our marriage image God more properly. So it puts it in that context.

And I would ask you to ask yourself: would your wife—if I ask her, if I call her up this week, I’m not going to do that, but if I call her up this week—did your husband honor you this week? Now, I know a lot of you have, and I know some of us haven’t, and I know that all of us should improve and be reformed by God’s word to the end that we might do that better.

Matthew Henry’s comment here is appropriate: “Giving due respect to her, maintaining her authority. Okay, this again with a little self-confession going on. But one of the ways that you can dishonor your wife is in the context of your children—to not have respect for her authority or not to engender respect for her proper authority in the family. She’s the queen, you know, she is a joint. We’ll get to that in just a minute. But she is to have real authority in the context of the home, and you should help maintain that authority.

Protecting her person—that’s honoring to her. Supporting her credit, delighting in her conversation, affording her a handsome maintenance, and placing a due trust and confidence in her. You know, you honor her by recognizing the importance of her again as your complement in imaging the glory of God.

Okay? As to the weaker vessel. Okay? So you honor her as your wife as to the weaker vessel. And just a couple of points here.

The vessel idea seems to stress the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of the potter over the clay. And this word is used in Romans, for instance. It’s used in other places like that. But one of the nuances of the word vessel seems to call us to mind that whether we’re a vessel in a functionally superior position or functionally subordinate position, we’re just vessels. The potter has determined these things. It’s not intrinsic to our abilities or what we should deserve from God. It’s simply the station he has placed us in to maintain.

And he has placed woman in a position of being weaker in some aspects. Now, this word weaker is “not strong”—is it. It’s—you know, like a—and then the word for strong “not strong” is what it means in the Greek. And this word for strong is used in 1 Peter 5:10. So in the same epistle, the word is used opposite of this word, when we read that “may the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after you have suffered a while perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.”

Now that’s written to men and women. So she’s not strong in a relative position relative to her particular—the kind of vessel that God has called her to be in relationship to men. And as I said before, I think this has to do with her propensity to follow men. But in any event, we’re to give honor to her as this vessel that needs to be strengthened as part of your job requirement as husbands. Okay? Needs to be strengthened.

Again, whatever problems your wife may have, whatever weaknesses she may have, it may not be your fault, but it is your job to strengthen her. Now, we always talk about strong brothers, weak brothers, and consideration, and all that stuff. But the idea is that we also have an obligation to strengthen the weak brothers in the context of the church.

Husbands have a relationship to their wives in which the wives are to grow in strength as a result of the husband’s giving her honor and glory in her particular calling. Okay? So it’s a strengthening task that we’re called to do—to guard her, in other words, and to build her up, to mature her in the faith.

And as being heirs together of the grace of life. So we have here an equality of essence and eschatology. You’re joint heirs, okay, of the gracious gift of life. You are where you’re at—in any calling, whether it’s an officer in the church or a lay person in the church, ruler in civil government or a citizen, husband or wife—you’re there by the grace, the gracious gift of God of life itself.

And so you have an equality of essence: citizen and ruler, layman, pastor, employee and employer. There’s an equality of essence there. Husband and wife—equality of essence. And there’s also an equality of eschatology. It draws us back to remembering the creation of man and woman, and man and woman together being in the image of God. It draws us back to that complementary nature.

Again, very explicitly, our honoring is tied back to an understanding that this person is given as a complement to us, that we might by way of our marriage image God more properly. So it puts it in that context.

And I would ask you to ask yourself: would your wife, if I ask her, if I call her up this week—I’m not going to do that—but if I call her up this week, did your husband honor you this week? Now, I know a lot of you have, and I know some of us haven’t, and I know that all of us should improve and be reformed by God’s word to the end that we might do that better.

