Refiner's Fire | Week 5 | Daniel Goulding

We're going to be continuing today in our refiner's fire series, walking through the letter of one Peter chapter three. When they text me the week that I was gonna be teaching and the passage that I would get the privilege of covering,

I text Bill back and said, Hey man, awesome, thank you. I don't know how it always works out that when we do a series like talking about the afterlife, you get heaven and angels. I get the devil and demons and hell. And you get all the fun parts of first Peter. And I get chapter three verses one through seven. And you'll understand in a second what I mean when you read these passages with me. I was joking with them, but

you will see the passages we're about to cover on the surface can be really taken out of context. And they can almost be a bit offensive if you don't understand the culture that Peter is writing to and the context with which frames this conversation.

I say all that to say if you're here, specifically if you're here and you're a female, there will be certain moments of what I'm about to read that you will be tempted to throw things at me. My ask is that you would at least wait until the end of service, give me the chance to bring it full circle,

and then just wait and come and throw stuff at me after service where I can at least try to dodge it. Okay? Let me set up where we're going today by kind of telling you a story because the passage we're about to read, if you read the letter of first Peter, again, is a letter that Peter is writing to

an audience of people who were Jewish and had recently converted to Christianity. And for the first time, they're facing massive persecution, not for anything that they've done other than actually living out their faith. And they're facing all types of persecution. And Peter's talking about how to thrive

inside of these moments that are really difficult.

And then in chapter three, he's going to kind of make a transition that almost doesn't make sense because he's talking about how to really thrive when life is hard and when things are difficult. And then he transitions and starts to talk about marriage.

And for some of you, you're like, hey, know why those are connected. I could have a conversation with you after service and tell you why. But what I think Peter inherently knew is the thing that is true about all of us. When life gets difficult externally,

we will have a tendency to bring those struggles to our internal relationships, right? When work is hard, finances are difficult, life gets messy. It's often the people that are closest to us, specifically for those of us in this room who are married,

it's usually our spouse, our significant other that catches the brunt of all of these pressures. I think that's why Peter transitions from all of these really difficult things, how to thrive when life is hard. And then he goes in and he uses really marriage as an illustration on how to live.

I know this is like the longest introduction ever, but let me tell you a quick story. Okay? So I will be married, in about a month and a half for twelve years. And that's pretty awesome because it's to the same person and those twelve years were all consecutive. You know what I mean? Like, was was no hiatuses.

There was no Like it's just been an incredible

testament to me of the power of God in my life. Because I got radically saved as a 19 year old, pretty wild fraternity guy. I don't think I've ever dated somebody for twelve weeks and now I've been married to my wife for twelve years in a row. Like it's just incredible. And I say that because anybody who's been married for any amount of time can attest to the fact that as you stay married longer and longer, you will know things about your spouse that you didn't know when you first married them, okay? For me, one of the things I had to learn about my wife is that my wife's default position is she's just terrified of

basically everything. I would try to compartmentalize it, but pretty much everything scares her. We're

staying at a house over here in Queen Creek that we've never stayed at before, which apparently means for my wife she has to inspect the entire house every night, like every sheet, every pillow, every cushion for scorpions. Because apparently all the scorpions want to eat us while we're sleeping. And so I just film her and laugh. I'm like, You literally look like a tweaker right now going around with this black light. She's like, stop it. And it's

hilarious. Right? But when I was newly married, I didn't realize that one of the things that I was signing up for was to be woken up in the middle of the night pretty regularly to her going, I hear somebody outside. And I'm like, what? Like what are they saying? She's like, I don't know, I heard somebody.

And so I was like, okay, awesome. Like what do you want me to do about that?

You should call somebody to protect us. And she's like, no, we gotta go look. And so I would get up. And the first few times I was petrified. You know, like scary, you're like half asleep. You like, I'm like, what am I gonna do if there's somebody that's here? Like, I don't know anything about self defense. Like, I'm gonna scream and embarrass myself,

but I would like go search the house and this would happen pretty regularly. And I promise I'm going somewhere with the story. But this would happen regularly when she would wake me up and she's like, I heard something. And I for a while would try to just be like, there's nothing there. Just go back to bed like you're here and stuff. But I've realized pretty quickly it was actually less energy and less effort for me to just jump out of bed half asleep, walk through the whole house, turn all the lights on, look behind the shower curtains, look under the bed, turn all the lights back off, jump back in bed and be like, see, there's nobody there.

