Renewing Your Marriage
Behold the Harvest!
Men, listen up!
Valentine’s Day is Wednesday! If you have a sweetheart, I’m giving you a 72-hour warning to get your act together!
Our theme for this year of Bible Methodism is to “Behold the Harvest” with an emphasis on the family. This quarter, we are emphasizing the importance of a strong marriage. So, when I was planning my preaching calendar, it just seemed natural to give this message on Valentine Sunday.
So have you heard about Valentine? [P]
In the year 269 A.D., the Roman empire was having difficulty in dealing the stubborn group of people called the Vandals. So Emperor Claudius did his best to recruit men for his army to go and fight and defend the fatherland!
Enticing offers were made…there was always the desire innate within men for greatness – especially on the battlefield! Rome was a proud land that deserved defending and any red-blooded man should be running to defend her!
But Claudius was not getting the response he hoped for. There were a lot of men who were becoming domesticated. They were getting married and learning very quickly that life with the wife was far preferable to sleeping on the ground to wake up and bleed to death in some distant and forgotten battlefield.
So Claudius thought he would simply remove that obstacle from these poor men who didn’t have enough good sense to go to battle – he would simply ban any more new marriages! We don’t need men on the home front – we need them on the battlefront!
But there was yet another wrench in the gears: Valentine. Valentine knew that God had instituted marriage and the family, and that a nation must be stronger within than it is without. So Valentine partook of what we would call civil disobedience. He didn’t make a fuss…he didn’t put up a fight…he just performed marriages as usual….well almost – he performed them secretly.
He would whisper the words of the ceremony, while listening for soldiers on the steps outside.
One night, he did hear footsteps. He hurried the couple he was marrying to escape, but he was caught. He was thrown in jail and sentenced to death.
Valentine tried to stay cheerful while imprisoned, awaiting his execution. But wouldn’t you know it – he sure had a lot of visitors! And they always seemed to come in pairs! And they were always a man and a woman! And they always left as one!
Yes he did! He was in jail for performing marriages – but he didn’t see any reason why that should stop him – and even in jail for his belief in marriage, he continued to marry young couples!
But the plot gets even thicker!…
You see, the jailer had one very attractive daughter. And she loved to come to the jail to help her father. She would help out with various duties around the jail, probably delivering the rations, and what not…but there was one particularly intriguing man who was no ordinary criminal…The jailer’s daughter would often visit Valentine in his cell, and they sat and talked for hours.
She believed he did the right thing by ignoring the Emperor and performing marriage ceremonies. On the day, Valentine was to die, he left her a note thanking her for her friendship and loyalty. He signed it, "Love from your Valentine." That note started the custom of exchanging love notes on Valentine’s Day. It was written on the day he died, February 14, 269 A.D.
Valentine knew that marriage is always an absolute essential to any culture in any time. This morning, we’re going to uncover some biblical principles for making your marriage marvelous…
So let’s open this service with anticipation for what God wants to say to us…let’s invest ourselves into worship…let’s invite God into the service, though He is certainly here already…and let’s intend to obey whatever truth the Holy Spirit illumines to our hearts…
Stand with me as we pray…
Valentine is that bittersweet immortal tragedy. Dying for his belief in marriage, he affirms his love to the jailor’s daughter!
It’s so sweet! It’s so beautiful! It’s so heartbreaking!
Well I know that when your on my side of marriage looking in – it’s easy to get carried away with thoughts of romance, fairy tales, dashing strong knights in brilliant armor that flashes under the light of the sun riding their gallant stallion to sweep the adoring princess from her feet. We tend to romanticize a lot about finding the “perfect will of God.” If we wait long enough for God to bring us that right one, then we will have a happy and beautiful marriage!
You’ve heard the speakers – you’ve read the books – how God brought Eve to Adam and Rebecca to Isaac!
But this morning, I’m going to tell you about someone who was in God’s perfect will…
someone who married the woman God wanted him to marry…
who continued in God’s will…
and whose marriage was the pits!
If you haven’t figured it out already, the man was one of God’s prophets – his name was Hosea.
