Sleeping With The Enemy?! - Romans 7:14-25 - May 23, 2012
Series: After The Honeymoon - #5
This past Wednesday, Army Specialist Leslie Sabo Jr., posthumously received the Medal of Honor. That medal ceremony brings to close a story that began 43 years ago, when Leslie and his bride, Rose Mary, stood in front of family and friends and exchanged their wedding vows. Mr. and Mrs. Sabo had a grand total of 31 wonderful days together, as husband and wife, before Leslie shipped out for Vietnam.
Now, Vietnam has been called many things – a “police action,” and an “undeclared war” – but whatever you choose to call it, nothing changes the fact, that by the time that conflict was over, more than 153,000 American servicemen had been wounded in action. Over 58,000 had been killed. Among that number was Army Specialist Leslie Sabo Jr.
But the casualties of that conflict went far beyond those whose bodies were ravaged by the instruments of war. That conflict left scars, not just upon the soldiers, but upon their families, and not just upon their families, but upon a nation.
And those types of casualties are harder to quantify. Among them were certainly countless marriages - and there is no way for us to know just how many marriages were destroyed by a war that was never formally declared, but which left wounds in its aftermath which were very real.
Today there is another war that rages. And while hostilities have never been formally declared, the casualties mount just the same. But instead of taking place on foreign shores, this battle is being waged in our homes and in the context of our marriages. And so this morning we are continuing with our series on marriage entitled, “After The Honeymoon.” And the whole idea of this series is to see good marriages become great, struggling marriages to find hope, and hurting marriages to find healing as we look into God’s word together.
And that’s a good starting place for us, because God is the one who has created marriage in the first place! And when He brings a man and a woman together in this sacred union, it is meant to be a rich, and a wonderful gift, that flows forth from His hands. And I hope that if you’re married, that that has been your experience in marriage! Yet the truth is that mixed with the joy and wonder and excitement there may also be times of hurt, and heartache, disappointment and frustration, possibly even bitterness, disillusionment and regret.
And we ought not to be surprised when difficult moments come into our marriages. Just take a look at who you married and you’ll understand why that is! Take a good look at them. In fact, here’s what I want you to do … If you’re married, take a moment, right now, and look deep into your spouse’s eyes. Go ahead and do that ... don’t be shy! What do you see?
Now they’re many ways to answer that question, aren’t there? You might see the man or woman of your dreams. You might see your best friend. You might see the person who knows you better than anyone else. If you had a fight on the way to church maybe you’re seeing the enemy, the one who has hurt you, wounded you in some way! You could answer that question in so many different ways, but I want you to understand is, that as you are looking into the eyes of your dearly beloved, that you are looking into the eyes of a sinner.
And then I want you to look even deeper. Because there is something else you need to see in your spouse’s eyes. If you look close enough, what do you see? You see a reflection of yourself, don’t you? In your partner’s eyes is reflected the image of yet another sinner.
That’s what marriage often does – reflects ourselves back at us – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Marriage is one of God’s many places where He is at work refining us and molding our character into that of His own Son. See, marriage is for our good, but it is for God’s glory! And God is glorified as sinners are transformed by His grace. The Gospel is proclaimed in our marriages as we extend that grace to one another. And that is true of any relationship – not just our marriages - so don’t think that if you don’t happen to be married right now that this isn’t a message for you! God’s truth is truth for us all. And the truth is this: that when all is said and done, God is more interested in your holiness than in your happiness. And marriage is a place where all those rough edges in our lives can be reflected back at us, that we might see them as they really are, and allow God to work in them to bring holiness and healing.
What on earth do I mean by that? Well open your Bibles with me this morning please to the 7th chapter of the book of Romans. Romans 7 and we’ll begin reading in verse 14. And I’ll say right up front that this 7th chapter has got to be one of the most difficult passages to understand in the entire Bible and yet we so much need to grasp it’s meaning and to understand it in the context of our own lives. When I finally began to better understand it a number of years ago it radically changed my perception of who I was, what God was doing in my life, and the person He was calling me to be. It was a passage that God used to free me from a burden of guilt and frustration and because of that it is a passage that I’ve found I’ve needed to come back to from time to time. So let’s begin reading in Romans 7, verse 14. This is what Paul writes …
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:14–25, NIV)
A couple of weeks ago I ended the message with a quote that I asked you to think about that went like this: “Till sin be bitter, marriage will not be sweet.” And the main thrust of that message was that the biggest problem with our marriages, is not the pressures of life, the marriage itself, nor our spouse. It’s not the in-laws, the out-laws, or the children. The biggest problem in our marriages is the sin within our own hearts. When you said, “I do,” you joined yourself in marriage to someone who was so desperately lost, and so hopelessly entangled in sin, that it required Jesus to die and shed His blood, so that their sins could be forgiven and they could have peace with God. And they married someone who’s in exactly the same boat! If the two of you are in Christ then you have experienced God’s amazing grace and you’re going to have plenty of opportunity over the years to extend that same type of grace to one another.
