Let the Joy of the Lord Overflow in Your Marriage (Eph. 5:20-25)
Quote: Let the wife make the husband glad to come home; and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
Martin Luther
Today, too many couples scarcely relate to each other, after years of marriage. Many other activities, responsibilities and interests seem to crowd out the importance of a happy marital relationship for millions in America. Men want to be respected and women want to be loved, neither seems to be the case in most modern marriages.
Paul the apostle gives us some practical advice in Eph. 5 that is worth considering today:
1. Men most love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Wives must submit (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to their husbands
as a service to the Lord. The best marriage where there is the greatest fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control is where love and submission are maximized in the marriage. The basic reason, Paul states, is that God created the husband to be the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the church. Therefore, as the church is to be subject to Chrtist, so let the wives be subject in everything to their husbands, but the husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself, continually for her with agape love that goes beyond eros, phileo or stergo (family affectionate and obligatory concerns).
2. The worst type of marriage is the hate and resist marriage. This marriage shows the opposite of love and submission. Patrick Morley in his book, The Man in the Mirror writes about this kind of relationship:
Illustration: The hate and resist marriage is seen in the TV show Dallas in the relationship between Sue Ellen who has locked J.R. out of the bedroom. Meanwhile, the wealthy Texas oil tycoon keeps several girlfriends around town. In the Hate and Resist marriage the wife nags her man, she idles the day away, and she contends with her husband’s authority. Her disresepct for him displays itself in social functions, at which she makes sarcastic remarks about him that he hears for the first time. He treats his wife harshly and doesn’t consider her feelings when making family decisions. Animosity and disrespect characterize his demeanor towad his wife in private, though he pretends to like her when they attend church or other gatherings." (P. 135, 136)
3. The Hate and Submit Marriage. This is the type of marriage where the wife does her part to submit the husband takes advantage of his wife and abusively refuses to love her as Christ loved the church. Patrick Morely again insightly writes about this marriage:
"Edith and Archie Bunker provide a caricature of the Hate and Submit marriage. Archie, the opinionated, domineering emperor of his house, and Edith, the submissive attendant to Archie’s belligerent demands."
Husbands need to remember what Paul wrote, " IN the 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 as it was his own." (Eph. 5:28,29)
4. The fourth type of marriage is the love and resist marriage. Unfortunately, more and more households are seeing this type of model on TV so there is an increasing number of marriages that are suffering under this syndrome of an abusive wife with a loving husband. Patrick Morley writes,
"The feminist movement has fueld the Love and Resist marriage syndrome. In times past, we might have pictured this marriage as a wimply little guy dominated by a screechy-voiced battle ax, a couple like the Lockhorns comic strip. But today a professional woman overly devoted to her career might be a better example of the resistant wife. The two-income family puts extra tension on a marriage. The husband owes his wife some additional consideration around the house, even if her attitude about it may be wrong." (p. 137)
Only when there is a balance between talking and listening can a marriage enjoy harmony. Ask the Lord to help you strive for mutuality in your goals, discussions, interests and problem-solving. Concentrate more on what you have in Christ, in His word and in His empowering-fellowshipping Spirit, instead of what you do not have.
W. A. Criswell gives several suggestions for making a great and happy marriage in a sermon preached in 1988 from the pulpit of 1st Baptist Church in Dallas, TX. All credit goes to Dr. W.A. Criswell for the following points:
1. Above all, make God your friend and your confidant. God is for you. He’s on your side. Always remember, He is for you. And He will work for you if you will let Him. Proverbs 18:24: “There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” and that friend is God, who is always with you. His intention for you is that you have a beautiful and happy home forever.
In the beginning, there was one man and one woman. The first time divorce appears in the Bible is in the Mosaic Law. One of the strangest things in this earth and Jesus commenting on that in Matthew 19:8 said, "Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed you to break up your home."
Divorce is a man’s invention. Polygamy and the breaking up of the home and the family were never in the intention of God. It came through fallen man. Malachi 2:16 says of God, "He hateth putting away." Make God your friend. That’s your first great foundation for building a happy home.
2. Begin with God’s definition of true love. It is amazing the whole Greco-Roman world uses one word for love, eros, and if you’ll go down Piccadilly in London, there at Piccadilly Square, you’ll find a bronze statue of eros, the little god of love.
