Marriage Phil Kifer

Welcome to CityReach Cumberland's weekly podcast. We hope this message blesses you. For more information about us, you can check us out on the web at cityreachcomberland.com. So during this, I wanted to explore this in no way am I saying that women are less than, men are less than, women are greater than, men are greater than, God has created us all equally.

I just want to kind of look at what I believe marriage was initially intended to be. I hope that God speaks to you guys and my prayer is that God speaks to you guys in the same way with this message as he has spoken to me and allowed me to examine my own marriage. Because that's really what we need to do is examine our own marriage and see where we can be better in it. In order to look at marriage though, I think we need to go clear back to the beginning of where marriage originated, where it started, and what its intentional purpose was.

Before we get into this, let's go ahead and pray that God blesses this. Father God, we thank you here this morning. We thank you that you've given us a house to congregate in. We thank you that you've given us a word to live by.

And God, as this morning takes place, I ask that your spirit be the one to speak here, God. Allow it to be less of me, more of you. God, I'm asking for these words to truly be of you, to resonate in the hearts and minds of the men and women that sit here and allow them to examine their own hearts, their own motives, and their own love of their marriage, Father God. We just thank you again, and we ask that you bless this morning.

You name me, pray. Jesus name, amen. So like I said, we gotta go all the way back to the beginning of marriage. And to do that, we gotta look clear back at Adam and Eve, which was what really is the first law of the first marriage.

And it starts in Genesis 2. We're gonna start in Genesis 2, verse 18. It says, in the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.

Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and reburred of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called into living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him.

The very first part of that says that God seen that it wasn't good for man to be alone. So we need to recognize that first that being alone is never good. We need something comparable with us. But God said, I will make him a helper.

As I said, we're talking about marriage. So men, I need you to really see that when God intended to create something for us, it wasn't something that was to be our slave, it wasn't something that was to be a tool, it wasn't anything along those lines. God wanted something, God wanted something to be a helper to us. And it wanted something that was comparable to us.

So God brought all the creatures that we have of earth to death. And we see that of the creatures of the earth, a lot of them are good for us. A lot of them are help us in many ways. And Adam got the opportunity to see each one individually and pick out its name.

And he seen his beast and said, ah, that's going to give me milk and that's going to give me food. And that's going to be something great. I'm going to call it a cow or whatever they said in their language because I don't believe that was the original language. That's what we translated to today.

You know, he's seen the birds, he named them, along with, you know, even go up and say, man, it's going to be my best friend. But as God was bringing each one of these two men, he was still sitting back and said, none of these are good enough. None of these are what I want. None of these bring the joy of the spark to my man, Adam's eye that I want to see inside of him.

So what does God do for him? He says, like all of the idea pops up and says, got it. I know what I'm going to do. This in the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept.

He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord got it taken from man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

So little disclaimer that first verse, even God himself knew that man had to be a sleep to create something good. He had to get us out of the way first. It wasn't for the pain that he put the man asleep. He knew if man had his hands involved in it, we'd have jacked it all up.

So he puts him to sleep and he takes the rib and creates woman. And when Adam wakes and he sees this, it's exactly what God imagined for it. He looked at him and he said, wow, he's got that spark in his eye. He's got that joy.

This is the perfect helper that I want for man. Adam seen it, he got the name it. The joy was there. So at this point in time, we have three.

It's Adam, Eve and God, which is really what I want to talk to you today about, is how those three are intertwined and what that should look like. We all know what the center of it should be, which is God. We're going to utilize this in three strength. So God is a center strength and then you have man and woman.

And that's told to us in Ecclesiastics four is really where I'm taking the strings from. It says, two people are better off than one, where they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.

Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated. But two can stand back to back and conquer.

Three are even better, for a triple braided cord is not easily broken. And I think that was really what God's mindset was at the beginning. He seen that Adam was alone. He said, if I give him another one, they're better off.

That he intended and knew that if man fell, woman could pick him up. And I'm not talking about physically tripping over a root and falling to the ground, even though they can help you up that way too. But mentally, physically and spiritually, who else are you married? You know what I'm talking about that most of the time you can look at your wife, and it's the encouragement that you need to keep going forward.

And that's what God was talking about here. And you two can stand back to back and conquer. Guys, I'm telling you now, if you put the triple braided cord together, there's three, there's nothing that can overcome you. And my marriage alone is amazing proof of that.

We was good, just two of us. But man, when we put God at the center of it and braided it together, it's became unbreakable as it's spoken of. I want to back up for a second and look back at Genesis 2.21 because I forgot something there. It says in verse 22, he brought her to man.

I'm sorry that I skipped this, but I think this is very important. He brought her to man. For all of you married men that are here right now, I want you to really get the heart and look at your spouse and say, God brought you to me because that's exactly what God did. And I think that it's very important that we know that, and it places so much more value on a woman's life knowing where she came from.