Why? Listen again to what Paul says: “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep doing.” Paul writes those words as a man who has been redeemed – bought back from the death that sin brings – by the precious blood of Jesus. He writes those words as a man whom Jesus has met with, whose life has been incredibly transformed by the grace of God, and who has been used powerfully by that same God to share the good news of Jesus with countless others. He has seen miracles, He has experienced God’s provision, and what is his testimony? That there is this battle that rages within him. On the one hand he wants to live completely sold out to God – body, soul, mind and spirit – everything he is, and has, and ever hopes to be. That’s Paul’s heart. Yet even though he is a new creation in Jesus, that old sinful nature still rises up at times. He finds himself sinning when what he really wants to be doing is serving the Lord wholeheartedly.
Does he excuse his sin? No! But he does understand it as a continuing struggle in the Christian life. And that is a struggle that everyone of us will face even though we have been redeemed - on the one hand wanting to honor God in every word that is spoken and every deed that is done, and on the other a longing to satisfy the desires of the sinful nature.
That’s where I discovered this incredible freedom in my faith so many years ago. I struggled with the reality that even though I professed faith in Jesus, and I knew He had died to redeem me from the death that sin brings and to deliver me from sin’s power, I still found myself sinning. And I would cry out in the quietness of my own heart, “Can I truly be saved if this is what my life is bringing forth? Ought sin not to be done away with since I am now a new creation in Jesus?” And there was guilt, and there was shame, and a complete sense of failure and frustration because, like Paul, I knew the good I longed to do, but too often I find myself doing the evil that I did not really want to do. I struggled in my faith to reconcile those two realities and it wasn’t until I read this passage in Romans that it began to make sense for me, and I realized that as long as we still draw breath there is going to be this tension between the things of God and the things of this world.
Does that excuse my sin? Not by a long shot! Does that mean that I stop striving for and reaching towards that life that is described for us in God’s word? Not at all! What it does mean is that I learn to appreciate God’s grace all the more. See, my life is a long term project that God is working on. By God’s grace I am not today, what I was yesterday, and by that same grace I am not today, that which I will one day be! From the moment we first experience God’s mercy and our sins are forgiven, a work of sanctification – that is the process of being made holy – is begun in our lives and it continues until the day we die.
Now what does this have to do with our marriages? Let me suggest to you that it has everything to do with the pain, and hurt and heartache we may experience in that union. To help you understand that, let me ask you a question that you need to wrestle with: If you love your spouse as much as you profess to do, then why is it so very easy to treat them as if you don’t love them at all?
Now I like to think that I love my wife with my whole heart. I would lay down my life for her. I asked her to marry me, to build a home together with me, because I loved her, and appreciated her, and treasured her. She did things to my heart that no-one else had ever done! But it breaks my heart at times when I see how very easy it is for me to hurt her with my words, or my thoughtlessness, to take her for granted, to consider her needs less important than mine, to undervalue her opinion, to treat her, in fact, as though I did not love her at all.
And you’ve been there too, haven’t you? You’ve said, or done something, that brings pain or hurt or trial into the life of your spouse. You may even have said or done those things on purpose to bring hurt or pain to them because of your own anger or hurt that you were experiencing at that time. Careless words rush out, you turn away in anger or hurt, you slam the door, you give them the silent treatment, you take your pillow off the bed and go to sleep in a separate room because you don’t want to be sleeping with the one who has suddenly become, the enemy. Can you relate to some of those things?
Well where does that come from? You and I both know that these things – these attitudes and behaviors - are more hurtful then helpful and yet we do them anyway. So where do they come from? They come from that battle that is being waged within your own heart. If I snap at Heather, or the kids, or anyone else for that matter, it is because of some hurt, pain, disappointment, or shattered expectation in my own life. My anger, my frustration, my impatience rises to the surface, and God uses that situation to reflect back to me – as though in a mirror – some area of brokenness in my own life that He longs to heal and to make whole.
