February 22, 2004 Ruth 1:1- 2:23
“Making marriage work”
INTRODUCTION
A boy came home from Sunday school and his mother said, "What did you talk about at church?" The boy said, "Marriage!" "What did you learn about marriage?" his mother asked. The little boy thought for a moment and replied, "Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!’”
The little boy had more insight than he knew. Most couples when they get married do not know what they are doing. They have very little concept of what marriage and family is all about. All that they can see is the love that they have for the person of their dreams. They can’t see that there are struggles and trials coming that can very easily turn lovers into enemies.
A woman and her husband came to their pastor and said, "We’re going to get a divorce. We just don’t love each other anymore.” The pastor, knowing that God hates divorce and wanting to help save this marriage said to the husband, "The Bible gives us very clear instructions about love and tells us that there are different levels of love that can be experienced in a marriage. The deepest level is found in Eph. 5:25. It says there that you are to love your wife as Jesus Christ loved the church." The husband says, "Oh, I can’t do that." The pastor says, "If you can’t begin at that level, then begin on a lower level spoken of in Matthew 19:19. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Can you at least love her as you would love a neighbor?" The husband says, "No. That’s still too high a level." The pastor, getting rather frustrated by this point, turns to the last passage - Luke 6:27. “Here is the final level of love. Surely you can muster this one.” Do you know what Luke 6:27 says? “Love your enemies.” – adapted from [Levels of Love, Citation: Erwin Lutzer, "Learning to Love," Preaching Today, Tape No. 99.]
The reality is that some of you can relate to that story. You have been there. Some of you may be there right now. Some of you will be there one day in the future if you don’t take steps to correct the direction that your marriage is going right now. That’s why we’ve come here today. We’ve come to look into God’s Word to gain wisdom and strength that will enable us to prepare for the future by walking right today. And specifically, for the next two weeks, we’re going to discover 8 principles that, if put into practice, will enable your marriage to not only survive but thrive. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can start enjoying our spouses the way that God intended, so let’s get right to it.
If you really want your marriage to work, you have to...
1. Meet needs (1:1- 5)
What do you think are the real needs of your family? The spoken needs of your children may be a new toy or computer game. But what are the real needs? In Ephesians 5, God gives us commands concerning family relationships. These commands should give us some clues as to what their actual needs are. For example, if husbands are commanded to love their wives, her greatest need must be love. If fathers are commanded to not exasperate their children, then our children’s greatest need from us must be patience, understanding and realistic expectations. And if wives are commanded to submit to their husbands, then his greatest need must be for his wife to respect him and to look to him for leadership.
In the book His needs, her needs, the author makes the bold statement that it is possible to affair proof any marriage. He says that the way to do that is by each spouse faithfully meeting the needs of the other spouse. The theory is that if everyone’s needs are met, then neither spouse will feel the desire to look elsewhere to have their needs met. Whether or not you agree that you can affair proof a marriage, it is true that both spouses in a marriage have needs and have a responsibility to meet the needs of the other spouse. In order to meet needs, I must have an idea of what those needs are. So, based on 25 years of marriage counseling experience, the author lists the top five needs of husbands and wives. Here they are: - His needs, her needs by Willard Harley, jr. (gleaned from 25 years of marriage counseling experience)
His needs
1. Sexual fulfillment
2. Recreational companionship
3. Attractive spouse
4. Domestic support (well-ordered home)
5. Admiration (be proud of him)
Her needs
1. Affection
2. Conversation
3. Honesty and openness (builds trust)
4. Financial support (security)
5. Family commitment (good father)
Whether or not you agree with that list, it at least illustrates the fact that we do have needs, and that the needs of both spouses are different from one another. One problem that I have with this list is that it does not include the greatest need of all – the spiritual need for a personal and a shared relationship with God. See, your family’s greatest needs are not financial, emotional, relational or physical. They are spiritual. You can’t meet the spiritual needs of your spouse. But you can put your family in a place where their spiritual needs can be met, and you can create an environment where spiritual things are clearly the priority of your life.
