Chandler on Sanctification

Yesterday I listened to Matt Chandler's sermon about Sanctification in Marriage.  It's the 7th sermon in Chandler's Path series.  Chandler's main text is 1 Peter 3, which can easily make women shut-down, walk out, and grumble in defiance.  However, Chandler's purpose in preaching through this passage is beautiful, if we'll just give him a chance:

I want to talk this morning about the relationship between husbands and wives and how, in Jesus Christ, we get back to Genesis 2, which says of the man and woman, “They were naked and unashamed.” And don’t think “naked” in regards to physical nakedness (although that’s great), but rather think in terms of them having nothing to hide. So how do we get a man and a woman in the confines of marriage back to the place where they have nothing to hide from one another and they don’t walk or operate in any shame? So Jesus is going to purchase that for us in His cross, and then He’s going to lead us that way by giving us commands that we are to obey and, in obedience to those commands, we line ourselves up with how He designed things to work for our joy and His glory. Now I don’t know this year that I will get into a more controversial text than the one that I’m about to be in. It flies in the face of almost everything our culture believes and tries to operate in. So here’s what I need you to promise me. I’m fine with you getting offended, and I’m fine with you getting angry. What I’m saying is don’t turn me off until we’re done unpacking it. Don’t just hear certain words and go, “Oh no, he didn’t!” Just give me my 45-50 minutes, let me unpack this thing and then if you want to leave and never come back, I really am okay with that. But don’t turn me off until we’re done here. Because God’s appeal to you as wives and God’s appeal to you as husbands is not about your begrudging submission, it’s about your joy. So what’s at stake here is your joy. So my prayer is that you would be hedonistic enough to listen and here.

Matt Chandler is the lead pastor at The Village Church, in Dallas, TX.  The Village is part of the Acts 29 Network, directed by Scott Thomas.

To download other sermons by Matt Chandler (who, by God's grace, is an amazingly gifted pastor), click here.