8-17-08
Love Like a Man
Building a Joyful Marriage: Part 6
Colossians 3:19, 1 Peter 3:7 

Summary: The summary of the NT teaching on marriage is “Men love; women submit.”  The different instructions for men and women point to different roles.  Maleness and femaleness produce the deepest kind of unity (harmony rather than unison), but the world rebels against that and tries to flatten the differences.  Men and women are VERY different.  Masculinity in marriage centers on loving the wife gently.  The call to gentle love strikes at the curse (“he will harshly rule over you”) and returns to the way God loves us.

Introduction: Achieve Masculinity and Femininity
Review
Summary of the NT message on marriage
Love and Submission
Why love and submission?
Male and female
Scripture’s emphasis on gender distinction
Man’s rebellion against that
Gender differences
Physical
Psychological
Social
An essential part of your being
Harmony is a greater unity than unison
Achieving masculinity and femininity
Husbands
1.	Gentleness
Harshness destroys companionship
Harshness destroys oneness and intimacy
Understanding

Colossians 3:18-19 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.  19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
1 Peter 3:7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Introduction: Achieve Masculinity and Femininity

We live in a world that is very advanced scientifically in some ways, and in other ways is very backward and primitive – and one example of that is in their confusion over the differences between male and female.  I mentioned last time the woman who has been in the news because she had an operation and she thinks she is now a man.  She made the news because she was pregnant and just recently gave birth.  I have seen numerous news articles over the past months from several different sources – both liberal and conservative, and every single one of them refers to her as a him.  The headlines say, “First pregnant man” or “Man gives birth.”  I realize they have to say that because it wouldn’t sell many newspapers if the headline said, “Woman gives birth.”  But that is all it is – a confused woman giving birth.  You cannot change from female to male by having an operation and taking some hormones.  Every cell in that woman’s body is still female.  Anyone who had a high school biology class should know that all the trillions of cells in a woman’s body – every last one of them has 2 x-chromosomes.  And every cell in a male body has an x chromosome and a y chromosome.  From the top of that woman’s female head to the bottom of her female toes every cell in her body is as female as you can get.  And to say that she is male because she feels like a male is very much like saying the earth is flat because when you look out your front door it looks flat.  We live in a culture that does not even know what maleness and femaleness is.  Most people, even in the church – if you ask them “What does it mean to be female and not male?” or “What does it mean to be male and not female?” could only provide the shallowest kinds of answers.  They think it is nothing more than just following a few unimportant cultural traditions.  But maleness and femaleness is far more than that and it is important to God that men achieve masculinity and women achieve femininity.  So we are going to start with what it means to be a man - and specifically, what does it mean to love like a man?