Hosea teaches us a very valuable lesson: Marriage is work, but marriage is worth it!
Let’s step into the story…Hosea 1:2-9; 2:5
Marriage is work, but marriage is worth it!
I realize that the story of Hosea is an analogy to the people of Israel who turned their backs on God. But the story is also a true story.
Hosea was a real man…
Gomer was a real woman…
they shared a real marriage…
brought forth at least one real child, maybe two, between them…
and Hosea experienced real devastating heartbreak!
But when God says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her,” I think Hosea’s marriage gives us a pretty striking example of what that means.
Too often it’s tempting, it’s easy, it’s recommended, it’s reasonable, it’s even expected to bail.
On the liberal end, any reason whatsoever is sufficient.
On the conservative end, most people would still give you the exception for marital infidelity.
But the example that God gives to His people overlooks even adultery. Why?
Because marriage is work, but marriage is worth it!
Hosea’s example demonstrates:
1. Unspeakable pain
In marriage, the two become one flesh, and when one rips away from the other, there is an unspeakable agony left in the open bleeding sore that remains.
I’ve heard some people testify that a divorce is more painful than the death of a spouse. You read this story and you can’t help but be moved with compassion for Hosea as he is left in the lurch of a spoiled marriage.
He heard the voice of God,
found the love of his life – a beautiful bride,
and started to build a family with her.
But no sooner had she weaned her second child before she conceives a third. But by the time this 3rd child is born, it’s evident beyond all doubt that this child is not Hosea’s.
When you read on down to 2:2, you see that even though Hosea never divorced his wife, his pain was so deep and so sore that he denied relationship to her. See also vv.4-5.
Imagine all that Hosea must have felt!
Rejection… loneliness… mourning the death of someone who still lives…bitterness…anger…inferiority…a broken spirit…a grieving heart…
{Narrative – daily routine}
Hosea spends his days trying to fill in the gaps left by Gomer. He awakens after a short night, fixes the breakfast for the children and tries to make sure they are clothed and fed.
He proceeds about the duties of his wife: cleaning, cooking, kissing scraped knees, and stopping sibling squabbles. But even though he loves his kids, he’s alone…very alone.
The knife in his heart twists when Jezreel whimpers that he wants Mommy to come home!
After he returns home from daily trip to the market, he looks for that familiar figure…he does not see her and out of habit he opens his mouth to call for her – but before the word rises from his throat, it is constricted in pain as he remembers she’s not there and she’s not coming back!
Hosea is a prophet. Heaped upon the torment of losing his wife to adultery, is the responsibility that God has given him to preach the message of repentance to his people! With the burden of his own family, he carries God’s burden for Israel. He preaches with unbridled passion because he doesn’t just know the truth of what he preaches in his head, he has also experienced the pain of it in his own heart!
When Hosea lays his head in a tear-soaked pillow next to the empty place where his wife should be, the sorrow of the day does not subside to sleep - for all he can think about now is that his wife is in the arms of some other man. Some other man who does not love her, but just wants a right to violate her for a single night.
Agony unto agony!
Unequalled misery!
Unspeakable pain!
If anyone had the “right” to divorce…
If anyone had the desire to divorce…
If anyone had the approval of others to divorce…
I can assure you that Hosea did, above all others!
But God wanted to use Hosea to teach His nation, and eventually the world, a couple of very important lessons:
Marriage is still worth it! And marriage is worth it because it reflects the love that God has for His people!
The Church is the modern extension of the people of God. And God said, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her!”
Hosea modeled for God’s people how much God loves them…and God’s love for His people is the model for how much husbands should love their wives!
That tells me something very important:
Marriage is work, but marriage is worth it!
And so after enduring unimaginable misery, God speaks to Hosea again, saying,
“she’s not coming home on her own…
but I want you to go find her…
I want you to rescue her…
I want you to bring her back home…
I want you to win her heart again and
make this marriage work!
Because marriage is worth it!
Let’s turn and read chapter 3…
So here is Hosea: the love the shared with his wife has been rejected.
