How to Make Marriage Work - Life of Christ Part 68

Being a pastor, I get a chance to do weddings fairly often, and one of the things I like to do when I do a wedding is give the bride and groom a little sermonette or a little charge of some kind. And the way I always start that off is by saying to them, now you two people are about to enter in to the most difficult relationship to make work on the face of the earth. You say, well, Lon, that's great.

That's really great. These people pay all this money for a wedding and you come in and depress everybody. Well, no, I'm not trying to depress people.

I'm trying to make people realistic. I'm trying to take these two starry-eyed people standing there in front of me and help them get realistic about what they're really getting themselves into. Now, in that regard, you know, we're dealing with really an American epidemic today when it comes to divorce. On Tuesdays, when I meet with people in my office, Tuesday afternoons, week after week, without a doubt, the number one issue that comes into my office, there isn't even a close second, is people who are dealing with the struggles of making relationships work. Marriage, divorce, remarriage, issue numero uno that comes into my place. And, friends, USA Today reports that in spite of all the books, all the studies, all the seminars, all the help that's out there, still one out of every two new marriages today in America is going to end in divorce. We have an epidemic on our hands.

What do we as the Church of Jesus Christ, what does God have to say about all of this? We want to talk about that. And I realize I'm going into a minefield here. I realize that there's a lot of people here this morning whose lives have been touched and in some cases, I suppose, really damaged by divorce. There's many of us here who grew up in homes that were traumatized because our parents got a divorce. There's some of us here this morning whose marriages are teetering right on the brink of a divorce ourselves. And all of this rolled in together means that just the very word divorce propels pain and heartache to the surface.

And particularly in a church setting, people have got their guard up the minute the word's mentioned. I want to see if I can get you to let your guard down. And if we can talk about this from God's perspective, but if we can do it in a loving, healing, restorative, supportive manner so that you walk out of here feeling affirmed and ministered to and not condemned. I mean, that's what I'm going to try to do this morning. And I hope that you'll find that what I'm going to share is helpful as well as healing.

So with that little bit of background, we'll try to navigate through the minefield here without stepping on one. And let's start Matthew 19 and see how we do. Verse 1, when Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. And large crowds followed him and he healed them there. And some rabbis came to him to test him. And they asked him, they said, now is it lawful, Jesus, for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?

You say, what kind of stupid question is that? Well, the rabbis had a whole book in their Mishnah, in their code, I mean, about this thick, that dealt with nothing but divorce. Reasons for divorce, reasons you could or couldn't get divorced. And there was wide divergence of opinion. Some rabbis said you can only get divorced for adultery. And other rabbis on the other extreme said, no, in fact, it's actually written in there that a woman, if she burned her husband's toast, he could divorce her.

That was a broad spread. And so they come to Jesus and they say, Jesus, now listen, we rabbis are all over the map on this one. What would you say about it? Well, Jesus responds and says, verse 4, haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female? That doesn't really apply to our topic just for the sake of pointing it out. Would you notice that Jesus believed in the account the Bible gives of how man came into being?

All right? Now, he goes on and says, quoting from Genesis 2, and God said, for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. So there are no longer two in the sight of God, but there are one, and therefore, he says, whom God has joined together, let man not separate.

What Jesus basically says is, hey, from the beginning God's intended plan was one man, one woman, till death do us part. Well, the rabbis respond, verse 7, and they say, well, then if this is the case, why did Moses allow a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away? How can you be the Messiah when you're taking something right out of the Old Testament and you're saying it's wrong? How can the Messiah say the Bible is wrong? Now, what they're referring to is Deuteronomy 24. You don't have to turn there, but if you want to jot that over in your margin, it's Deuteronomy 24 they're referring to, and here's what it says.

Moses says if a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, then he can write her a certificate of divorce, give it to her, and send her from his house. Now, that's what they're talking about. And, of course, they were trying to define what it means to be displeasing. Does that mean burning the ghost?

What does that mean? And Jesus says, okay, let me respond to your question. Verse 8, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hearts, because they were hard and sinful, but it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you, Jesus said, that anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness and marries another woman commits adultery. In other words, Jesus says, listen, God never intended divorce to happen, period.

