The Idol Of Romantic Love - Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. The romantic attachment in my life cannot save me, but Jesus Christ can. You see, I don't have to expect someone else to give me meaning and purpose in my life, because Jesus Christ can. You see, that's the whole point, and that's why I worship Him. And that's why I should never worship another human being, even one I deeply, deeply love.

You know what the lagniappe of it all is? When you love Jesus Christ the most, you'll love your romantic attachment more. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Denial of Death, and he explains the various ways that secular people in the American culture have dealt with their loss of belief in God. How do you deal with your loss of belief in God?

What do you live for? He said, now that we think that we are here by accident and not made for any purpose, how do we instill a sense of significance in our lives? One of the main ways is what I call apocalyptic romance.

We look to sex and romance to give us the transcendence and the sense of meaning we used to get from faith in God. Oh, he's exactly right. You see, he's exactly right.

You see, what happens is if I find that person, it's going to do something for me. You see, it's got built into it a tremendous amount of immaturity, but it's also got a tremendous draw to it. Why do you think in high school, when you're fighting the hormones and lacking any kind of maturity, why is the quarterback so cute? Why? Why?

Why is the head cheerleader? You see, why? Because if I'm with them, I'm somebody.

They fulfill the vacuum in my life. You see, that's what happens in this kind of blinded romantic love, and that's exactly what happens to Jacob, and that happens to millions of people in the culture in which we live. I mean, after all, years ago, a song was written, You're nobody till somebody loves you. Really?

Where do we get that? Is that scriptural? You're nobody till somebody loves you. Many of us grow up just feeling that, yearning for that. Boy, when romantic love comes into our life, we can make it an idol and a heartbeat. In fact, when we find that one person, we often believe everything wrong with me is going to be made okay when I find that one person. There's a problem, though. No one can live up to that.

Nobody can do that. In fact, inevitably, disappointment almost always follows. Almost always. See, why do we do that? Evolutionary biologists say that it's hardwired into our brain. That's why we fall in love and really go all out for romantic love.

But I think there's another reason, and I think that reason is we were created for romantic love. Hold your place here and go with me to two passages. The first one's in Genesis 1, very easy to find, from Genesis 29. Genesis 1, verse 27.

You know the verse. God created man, and then these words, in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them. We are created in the image of God. What God is like, we are like. God is spiritual. We have a spirit. You see, God is love. God has an amazing capacity to love.

So do we. You'll not find that. You can find devotion in the animal kingdom, but you won't find that. Not the way in which we love. Turn with me now to Ephesians, chapter 5. Ephesians, chapter 5, the Apostle Paul.

Verse 25. Paul is trying to appeal to the greatest union of romantic love that exists on earth, husbands and wives. And he wants to tell the husband that the husband must love the wife.

He must be devoted to the wife. And so he says, husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So that he might sanctify her, set her apart, having cleansed her by the washing of the water and the word. That he might to present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

That she should be holy and blameless. So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of his body. And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave or be joined to his wife. And the two will become one flesh.

This mystery is great. I am speaking with reverence to Christ in the church. He's basically saying to us, you need to love your wife the way Christ loves you. You need to love each other the way Christ loves the church. We are programmed to love spiritually. Romantic love is very much part of the way in which we love each other. And the love is all encompassing in scripture.

There are three different Greek words that describe the love between a man and a woman. There is agape love, that love that God had for the world. It's a choice to love. You choose to love. And there is this idea of phileo love. It is the love of friendship. They become friends and close and companions. And there is eros, the love that I call the liverquiver. The idea that you should be attracted to one another. It all goes into play.

It's all part of the same thing. We are to love. We were created to love one another. There is nothing wrong with romantic love. There is something completely wrong when you try to get out of romantic love what only God can give you. Now I know some of you might be saying, well, I'm not really into that kind of love at all. I don't really want anything to do with that kind of love.

Well, if that's true, it's probably for two reasons, most likely. One, you had a loving relationship like that and you ended up bitterly disappointed by it. Or two, you have a fear that you're going to be controlled by its power. That's what happened to Jacob. Now back to Genesis 29. We see the power then of what Jacob was willing to do of romantic love. Now I want to show you the devastation when you make romantic love your idol.

Verse 30. So Jacob went into Rachel also and indeed, and here it is, he loved Rachel more than Leah and he served with Laban for another seven years. He loved Rachel and then that word more, more. You know, because he made his love for Rachel and idol in his life, there are decades of misery in this family.

Decades. You see, Rachel gives him two sons eventually. You know them. Joseph and Benjamin. Now did Jacob love Joseph and Benjamin more than his other sons? Yes.

