Planting Hedges in Marriage (Part 2 of 4)

The way we demonstrate care for one another in the little things of life can often have a huge impact on the success and enjoyment of our relationships.

That has gone on undetected for a period of time. And it is neither some kind of superficial optimism or a debilitating pessimism that ought to permeate our thinking in relationship to this. But if we're going to be realistic, then it includes a healthy dose of skepticism. Skepticism starts with an examination of our own motives.

The man might ask himself just why it is that he's so concerned to be calling his secretary at such a late hour on a Friday evening. You ought to be skeptical of that. You ought to ask yourself the question, am I emotionally attached? In fact, it's the height of naivety and foolishness to assume that we can enter high-risk areas without facing the potential for failure. Gordon Macdonald, writing on this in his book Rebuilding Your Broken World, quotes Oswald Chambers, Always beware of a friendship or of a religion or of a personal estimate of things that does not reconcile itself to the fact of sin. That is the way all the disasters in human friendships and in human loves begin, and where the compromises start. Jesus never trusted human nature. He was never cynical.

He trusted absolutely what he could do for human nature. But he recognized that with which he was dealing. So if we're going to be realistic in preventing the kind of demise that we're alluding to this evening, then we need to make sure that we put necessary boundaries in place. And I want to give to you one or two hedges, if you like. England is the land of hedges. If you've driven in England at all, you'll know that there are huge big hedges everywhere.

It's downright scary, especially in the home counties in Buckinghamshire and Surrey and all around there. You meet these cars going at breakneck speeds all around the lanes, and you can't see around the corner because of the hedges. Some of the hedges are beautifully fashioned with care.

Others are wild. They're haphazard, apparently. In each case, they're usually planted as a line of demarcation between farmers' fields or as a means of protection from the elements for the things that are within their precinct. And the care which the average Englishman takes of his hedgerow is actually an indication of the importance of it for him, not simply as a thing of beauty but also as a boundary. Well, you say, well, what kind of hedges are you thinking of? Well, very simple things.

Let me give you just one or two. Let's call the first hedge the hedge of carefulness. There's nothing dramatic about that, is there?

No, and deliberately so. The principle is that which is found in Paul's writings to the Corinthians, let the man or the woman who feels sure of his standing to be careful that he doesn't fall tomorrow. That doesn't mean we're supposed to live in paralyzing fear. We wouldn't be well served by living every day imagining all the dreadful things that might happen to us. The fact of the matter is, if we're going to live in sanity, we have to proceed believing that the best will be the case and yet at the same time making constant provision for possible failure. When you and I tonight think about our children heading down the road of life, when we think of them getting their driver's license and going down the street, and when we try and affirm for them the importance of the stop signs and not becoming an amber gambler and not trying to jump the red and sustain it beyond the green, we teach them all these things because we want them to come home in the evening.

And in the same way as we think of them going into marriage, we want to teach them about the green lights, the stop signs, the cautions, and we want to tell them about the importance of hedges. You see, it's very foolish for us to live with a kind of naivety that assumes somehow or another we are immune from the external forces that would work against our marriage. Anybody who tonight believes themselves to be immune from those things is in a perilous situation. That is why, you see, that to expose our minds constantly to ungodly thinking is a great danger. And ungodly thinking will be formed by this stuff that we take in through our eyes and through our ears. That's why to read trashy novels will be imperiling to our marriages. To watch movies which glorify adultery and infidelity will be perilous to our marriage. To listen to stories and jokes and conversations which constantly undermine the framework of godly living will be perilous to our minds, and as a man or a woman thinks, so is that man or woman. Please don't tell me that you can live with impunity in relationship to these things.

You cannot. You are silly to think that you may. And if there is a direct correlation between the issues of violence and so much on our streets, isn't it interesting that no one is prepared from the Hollywood jet-set to stand up and acknowledge a direct correlation between a barrage of filth and immorality and the extent of chaos amongst our young people in our generation? If it is true for one, it is true for both.

