Today’s study is going to be entitled, “Basic Principles of Being a Husband.” So if you are a husband here in the audience today, it is good that you are here, or if you are listening. If you are not, you still have a lot to learn here from this because what we are going to talk about today is going to deal with how to relate to, and in particular, a husband relating to his wife, but it has far reaching application in just dealing with friends, family, parents, children. The applications are similar, although we are specifically going to focus on this idea. What are some of the basic principles that the Scripture teaches of being a very effective husband?
We are going to start by looking at Proverbs 5, so I want to ask you to turn to Proverbs 5 with me. I have had many, many, many, many people in the last month talking, unfortunately, people complaining, a lot of people at work and friends, about issues with the marriage, and especially with husbands, and I just felt compelled to finally put a study together, in particular about husbands, because I am hearing the same themes over and over and over again.
So it would be a good cudgel for us husbands in the audience today to recognize what it means—what does the Bible tell us about being a husband and how to be an effective one—because it is a great gift, it is a great gift to have a wife, and we are going to now look at Proverbs 5. This is not going to be a study where we are going to delve into the deeper spiritual meaning in Proverbs. We are going to look at the practical application. So I am going to turn you to Proverbs 5, and look in verse. 18. Proverbs 5:18-21 says:
Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
I want to focus on verse 18 of what we have just read. Proverbs 5:18:
…rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
And there is a key word in that verse and it says “rejoice.” Now we hear that word a lot. We sing about it. There is a song that says, “Rejoice and be glad. This is the day the Lord has made.” But what does it mean to “rejoice” really with your wife, the wife of your youth?
And in this particular instance, I think the best passage in the whole Old Testament that is the same Hebrew word as “rejoice” can be found in 1 Kings 1. So I want to define the word “rejoice,” or begin to understand why is it that us husbands should be rejoicing with our wives and what does it mean. 1 Kings 1, and this is a great passage, and I think it is going to really convict a lot of us to realize, am I rejoicing with my wife like the word “rejoice” is really defined here? 1 Kings 1:36, I am going to give a little bit of the context, and when we get down to verse 40, we are going to see the word, and it is when Solomon was made king, so I want you to get that in your mind. 1 Kings 1:36-40:
And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada answered the king, and said, Amen: the LORD God of my lord the king say so too. As the LORD hath been with my lord the king, even so be he with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord king David. So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon king David’s mule, and brought him to Gihon. And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.
Here is 1 Kings 1:40:
And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes,…
And here is our word:
…and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them.
Now that was joy. All the people shouted, “God save King Solomon,” and they rejoiced with this music, and what did the Bible say happened right after as they were rejoicing, the Bible says they rejoiced so much “that the earth rent with the sound of them.”
So I am going to ask you husbands in the audience today, are you rejoicing with the wife of your youth? Are you rejoicing with your wife today, if you have a wife? If you will have a wife shortly, are you rejoicing? Does the earth quake with the sound, the feeling, the emotion that you have for your wife when you see her, especially after you have been apart for a whole day, if you have been working? You are both working perhaps, outside the house. Your wife is in the house minding the things of the household and you are at work earning a paycheck somewhere in the business world. When you come home, are you rejoicing over her like these people rejoiced about King Solomon who was anointed the king? And the whole earth quaked, the Bible says, because they were rejoicing so greatly.
Now I want to also ask this question. Do you get as excited today? Are you as thrilled today to see your wife as you were when you first started dating? When you first met her? Now we have to ask ourselves a serious question. If I look inside myself, am I? Am I? If I am not rejoicing over my wife like this today, then I am definitely living below par, below where I can be. Here is why: because the Bible says in Proverbs 5—we read it—what did it say right after rejoicing with your wife? It said in Proverbs 5:19:
…and be thou ravished always with her…
Always! Now there is the key word. That is why I am challenging all of the men in the audience today. Every one of us men who are a husband, am I “ravished always” with my wife? Always—not just in the beginning…not just the honeymoon…not just the first year…not just when we first start dating…not the first five years…maybe I have been married 10, 15, 20 years…maybe only 3…maybe I have been married three weeks—am I rejoicing always? Am I “ravished” with her?
What does it mean to be “ravished”? This is the only time it is translated “ravished,” this Hebrew word. It is #7686 in the Strong’s. The only time in the Bible it is translated “ravished” is here in verse 19 and in verse 20. Proverbs 5:20:
And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman,…
Most places in the Old Testament, I think you would be surprised to see what it is translated as. It is translated as “err” as in “error,” or most of the time it is translated as “wander,” “to wander.”
