Genesis 2
18 – The Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.
Genesis 2
21 – So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 – Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.
23 – The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man.
24 – For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
As you probably know by now, most summers our family vacation consists of at least seven days at the beach. We rent a small condo on the Carolina coast just north of Myrtle Beach and we basically just veg for a whole week-sometimes two if we can afford it. Sue and I take books to read. We doze on the beach. Daniel and I go for long runs. We enjoy our morning coffee on the deck as we watch the sun rise over the water. We swim and go for walks along the shore…and we always take with us a brand new 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle to assemble.
Now, when we unpack the puzzle and begin to put it together all five of us eagerly pitch in. We clear off the coffee table and lay out all the pieces right side up. We place the top of the box with the picture of the assembled puzzle in clear view. We find all the straight-sided pieces that make up the border of the puzzle. And we set to work. But you know, once the border is done and the easy portions of the picture are complete, fewer and fewer of us Adamses invest much time in the puzzle’s completion. Usually by the time everything but the sky is done, Sue is the only one working on the project. This is because when it comes to putting puzzles together, it is much easier to START, than it is to FINISH. Many tasks in life are like that. It’s easier to START a marathon than it is to CROSS THE FINISH LINE. It’s easier to GET a mortgage than it is to PAY ONE OFF.
And, this principle is especially true when it comes to MATRIMONY. Marriages are relatively easy to start but can be very difficult to finish. The sad fact is that many brides and grooms treat their marriages like our family treats a jigsaw puzzle. I mean, they lay out all the border pieces. They work very hard to make the ceremony just right. They spend a fortune on beautiful flowers and great music and fabulous dresses and tuxes. They find a nice home and enjoy the fun of furnishing it and setting up housekeeping. But as the months and years go by and as the task of marriage becomes more and more puzzling they give up. They never finish what they started. They never complete the beautiful life-long picture of love God intended their marriage to be.
Because of this, as you no doubt well know, the statistics on the institution of marriage don’t look very good these days. We live in a nation where 60% of new marriages end in divorce…where in the state of Florida you can get a divorce without even leaving your car by using their convenient drive through divorce service. Real Estate agents report that fifty per cent of the houses that are put up for sale are listed because of divorce situations. And at Promise Keepers yesterday Dennis Rainey informed us that the divorce rate among Christians is higher than it is in secular circles.
NOW, WHY IS THIS SO? WHY DO SO MANY BRIDES AND GROOMS GIVE UP ON THEIR MARRIAGE?
Well, one reason behind the high failure rate in marriages in our country is the fact that…
1. …many people buy into the myth that marriage is for everyone.
I mean even though marriage has such a bad rep in today’s world; even though so many marriages end in a painful divorce. In spite of the fact that divorced people are twice as likely to die from heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and cancer due to the added stress caused by the split up; in spite of this painful reputation, there is this desire on the part of almost everyone to someday get married. Census figures reveal that only about five per cent of the people over 65 have remained never married in life. So, the vast majority of people in our culture apparently think that marriage is worth the risk. They believe that marriage is an essential for everyone in life but this isn’t necessarily so.
In fact, the Bible acknowledges that it might be best for some believers to choose NOT to marry. In Matthew 19:12 Jesus defends those who have, …renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. Our Lord does not say that those who choose singleness are more spiritual than those who choose marriage but He does affirm and validate their decision. As Paul says in I Corinthians 7:35 some people are called to serve God as singles because the ministry He has prepared them for requires time that a married individual just does not have. So, it is not necessarily God’s best will for everyone to marry. Another factor in the high failure rate of marriage is that…
2. ….people wed before they are ready.
Many people rush into important decisions simply because the mood hits them. Listen to what a real estate agent said about the HOUSE-buying mood. The mood doesn’t last long, and when it passes, it’s all over…but when they’re in the mood it’s unbelievable. A woman will buy a house simply because she likes the laundry room. A man will walk into the garage and visualize where his workshop will be, and it’s a done deal. They don’t check the heating system, the plumbing, the electrical, the attic, the basement. If they are in the buying mood, they work fast. They sign.
People are the same way when it comes to buying cars. If the mood hits them they will purchase on impulse without considering many important factors. And you know, there is also a marrying mood that causes a similar form of temporary insanity. People who have no business marrying each other fall in love with the IDEA of marriage and make a commitment to start something they are not capable of finishing.
This reminds me of the story of a young inexperienced pastor who was faced with his very first wedding ceremony. So he sought advice from an older minister. The experienced pastor gave him a great deal of advice and then closed with one final suggestion. If you ever forget what you are supposed to say, just quote Scripture. It is always appropriate to quote Scripture. The young minister remembered this and when he performed the ceremony everything went smoothly until the point came when he pronounced the young couple as being husband and wife. At this point his mind went blank. He didn’t know what to say. He remembered the advice of the old preacher to quote scripture, so he said the first verse that came into his mind, Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
Unfortunately that could be accurately said about many marriages. The groom and his bride don’t really know what they are doing. They are just in the mood to marry. After all, it’s fun to plan a wedding: lots of friends, lots of gifts, lots of parties. But this fun-this mood-leads many people to marry who shouldn’t.