That is the word used universally in the Greco-Roman civilization for love, but you will never find it in the Bible, not one time. Those inspired apostles of the Lord God chose a word that was practically unknown in the Roman Empire. And they used that word extensively throughout the Bible. But the word is agape.
For example, I John 4:8: O theos agape estan. God is agape, love. Ephesians 5:25, in the verbal form of it, husband’s agapao your wives even as Christ also agapao the church. A word, good Greek word, but seldom used. And they made that word in the New Testament to describe the true love of God and the true love that ought to obtain between a husband and his wife. The world’s definition of love is "Eros."
You watch television, ever and so much of it is filthy. If you go to the movie house which many of us never go to, but if you watch the screen today, you’ll find eros. Modern sentimentality over which we have no control. An emotion alone, nothing you can do about it, helpless before it, we are pawns of our sexual glands, and we’re animals. Nothing is morally right or wrong, do what feels good. And it makes marriage hopeless and divorce inevitable.
But God’s concept of agape is in a different world. It is a commitment to Christ and to one another in him, holy and forever. It is a way of choice, a way of thinking and living. I will place your highest best interest above anything in my life, one says to the other and that makes for a beautiful home. I have here a long discussion on the difference between love and infatuation, the difference between eros and agape and I haven’t time to speak of it.
3. To have a beautiful home and a happy marriage bestow words of appreciation lavishly on each other. Praise, Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Don’t criticize and don’t find fault. If you want your wife to cook for you, you want her to be a slave in the kitchen, praise her cooking. Keep on praising it, no matter what it tastes like. Just keep on praising it. Always turn it to a wonderful end. The wife said to her husband, "Oh, sweetheart. The dog ate the biscuits." And he replied, "Don’t worry honey, we’ll get another dog." Oh, it’s something gracious and something nice.
4. Never criticize in public, no matter what. Don’t make him or her feel small. Always build up one another. He may be a pygmy, but if you brag on him in public he’ll feel like he’s ten feet tall. How a girl or a wife or a woman can manipulate a boy, can manipulate a man, is just almost unbelievable. And it is that easily done. A little boy came home from school and said, "Daddy, today, I learned what girls are for." Well, that immediately intrigued the father. And he said, "Son, you learned what girls are for? What are they for that you learned today?" "Oh, daddy," he said, "my little friend came up to me and said, "Billy Bob, I want you to show me how to throw a ball and how to use a bat and how to use a mitt and how to catch a fly and how to run a base." And the dad said, "Yes son, what?" And the lad replied, "Daddy, I learned what girls are for. Girls are to teach things to."
Marvelous. I can just see that little girl. She just had that little boy wrapped right around his finger. It will never fail. It will work forever.
5. Treat her, after you marry her, as you did when you were courting. You were so sweet, so nice, so affectionate. Why change now? Why treat her as you’re doing now. Before marriage you loved to be together, why not now? She says, "I wish I were dead." He says, "I wish I were dead." She says, "In that case, I wish I were alive with you dead."
Oh, before I married Maggy dear,
I was her pumpkin pie,
Her precious peach,
Her honey lamb,
The apple of her eye.
But years of married life,
This thought, I’m forced to utter,
Those fancy names are gone,
And now, I’m just her bread and butter,
That’s all.
Don’t change if you were honey pie before, just keep on, keep on.
6. Plan little kindnesses, surprises for each other. A gift, a dinner, that’s not a waste of money, that will be the best investment you ever made in all of your life.
7. Place the other’s good and happiness above everything else. Romans 12:10: “Be kindly affectionate to one to other; in honor preferring one another.” Seek to make her happy, seek to make him happy. It will do your heart good. And it will be a learning experience in being unselfish. Beautiful thing.
8. Talk and discuss things together. Talk and listen. Communicate, no decision ever to be made unilaterally, both share in it, a shared life. I have a crazy thing here. Here’s a couple before a marriage counselor. And she says to him, you call it nagging, you call it nagging. So the counselor says, try listening to her; it’s harder to listen than to talk. She says he always has his nose in a newspaper or glued to TV or he’s sound asleep. I’d just as well not be there. The counselor: then shake him and say, listen I have something to say. Then the woman took off. Then the counselor understood: the man had perfected what is known as occupational deafness. She just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. And his reaction to it was: He was just occupationally trained. He was looking at the paper, or television or staring out into space. Give him an opportunity to say something back. Just don’t talk forever.
