Relationships: The Struggle Is Real: Marriage
7/17/2016 Genesis 2:15-24 Ephesians 5:21-23
We are in the third message of our series Relationships: The Struggle Is Real. We have looked at Dating and Singles. We have upcoming Parenting, Divorce, and Being Single Again because of death. Today we are going to look at Marriage.
How many of you have gone to a movie and been given 3D glasses that actually work. If they work properly, you can see things that others cannot see. As a matter of fact, you see things that are not really there in front of you, even though it looks as if you can reach out and touch the images in front of you. If you keep the glasses on long enough, you will believe what you are seeing is true and accept it as normal.
We all see the world differently. We all see our church differently. We all see each other differently. It all depends on what pair of glasses we see through. When you become a Christian, you agree to put on a pair of glasses so that you can start to see things from God’s point of view. The whole purpose of reading the bible and studying the bible is to see things from God’s point of view, because the Scriptures are God’s gift to us to understand who God is.
So the battle comes for us in that somebody is always trying to get us to take off our glasses and see the world from their point of view. There is nothing wrong with looking at the world with their glasses on so long as we realize that’s what’s happening, but before we make a decision to act, we should put back on God’s glasses to see the world from God’s viewpoint because ultimately that is the view that is going to matter, and that is the view that is going to put us in the best position to get the most out of life, and to keep us within God’s will.
Here is how some people think of God and what God thinks of morality from the Wiz, where everybody knows the Emerald City is Green…..The Bible tells us that God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
God’s view is rarely going to be the popular view or even the majority view even among the people who call on God, but it is going to be the right view. Jesus is the Son of God. That means Jesus knows everything. Jesus accepted the book of Genesis as being the word of God, because he actually quoted from it and refer to events in it as being accurate historical events. So we can trust the book of Genesis, not only because it is in the Bible, but because Jesus trusted the book of Genesis.
Jesus wore a pair of glasses that always looked at the world from God the Father’s point of view. He said, “I can only do, what I see the Father doing.” That’s a good pair of glasses to be wearing. Can you see the Father doing what you are doing?
The idea of marriage, was a God idea. You may recall, when God created life, everything was created in abundance and in pairs simply by God saying, “let there be. “ When it came time for the creation of a human being, God didn’t speak humans into existence in the same way. He took the time to create one person, by the name of Adam from the dust of the earth. So when God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone”, God was saying, “It is not good for there not to be another creature of His kind that was created in the image of God.” God is not making a declaration here that everybody needs to be married in order not to be alone.
God came up with the idea of the sexes. He created a woman who was like the man but not exactly a man. God created the woman with the idea of sex in mind. So God came up with the idea of sex and defined what the boundaries of it would be. God wanted the man and the woman to share in the kind of oneness that exists between the Trinity in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God brought these two first people together, named Adam and Eve and God married them. The idea was that the man would leave all of his closest relationships and attachments behind, cleave to his wife—(emotionally and spiritually), and become one flesh with her physically. Adam and Eve were so much one, that they were naked and had nothing to hide because their relationship was pure and holy in God’s sight.
When they had sex together God was smiling and saying, “Yes, that’s good. They are using it exactly as I planned.” The marriage relationship of a man and a woman was to be a picture of the future relationship that Christ would have with the church.
Shortly after sin came into the world through Adam and Eve’s rejection of the authority of God, the first thing they lost was their oneness with each other, and their oneness with God. Sex immediately became distorted and they tried to hide their sexual organs from each other behind their leaves from some trees. Something went wrong inside with humanity’s sexual desires that would be passed on through their genes. They even turned on each other for the wrong that had occurred when God confronted them with their disobedience.
Within a few generations marriage had been redefined as people drifted further from God, and we soon see Lamech, the first man in Genesis to take two wives. The Bible records that sexual activity drifted into not only wives but concubines who were like official girlfriends on the side. Genesis shows us that rape, adultery, prostitution, shacking up, and homosexuality all became a part of what humans thought was natural and acceptable as they kept changing the glasses they were wearing.
We see two women who get their father drunk with alcohol so that he could get them pregnant without knowing it. We would call it date rape today with drugs today. All of this happens in the very first book of the bible. We think as a nation we are progressive in our sexual liberation, but everything Hollywood glorifies as the new morality is in the very first book of the bible. The only difference is that in Genesis its referred to as sin and disobedience to God.