And the Bible says it is. That's why you have to plant hedges. When you travel, they prepare you, don't they, those nice ladies, for the worst while all the time hoping for the best. So therefore, if you are going to be effective in staying against the marauding hand of the evil one who is a roaring lion looking for those whom he may devour, make sure that you constantly are sowing, planting, cultivating, nurturing, clipping, and caring for the hedge of carefulness. Second hedge, we might call endeavor. Endeavor is another word for hard work.

You see, we daren't assume that a healthy marriage can ever be discovered and enjoyed without hard work. We've all witnessed the transformation in the neighbor's yard after a new owner has moved in. Pathways that were previously just totally unkempt are now manicured and they're bordered with flowers. The large expanse of grass, which was one of the greatest seed beds of dandelions for miles around, has now become a lawn. Small stone walls, which we never knew existed, have suddenly reappeared to define flowerbeds, and the borders are now tailored in such a way that there is an exquisite eye for detail behind it all. And what can we deduce from this kind of metamorphosis? Certainly that the new owner loves to garden, but more than that, that he or she or both of them and their helpers were prepared to put in long, hard hours to turn the jungle to beauty.

Are you prepared to put in the long, hard hours necessary to ensure that your marriage is like a botanical garden rather than like a disaster zone in some rainforest? You see, if you live in shambles for long enough, you actually become unaware of how bad things really are. That's what had happened to the man that Solomon describes, the field of the man who lacks judgment. He said thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins. And he looked at it all, and he made a mental note to himself. He said to himself, listen, laziness and neglect will make us an even prey of poverty, and scarcity will grab us like a bandit.

He looked at it and he said, you know, I could be like that, my yard could look like that, my life could be like that, my marriage could be like that in just a moment. If you want to have a marriage like that, let me tell you what to do. Do nothing. Just do nothing. And you'll have it sooner than you ever realize.

You just do nothing, and it'll get like that. But in order to hit the fifty mark smiling, in order to have the big picture and the wee picture, it's going to take the hedge of carefulness and the hedge of endeavor. And that means that we constantly have to review where we are, regularly assessing where we are, where we've been, where we're going.

Strategic points along the journey demanded of as the arrival of children, the development of our careers, the college years, the decisions of retirement, so on. Probably one of us will be better at doing this than others, more of an initiative taker. But together we have to have a united plan of action, learning with an eye for detail to take care that we don't allow our garden to be infected in a destructive way by all kinds of weeds. And it can be tiny wee things.

You know that I have a psychological problem with dandelions, I've already admitted that openly to you, and that I can be seen on my hands and knees with a screwdriver digging the things out from the root and pouring inordinate amounts of roundup down holes in my lawn, which not only cures the dandelion but makes dead patches for about a foot and a half in circumference all around it. But little things. For example, I just recently read of a lady in her 60s who was tired of having her husband open mail, which was addressed directly to her as an individual. I don't know if you saw this. I think I saw it in the newspaper and it intrigued me.

I just caught it out of the corner of my eye. It was something like a 60-year-old lady is ticked off with her husband opening her mail. I said, I got to read on here.

The reason was because I'm guilty of the same thing. I can open everybody's mail. I love opening mail. I mean, the people in the office are sick of me going, where's the mail? You know, I love opening mail, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I can't get mail and lay it down and go away somewhere. If I'm going to the bathroom, it comes with me. If I'm going in the car, it goes with me.

I'm tearing it open as I drive. I'm reading it, stashing it, filing it, crumpling it, chucking it, but I deal with mail. So I said, wow, I got to read this. And as I read, it wasn't that the lady wanted to keep anything from her husband. Because in point of fact, everything that she got, she always read to her husband. It was simply that one of the things that she looked forward to every day was the joy of opening her own mail. And her husband was insensitively depriving her of the privilege.