So moving back up our two, Ephesians or Ecclesiastics, the triple braided cord. One string by itself is easily broken. Three legs side by side are still easily broken. Inside of your marriage, you have to understand that you have to continuously loop them together.

If you only take two strings, you hold them up like this and you spin the bottom of them, what will happen when you stop spinning? You let go and it comes on spun very quickly by itself. If you take three though and you break them together, holding them up in the same way, when you let go of that bottom, it'll stay right the way it is. And that's the exact depiction of our marriage also.

If you place God at the center of it and you keep lapping your lives over top with God, and you intertwine them together, you're still three individual strings, but you are put together in a way that cannot be brought apart unless you take your own hands and start pulling it apart. And that's we really got to look at it like that. Marriage fails because we take our own hands and tear it apart, whether that's on a man's side or woman's side, that's the only way to separate what God has brought together and braided together. So I want to take a look at each individual string right now, what they look like, what our culture's done to them, and what it really should be.

So we know what the center one is. Everybody here knows who God is, right? If not, I need to talk to you real quick. All right.

So we know that the center one is God. So you have one of the left, one to the right, that we're going to break together. The first one that I want to look at is women, we should always put them first. So where I want to look at this app is in Peter 3, verses 3 through 5.

Don't be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should cloth yourself instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. This is how the holy women of old make themselves beautiful. They trusted God and accepted the authority of their husband.

We have developed a culture today that's exactly what we was being warned of when this verse was written. And that's verse 3. Don't be concerned about outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, and beautiful clothes. We have created a culture where we in no way do what God intended for us to do and look at the inward beauty of something.

Now ladies, I am in no way saying don't dole yourself up. Make it, you want to make yourself feel good about yourself. That's awesome. But there's something that is so much more important than the external beauty.

Something with the external beauty. You can put all that makeup on your face that you want to. You can dazzle your hair and all different shapes, styles, colors, and everything. But what happens at the end of the night when you get a shower?

Every bit of it falls apart. God never intended for us to look at beauty in that way as something we can wash off at the end of the night. Beauty comes from within, unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. God gave women a softer voice for a reason, because they wanted them to be a quiet spirit.

My wife is shaking her head no because she can get very loud, but it's okay. I see the beauty within. That's an external for the moment. That quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.

Men, if we are looking for true beauty of a woman, then we need to look with the eyes of God as it was intended. We need to see the precious beauty that God sees. If you wake up in the morning next to your wife and you, you need to re-examine your heart. Okay?

Because that's when you should see the true beauty. When there's absolutely no makeup there, she got some bed head going on, inner plesamas. That is when you should find your wife the most beautiful. Even with the dragon breath, you should still be able to say, I see the inside.

I see what God sees. Now it says in there the authority of their husband. Again in our culture today, we have created something where being submissive to a husband or accepting their authority is a sign of weakness. Ladies, it is the complete opposite.

Accepting the authority of your husband is the complete opposite of throwing up a white flag and saying I surrender. Accepting authority is also stated in Ephesians 5. It says for a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of a church. He is the savior of his body, the church, as the church submits to Christ so your wives should submit to your husbands in everything.

We don't submit to Christ because he came to earth, sat down on his throne and held a mighty scepter and said, I'm your God, you shall do it this way. No, we accept the authority of Christ because he came to earth and displayed a heart that we should have. He showed us the way we should live. I want to read something real quick that I found this week.

I do not remember exactly where this came from, but this talks about submission. And it states for a wife practicing submission to her husband does not mean she should be silent, a yes person or a doormat nor does it mean she should have no opinions of her own. Rather, a wife who chooses to take an attitude of submission towards her husband is a wife who has a heart of being supportive to her husband. She does so because she chooses to.

In choosing to support her husband, she is empowering him to have the self-respect he needs. He will develop into the kind of man who accepts his role and responsibilities in the home. He will seek to carry out his God-ordaining position of protecting, providing for and leading his family when a wife submits she is being a helper to her husband in the broad biblical sense of the word. Exactly what God intended in the original purpose to be a helper is exactly what a true wife's submission to her husband is displaying and resembling.

Now say again, it's not the church does not submit to Christ. Because he was whipping everybody and kicking them around and ordering them what to do. He submits because of the way Christ led. He led with a heart of love.

So this is where I start talking to the men. Please, none of you guys take me in the shin when I come down off here, but there's something that we need to realize if we want our wives to be submissive. We must have a heart of love. We must have the heart of Christ.

We must have the eyes of Christ and see a woman in the exact way that Christ seen the church. Christ didn't hate the people because of things that they were doing or they was trying to kill him and they beat him and they put him on that cross. He still said, I love them. I love them.