Adam and Eve were doing fine until sin entered the world, but when sin entered the world, it messed up God's plan. Sinners commit adultery. Sinners are unfaithful to their partners sometimes, and when that happens, you can't always put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Sometimes the breach of trust is so great that you can't fix it. And God, being a realist, recognizes that and says that in the case of unfaithfulness that a divorce is permissible because of the sinfulness of man, not because that was his plan. But when you read in Deuteronomy 24 that if a wife does something displeasing or if she's found with something indecent, Jesus said what God meant was unfaithfulness, adultery, anything else, burning your toast, is not what God had in mind. Now let me stop here and throw in a couple of corollaries to make sure we've got this whole thing right. I want to say two things. First thing I want to say is there are some other reasons in the Bible for divorce other than this that God says are legitimate.

By the way, and I'll give you three. Number one, the word that's used here that's translated as marital unfaithfulness is really a word that means sexual uncleanness of any kind. And so it's not just adultery that is a ground for divorce, but homosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia, any of these sexual sins that breaks the trust bond of marriage is a legitimate ground for divorce. The second reason the Bible gives for divorce is in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 where the Bible says that if you have one unbeliever married to one unbeliever and the unbeliever says I'm sick of this Christianity stuff, I'm sick of this religion stuff, I'm sick of you and I'm out of here, the Bible says let him go.

Let him go. That's a legitimate divorce and the believer is not under obligation to keep that marriage going if the unbeliever walks out. And a third and final reason for legitimate biblical divorce is abuse. I don't believe and I don't think the Bible teaches that God ever intended a woman to be Nicole Simpson, that God didn't put women on the earth to be some guy's punching bag, and that in the case of repeated abuse a divorce is appropriate. Now as you can see those are fairly limited reasons for divorce, but those are the ones the Bible gives. The second thing I want to say in this regard before we go on is that the first response we as Christians should have in any situation like this is not divorce but forgiveness. In other words just because God says if your partner commits adultery you can divorce him does not mean God is saying you should divorce him. I think the first rule we should always work to is a rule that says let's see if we can first forgive and keep that marriage together. Divorce is a last option.

Just because you can doesn't mean you ought to. Okay, now let's finish the passage. Well, verse 10, the disciples said to Jesus, hey, if this is the way the situation is between a husband and his wife, if she can burn my toast and let the iron cook my shirt and all these other things and I can't get rid of her, then hey, it's better not to marry at all than to get yourself locked down in a situation you can't get out of. I see some humor in this. It's obvious you don't, but I think Peter's going, hey, man, you mean I got to put up with her no matter what she does to me?

I don't think I'm interested in this. And response, if you read it, we're not going to go through it, but Jesus basically says Peter, hey, stay in single. All your life is an option if you want to. And there's some people who do that. It's up to you. But this is the deal about marriage.

This is the way it is. What I want to do now is stop and say let's talk about some of the real life implications of Matthew 19. Or to put it another way, when it comes to how we here at McLean Bible Church try to take these broad principles and put them into action, how do we do that? And I've got six basic principles I want to give you that we follow.

You might want to write them down. This is how we try to implement what the Bible says. Whenever anybody comes to see us with a divorce, remarriage, marriage problem, here's the way we go at it.

Number one, I've got six of these. Our first goal is always reconciliation. Meaning that regardless of the details, the first swipe we take at any marriage situation is to try to promote healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and to preserve that marriage.

That is the very first goal we have. Out of the gate, that's the very first thing we try because we believe that is God's ideal solution. Number two, we believe that every situation has to be considered individually, separately. No two marriages, no two divorces, no two separations are ever alike.

Friends, the transmutations are staggering, the permeations you can have on this thing. So here at McLean Bible Church we don't have fifty-five rules that we go by to cover every single possible situation, not at all. What we try to do is sit down with a husband and a wife and listen and hear and then do the best we can to take the truth of the Bible, the broad truths of the Bible, and bring them to bear on this specific situation because you can't predict everything that's going to come in. I was reading about this couple in Tennessee, I don't know if you saw this in the news, but the guy was suing his wife for divorce on the grounds of unfaithfulness, adultery, and she contested the divorce and went into court and testified that she had been faithful to her husband but one of her multiple personalities had not. This is true, this happened in court. You say, well now Lon, do you all have a rule for multiple personality adultery?