Now, wait a minute. The Bible says, “be ravished always with her love,” the love of your wife. The Bible says that this word is defined as “error” or “wander.” Well, look at Proverbs 5:20:
And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
So, in other words, what it is supporting is the idea of “do not wander.” Do not wander away from your wife—physically, emotionally, spiritually—that connection, that focus on your wife. You are not to wander from what? It says, “be thou ravished always with her love.” So do not wander from her love.
Now I do not know about you, but out of all of the women in your family, whether it is your wife or your sisters or whoever it may be that you are close to that you have seen through many years of their life, do not most women have a lot of love that they want to give? It is innate. It is an innate desire where a woman really, really, really wants to give a lot of love to a husband. If she is not married, she has a great desire to become married and wants to love. And that is what the Bible says. Do not wander from her love. In other words, be ravished always in her love.
And it is unfortunate that many, many, many people that I rub shoulders with—friends, people at work—a lot of people come and talk to me about these things and I really try to drive home Biblical principles and encourage, especially a lot of the ladies who come up and are complaining about husbands. And it seems to be rampant today. And we know that the divorce rate is over 55% in North America. And the 45% who are married, a lot of them are unhappily married. Or if they are not happily married, it is just kind of routine; it is bland. That is unfortunate; that is very unfortunate.
But what has happened because we do not remain ravished in our wife’s love, the earth does not quake anymore when I see my wife and I rejoice? We degenerate back into and our inclination is to go into a perfunctory routine, is it not? It is that mechanical routine. Day after day, it is kind of the same thing. I come home. Maybe dinner is on the table. I sit down and relax in the chair or maybe I go to my desk and I study or I take one of the children to an event, perhaps a sporting practice or maybe they are in a club at school—whatever it may be.
Now, sadly to say, this is too common today, but being ravished in your wife’s love takes work and effort. It does not come naturally. It takes work and effort. And we are now going to take a look at a couple of ways, three in particular, that if you practice, and I guarantee you men, if you study and practice these three principles that I have recently dug out of the Scriptures to address these issues, because so many people come to me, especially at work, that I have to have good answers, I have to have Biblical answers, so it has really caused me over the last couple of months to be digging, and I found three themes that keep coming up over and over again that I believe if you do these things, I can guarantee you, you can reignite passion and intensity in a relationship where the Bible calls you to “be ravished always” in your wife’s love. Do not wander. Do not let yourself drift into a routine or, of course, the worst case is to drift away from your wife and it falls into adultery or, emotionally, you just simply detach and you are just kind of roommates after awhile. The worst is, I do not believe in that, but you stay married, and that is great because divorce is not allowed in the Bible, but it is bland. It does not have to be. God gave us a great gift here, and we are going to now see these three ways, and I really believe that these principles, there are many more, but if these three are studied, practiced and used, I guarantee you that your marriage will enhance, quadruple, what it is today.
The first one: the first principle is to communicate and we are going to read in the Scriptures about that, but what does it mean to communicate? It is a simple definition. It is a word that we use commonly and it is very popular. The word “communicate,” in its most basic form, simply means “to share,” to share. And what do most women want you to share with them? What do they want to share with you? I hear this over and…this is the number one thing I have heard from everybody that I have talked to, and I have really been involved in talking to a lot, I mean, over a dozen people, just in the last month alone, different people. This is number one: women want to communicate their everyday life. They want somebody to talk to, somebody who just simply will listen, simply listen. If a wife is home with the kids all day, she wants to be able to talk to you when you get home or maybe on the phone briefly.
I would ask a lot of these women, give me a time? How much, you know? How much do you need to talk? Thirty minutes seemed to be the most common answer—about a half hour a day—whether that is at dinner, whether that is 15 minutes at lunch and 15 minutes maybe right before bed, whatever it may be, just listen.
Communicate means to share. If your wife wants to share, it is your job as a husband to listen and be available. That is the key: be available for her to share her emotions, her feelings, whatever did not go well that day, perhaps some joy, some wonderful things that did happen, maybe one particular issue, maybe she had visited somebody or maybe something happened with the kids.
She just wants to talk and she wants to have deep communication. That is key: very deep, emotional communication, which means that you have to be locked in. You have to be focused. You can not be reading the paper or doing something else and just kind of hearing as she talks as maybe she is doing dishes. You have to be there focused, listening.
