PT-1 "Unbreakable Love" (Eph. 5:31)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/28/2019 10:22 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                      Focus:  PT-1 “Unbreakable Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 5:31

 

            Message of the verses:  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’” (NKJV).

 

            Ephesians 5:31 is a direct quote from Genesis 2:24 and in Genesis chapter two God gives us another aspect of creation along with Adam naming the different animals that God had created.  As Adam named the different animals he noticed that all of them had mates and so this probably was disturbing to him as he had no mate at the time.  God solved that problem as He performed the first operation and took a rib from Adam to use to create Eve and then Adam stated what is seen in verse 24 of Genesis.  Marriage has not changed from the time that God created Adam and Eve in the eyes of God and so marriage has in it what our theme is for today’s SD and that is “unbreakable love.”

 

            I have listened to different sermons or talks in marriage ceremonies along with marriages seminars that talk of the importance of breaking it off between the parents and their children who have gotten married.  When parents continue to try and rule their children after they get married you will find nothing but trouble.  I think a wise parent can suggest things to their newly married children, but suggesting is much different than trying to rule over them.  They are a new unit and need to operate as being a newly formed unit as they certainly are in the eyes of God. 

 

            John MacArthur writes “Proskollao (cleave) literally means to be glued or cemented together.  Husbands and wives are to leave their parents and to cleave to, be cemented to, each other.  They break one set of ties as they establish the other, and the second is more binding and permanent that the first.”

 

            We read in Malachi 2:16 that God says “I hate divorce,” and God has always hated divorce and will continue to hate divorce.  The reason is that it destroys that which He has ordained to be unbreakable.  God hates divorce on any terms and for any reason.  We see that Jesus spoke of this with the Pharisees and told them that they were not to divorce their wife for any reason with the exception of adultery.  When He was talking about adultery He was talking about continued adultery, and not a first time and then never happen again.  Jesus Christ is always forgiving believers and so husbands and wives are to be the same, forgiving one another.  Jesus Christ does not separate Himself from believers who sin and so that should be true of husbands and wives.

 

            In the OT we see that Israel was repeatedly unfaithful to God, and that unfaithfulness is often referred to in the OT as spiritual adultery.  When God chose Israel as His people He determined to love them with an everlasting love as seen in Jeremiah 31:3.  It was only after unrelenting spiritual adultery and rejection of Him that God finally gave Israel a divorce:  “"And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also” (Jer. 3:8).  However that was not to say that God had rejected the true believers within the nation, who were secure in His saving grace as can be seen in Mal. 3:16-18, and with the quotation of those verses we will end this SD.  “16 Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name. 17 “They will be Mine," says the LORD of hosts, "on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him." 18 So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Anyone who has been married for any length of time knows that when two sinful people come together in marriage there are bound to be some troubles from time to time, but when that happens I am to remember that this covenant that I made with my wife is permanent.  It has been permanent for over 46 years by the grace of God.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I had a very profitable lunch meeting with my Pastor yesterday talking about humility and the filling of the Holy Spirit, and for that I am thankful to God and to him.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Action:” “Love insists we do something.  Feelings follow action.  Feelings are the fruit, not the root, of love.  If you give your enemy something to eat or drink, something happens to your feelings.  When you invest yourself in someone, you begin to feel differently toward him or her.”

 

8/28/2019 10:56 AM

Caring Love (Eph. 5:28-30)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/27/2019 10:35 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                          Focus: “Caring Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Ephesians 5:28-30

 

            Message of the verses:  “28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body.”

 

            We have learned that the church is called the “body of Jesus Christ,” and as we look at these verses we see that the husband should love his own wife as he loves his body.  Some men may not believe that they love their own body, but think about how much time you spend caring for your body and you will see that you actually do love your own body.  We as husbands are to care for our wife to the extent as we would for our wife’s welfare as we do for our own body.

 

            I suppose that in our generation that both men and women care more for their bodies than ever before.  Vitamins, exercise, clothing and many other things seem to be more important today than ever before.  The amount of money spent on personal needs for our bodies is many times over what was spent in centuries before us.

 

            As Christians we know that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit thus we should take proper care of our bodies as we give them the right food, maintaining reasonable strength, getting enough rest, and other things we won’t take the time to mention.  “When we have a healthy body we have a sense of well-being; and when a husband meets the needs of his wife—with the same care and concern with which he meets the needs of his body—he will also have a sense of well-being and pleasure as a by-product of his love.”