Matthew Henry’s comment here is appropriate: “Giving due respect to her, maintaining her authority.” Okay, the home. If you lead her—someone’s got to make the decisions at the end of the day. And it’s got to be the husband. He may defer to the decision of the wife, but it’s still his decision then to defer and let the wife’s decision take sway. So he’s got to lead. He’s got to be that husband. But when he does these things in this honoring way, in the correct way as a husband, then the scriptures tell us our prayers will be heard.

And if you don’t do these things, your prayers won’t be heard. This guy will be brass to you.

Now, the implications of this, I think, are a lot broader than at first glance. I said last week that Sarah’s role is much broader than just, you know, being submissive in the sense of doing what her husband tells her to do and that kind of stuff. I pointed to the overarching life of Abraham as a life requiring patience as he acquired seed and land.

And we reminded ourselves based on the Genesis account that the feminine aspect is given to man that he might exercise dominion in his calling as a man. So Sarah’s submission was essential to Abraham’s fulfilling his vocation, his vocation of acquiring land, seed, and the promise of God to be a blessing to the nations. Okay. So Sarah’s submission is a vital part of all of that.

And I think what we have here in this concluding phrase to the man shows that our role as men, our changing of the world, our transforming of the world, our proper exercise of dominion—Christian dominion in the context of the nations—is contingent upon the correct treatment, so to speak, correct interaction with our wives.

Now, you know, I what I’m trying to say here is that if we keep in mind the rest of this song, then when it says “Your prayers won’t be hindered,” that becomes a much more important statement than it first looks like.

Here’s what I mean. In the New Testament, pieces of a tune are whistled. You know, I can name that tune in with three notes or five notes, whatever it is. And you hear these notes and you recognize this song, right? And this song then comes into your mind. So Intel is built on this with that little musical note they have to bring to mind to you all that Intel and the Pentium processor is all the wonderful things it’s done for your life. And probably when you hear that maybe a lot of you it’s like “oh those computers again.” But in any event, the little note played brings into mind a whole view of things.

And here in the relationship of men and women we are given an Old Testament reference to the women, and then we’re given a very specific reference to Sarah, and then we have this discussion of husbands loving their wives so that their prayers wouldn’t be hindered. And I think that in those two or three notes that are strung out for us there—role of men and women, Sarah, prayers not be hindered for men—if they do things right, then the whole song of Abraham’s life is supposed to come back to us. And we won’t be able to get into this in any detail this week, but in this outline, this chiastic structure that Mr. Jordan provides for us here, what it shows—and just, you know, be good Bereans, take it home and study it to see if you think it’s so—but it shows a centrality to Abraham’s life that isn’t always the one we think of and probably is never the one you’ve thought of.

If you look at this chiastic structure, at the very center of it is God’s appearance to Ishmael, that he will bless Ishmael. Now let’s think about this a little bit.

Abraham is called out of the Chaldees, and he’s called to go to possess a land and he is given a promise from God that he’ll possess that land and he will have a child, a seed. Now ultimately that points to Christ, but in the immediate context it points to Isaac, and he’s have to wait a long time for Isaac—430 years for the land. But God also promises Abraham that he will be a blessing not just to the land of Canaan, but to the nations.

To the nations. Now, Abraham sins with Sarah. Sarah had a bad idea. And Abraham, like Adam, failed to guard Sarah, his wife, correctly. He should have told Sarah, “No, God has promised that we’re going to have children. This way. That’s a violation of the proper relationship that we should as God-fearing men and women have in our home, because Sarah, you know, wanted him to go into his her Egyptian handmaid Hagar, have a son with her that could be then that Sarah could then legally adopt as her own.

That was the plan. And in a sense, in the culture which they lived, it’s very much like the sort of thing that goes on today, although without the sexual relationships between Abram and the handmaid. This is what happens today, right? You got surrogate parenting. Nothing new under the sun. This was an example of surrogate parenting. It was sin on Sarah’s part, and it was greater sin on Abram’s part to do it.

Remember his job. He’s supposed to guard her from her own sin. Now, he doesn’t do that. Instead, he gives into that sin, and they have a child. Now, I don’t think—I’m sure that his desire was not sexual in nature. It was a surrogate parenting thing, but still it was moving outside of the promise.

