Bitter Marriage

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 26:34-35

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Well, there's more people than I was expecting to see, which is good. And if you've looked at the bulletin, you'll see the title for our focus this morning, which is verses 34 and 35 in Genesis 26, is
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Bitter Marriage, and so we assume the families that are not here have the marriages that are sweet, and that we're the ones that need the instruction from God's Word.
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We'll assume that for now. We're continuing, of course, in chapter 26, and we began chapter 26 by looking at the parallels between Abraham and Isaac, like father, like son.
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We saw that really in the past two weeks, between the deceit in the land of Gerar, passing off his bride as his sister, and then also the well -digging and the disagreement that he had with Abimelech, and then ultimately the covenant that resulted from that disagreement.
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And so we've been watching this mirrored relationship, like father, like son, like Abraham, like Isaac.
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And this morning, in verses 34 and 35, we shift our attention to Esau, and in light of what we have seen in chapter 26, we now look at just how unlike a father can be from a son.
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Esau, in this passage, bears almost no resemblance to Isaac, his father, nor Abraham, his grandfather.
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And so we begin in verse 34. When Esau was 40 years old, he took as wives
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Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bassamath, the daughter of Elon the
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Hittite. Now the detail of Esau's age when he's married brings us back to Isaac, and perhaps this is the only parallel between Esau and Isaac in this chapter.
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When Isaac married Rebekah, he was 40 years old. When Esau marries, he also is 40 years old, but the parallel stops there.
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We remember, of course, the grand effort of Abraham when he sent out that servant to seek a bride for his son, and how it must not be among the women of Canaan.
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It must not be among the idolaters, the pagans. Whereas Esau literally doubles down with Canaanite women, with idol worshippers.
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He doesn't marry just one, but two. He marries Judith and Bassamath. We'll call them
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Judy and Baz for short. And they're both Hittites. They both worship the gods of the
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Hittites. They're polytheist idolaters. And so here, Esau defies the way that his father and his grandfather had ordered their way before the
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Lord. Here Esau ultimately defies God's promise concerning the land and his place within it.
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Remember what Abraham heard in Genesis 24, verse 3. This is what Abraham said to the servant,
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I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the
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Canaanites among whom I dwell. So the servant had to swear this. Isaac would have been deeply influenced by this.
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And of course, we consider that great scene when Rebecca came from afar. And we find
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Esau here, who has just come off the heels of despising his birthright, now also despising and disregarding the way of God toward his own father.
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As Jeff Thomas points out, there's often newly converted Christians. They haven't grown up in Christian homes.
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They haven't experienced Christian influence in their upbringing. And when they come to Christ and they give their lives over to him, they have a whole new world to learn.
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They don't understand the baggage that they have. They don't understand the issues in their relationships that Christ needs to correct and redeem.
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And so they have a pretty steep learning curve about what it means to be a Christian and how to have Christian conduct in relationships, in the workplace, in the home.
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But we can't say that of Esau. Esau, of course, had the direct influence of Abraham, at least for the first part of his life.
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And then the godly influence of Isaac, his father. And Isaac was not a perfect man.
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We'll see that just in a few minutes. But according to Hebrews, he at least foretold his two sons of the things to come.
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Of course, he bore testimony to them of the way of the Lord. And we see Esau, what
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Hebrews says, a profane and godless man, resisting this direction, this influence, this guidance from his father.
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He really was a favored man for being born into this family at this time. And yet he deliberately pursues a polygamous pagan marriage, a godless marriage.
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And what of his wives? We read in the next verse, verse 35, they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.
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Grief of mind here, in Hebrews, literally a bitter spirit, a morat ruach, a bitter spirit, a profound sadness.
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Might even be expressing overtones of hostility they showed toward Isaac and Rebekah. Perhaps all smiles at the beginning and then sneers or open hostility.
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Perhaps they were provocateurs in those family dynamics. And so they were continually this bitter spirit, this grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah, who had heartache now for their son
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Esau. They're watching him slip further and further away. It must have been like David watching his son
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Solomon slip further and further away. We have here another case of leaving and cleaving gone horribly wrong.
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This is not how it should be. Imagine how happy Abraham was when
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Rebekah came across the horizon to be united with Isaac for the first time. When the servant's mission was successful,
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Abraham's heart must have leaped for joy. Now he knows that his son will be secure in the way of God, that his wife will not undermine his devotion to the
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Lord, but rather enhance it. Continue in this devotion to Yahweh. Continue in this encouragement into the promise in the land.
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Abraham could have lived out his years in contentment with the marriage of Isaac to Rebekah, but now
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Isaac has to dwell with grief and regret. This is not how it's meant to be.
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Rather than a joyous marriage that the parent can rejoice over, Isaac here has a bitter sorrow at the decision of his son.
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Instead of thanking the Lord for new mercies and hopes for the generation to come, now he has this bitter regret.
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And you wonder if Isaac and Rebekah often at night would discuss where things went wrong, perhaps blaming themselves in many ways.
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And perhaps they should have. This is a narrative setup, ultimately not for Esau's sake, but for the sake of Jacob.
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This is giving us the contrast between the line of Esau, the line of the serpent, so to speak, the sword running through that tent, and the line of God, the sons of God, ultimately the
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Son of God. And so we read in the next chapter, in chapter 27, verse 46, how this contrast begins to develop.
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Rebekah says to Isaac, I'm weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth, one of the
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Canaanites. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?
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So she's already so grieved by what Esau has done in marrying these two women, and he'll go on to marry two more, according to the genealogy in chapter 36.
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She says, if Jacob goes down this path, my life is over. I've got nothing left to live for if Jacob continues in this direction.
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If Jacob does what Esau has done, my life is as good as over. And then in verse 28, interestingly, we read
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Isaac calling Jacob, blessing him, and charging him. Notice that language. He charged him, saying to him, you shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.
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Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father. Take yourself a wife there of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.
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Keeping it within that family, within that covenantal lineage. Now here, we see an
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Isaac that we have not detected so far in Genesis 26, 34, and 35.
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Here, he seems to step up to the plate. Where we can read between the lines, perhaps, he had failed with Esau.
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We never read of Isaac charging Esau, or giving this kind of specific instruction.