 

            “The husband who loves his wife as Christ loves the church will no more do anything to harm her than he would to harm his own flesh.  His desire to nourish and cherish her just as he nourishes and cherishes his own body—because that is how Christ also does the church” (MacArthur Commentary on Ephesians).

 

            When a husband looks at his wife as a cook, housekeeper, occasional companion, and sex partner he is not loving her as Christ loves the church.  Paul wrote in Philippians 4:19 that God supplies “all [our] needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” and so we are to do this for our wives.  Now again I want to mention that Paul, in this section of Ephesians beginning with 5:18 is talking about things to be done in the power of the Holy Spirit as He fills our lives to accomplish the things He desires us to do and for husbands it is to love their wife as Christ loves the church.

 

            One of the things that the husband is to do is to nourish a wife and provide for her needs and to give that which helps her grow and mature in favor with God and man.  Now to cherish her is to use tender love and physical affection to give her warmth, comfort, protection and also security, as women truly love to know that they are safe.

            John MacArthur concludes:  “Christ provides for us as His church because we are members of His body.  Not to provide for His church would be not to provide for Himself.  He shares common life with His church, and we are members of His body, His flesh and bones, His present incarnation on earth.  Paul said, ‘The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him’ ((1 Cor. 6:17), and again, ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me’ (Gal. 2:20).

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I once again am learning the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit in order for me to love my wife as Christ loves His Church.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  From the beginning of this year up until now and beyond I am learning about humility and the biggest thing that I have learned about it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that I will be humble.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”

 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate

your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who

Curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those

Who spitefully use you and persecute you.

Matthew 5:43-44

 

8/27/2019 11:06 AM

PT-2 "Purifying Love" (Eph. 5:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/26/2019 9:19 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                           Focus:  PT-2 “Purifying Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 5:26-27

 

            Message of the verses:  “26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”

 

            In John MacArthur’s commentary he writes about a two Christian couples and their views on the magazine Playboy, and the one man stated in an interview that he would never have anything to do with it, while the other Christian man said that he and his wife read it and I suppose look at the pictures in it.  He said that it enhances their marriage, however he was certainly wrong about that and should have been in agreement with the first man.  The second man has totally misunderstood about purifying love for his wife.

 

            Now there are far too many times that I have seen young men tell young women that they are in love with them, when in truth they are lusting over them, and of course this is not a purifying kind of love that they have for them, only hormonal love.  Married men should never flirt with other women as this is sinful and shows their need to have more of a purifying love for their wives and could also cause the breakdown of the marriage if the other woman took this seriously.

 

            John MacArthur writes “In ancient Greece, a bride-to-be would be taken down to a river to be bathed and ceremonially cleansed from every defilement of her past life.  Whatever her life had been before, it was now symbolically purified and she would enter the marriage without any moral or social blemish—the past was washed away.

 

            “In an immeasurably greater way Christ gave Himself up for the church, that ‘he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.’  His cleansing of believers in not ceremonial and symbolic, but real and complete.

 

            “The soteriological truth in this analogy is that saving grace makes believers holy through the cleansing agency of the Word of God, so that they may be presented to Christ as His pure Bride, forever to dwell in His love.  It is with that same purpose and in that same love that husbands are to cultivate the purity, righteousness, and sanctity of their wives.”

 

            Now I have to say that humanly this is totally impossible to do, for one thing in order to love your wife in this way the first thing that you have to be is a believer, and the second thing is that you have to have a growing relationship with the Lord so that you can understand this truth.  And another thing that is extremely important is that you have to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit of God so that He can live His life through you in order to love your wife as Christ loves the church.

            Spiritual meaning for my life:  To continue to learn and understand the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit and to learn what my part is in this.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I have been writing about humility since the beginning of this year, knowing that humility is very important to be and first of all to understand it.  I can say that I have learned many things about humility and I can also say that there has been a great spiritual battle going on inside of me as I am sure that Satan does not want me to learn about this.  The important thing for me is to learn about being filled with the Holy Spirit continually so that I can then do the things that God has planned for me to do in eternity past.

 

Today’s quotations from “Love in Action” comes from page 15:   “Christ provided the crowning example of how to respond to our enemies when from the cross He prayed for those who were abusing Him.  And here in Romans He tells us He died for us even when we were yet His enemies.”