God did not change his view or his vision for marriage or on sex. You cannot find one instance of God telling a man to pursue a sexual relationship with another man, or a woman with another woman. You cannot find God telling two single people to pursue a sexual relationship with each other outside of marriage. You cannot find God telling a married person to pursue a sexual relationship with another person. The only way you can do this is to take off your glasses of looking at the world through God’s view point and putting on a different pair of glasses so that you start looking at the problem from a different point of view.
Marriage had gotten to the point where you could divorce a person if they burnt your dinner by simply saying 3 times, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you. They tried to get Jesus to say this was okay, but instead Jesus shocked them by quoting Genesis. He said Matthew 19:3-6 (NIV)
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" 4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,'
5 and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'?
6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
What Jesus wanted us to do, was to get back to God’s original plan for marriage so that we could function in the oneness that God desires. The struggle in marriage comes from two people who have expectations of each other and those expectations are not being met. The bible tells us that marriage is going to be a challenge. 1 Corinthians tells us, those who marry will have troubles in this life.
Here’s the definition of what marriage is from our Book of Confessions. It’s in your bulletin. Let’s read it together. Christian marriage is an institution ordained of God, blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ, established and sanctified for the happiness and welfare of mankind, into which spiritual and physical union one man and one woman enter, cherishing a mutual esteem and love, bearing with each other’s infirmities and weaknesses, comforting each other in trouble, providing in honesty and industry for each other and for their household, praying for each other, and living together the length of their days as heirs of the grace of life (6.131)” (Westiminster Confession)
We all come into marriage with different dreams and desires. We expect this other person to make those dreams and desires a reality for us. So how do we make this marriage work once our dreams and desires become expectations that we pour on the other person. Once they are poured out, it changes the nature of the marriage. You see the other persons, they didn’t even know they were signing up for some of our expectations.
How do we get beyond the expectations we have of this other person to building joy and intimacy in marriage? Our expectations can become a burden around the other person’s neck. . I Expect you, ..I expect you.. I expect you….
How do we get people who have unfulfilled expectations of this other person to make the necessary adjustments to make the struggle less of a struggle?
We are going to look at this from God’s view point using God’s word. God created marriage. God knows how it should work.
How do we deal with expectations? It begins with answering the question, what does my spouse owe me. You owe me because…..
Christians need to realize your spouse does not owe you anything. I know that seems odd, but the sooner we realize it, the more appreciative we become of the other person. Think about it, Jesus never once says, you owe your wife this or you owe your wife that. Christian marriage is a series of decisions to act in love. So get rid of expectations of thinking your spouse owes you because God is not going to tell your spouse to do anything for you, because they owe it to you.
The reason the bible tells you to marry a believer, is because every marriage needs a third person who is front and center in the marriage. That third person is Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:21 Submit to one another out of a reverence for Christ.
Submit means, I am going to make your dreams, your desires, and your wishes a priority over mine. So when the two clash, I am going to make yours a priority.
Notice it does not say submit to one another out of your love for each other, or out of reverence for each other. Or even because of the commitment you made in your vows. It says submit to one another out a reverence for Christ.
Reverance means wow, or awe, or whoa. The submission comes out of our reverence for Christ.—The immediate temptation is to take off the God glasses and look at marriage from our glass perspective. But God is saying, “In light of what Jesus has done for you—died for you, forgave your sins, cleansed you and made you righteous and even now has promised you new life. I want you to show your reverence to me by submitting to your spouse. This is revolutionary for marriage. Especially when you realize this passage isn’t about who is the boss of who.
This is like you telling God just how grateful you are for all the wonderful things He has done in your life and you just love and appreciate Him, for giving you grace and mercy when you didn’t deserve it, and how you broke your promises but God still loves you and you say “God is there anything I can do to honor you and show you my appreciation.” God says yes. Submit to your wife or to your husband and pour all the love you want to give to me on top of him or her. Pour your gratitude on him or on her.
We want to say, well God isn’t there something else I could do in the church to show my appreciation. We want to keep our walk with God in the church. He wants to put our walk back into our marriage.
