Planting Hedges in Marriage (Part 4 of 4)

Every day we make countless tiny mistakes. Many decisions that may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but as we'll hear today on Truth for Life, these little decisions add up over time and can either erode or build up a relationship.

Alistair Begg is teaching from Ephesians chapter 5, we're in verses 22 through 33. I have concluded that there are many marriages which are frankly dull. Dull.

Really dull. And while routine in and of itself needn't be equated with boredom, it certainly is possible to fall into the trap of going through certain motions, activities, again and again, to the point of disinterest and disenchantment. The fact is that laziness and taking our partner for granted often squeezes out the kind of creativity that marked our courtship.

Now, I'm not referring for a moment to superficial expressions of imagination that are often promoted by self-interest or by guilt, the kind of bizarre stuff you read about in books, really stupid things. I'm just talking about little things that keep the home fires burning. Because when the other factors are in place—the carefulness and the devotion, etc.—then these little things have a part to play.

Where the other aspects are not there—meaningful communication, devotion, you know, the commitment to the whole shooting match—then let's not kid ourselves that, you know, twenty minutes with a card in a coffee shop is gonna fix the problem, because it sure isn't. But it never ceases to cause me some of the deepest pain of all in pastoral ministry when I have to sit and listen to a wife tell me how, when her husband took a lover, he all of a sudden became Mr. Imagination.

And they will always say to me, Where did he get this stuff from? And the fact of the matter is that it is rooted in selfishness, and it is rooted in sin. And sometimes I have to say to the wife, as I seek to help both she and he to come to repentance and faith as with others I try and help them put the train back on the tracks. It's not uncommon for the wife to have had a real blind spot in relationship to this as well, and actually to have been devoid of much meaningful imagination on her own part. So, if variety is the spice of life—at least one of the spices of life—then let's make an honest attempt to keep our marriages interesting. Determine to break out of monotonous routines. It's only when you get out of the rut, incidentally, that you will see how deep the rut was. And if marital failure is brought about by countless little decisions made daily which erode the relationship, then surely we can anticipate a measure of success by being content with small gains over a long period of time. It'd probably take most of us twenty-five years to see the benefits of companionship, persistence, communication, and creativity. But isn't that what everybody told us, the older people told us, about compound interest? They said, a little bit, over a long period of time, we'll multiply and compound, and you'll be surprised one day. Just do what I'm telling you, they say, and you can begin to imagine if you will just do as they say and put that small amount of money away and allow it to build. You're surprised! Goodness gracious, they were right.

Twenty-five years later, it did what they said. And the same is true in marriage. Learn to listen to the older folks. Listen to those. Find them. You'll see them around. They hold hands when they walk to the car.

They don't need to write a book for you. You just watch them. They're here. I see them. I watch you walk to the car. I watched many of you walk to the car this morning as I did my little research project. And all of you are going, Oh, I wonder if we held hands going to the car. It doesn't matter whether you did or whether you didn't, but a number of you did, and I saw you. And I said, That's good. I like that. And I saw the ones where the husband was two steps out in front, and the wife caught him up and caught his arm and pulled him back, and the others where he had to move his coat to get it on the other side so he could get a hold of her so that they could walk together.

Hey, life goes by real fast, doesn't it? I'm voting down dull, boring marriages. I just want you to know that.

There is no reason for a Christian marriage to stink as a result of a sad lack of imagination on the part of those whom God has given the powers and wisdom and love and truth that are contained in the Bible. We don't need to go anywhere else. Okay?

Still here? I'd like to change the analogy. I'm going to do one, and then one, I'm changing the picture from planting hedges to pulling weeds. And I have a number of weeds that we will pull over time.

I have a weed called unbroken ties. You know, it has to do… In fact, let me give you a great quote here. I'll just give you this fabulous quote.