Review

We began our study of marriage by looking at God’s ideal for marriage in Genesis 2.  It is not good for the man to be alone, so God solved the problem of Adam’s aloneness with Eve.  That shows us that marriage is for companionship.  And when God gave him a companion He gave him a suitable helper as a companion.  That points to partnership in their task.  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother – that is priority.  Marriage is the highest earthly priority.  “…and he will be united to his wife and the two will be one flesh” – that is oneness.  “And the man and his wife were both naked and were unashamed” – that is intimacy.  So we have found so far in our study of Genesis 2 that God’s ideal for marriage is companionship, partnership, priority, oneness, and intimacy.
That is the way He designed it to be, and it is of utmost importance that we strive for those five things in our marriages, because the purpose of marriage is to display the way God relates to His people.  So when we fall short of those five we not only foul up our marriages, but we live a lie about God.
In Genesis 2 Adam and Eve were no doubt the most happily married couple that has ever lived.  The very first marriage had all five of those aspects of God’s ideal right from the word go.  But then something happened to marriage.  Marriage was perfect in Genesis 2, but then came Genesis 3.  And in Genesis 3 the greatest catastrophe that has ever taken place brought damage on the whole creation that we will never fully understand until the creation of the new heavens and new earth.  Man fell into sin, and brought upon the whole creation the curse of the Almighty.  And the devastation that followed was a cataclysm greater than any disaster that has ever happened since – including Noah’s world-wide flood.  And that devastation touched everything – especially marriage.  God cursed marriage directly.
The marital bliss of Genesis 2 was due to God’s grace.  And Jonah 2:8 says that whenever you prefer some earthly treasure above God you forfeit grace that could otherwise be yours.  So human sin provoked God to withdraw His grace in marriage.  That is the curse, and that is why marriage is so fraught with trouble.  It is why you have so much trouble getting along with your favorite person in the whole wide world.  Your relationship with the person you love the most in this world is more difficult than your relationship with people you don’t love nearly as much as you love your spouse.  That is because of the curse.
Perhaps another reason why God cursed marriage specifically is because if it is designed to reflect the relationship between God and His people, in this life, living under the curse, loving God is hard.  Sin interferes with that relationship, and so it requires a tremendous amount of effort.  In fact, it requires all the effort you are capable of.  God said, “You will find me when you seek for me with all your heart.” (Jer.29:13)  And so to reflect that relationship it is fitting that marriage should be a relationship that requires a huge amount of effort.
So to summarize everything so far in this study – God created marriage just the way He wanted it in Genesis with the five aspects of God’s ideal, then the catastrophe of Genesis 3 ruined all five of those aspects.  So the solution to all marriage problems is to learn from Scripture how to reverse the effects of Genesis 3 and get back to God’s ideal in Genesis 2.  If you try to do that in your own wisdom – you just sit down and think, “Hmmmm, what would be the best way to achieve companionship, partnership, priority, oneness, and intimacy,” it won’t work.  The reason those five things are lacking in marriages is not because people aren’t trying to achieve them.  Most married people are trying to achieve them – even unbelievers.  The reason they are lacking is because they require grace.  And in the curse that grace was withdrawn.
When man fell he left God’s paradise for something he thought would be better.  And when man did that, God responded by locking the door behind him.  So now we are locked out.  And trying to re-create our own new paradise will be an exercise in futility.  The only way back in is through the method God prescribes in the New Testament for reversing the effects of the curse.  The instructions in passages like Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 2 and the Song of Songs are like keys that can unlock that door.  They teach us how to gain access to that grace that is otherwise impossible to get - the grace that can get your marriage back to Genesis 2.
Summary of the New Testament message on marriage
Love and Submission
So let’s start with New Testament, and then we’ll go back to the Song of Solomon.  The New Testament message on marriage is not very hard to summarize.  You can do it with four words: Husbands love; wives submit.  In the book of Colossians Paul teaches us about marriage in two short sentences.

Colossians 3:18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

If you need to be brief, that is what it boils down to – Husbands love; wives submit. 
Paul gives a more detailed discussion in Ephesians 5, but the gist of it is still the same.

Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
25 Husbands, love your wives

The rest is just explaining why.  The other main passage in the New Testament dealing with marriage is 1 Peter 3.  And guess what it says.

1 Peter 3:1 Wives, … be submissive to your husbands 
7 Husbands, … be considerate as you live with your wives
Why love and submission?
Now, if the objective is companionship, partnership, priority, oneness, and intimacy, why is the big emphasis love and submission?  Why not say, “Wives, be suitable helpers to your husbands”?  Why not just say, “Work toward companionship, partnership, priority, oneness, and intimacy”?  God did not say that, because that would be like saying, “Just go back through that door that’s locked.”  The problem is not just the lack of those five things – it is the fact that the curse blocks us from those five things.  So let’s see what God teaches us about how to get back through that locked door.

Male and female
Scripture’s emphasis on gender distinction
When you study all that the Bible says to married people one very striking observation is that there are different instructions for husbands than for wives.  That is striking because most of the rest of God’s commands are identical for men and women.  The Ten Commandments and fruit of the Spirit for men are exactly the same as they are for women.  The promises, rewards, warnings - all the same.  Men and women are treated in the Bible as having the same value, same importance, and the same responsibility before God. 
That is striking because in the surrounding ancient near eastern cultures at the time of Moses, the legal penalties for murdering or harming a woman were much less than for murdering or harming a man.  But in God’s law delivered through Moses they are the same.  Ninety-nine percent of what God says to us is exactly the same for men and women.  There are two exceptions that stand out like a sore thumb.  Men and women are given different instructions when it comes to roles within the family and roles within the Church.  Males and females share the same dignity, the same importance, the same degree of resembling God, and yet there are distinctions when it comes to roles in the home and in the church.
When God created the first two human beings and set them in a special relationship designed to display the way God relates to His people, it is no small matter that it He created them male and female.  Scripture makes a pretty big deal about that.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Gn.5:2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man."

