To Encourage You

1 Peter 3:7 “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way”

Have you ever noticed how the Bible has a way of stepping on our toes?  It has a way of disrupting the status quo everywhere it is listened to.  That’s what happened everywhere Jesus preached and taught, and that’s the way it was for His apostles.  

We read about one such incident as the apostle Paul and his companions began to preach the message of the gospel in the city of Ephesus and challenged their idolatrous ways. We find a record of this account in the following passage : “About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way.  For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, ‘Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.  And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.  And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.’  When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel.  But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him.  And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater. Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together. Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward. And Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense to the crowd.  But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours they all cried out with one voice, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians’” (Acts 19:23-34).

Talk about an uproar!  But that’s exactly the effect when the truth of God’s Word confronts a society steeped in the lies and ways of God’s enemy. A similar response is likely today in response to the simple statement made by the apostle Peter in the verse above from 1 Peter 3.  It says that husbands should live with their wives in an understanding way.  Have you ever noticed how often the phrase “they’re living together” is heard today in reference to the relationship between a man and a woman?  Curiously, I’ve never heard that statement made about a husband and his wife.  Rather, it is almost exclusively used to refer to a relationship between a man and a woman who is NOT his wife.  It’s a clear violation of the way God has declared in his word that such relationships should be.  Elsewhere the Bible very clearly speaks against such “living together” relationships by referring to it as the sin of sexual immorality. In 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 we are told to “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.  Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”  And in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 we are told the following disruptive (to our society, anyway) words, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” 

Go ahead and make such a statement openly today, and the reaction would be similar to what Paul experienced in Ephesus!  But it’s the truth of the Word of God, truth that is provided for our own good. It’s a message from God, and “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  

As I heard one pastor put it some years ago, “Do you want to show hatred to a person who is involved in sexual immorality?  Then convince them that what they are doing is good.”  For you see, it’s that message that is coming from the enemy of our souls. One of his names is “the thief,” and of him we are told “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10a). By contrast, Jesus, in Whose name each and every one of the apostles wrote, told us “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10b).  

The Word of God: it’s a message that upsets the status quo for our own good.  But that good only comes when it is actually listened to and obeyed.