Marriage Is Working To Keep A Vow
GNLCC 6/30/2003 Proverbs 5:15-19 Ephesians 5:21-33
One day two little kids were playing outside with sticks. They pretended they were great pirates with long pointed swords. All was going well until Billy got a little too close and accidentally hit Johnny on the arm. It stung very sharply and Johnny began to cry.
Billy knew he would be in trouble and he told Johnny, I’m sorry, I’m sorry it was accident. Johnny stopped crying and said okay, don’t worry. I promise. I won’t tell. Billy felt a sight of relief. They played together for a few more minutes and were called inside by their mother.
As soon as they got inside, their mother brought them some ice cream and cookies. But Billy had an extra cookie. Johnny immediately said, “no fair, Billy has an extra cookie.” His Mom said, “yes that’s because Billy picked up his toys this morning and you did not.” Still upset over having one less cookie, Johnny blurted out, “Billy hit me on the arm with a stick outside and still kinda hurts.”
Billy looked at Johnny with disbelief, because he had believed his brother’s promise. Johnny’s vow was good only as long as things were going his way. How good is a vow or promise that you make? It’s funny, just by saying I vow to do this or promise to do that, we create something out of nothing which can cause someone to agree to change their lives forever.
We live in a world today in which some people make vows and promises that are absolutely worthless. The prospective tenant promises to pay the rent on time and the landlord promises that everything is working fine in the apartment. One of them is often not telling the truth. The car dealer promises us this car has no mechanical problems and he guarantees everything for 30 days. Somehow on the 31st day, the transmission falls apart.
A vow is like a promise taken to a new level. When we make a vow, we do it entirely on our own with God as our witness. One of the most sacred vows of all time, is the pledge one human being makes to be there for each other no matter what. We all love that love story in which the couple in love undergoes some severe trial together and the other person remains there until death, or of the soldiers on the battlefield, when one gives up his life because of a promise so that the other might live. We like to see people keep their word. It gives us hope of one day having something like that for ourselves.
Today we celebrate Marriage Sunday. A marriage vow is one of the most sacred vows that we make to each other. It is sacred because the marriage relationship is to be a picture of Jesus Christ and His relationship to the church. Jesus’ vow to the church was to voluntarily lay down His life for the church to have life. His vow to the church was forever. There is something about those words, till death do us part that calls out for the best in each of us.
No vow should be taken with greater seriousness and integrity than the vow a man and a woman makes to each other in marriage. Did you know that many people do not understand the purpose for getting married? The purpose of getting married is not to find happiness together. The purpose of marriage is to have the opportunity to keep the vows and the promises that are made to each other.
There is no box of joy and happiness waiting to found by a couple. It’s the work that goes into keeping the vows that makes a marriage overflow with happiness and joy.
Notice when we make vows in marriage, our vow is “what I am pledging to do for a lifetime.” It’s not that couples fall out of love with each other that causes a marriage to go bad. The unhappiness comes in when couples quit keeping their vows to each other. Love can always be brought back into a relationship simply by both partners going back to their marriage vows and starting to keep them.
Today we’re celebrating marriages that are barely a year old, marriages that are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and above years old. Each one can tell you there were some great moments at times and some moments that may have been tense, but keeping their vows helped them to get through the tenseness. If we believed what the bible has to say about marriage rather than the love songs, we’d be in much better shape for handling difficulties in marriage.
Every couple starts out with the idea, their marriage is not going to make the same mistakes that other couples have. There’s will be the one everyone will want to pattern themselves after. But it just does not work like that. Marriage is not what we expect it to be as we all who are married have found out . People have lied to us when they said, “as long as you really love each other, it will work.” That’s a bunch of non-sense. Being romantically in love is not enough to produce a good marriage. Both people striving to become like Jesus Christ will.
Look at the artists who sing all those romantic love songs, and try to see if you can name five who have been married for 20 years or more to the same person and are still keeping their vows. Barry White, Lionel Ritchie, and Smokey all gave us some great romantic music, but not one of them could show us what it is to keep a vow to one person for a lifetime.
The one manual that tries to give us a realistic view of marriage, is the one that created it. It’s called the Bible. Now the Bible makes it clear that a good marriage is one of the rewards that God has given us to enjoy in this life. But the Bible also warns that it is not going to always be easy.