And I would do that like literally multiple times a week. And I did think like if somebody's actually here, they're gonna be like, why is this guy like power walking through the house in the middle of the night? Like, this is bizarre. Well, there was one night in particular where this whole thing kind of crescendoed and my wife woke me up in an absolute

camp. She like screamed that there was somebody that was there. And for the first time I've like felt the terror that existed inside of her heart like 95%

of the time that she's awake. And I woke up with just this absolute tear, half asleep, and I literally, no exaggeration, just started punching and like roundhouse kicking in the air. And my wife was looking at me like, what in the world are you doing? And I'm like, I'm keeping us safe, obviously. Like, what do you think I'm doing?

And in that moment, we both realized we should probably get an alarm system because that was really ineffective. And I was like, I'm sick and tired of getting woken up all the time. And so I now pay every single month a payment to an alarm company for all of the cameras in my house and for all of the alarm systems that are at all of the windows and doors of my house. Not because I think that I actually need them, but because that $40 a month or whatever lets me sleep through the night.

My wife now will get up and look at the cameras instead of waking me up to go look at the nothing that she thought that she heard. Gentlemen, if that's your point, you can just get an alarm system and you can sleep through the night if you're married to this person. And you're sitting here like, why are you telling us any of this?

Here's why I tell you all of that. Because for the first time in that one moment, that night, I felt this deep fear that my wife felt pretty regularly. I've come to understand that

women walk around and feel more afraid than we as men tend to feel, right? Our natural disposition when we walk into a room is not to try to feel like somebody in the room wants to take advantage of us, or when we're walking to our car, we've gotta be careful because somebody might come and try to assault us. But women walk around a little bit more timid and afraid than we as men do.

What Peter is going to talk about in this passage of scripture, I'm just telling you right now, it can be a little offensive because what Peter is going to address is this thing that our culture just completely rejects. And it's that men and women are uniquely designed and they are different. Different is not bad.

Different is just different. And he's going to say that inside of the home, there is order that is supposed to exist inside of a marital relationship. But when life gets hard, when things externally get difficult,

what is going to cause you to do is to have moments where you are deeply at the root of whatever's coming up. You're actually afraid of something. And just like my knee jerk reaction when I woke up afraid thinking somebody was in my house, I just started swinging. In an empty room, the consequences aren't that dire.

But when we begin to fight and punch and swing at the people that we're supposed to actually be the most connected to, This is how, friends, we do the most damage inside of our marriage relationships.

If you're here today and you feel like your marriage is in a really tough spot, my prayer is that you would walk out of here encouraged, that there is practical things that we can begin to do.

If you're here and your marriage is awesome and you're doing really well, I pray that you would take hold of some of these truths and build and be intentional while things are good with enough wisdom to know it might not always be that way.

And for all my single friends that are here, my hope and my goal is that you would begin to put these practices into your life so that when you get to that point, if you do, that you have some really practical ways and skills to live inside of the context of marriage.

Here's the big idea that we're gonna look at today, if you're taking notes. What Peter's going to implore us to do is to choose meekness, not weakness.

Let me explain what I mean. When conflict arises in every arena of our life, but specifically our marriage, every single one of us in this room, myself included, we will have a natural response that we want to go to.

What Peter's going to say is that a lot of those responses are actually rooted in your flesh. Your sinful, carnal, weak part of who you are. But if we can become aware of that, we can actually choose to lay those things down to willingly not go there and choose a different option other than our natural default response.

And he's going to use a word that we see a little bit in the New Testament that isn't necessarily a huge part of our vernacular today. He's going to use a word called meek. Meekness. Jesus in the New Testament said, it's blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. But that word meek,

we don't necessarily understand what it means. A lot of times we mistakenly think meekness is weakness, but it's not. The word that Peter's going to use, that Jesus uses in the New Testament for meekness, it actually is a Greek war horse term.

What the Greeks would do when they were building the strongest cavalry that we've seen in almost any army in history is they would go out and they would find wild horses. They would take those wild horses and they would put them through a test.

And they wanted to see and they wanted to find the horses that were actually powerful enough and strong enough to make it in battle. That could actually fulfill the tasks required to be a war horse.

And they would take half of them that didn't make it. They would make them pack animals and the rest would become potential candidates to be war horses. Well, it wasn't just enough to be powerful, to be able, to be confident and have the ability to fulfill the tasks.

What they needed to make sure is that those horses that were powerful enough were willing to do something that the majority of them would not be willing to do, which was actually submit to the rider that was going to be put on their back.

When Peter is using this word meek, when Jesus uses this in the New Testament, what he's talking about is a literal war horse that they would call a pros or a prowse. And it was a powerful war horse that could fulfill everything. But it was willing to submit to something greater than itself.

Here's the definition and I know this is like the longest introduction to a passage of scripture ever. But here's the definition that we're gonna use this morning for meekness. Meekness literally means strength but under control. It does not mean weakness. It means choosing another option. Yes, anger

is there. Yes, I could respond with this. Yes, I might be right but sometimes I can be so right that I'm wrong. There is another option besides giving in to our flesh and our weakness. Here's how Peter starts in one Peter three:one.

