Dennis Tuuri

# The Ascended Husband

To that law and particularly to a law concerning marriage. God’s word is always a law word and a grace word to us because of the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. We just sang about the graces ever knew that God pours upon us on the Lord’s day. One way to think of them is glory, knowledge, and life. The basic flow of our worship service. And what men want is glory, respect, esteem. Men generally, men and women.

They want knowledge to know what’s really going on. And they want rejoicing—life together. But fallen man tries to attain these things not through the mediation of Christ. So when we come to this service, and young people, you know, you need to think about this as you mature into an understanding of the gospel of Christ: the gospel says that Jesus died for your sins, and your sins are trying to seek glory, knowledge, and life apart from the mediated grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And for his people, God died for those very sins and was raised up so that we could be forgiven for that, and now seek glory, knowledge, life. And in today’s text, how to have a successful and prosperous marriage through the mediated grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, was raised for our justification, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, and for the sake of his purposes in his kingdom.

So the gospel is central to an understanding of all of God’s word. And if you are trying to receive glory, knowledge, and life, not through the mediation of the resurrected savior and not through his word, then you are headed for hell. That’s where you’re going. So we plead with people, we implore them: set aside your sins by the grace of God. Repent of those sins. Believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only source of glory, knowledge, and life. And he died and was raised up so that his people might have that kind of resurrection, prospering life.

So let’s go to God’s law word, a grace word today that tells us a very important truth about one of the central things that most people are involved with: Christian marriage. And by way of implication, we’ll draw out a little bit maybe of implications for male-female relationships as well. But we turn now to Colossians 3:19, and the title of the sermon is “The Ascended Husband”—or the heavenly husband, we could say.

And remember that we come to these texts only after we’ve had a couple of chapters of the grand glory of the Lord Jesus Christ displayed for us in his death on the cross and his resurrection. And then at the beginning of this chapter, his ascension. We’re to seek the heavenly things. We’re to be heavenly husbands, heavenly fathers, heavenly children, heavenly wives. We’re to have this relationship with the ascended Christ at the right hand of the Father.

So we turn now to Colossians 3:19. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for the simplicity of this verse and yet the profundity of it. We acknowledge that this is what we need and that in ourselves, apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t love one another, let alone our wives, and we don’t have good thoughts and kindness to each other, but we’re bitter toward each other.

So bless us, Father, with the knowledge of the ascended savior. We seek heavenly things this morning at the right hand of you, Lord God, the Father—right hand of the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. We seek his perspective on our marriages, and more than that, we seek his empowerment, his transformation, that we might be people who love and who are not bitter, either in ourselves or toward others. Bless us, Father, to the end that we would attain these things for the sake of your glory, majesty, and honor and dominion.

In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

I want to begin by just saying that in a very somewhat tangentially related way—and I’ll have maybe a little bit more to say when we ordain Daniel—but we had a great meeting at Hathman. The forward: every other year the officers go off for a vision planning session for a day and a half. Other church leaders go with us. It was a great time. We came away with all kinds of wonderful ideas, and you’re going to be excited when these—the ones the elders adopt and kind of prioritize—are presented to you in April. I mean, it was an excellent meeting. And I think that one reason why it was excellent: there are two things that made it particularly joyful to me.

One is this idea of succession. At the meeting, Daniel—who will be ordained today as a deacon—was there. How Forester grew up mostly at this church, right? There were three, you know, siblings there: Michael, Angela, and Abigail. And there was Brian Hangartner. You know, some of these kids—their dads had been at these meetings before. Now it’s them. Now they’re taking over. Now they’re stepping up and doing these things. That’s a wonderful blessing to this church: to have these children who have basically been raised in the context of what we are now assuming leadership and direction in various ways, including today as a church officer, Daniel.

The second thing I think that Keithman was exciting for me—and I think the reason why it was, in part at least, productive—at least part of the reason was the fact that we had six deacons, including Daniel. We had three pastors. And then we had two male lay leaders, leaders who were not officers. Then we had five women who are not officers. So out of the group, we had five women there. And I already mentioned two of them: Angela and Abigail. And my wife was there, and Molly was there. And the last woman is Angela. Did I mention Angela already? I did. Angie Schubin was there. How can we forget that? Yeah. Okay. She had great ideas in the little breakout group we were in. She had most of the ideas. So the church benefited yesterday because of an understanding of the need for both men and women in planning, vision planning, etc.

So really, it’s somewhat related to this text: understanding a proper role of the significance of men and women, bringing different perspectives and different ideas. So we had a great time, and we’ll have more to say next month when we come back to you.

Now, we began this—this is sort of the second half of the sermon, which we began with the last verse about the wives: “right wives, to be submitting to their husbands as is fitting in the Lord.” And so, you know, the context of today’s verse is that. And so what we have here is a series of instructions—wives and husbands, children and parents, servants and masters—that sort of establish the idea of what a Christian culture, what a Christian civilization is supposed to look like in relationships.