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Here, Isaac sounds a lot like Abraham, but Esau never had that benefit. As far as we can tell,
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Isaac charges Jacob to avoid a mixed marriage. But we get the sense Esau never had such a charge.
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For instance, we keep reading in 28, beginning in verse 6. Esau saw that Isaac had blessed
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Jacob, and sent him away to Paddan Aram to take himself a wife from there. And that as he blessed him, he gave him a charge, saying,
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You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. And he saw that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother, and had gone to Paddan Aram.
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Also, Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac. And so,
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Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalot, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son. Do you see what's going on here?
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Esau's recognizing, oh, my father has blessed my younger brother. And not only has he blessed him, he's charged him not to marry a
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Canaanite wife. And I've already got two of them, and oh, I can tell my father does not approve of these wives.
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And I want to please him, and I want that blessing, and so I'm going to go marry within the Abrahamic household as well.
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I'm going to go to Ishmael, and marry a daughter of Ishmael. So you get the sense here that Isaac had dropped the ball with Esau.
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That Esau had never been charged. That Esau was not aware of this displeasure of Isaac toward Canaanite women.
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We get the sense that Esau had been failed as a son. Now, that doesn't mean he did not act brashly.
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We don't know if he never sought appropriate counsel from his parents. He's a man driven by his belly, a man driven by the needs of the hour.
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And we can perfectly be consistent with his character for him to charge off into marriage against the wishes or even the counsel of his parents.
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But we also get the sense that Isaac was miserably passive here. And that the failure of Esau's marriages woke him up to charge and command
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Jacob to not take a similar path. And so there's a lot hanging into this bitter spirit that has come about.
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We live in a day, brothers and sisters, where a parental blessing on a marriage is something despised.
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We live in a culture where that is something to be discouraged. It's old -fashioned for a young man to go and seek the approval of the father.
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And so how does our culture do things? How does our world do things today? Well, you go off to college and they meet and they live together for years and the parents are completely detached, only on specific holidays or get -togethers will they ever even meet this lover to one of their children.
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And then they'll find out, perhaps after friends have found out, that a proposal has taken place.
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And the counsel is never sought, a blessing is never given nor received. We live in a day when this parental blessing is despised.
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And Christians must be sure, must be quick to understand that this parental blessing is part of our theology of marriage.
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It's part of our understanding of the authorities that God has established for His people.
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And that means that even when perhaps a young woman that you're seeking is a relatively new convert to Christ and her parents don't know
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Christ and they really want nothing to do with her relationships, and they would almost feel uncomfortable if you even sought to ask for their approval for their daughter's hand in marriage, well, you still do it.
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You still do it because you're a Christian. This is how Christians operate. This is how Christians understand authorities within their lives.
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For every Esau in the church, there are passive parents like Isaac's.
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For every defiant, stubborn child that refuses to heed the wisdom and concern of their parents, there are also passive parents that refuse to confront or direct or guide their children.
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And so there are parents like Isaac who would rather endure decades of bitterness in their children's relationships than do the hard work of training up their child in the way they should go, directing them, even perhaps confronting them when they're going astray.
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And it has to be this understanding that children recognize where God's blessing is found and therefore they seek the parents' blessing in their relationships.
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They seek their parents' counsel in their decisions. When it comes to the most important of all human relationships, a marriage between a man and a woman,
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Christians seek to marry in the Lord. A few holidays ago,
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I had ordered a gift for Alicia from a website I found that sold some
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Scottish goods, loyal to the motherland as always. And I didn't know anything about the name of this website, but they had all sorts of things about marriage, and you could buy all these different anvil ornaments.
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And I'm like, this is kind of strange, whatever, must be some tourist attraction. Didn't think too much of it.
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Well, the website, the storefront, the destination is called Gretna Green.
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And Gretna Green has its fame, since I've learned, due to runaway marriages in Scotland in the 18th century.
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In 1754, there was a Marriage Act that was enforced in England and in Wales. However, it was never ratified and enforced in Scotland.
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The Marriage Act required children, or those under the age of 21, to have their parents' approval in marriage.
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And if the parent didn't approve, then it was legally vetoed. A binding marriage could not be legally recognized.
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But since this was only in England and Wales, and in Scotland this act was not legally binding, it was possible to follow the
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Scottish law, which at that time was a boy as young as 14 could marry a girl as young as 12.
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How mature is that marriage going to be? Well, the times were different, I suppose. And that's without parental consent.
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So what do you think a lot of young English boys and girls and a lot of young Welsh boys and girls did?
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They ran to the first stop across the English border into Scotland, which happened to be Gretna Green. And Scotland recognized irregular marriages, meaning anyone that could be there with two or three witnesses to an exchange of a marital covenant could authorize that marriage.
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And so you had blacksmiths, hence the anvil, ordaining marriages, thousands, tens of thousands of marriages that were sought without any parental approval.
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In fact, in defiance of perceived disapproval from their parents.
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Matthew Henry says this well. Children have little reason to expect the blessing of God who do that which is a grief of mind to their good parents.
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God has so ordered his world and established relationships in the life of a believer that we should expect not the blessing of God when we seek not the counsel and the blessing of our parents.
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This is part of what is redemptive about Jacob's character up to this point. As deceitful as he is, he's actually seeking his parents' blessing.
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And as we watch God's grace begin to untwist the twister, God's mercy begin to lay hold of the heel grasper, we'll see that God's grace is going to purge these deceitful tendencies out of Jacob and in fact enhance his desire for the blessing, not through Isaac but from God himself.
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That's really the climax of the Jacob cycle. The question stands before us.
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Do we recognize that God's blessing follows the ordered relationships he has put in our young men and women?
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Do you recognize that God's blessing is not irrespective to your parents' blessing?
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Do you recognize that? That even ungodly, unbelieving, and deceived parents still have your best interests in their heart however misconstrued.
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And like Jacob, you want to humble yourself and seek their favor, their blessing as you are able under the terms of the gospel.
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How seriously will you heed this warning when you get older? You start seeking relationships and relationships start seeking you.
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I look forward, as a father of three young girls, I look forward to the young men that are going to have to court me and court my favor in order to get close to one of my daughters.
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I have all sorts of things planned and I have more years to plan yet. Perhaps some of you young boys here will have that experience.
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That'll be fun. Do you recognize that God's blessing follows the authorities that he's established in your life?