And he was oblivious to his wife's sensitivity. See, it's care in little things which make a huge contribution to the enjoyment of our relationship. And if we are to ensure that things don't dry up underneath us, then we need to make sure that we are sitting under the word of God so that it can confront us with things like this. And let me do just one more, because our time is gone, isn't it? How about the hedge of communication?

Communication. You know the line, before I was married, I would lie awake at night thinking of all that my fiance had told me that evening? And now that I am married, I'd fall asleep before my wife has stopped talking. Now, that vaguely humorous statement is actually too close to the mark for too many couples. Because in tracing the roots of extramarital affairs, it is very common to be told that in the beginning, the appeal of someone of the opposite sex had been the appeal of a listening ear. It hadn't been that the ear was attractive.

It was simply that the ear was open in direct contrast to the ears of their spouse, which apparently were closed. And somewhere along the journey of life together, the couple had failed to take time to let each other know just what was going on inside their heads. It's very, very important, incidentally, in preparing for marriage that this issue is addressed, and that potential pitfalls in this area are identified.

Because you see, unless young couples are friends when they marry, and by that I mean that they're those who really enjoy each other and want to know what each other is thinking, and what their view is on this particular subject, and what their view is on that, if they do not begin in that way, they will not easily cultivate it in marriage. Communication is absolutely essential to all human relationships, and it is imperative if we're going to discover and maintain any kind of level of intimacy, which is God's design for marriage. Now, I trust you see that all of this is biblical. I'm not giving you chapter and verse here, but for example, if we return to the book of Genesis, we would notice that the origin of any kind of communication breakdown is traced to Adam's sin. Prior to that, there was absolutely perfect communication between God and man, between man and his wife.

There was complete openness between them. That is why they were naked, and then you know shame. But suddenly, we discover them covering their bodies, hiding from God, hiding from one another, and now the big cover-up has begun. Unconfessed and unforgiven sin always leads to a cover-up with its inevitable consequence. That is a breakdown in one's relationships with others. Husbands hide from their wives, and wives cover up parts of their lives when there is unresolved sin.

In order to reestablish communication and intimacy, it is first necessary to eliminate the sin that blocks our communication. Now, when you understand this, loved ones, you can no longer hide behind the excuses of temperament or childhood patterns. You sit and listen to couples explaining why this happened and that happened and the next happened, and along the line, it always comes out when someone says, Well, that's just the way I am. For example, the husband explaining why it is that he doesn't talk to his wife very much.

As if somehow or another, that justified it. Well, that's just the way I am. You see, temperamentally, I'm that way. Or I never spoke much when I was a kid, and frankly, I don't feel like speaking much now, and hey, that's just the way I am.

So what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to say something like this, I don't doubt that that's the way you are, but I'm going to tell you something, Charleo, it's not the way God wants you to be. And if you confess your sin and do what God tells you to do, you won't be that way in the future.

That's a little bit of a revolution, because contemporary counseling says now we're just going to have to work with this. I mean, this is obviously an embedded condition, this goes back a long way, this is a temperamental flaw, it's some kind of genetic thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, rotten blah. It's flat-out sin. The Bible says you talk to your wife, you do as you're told, you take the initiative, you're not doing it, you're a flat-out sinner, you repent of your sin and ask God to help you, and start talking. You say, well, I'm glad I never came to you for counseling, Al.

And so you should be. You see, instead of hiding away behind a file drawer full of theories of temperament—and incidentally, these temperamental things, I pay scant attention to them, I've got to tell you—theories of temperament, incidentally, do not have their basis in the Bible, they have their basis in pagan Greek thought. That's where they come from. They don't come from the Bible. They come from paganism and from Greek thought. That doesn't mean that they're all wrong and everything's wrong with them. I just want you to know that they don't come from the Bible.