3. And then, a third reason many marriages fail is that people go into marriage with unrealistic expectations.
A. For example they expect marriage to make them happy.
For some reason there is this universally accepted notion that a quick walk down the center aisle will usher a person into the halls of human happiness and bliss when in reality, it might and it might not. In preparation for this message I asked several Redlanders who have had successful marriages to share their wisdom and Charlie and Louise Brinkman said something that addresses this point.
We don’t think that happiness should be the objective of marriage because marriage is made up of both happy and unhappy experiences and even happy and unhappy periods. If you approach marriage with the idea that it is supposed to be a happy experience, you may give up when those unhappy periods persist.
Charlie and Louise are right on target here because marriage does NOT insure happiness.
A man walked into a mental institution one day and was taken on a tour. The tour saw one cell where the man was beating his head against the padded walls. He kept saying, Linda, how could you do it? Linda, how could you do it? They guide explained that the man was in love with Linda, and when Linda jilted him, he drifted off into the ozone. He couldn’t handle it.
They went on to the next cell, and there was a man inside saying, Linda, Linda, how could this happen? Linda. Linda. The visitor said, Who is he? The guide explained, He’s the man who married Linda. Marriage is NOT the secret to happiness in life. In fact it is selfish to go into marriage for that purpose. We should marry with the idea that our goal is to make our future spouse happy.
B. Others by into the misconception that marriage will end their loneliness.
One single who embraced this misconception wrote, I can’t think of anything I hate more than being alone. Everywhere I turn I see couples: couples on television, couples in cars, couples on planes…couples in restaurants. Everywhere there are reminders that I am alone. I wonder if I will ever find a person to fill the hole in my heart.
But as Bill Hybels says, the truth this single person should know is that there are millions of lonely married people. They may share a table, a sofa, and even a bed with their marriage partner but they still feel lonely. They may even have an ideal marriage…a genuinely intimate and loving marriage and STILL feel lonely deep in side. This is because God created us for not ONE but TWO levels of relational intimacy. One level CAN be met by establishing a deep, honest, trusting relationship with a friend or marriage partner. But the other can only be met by entering into an authentic, growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A good marriage to the right person, entered into under God’s direction and nurtured carefully, CAN go a long way toward meeting the human need for intimacy. The Bible calls this ONENESS. But within every human heart is a hole that only God can fill. No marriage partner will make you feel like you are a WHOLE person. No friend, lover, or spouse can provide you with soul- S.O.U.L.-satisfaction. Only God can do that.
In his classic book, Fit to Be Tied, Hybels takes this truth a step further when he points out that the only people with the strength to pay the price of a great marriage are people who have, …plumbed the depths of their relationship with God, have dealt with their own broken-ness, and have reached a place of happiness within the context of their singleness.
Well, how can we avoid these misconceptions? I mean, how can husbands and wives beat the odds and finish the marriages they start? How can we succeed at making our marriages all that God intends them to be? Well, some of you shared some great advice on this subject.
Bill and Meredith Jones said, In marriage pick your battles. All issues don’t merit the same level of debate. They also advised, Don’t put yourself in compromising situations. Never go to lunch or to any other activity one on one with someone of the opposite sex. There is safety in numbers.
Frank and Virginia Coffman said that, Husbands and wives should extend the same common courtesy to each other that they would to friends. They must not take each other for granted.
Bill and Sandy Wehunt said, Find a common leisurely interest…something stress-free that you can enjoy doing together. My wife agreed. Sue said, Couples should always find time to do something fun…to play together.
I’m sure you will agree that all of this is great advice and it provides a great springboard for the things I want to share with you this morning. Because today I want us to look at three very basic Scriptural principles, Godly wisdom, that will help us to finish the marriages we start, and the first is this:
4. We must learn to think of Marriage as a PERMANENT relationship.
Now this may seem like a pretty obvious tenet for making marriage last but you see, many people in our culture no longer look at marriage in this way. In fact, it has almost become in to see how SHORT a marriage can be. This week I read that Catherine Oxenberg and producer Robert Evans split after 12 days. Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman’s marriage lasted only 9 days. Dennis Hopper and Michelle Phillips’ lasted only 8 days. But the record is held by Robin Givens and tennis pro Svetozar Marinkovic, whose life together was less than 24 hours. The actions of these celebrities reminds me of something I read on a Hallmark card once. It said, I can’t promise you forever but I can promise you today.