The stinging pain of the open wound has clotted over.
If Hosea has any feelings left at all, they are hard, distant, distrusting.
And now God says to go back to her and love her.
“God! She has spurned my love!
She has rejected me!
She does not deserve my love!”
Yes, all of that is true. But husbands are to love your wives as Christ loved the Church (when they were yet sinners!) and gave Himself for her!
Marriage is worth it!
Hosea heads out to find her.
He is not under some romantic delusions.
He probably doesn’t have any feelings for her whatsoever!
But he chooses to give her, on the basis of nothing more than PRINCIPLE!, he chooses to give her unmerited love.
2. Unmerited love
Hosea follows God’s lead – look at 2:14. Hosea searches out his wife and offers again a bride’s gift to her. It was customary for the man to give a gift to the bride herself after she had consented to marry him. Hosea seeks to win her heart again, but can only go so far…
Look at what Hosea gave her: 15 shekels and half a homer of barley. The going rate for a slave was thirty shekels. Barley was about least valued grain that could be offered – it was viewed as the grain for animals, not people. Hosea was not giving even the decent price for a slave.
This indicates two very sad realities:
1. The emotional distance between the two was vast. Hosea could have spent more on a slave who would have been faithful!
2. If Gomer was willing to accept this paltry sum, she must have been in desperate straits!
Hosea didn’t have any spark of romance toward her!
Gomer was willing to take the price of sub-standard slave, rather than a bride!
And if Gomer is in such a destitute condition to accept this,
then you can be sure that she was not the same smooth-skinned sweetheart Hosea married years ago!
In dirty rags, matted hair and a face that is weathered by the sinful life of a prostitute,
Gomer leaves the house of her adulterous companion and comes home –
where love is no longer what love was.
Where love cannot be earned, or merited, but rather chosen.
I heard one wise man say that the best time to love your wife is the time when she’s the most unlovable.
As a man, the same is true of respect. Wives, affirm your respect for your husbands when they’ve just done something stupid. He really needs to know that if the whole earth should laugh at him, you will stand behind him with adoring admiration.
The Biblical formula is for husbands to love, and for wives to respect. The husband should choose to give unmerited love. The wife should choose to give unmerited respect.
Unmerited – not one for the exchange of the other – unmerited, unconditional!
A woman and her husband who came to a pastor and said, "We’re going to get a divorce, but we want to come to make sure that you approve of it." There are people who come to the pastor hoping that when they say there is no feeling left in their marriage, the pastor will say, "Well, if there’s no feeling left, then, the only thing you can do is split."
Instead, the pastor says to the husband, "The Bible says you’re to love your wife as Jesus Christ loved the church."
He says, "Oh, I can’t do that."
The pastor says, "If you can’t begin at that level, then begin on a lower level. You’re supposed to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Can you at least love her as you would love a neighbor?"
The husband says, "No. That’s still too high a level."
The pastor says, "The Bible says, Love your enemies. Begin there.
Hosea was learning that marriage was work, but marriage would be worth it!
Hosea’s marriage demonstrated unspeakable pain, the choice of unmerited love and next…
3. Unending patience
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 makes it very clear that once someone is remarried, they may not return to their first spouse. Even if the second spouse dies, no return is permitted to the first.
But until/unless a second marriage happens, everything possible should be done to restore the first!
When you look at the names of Hosea’s children – by the time of his second child, “No-Mercy,” he has already begun to suspect that she is not faithful. But the time she gives birth to “Not-My-People” he knows she is no longer his! After the third child she leaves the house all together…
In 3:1, Hosea is commanded to go to her even while she is in the arms of an adulterer!
Hosea didn’t cut a deal with Gomer!
He didn’t institute the “3-Strikes-you’re-out” approach!
He did not divorce her!
He didn’t lash out in violent rage against her or depressed suicide against himself.!
He took each agonizingly long day,
Each lonely moment,
Each searing pain – one at a time!
He found out that love and marriage take an unending supply of patience! Unending patience over unmerited love on top of unspeakable pain!
But marriage is work, and marriage is worth it!