There has been a lot in the news lately, and especially this week about gay marriages. Can those “couples” provide what their families need financially? Yes. Emotionally? I don’t think so. Spiritually? NO! It is the area of unmet spiritual needs that most families overlook, and it is this area that brought about the suffering in the family that the book of Ruth introduces us to.
[read vs. 1- 5] Elimelech was married to Naomi, and they had two sons, Mahlon and Kilion. Because of Elimelech’s awareness of his responsibility to provide for the needs of his family, when a famine came to the land of Canaan, he took his family to the country of Moab. Even though the inhabitants of Moab were cousins to the Jewish people (they were descendants of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughter), they were Israel’s enemy. But Elimelech felt it was necessary to go to the land of an enemy to provide for his needs rather than stay in a land of famine and trust God to provide for his needs. What Elimelech failed to understand is that it is not the ground that provides crops and meets needs; it is the Lord.
And that is exactly what made it impossible for Elimelech to be able to meet the needs of his family. In trying to provide for them, he removed them from the place of blessing. By moving away from Canaan – the place of God’s presence – Elimelech made it impossible for his family’s spiritual needs to be met. It was much easier for his sons to fall into temptation and rebellion against God in this land. This was evidenced by the fact that Elimelech’s sons married Moabite women, something that displeased God. He also removed them from the worship of God at the tabernacle and put them in an environment where a false God was worshipped. Elimelech, who grew up in the time of the judges, did exactly what everyone else around him was doing. He did what he thought was best for his family. He did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).
Before we go judging Elimelech, can I suggest to you that many of us would have done the exact same thing if we had been in his situation. I can say that because I see people following in Elimelech’s footsteps week after week after week. Husbands and wives, in trying to provide for the needs of the family, will put physical, emotional, financial and relational needs ahead of spiritual needs. Instead of bringing their family to church on Sunday for worship and the strengthening of their relationship with God, they’ll work to provide for the family’s financial needs. Or they’ll sleep in so that they can be in a better mood for their family and provide for their emotional needs. Or they’ll take Sunday to go on family outings and provide for their relational needs. In so doing, they make it impossible for the spiritual needs of the family to be met. They will bring disaster on their families.
Disaster eventually came to Elimelech’s family. All three men in the family died. Naomi and her daughters-in-law were left to fend for themselves. In the absence of a husband, a woman’s sons were responsible for the care of their mother. Without sons, her only option was to be dependent on the welfare of people, to be sold as a slave, or to engage in prostitution. Talk about needs that went unmet.
Folks, sin will leave you lonely, destitute, hopeless and bitter. It will not provide what it promises, and it will steal from you everything that you already have. Naomi lost her husband and her sons. Elimelech didn’t understand his family’s greatest need was an ongoing relationship with God. Since he didn’t meet that need, he wasn’t around to meet any of their other needs either.
In order to make marriage work, you have to meet the needs of your spouse, especially the spiritual needs.
TRAN: Let’s say my spouse is unable or unwilling to meet my needs – spiritual or otherwise. Some of you have a spouse who cannot meet your spiritual needs or even share spiritual experiences with you because they are not Christians. What happens then? The most obvious answer is divorce. But God gives a different answer.
2. Stick together (1:6- 23) even when needs go unmet.
After the death of the men in her family, Naomi received news that the famine had lifted from her homeland so she and her daughters-in-law began the journey back to Canaan. They were not far down the road when Naomi gave this advice to Ruth and Orpah. [read vs. 8] Ruth and Orpah didn’t want to go. They loved Naomi. They wept at the thought of separating from her. Believing that going back to their own people was the best thing, Naomi said these words to convince them to leave her. [read vs. 11] In Naomi’s speech about not being able to have more sons, she was saying that she did not have the capacity to meet their needs anymore. She was encouraging them to leave based on that piece of information. (vs. 11-13) That was the way that Naomi thought about life and relationships: “when your needs aren’t being met, you leave”. That’s why she and her husband had left Canaan to begin with. From her perspective, God had not met her needs then, and He had cruelly taken her husband and sons from her so that they could not meet her needs now. [read the end of vs. 13]
Orpah listened to Naomi’s advice and headed back to her people. That was the smart thing to do. It increased her odds of survival. Ruth would have been smart to heed Naomi’s words. In all likelihood, Ruth’s life would have been much easier if she had remained behind in Moab just as Orpah did. She knew the culture. It was home for her. The likelihood of her finding a husband back in Canaan was virtually none. By trying to send these girls away, Naomi was sacrificing her needs for companionship, family, help and support for the needs of her daughters.