No, no we don't have a rule for that, we don't have a rule for any of this. We just sit down with each couple and we talk. Number three, regardless of how bad somebody has messed up a marriage, the forgiveness of God applies. This is the principle we operate on, the forgiveness of God applies. You know we have a vibrant single parents ministry here, we're getting ready to start a divorce recovery group and when we have these meetings, these are not melancholy meetings with black crepe paper all over the walls or anything like that. Friends, these are healing affirming meetings because we believe that God is a merciful, gracious, forgiving God and we believe that when people, even if they made big mistakes, if they're willing to come to God and confess it and receive his forgiveness, God always forgives. We believe that for Christians there is life after divorce. As a matter of fact, we believe that if Christians will really give their whole heart to God even after a divorce, they can have abundant life. We believe that God makes up for the years the locust of Eden. And that's what we teach people, forgiveness applies.

Number four, we believe that the blood of Jesus Christ covers the things that we did before we were Christians, the things we did in spiritual ignorance. We have many, many people who come here and come to know Christ for the very first time right here at McLean Bible Church, but they've already had a divorce in their past. What do we do with those folks?

Well, the first thing we do is try to go back and fix that old marriage and see if we can make it work. You say, Lon, what kind of success do you have? Not good.

Not good, but we try. And if we can't make that work, then what do we say to these people? We say, look, you were not a Christian then. You may have known what you were doing, but not from God's perspective.

You weren't plugged into that. We believe that the blood of Jesus Christ covers what you did before you were Christian and as a new creature in Christ, you get a new chance to start over. Now, make the next marriage work.

Make it something that honors God. Number five, in considering remarriage questions, when people come in and go, can I get remarried? Here's my situation. We believe, principle number five, in always putting the monkey on the person's back. You say, now what in the world does that mean? Well, I have people come in and go, Lon, here's my deal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Lon, can I get remarried? Tell me. And I always say to them, I can't tell you the answer to that. I can take the Bible and I can talk to you about the principles in here and I can even give you my opinion, but you know what? When you stand in front of Jesus Christ to give an account of everything you've done here on the earth as a Christian, I'm not going to be standing there with you. Frankly, I don't want to stand there with you.

I got my own problems I'm worried about when I get to that moment in time and I'm not going to stand here and justify what you did. You need to get on your knees. You need to pray about this. You need to seek the face of God. You need to stay on your knees till God tells you what he wants you to do and then whatever you do, just make sure that you're prepared to answer to Christ. Don't blame it on me. Don't blame it on some other preacher because you can go down the road and get the exact opposite answer from some pastor down the road if you want to, but that isn't the point. The point is, what do you think God wants you to do? See, the monkey's got to go on their back. Not my back, their back.

They're the ones who have to make the decision. And that leads me to my sixth and final point and that is, no matter what people decide, even if they decide to go against whatever advice I might give them, listen carefully, we as a church family are committed to never rejecting anybody over this issue. I've sat in my office. I did about two years ago and I had a couple in there and they said, Lon, here's our deal. We got a couple divorces. We want you to do the marriage. Will you marry us?

And after listening to them, I had to say, you know what? I'm sorry, but my convictions will not let me do the ceremony. I can't perform and I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings, but I just can. However, I said, if you guys go out and decide to get married anyway, if you go to the Justice of the Peace, if you go to another pastor, if you go to Las Vegas, I don't care where you go, and you get married anyway and decide to come to McLean Bible Church, let me tell you something. We want you here and I and this church will do everything in our power to make your marriage successful.

Whether I thought I could do it or not didn't make any difference. You come here, we'll do everything we can to make this marriage work. We're not going to reject you over this, even though you didn't agree with me. Folks, I'm not the Pope. I'm not God. You say, well, we're thankful for that. Well, I am too. And I don't have the final word on all of this.