And I said that these things are sort of fluid. What do I mean by that? Well, it struck me that as I’ve been studying these texts, first of all, “as is fitting in the Lord” can we agree that, while that’s attached to verse 18, of course, that’s the underlying truth for all these instructions for relationships? Husbands are supposed to relate to their wives as is fitting in the Lord. Wives to husbands, fitting in the Lord. Children to parents, as it is fitting in the Lord, proper from the Lord’s perspective.

We mentioned before that “Lord” is mentioned seven times in this section. It’s a big, huge deal. We’ve got “a Lord in heaven” is how the section ends. So, first of all, it kind of goes both ways, even though it’s attached to life. And you know the verses—we’ll look at a verse a little bit later. But we think sometimes of Colossians 3:18 and 19 as two separate sets of duties, and they’re kind of that, but they’re kind of not. They’re emphasized to husband and wife. But really, is there any husband who would not understand? Maybe there are, but as we pointed out two weeks ago, when we lead up to this in Ephesians, the verse just before this sort of section talks about the mutual submission of each other. Husbands and wives are always also brothers and sisters in the Lord. They’re to be mutually submissive.

So while the wife’s submission is kind of put forward for whatever reason, the husband’s submission is clearly supposed to be involved as well. Now, if you have a problem with that, I can talk to you later, but I think it’s quite clear. And some people say, “Well, husbands are supposed to love their wives, but wives are never commanded to love their husbands.” That’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. Okay, we’ll look at a verse here in a couple minutes, but obviously all the disciples are supposed to love each other, including, you know, is the husband the only person the wife isn’t supposed to love? No. It’s crazy. So clearly that’s a mutual thing.

And then when we get to the husband’s negative—and there’s not a negative for the wife—Paul is correcting some really perverted relationships that exist in the fallen world relative to, you know, the word “patriarchy.” Maybe it has a good connotation, but it’s got a bad connotation because it stresses, you know, authority. “Archy” is like rule—rule by fathers. And while there’s a biblical kind of—what the biblical truth about the relationship of the family—it gets twisted into them becoming tyrants. And that’s what it was in Rome. That’s what it was with the Greeks. That’s what it was with the Jews at the time. That’s what it is in pagan cultures. That’s what it is in Islamic—in, you know, the Islamic portions of the world that actually believe the thing and try to implement it. We’re not like that, okay?

So we’ve got different roles going on here. And the husband gets a negative attached to his positive command to love his wife: don’t be bitter. Well, is it okay for the wife to be bitter? Obviously not, right? And we’ll talk about that in a little bit. And marriages are destroyed. Bitterness is one of the most common caustic chemicals in your home.

I was reading a Family Life article from 2007, and you know, Beethoven died. He died a bad death. He was just in horrible shape, and nobody knew what was going on. And one of his last things he asked for—as I read from this article—is he wanted to, he really hoped that they would find out what had happened to him because it was so horrible, so that other people wouldn’t have to go through it. That wish, that prayer was answered. Two hundred years later, they did research and they discovered that he died of lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning. Now, that’s what people used to do. And why did they do it? Because they took a bunch, drank lead? No. Because they had plates or this or that had a little bit of lead in them, right? Little bit of lead. And over time, the lead builds up in the system, makes you horribly sick, grumpy, irritable—which he was, at the end—out of sorts, and it kills you.

Well, this command not to be bitter—well, it’s directed to husbands for a particular reason. It’s, I think, also obviously true, just like love and submission, and it applies to wives too. And a lot of marriages, you know, when they break up on the shores, what they’re breaking up over are the rocks of long-seated bitternesses. You know, Bill Gothard—one of the things that I still remember from years ago—the root of bitterness, right? And it could be toward parents, could be toward whatever it is.

And the idea is then, so all these things apply both to husbands and wives. And this command today—which is what it is, it’s a law. It’s one of those Psalm 119 things we’re supposed to meditate on, delight in, and do: not to be bitter, to put it away—you know, is bidirectional, like the rest of them are.

Why are they listed in the order they are? I mean, why is the wife told particularly to be submissive? Why is the husband told particularly to love his wife and not be bitter? And I think—or at least I can think of—a relationship of these statements back to creation. And this isn’t just some kind of oddball Dennis notion. Remember that when we were exegeting Colossians 1 and even into 2, what did we see? We saw all kinds of imagery of new creation stuff, because that’s what the gospel is. The world has been made new. Jesus is the second Adam. Duh, right? That means it’s a new creation in Christ.

And so we saw elements of that. And so here what we see is the ascended husband, the heavenly husband, the heavenly wife, playing out what Adam and Eve were supposed to be like, were originally created to be. And then after their sin, right, they fell, and everything went to pieces.