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This is something that Jacob has to learn the hard way. He's going to learn it the hard way under Laban. That God's blessing is going to come under authority and even when that authority brings about unfair treatment, he submits to it and he finds
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God's blessing. And this is a vital lesson for especially a young man or a young woman to learn, but it's a lesson life teaches you all along the way.
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When you submit to difficult circumstances because you're following God's way, you will find
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God's blessing. When you seek blessing by avoiding what God has given, you will never find it.
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We live in a world that screams to us in almost every cultural outlet imaginable that our instincts are inviolable.
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What do my parents know? They're old -fashioned. They have ulterior motives. What do they know?
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I know in my gut what's right for me because I've walked the earth for 18 years. I have all this wisdom, right?
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What do my parents know? They're so outmoded. They just don't get it. They're not with it. I know me, and they don't even understand this relationship.
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They don't know us. I still, I mean, I was already into the flow of walking with the
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Lord and desiring to build a Christian marriage when I sat down in front of Pastor Larson and Alicia and I, and we just went over some of the basics of marriage.
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And I just remember in the back of my mind thinking, I know you're supposed to do the whole preamble about common issues in marriage and let down expectations and difficulties that come, and I'm just thinking in the back of my mind, we got it.
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Alicia and I, we're just, you know, we're unique. Not going to have those kind of issues.
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We delude ourselves. We delude ourselves. Young men and young women are especially prone to deluding themselves and ignoring the wise concern, the wise counsel of their parents who know them better than they know themselves and who know life more than they know it and who understand the difficulties and hindrances of relationships.
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Do you believe that God works through the authorities in your life or do you follow the way of the world that says, go with your gut, your heart's never wrong.
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Obey your feelings. That will be your guiding compass. Muzzle any voice that is older and wiser and more experienced and more concerned for you and more desirous of your good and has sober discernment and is not caught up in the flow of things, who knows you and knows your whole life.
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Ignore that and follow your gut. It's foolishness. How do you understand the blessing and will of God to come about in your life?
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So that's the question and it's one that we'll see again being asked in the life of Jacob.
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Now we turn our attention over to the matter of intermarriage itself. Intermarriage, of course, is a constant refrain throughout
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Scripture. You cannot read much of Scripture at all in terms of the story of Israel without seeing this as a central concern of the
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Lord for His people, that they would separate themselves from the peoples of the lands, that the holy seed, so to speak, would not be mixed, would not be polluted.
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We have this not only contained really in seed form here in Genesis, but flowering beginning in Exodus.
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The Lord said, Behold, I make a covenant, this is Exodus 34, take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you're going, lest it be a snare in your midst.
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You shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, cut down their wooden images, for you shall worship no other god, for the
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Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Verse 15,
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Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods, and make sacrifice to their gods.
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And one of them invites you, and you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods, and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.
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And so Joshua can say the same thing. He says, There'll be snares, traps to you, scourges on your sides, thorns in your eyes, until you perish from the land which
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God has given to you. This is how serious these subtle relationships are.
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And God is screaming the alarm at his people. We read, of course, the sad tale in Judges, beginning in Judges 3.
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The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the
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Jebusites. And they took their daughters to be their wives, they gave their daughters to their sons, and they served their gods.
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And so they did evil in the sight of the Lord. And they forgot the Lord their God from serving
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Baals and Asherahs. They forgot the
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Lord their God. I know, I know men my age whose choices mimic that of Esau and whose life right now could be described by that verse.
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They forgot the Lord their God. They forgot the name of the
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Lord under whom they were baptized, the name of the Lord whose bread they broke and cup they drank.
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They forgot the Lord their God. And so, of course, the point wasn't that God is obsessive about strangers in the land.
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He's somewhat xenophobic. The point is crystal clear in Judges 3, isn't it?
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The point is about His people's relationship to Him. This is why you must not intermarry.
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Because I've called you to be separate. I've made you holy. You are My special possession.
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And so because of your relationship to Me, you must not be led astray. You must not intermarry. If we can paint the history of Israel through Judges, through the dynastic period, think of the great refrain of all these kings, whether of Israel or Judah, that did evil in the sight of the
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Lord, were led astray to serve false gods, or even under the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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Remember in Ezra 9 when it's reported that among the priests they were intermarrying.
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The summary would be something like this. The reformation of a society begins with the reformation of a church.
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The reformation of society begins with the reformation of the church. The reformation of the church begins with the reformation of the family.
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And the reformation of the family begins with the formation of a godly marriage.
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This goes in either direction. Marriage, a marriage between a man and a woman, is within the creational paradigm the original society of humanity.
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And so it is the keystone to all human society.
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Marriage is the bedrock of human civilization. And so this vital connection between the reformation of a society and the formation of a godly marriage, or the disintegration of a society because of the disintegration of marriage, it goes in either direction.
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If you want to change the culture, you need to change the church. If you want to change the church, you need to change the home. If you want to change the home, you need to form a godly marriage.
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In other words, there's a multi -generational aspect to a mixed marriage. Whenever God addresses his people about mixed marriages, it's never just about the husband and the wife.
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It's also about that which comes from the husband and the wife. It's about the legacy of that marriage, about the issue from that marriage.
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There is no in -between. You either have multi -generational faithfulness or multi -generational compromise.
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As with everything in life, there's no neutrality. And so the Bible urges us to be earnest about this.
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Psalm 78. He establishes a testimony to Jacob. He appoints a law in Israel which he commands our fathers that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, the children who'd be born, that they might arise and declare them to their children so that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, not to be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that never set its heart aright and whose spirit was not faithful to God.
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This is verse 4, going back a bit, in Psalm 78. This is the confession of the psalmist. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the
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Lord and his strength and the works he has done. Psalm 145. One generation shall praise your works to another.
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They shall declare your mighty acts. So not just proclaim, but praise.
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And one of the ways that God's works and name is praised is in the context of a godly marriage.
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A godly marriage, perhaps, is the greatest beacon to godliness that our society can see.
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It's a subtle, less obvious influence that we think it has, when in actuality it's one of the brightest beacons to the effects of the gospel and the difference that Christ makes in a person's life.
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It's in a marriage. It's in a relationship between a husband and a wife. It's not just that the world can't understand it.
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The world can't even compute. How is it possible for a man and a wife to be like this?
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For a man and a woman to live like this? And this is the problem with a mixed marriage.