When they asked Jesus a question about divorce He began His answer by saying…

Matthew 19:4 "Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female'…

And it is repeated again in Mark.

Mark 10:6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.
Man’s rebellion against that
Why do we need so many reminders in Scripture telling us that God created us male and female?  Isn’t that kind of obvious?  You would think so, but amazingly it has escaped the notice of many in our world.  A major part of man’s rebellion against God is the effort to ignore the distinctions between male and female.  If you doubt that there is a concerted, satanic effort to rebel against God, just look at how hard people in the world are trying to flatten out the differences between the sexes.  What possible explanation could there be for that other than rebellion against God?  You would think that if they really believed in evolution they would celebrate maleness and femaleness, because that is what evolved, and that is what would be the avenue to further evolution (if there were such a thing as evolution).
So why does the world fight so hard against maleness and femaleness?  And why does Scripture fight so hard at reminding us of the distinction?  It is a big issue on both sides because the differences between males and females are good and wonderful and excellent and they reflect the glory of God, and anything that does that Satan is going to fight against with all his might.
We live in a state where neither the legislature nor the Governor can think of any good reason why we shouldn’t let men go in girls’ bathrooms or showers, and in a country where every major news outlet believes a man has given birth to a baby.  I don’t preach politics from this pulpit.  But I do preach the Word of God, and I have to tell you from the Word of God that HR200 that was recently signed into law in Colorado is pure, 100% rebellion against God.  God has created us male and female, and He defined marriage as one man and one woman together for life, and this world resents that.  And the powers that be – the majority in the legislature and Governor Ritter – have mustered all their imagined power and have said, “We will break free from the chains of God’s confining limitations.”  This is exactly the kind of thing Psalm 2 was talking about.

Psalm 2:2-6 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. 3 "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters."  4 The One enthroned in heaven …  5 rebukes them in his anger 
Gender differences
So even in the midst of the confusion in our culture about gender, hopefully we all understand that men and women are very different, and our differences go way beyond a couple anatomical features.  There are differences in temperament, emotion…
•	the way we think, feel, communicate
•	the way we interpret things,
•	the attitudes we have, 
•	the way we interact socially, 
•	the way we hear, see, touch, remember, navigate,
•	the things we enjoy...
•	our metabolisms work differently, and our bones, tendons and ligaments have different density.
I could give you 30 pages of differences just from one source.  
And those differences are clues to the fact that God did not design us for identical or interchangeable functions.  When God cursed the woman in her role the curse centered on children.  When God cursed the man in his role it had to do with earning a living.  Those are clues that point to different roles.  And you can tell from the way God designed us that we are designed for those roles.