You know that couples can go down the street and across the city and call up people and get exactly opposite answers of what I might tell them. So, we're not rejecting anybody on this. I mean, hey, we're not here to change the past.

We can't change the past. We're here to help people make the future something that honors God. That's our focus.

And if you want to come here, no matter what's in your past, and make your future honor God, then we're here to help you. That's what we're all about. Well, that's kind of the way we operate. And we try to take those six principles as best we can and figure out what to do with every individual situation. But it's still not easy. In fact, many times we'll take a situation and the staff won't even agree what to do with it. Two or three of us will be over here saying, well, we think we ought to do this.

And a couple of us will be over here saying, no, we don't really think so. This is not easy stuff. This is a complicated world. But these are the principles we try to go by. And no matter what your marital status is here or what your background is, I want to say without apology, you're welcome here and we'll do the best we can to make the future what it ought to be. You can't change the past.

But we're not going to reject anybody over what happened in the past if they want to make their life count for Jesus Christ in the future. Now one more thing I want to do. I want to ask the question, so what? Because this has all been crisis management.

I don't want to just do crisis management. We want to do some preventive maintenance here. So let me see if I can take the last few minutes I've got and talk to you about some principles of making marriage work better so that if you're married you don't end up in my office.

I don't want to see you in my office over that issue. And if you're single, hey, you're looking for somebody you can make a marriage work with so who are you looking for? Well, what kind of person, how does this deal work?

Let me see if I can give you, I've got five quick things to give you. And these things come after being a veteran of the trenches for 20 years. I've been down in there with the mustard gas and everything and I'm here to tell you that I love my wife. We've got a great marriage but there's mustard gas in the trench and if you don't think there is, you've never been married. And how do you make your way through that and hang together and survive?

Alright, I've got five suggestions. Number one, if you want a marriage that works, it all starts, number one, with unconditional commitment. The C word. Unconditional commitment. This is the cornerstone of every marriage that makes it. When Brenda and I got married we adopted a motto. Our motto was divorce is not one of the above selections.

And you could paste that on the wall in our house if you want to because that is our commitment. Divorce is not one of the above selections. And friends, that has stood us so well over the last 20 years. We have said because divorce is not one of those selections that we're going to work this out. It doesn't matter how hurt we are. It doesn't matter how badly we've treated each other. It doesn't matter what our flesh feels like doing.

Divorce is not one of the above selections. We will come back to the table. We will sit back down with a cup of coffee and we will work this out because there is no other option. And I believe that couples that enter into a marriage relationship without that kind of unconditional commitment, man, the pressures are too great. The temptations are too easy. You've got to start there. And that's a commitment we made to Jesus Christ first.

And it issued out in a commitment to one another. Brenda has often said, and I don't mind admitting in public, she's often said, Lon, if I wasn't a Christian I'd have divorced you in the first year for sure, buddy. Nobody ever asked me what I thought, so I never really shared my opinion about that subject. But friends, every compatibility test Brenda and I have ever taken, we're a dismal failure. I mean, we are a disaster zone. People look at our tests and they go hmm, man, and just turn their head. And listen, I know what they're talking about.

The sparks fly in my house sometimes. Because in terms of compatibility, I mean, you put us on paper. We don't look real good together. But I'll tell you what, 20 years later we're still in love with each other and hanging in there because we made a commitment divorce was not one of the above selections. And here we are. Number two, a marriage that makes it is a marriage where people learn to appreciate the differences in one another and value those differences. They don't despise the differences. They treasure the differences. And men and women are just different. You know that.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. We're just wired differently. I mean, men, for example. Let's talk about men. Men, they insist on driving.

I wrote a few of these down. And they'll never ask directions. They can't afford to take you out, but they'll spend $200 on a new fishing rod. They leave hair all over the bathroom sink when they shave. Their idea of a perfect gift is a tacky negligee.

I mean, to them, sex is a recreational sport. They never call when they're going to be late. They thought the movie Dumb and Dumber was a riot. They love that movie. They never put the toilet seat back down. They never replace the toilet paper roll. They're experts at listening but not hearing. And if you and he are both sick with the same cold, he's always sicker than you are.