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Abraham Kuyper. I think I've mentioned him before. Excellent theologian. Depending on where you are and understanding how
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Christianity engages with culture, you may have some grains of salt to pick with Abraham Kuyper.
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I certainly do in some respects, but more to gain than to lose with him. He's a Dutch theologian.
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Actually, at one time the prime minister within the Netherlands, and he wrote several really important works, some of which are just now being translated into English.
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He wrote one work called Pro Rega, so For the King, and it's all about a cultural view of Christ's kingship.
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How does Christ's kingship affect every other facet of life, every relationship or sphere of life?
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That's the tag for Kuyper. If you think Abraham Kuyper, you think sphere sovereignty. Christ's kingship over every sphere of life.
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And he asked this question, in what sense is a family Christian? In what sense is a family
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Christian? And he says, you may easily be tempted to call a household Christian just because the
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Bible is read every morning or every afternoon, and because the members of that home pray, they rest on the
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Lord's day, when the situation is, in fact, one where the husband and wife are not one but two, and where no care is given to the way the children are raised.
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Do you see what he's connecting here? He's saying, what makes a home a Christian home? It's not the rituals within the home, using the
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Bible like a talisman, using the duties and traditions of the week, but it's actually the relationship between a husband and his wife and how they're raising their children.
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Kuyper says that is what makes a home a Christian home, where the husband and the wife are not two but one, where care and thought and strategy and prayer is poured over the children being raised.
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That is what makes a home a Christian home, where there's not a division or a lack of unity or a lack of concern or even a lack of mission, but there's actually this great unity, such that the two have become one, flesh of flesh and bone of bone, and that unity is driven with concern, not only for each other but for their children, and that drives them toward mission, mission not only in their home but through their home.
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That's what makes a household a Christian household. When we start connecting this to the language of the prophets, to the language of Paul calling
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Christians to be separated from the world, we realize there's really no difference here. I mean, we can talk about Paul spiritualizing the warnings of God to the people
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Israel, but ultimately he's really just doing the same thing the prophets are doing, don't mix and marry.
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It's just as physical as it is spiritual. Don't be yoked with an unbeliever.
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That's essentially what a prophet would say to an Israelite. Don't be yoked with an idolater. Don't be yoked with an unbeliever.
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What do these things have in common? What fellowship do they have? How can you put light with darkness?
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That's where Paul goes with it. And so we have this picture that Paul gives us in light of Malachi 2,
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Jeremiah 31, all these places where God says, this is what I've done so that I would be a husband to my people, that they would be my bride.
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And Paul picks that up in Ephesians 5 and he develops it. And he essentially is saying the same thing, where a man and a woman are not united as one in worship, they're not reflecting the relationship of God to his people.
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And this is part of the great mystery of marriage. To marry an unbeliever, to marry
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Judy and Baz, is just dragging bail into the temple of God.
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That's what Paul says. What part has a believer with an unbeliever?
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What agreement does the temple of God have with idols? You are the temple of the living
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God. And so he quotes the same language because it's the same application for the same situation.
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Come out from them and be separate. In other words, we have to have the same identity that the
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Israelites were meant to have. Not on ethnic lines, but ethnicity and culture and religion were never and have never been neat little compartments that can be easily separated.
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And so while the Israelites were called to separate in an ethnic way, it was still no less a cultural and religious separation.
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And that's what every Christian is called to have. A cultural religious separation.
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Because what is culture? It's Henry Van Til famously observed, but religion externalized.
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That's all culture is. It's religion externalized. And so Paul says, essentially, you're under the same direction for the same issue, the same circumstance as the
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Israelites. Come out from among them. Do not be yoked to that which is unclean, to that which is idolatrous.
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You are a temple of the Lord. You are his special possession, his treasure. In other words,
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Paul understands the reformation of a society begins with the reformation of a church and the reformation of the church begins with the reformation of the family and the reformation of the family begins with a godly marriage.
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So married couples, are you projecting this sense of unity, concern, mission -orientedness, in your relationship?
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Are you experiencing this sense that there's a higher purpose to your marriage because you are
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Christians? That your marriage has been made holy. It's set apart from other marriages that God has given to humanity.
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Marriage being a creation ordinance. Is your marriage such that that higher calling, that mission orientation, is visible within your home?
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Such that your children aspire to marry in the Lord. In fact, they're very guarded and very concerned to not be led astray.
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To not do the wrong things or take the wrong steps in a relationship and to be very quick to look for your blessing as a godly parent and influence in their life.
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This is what we all want. We don't want any Gretna Green situations in GRBC. Marriage is meant to be this picture frame.
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Beholding the joy of the Lord. The joy of his union with his people. It's meant to be the sweetest gift that can be experienced on this earth horizontally between a man and a woman.
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So if it's meant to be the sweetest gifts, how are we going to avoid a bitter marriage?
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And I want to give five very basic tips to avoiding a bitter marriage.
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Now the first is perhaps the most vital and the most obvious.
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It's always the very beginning of every marital ruffle, discouragement, and strife.
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The first is this. Love your spouse. Love your spouse.
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Love your spouse. This is not advice, this is a command.
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It's a command given to a husband and given to a wife. Husbands, love your wives.
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Wives, see to it that you love your husbands. And as with all commands that God gives us in his word, when it's easy, it's easy.
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It's easy to love your wife when your wife is lovely. It's easy to love your husband when your husband is lovely.
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When it's hard, it's really hard. And that's why we have it as a command.
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When it's hard, you don't have the excuse to stop obeying. You don't obey this command to love your spouse based on the ebb and flow of how you're perceiving the relationship to be and whether your needs and wants are being met and whether you're pulling more weight.
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That's not the issue here. You're commanded to love your spouse. So love your spouse. The command is given to you to love your spouse, irrespective of how your spouse is loving or failing to love you.
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You are called by God to love your spouse. So love your spouse. Now I say that, and then
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I have to quickly qualify it, as the Puritans would. Primarily it is the husband's responsibility to be the fountain of love in the marriage relationship.
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If the husband is the covenant head, if the husband is the one who cannot say like Adam, it was the woman you gave to me.
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If God comes looking for Adam, irrespective of what took place between Eve and the serpent and the fruit of the tree, it's the man's responsibility to ensure that he's doing his part to love his bride, as Christ loved the church.