Physical 
The skin of a man has fewer nerve endings than female skin, and he has 10% more red blood cells which makes those injuries clot and heal faster.  Thus man is more suited to the rigors and dangers of physical labor as well as protecting the family from danger.
The skin of a woman is much more sensitive, giving her a far superior sense of touch.  She has more white blood cells, enabling her to fight infection better.  Women also have superior senses of hearing, smell and taste, which makes women much more aware of their environment and more able to pick up on subtle environmental cues.  That is why you sometimes see a woman dash over to catch a baby who is about to fall off a couch, and she moves before the father notices anything is about to happen.  That is not intuition – it is the way God designed the woman’s entire body and brain and nervous system.
Female eyes are designed to have a finer discrimination of color – especially at the red end of the spectrum.  That is why a woman is more likely to notice a slight rash on a baby’s skin, or notice someone blushing.
The nerves throughout the female body interact with more neighboring nerves then nerves in the male body, which means women have more meaningful processing of sensory input.  If a man interviews someone for a job, the man will come away knowing how the person responded to each question.  But if a woman does the interview, she will come away with all kinds of information about the person’s mannerisms, facial expressions, dress, hygiene, nervousness, etc.
Men have larger windpipes and bronchial tubes, and 30% more lung capacity, larger hearts, 50% more muscle mass, and a different skeletal structure.  God designed the average man to be far stronger than the average woman physically.
He also designed the average woman to be far superior to the average man verbally.  The brains of men and women are different not only in shape, but in the way they function.  The whole process is different.  If you numb the left side of a man’s brain there will be a severe loss of verbal skill.  If you numb the right side, there is actually an increase in verbal skill.  Women register almost no difference in verbal skill with either side numbed.  You can numb the left, numb the right and they can still talk just fine.  A woman can literally out-talk a man even with half her brain.
And when the feminists and the people in the public school system try to teach that the differences in the genders are environmental or culturally conditioned, they are ignoring science.  The differences go back to the womb.  Baby girls are more likely to focus on a face and be comforted more by voices and human touch than baby boys.  Girls learn to talk sooner, and when they start drawing, they mostly draw people.  Baby boys orient more to objects, lights and toys rather than faces, and they are comforted more by patterned mobiles or ticking clocks than by human voices.  Boys draw objects more than faces, and boys learn three-dimensional drawing sooner.
Men and women’s bodies react differently to stress, and are stressed by different things.  The reaction of a man’s body gives him an advantage in the short term reaction, but makes him more prone to heart disease and shorter life spans.  Women don’t do as well on the short term, but do better on the long term.  That has implications regarding what we said last time about who should shoulder the worries of breadwinning and finances – along with other kinds of stressors. 
Men’s brains are designed to react more quickly and to be able to make decisions faster than women.  That is helpful in leadership.  Women’s brains enable them to be more patient and tolerant than men.  That is helpful in child care and family relationships.  The cries of a baby have a definite automatic physiological effect on a woman.  When a woman hears a baby cry oxytocin is secreted in the woman’s body, her pupils dilate, and there are various other reactions.  None of that happens to a man.  He just hears a crying noise.

Psychological 
There are also countless psychological differences.  God made men with more of a need for accomplishment.  He made women with more of a need for healthy relationships and families ties.  That is why on a road trip the man cares about nothing but conquering a certain number of miles per day while the woman wants to enjoy the trip.

Social
One study of gender differences just had a room with nothing in it but two chairs.  They found that when they put two women in the room the ladies would usually orient the chairs facing toward each other and spend the whole time talking to each other.  But when they put two men in the room they would usually orient the chairs side by side and say very little to each other.  Those are just samples.  We could literally go on for hours talking about the psychological differences. 
An essential part of your being
So this truth is emphasized both in special revelation (in Scripture) and in general revelation (in the creation).  Both God’s Word and the creation itself shout to us, “In the beginning God created them male and female.”  And notice that it says we were created male & female, not just designated male and female.  Right at the very beginning of His Bible God alerted us to the fact that your maleness or femaleness is not an incidental part of who you are.  It is part of the very fabric of your being.
There are some things that are essential parts of you, and other things that are non-essential.  Things like my shoe size, or how high I can jump are non-essential parts of my identity.  But the fact that I am male is right at the core of who I am and how I am to interact with other people.  And the wisdom and power behind the differences between males and females should cause us to stand in awe of God.
Harmony is a greater unity than unison
And those very differences create a more profound kind of unity than two identical things.  Diverse counterparts properly joined together create a greater unity than things that are exactly the same.  If we all sing the same note, it’s unison.  But if we have soprano, alto, tenor and bass doing different things, we have harmony.  And anyone with an ear to hear knows that beautiful and complex harmony touches us in a deeper way than mere unison.  That is why God created heterosexuality and not homosexuality.  It was Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve – male and female.  And God brought the two together, and united them with a deep, rich, profound unity.  That oneness is so important to God that He devotes the second chapter of the sacred Scripture to describing it.  The beginning of the Bible gets a lot of exposure, and we may have thought God would use it to explain salvation by grace alone, or give the Ten Commandments.  But He chose to talk about His ideal for marriage in that chapter.
And the need for the differences between the sexes couldn’t be more obvious than in Genesis 1:28 where God gives man his first task.  I call it global swarming.

