“Devil, You Can’t Have My Marriage!”
Ephesians 5: 25-33
INTRO: 1. There are certain things in our life that will never change, nor improve until we take a stand.
a. There are certain things in life that will never be secure until we take a stand.
b. It’s time to take a Holy Ghost stand against the forces that are targeting our marriages.
c. Time to stand against a world that is increasingly anti-marriage.
d. Time to stand against a devil that is working to infect and destroy your home from the inside out.
e. Time to stand against modern philosophies that flies in the face of what God says.
2. Here in Ephesians our marriage is likened to the relationship Jesus Christ has with his bride… the church.
a. Calvary marks the place where Jesus took a stand against Satan, Sin and the World… a stand for his bride, the church.
b. Paul was saying here, like Jesus, you’ve got be be willing to fight for our marriages.
3. There are two subtle extremes that the enemy of marriage uses to destroy our marriage relationships right under our own noses.
a. There is Criticism… most often used by the wife, because she feels she has more invested in the marriage.
b. Let me tell you this morning, criticism never changed a marriage, but it has been used to plant hopelessness and division in millions.
c. There is Passivity… most often used by the husband that believes that the marriage relationship will magically take care of itself.
d. Men it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee…A Happy Marriage is NO Accident!
4. Before we can make a stand for anything we must see what in fact we’re standing on.
a. Your marriage can’t stand on feeling or emotion…fluctuate with the seasons.
b. Your marriage can’t stand on physical attraction…time can be cruel to our appearance.
ILL. Soon after our last child left home for college, a man and his wife were resting on the couch. She resting next to him with her head in his lap. He carefully removed her glasses. "You know, honey," he said sweetly, "without your glasses you look like the same beautiful young woman I married." "Honey," she replied with a grin, "without my glasses, you still look pretty good too!"
c. Your marriage can’t stand on mutual agreement…they’ll be some ’hum-dinger’ fights.
d. But your Marriage can stand on the Word of God.
e. Come to realize that only God can make my marriage what He intended it to be.
5. How can I let the Devil know that I won’t stand by and let him destroy my marriage?
a. How can I let the devil know I’m standing on the Word and relying on the power of the Holy Ghost?
b. It’s time to make a few declarations this morning and mean it.
DEVIL, YOU CAN’T HAVE MY MARRIAGE…
I. BECAUSE I MADE A VOW.
a. It may not mean anything to Hollywood, but it means something to me!
b. It may not mean anything to the society we live in, but it means something to God!
b. Although, I may live in a generation of vow-breakers, I’m committed to the vow I made.
c. A vow is more than a promise it is a covenant ratified by God himself.
A. IT’S A VOW BEFORE GOD
1. A vow that God takes more seriously than we do.
2. God’s people where surprised to find that their tears on the alter and offerings no longer stirred God and they were very surprised to find out why.
Mal. 2:14 "Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant."
3. I’ve heard people say “I don’t need a piece of paper or a ring to be married.” But I say you need that vow.
4. God recognizes nothing else as acceptable.
5. I understand that this is not popular preaching this morning, but this is God’s word.
B. IT’S A VOW THAT COUNTS ON DIFFICULTY
1. The basic greek word for “marry’ or “marriage” is the word gameo from which we derive our english word for gem.
2. The root word means literally to “fuse together.”
3. The same minerals in a chunk of coal are in a diamond, but there are two other elements that exist in the diamond.
4. They are time and pressure.
5. If you want a marriage that is precious, rare and shines—it will take time and enduring the pressures of life together.
6. Some people act surprised when they discover that Marriage has difficulties… it’s the rule not the exception.
7. There are seasons of marriage you don’t want to miss.
8. Things change, we change…learn to celebrate them and life will shine.
9. There are differences we will learn to live with
ILL. I love a recent definition of marriage I ran across. Marriage is when you agree to spend the rest of your life sleeping in a room that’s too warm, beside someone who’s sleeping in a room that’s too cold.