 

8/26/2019 10:02 AM

PT-1 "Purfiying Love" (Eph. 5:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/25/2019 9:20 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                           Focus:  PT-1 “Purifying Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Ephesians 5:26-27

 

            Message of the verses:  “26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”

 

            When a husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church it can be described as doing it with a purifying love.  John MacArthur writes “Divine love does not simply condemn wrong in those loved but seeks to cleanse them from it. Christ’s great love for His church does not allow Him to be content with any sin, any moral or spiritual impurity in it.  God tells His people, ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool’ (Isa. 1:18).  He cast the sins of His forgiven children ‘into the depths of the sea’ (Mic. 7:19), and He forgives their iniquity and remembers their sin no more (Jer. 31:34).”

 

            We have been over the gospel message many times in these SD’s and learned that once a person become a believer in Jesus Christ, making Him Lord and Savior all of His sins are forgiven.  Then when a believer sins he or she is to confess their sin to the Lord as 1 John 1:9 tells us and the example is found in John’s gospel where we read of Jesus washing His disciples feet “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you’ (John 13:10).  Jesus was speaking of Judas who would later on that evening betray Jesus. 

 

            In the next statement that MacArthur has in his commentary, it truly speaks volumes to me, although it is something that I know, but needed a reminder.  “Love wants only the best for the one it loves, and it cannot bear for a loved one to be corrupted or misled by anything evil or harmful.”  He then goes on to put into the context of the husband by writing “When a husband’s love for his wife is like Christ’s love for His church, he will continually seek to help purify her from any sort of defilement.  He will seek to protect her from the world’s contamination and protect her holiness, virtue, and purity in every way.  He will never induce her to do that which is wrong or unwise or expose her to that which is less than good.”

 

            Well because it is Sunday evening this SD will be short, but Lord willing we will complete this section in our next SD.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”:

 

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still

Sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been

Justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through

Him.  For if we were enemies we were reconciled

To God through the death of His Son, much more,

Having been reconciled, we shall be

saved by His life.

Romans 5:8-10

 

8/25/2019 9:42 PM

PT-3 "Sacrificial Love" (Eph. 5:25b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/24/2019 6:03 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                         Focus:  PT-3 “Sacrificial Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 5:25b

 

            Message of the verse:  “and gave Himself up for her.

 

            We have written about that a husband is willing to give up his life for his wife like Christ did for the church, and if the husband is willing to do this then the husband should be willing to sacrifice lesser things for her.  He should be willing to put his own likes, desires, opinions, preferences, and welfare aside if that is required to please her and meet her needs.  The husband is to die to self in order to live for his wife, because that is what Christ’s kind of love demands, and that is what submission is about.  Now of course this cannot be done on his own, or in the flesh, but can only be done by the filling of the Holy Spirit, otherwise it will not truly be possible.

 

            John MacArthur writes “The true spirituality of a church leader is not measured best by how well he leads as a deacons’ or elders’ meeting, by the way he participates in Sunday school, or by the way he speaks from the pulpit—but by the way he treats his wife and children at home when no one else is around.  Nowhere is our relationship to God better tested than in our relationship to our family.  The man who plays the part of a spiritual shepherd in church  but who lacks love and care in his home is guilty of spiritual fraud.”

 

            As we look at this very penetrating statement from above we know that it is not what the world tells a man how he should live out his life, in fact the world that we live in today is different than the time period when MacArthur wrote this commentary when the world wanted a macho type of man, but now true to the decline of the man’s role in our society the world wants a man who doesn’t even act like a man at all as the curse of what happened to the woman back in Genesis chapter three which says that the woman wants to rule over her husband is truly seen in our society today. 

 

            We will finish with a rather long quote from John MacArthur which he begins by writing “To regularly remind myself of the essence of this self-sacrificing love, I have on my desk the following words from an unknown source:

 

“When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and you sting and hurt with the insult of the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ—that is dying to self.  When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence—that is dying to self.  When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, and irregularity, or any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus endured it—that is dying to self.  When your are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any attitude, any interruption by the will of God—that is dying to self.  When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown—that is dying to self.  When you see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances—that is dying to self.  When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart—that is dying to self.”

 

            As I read over the things that are written on this SD which are quotes from this unknown person and also the quotes from John MacArthur I realize that I can never do these things on my own, and that is why this section that we have been looking at begins with “do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit,” I realize that that is the only way any of this will ever be accomplished in my life, to which God will receive the glory for at that time great things He has done in my life.