Ruth would have none of it. [read vs. 16-17] By sticking together, Ruth was sacrificing the fulfillment of her needs in order for her to help meet the needs of Naomi. Ruth believed that her commitment to Naomi, her responsibility toward her mother-in-law was of greater importance than the meeting of her own personal needs.
Though the words that Ruth used are spoken in many weddings today, the commitment that they speak of is lost soon after the honeymoon. According to the research of George Barna, a pollster who examines many trends in the United States, the divorce rate among people who do not attend church is 34%. As scary as that is, what’s even scarier is that it’s not much within the church where the divorce rate is 33%. That means that one in three marriages of those who claim to be Christians will end in divorce. Young people who have grown up in homes of divorced people have gotten disillusioned with marriage and have decided to live together to try things out before marriage. In 1960, 10% of the people who got married lived together first. By 1998, half of the people who got married had lived together first. But even if you can successfully live together, that is not proof that you can survive marriage. As one person said, “Living together before marriage is nothing more than ‘playing house.’”
In the National Survey of Families & Households, researchers found that almost half of all couples who cohabit break up before marriage. Even if these couples do marry, the divorce rate skyrockets to 80%! And this study found that in these “living together” relationships that women are 62x more likely to be assaulted by their boyfriends than by a husband. Why? Because couples who cohabit are reversing God’s order, a relationship without the Godly principle of “to death do us part.”
Rick Warren is the author of The Purpose Driven Life. His wife Kay has cancer. He sends out a letter every week through his web site and this is what it said, “So many of you have asked about Kay’s progress in her treatment for cancer, so we wanted to give you an update. We are a little over halfway through her 12- week chemo-regimen. Yesterday she had a great day at the hospital until the chemo effects kicked in, and she quickly deteriorated into misery and major nausea. The rest of the day was very rough as nurses tried to ease her pain. Today, Kay feels wiped out from all the meds they’ve given her, along with the expected fatigue and nausea from the chemo. I’ve kept all visitors away, so the room is quiet for hours. The less going on, the better it is for her. Between caring for Kay’s basic needs, I sit quietly and think a lot and thank God for my wife, and God’s amazing invention of marriage. With all its ups and downs and “in sickness and health,” I’m certain that marriage is God’s primary tool to teach us unselfishness, sensitivity, sacrifice, and mature love. I want to thank you for your prayers for Kay. My wife is the love of my life, and this is what God intended families to do - to care for each other in need, even if it means cutting back your ministry for a season. I’d want every other husband in ministry to do the same if the situation arose in his family. God blesses us when we keep our commitments to each other."
Right now, you may be in the middle of an unhappy marriage. Your needs are not being met, there is no excitement, you fight all the time and that man or woman at work looks very tempting. The thought comes into your mind that you would be much happier if you could just get out of this relationship and into one where your needs would be met. Before you act on that thought, here’s something for you to consider.
A recent study by the University of Chicago showed couples who stay in an unhappy marriage and endure it are more likely to be happy 5 years later than those who decide to divorce. The study noted that even if no work is done on the marriage, ongoing problems were often viewed in new perspective over time. And when both spouses worked on the marriage, many problems were solved and communication improved.
In a study released in July 2002, researchers showed that divorce does not make unhappily married people any happier. When the adults who said they were unhappily married in the late 1980s were interviewed again five years later, those who had divorced were on average still unhappy or even less happy, while those who stayed in their marriages on average had moved past the bad times and were at a happier stage. - Linda Waite, professor in Sociology, wrote the book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better off Financially (Doubleday, 2000), co-written by Maggie Gallagher of the Institute of American Values.