And Eve thought: “That guy, he just stood there. He’d let me do it. In fact, maybe he wanted to see what it would be like if I ate that fruit. I can’t trust that guy ever again. Why would I want to trust that guy? Submit to him? Are you crazy? The last time I did that, let him just sort of be there, and maybe even manipulate me into eating the thing. The last time I did that, it the whole world suffered and died and fell apart.”

And the husband, what does Adam think? He thinks, “Love her. Be nice to her. She got us into this mess. I didn’t need to. Think she did.” And that’s just what he tells God, isn’t it? Of course it is. He says, “This woman you gave me. He’s bitter toward her.”

Okay, that’s Adam’s state and his fallen nature: to be bitter toward his wife. His wife’s day is to not be trusting of God, working through her husband, to submit to a guy who, you know, every bit of her genetic memory going back to the fall tells her is a guy that done her wrong. Why would I want to submit to him? Why would I not be bitter to my wife, who got me into this mess?

You see, so I think that’s why these particular emphases are played out the way they are. You know, there’s lots of reasons you know to not the Roman household code. But I think also what we’re seeing again is a reversal of the fall. Now, that’s very significant for us, right? I mean, what that means is—what that means is—we want to have rejoicing, life, right? We want to have a good time. We want to celebrate, and God wants us to celebrate.

The last thing we do toward the end, the last phase of our worship is celebrating here at this table, right? It’s not supposed to be dreary. It’s a calling to God’s memory, we could say. This is a memorial—the way that the ark of the rainbow was a memorial to God, and he’d see it. He doesn’t need to remember, but he says he would remember, and he treats us graciously. It’s the assurance to us that our sins are forgiven, and we rejoice about that. We’re not morose about it, okay?

So that’s what God wants for us too. He wants us to celebrate. He wants us at the end of the day to have a great time together in our families and to have a life characterized by submission to him and resultant joy.

And so what this tells us is the way we get to that is by entering into the ascended life of the savior, by being heavenly husbands and heavenly wives in the home. And this is such a significant element. You know, if you know what’s the old line: if mom is not happy, nobody’s happy.

And if things are bad at the home, you know, you can compartmentalize it, you can put it away, maybe when you go to work, but you know, husbands, you know how it, you know, bears down on you.

I threatened this morning to start with the shriek from the lead singer of Alabama Shakes. She has this great song, “Don’t Want to Fight No More.” And she starts it by going, shouldn’t do that. It’s a little gets louder, whatever. But the first one, first line of the, it’s, you know, the refrain is simple. Don’t want to fight no more. I mean, you can just turn on the radio, and within 10, 15 minutes, you’re going to find a song that relates to these sermon texts, and usually negatively—how things are going bad. And in the song “Don’t Want to Fight No More,” you know, the first thing is: my line, your line, don’t cross the lines.

So there’s this, and now I know there’s some degree of truth to that, right? But in the fallen—I don’t know who those people are, the Alabama Shakes—but in the fallen world, they try to build relationships and marriages while remaining in a state of autonomy: “my lines, it’s my life, my thing,” and you know, “Let’s not get this mixed up, right?”

So, and that is exactly the opposite of what our text is telling us to do. Our text says, “Please the Lord.” Number one: it’s not my lines. It’s Christ’s lines. It’s his roles that he’s laid out for. Then secondly, you know, to think of the other—the husband is to love his wife. He’s not supposed to put himself first. His lines become subordinate to her lines, right? And the wife is doing the same thing.

And so the wonderful news of the gospel is played out in families that obey these simple commands and as a result don’t end up with, you know, screaming out, “I don’t want to fight no more,” over and over again, but actually don’t fight like they used to, and know how to biblically resolve conflicts.

So that’s what these texts are about. So everything that we’re saying here has as its context this bilateral phrase: “fitting in the Lord.”

Okay, I’ll make a couple of comments about love and bitterness now. Okay, and then we’ll move to the conclusion.

So love. So what is the husband’s obligation? It’s to love his wife. What word is it? It’s agape. What’s the significance of that? Well, it means it’s not a sexual love. First of all—don’t you know—don’t emphasize that. And it’s not an emotional love. Secondly, okay? It’s not based really upon the characteristics of the person. Agape love is this godlike love that he has for us. Okay? So agape love really isn’t based on a set of conditions. It’s a command here, okay? It’s a command. People don’t like hearing that.

You know, love is supposed to be miraculous, and there is that element to it. There’s nothing wrong with, you know, sexual love and emotional love. That’s all great. That’s part of it—the chemistry, etc. Sure. But when we get around to describing the heavenly husband, the characteristic that God frontloads is to have an agape commanded.

Remember, we’ve talked about the reference from Philippians: an intentional, purposeful love for someone else. And that’s what Philippians says that love is. It’s intentional. It’s purposeful. And so the husband is to have not a love that goes up and down depending on how the wife acts, right? But he’s supposed to have a love that is intentional and purposeful toward a particular direction.