Continuing on in Ephesians where we start talking to the husbands, Ephesians 528. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So I know that the first verse is love, but I want to leave that for a second. So just track with me, please. No one ever hated his own flesh.

Now I've worked with many men coming through the home home, going through the home myself, don't want to do it now today. It may feel like a lot of us hate our own flesh, but I promise you when you get hungry, you still feed it. When you want something, you still go and do that. So that's a way of self-love for yourself.

So men, we must first learn how to love ourself before we can love a woman. She's not going to fix the love that you have for yourself. She's not going to make you what you ought to be. She can help you get to where God's word gained purpose is for you, what you must be in love with yourself and God before you can ever get yourself to have a godly wife.

Yes, men's time, I'm speaking to you right now. Love yourself first. Okay. And just because you do not want to say it doesn't mean that if you love yourself already, you got to walk it out a little while.

That's a side note. Sorry, guys. We're we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. God created man in his image and seen that it was good.

He was amazed with it. So what did God do to give us something? He took a bone out of our side and made her so that we could experience the same love and joy that he experienced knowing that man came from him. Man should know that woman came from him.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Men are our marriages. And our love has been destroyed from generation to generation to generation. To generation.

Why? Because somewhere along the line men stopped being what they should be and were displaying that to their children. So when their children left the home and got into the marriage, they had no clue what that looked like. They had no clue what the God or game purpose of marriage was because the father before them was not showing them what that looked like.

I believe that that's what that verse is speaking to. So fathers, you don't just have a role to your wife. You have a role to your children also to display the heart of Christ to your wife because that's what shows them Jesus. That's what leads them.

They said it at the beginning. Train a child up in the way they should go and they will never depart from it. If you're being like Christ and you're leading in the way that you're supposed to, you're displaying that heart that the child will not depart from. So like I said, I want to talk about love after I said a few things there.

I said, so a husband ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. I want to look at that word love. The perfect example of that love is 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7.

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous, love does not brag, it is not arrogant, it does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit. It is not provoked, it does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth, it keeps every confidence. It believes in all things, hopes all things, endures all things. How, man, we fall short of that.

Seriously, we do. So the word love that's there is, you got it, a goppio. A lot of people have heard of said agape, love, but that's the specific love that it's talking about. And it says of a person to welcome, to be fond of, to love deal your things, to be well pleased and to be contented at or with a thing.

It does not say to be contented with many things. So you can't, the love that you have for your wife, you can't have that for multiple. That's not what God's purpose of the love was. Love is kind, to show oneself mild, virtuous and good.

Looked up that word, virtuous and has having or showing moral standards. Men, we've got to have a moral standard in our love and our life before we can ever display that to someone else. So I want you to look at your own heart and say, what are my moral standards? Because that'll answer what standards am I setting for my love, for my wife, for my children.

Said love is patient, not lose heart, harsh or veer patiently and bravely and enduring misfortunes and troubles. Patient and bearing offenses, slow to avenge and slow to anger. I lack greatly on my patience. I really do.

And it's something that we all need to work on because we have this thought process of an eye for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Oh, she did that to me. Guess what? I'm doing the same thing right back.

Men, that's not what we're called to do. If we're setting the example, then we're not avenging it. We're doing the same thing that Christ did for us. I forgive you.

I forgive you. What standard are you setting for your wife? What standard are you setting for yourself and your children in that? Jealous.

That means to be burned with zeal. Zeal is a great energy or enthusiasm in a pursuit or a cause or an object. Men, you should be setting a standard to where your wife's zeal is for you. Not the opposite way around.

You shouldn't be craving that zeal. You should be setting a standard that once hurts to crave that zeal. It does not keep an account of a wrong. That is suffered.

It does not rejoice in a righteousness, but rejoice with the truth. It keeps every confidence. How many of you can say that you have the same confident in your marriage today and hopes in your marriage today as you did on day one? The day that you stood in front of your wife and said, I do.

What standards did you set for yourself or what expectations did you have? Because it clearly tells us that we never lose those. It also says, in Ders, all things. I'm not boasting.

I'm not saying my marriage is perfect. But in Ders, all things, we've been through all of it. If you're if you're if you're a marriage is set on God, it's intertwined and braided together with God. It says that it's uneasily broken.

This is exactly what God meant when he said in Ders, all things. Or you're willing to throw the towel in when you have the slightest little dispute, or you don't agree, or you have that thought process of, oh, she has to submit to me. So therefore your way must be my way. Because that's not what it's meant to be.

You're willing, you must be willing to hear what she has to say, and you must be willing to put that in your heart and your decision-making process. So I want to look at something in a way that a man should have led in life and he failed. And it's a story that you guys have heard many times. We're going back to Adam and Eve and when she was deceived.