The point is that even if you are not happy in your marriage right now, stick with it. The alternative to your situation is divorce, and that will certainly not make you any happier; it will make you miserable.
TRAN: The fact is that no one has to have an unhappy marriage. Any marriage can improve if one or, even better, if both of the partners are willing to work at it.
3. Work hard (2:1- 7)
Ruth and Naomi successfully made it back to Bethlehem. The people in her hometown recognized her and began to call her by name to see if it really was her. After all, it had been over 10 years since they had last seen her. Naomi told the people there not to call her by that name anymore, but instead to call her “Mara”. You see, Naomi means “pleasant” or “sweetness”, and as far as Naomi was concerned, the Lord had made her life bitter which is what “Mara” means. She had given up on ever being happy again much like many spouses have given up on ever experiencing happiness in their marriage. She had given up on the Lord, but the Lord had not given up on her. There was still hope. That’s what the last phrase of vs. 22 points to – “the barley harvest was beginning.” New life was springing up. Needs were getting ready to be satisfied.
Once they made it back to Bethlehem – which happens to mean “the house of bread”, the place where needs are met – they still had no means of providing for themselves. But Jewish law made special provision for how God wanted the poor of the land to be taken care of. (Lev. 19:9-10). When a field was harvested, they were to leave the corners unharvested, there was to be no double harvesting, and they were supposed to leave what fell out of their hands or their wagon on the ground. Then the poor of the land could come into the fields and harvest for themselves what was left.
That was exactly what Ruth did in order to provide for her and Naomi’s needs. She went into the field and began to work. [read vs. 7b] And she “just happened” to go into the field of Boaz, and he “just happened” to arrive home while Ruth was working in his fields.
Do you remember the time when you first met your spouse? Think about it. What was she wearing? What did you first notice about him? What made you want to see her again? Incidentally, one of the best ways to re-ignite the passion that you once felt for your spouse is to go back and remember what first drew you together to begin with.
When Boaz first met Ruth, she wasn’t all prettied up – dressed nice with her makeup just right and smelling good with a fragrance that excited all his senses and put him under her spell. She was in her work clothes, and she was working hard. Her hair was probably out of place, and I’m sure she had a fragrance about her, but it wasn’t one that would attract anything but flies. It would be the equivalent of a guy that you were interested in catching you at the end of a strenuous workout of after you’ve spent many hours cleaning house.
The work that Ruth was doing was hard, long, hot and back-breaking. She was constantly bending down to pick up fallen grain. It was also frustrating. Usually, there was not a lot gained in one day’s work (i.e. Naomi was shocked by the amount of grain that Ruth came home with). Once she had gathered the grain, she wasn’t done. Then she had to thresh the barley, after she was already exhausted from a long day of work.
Ruth was willing to do all this because it meant survival for Naomi and her. And survival was important to her. There was an easier alternative. She could have become a prostitute. There are easier alternatives to marriage too. You can get into relationships and have sex with other people with no commitment and no work. But it won’t provide satisfaction or fulfillment, and it will end up destroying you because it is outside the realm of God’s will and God’s blessing.
Is the survival of your marriage important to you? That’s a question you have to answer because it will determine how much work you are willing to put into it. If you’re not sure how you would answer that question, try this one. Is your happiness and joy important to you? If you answer “yes” to that, then the best way to reach that goal is through marriage. That means that if your own personal satisfaction is important to you, then you must be willing to work at your marriage.
According to Dr. Lana Staneli, author of a book on marital triangles, “Of those who break up their marriage to marry someone else, eighty percent are sorry later. Of those who do marry their lover, which is only about ten percent, about seventy percent of them get a divorce. Of that twenty-five to thirty percent that stay married, only half of them are happy. Having an affair is an invitation to an awful lot of pain and tragedy.”- Laura Schlessinger, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 223-224.