But here is the problem, what do most of us men do when we listen and our wife talks about maybe a difficult issue that day? What do we always want to do? Okay, we rush; we want to get to the point. I do not want to, like, make it a half hour. That is a good one, Gary. And the other one is…yes, he is…newly married…yes, Gary, congratulations—you are learning very quickly. Here is the big key, do not we all want to solve a problem and offer a solution? Do not we always want to interject and say, “You ought to do this” or “You ought to do that”?
Go ahead, Lester. Lester says that he thinks what he should do is have the husband listen to his wife. Yes; that is what we are talking about—simply listening. But here is the key, men: listen without jumping into solving the problem or a problem or offering a solution. She may just want to talk and have somebody listen so that she can get it off her chest, off her mind, whatever is bothering her. Or if it is something joyful, you can rejoice with her.
But if it is a problem, it may not be the best time for you to interject, “Here is what you ought to do,” because we are solvers of problems, us men. We just want to, “Let us fix it; let us move on; we will get to the next issue; forget about it.” That does not work! That does not work.
Now there is a time and a place. There is a less emotional time, maybe later that night or maybe the next day or maybe a few days later, when you can slip in a suggestion and it is a perfect time to do it. Or, obviously, if your wife does want to talk about an issue and hammer it out, well, then, that is the time to do it, but you have to look for the signals. You have to be aware of the signals that your wife is giving you for that.
This is called “heartfelt understanding.” You need to get into your wife’s heart and understand what is most important to her. What is (a) bothering her from that particular day, or what is on her mind, or what is weighing on her, or what causes her joy? It is heartfelt understanding, and the only way you can do this is to be more of a listener than a talker.
Now, do you see how this applies to friendships as well? It is not just a husband and a wife, but I am particularly focusing in on the marriage relationship today on this on.
Now, God’s mandate is for us husbands to be as concerned and interested in our wife’s live as our own, which is the motivation that you need to be able to step into her shoes and just listen and try to understand. And even though it may seem silly to you, you will still listen. You will still let her go on and talk and spill her soul to you.
Here is what it is. Ephesians 5:25. Let us go to the New Testament. God gives us the mandate. There is no excuse. This is coming right out of the Bible. I am not making this up. Ephesians 5:25-28 says:
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies…
What is as important to you has to be as important to your wife, or vise versa. What is as important to your wife has to be as important to you.
Let us go on. Ephesians 5:28-30:
…He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh;…
But does what?
…but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
How do you nourish and cherish your own flesh? You always want the best for yourself. You want to put good things in your body. You want to eat well. You want to feel like you are energized. Your wife is part of you. Whatever she needs, you have to be there and you have to pay attention to what those needs are and to recognize them and to ask. If you do not know what they are, you have to have deep conversation and find out what they are.
Now this “one flesh” idea is in Genesis 2:24. Genesis 2:24 tells us plainly that this is true. That is where it is coming from in Ephesians 5. Genesis 2:24:
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
So, again, if your wife feels the needs, wants to communicate, needs to talk, wants to do it daily, not just once a week, every single day. Why do sometimes women have a reputation, especially young teenage girls, they are always where? On what? The phone…if they are allowed…if they are in the household and if they are allowed. And, boy, if they have cell phones, forget it. They are on that phone all day, all night, at lunch time at school. Girls love to communicate and talk with friends. Your wife, she did not lose that desire. She needs you now to talk to over everyday issues of life. She needs you. You are one flesh now if you are married. You have to be available.
Alright, the second step. The first one was to communicate daily and deeply—daily and deeply. But the second one, and this is huge for men—huge. Do not be critical and do not be judgmental. That is hard to do, but that can hurt somebody else’s feelings really, really, really easily.
Jesus said it in the greatest sermon ever preached, to me, and that is the Sermon on the Mount, and that is in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. It spans three chapters. It is an awesome sermon that Jesus gave on the mountain. And Matthew 7, the first 5 verses, gives us all we need to remember as husbands, how to treat our wives in particular. Matthew 7:1-5:
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
I have a great story for you. Just the last couple of weeks, whenever I have seen my nieces, they are five and three, the five-year-old sometimes, and more than once in the last few weeks, has said to me, “Uncle John, Rebecca said a bad word.”
I took her, the very first time she said that to me, I took Jessica, the older one, I took her and I brought her over to, in their living room, they have a big mirror on the wall, and I lifted her up and I said, “Jessica, who do you see in the mirror?” And she said, “Me.” And I said, “Right; who do you have to be concerned with then? Is it what Rebecca says or does not say, or is it what you do?” And she looked at me and I said, “It is you. God sees you and what you do. It is not your job to tattle on or to judge your sister. That is between her and God. God sees everything, but you have a full-time job worrying about whether you or doing it right before God or not.”