Man should have led properly in this situation, I believe, and what I've read from it. And it can be a lesson to us men today. Starting in Genesis 3 verse 1. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall not keep of every tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it. Leached you, God. We're called to wash our wives in the Word.

If you look back on this, God spoke these words to Adam before Eve was there. God was told Adam don't touch that tree, don't eat it. So Adam was doing exactly what we were called to do. I believe that he was showing his wife to the garden once he was brought to him.

He was saying, I named this one a cow, I named this a dog, I named this a fish, I named this a bird, I named, and so on. But they got to the middle of the garden and he said, ah sweetheart, I got to tell you what God said. That tree right there, we can't touch that. He was leading his wife in the Word of God that was spoken to him.

Now the serpent, Adam had showed Eve this serpent, that's what I called it, it was made of God, God created it. What was speaking to her was something that was created of God, but that the enemy was using to deceitfully talk to her. And that's what happens a lot in life today. The enemy will take things, speak to you in a way that you think, oh well that's a special God, but it's really not that thing may be of God, but the words that it is speaking or the way that it's showing you is not of God.

And that's exactly what was going on here. So after he says to him, this is what God says, the serpent speaks back up to him and he says, then the spirit of, then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and the tree desire would make one wise, she took up its fruit and ate, she also gave to her husband with her and he ate.

If Adam was leading correctly, and his wife was truly listening to him, when the serpent was saying these things, she knew what the serpent was of God, she would have turned to her husband and said, is this what God meant of this? Is this what God was really saying? But also, as it says, the person was there with her. Adam failed at this point.

Exactly how a lot of men today, including myself, have failed multiple times in leading our wives. If Adam was doing exactly what God wanted of him, he would have did this, the serpent's there, the wife's there, he'd have stepped in between it and he'd have said no. What you were saying is not of God, sweetheart, this is what God said. We today are failing in that aspect of our lives in a lot of areas.

We're willing to step back and watch something take place and not willing to lead our wives the way we should. As Jesus was willing to bear the cross for the church, you must be willing to bear the burden for your family. You must be willing to take the beating. You must be willing to endure the harshness of the world so that your wife can be led correctly.

If Adam wasn't standing directly there, which I don't have a clear answer exactly on this, whether he was standing on the side or whether she brought the fruit to him. No matter which way though, even when she came with it, Adam knew what was supposed to take place with that. So just because, or she presents it to you in a context that you think is good, you still need to be the head and lead in the way that God wants you to and say no. That's not of God.

That's not going to be part of our marriage. That's not going to be how I lead you nor is it going to be how I lead our children. You're going to correct her with the word of God, not the word of yourself. So it's not a time to smirk your hand or anything like that and do what you're own a little way.

I know that that's the culture we've created and we think that that's acceptable. Be willing to stand between that deceitfulness. Be willing to stand up and lead and speak specifically to the men, men that are married, men that are considering getting any of it. Be the leader that you're supposed to be.

Be the head that you're supposed to be. But if you want your wife to be the godly woman that you desire, you have to show her how to be that godly woman. You are the head of the household as Christ is the head of the church. You are the head of the body.

From here down does not work properly without this. You get hit hard enough in this, get something down here that doesn't work properly, no more. So husbands, if you were the one that is on the head, then you were controlling the rest of the body. The rest of the body has its own part.

It picks its own things up without its own walking. But only if the head is working properly and telling it how to walk is sending signals. So men, I ask you today to examine yourself. So what's the team can go ahead and come back up?

Men, I ask you to examine yourself. Are you leading properly? Are you washing your wife with the word? Or are you standing between your wife and the deceitful star in our world today?

I want, and I'm asking the men that are sitting here right now that are married. I know we have some men in the men's side that your wife's on here with you. I want you to do this afterwards. Men, I want you to take a hold of your wife and I want you to tell her you were brought to me by God.

I want you to say to her and I want you to ask God to give you the empowerment to be able to lead your wife in the way that God intended in the beginning. But most importantly, I want you to look at your wife and say you are my helper. I thank you for the encouragement that you give me. I thank you for picking me up when I'm down.

I thank you for the motivation and I thank you just again for being my helper. So as we pray here, men, I'm asking you again, lead your wives, lead them in the prayer, lead them in the life, lead them in the love. Be the man that God intended for you to be. Lead your wives to the altar and bow down with them together and ask God to intercede in between you, wrap himself around you and make you guys a tightly graded cord that he wants you to be.

Father God, we tell you today that we love you. We tell you that we thank you for the gift of women that you have given to us. God, we thank you that you have created them to be our helpers. God, I ask for an empowerment of every man that sits here to be the God ordained and intended man that you have created to be.

God, if there's a man here that doesn't know you, God, I ask that you bring your spirit, intercede on their heart and tell them to say yes to you, allow them to accept you into their home and into their love. God again, we just thank you. We ask that you lead us today. Name our prayer.

Amen.