Think of precious metals like gold and silver. To remove the impurities within those metals, they heat them up to an incredibly high temperature until the impurities rise to the surface and are revealed for what they really are. Only then can the impurities be dealt with and removed so that the precious metal that is left is even more valuable than before.
Marriage is this very close and intimate relationship between a man and a woman that heats things up in a heartbeat. Pressures, expectations, different dreams, can all become the flashpoint that God uses to reveal the impurities within – not within our spouse – we don’t have any trouble seeing those ones do we? – but the impurities within ourselves.
When that heat is on it is easy to lash out at our spouse and to focus on their sin. But friends, God is longing to do a work, not just in your spouse, but in you. And until your own sin be bitter to you – bitter to the point that you cry out to God for help and seek to walk in righteousness, truth, holiness and peace - your marriage will not be sweet.
Just consider how much hurt and heartache could be avoided in our homes if we allowed a gentle answer to turn away wrath, if we considered the needs of our spouse ahead our own needs, if, husbands we loved our wives as Christ loved the church and laid down our life for her, if wives, you respected your husbands in a similar manner to how you respect Jesus. Would not our homes be different places if we faithfully did this time after time? This is the good that we want to be doing. Yet all too often we choose the path of anger, or hurt, or bitterness in place of those things that we are called to in Jesus. We choose the evil we do not really want to be doing and the result is that we end up focusing on what our spouse has said, or done, or left un-done, rather than what God is revealing of our own nature.
Turn with me for a moment to the Gospel of Luke. Luke, chapter 6, and we’ll read a couple of verses beginning in verse 39. Jesus is speaking to the crowds and He tells them a parable saying: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit?” [And then down to verse 41 … “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Luke 6:39–42, NIV)
Now, instead of the word “brother” in those verses, substitute the word “husband” or “wife” – whichever one is applicable for you. So often we focus on the speck of sawdust in our spouse’s eye while failing to see the plank in our own eye. And when we’re each focused on the sin of the other we’re going to fall into this pit of despair, and anger and hurt and bitterness. And all too often this is what ends up destroying marriages. A much better way is to start with our own sin. Allow God to deal with the impurity that the heat of the moment has revealed in our own life, because God knows that that is the work that needs to be done if your marriage is to be truly sweet.
Friends, the truth is that as long as I live, there is going to be this tension, this battle, this undeclared war, that is being waged between my desire to live for God and the longings of the sinful nature which threaten to bring so much hurt and heartache into our marriages. But the good news is this: In Christ we are not powerless in the face of these longings. The Bible tells us that the victory is ultimately His for we can be confident of this: “That He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6, NIV) I may have to fight this war all the days of my life but my spiritual nature is guaranteed the victory when all is said and done. That’s why Paul cries out in verse 24 saying, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Hope for victory in this struggle in each day lies in Jesus. Hope for marriages that are hurting and troubled, or simply not all that they are meant to be, is found in Jesus! It is through Him that the Spirit works to purify, and refine, and overcome and continue in you, that process of sanctification which is so pleasing to God and so healing to our relationships.
You heard them earlier in this service but listen again to these words from the 5th chapter of the book of Galatians. Paul writes, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. …. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. … Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:13–26, NIV)
Author Dave Harvey wrote these words which I believe to be profoundly true: “The gospel is the heart of the Bible. Everything in Scripture is either preparation for the gospel, presentation of the gospel, or participation in the gospel. In the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the gospel provides an ultimate solution for our sin – for today, for tomorrow, for the day we stand before God, and forever.” (When Sinners Say “I Do,” Dave Harvey, pg. 24) And I would add to that that in providing the solution for our sin, and hope in the midst of brokenness, that the gospel is also the solution to the brokenness in our marriages. It is the fountain through which grace flows into our marriages and by which they are strengthened and made whole.
There is much more I would like to say this morning but time is passing swiftly. So let me just say this – the true enemy to the marriage you’ve always desired is not the person whom you are sharing the bed with – it’s that heart in tension that lies within each of us. And we need to allow the gospel to speak into the reality of our own sin, to find healing for our brokenness, and to discover hope for each day, that that same grace which God has so richly poured out upon us, may flow into, and be lived out within, the context of our marriages.
Let’s pray …