It says, In the same way, notice these four words he's going to start this section of scripture with, and we'll see in verse seven, he's going to repeat these. Just caveat upfront, here's what he's gonna do. He's going to address women first,

but he first says in the same way. So he's saying all of this that we're gonna talk to about women. This also applies to the men in the room, but he's gonna use six verses to talk to women and then one verse to talk to the men. I think that's because women just need more reminding than men. No, I'm just kidding. I think it's because he knows men are not as bright as women. So he gives us just one thing to stick to. But he starts and says in the same way. So husbands, all of this applies to us, but we're speaking to women. He says in the same way, you wives must accept

the authority of your husbands. Let's close in prayer. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you. I'm just kidding.

Here's how he starts this verse. And I just wanna start by telling you, hey, I know it says women submit to your husbands. And in our culture, we're like, hey, I don't submit to somebody like I'm my own person. And this can be a little bit offensive to our culture today.

We have to remember the audience that Peter's writing to. He's writing to an audience where women were literally one step above an animal when it came to rights and things that a husband would have within his possession. A woman was not an equal. A woman was actually a possession of the husband.

So when Peter says, wives, submit to your husbands. And we go, oh, that's kind of offensive. This culture would have been like, no duh. Like, obviously, like that's the law of the land. The women have to submit to their husbands.

But we're gonna see in a second that who Peter is writing to gives us all the context into why this passage makes sense. Now, again, I know that there's churches that have taken this one verse. They don't read the rest of the context and they say, Hey, wives submit to your husbands.

And I'm telling you, those people have it wrong. There is submission that is supposed to happen inside of the home, but it's not from this place of bravado.

It's not from this place of women you are less than, number one, it's just your husbands that you are asked to submit to. No other man, if they ever try to tell you to submit to them, has any biblical standing to actually tell you that that is real or right.

But what Peter is going to address is something that was prevalent at this time that sadly is still really prevalent today. Peter is addressing a huge, a growing group of women who have heard the message of the gospel of Jesus, right? They are in an oppressive culture.

They have no rights. They have no freedoms. They have no voice. They have no ability to change any of that either.

Yet there's these people going around talking about this guy named Jesus who came, who died a perfect, who lived a perfect life and died the death that we deserve. Because of that, women and men can come into a saving faith with Jesus and live a full life. And so women in this culture are coming to the church in droves,

but their husbands were not. The husbands had much more to lose in converting to this thing called Christianity. They would lose their standing in culture. They would lose their businesses. They lose everything.

But their wives are like, man, I've got nothing already. Like I got nothing to lose. And so the church was thriving with women. And the sad truth is, is our church today, not necessarily just Rock Point, but the global Christian church today is under the exact same dilemma. Women come to the church in droves.

Men, we watch football on Sundays. Women come to the church, bring their families and then go home. Statistically, the data tells us that it's more likely for a woman to go home to a non believing spouse than it is for a husband, though that does happen.

What Peter is specifically addressing when he says, wives submit to your husbands. He's talking to wives, we'll see in verse two, who have husbands that refuse to follow Jesus.

He gives really practical advice to people that find themselves in a situation that I'm telling you is much more drastic than people think that it is. Here's what he says in verse two.

He says, in the same way you wives must accept the authority of your husbands. Then even if some refuse to obey the good news, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives.

Here's what Peter addresses. He addresses all of the women that go, man, I go to Bible study. I hear all my friends talking about how awesome things are with their husband and how they pray together and how they go to church together and how they serve together. And I'm on my own. I've gone home. Like I've tried. I've brought my husband to church. He's willing. He like he was willing to go and now he's gone a couple times. He wants nothing to do with it.

Because he says, even if they've refused the good news, that means the assumption is that they've heard the good news. If they've heard it and they're refusing it, he gives really practical advice to women who find themselves in that situation. He says, It is not your responsibility

to come home with Bible tracks every night and try husband to Christ through words. I feel like I came here to give some wives peace that find themselves in this situation in a moment of desperation going, I don't know what to do. I've tried everything and it doesn't seem like anything's working. What Peter says

is even if you find yourself in that situation, honor your husband. Submit to your husband. And the way that you do it is not with the words that you preach.

It's not with the things that you say about how good Jesus is, though that can be part of it. What he says is the way that you will win your non believing spouse to Christ is by the way you live. The greatest witness to non believing spouses is the way that we choose to honor, respect,

love, and cherish and value them, even though there's a part of you that really desperately wants to have something that all of your friends have who has a believing spouse. He says, The way you live, your reverent holy life will be the greatest example to them. What does this mean practically?