On the other hand, working at your relationship and doing marriage God’s way is an invitation to pleasure, satisfaction and fulfillment. A new study commissioned by the Family Research Council of Washington, D.C., found that the people most likely to report a high degree of satisfaction with their current sex life are married people who strongly believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong. The study found that 72 percent of these “married traditionalists” reported sexual satisfaction. This is 31 percent higher than unmarried non-traditionalists and 13 percent higher than married non-traditionalists. The study went on to show that sexually happy people also tend to go to church. Some two-thirds of the responders who attend church weekly are very satisfied with their sex lives, compared to barely half of those who never attend church. SOURCE: Adrian Rogers, Ten Secrets for a Successful Family (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1996), 122-123 How’s that for a reason to come to church? I can see the newspaper ad now: “Come to church, and you’ll have a better sex-life.” In our “Sex and the city” world where the general feeling seems to be that free sex is the only way to satisfaction, we need to sound the message loud and clear that God’s way is the way that your needs in every area of your life are going to be met to the highest level.
The greater the level of work that you are willing to put in, the more you will have to show for it at the end of the day. Even if all you’re willing to do is to kiss your wife every day, it will have a dramatic impact on your life. “According to a German medical magazine, which reported the results of an insurance company survey, a husband who kisses his wife each day before they separate for work will probably live 5 years longer, earn 20% more money, lose up to 50% less time because of illness, and be involved in fewer automobile accidents than the husband who doesn’t kiss his wife each day” (John Drescher, For the Love of Marriage, 1996, p.71) So guys, if you haven’t yet kissed your wife today, or even if you have, reach over and plant one on her right now.
4. Show appreciation (2:8- 23)
When Boaz learned who the young lady working in his fields was, he went out to her and said these words: [read vs. 11-12] Boaz was every woman’s dream man – and it wasn’t just because he was rich and powerful (2:1 says that he “was a man of standing”). He was generous. He let Ruth harvest in the field and allowed her to eat the food that he had provided for his workers. He was protective. He gave strict orders that none of his men were allowed to touch her or harm her in any way. And he was a man that paid attention to his surroundings. He noticed the details. And when he did notice the details, he verbalized how he felt about the situation. He showed appreciation to her. He didn’t grunt his thanks. Wife: “Did you like your dinner?” Husband: “(grunt)”. Most guys don’t even notice what their wives do for them!
At this point, there is no indication that Boaz had any romantic thoughts toward Ruth. It’s easy for a husband to show appreciation and recognition toward his wife when he is expecting a romantic interlude with her. He’ll say just about anything – promise just about anything – thank her for anything if it means that he’s going to get sex. But Boaz showed appreciation toward her even though she had done nothing for him (she actually was costing him resources), and he didn’t expect to receive anything from her in the future. If you show appreciation toward your wife just because you want something from her, then you are acting as the immature men that the world paints husbands to be to begin with. It’s immature children that cozy up to mom and dad and say all kinds of nice things in order to get something from them. “Daddy, you’re so wonderful.” “Ok, kid, what do you want?” Grow up! Notice what they do, and give appreciation for who they are and what they have done.
And even though Boaz’s appreciation toward Ruth was prompted by her sacrifice above the call of duty, you don’t have the option of waiting until your spouse does more than what is expected of him or her before you give recognition and appreciation toward them. Thank your spouse even for those things that you consider to be part of her responsibility as a wife and mother. Maybe they are her responsibility, but she could have been someone else’s wife and the mother of someone else’s children. You were blessed enough to get her, so be thankful for the things that she does. Wives, thank your husbands for mowing the grass or for being a good provider or for taking out the trash. Spouses, don’t wait until the next Valentine’s Day to bring home some flowers or candy to one another. Do it just because you love them and you appreciate them.
Your husband – your wife – needs to know that you value them – not because of what they do for you, but just because of who they are. I’m sure you do value them, but have you told them lately?
CONCLUSION
How many of your marriages are in trouble, but no one knows it because you feel like you have to put on a mask? Your marriage can get better if you:
1. Meet needs
2. Stick together
3. Work hard, and
4. Show appreciation
NOTE: Next week, we’ve got something special planned. We’re going to look at 4 more principles for a marriage that works from chapters 3 and 4 of Ruth. And then, we’re going to have a wedding. For all who want to participate, you will have the opportunity at the close of next week’s service to participate in a wedding ceremony in which you recommit your self to your spouse.