 

            I have to say that at the beginning of this year when I desired to better understand humility that I have been going through some very difficult situations within me, and I full well believe that God is answering my desire to learn about humility and with that is teaching me that at all times I need to be filled with His Holy Spirit.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”: “Agape is love that comes from a God who is love.  It is love lavished upon others without a thought or whether they are worthy to receive it.  It is this kind of love that is to characterize the Christian.  This is totally selfless love that comes from God.  Agape is the power that moves us to respond to someone’s needs with no expectation of reward.  At least fifty-five times in the New Testament we are commanded to love.  It is one of Scripture’s most repeated, inescapable directives for the believer.  It touches us in all of our relationships and affects us in each of the many roles we play as parents, spouses, children, friends, and fellow believers.  It even defines the way we are to respond to our enemies.”

 

8/24/2019 6:47 AM

PT-2 "Sacrificial Love" (Eph. 5:25b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/23/2019 11:06 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                          Focus:  PT-2 “Sacrificial Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 5:25b

 

            Message of the verse:  “and gave Himself up for her.”

 

            I stated in our last SD that we would begin this SD by talking about the Good Samaritan, and his expression of love to the man who was beaten and robbed was based on his own generous character and also on that man’s severe need, as the man that the Samaritan who was attending to was probably gone to be left for dead if the Samaritan had not come along.  It really did not matter whether the man deserved his care as this did not really enter into the picture that Jesus was painting with His Words.  Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, and the reason was because He loved them and it was His desire to serve them, and this was not because they deserved even that most menial of services.  Jesus loved them despite their selfishness, pride, ambition, self-indulgence, jealousy, or even their fickleness.  There is no doubt that Jesus felt great sorrow and pain because of their continued selfishness after three years of being with Him in intimate fellowship.  Just a little more thought on this and that is that we know that God hates and cannot tolerate sin, and yet Jesus lived with sinful people the entire time that He was on this earth, and that to me is amazing.  Jesus did not love and serve them on the basis of those feelings but on the basis of His own loving nature, so it was not so much the feelings that He had for His sinful disciples, as it was because of His loving nature.  Another reason He washed their feet was to give an example of what every disciple of His is commanded to do.  “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).  And then a little while latter Jesus said “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John. 13:34).

 

            John MacArthur writes “Where there is need, love acts, with no consideration or deserving or worth (cf. 1 John 3:16).  God’s love is its own justification; and when we love as He loves, our love is also its own justification, because it is like His love.  God did not love the world and send His own Son to redeem it because it was worthy of that love.  It was totally unworthy of His love; and when His love came in human flesh, the world despised it, rejected it, and threw it back in God’s face.  Yet Jesus Christ, as God’s incarnate love, did not flinch or turn away or become resentful.  He preached and taught and bled and died, because that is what divine love demanded.

 

            “Love does whatever needs to be done and does not count cost or merit.  It reaches out and helps, leads, teaches, warns, or encourages.  Whatever is needed it gives.  Whether its help is received or rejected, appreciated or resented, love continues as long as the need continues.”

 

            Now if the Christian who loves because of what other people may do for him or if he loves because they are attractive, they do not love as God loves.  This is true of the Christian husband, for if he only loves his wife because she is attractive or pleasing temperament he is not loving as Christ loves.  The husband who loves his wife for what she can give him loves as the world loves, not as Christ loves.  The husband who loves his wife as Christ loves His church gives everything he has for his wife, and this includes his life if necessary.

 

Quotation from “Love in Action” for today:  “Beloved, if God so love us, we also ought to love one another:  No one has seen God at any time.  If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.  Bu this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit, (1 John 4:11-14).”

 

8/23/2019 11:34 PM

           

PT-1 "Sacrificial Love" (Eph. 5:25b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/22/2019 10:18 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                          Focus:  PT-1 “Sacrificial Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 5:25b

 

            Message of the verse:  “and gave Himself up for her.”

 

            As we look at these six words, which are powerful words, we can go back into eternity past as I have been writing about from time to time, talking about how in eternity past that it was all planned out for Jesus Christ to come to earth and pay the price for His bride.  Philippians 2:6-8 speaks of Christ humbling Himself in order to become the God/Man so that He could pay the price for our sins.  In the letter to the Romans Paul builds his case showing that every person born of the seed of man is a sinner, and then goes on to talk about how Christ came to save sinners.  “7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:7-8).  The point in all of this is that it was gracious love that was the reason that Christ did this for all those who will accept what He did for them on the cross. 