So as husbands, let us go back to that issue again, to not be judgmental or critical. It is so easy to find fault. Maybe the wife is home all day with the children. You come home and you are upset that they are acting a certain way, and you are quick with a criticism.
You cannot. You cannot do that. She has been toiling all day with the kids and juggling laundry and cooking and cleaning and maybe she had to run to the store and do this, that, and the other thing. You have to have compassion—you have to.
Criticism and judgment have got to be withheld, because it hurts somebody else’s feelings, even though you may not intend it. You may think it is…what do we like to think as men? “I am offering constructive criticism.” Um, that is good for a child; but when it is my wife, it is a more tender issue and I have to make sure that I am not being judgmental or critical.
Let us go to the third and final step that I really think that if you apply these three principles, you are going to enhance your marriage like never before. The third one, as a husband, is to keep looking for ways to serve her. That is right—to serve her.
Let me ask a question, before I define what it means to “serve.” Is the husband the head of the house? Yes; you are correct. Let me prove that. Ephesians 5:23. You might think, “Wait a second. Well, do not they seem distinct to one another in what we just said, to serve but he is the head of the house?” Ephesians 5:23:
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church:…
Do you see the analogy? “The husband is the head of the wife.” True. How?
…even as Christ is the head of the church:…
So husbands need a model of who to follow as the head.
Before I go into the Scriptures, let me give you an earthly example. If you work, I do not know if any of you are a manager out there, but if you have a manager at your work, does your manager work longer hours than you do? Probably; they get paid more than you. More is expected of them. They, typically, put in more effort. They have more to do. They have longer hours. They have a lot to do—a lot of people to handle.
It is a tough job being a manager, but does the manager just sit back and bark out orders? Usually not. Most managers have to dig in and do a whole lot of stuff—projects as well as manage people and some of the work flow. It is a tough job and not something that everybody maybe even wants. Maybe that extra pay is not worth it.
But what about the Scriptures? How is the “head” to operate? The most effective manager in the company is the one who does the most and who is not lazy—not delegating everything, some things, but they do a lot by example.
The Scriptures tells us in Luke 22 how the “head” operates. Men, you are the head of the household. Luke 22 tells you, gives you the managerial manual of how to operate as the head. Luke 22:24:
And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.
In other words, I want to be the CEO of the company. Luke 22:25-26:
And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief,…
That is you men. You are head of the household. You are the “chief” of the house.
…and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
Serve—you see? So my injunction to the men is to seek ways to serve your wife. I have a great example. I had two different people in the last three weeks tell me the same exact story and they used the same analogy.
These are couples where, you know, a lot of stuff has to get done at night; they are working during the day. The husband is sitting down and relaxing after dinner. Sometimes that is fine…on a La-Z-Boy chair, perhaps. The woman is juggling three things. She has a load of laundry in, she is doing the dishes, and Suzy has to be minded to make sure that she is doing her homework.
How many husbands get off of the chair and run up to the wife and say, “Honey, a lot seems like it is going on right now. What thing can I do right now to help you out?”
What happens when the husband does not do that? Lamentably, one woman told me, she said, “I hate to say this, but it seems like I am always being a ___ when I ask for help.” What is the word that I am looking for? A nag—a nag—nagging. Do not we often hear that, that women “nag,” or at least we think that they nag? Nagging is when they are always asking you to do this or do that or do the other thing.
A lot of times, why do women get that bad rap of nagging? Because the husband is sitting in the chair. He does not want to do anything. He thinks that it is okay for the wife to have those three things to do at once while he is reading or watching television, or whatever he is doing.
She has a load of laundry in. She is doing the dishes. She is also the one who happens to cook, and she is also being the one minding all of the kids, some of the kids, most of the kids—whatever—and the husband does not feel responsible that he needs to help out. Remember, Jesus said:
…he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
After dinner, I am asking my wife immediately, “What do you need? What is most important tonight? Should I wash the dishes? Do you want me to go fold laundry?” If you do not know how to do laundry, learn…learn. If you do not know how to do dishes, learn. The children, you have to be just as involved in their lives, too. You know that.
Here is a great way to do it. Every morning, men, if you adopt this habit, oh, I guarantee you that your wife will completely love this. Every morning, ask your wife, “Today, there are a lot of things probably on the ‘to do’ list. What one thing could I do, either tonight or during the day, or whatever, or on the way home, that would really help you out and be a benefit to the house?” Every day, now I am not just saying once. If you say that every day and you do it, whatever your wife…“You know what? Tonight, really, the most important thing, could you do the food shopping?” Or whatever it is…your wife will absolutely adore and love and respect you like you would never believe.