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And we know that Christ loved the church even when the church was an enemy unto him. So husbands, love your wives.
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What does Colossians 3 .19 say? You almost couldn't design it better. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be bitter toward them.
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If you don't want a bitter marriage, the husband needs to love his wife in a way that he's not bitter toward her.
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Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies, Paul says. He who loves his wife loves himself.
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No one ever hated his own flesh. Paul's saying if you don't love your wife, you don't love yourself, because you and your wife are one.
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So if you love yourself, you're going to love your wife, because you and your wife are one. And so love in this way is meant to be the greatest comfort, the greatest joy in marriage.
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There's this love. And everything in a marriage becomes high stakes. You love this person who knows you so well, inside and out, and when it gets hard, when the relationship begins to face some struggles or some trials or some miscommunication or some distance, you're more vulnerable and threatened than you could ever imagine.
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This person that you shared so much of your life with and so much of yourself with has power to ruin you.
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And if anything, in this relationship, it can be mutually assured destruction, as it was between the U .S.
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and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. You just proliferate words and memories and exchanges and all those spats and arguments you've had before, and it just keeps ratcheting up, because you're so threatened and so vulnerable.
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And love has to disarm. And love has to forget. And love has to cover.
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And it can't be bitter, and it can't be resentful, and it can't cling to things, and it can't say, oh, yeah, on the treaty we're good, but I still have all this back here.
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If we ever really go at it again, love your spouse.
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This is a Puritan. Richard Steele says, this love is not merely romance, right?
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Everyone knows romance doesn't last too long. And then you realize that romance isn't really true love, as our culture would lead you to believe, right?
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Romance is true love. I'm unfortunately one of those guys that I get kind of teary -eyed, too.
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Lately, even at like commercial, if there's like a commercial, I can be like, oh, man, all right, Budweiser, that was a good one.
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It's like, come on, man, man up a little bit. But we get swept up in the sense that it's going to be this sort of Jane Austen romance, this stir, this buzz of expectation and anticipation.
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We think, that's real love. And then for years later, you're trying to recover that, and why can't it be like it used to be?
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Well, because that was just immature love. That wasn't seasoned. That wasn't aged. That's not actually real love.
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Love being a genuine commitment for the better of the one that you have love toward.
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And that commitment wasn't really deeply rooted. If anything, it was more selfish and self -serving. Love takes time to mature, and it's only when you get past that distraction of romantic love that you begin to understand what true love really looks like in a marriage.
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And the culture says, oh, that's pitiable. That's not real love. And the Christian says, this is real love.
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I need more of this self -denying, other -oriented commitment, because this is what love is.
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This is how I love my spouse. And so Steele says, it's a genuine, constant affection and care for each other, fervently.
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Marital love cannot be based on beauty or wealth, because these things are passing. And not even on piety, because that can decay.
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Very wise for a Puritan to say. You know, if Alicia's love for me was resting on my piety, we would have a loveless marriage.
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Her love has to rest on not just my virtues and strengths, but in spite of all of my faults and weaknesses.
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And that's true love. It has to be based, then, on something really beyond the actual person.
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And whatever form that person may be, from season to season, or decade to decade, the person you marry is the person you know least.
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You only get to know them once you've actually begun the marriage. And then both of you are changed by that relationship, and changed by the way
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God is directing your lives through that marriage. So year by year, and season by season, you've grown, in good ways and in bad ways.
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And your relationship has grown, and you're different than you were. And if your love was fixed on the way you were at the altar, five, 10, 15 years ago, then you're going to really struggle with what love means in a
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Christian relationship. But if your commitment is based on something beyond, not just how this lover is in this season, at this time, in this state, because of this circumstance, but who they are to me, and what they will be, who they are to God, who they are in light of the commitment
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I made to them. And in a really difficult time in marriage, sometimes all you have is that commitment that you made.
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And what you love, perhaps, is simply you love the fact that you made this commitment.
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And you start there, and pray that God will give you grace to find more, and more, and more.
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You remember that the covenant you made was for better or worse, and that worse doesn't have a defined end.
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It can keep getting worse. But your commitment cannot change, because you made a covenant to love your spouse.
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So love your spouse. Richard Steele says, Married persons ought to consider their spouse the best in the world for them.
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You ought to consider your spouse, if you're married, the best in the world for you. You ought to reaffirm that to yourself and to them often.
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I couldn't imagine being with anyone else but you. God's design was perfect for us to be together.
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I wouldn't want anyone else in the world but you. Think of all that we've been through together. Think of all that we've faced.
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Think about how we've grown. Think about the things that seemed so big back then, but seem so foolish now. Think of how the things that seem so big now will seem so foolish 20 years from now.
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Think of how we've spent now more of our lives together than our lives apart. John Wesley, to encourage you, you all,
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I hope, can say, if you're believers in a marriage here this morning, you all should be able to say, I have a better marriage than John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, a great pious revivalist and responsible, perhaps, for the salvation of tens of thousands across the
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Atlantic. And John Wesley had a terrible marriage. He was married within one week.
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He basically rolled his ankle or maybe even broke his foot on some ice and was carried by a number of well -wishers to a preaching engagement, of course.
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First got to get that out of the way. And then to be cared for. And one of these caretakers was
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Mary, she goes as Molly Vasil. And within a week, they were married, 1751.
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By all accounts, it wasn't a romantic beginning. And by all accounts, it ended in hostility.
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Wesley was given over, of course, to a slavish itinerary of almost everything in his life, including preaching.
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And so he'd almost never be home. He'd almost never have time with his new bride, who was a widow with four grown children.
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Molly constantly suspected that he, therefore, was in adulterous relationships. She would receive his mail from well -wishing admirers, especially young women writing to this famous preacher.
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And she would have fits of rage out of jealousy. And Wesley wasn't innocent in this.
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He wasn't a model of love. He once sent a letter to his wife, and part of it read,
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Know me and know yourself. Suspect me no more. Asperse me no more. Provoke me no more.
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Don't contend for mastery. Be content. Be a private, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me.
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Love, John. Or, if you were buried just now, or even if you had never lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God?
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Implying none. That's not loving your spouse. It was said of Wesley by one of his biographers,
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Had he searched the whole kingdom, he would hardly have found a woman more unsuitable than the one he chose to marry.