 

            If we look at the world’s kind of love we can see that it is always object-oriented as a person is loved because of physical attractiveness, personality, wit, prestige, or some other such positive characteristic.  We could thus say that the world loves those whom it deems worthy of love.  I think that it is fair to say that this kind of worldly love is necessarily fickle, for as soon as a person loses a positive characteristic—or that characteristic is no longer appealing to the person who thought that they love that person then the marriage will fall apart.  As soon as a partner loses his or her appeal, love is gone, because the basis for the love is gone.

 

            This above section is what we have called “Worldly Love,” and that is not at all like God’s love as God’s love is much different.  God loves because it is in His nature to love that which He has created and also because the objects of His love are in great need to be loved and not because they are attractive or deserve His love.  When Adam and Eve sinned then God could have just destroyed them and started over again, but He didn’t.  The reason is because of His love for them that He did not destroy them.  Imagine if that decision would be in the hands of a worldly person what would have happened.  In God’s marvelous graciousness, He loves because He cannot do otherwise.  That is really good to know.

 

            We will end this SD with a quote from John MacArthur who writes:  “God can command His own kind of love from those who belong to Him because He has given them the capacity to love as He loves (cf. Rom. 5:5; 1 Thess. 4:9) and because His commanded love must, therefore be a matter of choice (cf. James 2:8; 1 John 3:7, 16-18, 23; 4:7, 11).  It is an act of the will as well as of the heart.  And it seems to be a principle that whatever we choose to love and practice loving soon becomes attractive to us.  But a Christian’s loving with Christ’s kind of love is not based on the attractiveness of the one loved but on God’s command to love.  Loving as Christ loves does not depend in the least on what others are in themselves, but entirely on what we are in Christ.

            “A husband is not commanded to love his wife because of what she is or is not.  He is commanded to love her because it is God’s will for him to love her.  It is certainly intended for a husband to admire and be attracted by his wife’s beauty, winsomeness, kindness, gentleness, or any other positive quality or virtue.  But through such things brings great blessing and enjoyment, they are not the bond of marriage.  If every appealing characteristic and every virtue of his wife disappears, a husband is still under just as great an obligation to love her.  If anything, he is under greater obligation, because her need for the healing and restorative power of his selfless love is greater.  That is the kind of love Christ has for His church and is therefore the kind of love every Christian husband is to have for his wife.”

 

            Lord willing we will look at the parable of the Good Samaritan as we begin our next SD, showing the kind of love he had for a perfect stranger.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  That is a tall order, but with the Lord all things are possible.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Being humble by the filling of the Holy Spirit has a lot to do with loving my wife like Christ loves the church.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Actions”:  “Believers are to follow the way of love, to do everything in love, to serve one another in love, to live a life of love to speak the truth in love, to put on love, to pursue love, to spur one another on to love, and to love not only in words but in actions and truth.”

 

8/22/2019 10:57 AM

 

           

Intro to "The Manner of Love" (Eph. 5:25-31)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/21/2019 9:43 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                               Focus:  Intro to “The Manner of Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Ephesians 5:25-31

 

            Message of the verses:  “25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.”

 

            I mentioned in our last SD as we ended the fifth introduction to Ephesians 5:25-33 that we would begin to look at two different main points which will then conclude verses 25-33.  This was in the last quotation from John MacArthur’s commentary as he gave us his outline to these verses.  In today’s SD we want to look at another introduction, this one on verses 25-31 which speaks of “the manner of love” and in this section we will find sub-sections entitled “Sacrificial Love’; “Purifying Love’; ‘Caring Love,; and ‘Unbreakable Love.”  We will begin with just the introduction to this first main section today and then will look at “Sacrificial Love” in our next SD, Lord willing.

 

            In this introduction we will look at the first half of verse 25 “husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.”

 

            Verse 21 of Ephesians five states “and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”  This verse gives us the explanation of the mutual submission, and loving your wife is certainly a part of that mutual submission.  The husband’s primary submission to his wife is through his love for her, and as we read these verses we see that Paul is clearly telling us that this love is a boundless love, as seen in the second part of verse 25 which says “just as Christ also loved the church.”  I have mentioned in earlier SD’s things that I have learned from the 2^nd Psalm, as this Psalm actually goes back to eternity past where the Father’s desire was to give a bride to the second person of the trinity, the Son.  The plan was set in motion for the Son to go to planet earth, which was not in existence yet, and pay the purchase price for the bride, which would mean that He would die for the bride that the Father was giving Him.  This tells us that Jesus Christ loved the church before He brought the church into existence.  He chose and also loved His own even “before the foundation of the world” as seen in Ephesians 1:4, because God’s love is eternally present, having no past and no future.