When Paul tells us in Ephesians these same basic truths, right—parallel books, a little more expansion in Ephesians—you know, he talks about love as nurturing and guarding. He says, you know, no husband, no man hates his own body. He loves himself properly, and what does it mean? Paul says it means that he nurtures his body, and he guards his body. He takes care of himself. He doesn’t let people, you know, beat him up or shoot him, if he can avoid him. And then secondly, he feeds himself. He nurtures. He tries to build himself up. And of course, that’s, you know, not just physical. We all try to, you know, move ahead to, you know, grow to human flourishing, prospering.

Paul says: if you want to know what love is for your wife, this is one way to think of it. It’s to be intentional, purposeful toward your wife so that you can guard her. So it means you got to be pay attention: what are the threats?

We talked a little bit in preparation for Hein, a little bit at Heath: what are the threats to the church, right? There’s always that part of this business tool SWAT analysis ends with what are the threats? You got to be aware of them. And more, far too many husbands, including myself, more often than not, are not purposeful about analyzing the potential threats to your wife. And they come in various directions. They’re not the same threats that you would feel, okay? Because she’s different than you, and you’re different from her—both as people and then you’re also completely different sexes.

So it’s a different deal going on. And again, if we think of this submission thing, one of the threats is the tyranny of men relative to her, right? Whether it’s real or imagined, that’s what she’s looking for. It’s what women are looking for, because that’s what happened in the garden. That’s the way men, that’s the way fallen man is, okay? He deceives. He corrupts. He, you know, is just a bad leader.

So, so how do we love this commanded, intentional, purposeful love of our wives? Now, and remember why I say all this: I’m talking to husbands. But remember the obligation is bilateral. Wives have the same love for their husbands.

So but with the husband, Paul says love and nurture. So I mean—I’m sorry—to cherish and guard. So to guard your wife, okay. Now, these are the same two tasks that Adam had toward two different gardens that he had. You know, Adam had two gardens, right? He had a garden that God placed him in, and he was specifically told to guard the garden, keep it from being attacked, which he didn’t do too well, right? But he was also told to grow the garden, right? To grow it, to make it more beautiful. And in fact, his task, our task, was to take the garden imagery of heaven basically and take it all the way around the world—all around the world. He was supposed to extend that garden, okay?

And gardens, you need to do two things. Protect them from outside attacks or whatever it is—bugs, drought, whatever it is—and you’ve got to nurture them, feed them, grow them up. That’s what Adam’s job was. And then God gave him a second garden. He gave him a wife, from whom he would have children. And this isn’t just an analogy. The spouse is actually called a garden, I believe, in Song of Songs. So there’s an actual reference to women as gardens, okay?

And what does that tell us? It tells us just what this love, and Paul says in Ephesians, that what you’re supposed to do with that garden is to protect them, you know, and to nurture them, grow them up.

I know people hate me for this reference. Some people don’t like it because it’s just way too old. Dad, you’re not hip. You got to get one. I tried Alabama Shakes earlier. I don’t know if you, but an old movie reference: Titanic. You’ve heard me say this before. Some people hate it because they think the movie was so bad. I have a different, little different take, but in any event, you know, so there’s this woman, Rose, who Leonardo is going to rescue in the ship.

And you know, I think he’s kind of a Christ figure. I know, I know, I know, I know you don’t like that. It’s okay. You got to take every thought captive in these movies. You got to put, you know, think God’s thoughts about him, okay.

So, so anyway, and but the point is, as an old lady, she’s back. You’re trying to find the wreck. You’ve seen the movie probably. And do you remember that in her little stateroom there in the boat she’s in, she’s got all these pictures around her of things she had done with her life? She went flying, horseback, I don’t know what all they were. And that’s a perfect picture.

Husbands, you should want at the end of your life to think: how have I nurtured my wife’s giftings? How have I helped her develop? Not how, you know, we in churches like ours can restrict that way down to a very small subset of human life. And I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to do. Love means bringing the other person, with intelligence on our part and purposefulness, to full development, human flourishing. That’s what it’s all about.

I don’t know if I should get too personal, but my wife will not like me for this, but I did a small thing several Christmases ago. I bought her an art table, and I’ve praised God so many times for that idea, because she’s been able to produce all kinds of beautiful stuff. That’s so makes my life so much enriched and brings her to fulfillment and expression. I don’t know what it is with your wife, guys, but it’s, and there’s multiple things, of course, but the point here is: this command is just a little bit. It’s a lot different than just, you know, like her, you know, attend her a little bit, take her out to dinner. Okay, those things are nice, but it means guard her, understand the attacks, understand her fears, protect her from those things.

And I’m not being condescending here, because it’s bilateral. I think the wife is supposed to be doing essentially the same thing with the husband and bring her to development.

So that’s the first commandment here: this love.

In Colossians 2, love was talked about. It says that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attending—or excuse me—attaining to all the riches of the full assurance of understanding. This was God’s purpose for his people. His purpose was that the congregation, the people of God, would be knit together in love. And surely, if that’s the purpose in the congregation, that’s the purpose in the home: that husbands and wives would be knit together in mutual love for one another.

