OPEN: At the banquet of Tom and Susan’s 25th wedding anniversary, Tom was asked to give his friends a brief account of the benefits of a marriage of such long duration. "Tell us, Tom, just what is it you have learned from all those wonderful years with your wife?"
Tom responded, "Well, I’ve learned that marriage is the best teacher of all. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance, meekness, self-restraint, forgiveness (pause) and a great many other qualities you wouldn’t need to know if you’d stayed single.”
APPLY: God loves marriage.
He performed the first marriage in the garden between Adam and Eve.
In fact, the main reason God created Eve from the rib of Adam was because (as He said) “it is not good that the man should be alone.” Genesis 2:18
One of the reasons God didn’t want man to be alone was because marriage changes us. It improves our lives and transforms us into something we could never have become alone.
One of the ways it changes us is by making us live longer.
Repeated studies have found (as one study did) that compared to married people:
Those who had been divorced or separated were 27 percent more likely to have shorter lives. Those who had never been married were 58 percent more likely to die than married folks.
And the "penalty" for not getting married was greater for men than women.
(Rob Stein The Washington Post 8/20/06)
Another study found that being married makes one better off financially.
Back in 1985, researchers began a 15 year study of 9000 individuals
And they found respondents who remained single had a slow but steady growth of wealth.
But those who married and stayed married showed a sharp increase in wealth.
The author of the study Jay Zagorsy summed up his findings saying,
“If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth.”
(Reuters, "Marriage Builds Wealth More Than Being Single?" January 20, 2006)
So, in other words:
Marriage can make you HEALTHY.
And marriage can make you WEALTHY
BUT (pause) can marriage make you WISE???
Well – it can - if we do it God’s way.
We can learn all kinds of things like loyalty, forbearance, meekness, self-restraint, forgiveness.
Things we wouldn’t have learned if we were single.
Several years before John wrote the book of Revelation, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus (which we call Ephesians) and in that letter, Paul told the Christians at Ephesus about marriage.
Turn with me to Ephesians 5:21-33
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, (this is your act of submission) love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.
‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’
This is a profound mystery— but I am talking about Christ and the church.
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
In other words: husbands should love and protect wives just as Jesus loves and protects His church. And wives should respect, honor, and submit to their husbands just the church does these things for Jesus.
In Ephesians 5, God is telling us how highly he regards marriage. In fact, God regards marriage so highly -that He compares a healthy marriage to a healthy church. Husbands and wives should do the same things to have healthy marriage as you would if you wanted a healthy congregation.
So now - what do you do when you have an unhealthy marriage?
How would you heal a relationship between a husband and wife that’s gone to the breaking point?
Well, apparently you’d do the same thing you’d do if you had an unhealthy church.
Here in Revelation 2, Jesus is telling Ephesus that their relationship with Him had become unhealthy, uncomfortable, and strained. Something needed to be “fixed”.
Jesus diagnoses the problem and gives them some “marriage counseling. He tells them:
“You have forsaken your first love.” Revelation 2:4
That’s the issue that had caused their problem, and the solution was:
“Repent and do the things you did at first…” Revelation 2:5
Repent means “turn around”, “go back”!
Go back to the beginning and do what you did at the beginning - again. That will bring healing to the strained relationship they were experiencing.
So what had the Ephesians done back at the beginning?
In Acts 19 we’re told us how the church at Ephesus got started.
On 2nd missionary journey, Paul paid a visit to Ephesus – and stayed there for over 2 yrs.
It appears to have been a moderately successful church plant until just before Paul left. That’s when a Great Revival took place… AND as a result:
“…the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus… were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds.
A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.” (Acts 19:17-20)
Notice: the Ephesian church “held the name of Jesus in high honor” (they began to really love Him).
AND once they really began to love Jesus:
1. they openly confessed their evil deeds.
2. and they publicly burned their books of sorcery (worth approx $5 million).
3. And THIS RESULTED in the word of the Lord spreading widely and powerfully.
Another way of putting it would be to say: “they changed”
Their new relationship with Jesus changed them so much that they
1. Thought differently
2. Behaved differently
3. Threw out everything that would stand between them and Jesus.
As a result everybody around knew of this great love they had for Jesus.
(pause)
BUT about 40 years later… things have changed.
Their love for Jesus has grown stale and somewhat empty
Their relationship is on life support. And unless they do something drastic Jesus is going to walk away and take His candlestick with Him.
And so Jesus says:
TURN AROUND
GO BACK
LOVE ME LIKE YOU USED TO.
That’s the way to fix a broken church.
AND that’s the way to fix a broken marriage.
Go back and do the things you used to do when you first got married.