 

            It is very clear that no sinful human being has the capacity to love with the divine fullness and perfection with which Christ loves, as He forever loves the Church.  John MacArthur writes “However, because a Christian has Christ’s own nature and Holy Spirit within him, God thereby provides for husbands to love their wives with a measure of Christ’s own kind of love.  The husband who submits to the Lord by being filled with His Spirit (v. 18) is able to love his wife with the same kind of love Jesus has for His own bride, the church.  The Lord’s pattern of love for His church is the husband’s pattern of love for his wife.

 

            “In this passage Paul mentions four qualities of that divine love that husbands are to exemplify for their wives.  Like the Lord’s, the husbands love is to be sacrificial, purifying, caring, and unbreakable.”  We mentioned these four qualities earlier in this SD and they are what we will be spending our time looking at, Lord willing, in the next several days.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Husbands love your wife, Just as Christ loves the Church which can only be done by being filled with the Holy Spirit.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Jesus Christ humbled Himself in order to come to planet earth to pay the price for His bride, and I believe that He was filled with the Spirit in order to accomplish this task, and so I am to be filled with the Spirit in order to live a humble life so that I can accomplish the things that God has planned for me in eternity past as seen in Ephesians 2:10.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”:

 

“Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 14:1).

Let all that you do be done with love (1 Corinthians 16:14).

Walk…with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering,

bearing with one another in love (Ephesians 4:2).

Walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a

Sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).  [Speak] the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).  Put on

Tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering (Colossians 3:12b).

Pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart

(2 Timothy 2:22b).  And let us consider one another in order to stir up love

And good works (Hebrew 10:24).  My little children,

Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed

and in truth (1 John 3:18).

 

8/21/2019 10:24 AM

 

PT-5 "Intro into the Role of the Husband" (Eph. 5:25-33)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/20/2019 2:00 PM

 

My Worship Time                                          Focus:  PT-5 “Intro into the Role of the Husband”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 5:25-33

 

            Message of the verses:  “25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”

 

            In our last SD we spoke of the different sins that are found in the OT, especially in the first book of the OT, and as we look at our society today we find that those very sins that we mentioned in our last SD are even looked up to as being okay in our society today.  Remember what Romans 1:32 says “and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”  When we look at young people who are about to get married and are both virgins in today’s world they are laughed at.  When I was a youngster there were hardly any people living together who were not married, and now this is pretty much a normal thing to do, as it seems that they want to try marriage out and see if it will work or not.  As we think about all of these sinful things we know that it is Satan who is behind them as he continues to try and weaken the family. 

 

            What I desire to do at this point in this introduction is to quote the very last paragraph in MacArthur’s commentary as this is pretty much a normal thing for me to do as in this paragraph we will see the outline in which we will follow. 

 

            “In Ephesians 5:25-33 Paul continues to describe the godly and moral life of the believer who is filled with the Holy Spirit and who is mutually submissive ‘in the fear of Christ’ (v. 21).  As he has already made clear (vv. 22-24), God has ordained the husband to be head over the wife.  But the emphasis of the rest of the chapter is not on the husband’s authority but on his duty to submit to his wife through his love for her.  (Verses 25-31 explain the manner of that love and verses 32-33 reveal its motive.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  To remember the importance of loving my wife as seen in this section.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  To continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that I can be humble as I live out my walk with the Lord, and as mentioned being humble means I am filled with the Holy Spirit, and this will enable me to love my wife as Christ loves the church.

 

Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”

 

“I. Changing Lives…By Encouraging You World”

 

“Love is the one ingredient of which our world never tires and of which

There is never an abundance.  The world will never outgrow its need for love.”