Something else that Hosea is to be commended for is his
4. Unconditional responsibility – vv. 1:10-2:1, 23
Marriage is not 50/50 it’s 100/100. If you both don’t give your all, then you’re likely to wish you had!
At least one of the children was not his own, and probably two.
He could have cast them out to be with his wife…
He could have foisted them on their own fathers and/or demanded child support!
But instead he chose to take responsibility!
He was Gomer’s husband and what was Gomer’s was his too!
But a glaring weakness in today’s marriages is that the espoused are more concerned with “rights” rather than responsibilities!
“I’ll take out the trash, if you do the dishes…
I’ve changed his diaper 3 times today, it’s your turn!…
I deserve to be treated better than this!…
I’m not going to put up with all this!”
Instead of both parties assuming full responsibility for a successful marriage, they both are about half-responsible = a recipe for disaster!
My dad has always said, and I’ve heard others agree, that there is no such thing as a one-sided divorce.
Now I don’t know how Gomer saw Hosea.
I don’t know what he did to lose her attraction between their marriage and when she left.
But I do know that before the crashing marriage burned – Hosea got his act together and took unconditional responsibility to make the marriage work – even if it was just pure work!
Because marriage is worth it!
5. Uncompromised boundaries – vs. 3:3
Hosea has successfully brought his wife home. Now he must keep her home. He’s got to put forth all the effort he can, and even more with God’s help – but they both must have an “emotional safe zone.”
Hosea has to know that while he learns how to be a good husband in this new situation…he has to know that she is not going to checking out and visiting other men again!
There has to be a mutual trust in any relationship and that trust is built by respecting uncompromised boundaries!
Illus: The safest place in the fort is in the middle. Not the walls. A good fort must have strong walls and towers, but that’s to keep the enemy out. In a relationship, trust is built by staying in the center of the fort. If you’re running around the wall looking and all the pretty enemies, you sabotage the center of the fort!
But there also needs to be an alarm when the enemies attack the walls. If he’s making a pass at you, you should tell your husband. If she’s cute and knows you know it, you should tell your wife. Just that simple act will fortify the walls and help you to stay in the center.
There must be accountability – not for finding fault, but for proving trust.
The stronger the walls are built, the bigger the fort becomes.
The bigger the fort becomes, the larger the center grows.
And your relationship will experience more freedom, and trust and security!
But you don’t compromise the boundaries by running outside the walls, or on top of them either!
This sad story, finally, through much tears, toils and work…this story finally comes to happy end with an…
6. Unlikely Reconciliation – vv. 3:5; 2:16,19-20
“We’ve made adultery grounds for divorce. In actuality it’s grounds for forgiveness.” Harold Ivan Smith
A woman came to a lawyer and said, "I want to get a divorce! I really hate my husband, and I want to hurt him! Give me some advice."
She wanted to leave him with a venomous sting.
The attorney said, "Look, you’re going to divorce the guy anyway, so for three months don’t criticize him. Speak only well of him. Build him up. Every time he does something nice, commend him for it. Tell him what a great guy he is, and do that for three months. After he thinks that he has your confidence and love, hit him with the news and it will hurt more."
The woman thought, "I can’t go wrong on this. I’m divorcing the guy anyway. Why should I speak badly about him anymore? I’m going to speak only well of him."
So, she complimented her husband for everything he did. For three months she told him what a great man he was.
You know what happened to that relationship? After three months, they forgot about the divorce and went on a second honeymoon!
When God prescribed the divine formula for marriage (printed in your bulletin), He knew what He was talking about! He created male and female! He created marriage!
If you apply that formula of unmerited, unconditional love from the husband to the wife – and the wife applies unmerited, unconditional respect to her husband – not only will your marriage work – but it will work wonderfully well!
It will make your marriage marvelous!
I take thee to be my wedded spouse…
to have and to hold, from this day forward…
for better, for worse…
For richer for poorer…
In sickness and in health…
to love and to cherish…
till death do us part…
according to God’s holy ordinance…
And thereto, I pledge thee my faith!
Marriage is worth it!