Did he make it clear to everybody? Yes. Did he spoil Joseph and give him a coat of many colors? Yes. Did his other brothers hate him and resent him for it?

Yes. They plotted even to kill him and they ended up putting him into slavery. Why? Because of Jacob.

He even loved the children of Rachel more than he loved any of his other children. There is a real problem there. You see, we use a phrase and you probably have used it and we think it's endearing but I'm telling you it's not. He worships the ground she walks on. That's tragic. We're built to worship just one. See, we're to worship God Almighty. We're to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who we worship.

When you say, oh, it's so wonderful, he worships the ground I walk on, something's wrong. You see, that is not at all what God intended marriage to be. There are all kinds of casualties in this setting but the one who paid the most for the idolatry of Jacob is Leah. Just imagine what it would have been like to be her.

Just imagine what that would be like. You have a husband, you know he doesn't love you and he makes it clear every single day that he loves your sister more. So how does Leah compensate? I hate to say this but in the beginning she had it all wrong. She compensated by creating her own idol. In other words, she said there's a way I can have meaning in life.

There's a way I can have purpose in life and here's how it goes. Verse 31, now the Lord saw that Leah was unloved and he opened her womb but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son and named him Reuben. Now notice what goes on in her mind. For she said, because the Lord has seen my affliction, surely now my husband will love me.

Isn't that amazing? Look in this culture, everything's based on the legacy, everything's based on the heirs. If I can give him the heir, he will love me then. Well, it didn't happen. No more love came her way.

Well, how do I know that? Verse 33, and then she conceived again and bore a son and said, because the Lord has heard that I am unloved, he was therefore given me a son also and she named him Simeon. She had Reuben and she said after that, how did he treat her?

No differently. He didn't love her anymore. But now she has two sons. Third son, she conceived again and bore a son and she said, now this time my husband will become attached to me because I have borne him three sons and his name was Levi. Did he become attached?

No. She thought it would work. She thought there's my chance to have meaning and purpose.

I can be the woman who gives him the legacy and then he will love me. But she figures it out. Verse 35, she conceived again and bore a son and she said, this time I will praise the Lord.

Ah, no mention of Jacob. This time I will praise the Lord. This time I'm not searching for love in all the wrong places. You see, this time I'm just going to praise the Lord and here's what's so interesting about that. Therefore, she named him Judah and at that time it says she stopped bearing. Wow.

She seemed to get it. You see, this is such an unusual story and it's so tragic on so many levels. I mean, you might be thinking when you go through this story, who am I supposed to emulate here? You see, who's the example to me? Who's the person that's showing us the way we should live? The answer is no one.

Really, none of them. Because that's not the way the Bible's put together. The Bible's not about each little story to teach you a good moral lesson. The Bible's about a collective story, one story that reveals the condition of fallen human beings and that man needs to restore his relationship with God and ultimately what man needs is a savior that God provides.

That's the entire message of the entire Bible. Well then, what can we really learn from this? You see, what can we learn from this story?

You can learn a lot but I want to zero in on just a couple of ideas. Here's an important idea for you to learn from this story. No matter what or who you put all your hopes in, Rachel, eventually you'll wake up in the morning and it's always going to be Leah. That's exactly what's going to happen. You put all of your identity and hopes and you think it's all in Rachel but you're going to wake up in the morning. And when you wake up, it's going to be Leah.

It's just the way it is. C.S. Lewis, brilliant Christian philosopher, in his classic book, Mere Christianity, says this, Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know what they want. And they want something acutely, something that they understand can't be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings in which no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy. He said, I am not now speaking of what would be an ordinarily called unsuccessful marriage or a holiday or a learned career.

I am speaking of the best possible ones. He says there was something we have grasped at in the first moment of longing which just fades away into the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean.

The wife may be a good wife and the hotels and scenery may be beautiful and excellent. And the chemistry may be a very interesting subject but something has evaded us. They never quite satisfy our deepest needs. You see, that's what happens. If you marry as Jacob did and you put all of your deepest hopes, the completion of your character in that other person, in your deep romantic love and you've set that up on an idol and that is where you really spend your worship.

You will be bitterly disappointed because no human being can give your soul what it needs. It just cannot. And then you know what happens?

I've seen it over and over again. One, this is what happens, you blame them. You blame them. It's their fault. He or she does, they don't meet my needs and you blame them.

And it's all their fault and what I need to do is move on to someone else who is going to meet my needs. That idea comes from our culture. That idea does not come from God. In 1 Peter chapter 3, Peter says to wives that if you let God meet your needs, if you let God meet your needs, then God can use you to meet the needs of your husband. Peter says it even more profoundly. He said even if they are disobedient to the word, they may be won by your quiet and chaste behavior.