And then what does it say? Attaining to all the riches, the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and Christ, spiritual flourishing and development, being knit together in love so that we can have a deeper comprehension of the blessings and glory and goodness of the Lord to us through the work of Jesus Christ. That’s the love that God has, that Paul set up for us in an earlier chapter as we come to this command to husbands to have this kind of love.

And then again, earlier in this chapter, in chapter 3, but above all these things—he talks about the virtues, the grace clothes; some people call them not grave clothes, grace clothes, right?—putting all the virtues on. And above all these things, put on like clothing. I mean, that’s what this is about. It’s a clothing metaphor. It goes back to the garden again, right? God’s clothing for Adam and Eve. And God uses clothing for us.

He gives us virtues to clothe us in. And the final, the great one is—all put above all these things. Put on love. Volitional, not an emotion. Put on love. Why? Which is the bond of perfection. Love is the bond of perfection. Again, it knits people together.

Husbands, if you’re not actively, intelligently, purposefully guarding and nurturing your wife, loving her—not just as something off to the side of your life, but very central to it—if you’re not knitting, being knit together with her, right, then really you’re kind of not doing—you’re not achieving the bond which brings perfection. And your marriage has cracks in it as a result. It’s got a little bit of lead poisoning going on, maybe, because if you’re not doing good, you’re probably not doing—you’re actually not being neutral. You got some bitterness. Whatever it is, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

So the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. This—I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I keep wanting to come back to this verse. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts. What does that mean? Well, we think of it: okay, the peace of God is ruling, I’m peaceful. That’s great. But that’s not what it means.

The word “rule” here means be an arbiter, be the judge, be the decider. So it means that as you have relationships with people—church, work, certainly wife—the peace of God is the arbiter in your heart as you try to be knit together in love, which is the bond of perfection.

So I think all those things we can bring into this command to love for the husband to love his wife. And we could, you know, we could put into the text here as well 1 Corinthians 13 stuff. Husbands, you’re going to know live your wives with understanding. I think at least part of that—it’s what we’re told in 1 Peter—is understanding your responsibilities, okay? I mean, it’s not about figuring your wife out. There is some of that. You got to know how to guard her, how to nurture her. But part of it is with understanding of your role. Do you understand what that love looks like that I’ve just described?

And of course, we need reminding, years, because we still live with a fallen nature. And one of the places you can go, with a little checklist with your wife in mind, and wives can go with their husbands in mind, is 1 Corinthians 13, right?

Love is patient. Love is kind. Well, there it is. That’s a header. That’s God. God is patient and kind. We’re in God. We’re in the ascended Christ. We’re supposed to be patient and kind with one another and particularly in our marriages, right? Patient and kind. Were you patient with your wife? Were you kind to your wife?—intentionally loving her, doing acts of goodness for her. That’s what it means. It doesn’t mean, you know, “you were always on my mind.” That song, that song’s just an excuse for unthankfulness. “Oh, I didn’t really love you as much as I. You were always on my mind, though.” That’s not biblical kindness. That’s not biblical love. Kindness is doing good, okay? And avoiding the things that’ll keep you from doing good.

I won’t go through the list in 1 Corinthians 13, but you all should. I will, when I get home, remind myself. I’ll put Christine into the picture. Patient, kind. I mean, we’ve got these wonderful verses about guarding and nurturing. We’ve got these wonderful verses that tell us what God’s character is like. That’s what 1 Corinthians 13 is. And as a result, how we should be.

Men, we can attend to those things. And wives, like I said, this is bilateral. And children, you’ve got an obligation to love your parents. Parents have an obligation to love their kids. This is about all of us, okay? Emphasis on husband, but about all of us.

And so I would encourage us to go to 1 Corinthians 13.

All right, I have a lot more I could say, but the husband is to have the wife’s interest first, as we’ve talked about—putting her needs and interest above your own. I haven’t mentioned that. So Christ sacrificial, self-sacrificial love puts the interests of the bride, his church, above his own. Lays down his life. And, you know, it’s a hard thing to figure out what that is, but at least it means putting the interests of the others above our owns.

Like I said, it’s not “my lines, your lines.” No, I’m thinking about you, not my lines. I want to know what you want. Putting your interests ahead of my own.

Now, you don’t put them first. You don’t put your wife’s interest or your husband’s interest first. You know whose interest you put first. It’s “fitting in the Lord.” You have to put the Lord’s interests above everything else. But then beyond that, you don’t serve. It’s Jesus, others, you—Joy. Old acronym. Probably a lot of you won’t like that I use that, but that’s okay. It’s a great acronym. Jesus, others, and you. And love means putting the interests of your wife—husbands, who are commanded by today’s text—above your interests.