C. Neil Strait

 

8/20/2019 2:19 PM

 

 

PT-4 "Intro to the Role of the Husband" (Eph. 5:25-33)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/19/2019 8:52 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                Focus:  PT-4 “Intro to the Role of the Husband”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Ephesians 5:25-33

 

            Message of the verses:  “25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”

 

            We have been talking about how marriage has been corrupted and the reason was both the man and the woman twisted God’s plan for their relationship.  What they have done is that they reversed their roles, and marriage has been a struggle ever since.  I believe that I understand the curse that God gave to the woman and to the man much better than I have in the past.  I can see in our society how the role of the woman is in many cases directly the opposite of that which God has intended it to be, and also in many cases the man is not fulfilling the role that God has for him.  This is all because of sin, sin that began in the Garden of Eden and then the curses that God gave because of the original sin.  One of the things that I have noticed in my family is that the marriage of my daughter to her husband seems to me a good picture of what God has planned for marriage to look like.  Some will say that she submits because of her husband’s patience, and although he is patience and makes it easier to submit then that in and of itself is good, but women are to submit to their husbands as this is the will of God for them.  I heard a statement many years ago while taking a class at my job and I believe the statement can help a marriage a lot if only followed.  The man said that we have to “fact finds” and not “fault find.”  Seems we always want to be right, and this causes many problems in a marriage.

 

            John MacArthur writes “Throughout history the most dominant distortion of relationships has been on man’s side.  In most cultures of the ancient world, women were treated as little more than servants, and the practice is reflected in many parts of the world today. (1980’s) Marcius Cato, the famous Roman statesman of the second century B. C., wrote, ‘If you catch your wife in an act of infidelity, you can kill her without a trial.  But if she were to catch you, she would not venture to touch you with her finger.  She has no rights.’  That reflects the extreme of male chauvinism that comes out of the curse of the Fall and reflects the perversion of roles and responsibilities that God intends for husbands and wives.

 

            “Even in supposedly liberated societies, women are frequently looked on primarily as sex objects who exist for the sensual pleasures of men.  Because modern man is inclined to view himself as merely a higher form of animal—with people simply as things, to be used for his own pleasure and advantage.”

 

            We have said different things about the family, how it is what God desired to be the building block of society, and I suppose that the truth is that Satan knew this and that is why his initial attack of God’s creation involved the corruption of the family.  All you have to do is follow the early chapters of the OT, and you will see how the family began to crumble in many different ways.  We know for instance that man was only suppose to have one wife, and yet we see David had many wives and Solomon had many more, and yet God allowed this to happen and even worked it out for good in spite of the sinfulness of it.  There are stories of homosexual acts in the Old Testament as God actually destroyed two cities because of this.  There are many more sinful things described in the Old Testament as examples of how Satan attacked the family, and yet through it all God still saves people from their sins as through all of the sinfulness of the Old Testament times God brought His Son into the world to complete what He had for Him to accomplish in order to bring about salvation.

 

            John MacArthur writes, and we will conclude with this quote:  “In the first book of the Bible we see the reversal of roles of husband and wife, fratricide (the killing of one’s brother or sister), polygamy, perverted sexual suggestions, adultery, homosexuality, fornication, rape, prostitution, incest, and seduction—each of which directly attacks the sanctity and harmony of marriage and the family.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Continue to relearn the roles of the husband and by the work of the Holy Spirit fulfill them.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Humility is defiantly an asset of being a better husband.

 

We begin today’s SD with the introduction to a book entitled “Love in Action, changing lives with the Power of Encouragement,” written by Dr. David Jeremiah and we will be quoting from this book for a fairly long time. 

 

“Dear Friends,

 

“It is truly amazing how the advances of science, medicine, and technology have transformed the knowledge we have about the world around us.  What was once a dirt road is now an information highway!

 

“But, if we look around at the people we know, the people we pass every day on the way to work, in the grocery store or in the bank, we realize there is one thing that hasn’t changed in all of time.  People still need love, and they need to see love in action.

 

“Sixteen centuries ago Saint Augustine asked, ‘What does love look like?’  And the answer was, ‘It has hands to help others.  It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy.  It has eyes to see misery and want.  It has ears to hear the sights and sorrows of men.’  In other words, love is action.

 

“But how can we put our love into action?  As you will learn throughout this book, encouragement can be a way that we love others.  Encouragement is one of the most powerful, life-changing forces in our world.  And no matter what advances we make in technology or medicine, nothing can improve on the power of encouragement.

 

“In the following pages, you will find excerpts from my book, The power of Encouragement.  I am convinced that the contents will challenge you to express the kind of encouragement that heals hearts, unites lives, and renews spirits.  May we learn to have hands, feet, eyes, and ears that are willing to put love into action, to change lives with the power of encouragement!”

 

As mentioned this quotation is from the pen of Dr. David Jeremiah.

 

8/19/2019 9:39 AM