9. Never speak or air a problem of the family outside the home. Whatever the problem is, keep it there inside of those four walls. Others are not interested. I can sure tell you that. If you have any kind of a problem in your house, you remember there’s nobody outside of that house interested in what your problem is, and when you start delineating it or talking about it, they are bored to death. If anybody asks you, "How are you?" You answer, "Fine." And you may be so sick, you’re going the way of the hospital. It doesn’t matter, just say everything is fine. Just smile and go on, it’s the best way to do.
10. Thrust anger far from you. May I expatiate just a second on Ephesians 4:26? “Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Isn’t that something? He does not say, don’t get angry. That would have been unrealistic. There are times, if you’re normal, when you’re going to rise up on the inside. You’re going to get angry. But don’t be controlled by it. Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech, you will ever regret. Don’t talk when you are angry.
The preacher was describing a couple. And he was doing it beautifully. Fifty-five years and they had never had a quarrel and they’re never been angry and never had a cross word, and the eyes of the people were moist and they were moved by the beautiful example. Then he gave his account for it. In soft confidential manner and tone, the preacher added, they were lying. That’s the Lord’s truth. You just don’t be normal and live for all the years and the years and there not be things in your life before which you arise in your heart.
Never make anger a permanent guest in your heart. “My wife,” said a man, “is the most even-tempered woman I ever knew. She’s mad all the time.” Don’t. It lies in the power of anyone to throw rotten apples of discord into domestic harmony. Family quarrels are the most bitter of all you’ll never experience in all of your life, anything comparable to the bitterness of a quarrel in your house and in your home. Doing and saying things designed to hurt. Seething things. Thinking them up to say. And we react in kind. If you’re cruel, there’s always the human tendency to strike back. We seek a whip to induce pain.
And the converse is true. Proverbs 15:1: “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” Don’t be angry at the same time. If she’s angry, you keep your composure. If he is angry, you keep your composure. Always a soft answer.
11. Never live beyond your means. Watch that money problem. Watch that going in debt. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I have read, and these things I speak tonight are summations of what I have read. I have read that the number one problem in marriage is money, money, living above your means. Now, I know this because I study the Book, the Bible and Jesus, they have more to say about money than about any other thing. That’s the strangest thing. Jesus had more to say about possessions than about any other thing.
Living in slavery literally is what you do when you live beyond your means. Do you have a credit card? Tear it up. Tear it up. Tear it up. If you have a credit card, tear it up. I have one. It is stuck away and I have to sit down and try to remember where is that confounded credit card? Don’t use it. Don’t use it. Those endless payments, keeping your nose to the grindstone. Ben Franklin said a strange thing: "He who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing."
Romans 13:8: “Owe no man anything, but to love one another.” I think what that means is, you’re not to go beyond what you’re able to pay. If you have a house and you go in debt for a house it has to be in a programming in which you can pay the payments. If you have a hospital bill and a baby, plan to pay it. If you go beyond your means, you’re going to have trouble.
12. Work and strive to make your intimate life beautiful. Experts agree sex alone seldom makes or breaks a marriage, but it has a lot to do with it. The master bedroom is well named and for the man and a woman to have a beautiful life together is a thing that Heaven itself, alone can bestow.
13. Center your marriage in our Lord and in the church. Here. I Corinthians 7:13: “Marry but only in the Lord.” When I counsel a young couple, I’ll say to them, I have five fingers. Say grace at the table, pray out loud at the table, say grace. Before you go to bed at night, pray out loud where the other one can hear. Make attending church something special. Dress up with it. When I see people come to church in their off scouring clothes, it offends me. And I have been at this so long--been a pastor 62 years. When a girl comes to church, she ought to put on the best she has. I don’t care what. Put on the best you have. It may be sorry and ragged, but if it’s the best you have, put it on. And when a boy comes to church, let him wear the finest that he has. This is for God.
14. Accept some responsibility. It doesn’t matter what it is, I’m going to sweep out the floor, or I’m going to open the windows, or I’m going to park the cars, do something, do it. And bow before the Lord. It’s like slipping the car into gear. It’s letting a super engine assume the load. He can do what we could never, ever do. If you have God on your side, and you let Him lead and direct in your home and in your life and in your work, it is marvelous what God is able to do.
15. Praise God as He will deliver you through any trial. When things are the blackest, He turns them into the lightest. And when the things have the most despairing outlook, God makes it the most precious, endearing pilgrimage that you could ever imagine. God doesn’t fail us. That’s how to have a happy home.