It means if you find yourself in this position, in the temptation, the weak part of your flesh that wants to just of belittle them potentially or point out their deficiencies or the things that aren't working. He says, You have to fight that.

And publicly, you have to choose to honor them. Choose to respect them. When you're at parties, don't make them the blunt of your joke. Let them be the one that you talk about their strengths in public and their weaknesses in private. That the correction

and the call to repentance is one that's meant for conversations when nobody else is around. But publicly you honor, publicly you cherish. This is how ladies, you submit to your husband. That you respect the position that God has given them inside of the home, even if they are not fulfilling

the call of being the leader of your home. I also say this to all of you who are in the room who find themselves here today and you're single. You will, after walking through some frustrations in dating, you will begin to convince yourself that the

belief system of the person that you're dating, it's really not as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

And you will have taken the list of things that you wanted in a future spouse that was like, I want a husband that will pray for me. I want a husband that will love Jesus. I want a husband that will serve with me. I want a husband that will do X, Y, and Z. And you will throw all of that out and settle for a guy that on some dating website, at least check the box that says, yes, I'm open to spirituality.

And you're like, hey, I can work with that. I'll bring him to church. I'll get him saved. I can change him. And unfortunately, the data tells us most likely you will not be able to. Women dating is not a mission field. It is not your job to save the person that you're dating. When we begin to get into these relationships

and we enter into a marriage, I'm telling you, four, five, six, seven years into that relationship, the thing that we thought wasn't that big of a deal, when life gets difficult and all of these external pressures start to come, the core tenets of who we are and what we believe will become a really big deal.

So to my single friends, I say, you can avoid finding yourself here by being really intentional with how you date today. But for everybody who's here that finds himself in this situation that is married, no matter how you ended up here, Peter basically takes divorce off the table and says, your mission

is to live a life of holiness in front of your unbelieving spouse and it might take a while. It might be a long time before something happens, but God is writing a story in your non believing spouse through your life of faithfulness.

And see, I've never been in a relationship. I've never been in a marriage with a non believing spouse. But when I got newly saved as a young guy, it took me a while to realize I should probably find some new friends. I should probably stop hanging out with all the people that I was hanging out with before

I was a Christian. Well, I found myself at like 20, 21 years old as a newly Christian, newly married man getting invited to a bachelor party in Vegas with all of my old buddies. And I was like, Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I should do that. So I find myself at this bachelor party in Vegas.

And on night two or three, all my buddies wanted to go to one of those clubs where there's dancing that's inappropriate and all those kids in the room. I won't go completely there, but you hopefully know the type of place that I'm talking about. And not because I'm trying to be holier than thou pastor guy.

I just literally had no desire to go. I didn't want to be there. I didn't wanna be the guy because I've been that guy where I have to do something and then go lie to my wife about it. I just was like, there's nothing about this that I wanna do, but I was petrified

to actually tell all of my buddies that I didn't wanna go to the club with him.

But I at least, I got enough courage. Was like, hey guys, I'm just gonna hang back. You guys have a blast. I'm not here judging you all. You guys go have fun. And I stayed at the room. I FaceTimed my wife. I went to bed early, woke up in the morning, heard all the shenanigans that happened the night before. And I was like, Awesome. And maybe that was it. It was just this one moment that was like this catalyzing moment of my faith.

And it was cool and we moved past it and what I did not know is that it was small things like that. It was small moments like that where all of my friends, my non believing friends saw the way that I lived and the way that I honored my wife.

That led them to over the next twelve years, the really crazy part is of the 10 friends at that group, probably six to eight of them, when their marriage was on the brink of failure and divorce was a pretty inevitable conclusion,

Somehow they ended up on my couch calling me and my wife saying, Hey, can you help us through this?

Not because we posted on Instagram, hey, you want free divorce counseling, like come call me. Like it's not necessarily a fun thing to do. But I began to understand that the non believing friends and spouses that we have, they are watching the way that we live.

And here's the truth and here's the realities that nobody wants to say. There are some really practical benefits of living a life submitted to Jesus. Your marriage will thrive. Your life will thrive. Your business can thrive. Not because of you, almost in spite of you.

But that's the beauty that exists in the supernatural, partnering with the natural and God doing what he always does in and through our obedience. What Peter is saying is that if you will just start to live the biblical commandments out even when it doesn't make sense, there will come a day where it begins to make sense.

You don't have to understand it all to actually believe and put into practice it all. Here's how Peter continues.

He says, verse three, Don't be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. He says, You should actually close yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within. The unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. That

phrase right there, gentle and quiet spirit, he's literally using the word for meekness.