Listen to this verse about marriage. I Corinthians 7:28 says, "But those who marry will face many troubles in this life." Now the verse didn’t say that there wouldn’t be joy and happiness in marriage, but it specifically tells us that marriage is going to have many troubles. The reason for the troubles is that all of us are imperfect human beings. But we deceive and tell the other person, “I’m going to be the perfect mate for you" and they deceive us and say " that’s wonderful and I will be the perfect mate for you. "
The success of a marriage has little to do with how much you love another person feeling wise. People get divorced everyday who still have feelings for each other. The success of a marriage depends on the amount of work that you are willing to put into keeping the vows you made on your wedding date. It’s not enough to say I do once. We have to keep not only saying I do, but doing it as well.
Marriage may be fun, it may be good, it may be what you want, but more than anything else a good marriage is working to keep your vows. You have to work at a marriage to make it a good marriage. Just wishing for one or praying for one is not going to cause it to happen. Both people must work at it. It is work to keep the vows you made. Work means dying to yourself for the good of the marriage. Sometimes you may be the only one doing the work, but you keep on doing it.
Now God told us in the beginning that marriage was going to be work when He said in Genesis 2:24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
God tells us in the beginning, to be married you’ve got to do three things and all of them involve work. The first thing you must do is leave where you’ve been. If you have ever left one apartment to move into another, you know that there is a lot of work involved.
So in marriage God says you’ve got to leave your family and go live somewhere else. That means saying good-bye to people you love. It means no longer expecting to get financial support from them, no longer being able to automatically take their sides in disputes, no longer being able to share holidays and traditions like you use to, no longer being able to rush in and be there for them like you use to, and no longer letting them be the first human beings in your life. It means adjustments.
This doesn’t happen automatically. You’ve got to work to leave them behind, especially when some of them are holding on to you refusing to let you go or you’re still trying to hold on to them. Some couples never leave their families, and end up divorced because every major decision had to be approved by one of their moms or dads. When family members ask, “How come you’re acting all different to the family”, “you’ve got to be willing to say, “I made a vow to put him first/her first and I will not take it back.”
God says you’ve got to be united to each other. Contrary to what you might think, you and your spouse are not as much alike as you thought you were when you first got married. The good news is that this gives us the opportunity to prove what we said on our wedding day when we made our vows.
We go out and marry and marry opposites because they compliment us, but we have to go home and live with each other weaknesses. Those of us who don’t talk much, marry someone who talks a lot to help cover our weakness in public. Once you marry, you find out that every time you’re ready to go home, this person wants to talk to fifty people.
Those of us who are always late marry someone who is always on time, because we think, now we will never be late again. Instead we find this person who is constantly bugging us to death about hurry up, come on now, we’re going to be late again. It takes work to be united together. You realize that very quickly you’ve got to come to an agreement on certain rules if its going to be a happy experience. Those rules change with time if you’re working at keeping your vows.
God says and become one flesh. Now that verse includes sex, but it includes a lot more than sex. Some of us think that becoming one means that the other person is to become just like me. So we set out to make this other person just like us. It’s like putting a fox and a chicken in the same cage. They will become one, but after a very short period of time, you will see mostly the fox, with perhaps a feather or two around his lips.
It takes work to keep from trying to make this other person do things just like you want them done. Remember, the positive attributes of the person next time you’re upset over the toothpaste, the garbage,
the cabinet, or the bed not being made.
Marriage is not making the other person in our image. It is giving birth to a new relationship that’s different from what either person has known in the past. Remember in our vows, we promised to make the adjustments necessary to provide for the other persons strengths and weaknesses.
Both people have much to bring and to offer to the relationship, and both have things they have to let go of if oneness is going to be achieved. It may mean changing your former family traditions and creating some of your own. It means that you can be different but still be one. Each weakness can be turned into a strength if you’re willing to work at.
We may confuse marriage reality with marriage myths. " And they lived happily ever after" is one of the myths. The only couples that have lived happily ever after in marriage were those who as soon as they kissed each other after they were pronounced husband and wife, they both instantly had heart attacks and died before reaching the floor. They could honestly say they never had a disagreement of any kind.
Couples can certainly live happier together after they get married if they are willing to resolve conflict. When disagreements come up, smart couples are willing to work through to a solution. It does no good to keep things in, slam doors and throw pots, say whatever, get up and leave, or just refuse to talk. These things are the gateways to pain and alienation.