How can I do that? How can I stay in it long enough because I don't need him to meet my needs? You see, that's not it. I need God to meet my needs and when God meets my needs, I'm now open to meet the needs of the one I'm married to, the one I'm in love with. Also, then you can blame yourself and then you become sort of self-loathing, despairing.

And I run into those folks too. It's all my fault. I have no meaning in life. I can never make any woman or any man happy. I'm doomed to this life that I have. That's not from the word of God. And thirdly, you can blame the world.

It comes out sort of like this. I hate men. I hate women. When someone's telling me that, they'd just categorize maybe three and a half billion people on earth.

I hate them all. That's a statement out of pain. You see, that's a statement you make out of pain.

And the reason is you expected something that they can never deliver. Or, like Leah eventually did, you can turn to God to give you what no other person could provide you, purpose and meaning, a reason to be alive. Again, Ernest Becker writes this, The failure of romantic love as a solution to the human problem is so much a part of modern man's frustration. No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood. However much we may idealize or idolize him or her, the love partner, he or she inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection. After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of our faults and our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified. To know our existence has not been in vain. We want redemption and nothing less.

Needless to say, human partners will never give us that. And you think of Leah. The woman with the weak eyes. What did God give her?

Well, think of this. What did God give her? Well, in her, he gave her conception. She had four of the twelve tribes.

But what about for her? Well, who was that fourth son? What was his name? Judah. Judah.

Well, who's he? Well, where did Jesus Christ come from? What tribe? What tribe did Jesus Christ, the son of God, God incarnate, come from? Judah. He came from Judah. He didn't come from Rachel. He didn't come from Joseph. He didn't come from Benjamin. He came from Judah. You see, God loves the unwanted, the weak, and the unloved.

He truly does. That's why he says, I am the husband to the widow. I am the father to the orphan. In other words, I don't care what your condition is, I can meet your needs. You see, you were created so that I could meet your needs. And when you seek your needs in me, you can have them met.

But when you try to get them out of some other person in a romantic love situation, you are doomed to fail. You will always be disappointed. And by the way, when Jesus Christ came to earth, didn't he come as the son of Leah? What do you mean by that? Wasn't he somebody that nobody really wanted? Wasn't he born in a manger? Didn't Isaiah 53 say exactly, let me quote, that he had no beauty, that we should desire him? In fact, Isaiah described him as a root out of ground. That's not exactly really a beautiful description.

What does that mean? It means Jesus was homely, just like Leah. And in the end, by the way, wasn't he abandoned by almost everyone? It's truly in his life a son of Leah.

Why did he do that for you and me? You see, that's what Jesus Christ did. A romantic attachment in my life cannot save me. But Jesus Christ can. You see, I don't have to expect someone else to give me meaning and purpose in my life. Because Jesus Christ can. You see, that's the whole point. And that's why I worship him. And that's why I should never worship another human being. Even one I deeply, deeply love. And you know what the lagniappe of it all is? When you love Jesus Christ the most, you'll love your romantic attachment more.

And that's the beauty of it. How you love them in the way that God said you should love them. Not in a way built out of your needs and your wants. But in a way in which you can help fulfill them. That you can be a conduit of the blessings of God into their life. Don't make an idol out of romantic love.

Let's pray. Father, I fear that there is one consistent thing that happens to us when we make an idol of romantic love. For so many of us, we don't even know we're doing it.

But it always shows up. It always shows up in our disappointment that they are not doing for us all the things that we thought they would do in order to make us feel so good about being ourselves. And somehow then we're left empty. And somehow, Father, we're left disappointed. Father, I would pray that each and every one of us who know Jesus Christ the Savior. Would look into our own heart and say, have I put these kind of unfair expectations on the object of my human love?

Have I done that? And if I find myself so disappointed because they are not meeting that need. Maybe, Father, what I need to do is to make you the object of my love.

And allow you to meet the deepest needs in my life. And Father, for anyone here who has never put their trust and faith in Jesus Christ. May they understand that He loves them with a love that is immeasurable. And He not only died so that their sins would be forgiven.

He not only died and rose from the dead so that they one day may have eternal life. But Father, as Jesus said, if they rightly relate to Him, He will give them life and give it to them abundantly. A life filled with peace and joy and hope and purpose and meaning.

A life of true fulfillment. Father, I pray that each and every one of us, saved and unsaved, examine our own hearts and ask ourselves the question, Do we love You most? In Christ's name, Amen. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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