Now, again, for this passage to make sense, I got to give you some cultural context. So back in the time that Peter's writing this letter, women would do this really bizarre thing. They would take a really long time to get ready, and they would do their hair and their makeup. And they would tell their husband, I'll be out of the house in fifteen minutes, but it would take forty five minutes. And their husbands would just be notoriously

late for everything. They would have to tell people, Hey, why are you late? No reason. We had weeks notice and hours to plan, but it just But luckily for us, we've made a lot of progress and that stuff doesn't happen anymore today. So I'm totally joking. But what Peter is saying is powerful.

This does not just apply to women. Gentlemen, we are guilty of this exact same thing. He's saying that when your marriage is really tough, when things are really hard out here and you're feeling the pressure in your marriage and things with your spouse have not been good for a while,

what you will begin to try to do is you will feel so out of control that your temptation will be to just take really tight control of the few things that you can control. And one of the things that's really easy for you and I to focus on and put a hyper emphasis on is our external appearance.

And sometimes the people, and again, I don't say this as a universal rule and like, hey, we should all just be ugly and wear burlap sacks and not do our hair. Like that's not what I'm advocating for. But sometimes some of the people who externally have it all together.

The truth is when you get behind the scenes, you realize the external has become hyper inflated because the internal things have basically disappeared. What Peter is saying is that you and I have to fight against the temptation

to focus so much on the external that it actually becomes an issue and we stop focusing and we stop We start neglecting the internal part of who we are and more importantly, the eternal part of who we are. What Peter is saying should be the focus of every woman. Women, here's how you find your beauty.

Your beauty is not found in the external. It's found in the internal and the eternal parts of who you are. But you will be tempted just like we as guys will be tempted to do, especially when things get difficult.

You won't want to focus on the internal part of you. You won't want to focus on your relationship with God and spending time with him. All of a sudden, the gym will become much more important and the way that you look and the way that you peer will become hyperinflated.

And what Peter is saying is because you're overcompensating for what you don't have in here. And he says, that is weakness. That's your flesh. That is just your mind telling you what to do. But the spirit of God that lives in you says you need to live from a disposition of knowing your worth and knowing your value

And knowing that you are chosen and that God has a plan and a purpose for your life. And that you walk with a confidence and you exude that and that's the disposition from you walking. That's how we choose meekness not weakness.

Guys, I know this passage is geared to women, but I press pause on that for a bit to say part of why right now women in culture today feel such a hyperinflated pressure to be something externally that I don't think that they're actually supposed to be,

is not because we've just elevated the standards of beauty to some new healthy level. I think because pornography has become so pervasive in our culture, normalized that we have actually taken this perverted fake view of what a woman is on a screen and in a movie that is literally fake and photoshopped.

And we've now made that our standard of beauty. And gentlemen, we have to repent of it. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with young adults that are looking for somebody to get married to. And they will look at girls inside of the young adult's ministry that they go, man, I look at the list and she's smart,

she's humble, she loves Jesus, she's gentle, she's funny, she's generous, she's kind, she serves like everything I could ever want, she is. Then they'll say something that I don't think they necessarily understand completely what they're saying. They'll say, but I'm just not attracted to her.

Again, what I'm not saying is that physical attraction doesn't matter at all. But what I am posing is maybe, just maybe, we have trained ourselves to be attracted to something that God actually is not attracted to. Our standard for beauty is completely perverted and perverse.

You go read the old testament. The prophet Samuel came to the selection ceremony of the next king and everybody was missing this little guy named David. And God through the prophet Samuel said, God does not look at the external. He looks at the heart. I say that to say if you're here

and what your greatest desire is is to have a really attractive wife or a really attractive husband, my fear is that we are going to have potentially an entire generation of people that have beautiful weddings, really fun honeymoons, and absolutely miserable marriages.

Here's the truth if nobody's ever told you this. The moment you get married is the best and the pinnacle, the crescendo of both you and your spouse. That's the best you will ever look physically is right there in that moment. From that moment forward, the reason everybody's laughing is because they're married. They know

gravity is winning. It's just the reality. Like I look at pictures of myself when I got married and I'm like looking in the mirror, like, oh, sorry babe, like my bad, hashtag dad bod. You know, like Now here's the thing we have to be careful with. Ladies, what you win them with is what you have to keep them with.

If what you win them with is just your external body, don't be shocked when it begins to change, they begin to look elsewhere. You need to carry yourself in a way that attracts somebody that is attracted to who you are internally and eternally, not just externally. Gentlemen,

have to train our minds, retrain our minds, repent of the things that we've put inside of our mind to begin to say, God, help me see the beauty that you see. For those of us who are married and things are difficult, spend a 100 times more having days with God than having days in the spa.

Peter is saying this is how we begin to heal both our minds and our marriages. Focus on not just the external, but the internal and the eternal. Here's how he continues. He says, This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful.