True? Okay, don't clap yet, ladies. Women, they complain, you never talk to me. And then they interrupt when you try. They have a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear. They hang pantyhose all over the bathroom. They nag you to pull your weight at home. And then when you try, they criticize everything you do. They point out every guy on the beach with a great body, but God help you if you sneeze in a woman's direction.

They never put the toilet seat back up. They hated Dumb and Dumber, and they wear socks and granny nightgowns to bed at night. What do you think of the list? All right? Now, on top of just the normal differences between guys and gals, you've got personality differences that come into it as well. I like the Gary Smalley's or personality types, and he links them to animals.

And you ought to get yourself analyzed and check it out. There's lions. Lions are the people who say, where's the hill? I'll take it. Doesn't matter what it costs. By the time the smoke clears, I'll be on top of the hill, right?

And if I have to run over 65 friends to get there, well, that's the cost of taking the hill. Then there's otters. Otters are like, where's the party? There is no party?

Oh, yes, there is. I'm here, and there's now a party. We're partying. Then there's the beavers. You know the beavers? The beavers are all about chopping down trees and building dams and building.

And it doesn't matter what else is happening, man. We're chopping them down and building. That's what life's about, and there's only one right way to chop them down and build, and guess whose way that is? My way.

That's right. And then there's the golden retriever. Golden retriever just kind of goes, and licks everybody. You know, nothing's ever wrong. We just lick everybody. We love everybody, you know? Oh, it's too bad.

Give you a couple of licks, you'll feel better. Now, you take men and women and give them personality types that aren't the same and put them in a marriage, and man, you've got all kinds of interesting stuff going on. Brenda's a beaver. I mean, my wife is a beaver, and she just loves to cut down trees and build stuff, you know, and it's work, work, work, work. We got stuff to get done.

I'm an otter. I'm like, work? This is party time. Let's have a party.

And she's like, we got things, and I'm like, well, that'll wait. Let's have a party. You can't party your whole life.

She says that to me all the time, and I go, why not? Where's it say that in the Bible, you can't party your whole life? So, man, you add that little mix in, and I don't know what you guys are in your home, but you add all that mix in there, and you got some interesting stuff going on. Now, listen, couples that make it are not couples that have different values. Man, you have different basic values, you're going to have trouble. They're not couples that have different priorities. Different priorities spell trouble, but they're couples that have the same values, the same priorities, but they are different, and they like being different. They recognize God wanted them to be different, and that the reason they're different is because each one needs the other.

I need a beaver in my life, or I'd never get anything done, and Brenda needs an otter in her life. And God put us together on purpose, and when you've got the emotional maturity to see that and appreciate that and like that and see it as a strength and not a weakness, you can build a good marriage. Man, if you see these things as bad things, you've got trouble. Number three, open communication is the secret to a good marriage. It's more important than sex.

In fact, if you don't have this, you won't have a whole lot of sex, trust me. And it's more important than money. Being able to speak the truth in love as Ephesians 4 is really the foundation of a good marriage. And friends, what I have learned is, you've got to work at this. You've got to learn how to talk one another's language.

It takes time, it takes input, it takes energy, it takes cultivation. You've got to work at this. When Brenda and I first got married, she would say to me things like, how do you feel about your work, about your job? And I'd go, I don't know. I don't think I feel anything about my job. And she'd go, yes you do.

Do you feel something about your job? And I'd go, hmm, I don't think so. And she'd say, Lon, you just don't want to talk to me. And I'd go, well, no, I'll be happy to talk to you. I don't have anything to say.

I don't feel anything about my job. Well, it's taken me 20 years to learn how to talk that kind of language. I mean, if Brenda asked me now, Lon, how do you feel about this or the other thing, I can talk on that level now.

But I had to learn how to do that, and that was hard work for me. On the other hand, my wife has learned when she comes to me, you know, just cut to the bottom line, give me the bottom line. If I want any more facts, I'll ask for them. But, you know, we used to have conversations where I would say, does this have a point or is this just recreational talking?