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. " 

Not only are they to fill the earth; they are also to subdue it.  "Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."  That is a massive task.  How is Adam going to fill the earth with human beings by himself?  
If your boss gave you a huge task to do, and then he handed you just two tools and said, “Here. You’ll need both of these” and the tools were very different from each another, what would that tell you?  It would tell you that in order to get this task done you need both the one tool and the other, very different tool.  The one tool will play one role, and the other, very different tool will play a different role.  And those two roles put together will be required to accomplish the task.  And if you mix the tools up, and use the hammer on the screws and the screwdriver on the nails the whole thing will be an exercise in frustration.  You will not only botch the job, but you will probably ruin the tools in the process. 
Anyone who has ever played on a team understands that roles are crucial for success, and they cannot be arbitrarily swapped.  If you’re in the middle of a football game and all of the sudden the center decides, “Instead of blocking I’m going to just run downfield like that running backs always do” – they will lose the game.  If you have ever seen an NFL center you can tell that they were designed by God to block and not to run anywhere.  And even if there is one who is an excellent runner, still it will harm the team if he fails to fulfill his designated role.
Achieving masculinity and femininity 
If you love the Lord, and if you take delight in His image, you will strive to fulfill your maleness or femaleness.  Women who love God and who love His image should strive to achieve femininity.  And men should strive to achieve masculinity.  Turn to Colossians 3:19 and we will take a look at what the roles are that God designed for men and women.

Husbands

What does it mean to be a man?  Masculinity, in marriage, centers on loving your wife.  Of course there are many other responsibilities a man has.  The man is to provide for his family, and protect his family, and lead his family.  But when it comes to how a man interacts with his wife in the marital relationship, the emphasis is on loving her in a certain way.  We husbands can get the key that unlocks the door to Genesis 2 by loving our wives.  And if you take the three major passages on marriage – you find three main emphases describing masculine love: gentleness, selflessness, and self-interest. 
1.	Gentleness 
Colossians 3:19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

Can you see how the target is reversal of the curse?  The curse really hit us men hard in the area of gentleness, didn’t it?  God told the woman that the man would dominate her with a heavy handed suppression – “your desire will be to control your husband but he will rule harshly over you.”  The curse on the man’s side is harshness toward his wife, so the way back into Genesis 2 is to undo that and to turn our harshness to gentleness.
The word translated harsh speaks of a bitter heart.  It is what happens when you allow your wife’s sins and weaknesses and failings and inadequacies to start to harden your heart toward her.  And your soft, tender affections toward her dry up and you start dealing with her like you deal with an object or like some person at work that you have no relationship with.
Men tend to be tempted along this line.  Your wife pushes you and pushes you and pushes you, and finally it gets so exasperating that you give in to the flesh.  For some men that means lashing out in an angry verbal response (or maybe even physical abuse).  For others it just means just turning off the spigot of tender affection toward her.
And a lot of times it is not even provoked by the wife doing anything wrong.  I know in my own marriage there have been times when I have fallen into a pattern of dealing kind of roughly or coarsely with Tracy not out of anger or exasperation, but just out of neglect.  It is not that I am upset with her in any way, it is just that I start getting consumed with work or some other thing, or I just get self-absorbed in my own little world, and when I do that I am not a very pleasant man to live with because I become oblivious to everyone’s needs around me.
This is like the man who is reading the newspaper while his wife is trying to talk to him and he just responds with an occasional grunt to reassure her that he is listening.  (And for many men “I am listening” really just means “I am vaguely aware that you are talking.”)  Where there is not intentional tenderness of affection going out from your heart toward your wife, what comes across to her is harshness and roughness.  Any time there is little or no effort on your part toward gentleness, it is pretty much of a guarantee that what she is getting from you is harshness.
So the outworking of the fall for us men tends to be harshness.  And that harshness can range from mindless, passionless neglect all the way to physical abuse.  And the key to the door to the Garden of Eden for us is love for our wives in a gentle way. 