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Luke Tyreman, an early biographer, said of Molly, At home she was suspicious, jealous, fretful, taunting, twittering, and often violent.
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Abroad, when she actually accompanied him in his ministry, it generally happened that nothing could please her. So he often left her at home for that reason.
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John Hampson, who was a mutual friend, once wrote, I entered a room unannounced to find
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Molly dragging John across the floor by his hair. And after years of conflict in 1771, a 20 -year marriage,
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Molly left and she never came back. John Wesley had almost a neurotic fixation of writing in his journal.
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At some periods in his life, writing every 15 to 20 minutes. And in these 20 years, he never wrote once of his wife.
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Not once until the day she left. And the day she left, he wrote in his journal,
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Finally, she left for good. I did not forsake her. I did not dismiss her.
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I will never recall her. I hope you all have a better marriage than John Wesley.
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So here's the advice again. Love your spouse. Love your spouse.
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Steele says, Marital love must be durable, lasting even after death has severed the bond.
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And you'll see that, perhaps, as you get to know Christian couples and one is called home before the other and you'll see how marital affection continues even when the grave separates one from the other.
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The true hearted love brings true contentment and comfort in its train. Without it, Steele says, marriage is like a bone out of joint and there is nothing but pain until it is restored.
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And that's how you ought to view your relationship to your spouse. You love your spouse. And until that love has reconciled, until that love has been met with like love, it's like a bone out of joint and you beseech the
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Lord and woo your spouse that it might be healed. So that's the first and the longest piece of advice.
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So, love your spouse, first. Second, trust your spouse. Trust your spouse.
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In other words, be faithful to your spouse and trust your spouse's faithfulness. Be faithful in every way you can possibly conceive.
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Be overly faithful. Overtly trustworthy. Do all that you can to be transparent in ways that you would never be transparent to anyone else in any other relationship.
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Your spouse has unique authorities and privileges to your life that no one else can dare claim.
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And so the scripture says, a husband's heart ought to safely trust in his wife. Not just trust in his wife, but safely trust in his wife.
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How is a husband going to feel safe in trusting his wife? It means that his wife's not going to overreact when he's coming to her with a real issue.
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Perhaps some difficulty at work or some threatening to their livelihood or their home, or maybe some personal struggle with sin.
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That she's going to be able to calm herself in her initial reactions and see him as a brother in Christ and one who has a soul toward the
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Lord that was bled and died for and minister to him in light of that. That is a wife whose husband can safely trust.
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Now, husband's love ought to never harbor any suspicion, any undue jealousy on the part of his wife.
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He ought to make it abundantly clear that he has eyes only for her. Only for her.
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There ought never to be some anxiety unspoken. Some assumption that's never addressed.
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Some miscommunication or lack of charity that might create a root of bitterness. You remember this covenant commitment that you have with your spouse and you remember that you are to view them as God's greatest gift to you in this world.
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And faithfulness is going to bind that commitment. Faithfulness in your mind.
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Faithfulness in your affection. Faithfulness in your duties and responsibilities. Faithfulness in your devotion.
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Faithfulness in the way that you dwell together. Faithfulness in the way you keep each other's secrets. A husband and a wife need to have great care and wisdom.
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To never speak ill or speak too much of each other's personal issues or marital issues in an undue way.
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In an out of hand or unprepared way. And where and when possible, if possible, and it's not always possible.
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There ought to be a mutual understanding of when certain sensitive things are shared and for what reason they're being shared.
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If at all possible. And I realize there's situations where that may not be the case. Trust is one of those things that once it's eroded, it is so incredibly hard to rebuild.
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It's a wound that heals the slowest. And it can take years and decades of hard work to just lay the foundation again.
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And if you're aware of how high the stakes are in that marital vulnerability and intimacy, you will be zealously guarding trustworthiness and transparency.
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You would rather your own reputation be maligned than that of your spouse.
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You would rather take the hit, take the bruise, take the spit, than let the one you love endure such treatment.
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This is what it means to trust your spouse. So love your spouse, trust your spouse.
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Third, help your spouse. Help your spouse. Meaning look out for each other's needs.
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Look out for each other's difficulties. What tendencies does your spouse have? Are there certain things that have been a pattern of problem in their life?
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Just this particular situation or this relationship or this issue always seems to have this effect.
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Are you aware of those difficulties? Help your spouse. What are their needs?
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What is involved in their daily tasks? What can you do to help each other, to be a mutual help and show that care and concern?
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Of course, the wife being the helper made meat to her husband, Genesis 2 .18, a helper comparable to her husband.
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That's just because the husband's already engaging in the work that God has called him to do. And so the wife is joining in on the work.
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That means husbands are not meant to be passive in their authority. They're meant to be active.
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And the wife has wisdom as a Proverbs 31 woman to know where and how she can complement that work, further it.
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That might not mean she's lifting, you know, 40 pounds of snow per shovel, but she's thinking hot chocolate would complement that kind of labor, you know.
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This is what it means to be a Proverbs 31 woman. So you get the kettle going while, you know, he's out there digging at the snow.
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What it doesn't look like is the husband being entirely passive while the home is, for all intents and purposes, imploding.
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And the husband's going, I just don't understand why we can't keep anything clean around here. And you better duck once you say something like that if you're a young husband.
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Help your spouse. It's part of loving your spouse, helping your spouse.
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And that means that as you grow in your marriage relationship, you understand more and more of each other, you understand more of those needs.
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You understand those ambitions and goals that you each have. You seek to put them out there so that you can try to find a way to unite them and weave them together so that you can be as one in what you're pursuing.
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This goes back to having a mission in your marriage. You try to understand the labor that you each have from day to day or season to season, the goals that are a part of that labor.
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You do everything you can to be mindful, how can I further my spouse's work rather than hinder it?
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I don't want to add to the burden of it. I want to help it. I want to ease it. I want to further it.
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Because I love them and I trust them and I'm committed to them. When you're young, you don't think this will be such an important issue, but it is.
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Because marriage always comes with a cross. Marriage always comes with crosses. Newlyweds are often naive.
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They only expect to have marital bliss for the first decade and they learn that sometimes you don't even get a year out of that and trouble comes.
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Trouble comes and trouble comes again and again. Sometimes trouble to your worldly goods, sometimes trouble to your health, sometimes trouble to your children, affliction from friends, from relatives, from enemies.