If we’re keeping our vows, we’re willing to talk and to be honest even when it is difficult. Wise is the couple who know how to talk or know when to go together to someone to help them work through a problem.
We need to work to keep our vows, because we do not have the same understanding of the term marriage. Marriage means different things to each person. One person is looking for deep personal discussions each night. Another just wants watch videos. One person is not planning on doing much talking. The other thinks that’s the purpose of getting in bed at night.
One person is looking for someone to clean, to take care of him/or her. One is expecting sex at the drop of a hat the other thinks once a week is a little bit much, but maybe twice in one week is okay if something special happened. Needless to say, problems arise when either person is intent on changing the other person.
The reality is, we cannot change another person. We can only change and adjust our own reactions and actions. No where in the Bible does it says for us to make others anything. The Bible tells us what we are to do about ourselves. Again in our vows, we promised to change.
Some of us with good marriages have been told on occasions, “You were just made for each other.” That sounds good but it is not true. The truth is that there is no perfect mate waiting for you and all you have to do is find that person to be happy in life. The Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and that the human heart is of all things most deceitful.
We all marry a person who has experience at being a sinner. If we marry a sinner, we should not be shocked if every now and then the person acts like one by being stubborn, selfish, demanding, and very difficult to get along with. Sometimes you will be the one playing the part. You must work to get rid of these things by making conscious decisions to allow the power of Jesus Christ to change you. Rather than complain to God about our mate, our prayer is to be, “Lord how can you change me to keep my vows.
Marriage does not make us a whole person. Only Jesus Christ can do that. The people who look as though they were made for each other have chosen to make themselves for each other by keeping their vows to each other.
Marriage is working hard to keep our vows again and again. It is amazing how our language is confused in marriage. Satan probably has a hand in it somewhere. We say one thing and the other person hears something else.
Communication is not me telling you, “here’s how its going to be. We’re going to do it like this.” Communication is not one person yelling one thing and another person yelling something about. To continue to build and rebuild a marriage real communication has to take place. Communication takes place, when I say what I intended to say, and you heard what I intended for you to hear. It is important not only hearing the words, but feeling the feelings behind the words.
Now women, have a good way of saying something that is not what they intended to say, but honestly believe that men should be able to look beyond what they said and understand what they intended to say. A woman will say, “Honey I picked up your shoes and put them in the closet.” The husband says thank you sweetheart and thinks nothing else of it. He notices his wife is a little distant, and says “is something bothering you”. She says “no.” He says, “are you sure.”
She says “well there is one thing. I just feel like I’m taken for granted around here. I have to pick up after the kids, and after you and its just getting too much. Why don’t you all care about my feelings and the extra work you make for me.” Now that’s what she was trying to tell him when she told him that she picked up his shoes and put them in the closet, only he thought she was just letting him know where the shoes were if he needed them.
This is why the Scriptures tell us to be bear with one another. We often assume the other person knows something that the other person doesn’t. It takes work to keep keeping our vows. Yet there is a great joy when we find that we are building in the correct manner.
There is a pattern to follow to keeping our vows. Keep doing what is right, even when the other person is doing wrong. You’re going to be hurt and disappointed. Keep on keeping your vows. No marriage ever got better because one partner stooped to return a wrong for a wrong. The word of God tells us to overcome evil with good.
It takes work to keep doing what is right when those romantic feelings for the other person is gone. It takes work to keep doing right when the other person has misunderstood your actions or your motives. Remember. Love is willing to believe the best.
The most needed ingredient for a good marriage is forgiveness. Keep forgiving the other person, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. It’s not possible to keep celebrating joyously the anniversary of your wedding without a lot of forgiveness. But remember we need some forgetfulness as well. It’s good when you can’t remember what that big argument was about two years ago. It means when you forgave each other, you did not bring it back up again.
One easier way to reach 50 or 60 years of marriage is to keep your vows one day at a time. The years will take care of themselves. Your marriage is to be a picture of Jesus Christ and the church. Honor and treasure it to the best of your ability. Reward each other for making it this far on the journey because many who started out on the same day that you did, did not make it this far.
Let the vow, till death do us part, continue to mean something in your life. You do not know how much time you have left together, so love each other fully today. Jesus is always ready to help you with a brand new start if you’re willing to repent and do things His way. Let’s keep working to keep our vows.