They actually They put their trust in God and they accepted the authority of their husbands. For instance, Sarah obeyed her husband Abraham and called him her master. I know some of you were like, what? This was going so good. I am not calling my husband my master, right? I

would challenge you, go actually read the book of Genesis, the story of Abraham and Sarah, right? There's actually only one time that I could find where Sarah calls Abraham master. And it's in reference to his relationship

to God and why she's so able to follow him easily because she knows that he's following God. It's more of a term of respect than it is some type of title.

What I am not saying and what does not appear anywhere in scripture is Sarah going, yes, master, what would you like for dinner? Yes, master, are you ready for bed? Yes, master, how can I like, that's not what he's saying?

Again, he's appealing to these women who have been Jewish, who have a really highly inflated view of the matriarchs of the faith. And he said, this is how Sarah got her beauty, by respecting her husband,

by honoring her husband. And if you know the story of Abraham, this guy made worse decisions than everybody in this room collectively probably will ever make together. Like he sold his wife off to different men who thought she was attractive, not once but twice.

He made some horrendous decisions, yet somehow Sarah was able to honor him. She was able to trust him. She was able to listen to him. What this shows me is that our ability to submit to one another inside of a marriage is not contingent on one party actually making all the right decisions.

I would argue the greatest moment, the greatest time in your marriage to serve your spouse, to honor your spouse, to actually favor your spouse is not when they do the right things. It's actually when they're doing all the wrong things. Please don't hear what I'm not saying. I am not saying that submission

keeps us in something that's abusive. That submission keeps us in something that is sinful. None of that is okay. None of that is allowed. If that's you, come to the church and let us help you. But what he's saying is that if it's just your husband being a knucklehead,

one of the best ways that you can show your husband how valued he is, is when he's When you're in public with him, don't bring out any of his weaknesses. Don't talk about the struggles that he has. Don't gossip with your girlfriends about all the things that your husband's doing incorrectly.

When you're in private with him, yes and amen. Call him to repentance. Hold him to account. Challenge him. Make him better. That's what a marriage is designed to do. But publicly, you honor one another. Gentlemen, we have to do the same thing.

One of the greatest things that I know about my wife is that my wife knows all of my weaknesses. It is not because I have a lack of them, but if hang If you hung out with my wife at all, you would never know about any of my weaknesses.

What she will tell you about is all the things that I do really well. And yes, there's a whole list of things that I don't do well and things that she comes to me in private and says, hey, we've got to do this and this. We've got to work on these things. You've got to be more gentle with the kids. You've got to All of that stuff, it happens in private.

Why? Because men, this thing that's deeply ingrained in us is respect. Is it good or bad? I don't know, but it's there. And when women respect us, our natural response is to do something that's kind of counter cultural to who we are. Our knee jerk reaction to that is love.

And what Peter is saying is, women, you want love, give respect. Men, you want respect, give love. And the two that are mutually submitted will give each other what both ultimately want.

He says, this is what Sarah did. This is the people you look up to. This is what they did. This is how they did it. They didn't let their weaknesses take over. They didn't let the things that they could do be the thing that they did. Instead, they chose another way. They chose the powerful way that was submitted,

that was laid down because your life is submitted to the Father. Your life is submitted to Jesus. So then together you mutually submit to each other.

Again, one Peter chapter three is not an exhaustive list of marriage, There's lots of other passages that address it. And really this is an illustration for us to see how we're called to live so even non married people can apply this stuff.

But for six verses he talks to women and then in verse seven he goes to the guys. And again, I think it's mostly because he knows the guys are dense and we just need to be like straight to the point. He's like, alright, I got one thing for the guys. Just do one thing. But I will tell you this one verse that he says is

way more difficult and way more challenging than anything we just called and said to women. And I also wanna say this too, if you're here and you're like, man, this is why this whole Christianity thing, I just don't like it because it's objectifying of women, it just keeps women down.

I would challenge you to look historically. As you look over the scope of history, the places and the times where women's rights have flourished and women have had the most freedom and the most rights, it's actually on the tail end of Christianity spreading in that area. Christianity is actually a liberating religion

for women. Yet somehow in our culture today, what's being mistakenly said is that Christianity somehow subjugates women. This is the freedom. This is the religion that says, no, we're all co heirs with Christ.

We all have the ability to have the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit living in and through us. You don't have to be married to be complete. You don't need a husband to get you into heaven. You can do it all on your own. But if you choose to get married,

there is order in the home. There is order through the design to which God created us. He created Adam first. He didn't create Eve at the same time. He created Eve, woman, from man. There's order in the way that we were even created.

There's order in the way that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all submit and trust and respect each other. Gentlemen, here's the doozy for us. Verse seven,

he says it again, way that he started this passage. He says, In the same way. All of these things that we just read, gentlemen, they apply to us as well. In the same way you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together.

