Husbands -- It's Our Role!

If you’re like me, you like being reminded that Jesus nourishes and cherishes us. The entire New Testament repeats that promise again and again. That truth lifts our head when depression seeps into our thoughts.  It gives us confidence when hard times come to our families, our health, our finances, our communities, our nation. 

It’s comforting and emboldening to know Jesus loves us above His own life; that He is quick to forgive us when we apologize, and that His forgiveness throws our sins – every one of our sins – as far from Him as east is from west.

And that is why His word to men in Ephesians 5 is so instructive for a healthy and successful marriage. Here is what He says:

 ¹Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma . . .”

But don’t stop there. Read on:

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her . . . ²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself . . . just as the Lord does the church. . . . ³¹ “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

The next verse elevates the marriage relationship of a man with his wife to an extraordinary and transcendent spiritual plane:

³² This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 

Men, we ought to do more than merely wonder how many fewer divorces we’d see among us if husbands obeyed this text of Holy Scripture. We ought, rather, to diligently seek His help to “Be imitators of God as beloved children,” and obey this Scripture. 

Don’t you think?

And oh, by the way – men, if we loved our wives like Jesus sacrificially loves the Church, I suspect our wives would find it easier to follow the next commandment in verse 33: . . . [A]nd let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

Good News YouTube -- God is Sovereign

Need some good news?  Here's some in less than 6 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOxYnBZeUMM

Grace to Know

I came across this passage today in Acts 18. It’s about a Jewish man named Apollos who was “speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John . . . But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.”

So many of us who love Jesus tell others about the wonderful things of God. But we only tell what we know. How much more do we NOT know?

So I laid aside my Bible and offered God this prayer from Psalm 119:

“Oh Lord! Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law.” (v. 18)

“Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, And I shall observe it to the end.”

“Give me understanding, that I may observe Your law

And keep it with all my heart . . . .”

“Incline my heart to Your testimonies . . . . Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity, And revive me in Your ways.”  

“Establish Your word to Your servant, As that which produces reverence for You. . . .  Revive me through Your righteousness.” (vv. 33-40)

Will you pray with me that we will each better know?

And that we will each better obey?

Hebrews Lesson 6 on YouTube

Rarely do Christians turn from Christ overnight. It happens by degrees. A compromise with sin here, a nursing of some bitterness there . . . We look at that somber truth in this 6th lesson through Hebrews.  Find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bixCYqPxkjE

Remember Elijah

An open letter to all my online friends who are faithful to Jesus Christ: 

Write this down in the flyleaf of your Bible: “Remember Elijah.” Here is what I mean by that:

The time will come when it will be illegal for anyone to say some of the things being said here and elsewhere about our national sins, about living righteously before God, and of God’s impending judgment.  And we might think ourselves alone because we do not hear or read words of encouragement from those of like Christian faith.

Remember Elijah.

Having just come off the mountain, exuberant with the memory of God’s powerful response to the false prophets (1 Kings 18), we find him in the pits of despair and fleeing for his life from the politician’s wife.

“They have torn down Your altars,” he cried out to God, “They have killed your prophets, and I alone am left.”

But remember God’s response to Elijah: “I have kept for myself 7000 who have not bowed their knee to the culture.” (1 Kings 19:10,18 – my paraphrase).

You and I enjoy the encouragement we provide each other online. But life in American culture has undergone a slow and inexorable shift away from Biblical truth. The time will come that the words of Christ-honoring Christians will be effectively silenced in the marketplace.

We, too, will soon feel alone – some of us will feel the emotion more intensely than others. But WE ARE NOT ALONE. God will always keep for Himself the remnant who hear His voice, and follow Him. 

Be encouraged. There are millions of us out there. Let us pray for each other every day.

Remember Uzzah

To Obey is Better Than to Sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22)

If you read about Uzzah’s death only in 2 Samuel you’ll miss a critically important piece of supplemental information. 

In the sixth chapter David and “all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord.” They placed the ark of God on an ox cart to bring it to Jerusalem. But as they drew near the city the oxen stumbled and knocked the ark off balance. Uzzah the priest reached out to keep it from falling. But “the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him . . . and he died.”

If that’s all we know, then we should have some questions, not the least of which would be: Why did God kill His priest for trying to protect the ark?

But take a look at the same story in the 15^th chapter of 1 Chronicles, especially verses 11-15. After Uzzah’s death, David again decided to bring the ark to Jerusalem. But this time: “David called for . . . the priests, and for the Levites . . . and said to them . . . because you did not carry it at the first, the Lord our God made an outburst on us, for we did not seek Him according to the ordinance.”

“. . . for we did not seek Him according to the ordinance.”

In other words, sacrifice and celebration in our worship and work for God is fitting and proper for anyone who calls God “Father” and Jesus “Lord.” But God also demands those things be done in obedience to His revealed will. Only after Uzzah’s death did the priests insert poles into the rings of the ark and then carry it on their shoulders – as Moses commanded half a millennium earlier (see Exodus 25:10-14 and Numbers 4:6-15).

The Holy Spirit tells us through the prophet, Samuel: “Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is no less a sin than divination, and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry.”  (1 Samuel 15:22-23)

God is always serious about our obedience to His commandments – even while we worship and work for Him.

Remember Uzzah.