All Married Couples Who Are Able Are Invited To Go To The Back Of The Church During The Invitational Hymn And Form A Line Going Out The Door of The Church. The Line Should Come In Two By Two With The Husbands & The Wives On Opposite Side.
Your Are To Walk Arm In Arm Down The Aisle Near The Music Area And Walk To The Front And Form A Line Across The Church Near The Opposite Wall. Couples May Also Stand In The Pulpit Area.
At The Appropriate Time, You Are To Face Each Other And Repeat After The Pastor As You Renew Your Vows To Each Other.
Sermon Outline-Pastor Rick 6/30/2003
Marriage—Working To Keep A Vow
Proverbs 5:15-19, I Corinthians 13:4-8 Ephesians 5:21-33
A. How Lasting Is You Promise/Vow
1. Billy, Johnny, Swords, Vow & Cookies
2. But You Promised---Gotta Go My Way
3. Vow Creates Something From Nothing
4. Worthless Vows—Landlord Tenant/ Mechanic
B. Vow—Higher Level Than A Promise
1. Most Sacred—Between Individuals For Life.
2. The Sacred Love Story—The Personal Sacrifice
3. Like To See Vows That Are Kept
C. Today Celebration Of Marriage Sunday
1. Marriage Sacred- Because Christ & The Church
2. Jesus Promised The Church All That He Had
3. Till Death Do Us Part—Take It Serious
D. Understanding The Reason To Get Married
1. To Live Happily Ever After??????
2. The Opportunity To Live Out The Vows
3. The Box Of Joy Waiting But Opportunities To Make
4. Secret Found In Working To Keep The Vows
5. Why Couples Become Unhappy
E. Our Marriage Is Going To Be The Perfect One
1. I Had Not Expected That To Happen
2. What—Romantic Love Is Not Enough!
3. Wisdom Of Barry White, Lionel Ritchie, Smokey
4. Using The Original Marriage Manual
5. It’s Going To Be Good, But Not Easy
6. 1 Corinthians 7:28
F. We Get To Choose From Imperfect People
1. The Well Accepted Deception Of Love
2. Success In Marriage Not Related To Love
3. What Does It Mean To Go To Work
4. Genesis 2:24 “For This Reason
G. God’s Acknowledgment Of A Little Work
1. There Can Be A Problem With Leaving
2. Saying Goodbye To A Lot Of Things
3. Prepare For The Adjustments
4. Leaving Not Automatic
5. Remember The Vow Of Who Is Now First
H. God Says Be United To Each Other
1. We’re Not Quite Alike—Great Opportunity
2. When Opposites Get Together
3. Talk, Time, Late
4. Sex
5. The Fox And The Chicken
6. In Differences Anger—Remember The Good
7. Toothpaste, Cabinet, Bed, Garbage
8. Not To Make You In My Image.
I. Sometimes Dealing With Myths Instead Of Marriage
1. And They Lived Happily Ever After
2. Choosing To Resolve The Conflict
3. Smart Couples Remember Their Vows
4. Marriage Means The Same Thing To Us Both-HaHa
5. Deep Discussion/Videos—How Much Talk
6. How Much Cleaning---- How Much Sex
J. Here’s The Power We Have To Change
1. Remembering Who Made The Vow
2. You Were Made For Each Other---Oh Really
3. Waiting For Mr. Perfect Or Ms. Right
4. Only Sinners Are Available For Marriage
5. Not The Time To Complain, But To Pray
K. Jesus In The Business Of Making You Whole
1. The Call Is To Keep Doing The Work
2. Communication—More Than Just Words
3. Saying What You Really Means
4. “Honey I Picked Up Your Shoes And Put Them
In The Closet”
5. When Everything Is Not Okay
6. Expressing What We Really Intended
7. Bearing One Another In Love
L. The Pattern To Follow
1. When The Other Person Is Doing Wrong
2. Keep On Keeping Your Vows
3. Expect Misunderstandings
4. Love—Willing To Believe The Best
5. The Gift Of Forgiveness
6. I Can’t Remember That Argument
7. One Day At A Time
8. Jesus Christ & The Church
9. Rewarding Each Other
10. You’re Still In The Race
11. Running Till Death Do Us Part