Therefore, I'm not going to use temperamental analysis as a means of determining who somebody is and what they are and why they're not and what they're going to be. The Bible stands champion over all of that stuff. Therefore, instead of hiding away behind the file drawer with all this stuff about temperament, we need to step up and fulfill our obligations in the awareness that the changes which God demands in His Word, He makes possible by His indwelling Spirit. You see, that's the difference with Christianity. The changes that God's Word demands, God's Spirit makes possible. He does not call for behavior from us that He does not provide the resource within us to be able to will and to do of His good pleasure.

So we can go home and tell our wives, I'm sorry, that's just the way I am. I can say more about that, but time is gone. Yeah, they'll be here a long time. We can't do this. Yeah. Yeah, we should stop. I'm sorry. Is this okay? I mean, is this helpful in any way?

Is it? Because I mean, I don't do much of this stuff, you know. The next one is sacrifice, but we'll save that for next time. If you want something to go away with, just ask yourself the question, what have I done in the last seven days that was an act of sacrifice on my part for the sake of my spouse? You probably shouldn't be coming up with, took out the garbage incidentally.

I tried that one, it's not on the list. I'm trying to learn to like baseball. I think I like it. I think I'm beginning to understand it. I don't understand the games within the games.

In fact, I think I'm prepared to say that I like baseball best of all American sports. But I don't understand how it all works. But I do understand the principle of sacrificing yourself for the advancement of another who's already on base. I don't know what you call it, but you bunt, and you're out, and he's on. And essentially this bunting business is what we'll come back to next time. Bunting for the sake of the advancement and well-being of the one that God has given to us as a partner in life. We've heard about some important boundaries or hedges in marriage today. The hedges of carefulness, endeavor, and communication. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Alistair returns in just a minute to close the program. Now, if you're enjoying learning about marriage relationships in our series, We Too Are One, you can own the study on a USB. It comes along with other teaching from Alistair about Christian relationships like healthy friendships, family relationships, parenting priorities. This collection of studies is called God's Design for Life Together.

You'll find it in our online store today for just $5 when you visit truthforlife.org slash store. We also have a great book about marriage that is brand new, hot off the presses. It's titled Gospel Shaped Marriage, Grace for Sinners to Love Like Saints. Getting married involves seemingly endless decisions, but as we're learning from Alistair, the most important decision is to determine how to set up our marriage for success. A healthy marriage involves a conscious decision to follow God's instructions for who to choose, how to live together, how to handle conflict. And this book, Gospel Shaped Marriage, will take you step by step through these issues, drawing directly from scripture. Request your copy of Gospel Shaped Marriage when you give a donation to Truth for Life. Visit truthforlife.org slash donate.

Or you can call us at 888-588-7884. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. O God our Father, we thank you that your Word is fixed in the heavens, that your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Thank you that today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

That past regrets and disappointments and failures and fears belong to yesterday. We thank you that sin confessed is sin forgiven. We thank you for clean pages, fresh starts, new opportunities. And we pray that you might grant us grace to resist the inroads of the evil one who would seek so to mar the benefit of positive advice by dragging us back to the garbage cans of sin already confessed and forgiven. God help us to hold on, we pray, by the power of the Spirit to be able not only to live within the hedges that are provided by your Word, but to begin to sow them in the lives of our children. So that as they look out fearfully on the prospect of leaving, as it were, the protective care of our homes and our influence, that they may even on nights like this be crying out to you, Oh God, help me, and provide for me, and make me the kind of young man or young woman that you want me to be, and grant that I might live in this arena without regret. And so we entrust one another into your care and keeping. We thank you for being with us this day, and we thank you for those whom we represent, and we commend them all as we name them in our hearts to you tonight, our loved ones, many of them far from us, children at college and university, mothers and fathers and siblings. And, Lord, we thank you that when they meet you at the throne of grace and we join you there, then we're never far apart. And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, tonight and forevermore. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Join us tomorrow. We'll find out why putting our spouse first leads to greater joy than when we focus on looking out for number one. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.