Get into the habit of doing that because Jesus told us in Matthew 20, let me read a verse here in Matthew 20, verse 27. Matthew 20:27:
And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:
Do you see that? There is the word “servant.” What do servants do? Everything! They do all of the dirty work, do they not? Yes; yes they do. So men, it is okay. You might think you are doing a lot by taking care of the outside of the house and that might happen during the five months of good weather and that is a lot, but is that everyday? Dishes need to be done everyday. Laundry, if you have a family, laundry is probably everyday or every other day. Cleaning, every week? There is a lot of stuff going on.
Jesus says in Matthew 20:27-28:
And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
You see, you give up your own needs and desires, your wants, for the sake of your wife. Because, remember, the model for the husband was who? It was Jesus Christ. He was the model. Husbands, you are the head of the household, even as Christ is the head of the church. So we are following His footsteps, if you want to do it right. He is the One serving. He is the One ministering. He is the One who washed the disciples’ feet, you know, to show the great example that He was here to serve.
Now, it is really important, when you are serving, to look for all kinds of ways to do it. With the children, I mean, children in the house can either separate a couple or it can draw them closer together. But it takes a lot of work when there are kids. You know that, if you have children. It is a lot of work. Husbands, you have to be very involved. You have to roll up your sleeves and you have to be involved in the homework, the activities, the clubs, driving them wherever. You are disciplining; you know that. Debriefing, when you come home from work with your child. “How was school? What did you learn?” Remember, if your wife is at home, she is with them all day. I know that a lot of you husbands are great at coming home and relieving some of that pressure and you take the kids and you go play with them for an hour or two or whatever you do to give her a little break. She needs that.
But look for ways to serve even when…and to reinforce…when you are serving, do not be critical, do not be judgmental…reinforce what your wife has done during the day. Congratulate her. Thank her for minding them. If she did something…she seemed to handle a situation and maybe it did not go as well, reinforce her anyway. Encourage her. Tell her, “You did a good job. Maybe tomorrow it will go better.” Do not be disappointed. Do not be angry.
And here is the key, as the man, as the husband, you need to go to that relationship with your wife to give, not to get. Let me say that again. That is so important. Husbands, you need to go to that relationship, daily, to give, not to get. Your wife has to be the most important thing to you in the whole world.
God comes first. We know that. The Bible says that. But on this earth, as far as your daily life, your wife must be and she must—here is the key, men—she must feel like she is the most important thing or person to you. If she does not feel that way, but you think it, you have a job to do to prove it and these are some of the solutions I am offering you today, some of the strategies to help prove that. Because if she does not feel like she is the most important thing in the world to you, she is going to withdraw some of that love. “Be ravished always in her love.” She wants to give love. She wants to pour it out to you, and you have to be there to receive it by giving because the more you give, you invariably get it back. That is a truism in all of life.
Let me give you a real, quick, easy thing to do. How many of you have cell phones? Maybe you cannot make a phone call from your work, but in the middle of the day, you can grab a cell at lunch and say, “Honey, I only have two minutes, but I just wanted to call and tell you how much I love you and I have missed you all morning,” or, “Something I did just made me think of you and I can not wait to get home tonight and just kiss you or give you a big hug. How is your day going, real quick? I am praying for you at lunch.” Or you are on your way to a meeting and you only have a minute. You leave your desk. You are allowed to make a quick call as your walking, you know, down a long hallway, “Honey, I only have two seconds. I just wanted to tell you that I love you,” click. Believe me; that will go so far in showing your wife that she is the most important person in the whole world to you.
So let us wrap it up. I really believe that, men, if we, you, can master these three principles—communicate daily and deeply with your wife, communicate; second, do not be critical; third, seek and find out ways to serve her—you will instantly transform one of the most beautiful gifts God ever gave to human beings. Do you know what that gift is? The privilege of loving another person and being loved in return.
There is no feeling on earth like the feeling of being loved and cherished by another human being. Nothing on this earth can compare to that feeling. It is a gift, men. The Bible says in Genesis 2:18:
…It is not good that the man should be alone;…
You men who are married, God gave you an incredible gift, because it is not good to be alone. When He gives you a spouse fit for you, a helper, it is an unbelievable gift.
So men, thank God tonight for your wife and thank her by instituting these principles today and every day, and I guarantee you, your marriage will be so blessed that you will live each day to the fullest, to God’s glory.
May He give us all the strength to do it His way, as the great master Jesus Christ did. Amen.