ILLUS: Remember how you were when you first got together? It seemed you could never stop thinking of them. When you were with them, you were on your best behavior. If you knew a certain of clothing made you unattractive you got rid of it. If you knew a certain habit you had offended them… you didn’t do it around them.
Your total focus was on pleasing that person.
And if someone asked you about that person you loved… you only said good things about them.
ILLUS: There was once a couple (true story) who were on the verge of divorce. Have you ever been around people that are going to get a divorce? How do they usually talk about each other? Why, they can’t say enough bad about one another.
Well, this couple went to a marriage counselor that and began telling everything that was wrong with the other partner. But every time they did that, the counselor kept turning the conversation so that the couple
• had to mention the good things between them;
• the qualities they had first admired in each other,
• the deeper pleasures they had shared,
• the goals they had mutually tried to reach.
The counselor later said “You could almost see the antagonisms gradually draining away."
After a few more meetings with him, the couple agreed to give their marriage a second chance.
(Christian Herald - Norman M. Lobsenz, 1973)
That counselor made them go back and do the things they’d done at first… and it worked.
Now someone might say “GREAT!!!
If only I could get my spouse to do that… everything would be just fine. If only my husband would love me the way he did back then. If only my wife treated me the way the way she did at the beginning. We wouldn’t be in this mess!!!
(pause)
Remember what I said at the beginning of this sermon.
Marriage can make you healthy.
And marriage can make you wealthy.
But it can ONLY make us wise … if we do marriage God’s way.
Allow me to let you in on a secret:
God never said “Husbands love your wives IF they deserve it.”
God never said “Wives submit to your husbands IF they deserve it.”
Go ahead – look it up. It’s not there.
You cannot fix a marriage by saying:
“If only they would do this!”
“If only they would do that!”
You can’t fix marriages like that.
You can only fix a marriage by deciding YOU will do what needs to do whatever needs to be done.
And it works. Sometimes – even if you do it for the wrong reasons - it still works.
ILLUS: Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband.
"I not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me."
Dr. Crane thought about that for a couple of moments and then suggested an ingenious plan.
"Go home and act as if you really loved your husband,” He told her. “Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind and considerate and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him… then drop the bomb. Tell him that you’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him."
With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, "Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!"
And she did it with enthusiasm. For two months she acted "as if," she loved him. She was kind to him, she listened to him. She was constantly giving, reinforcing, sharing.
Two months went by… and she didn’t return to her counselor, so Crane called her. "Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?"
"Divorce?" she exclaimed. "Never! I discovered I really do love him."
Without realizing it - in obeying God - her marriage healed.
She didn’t realize she’d “repented” and done the things she’d done at first, but when she did, she fell in love with her husband all over again.
But someone might say:
“I can’t do that… that’s hypocritical. I don’t feel love, so how can I show it?”
ILLUS: In his book, “The Christian Counselors Manual” Jay Adams tells about a man who came to him and said, “I know you hate to hear this preacher but my wife and I don’t love each other and we are going to get a divorce.
Adams’ answered: “I do hate to hear that you don’t love each other, you need to repent of that and start loving each other because the Bible commands, Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and you are a Christian so you have to obey the Lord’s commands.
Undaunted the man said, “Well, I just don’t feel anything toward her any more.”
Adams said, “Okay, lets go down to a lower level then. The Bible commands love your neighbor as your self. She’s your closest neighbor. So you have to love her regardless of how you feel about her. How you feel is irrelevant.”
Feeling defensive now, the man said, “I’m going to have to be honest with you preacher, I despise her. She despises me. We can’t stand the ground that we are walking on and we just cannot get along.”
“Oh!” Then Adams replied, “You are going to have to go down to a lower lever then. The Bible also says to love your enemies as yourselves. You have no option. You are commanded to love.”
Desperately the man answered, “How in the world can I do that when I don’t feel anything.
Adams responded: “You are going to have to understand that feelings are irrelevant. That’s the Hollywood concept of love. That is the romantic concept of love. A Christian’s love is Agape love: Doing the right thing regardless of feeling. So make a list of the ten things that you would do if you were madly in love with her and go and do them anyway. One counselor said, ‘If you act the way you wish you felt, eventually you will feel the way you act.’ So go do them regardless of feeling.”
In a last ditch attempt to justify himself the man said, “I couldn’t do that, that would be hypocritical.”
And the preacher said, “No that is not hypocrisy. That is obedience. Hypocrisy is not acting contrary to the way you feel. Hypocrisy is acting contrary to the way you believe.”
That’s true for married couples, and it’s also true for any other Christian.
We are weak enough that we often see life only through the prism of our feelings. As a result many of our relationships become damaged… even our relationship with God Himself. But what God attempts to tell us in Scripture is that when we become His children we should no longer act on our feelings. Instead we must learn to act on our faith… our faith in God and His love for us. And when we do that God will bring the healing.