Now, see, we’re so used to hearing about that example given to us in the New Testament as an example of sin, and the sin of works righteousness as opposed to faith righteousness, that we tend to forget other things about the story. Now, we want to affirm that is certainly true. God points this out as sin on Abraham’s part. He contrasts Hagar and Sarah, the bond woman Hagar, the endowed wife Sarah. Okay? He contrasts those two, and he contrasts those two as being one certainly an attempt by the power of our own flesh to get the promise of God—works righteousness—and the other is faith righteousness relying upon Sarah to have a child.

That’s all true. But what we don’t frequently think about is what God is doing in using Abraham’s sin sinlessly. And this is important for two big points.

What he’s going to do is he’s going to have Ishmael grow up. Now, eventually Sarah’s going to kick Ishmael out when Isaac is born. When she gets pregnant and Isaac is born, she’s going to kick Hagar out of the house with Ishmael. And God is going to tell Abraham then: “You listen to your wife.”

And Abraham’s going to be a guy who does listen to his wife. There’s a specific example in a proper way. But Ishmael is going to be kicked out. And then they’re going to go out there, and they’re going to come close to dying. And God then comes to them and appears to them.

Look at the text. Look at Genesis 16:7-15, for what Mr. Jordan sees as the center of the life of Abraham. Okay. And this is the entire middle section here all has to do with this relationship.

And this is the first time that Hagar is kicked out. In verse 7, “the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, ‘Hagar, Sarah’s maid, whence camest thou? And whither wilt thou go?’ And she said, ‘I fled from the face of my mistress Sarah.’”

And the angel of the Lord said unto her, “Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.” And the angel of the Lord said unto her, “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, ‘Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.’”

And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, and she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, “Thou God seest me. For she said, ‘Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?’”

The point here is that Ishmael is not an outcast from God. Ishmael is a different sort of nation that God is going to raise up from Hagar through Abraham. Now, Abraham’s sin was sin. But God uses that sin sinlessly to father a generation of people that will not be dwellers in the context of the land. They’ll live outside of the land.

Later on in this story of Abraham, Ishmael’s descendants are spoken of again. Ishmael receives the blessing of God. Hagar is not visited here because she didn’t—she rejected God. She’s visited because she was a God-fearer. She believed in God even though an Egyptian. And Ishmael is raised in the context of that faith as well.

Now, he’s going to have problems in his life. And we look at the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, and we see the Arabs and the Jews fighting in the context of the Middle East. And there’s a lot of truth to that. That’s the genealogy of what’s happened there. But the point here is that at the center of Abram’s life is this promise—not just to the child of faith but to also the child here was a result of his sin—that God will multiply him and make a great nation of him and bless him in that way.

Abraham is to have a ministry not just in the context of the land. Abraham is to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, and Ishmael is going to father some of those nations. So what we have in the entire overarching theme of Abraham’s life is not just the story of where the Jews came from. It’s the story of where the whole world comes from, in a sense, represented by two sons and God’s blessing on those sons to do particular things—one for the other.

The point is that Abraham is to pray for the nations. Abraham is to raise up a seed through Isaac of a priestly nation that will minister to all the nations around it. Now, the Jews of today don’t see it that way. They’re cloistered in Israel, and the Arabs don’t see their need to be ministered to. So the whole thing is set on its head. But ultimately, it’s the picture of what will come to completion in the establishment of the Christian church as the Christian church is that combination—with the special priestly people now being taken out of the way. All things come together in Christ.

Let’s look at another text, very important to this, where Abram actually prays for the nations in a couple of different regards.

Well, let’s go first through these brief observations, and I’ll stop along the way to make the point I’m making here. But let’s go through these observations on this chiastic structure, even though we won’t have time to go into them in detail.

Based on this chiastic structure, the structure begins and ends with a recitation of Abraham’s kind of life.