Now, it has not always been this way. Fifty years ago in America divorce was considered a tragedy. It was an embarrassment. Divorced people would do anything to avoid discussion of their marital status. But today, many people readily-almost proudly-admit that they have been divorced, not once or twice but three or four times. Charles Swindoll tells of seeing a sign in a Hollywood jewelry store window that said, We RENT Wedding Rings!
I want you to understand that I am not preaching AT those of you who have been divorced. I’m not trying to rub salt into your wounds! I hope you know that God can and will forgive any sin or failure and help us to start new in life. No, I am speaking to those of you who either are married or who believe that one day you will be married. Because it is you who must realize that one of the greatest causes of today’s high divorce rate is this fact that many couples enter marriage believing it to be terminable. In fact the whole concept of establishing a permanent bond between a husband and a wife is quickly becoming a foreign thought.Til death do us part is, unfortunately, a mere verbal formality to many newlyweds. More and more it is being interpreted, Til disagreement do us part or ‘Till other interests do us part. And this must stop because no marriage can last if there is always the option of quitting when things get tough.
The scripture we read a moment ago from Genesis says that in marriage, husband and wife LEAVE their families to CLEAVE to one another. And the Hebrew here for cleave means to glue or to cling in a permanent sense. This is the way marriage was intended to work. God designed it to be a life-long union between one man and one woman and if marriage is to succeed brides and grooms must embrace this principle at the onset. Charlie and Louise Brinkman commented,
From Day 1 and every day thereafter, husbands and wives must maintain the attitude that ‘I am in this marriage for keeps.’ NEVER EVER entertain the thought of quitting.
Frank and Virginia Coffman said that, In marriage you have made a lifelong commitment and you must do whatever it takes to carry it through.
Bill and Meredith Jones said if marriage is to succeed both husband and wife must believe that, Divorce is not an option.
During England’s darkest days in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, it was a pudgy, cigar-smoking, unimpressive-looking man who held the country together. While other voices were shouting Surrender! -Sir Winston Churchill stood fast. Bombs, devastated city blocks, buildings crumbled, bridges fell, but the stubborn Prime Minister refused to budge. Never once did he consider capitulating or even negotiating with the Nazis. He operated on this rather simple rule of thumb when it came to winning a war: Wars are not won by evacuations! And he was right. Surrendering is not an option if you plan to win a war…or if you plan to succeed in a marriage. I agree with the San Francisco attorney who said, There are two processes that must never be started prematurely: embalming and divorce. Remember, Jesus said that in marriage God binds two people together so that they become one and that, …what God has joined together no man should separate.
God did not issue this command to restrict us or two make us miserable. It is just that as the Inventor of marriage, He knows that real love and fulfillment exist only in conditions where there is long-term trust and commitment. And then, the second key principle in making marriage last is this….
5. …Brides and Grooms must learn to love their spouse the way God loves them.
You see there is a very stark difference between God’s love for us…and the typical love that sinful humans express to each other. Human love is a selfish love. It is oriented toward the lov-er…the one doing the loving. It is a love that is based on a feeling-a feeling that is fueled by whether or not the other person is physically attractive or has a good personality. This human love is focused around what the other person does FOR you. Jesus described this brand of love in Luke 6 when He said that sinners…love those who love them…and do good toward those who do good to them.
The problem with this human caliber of love is that it is not nearly strong enough to withstand the storms that plague any marriage because a selfish love is a weak love. Erwin Lutzer tells a woman who came to him in tears. She had a cast on her arm and scars on one side of her face and he asked her what had happened. She explained, I was in the hospital because of a serious fire. There were burns over two-thirds of my body. My husband walked into the hospital room, took one look at me, and said, ‘You’re not the woman I married.’ He left her to marry someone younger and more beautiful. You see when you apply this caliber of love to marriage, then when it doesn’t meet your needs, you just quit and find someone who does meet your needs.
That is human love. It says, As long as you stimulate me, as long as I can be proud of you, as long as you’re beautiful, I can love you. If you change, my love for you changes.
Now divine love-God’s kind of love-is different. Instead of being selfishly based on the one loving…the lov-er it is selflessly based on the one loved, the lov-ee. And divine involves not FEELING but sacrificial ACTION. It involves willfully focusing not on our needs but on the needs of the other person. The wonderful truth is that when we commit to ACTING in love toward our spouse, we experience a depth of passion that is not found in any other way. A woman came to a lawyer and said, I want to get a divorce. I really hate my husband, and I want to hurt him. Give me some advice. In addition to wanting to get the gold and give him the shaft, she was wondering about some other way that she might do him in. The attorney said, Look, you’re going to divorce the guy anyway, so for three months don’t criticize him. Speak only well of him. Build him up. Every time he does something nice, commend him for it. Tell him what a great guy he is, and do that for three months. After he thinks that he has your confidence and love, hit him with the news and it will hurt more.