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And if your spouse isn't there to help you, who is? Help each other.
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Be friends. Best of friends. Promoting each other.
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Reinforcing each other. Cooperating in things. As God would have you do so. I love what
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Richard Steele says here. This is based on a book that he published in the 17th century on marriage.
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He said, Her zeal must help his discouragement. His knowledge must help her ignorance.
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And he has a list of like 30 of these. The ways that we compliment and help each other. You're going to find that from season to season you're going to have to help in new ways.
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Maybe you have to help in a way that your husband had been helping you. Because things have changed or vice versa.
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And Peter seems to address this. That there's a help according to ability. Peter says, Husbands dwell with your wives with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel.
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So a husband is mindful of his wife and of course there's debate about what it means to be a weaker vessel.
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Is this speaking of physical weakness in terms of physical stature and capability? Or is this speaking of perhaps social weakness?
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Perhaps both? But part of how husbands are according to the apostle
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Peter meant to help their wives is to dwell with them and give them honor as to a weaker vessel.
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To help them in this way. Which means they're going to have to be understanding, patient, discerning.
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In other words, there has to be a sort of tailored help in light of what you know about your spouse.
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So help your spouse. Fourth, endure your spouse.
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Now we're actually, the rubber's actually getting to the road. Alright, now this is making some sense. This is my marriage.
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Endure my spouse. Endure your spouse, meaning be patient with your spouse.
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Be very patient. Be beyond patient. As Christians, we're commanded to be patient toward all.
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How much more so should we be patient toward the one that we've married? We tend to have great patience toward all and very little patience toward our spouse.
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And of course, marriage floods your life with temptations to be impatient and situations in which to be impatient.
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When I first met Alicia, never in my life can I imagine a young woman who could spend as much time in front of a mirror as Alicia.
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She would often be at her mom's house and I would be out in the car and I learned not to let my car idle because I'd run out of gas.
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So I'd say, I'll be by at three and I'd, this was before I really got to know her parents, so I'd be in the driveway kind of, you know, keeping a friendly distance.
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That's not good advice, young men and women. Always go in the home. Remember, you're courting the father.
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But I was in the car and I'd turn it off and I'd put the seat back and I'd read or I'd sit there and sometimes I'd nap.
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Then about 5 .30 she'd come down the stairs. I took it as a compliment because I'm like, well, she's, you know, spending all this time in front of that mirror for my sake.
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So I took it as high praise. It's a great compliment. You don't want someone rolling out in, you know, sweatpants and stains and all right, let's go.
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So there was something that was very exciting about, you know, someone who was so desiring to be beautiful to me that she would spend so much time.
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But what was a compliment back then, once we were married, became a source of impatience for me.
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We really have to go. This is, you know, you've got to wake up earlier if you want to have this kind of time. You're going to have to leave the rollers in because we've got to go.
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And you have to learn part of being patient, part of enduring your spouse is choosing the times that you're going to have those confrontations.
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In other words, when is it appropriate to be quiet? When is it appropriate to let a fault be for a time and find a better way and be in a better frame of mind to address it?
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A lot of marriages, they end up up in rocky roads almost always because of a fundamental selfishness and failure to communicate properly.
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But it almost always comes down to this sort of level of impatience. And perhaps this is one of the most pivotal pieces of advice
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I can give us practically. I'm preaching to myself here. I need to endure. I need to be patient.
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Very patient. Recognizing that I'm in a relationship as a sinner with another sinner, and we both have faults that drive us to impatience toward each other, perhaps leading to overreaction.
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And I need to acknowledge my faults and remove the log in my eye before I ever dare address the splinter in that of my wife's eye.
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I love what Richard Baxter says here. Remember, you know, faults, impatience, this is what
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Baxter says. Remember you're both diseased persons, full of infirmities, and therefore expect the fruit of those infirmities in each other.
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And don't count it a strange thing, as if you'd never known of it. You knew you were marrying a sinner, didn't you? If you'd married someone that was lame, would you be angry all of a sudden when they limp?
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Resolve, therefore, to bear with one another, remembering that you took one another as sinful, frail, imperfect people, not as angels or as blameless and perfect.
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So, endure your spouse. Be patient toward your spouse. Be gentle.
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Be as you would be with company coming over. Oh, if only our marriages could be as they are when company first comes over.
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The arm goes around and it's, you know, this beautiful postcard smile. Please come in. Our home always looks and smells like this.
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The candles are going. Everything's humming along. I remember reading, you probably haven't gone through these like I've had to, but if you've ever done an online class, usually part of your grade is on discussion boards and you have to interact with some statement and then your discussion is graded for content and then your replies are graded as well.
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And the replies are always asinine because you have to be like, oh, this was such a wonderful comment that you made.
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You know, this is excellent. I've been so helped by this and it's just, it's just almost sickening flattery because you're just forced to get a grade to respond.
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And someone raised the question, what if society treated each other like we are forced to treat each other on these discussion boards?
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And it's like, man, that would be a paradise. It would be endless flattery and patience and gentleness and respect and courtesy.
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And in a marriage relationship we ought to aspire to that. To have as much patience and respect and courtesy and gentleness as we have towards strangers or people that are coming over to our home for the first time.
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How much more so should we have that to our spouse? And it shouldn't be that as soon as we say goodbye, come again, it was fun, click, alright, you know, everything kind of lets down and, you know, it shouldn't be that way.
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There's this respect, there's this courtesy, this desire to endure your spouse. Be patient towards your spouse.
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So fifth and last, so we've said love your spouse, trust your spouse, help your spouse, endure your spouse, especially as you're helping your spouse, and then fifth and last, and this is a must for Christians, evangelize your spouse.
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When we talk about viewing marriage as a mission, and we understand one of the reasons that God has given marriage to a man and a woman, and we recognize this obviously is taking away from the focus of the sermon, we recognize that not every man and woman is called to marriage, and that's something that Paul addresses in 1
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Corinthians 7, and there's a lot to say about that call of God to celibacy, to singleness, and exclusive devotion to the
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Lord for some higher purpose, and that's noble, and that's laudable, and Paul says,
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I will kind of have you go in that, but I recognize that's not always God's will. And so we want to affirm that, that that's a valid and noble calling to celibacy and singleness.