She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered. Let me say and address the part that some of you are getting mad at right now because he called women the weaker vessels. Okay?

What Peter is talking about, go read and look at the original language in which he's writing. He does not say that they are weaker emotionally, weaker intellectually, weaker spiritually. I would actually argue that almost every aspect of those things, women are far superior than men. What Peter is saying is purely

physically. I know some women are like, Not me, I'll jump you right now. I'll take you. That's true. I know it will happen. But most likely what Peter is saying is that I could arm wrestle almost every girl in here and beat you right now. Again, I know there's some exceptions to that, but majority speaking, men

are just built stronger than women. And that's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. And he says, Men, because you're stronger, even more so because you're in a culture that says, this woman that you're married to has no rights. You can with

her whatever you want. She can't leave you. She can't divorce you. If you don't like her, you can get rid of her and discard her. You're stronger. You're more powerful. You have the rights. You have the authority. All of that is true. Yet even still, you are called to submit to your wife.

If you go read another passage in the New Testament, the book of Ephesians, it's the verse that everybody reads at weddings. Not the loved one, but the other one. Where he says, Husbands, this is how you're called to love your wife, to love your bride. To love her like Jesus loved the church, to actually lay down your life

so that she can thrive, so that she can go on and go further. Just like Jesus died for the church, gentlemen, that's what we're called to do. In the same way that Jesus went first, in the same way that he should have responded with anger, he should have

taken vengeance out on us. Not been gracious with us. He was not. And in the same way, we are called to lovingly lead our wife. And he says a really weird word. He says, do it by really understanding her. Here's the hardest part for us is guys. And I again, I don't mean this like offensively.

I can say this because I is one, you know, like

us dudes are not the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to understanding deep relational things. Like there's there's times that I talk to my wife and I'm like, what? Like what? You heard that? Like what? Like what are we even talking about right now? She's like, yeah. I just by the way that you sent that one exclamation point, I could tell that you were really upset. And I'm like, it was an accident. Like, I didn't even mean it. Like, I just hit a button. She's like, no. I know it. We know like

and us guys are like, oh, man. I was gonna watch the football game and hang out. And then, you know, like just and women are such nuanced, beautiful creatures. What Peter is saying is that husbands, our job is to study our wife. To know our wife emotionally, physically, spiritually, intellectually.

To spend time intentionally getting to know her. Because when you do that, when you really know your wife, you will be able to lead her in the ways that she needs to be led. And I know the ways to lead my wife in ways that will be different than the way that you are called to lead your wife.

The challenges for us, we'll just go, man, it's too much work. It's too much time. I don't wanna invest in that. Peter says, man, all of that is hogwash. He says, of that is just excuses. Your job, husbands, is a really tall order. You will. The Bible tells us very clearly, you and I, as leaders of our homes,

we will have to give an account to God for what we did with the wife that he gave us when we get to heaven. If that doesn't send chills into your bones, I don't know what will. You know what God's not gonna ask you about? How big of a house you bought her? What kind of car she drove?

What kind of vacations you took her on? He is specifically going to ask you and I, what did you do with her spiritually? How did you lead her? How did you make her more into the image of Jesus that I put inside of her? The only way that we can do that is by deeply, intimately knowing her. This

passage, this one verse for us as guys is huge because he ends with a less than subtle threat. He says, if you don't do this,

if you're gonna be the husband that just comes home and puts your foot down and says, this is why we're doing it, this is how we're gonna operate. And she says, well, why? He's like, because I said so. If that's gonna be you and you're gonna be that guy, just understand that God literally won't hear your prayers.

Like there's not many times where God talks about not listening to you. But imagine for a moment, some guy's dating my daughter and he's a jerk to her. He won't do anything for her. And then he comes to me and he asks for help.

Like, no, man. I'm gonna punch you in the face. Like, that's the only help you're gonna get. Right? What God is saying is that this is my daughter that I've entrusted to your care. Lead her, shepherd her well. If you don't, don't come to me and ask about things. Go fix this first.

Address this first, then come back to me and we'll talk about the portion why you don't need it, right? But deal with this first. Here's what he says to us as guys. You and I have to understand respect is something that we all want. It's part of the way that we're wired. But respect from everybody, but specifically our spouse,

respect is something that is commanded, not demanded. What I mean is this. In the military, the way that they find leaders is they go and part of what they're looking for is somebody that has command presence.