10. It’s a clash of cultures, of histories, of tastes and personalities.
C. IT’S A VOW FOR LIFE
1. It takes only a few minutes to get married, but it takes a lifetime to build a marriage.
2. There is power for living when you embrace a vow that is permanent and life-long.
3. In our years of marriage, Michele and I have never once threatened each other with divorce or threatened to go back to Momma… they’d send us back anyway.
4. Our marriage isn’t perfect, but with God’s help it will be permanent.
5. It’s what’s best for me, for my children, for my future.
II. BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN MARRIAGE.
Heb. 13:4 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
a. Society has made marriage a mockery saying that it’s no longer valid or useful.
b. We may joke and laugh about marriage, but I want to be counted among those who this morning makes it crystal clear… “I believe in Marriage.”
c. Even our laws have been designed to penalize marriage.
d. We are producing a generation whose appreciation and respect for marriage is disintegrating.
e. Have you let your children know that you believe in marriage?
A. IT’S NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA, IT’S A GOD IDEA
1. Marriage is such a good idea… only God could have thought of it.
2. In spite of all the shipwrecked relationships and broken homes, it’s still our best hope of a true lasting, loving and secure relationship
3. Since God thought of it… He defines it’s parameters.
4. My marriage is more than merely a relationship between me and my wife… it’s an institution that is bigger than us both.
5. We have bad days but we go on, because we believe in marriage.
B. SOCIETY NEEDS IT.
1. It was on this relationship that God began to build society.
2. Before governments, nations, laws or even churches he built the home by building a marriage.
3. Our society still relies on that basic foundational unit.
4. The poor condition of our nation and society can be traced to the poor condition of our homes.
5. As our marriages go… so will go our nation.
C. I NEED IT.
1. Marriage was created in the garden to complete man.
2. Marriage completes me.
3. It meets my need for companionship.
4. It meets my need for intimacy.
5. It meets my need for help.
6. Who needs it… I need it, the world needs it.
III. BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN MY MARRIAGE.
a. BIblical principle is mere rhetoric until it is applied personally to our lives, our homes, our marriages.
b. Nothing that touches your life more dearly than the condition of your marriage.
c. We’ve seen it this morning as a vow and an institution, but it’s also a life.
A. IT’S PART OF MY DESTINY
ILL. Advertisement: Wedding dress for sale. Wore once by mistake....
1. Our society has this concept they impress upon us that Marriage is disposable and that we can rack them up as mistakes.
2. But Jesus is clear that what he has done in the act of marriage is no mistake.
Mark 10:9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
3. We are joined for a purpose.
4. It didn’t surprise God when I married Michele…she complements my life.
5. Put your marriage in the hands of God and he’ll give you a powerful future together.
B. IT’S PART OF MY IDENTITY TO GOD
1. From that point on God sees you differently, not as two individuals but one.
2. Why Paul said what he said about loving yourself by loving your spouse.
3. Your unity is not just poetry, but spiritual fact in the eyes of God.
4. It didn’t say He brought us together but he “joined” us.
5. That’s why it’s so painful to go through separation and divorce… you’re one.
6. She is so tied to my identity that the bible said if I dishonor her God won’t hear me.
C. IT’S WORTH FIGHTING FOR
ILL. In the past few days I’ve followed the story of the wife in Houston Texas who used her Mercedes Benze to run over her adulterous husband. Video and autopsy both testify to the fact that she ran over him a number of times. What I find shocking was her defense. She was not trying to hit him but his SUV. Now if she hit him once that may be a good defense, but not when she did it again and again.
1. But are we guilty of doing things in our marriage again and again that is killing our marriage and then act surprised when things aren’t working out?
2. My marriage is worth guarding and working to make better.
3. My marriage is worth investing my time, my money, my attention to.
4. It’s time to embrace our responsibility.
5. I didn’t come here this morning to solve all your marriage problems, but to give you a starting point… but you’ve got to take it from here.
CONCLUSION: Are you committed to God’s way when it comes to your marriage.
No other way will work.
If you’re in this house this morning and you want to say as a couple, “the devil can’t have my marriage” I want you, if you will to take the hand of husband or wife and join me around this alter as a stand against all the forces that can and will come against that relationship.