You see God does not want us to put the other person first because they deserve it or earned it. God wants us to do it because Jesus put us first. He loved us, before we first loved him. God wants us to do for the other person, what God has done for us. Just as God has cancelled our debt, He wants us to cancel the debts in our marriage. Just like God declares that we do not owe him anything, we have to declare our spouses do not owe us anything. I want you to submit for my sake out of reverence for Me.
Vs 22 Wives, submit to your husbands because they are great, because they have earned it, because they can be trusted, as to the Lord. God is saying “ladies, you know how you submit to me.” “Well yes, but God it’s easy to submit to you. Look at all you have done and I’m so grateful.” God is saying,” I want you to take all that gratitude and pour it on your husband.” You’re ready to say,” but God you must not be paying attention to what he’s been doing.” God is saying,”It’s not about him. This is about you and me. I want you, out of reverence for me to love him, like I love you.” But God, couldn’t I wait until he starts behaving a little better.
VS 25 Husbands love your wives, if they submit to you , just as they deserve to be loved, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. God is saying, “Guys love your wives, just as Christ loved you.” Remember also that Christ died for you.
This is not about how lovable she is. It’s not what she has earned or deserved. God is saying I want you to take all the love and gratitude you have for me and channel it to your wife.
I want you to be willing to lay down her life for her, because I laid down my life for you. Some of us won’t even lay down the tv remote for her. This passage means that we need to communicate and convince our wives that we would be willing to lay down our stuff, and our gadgets, our plans, our businesses and our time on her behalf whenever it’s necessary.
Why because there was a time 2000 years ago when God stepped out of heaven and made saving us a priority in the history of time by sending his son Jesus Christ to die on our behalf on a cross. Three days later, God raised Jesus from the dead so that we could have eternal life. God says if you are grateful for what I did for you, then stand in for me and do it for your wife. That’s what it means to love your wife as Christ loved the church.
God is saying to married couples, I want you to take this debt free relationship you have with me and apply it to your marriage. Quit thinking this other person owes you something. God does not want us operating out of what we the other person owes us. God wants us to operate out of our love for God. God wants us to do this whether our spouse is a believer or not a believer. Some of our spouses will one day get saved, because we choose to live this passage in Ephesians.
I want you to know that this is God’s plan for restoring the joy and intimacy in our marriage. We stop focusing on our expectations. We choose to love God by finding out what our spouses desires and dreams are, and we try to fulfill them.
We choose to release our spouse from all these expectations and begin to be thankful for what they do on our behalf. Now notice, the goal of our submission is to show reverence for Christ. I can’t join in some sinful behavior out of reverence for Christ. You can’t unlock submission from reverence for Christ. Christians do not introduce into their marriages things that are contrary to the word of God by changing glasses and looking at marriage from another view point. Swapping spouses is not of God. Bringing in pornographic movies is not of God. Shacking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend to prepare for marriage is not of God. Anybody that tells you they love you, but will intentionally seek to pull you away from God to satisfy their love, is not of God.
If you are going to be a relationship, prepare for marriage, by living correctly before the marriage takes place. If you are not willing to submit to another person out of a reverence for Christ, you cannot have a Christian marriage. You will not have the kind of intimacy and oneness you are seeking.
One of the best things you can do for your marriage is to come be a part of marriage sensation and submit yourself to its teachings so that you can not only learn from other couples, but that you might help them grow as well.
The more we apply this teaching of recognizing we are to submit to one another out of a reverence for Christ and that our spouses do not owe us anything, the more we will leave our selfishness and expectations behind. It will give our spouses the freedom to begin to love us in much greater ways. The struggle in marriage is real. We need to own up to our part in understanding how our expectations are working against the very relationship that we desire to have. Are we willing to die for his sake, so that we might have life.
Marriage is not the only place we might have some unrealistic expectations of others. When Jesus commanded us to love one another, he never told us only to only go after the ones who are lovable, or attractive, or rich or popular or deserve our love. Just think of how much more we could do for Christ if we stopped expecting our church to do this for us, and started to help the church fulfill the dreams and desires it has for the cause of Christ.
Special thanks to Andy Stanley for some of his thoughts regarding spouses do not owe each other anything.