Now attached to that positive commandment to love is a command not to do something. Don’t be bitter towards them. This is a huge topic. I probably should have a separate sermon. There are books written about bitterness, right? And we could talk about a lot of those things. But just briefly today: what is this bitterness thing?

Let me read you from the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance what this is. It let’s see—to produce a bitter taste in the stomach, to embitter, exasperate, render angry, indignant. Those are the kind of characteristics of bitterness in this particular word.

The root of the word, the Greek word, is to cut, okay. So to not make—you know—to not cut people, to not cut them down to size, right? To not harm them, to not make them bitter, not exasperate them, not tick them off, right? These are the things, you know, we’re not to do: is to be bitter toward our wives.

In Revelation 8:11, we read: “the name of the star is wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water because it was made bitter.”

So there’s a—I think that probably refers to the bitterness of the Judaizing doctrine of the first century church. But whatever the reference is, here’s the point: a satanic attack happens through wormwood—stuff that makes people bitter and produces bitterness and flows from bitterness. And so bitterness isn’t just another little small problem you can have. It is a significant deal that makes lots of men. The text just told us in Revelation: die, okay.

Deuteronomy 29:18, which is probably the reference for the verse in Hebrews about a root of bitterness that I mentioned earlier from Gothard. We’ll get to that. But here’s what we read in Deuteronomy 29:18:

“There are many, let’s see, there are many so that there may not be among your men or women or family or tribe those whose heart turns away today from the Lord your God to go and serve the gods of these nations. And that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood.”

Now, there’s the Old Testament reference for the Revelation text and the Hebrews text. What does it say? Okay, it says that bitterness does several things. One: bitterness spreads, just like the wormwood spreads. This thing spreads too, right? So whether it’s a person, a family member, a child, whatever, if you got people causing bitterness, it’s going to spread. That’s the warning from Deuteronomy 29.

And then secondly, what is the root of bitterness? The actual cause or source of it—what is it related to in Deuteronomy 29? It’s a heart wandering from God to seek the nations and gods around us. What are some of the most frequent temptations for bitterness in a marriage? The gods around us, whether it’s the philosophy of the ungodly, the practices of the ungodly, the emphasis on wealth—whatever it be—particular forms of physical beauty, which change century to century. You know, women shouldn’t worry about that stuff. I mean, it’s ridiculous. But these are the things that can make husbands bitter.

And see, it’s related to this text from Deuteronomy. Bitterness spreads, and bitterness reveals a heart wandering away from the Lord Jesus Christ and being tempted to follow the gods of the people around us. That’s what Deuteronomy 29 says.

So when we read in Hebrews talking about Esau, we’re warned then in Hebrews 12:15 that we’re to look carefully. It’s a big deal. Look carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up causes trouble. And by this many become defiled.

You see, it’s the same thing. So you put these verses together: bitterness causes many people to be defiled. People take up causes. People get upset. Bitterness spreads. Spreads in families, spreads in a community. It spreads. And bitterness is this wandering away from Jesus to serve the gods around us. And we’re supposed to work very carefully that no bitterness springs up, because it’s going to cause trouble.

Ephesians 4:31 is the one of the few other references to bitterness in the Bible. Let all bitterness—that’s the head of the list here. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Why do you get to evil speaking, anger, and wrath and malice? You get there, according to Ephesians, with beginning, the beginning of it is a root of bitterness.

And so husbands, you know, this is like the worst thing you can do for your wife—the most unloving thing you can do, the most dangerous thing you can do—is to be bitter toward your wife.

Now, what does it mean to be bitter toward your wife? Well, it can mean—I think again it’s these are like iconic sort of passages. They go in several directions. You can be bitter with your wife not doing what you want her to do. It’s that simple. I wanted this. She wanted that. I’m bitter. It’s a little pity party. And I don’t know, I’ll bet you every husband here, if I get you alone in a room, you’ll admit to me that you’ve had pity parties. You’ve gotten your feelings hurt. You didn’t do what I wanted to do. I’m the head of the household, after all. You know, whatever it is. And you know what that is? That’s the beginning of a root of bitterness.

I’ve seen it in my life. Sometimes my wife will say something, and it’s really, you know, probably accurate, but I don’t like it. It seems maybe a diss to me or not understanding of me or whatever it is. It could be a thousand things, and all of a sudden, they’ll sort of think: “well, wait a minute, I don’t need that. And if I don’t need that, I don’t need this right now.” And so there’s a little wall that you sort of put up: brick here, brick there, brick here. And pretty hopefully sooner, within minutes—sometimes it’s hours, and you guys have been married 30, 40 years—you know, sometimes it’s days, okay? But at some point, sooner the better, you start: “well, this is ridiculous. This is my wife. This is who God has given to me.” Didn’t throw the knock the bricks down.

So bitterness can be some kind of disappointment.