Harshness destroys companionship
Lack of gentleness will destroy companionship, because it will alienate your wife from you.  Remember God created marriage to solve the problem of aloneness.  But when you are not tender and gentle toward your wife you create aloneness for her.  Whether it is the extremes of physical abuse or the coldness and emotional distance of neglect, it pushes her into a life of loneliness that is the opposite of the kind of companionship that God designed for marriage.

Harshness destroys oneness and intimacy 
And if it destroys companionship it certainly destroys oneness and intimacy.  A few weeks ago when I preached on naked and unashamed in Genesis 2 a question came up in the Q&A about how that applies to us today.  Of course Adam and Eve were unashamed in Genesis 2 – they didn’t have anything to be ashamed of.  There was nothing to be embarrassed about physically, because they had perfect bodies.  And there was nothing to be ashamed of in any other area either, because there was no sin.  So how do you achieve that naked and unashamed intimacy of Genesis 2 now, in a situation where we not only have imperfect bodies that we are embarrassed about, but we have plenty to be ashamed of?
To answer that question let us think through why Adam and Eve were unashamed.  Was it because they were flawless?  I don’t think so.
For one thing, being flawless does not make you safe from criticism.  If someone is determined to hurt you they will find a way to hurt you whether it is over something valid or something invalid.  I know some people who could have easily found 100 complaints about both Adam and Eve in Genesis 2.  They would not have been valid criticisms, but that doesn’t stop a criticizer.  So it wasn’t their perfection that made the safe from criticism.
Secondly, it is obvious from Jesus’ words that Genesis 2 is provided as instruction for our marriages today.  So what good would it be for God to give us a picture of an ideal that has no application to our situation?
Naked and unashamed is possible for us today.  It is possible for you to have a relationship where your partner is so safe that he or she could expose all of the ugliness of their sin and all their flaws and inadequacies, and be in no danger of being hurt or rejected by you.  How?  How is that possible?
Naked and unashamed was possible in the Garden of Eden because the other ideals of marriage were present.  Leave father and mother – that’s priority.  Eve was Adam’s highest earthly priority.  United to his wife and one flesh – that’s oneness and intimacy.  Suitable helper – that’s companionship and partnership.  And where you have all that you can be naked and unashamed – exposed and yet safe.
And so think about how that ideal is destroyed when you fail to be gentle with your wife.  God designed her to be sensitive – more sensitive than a man.  She is the more vulnerable vessel.  If she is not as tough as you are emotionally or in other ways, don’t get irritated at her about that – God made her that way on purpose.  In fact, not only should her weakness not be a source of irritation for you; according to 1 Peter 3:7 it should be a motive for you to honor her all the more.
So it is crucial that we be gentle in the way that we love our wives, because the more painful it is for her to bump up against your rough edges, the more she will have to protect herself from you.  And that kind of defensive posture will destroy the possibility of naked and unashamed intimacy. 
Now, on the other side of the coin we should also say that in our fallen world, there is no such thing as a husband who is totally safe, and so wives, if you want to strive toward this ideal of Genesis 2 intimacy in your marriage, you must be willing to get hurt.  Husbands, strive to be as gentle as you possibly can.  But wives, don’t wait for your husband to become a pre-fall Adam before you open yourself up to him.  In this fallen world we can only enjoy intimacy in proportion to how much we are willing to risk getting hurt.  That is the way love relationships are in this life.  In fact, even God suffers pain in His relationship to us.  In a sinful world there just simply is no intimacy without pain.  So wives, remember that love is patient and love forgives and love endures all things.  And husbands, be gentle with your wives.  God does not neglect us, nor is He harsh with us.  And so if we act that way toward our wives we destroy the display of God that marriage was intended to be.

Understanding
Peter gives us some further insight into how to love our wives with gentleness instead of harshness.