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But when we're talking about marriage as a mission, and as a comfort, and as a help, you want to view your spouse as you're viewing someone else that you're discipling, and hoping to win over more and more and more to the gospel.
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Steele puts it like this, if you let your spouse be damned, where is your love?
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So inquire into your spouse's spiritual state, and then use whatever means might improve it.
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Evangelize your spouse. Don't take it for granted. If you were to treat your spouse as someone that you're winning over to Christ, how different would your marriage be?
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Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, let the husband render to his wife the affection, do her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.
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He's just working out some of these practical relational things. And he says in verse 5, do not deprive one another except with consent for a time.
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Let me back up a little bit. He says something that would have been utterly shocking to Greco -Roman ears.
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He says that not only does the husband have authority over the body of his wife, everyone's asleep at that.
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That's what every Roman already knew. But then he says something utterly profound. The wife has authority over the body of her husband.
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That's like, what? No, she doesn't. To a Roman mindset, what are you talking about? But this is a
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Christian theology of marriage. There's such a profound unity that the husband has authority over the body of his wife in the same way that the wife has authority over the body of her husband.
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So radical is the unity between them. And that leads to Paul saying, in light of this, don't deprive one another except for this, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer.
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Now, there's a whole way of approaching, let's say, Paul's letters. We call it implicit ethics.
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It's a type of research. Implicit ethics. What is the implicit ethic? What is the norm that Paul assumes when he gives instructions like this?
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It's a good question to ask. What is the norm for marriage that Paul is assuming when he can say, the only reason a husband or a wife ought to deprive one another is for agreed upon time of fasting and prayer?
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What's the norm? That there's a spirituality that is higher than anything else in that marriage relationship.
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And that fasting and prayer, coming together and seeking the
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Lord as a husband and as a wife, really establish the relationship.
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In other words, their whole walk, their whole life, their whole identity in Christ is no longer as an individual, but as a husband and wife.
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And so even Peter can say in 1 Peter 3, we've already read, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel, being heirs together of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
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When you were single, you didn't really have this possibility of your prayers being hindered, but now you're married.
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You're no longer an individual, and now even your prayers can be hindered. So central is this marital relationship now to your own ability to walk with the
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Lord. And so evangelize your spouse. Pray for your spouse.
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And pray with your spouse. And daily seek to win your spouse to Christ.
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And sometimes thank the Lord that your spouse seeks to win you to Christ. You know, even preachers need a spouse that can win them to Christ in certain times and seasons.
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It's a good thing when you have a spouse that wants to flood your life with the light of Christ.
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So evangelize your spouse. Let me close with this.
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The life of the family is sick, something I've been thinking about a lot this week, as I'm sure several other families have been thinking about.
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Sin is a lot like physical sickness. And the life of the family, the life of a marriage is sick, just like the rest of human life.
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And Christ is a physician that wants to address sickness, not just to an individual, but to a marriage and within a family.
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Christ is a physician. He seeks to address things as the hymn puts it, as far as the curse is found.
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Is the curse found in the relationship between a husband and a wife? Yeah. That's the beginning of where the curse is found in Genesis 3.
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Then Christ has come to redeem that. Christ has died to redeem that. Is the curse found in the brokenness of a daughter to a mother or a son to a father or vice versa?
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Yes. Then Christ has come to redeem the family and its dynamics.
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Christ has died to redeem the family and its dynamics. Christ is a redeemer for anything that has been affected by the curse of sin.
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This doesn't mean that marriages can be healed overnight. This doesn't mean that family dynamics can change from a
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Sunday morning to a Monday morning. This is not some therapeutic patina that we can feel good about and then just expect that everything will be changed now that we've mentally assented and agreed that we would like those kinds of changes.
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This is the kind of change that takes radical repentance, radical commitment and a lot of hard work in a different direction.
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But Christ has died for that work. Christ has come that He might inhabit our homes and our marriages and shed grace and bring restoration and renewal so that patterns of destruction and bitterness and decades of sorrow can be overturned and where there was once ashes, there can be beauty and where there's a sort of grief of mind, there can be sprouts of joy.
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Christ is a redeemer for all that has been affected by sin and He's willing to redeem your marriage.
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He hasn't come to save you as a generic individual if you're a husband or you're a wife. He's come to save you as a husband and as a wife.
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And so there's hope. There's great hope for your marriage. You begin with repentance toward God.
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Commitment to the one that you've committed to. And you beseech the grace of God to bring about the change that I hope now you, like I, earnestly desire.
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Titus 2, 11 and 12. For the grace of God brings salvation and has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldliness, worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you that so many of us, Lord, have marriages far better than we deserve.
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Despite all of our failures, all of our selfishness, foolishness, failure to watch, to keep, to build, to work, to obey.
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Today you've somehow preserved, even blessed.
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We thank you, Lord. We're humbled. We recognize just how sick our relationships can be with sin,
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Lord, in our own personal lives, in our marriages, in our families,
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Lord. No wonder our society is so sick with sin, so full of rebellion and stubbornness.
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And so, Lord, we pray that you would revive our own hearts, revive and renew our marriages,
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Lord, that our homes might be transformed, and that as a result of that,
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Lord, your church would be reformed and so be salt and light in a dark and dying world.
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We pray, Lord, that you would spare us from the designs of the evil one, the designs of our fallen flesh,
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Lord, which often think we're meeting our desires when we're doing the exact opposite.
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We seek satisfaction in sin and selfishness, and it always leads to an emptiness, Lord. Let us remember that the way of blessing is difficult and narrow, and few there are who find it, but it is nonetheless the path of blessing.
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Let us obey. Be diligent to heed all that you've commanded us, Lord, to walk in the wisdom and light of your
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Word that we might find rich blessing on every aspect, every sphere of our lives.
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Renew the marriages in this church, Lord, we pray. Help and guide the young ones that are perhaps desiring, even preparing themselves for marriage now,
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Lord. We know that you have all these details worked out, but it's a fog. It's something confusing or hidden from them.
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Help them to just trust you to guide and order their steps and to trust the authorities that you work through,
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Lord, to bring about blessing. We pray, Lord, that if there's anyone in this room that does not know the true bridegroom, the ultimate meaning of marriage, which is a relationship with Christ, we pray that you would so convict and illuminate that they would be brought to saving faith even this day.