Is there a point to this? And now she'll give me the bottom line and say, do you want the rest of the facts? And usually I don't. I say, that's fine, okay? But, you know, but we've had to learn how to talk to each other.

It's taken a lot of hard work. But when you learn how to talk each other's language, then you can build a relationship. That takes investment. But if you're committed to the marriage, you're willing to do it. Number four, to make a marriage work, you've got to be a giver and not a taker. You've got to be a giver and not a taker. One of the reasons that marriages are so hard is because marriage is not a 50-50 deal. In marriage, both people have to be giving 100% of everything they have to make a marriage work.

Marriages only work when there's two givers in it. Dr. Joyce Brothers wrote an article recently entitled, Will Liz Taylor Get Married Again? Have you seen the bumper sticker that says, Honk if you've been married to Liz Taylor?

A great bumper sticker. But anyway, Dr. Joyce Brothers wrote this article and in the article she said, yes, Liz Taylor is just going to keep on getting married. And the reason is she said that Liz Taylor knows how to take love when it's given to her. She knows how to deal with it when people fawn all over her. But when the tables shift and she gets married and she has to give love, well, man, she picks up her Gucci bag and goes home. Because she's a love consumer. She's not a love giver. She's a love consumer. And that's why her marriages don't work and that's why she's going to end up getting married again and again and again. Because marriages don't work when you've got love consumers.

They work when you've got love givers. When you want your marriage to work, you get two people in there giving a hundred percent and it will. If and finally, and probably most important of all, you want to make a marriage work, it takes lots and lots and lots of forgiveness. Ephesians chapter 4 says that we're to be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another the way Christ forgave us. And I'll tell you something, husbands and wives hurt each other.

It comes with the turf. There's no way around it. But it's the husbands and wives who can forgive from the heart and go on. Those are the ones that make it.

Not the ones who dredge up the old stuff, every argument, but the ones who know how to forgive from the heart as unto Christ and they go on. My wife's great at this. Now, she's had a lot of practice, I've got to tell you. I'm not an easy guy to live with. And she gets to practice a lot.

But she's great at this. And we both worked hard at forgiveness and at holding each other accountable in an argument saying, wait a minute, didn't you forgive me for that? Yes, I did. Well, then you can't bring that up. I want to bring it up. I'm sorry. You can't.

And we do that with each other because otherwise you just stand there and slug each other until everybody's bloody and bruised. You can't do that. If you forgive, it's over, done.

It's gone. That's the way God forgives. That's the way we have to forgive. And probably one of the single greatest reasons Brenda and I are still together is because we worked hard on being people of forgiveness.

Those are five principles. And you know what? There's a song by Garth Brooks called Unanswered Prayer. I don't know if you ever heard that song. But if you remember, the song goes, he goes to an old football game, you know, and he sees his old girlfriend there. And this was a girl that he dated in high school and he loved her and he loved her. He wanted to marry her so bad, he prayed, prayed, prayed, prayed, oh God, oh God, I want to marry this girl or whatever.

Then he sees her at the game years later and she doesn't look like she used to look. And so the song, the line in the song is, thank God for unanswered prayer. That's how the song goes. But the truth is, we're all out there. Aren't we looking for that magic person that we can marry? And when we find that magic person, then marriage will work. Would you notice that the five things I gave you to make marriage work, none of them dealt at all with the other person.

Because see, I don't think that the other person is the secret to this. I think that, to be honest with you friends, that finding the right person is not nearly as important as being the right person. And if we're the right person ourself, we'll improve the quality of our marriage enormously if our partner never changes anything. Five things about being the right person, being a person of unconditional commitment, being a person who appreciates and values the other partner, even if they're different. Number three, being a person who is a communicator and a listener. Number four, being a giver.

And number five, being a forgiver. And if you'll build those five values into your life, forget your partner. God will take care of your partner.

You'll work on your life. God will improve your marriage. And if you're single and you're looking for somebody to marry, let me give you a piece of advice. Don't look for the right person. Ask God to make you the right person. Ask God to make you the right person. And then look for somebody else who's working on those same things that you're willing to do these five things with the rest of your life. And that's a good man. Okay.