Another song I listened to last night—it’s there’s a new Bunny Raid album out, and one of the songs that are being played from it is called “Unexpected Consequences of Love.” The unexpected consequence of love, and it’s about fighting. It’s about going from that early stage of your marriage or a relationship and then you get these unintended—or is it unexpected?—consequences of love. And one of the first lines in it is: “expectations run.” You know, you get married, you got expectations of each other. And then, of course, those expectations are not going to be met in full because we’re fallen human beings.

It’s two sinners getting together trying to get things out, and you have these great expectations. You’ve heard all your life, growing up at RCC, “marriage. It’s wonderful. It’s great. The family is what it’s all about. You just, you know, you’re going to be swept off your feet. It’s going to be wonderful.”

And it is all of that, but it’s also “expectations run ground.” And so you have a vision in your head from a movie you saw when you were 12 or from a TV series you watched, and you built up these expectations of what this marriage would be. And of course, it’s not what God wanted for it. And somehow we think that what God wanted is second best. You know, Talking Heads: “This is not my beautiful wife. This isn’t what I expected. This isn’t that submissive, quiet, you know, unassuming wife that I was supposed to get, wearing a woman from this church,” whatever it is. These kind of goofy, you know, visions we have of things.

And you know what? Your wife is a real, living human being with as much power as you, because she’s been made in the image of God. And you know what? That’s a tremendous blessing. You need to be built up. She needs to be built up. God has brought you together to sanctify each other and to form a dynamic duo on a mission that you’re both supposed to be submissive to from God, with tremendous power. And you’ve got it.

And when you let the unexpected, unintended consequences of love—”expectations run around”—”it didn’t turn out like I wanted it”—when you let those start to get in there and cause a root of bitterness, you’re blowing the thing up. We all know—well, I don’t know—I know marriages that failed, come to absolute failure, because of bitterness over originally small things. Over the years, forgiveness is not given. Forgiveness is not sought. Both parties expect the other party to do X, Y, or Z before forgiveness will happen. And the grace that’s supposed to be the oil that lubricates the marriage is drained away.

Why? Maybe a simple unexpected, unintended consequence. Maybe a simple expectation run around that’s not dealt with biblically, right? And so the bitterness grows and it festers, and then the marriage dies. And as we read earlier, bitterness doesn’t stop there. You know, the lead poisoning is for the rest of the family, and then it’s for the friends and relatives. It’s for the broader community that they exist in. And all of a sudden, you’ve got a rudabous creating a large plan, a kudzu thing, starting to overtake all kinds of people in various directions. And reevaluations of what was said and what’s going on and who’s right and who’s wrong start to happen, and pretty soon you’re in a mess. You’re in a huge mess, okay?

All that from a simple failure on the part, first and foremost, from today’s text, of husbands to not to be bitter toward their wives.

Now, there’s other kinds of bitterness, right? So husbands, know that any husband, of any length—well, there probably some here that do a lot better—but I know at least and others of us know that another bitterness that happens relative to our spouse is stuff that has nothing to do with them. We come home angry from a day at work—which, I guess, for me is coming home from the church anyway. So we come home, and we’ve got—we’ve got expectations running around at our place of work, right?

And or maybe it’s a relative that we’re fighting with, or maybe it’s just our own: “we’re like, ‘gee, I’m 50 years old. This wasn’t what I thought was supposed to happen. Why do I can’t I pay off this mortgage?’” Whatever it is. And those things can result in bitterness toward your wife. You take it out on the wife, right? Or she may do the same thing, but I’m talking to husbands today, primarily.

She may do the same thing. But he is the one here being singled out. This is a common temptation for us. That God teaches us, exhorts us, admonishes us: Men, don’t do this. Don’t be bitter. Don’t be bitter at her for expectations running ground. Don’t be bitter toward her for your own difficulties, whatever conflict you got going on out here. Okay? Don’t do those things, right?

So bitterness—husbands, what are some of the evidences? Well, how can you make your wife bitter, too? There’s nothing.

I think this verse means that the expression—God doesn’t say—I could get in trouble here. God doesn’t command us men here to rule your homes, to exert headship. He doesn’t say that. What he says is love your wife. Don’t be bitter toward them.

When you try to power your way through the marriage, okay, with assertion of authority, headship claims, all that—if that’s how you think you’re going to have a good working relationship, knit together in love, producing peace and prosperity, not just for you but for the extent, you know, you’re wrong.

Cutting words, words that are tyrannical, words or attitudes—these things come from our hearts, right? Our minds, when we’re dismissive of our wives. Men, in your fallen nature, you think that woman you’re married to is less of a person than you are. That’s what you think in your fallen nature. You think she’s stupid, or you think she’s whatever—she’s deceitful. Now, I know you don’t let those thoughts come to your consciousness, right? You fight them back. But I’m telling you, that’s what fallen man thinks.

That’s why every pagan culture says that men are in and of their essence superior to women, okay? That’s what you’re tempted to think. Fight it with all your might, because the Lord has told you: you’re joint heirs of the gracious gift of life. And if you don’t treat your wife with that kind of respect and dignity and authority, your prayers will be hindered.