1 Peter 3:7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

A more literal translation would sound this way: 

Husbands, in the same way live with your wives in knowledge as the weaker vessel…

To love your wife properly you must have knowledge and understanding of her unique points of weakness.  The word vessel sometimes means a utensil or tool (Acts 9:15) and other times it refers to valuables or treasures (Mt.12:29).  So referring to the woman as a vessel might mean that she is one of God’s valuable treasures, or it might mean she is a tool in the hands of God.  Either way, the main point isn’t that she is a vessel, but that she is the weaker vessel.  Which means the husband is the stronger vessel.  So both the husband and wife are seen as vessels – treasures in the house of God or tools in the hands of God.  And one is stronger and the other is weaker.  And part of what it means to love your wife properly is understanding her specific, unique points of weakness, and having that knowledge inform the way you live with her.
Last time during the second hour we talked about something I had said in the sermon about finances.  I had urged couples to make sure the weight of responsibility of providing for the family falls on the shoulders of the man.  And some of the women were wondering if it’s OK for them to do the banking for the family.  And what we said was yes, it is fine for the wife to take care of the banking if she is better at that or has more time or whatever, as long as she can do so without taking upon herself the weight of responsibility and the anxieties that go along with balancing the checkbook.
And women are all different.  Some can balance the checkbook without being tempted to worry or fret at all.  Others really struggle with that.
Some women have weaknesses in other areas.  For example, some woman’s emotions are fragile when it comes to interactions with people.  If someone criticizes them (or criticizes their husband), it is very, very hard for them to deal with.  For some women there is a point of vulnerability when it comes to worrying about how the kids are doing in school.  For others it is concern about how she looks physically, or how she comes across socially.
Each woman has special points of sensitivity because of their past.  Women who were abused (which, it seems to me, is most women – it is extremely common for women to have been abused), and the result of that can be that they are extremely sensitive in certain areas.  Certain kinds of criticism can be especially painful.  Or neglect in certain areas can be devastating.  And once you figure all that out, keep studying her because your wife can develop new insecurities as time goes on that she never had before.
Live with her in knowledge understanding her unique points of weakness and vulnerability.  That is part of gentleness in love.  That is one of the keys to the door to back into the paradise of Eden.
And by the way, one thing to keep in mind is this: When an abrasive object rubs up against a soft object, which one feels it more?  The soft one.  If you have a rough, calloused hand that touches some highly sensitive, soft area of skin, that soft, sensitive area will feel the roughness but the calloused area won’t feel anything.  So it is probably a good idea to let your wife be the judge of whether or not you are dealing roughly with her – because she is the one who can feel it.  Every week on my accountability sheet there are two questions for Tracy to answer.  One is: “Regarding my husband’s living with me in a loving and understanding way this past week I am: disappointed, concerned, content, or delighted.”  And there a lot of weeks when I am sure she is going to put delighted, and she puts something less.  And so I ask her why, and find out that I have been abrasive and rough and hurtful in ways I had no idea about.  I am so thankful for that form, because Tracy is such a forgiving woman that she almost never complains.  So if it weren’t for that sheet I would never even know about most of those times.  So if you do not use the accountability sheet or something like it, make sure you are asking your wife on a regular basis how you are doing in this area.

Conclusion

What does it mean to be a man?  What does masculinity look like in marriage?  Gentle love.  That is the epitome of masculine love because that is the way God loves His people.

Isaiah 40:11 He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.

Matthew 11:29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart

That is what it means to love like a man.  “But shouldn’t every Christian strive toward gentleness?”  Yes.  The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. (Gal.5:22)

Ephesians 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle 

Philippians 4:5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. 

Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

1 Timothy 6:11 pursue … gentleness.

Gentleness is for all Christians, but it is especially important for the way men love their wives because that is the way Christ loves the Church.  Harshness is a corruption of masculinity just as thorns and weeds and decay and death are distortions of the goodness of God’s creation.  So husbands, love like a man.  Love your wife with the gentleness of Christ and you will be on the path back to Genesis 2.

Benediction - 1 Corinthians 16:13 Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.