Somebody that just, when they're in the room, they just carry themselves differently. And everybody just kind of naturally follows them. They don't have the title. They don't have the position of leader. But people look to them as the leader. That's what Peter means. That respect is something that you should command, that you should live your life in a way that your wife's natural disposition is to respect you, to honor you, to submit to you. If you at any point have to tell her that you're the leader, you've already lost

all the leadership in your home. You should live your life in a way that leadership, respect, and honor is just the default of your wife. You should make it to where it's really easy to submit to your leadership. You should stop doing all the knuckleheaded things that make her question

if she can actually trust you, if this is a safe place. Because when those two people, when two people in a marriage do that, it becomes something beautiful. I close

by telling you this story. I even hesitate to tell you the story because I'll just be honest, I'm the hero of this story, which I don't like to do. But a year ago, almost to the date, July 1, me and my family left being on staff at Rock Point, and we moved back to California. And I never really told the

big crowds all the details of why we were moving. But what was happening behind the scenes in our life was ministry was going incredibly. We left California, came out here, started young adults ministry, we just watched God do incredible things.

And we watched this ministry that started with literally seven or eight kids that I convinced to show up to be like, man, let's do something. Within two years, we had like 400 people coming on a Thursday night, and lives were being transformed. It was just an incredible thing to be a part of.

But the truth was behind the scenes, my wife was really struggling relationally. And then in December, my daughter got really sick and she got a really bad brain infection. And my wife felt how far family was even though they're just in San Diego. And it was tough, But we got through it.

And the church was amazing, and all of you rallied around my family, and things were awesome. And then in March, my wife's dad, 49 years old, went to bed, and he just didn't wake up. And I'll never forget when I got the phone call. What am I gonna say to my wife who I already know is struggling relationally?

Who already feels how far family feels like they are? How do I tell her to sacrifice again and stay here because God's doing all of this through us even though it was true. And I knew that I knew that I knew my wife had not even said a word, but I knew I was gonna have to move home.

And when I sat down and I asked her, said, well, what do you do? How do we walk through this? With tears rolling down her face, she said, we have to go home. I can't process through this from here. And the crazy part is is in that moment, biblically, theologically,

I had every right to put my foot down and just go, nope, we're staying here. Because this is my calling. This is my life. This is what God's doing through me. You need to just submit. We'll figure it out. You will figure it out.

But I knew I was in this moment. I would sit in these some of the most intense prayer moments of my life and say, God, how can this be so good and this be so hard at the same time? What do I do? I felt like I had a choice.

The choice was to ask my wife to continue to do what she's done for so many years. To lay down parts of her life to follow me. Or

I had an opportunity to do what she's done for me so many times, but to do it for her. And to go back to San Diego not to pursue a ministry job or something that I felt like God was calling me to do, but to just go take a sales job to pay the bills so that my wife could heal.

And I have never it sounds like it was some easy decision, but it was the hardest decision I've ever made. But I knew that what I was not willing to do was to make a decision that I might be right in, but the consequences could potentially be my marriage.

And so I said, my default, my choice will be my wife. And so I left. I sat down with my boss. I sat down with Bill. I said, man, I don't wanna go. I still don't wanna go. But I know it's what I need to do for my wife.

I don't tell you that to to to puff me up. I say that to say, gentlemen, that's the level, the depth that we're supposed to know our wives to. That even when it's really hard, even when it makes no sense on paper, that we're willing to say yes. Even if it might be the wrong decision.

I knew that it might have been the wrong decision, but I had to choose my wife. Here's my hope and goal for every single person that's here today. If you're here and you find yourself in a really tough place inside of your marriage, some of this stuff might seem

like it's not gonna do anything like, Daniel, you don't know my spouse. But here's what I do know. Obedience always leads to blessing. Sowing seeds of faith will always reap fruit of faith. Be willing to go first in your marriage.

If you're here and your marriage is awesome, you're like, man, none of this applies to me. Everything is amazing. I'm stoked for you, and I pray that you are more intentional in the season that things are good

so that you have the wisdom to go. Let's build now while it's good. So if it does get rocky, we have the foundation. And for everybody who's here that's looking to get married, that you would put these things into practice now, today,

and not wait until you're in a moment of crisis to begin to learn how to submit to somebody other than yourself. So father, God, I thank you for every single person that's here today. God, I thank you that today, the day that we celebrate the freedom of our country, that we would begin to see and experience the freedom

that we are promised inside of our marriage. That God marriage is supposed to be a blessing, not a burden. But yet so often these things become a burden. But Lord, if we can learn to trust you again, learn to honor you and our spouse again, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's really hard and everything

in us is saying, let's just give up. That we would heed your voice, that we would heed your instruction, that we would go first. We would say yes, even when it doesn't make sense. Father today, would you show us each and every one of us what it means for us to choose meekness, not weakness.

It's in the mighty name of Jesus that everybody said, amen. Thank you for joining us online today. If you need prayer, connect with us at rockpointe.io under the Need to Talk tab. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay up to date with what's happening here at Rock Point.