You can pray all day long for your marriage. But if you’re not treating her like a joint heir of the grace of life, you are doomed, brother. Those skies are brass to you. For all your pleadings and all your words and all your fastings: brass, if you don’t treat your wife with love and without bitterness—with an intentional, purposeful love to bring her to maturation, with a leadership that is based primarily on service.

So that’s—this is about: don’t speak harsh words, don’t be demeaning to your wife, in your thoughts, in your actions, in your whatever you do. Don’t leave her out of major decisions. I mean, unless she wants to be left out. You can obviously delegate responsibilities, but don’t think, “oh no, this is, you know, men’s work.” Usually not. Usually it’s couple’s work. And that’s what God wants us to do: is to couple up in that way.

Well, how do you do it? That’s great, Pastor. I’ve tried it. Didn’t work. I just don’t know how to do that, Pastor Tuuri. That’s right. You don’t. And I don’t. You know, it’s interesting that Ephesians and Colossians have some of the grandest texts of the glory and grandeur and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? We saw those in the first two chapters of Colossians. Ephesians has the same stuff.

The way we do this is to be ascended husbands, to be ascended wives, wives, to be heavenly husbands and wives, to have a sense of the grandeur of Christ. That’s the basis for everything else: is we’re seeking Christ at the right hand of the Father. Apart from him, forget it. You’re old Adam, okay?

So the only way to accomplish this is to have relationship with Christ, to appreciate the grandeur and glory and majesty of who he is and the greatness of the gospel, the greatness of the judgment that you are facing apart from the gracious work of God—extending you, compelling you, miserable poor sinners to come to Christ. He drew you.

You know, I, we have this repentance prayer: we God forgives all those who repent. It sounds like, you know, we’re forgiven on the basis of something we did. We repented. Now he forgives us and loves us. But of course, underlying that statement is a knowledge that only by the grace of God do we come to repentance. It’s his sovereign mercy.

We are the walking dead, right? We are blinded by the devil, born body ruined, stone cold dead as we stepped out of the world, right? By his grace, we’ve been delivered. By his power, we’ve been sealed. By his blood, we’ve been redeemed. We’re saved by the love and the grace of the lamb. And because of that, if we remember those things—you see, if we’re connected to Christ in that way, and we come to this verse, and we’re not trying to do it apart from the grace and glory and majesty of Christ—Christ gives us the power to do just this.

One last thing, one last thing here. How do we do it? Well, I mentioned earlier the grace clothes. I mentioned the culminating one: love. But the way you do it is to remember what he’s already told us, earlier in this chapter—to put off, as we read in Ephesians, bitterness, which creates malice and bad speech and bad actions. So put that off stuff off. Repent. Repent quickly.

If you need to talk to your spouse about something that’s causing a potential root of bitterness, talk to them. Get an intended time and place. Do it in a calm, measured way. Do it prayerfully, but don’t let it become a root of bitterness. Confess that sin to God. Forsake it, right now, if you’ve got one going on towards somebody or anybody. Forsake it. Repent of it to God. Say, “That’s the lead that’s going to cause me to die. That’s the little stuff that’s going to become a fullgrown kudzu plant instead of just being a root.”

So you repent of that stuff, and you put off that. You put it off. But that’s not enough, because then we’re told to put on the grace clothes. Colossians 3:

“But now you yourselves are to put off all of these—anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Don’t lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who called him. Therefore, as the elect of God, by his grace, by his sovereign grace—you didn’t choose him. He chose you. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved—a deep assurance of your well-being. If your well-being depends on your wife’s, you know, compliments to you, no—you’re not going to be equipped to put off bitterness. A deep assurance that we are holy and beloved. And then, on the basis of that, we are depositively commanded to put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another. Of course, your wife has shortcomings. Of course, your husband has shortcomings and he has sins. Bearing with one another and forgiving one another for the stuff that actually is sinful.

If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you—that’s the good news. That’s the basis for everything here. So you also must do to the others. And above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection.”

Let’s pray.

Father, what wondrous things we read in your word. We’re so delighted in this concluding sentence of this section from Colossians, that were to put on this love which is the bond of perfection, that there’s peace here, and this peace is supposed to mediate in our hearts.

Lord God, we know that in many marriages in this church and throughout this world, there’s bitterness. There’s lack of love. There’s lack of submission to each other. Father, we pray that here, as a result of your word, that your spirit would be at work. I pray that men and women here in this place right now would repent of bitternesses, repent of a failure to love properly, repent of a failure of submission.

Lord God, may we have marriages that reflect the beautiful bond of perfection of the love of our savior, because we know this is why he bled and died—was so that we might move from being old Adam to new Adam, resurrected, ascended husbands and ascended wives, heavenly husbands and wives.

Let heaven reign in our homes this week. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.