The woman thought, I can’t go wrong on this. I’m divorcing the guy anyway. Why should I speak badly about him anymore? I’m going to speak only well of him. So, she complimented her husband for everything he did. For three months she told him what a great man he was. She ACTED loving toward him and do you know what happened to that relationship? After three months, they forgot about the divorce and went on a second honeymoon. This shows that one of the secrets to success in marriage is learning how not to be a selfish person, learning to be spouse-centered instead of self-centered. And when both husband and wife obey Scripture and submit to each other in this other-centered focus, a BEAUTIFUL relationship that is mutually beneficial to both is nourished. No doubt this discovery is what led Bill and Meredith Jones to advise all spouses to, Put the other mate first, for this will usually come back to you in spades.
This reminds me of a letter Ann Landers once received that described a couple who had been married for more than 50 years. The husband had spent the last eight years selflessly caring for his wife who had Alzheimer’s disease. He cooked for her and fed her every bite. He bathed her and dressed her every day all of these years. They had no other family. Listen to the letter she wrote depicting this faithful husband: I cannot describe the tenderness and love that man shows for his wife. She is unable to recognize anyone, including him. But, I observed him when I parked my car beside his the other day. He sat in his old pickup truck for a few minutes. Before he got out he combed what little hair he had, straightened the threadbare collar of his shirt and looked in the mirror for a final check before going in to see his wife. It was as if he were courting her! They have been partners all these years and have seen each other under all kinds of circumstances, yet he carefully groomed himself before he called on his wife, who wouldn’t even know him. This is an example of the love and commitment the world needs today.
Now you must understand. This other-centered way of living is something that is not possible to maintain unless you can tap into the supernatural power of God. In his book, A Marriage After God’s Own Heart David Clarke says, On your own marriage is impossible. It’s not just really…really difficult-not just a tremendous challenge. It’s impossible. Marriage is a never-ending series of conflicts, misunderstandings, and mind-boggling missed connections…Now for the good news: Marriage is the one human relationship with the most potential for intimacy. Even with all our differences, marriage can work beautifully when we keep God at the center of the relationship.
This leads us to the third basic essential. The Bible teaches that if marriage is to last….
6. …God must be the central part of the husband/wife relationship.
A little boy told his father that in Sunday School class he had learned about the time Jesus went to a wedding and made water into wine. His dad then asked him, And what did you learn from that story? The boy though for a moment and answered, If you’re going to have a wedding, make sure Jesus is there. That is pretty good advice. You see, a marriage in which God is a part is more likely to be a life-long one because spouses know that this is God’s teaching. If husband and wife each have a growing relationship with God they know the importance of valuing one another more highly than they value themselves. They play by the same set of rules so to speak.
So, if you want to succeed in marriage-if you want to get the fullest blessing possible from it-you and your spouse must commit from day one to build a three-sided relationship with God as the third party. You see marriage was never meant to be a duet. It was meant to be a holy trio between a man and a woman who love each other and the God Whom they both serve. This is the way God set it up. He is to be the glue that holds every home together. The psalmist said, Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.
A husband and wife who leave God out of their relationship never really understand what it means to love one another. They only scratch the surface of the level of intimacy that is available to spouses whose love for each other is empowered by their Christian faith. They are like carpenters trying to build a house without a foundation. And when the inevitable storms of life come: financial troubles….sickness…death….well, when this happens, Godless homes have a very difficult time standing. Remember Jesus’ words on this subject? He said:
…everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts on them may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock…and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and burst against that house and yet it did not fall for it had been founded upon the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine, and does not act upon them will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and burst against that house and it fell, and great was its fall.
In the family where both husband and wife are Christians, where they read the Bible together daily and pray together, where they attend church together…in homes where God is real. There is a uniting force and a strengthening force which is absent in marriages where God is ignored. Brian Harbor affirms, The greatest single cause of difficulty in the home today is lack of spiritual concern. Either purposely or inadvertently, we leave God out of our marriages.
This morning you may realize that the tough times you have been going through with your spouse are because this statement applies to you. You have been leaving God our of YOUR marriage. If that’s true then you may need to respond by squeezing your spouse’s hand as if to say, I want to finish what we have started. I want to grow old with you. In our marriage I want to experience the blessing God intended it to be. I want God to be central in our relationship. Or, you may be an individual who realizes that you have left God out of your LIFE. Our time together has helped you to see how lonely you are. You want to experience true wholeness. If that is so then I encourage you to talk to God right now. Ask Him to cleanse you of your sin and to come into your heart and life. You may be a couple or a family who feel that God is calling you to join this church and get active here as a husband and wife team in the ministry that goes on here. Any commitment you wish to make public we invite you to do so now…as we stand and sing.