I thought this was the best thing I'd ever read on this. You know, the old chestnut about your in-laws and stuff and interfering and coming over for Thanksgiving and who's going to whose house for Christmas and all that baloney and all those major, you know, things? The best thing to do is move an ocean away from at least one side of the family. But one of the weeds that can so easily infect a marriage is the undue interference of the in-laws or in-loves or whatever you want to call them. And I came across this wonderful illustration from a book called The Other Woman in Your Marriage by Norman Wright. And he quotes, I'll never forget the wedding of one of my best college friends, John Engstrom, years ago. Actually, it wasn't the wedding itself that impressed me as much as something that happened at the rehearsal dinner. Mrs. Engstrom, John's mom, was seated at the front table with John, his bride, and the bride's parents. At a particular time at the dinner, Mrs. Engstrom stood up and pulled out a beautifully wrapped box. She unwrapped it and with great ceremony displayed one of her favorite old aprons. Holding the apron high for everyone to see, she reached into her purse and brought out a big pair of scissors. With a flourish, she snipped off the apron strings and handed them to John's bride-to-be. Never again, she said, will I have the same place in John Engstrom's life. You are now the woman in his life. It was a moment of formal releasing in front of many witnesses, and the most significant witnesses of all were a young bride and groom. It was a profound moment, but a joyful one too, and there was a feeling of rightness about it all. I just thought you'd like that quote. Don't know if you do or not, but anyway.

How about I try and do two? Two weeds. Weed number one, taking each other for granted.

There's nothing brilliant about this. The Bible says that husbands are to live in consideration with their wives. Wives are to see that they love their husbands.

Let me just read this. It makes it easier. Oh, Carl loves doing the dishes, don't you, Carl? I was a guest of a family in Australia, and we had just finished our meal. In the absence of a dishwasher—a machine, that is—I volunteered to help with the project. In denying my offer, the young wife assured me that it would be all taken care of by Carl, her husband. Playfully, I inquired just how it was that she was so sure that her husband loved doing the dishes. Hence her question across the dining room table. Oh, you love doing the dishes, don't you, Carl? Neither she nor I was prepared for the response and the underlying sense of bitterness which accompanied it. No, said Carl, in front of the guest from America, his mother and father, his brother-in-law, and all his kids.

No, said Carl, I don't enjoy doing the dishes. He then went on to explain that the reason for his constant endeavor in this regard, ever since they had been married some twelve years, was on account of his frustration with his wife's untidy approach to the kitchen. By this time, I was just sliding slowly down, going, Man, it's a long way back from Australia. Her assumption was all wrong. He'd never addressed the matter in a constructive fashion, and I, it turned out, had just poked my unfortunate nose into a hornet's nest. I then found myself, for the remainder of my stay, trying to help this young couple pull some fairly large-sized weeds from their marital garden. It was interesting. It was just a tiny thing.

It was a passing comment. And suddenly, we were into it, and it was dreadful. Now, not every situation is as serious as that, but every one of us as couples needs to make sure that we prevent the growth of this ugly weed, that husbands, realistically, we need to learn what it means to live in consideration with our wives. And part of this surely means that the passing of time and familiarity with things doesn't allow us to be deadened to the sense of wonder and awe that we have the immense privilege of waking up each morning next to this woman who is an express gift of God for our lives. God, in his perfect wisdom, has provided for us in this way. Even in the bad days, that remains the case. And it is consequently possible for us to neglect the expressions of appreciation which are also necessary and need to be done with frequency, and we neglect to do them because we say to ourselves, but they're just doing what they're expected to do.

It's not deserving of special mention. Now, you can go home and test yourself on this, and it's not a nice test, I can assure you, because I've tried it in preparation. How often do I use the words, thank you, I appreciate you, I can't do without you? How long has it been since I complimented my spouse for some aspect of her character other than her appearance?

When is the last time I spent a special card or flowers or came home early so that she might have some time on her own, free from her own responsibilities? Sadly, it's really too bad that we assume that intermittent bursts of guilt may be assuaged by little bursts of appreciation. But the fact is, again in learning from others, it would appear that it is not so much the big things in life which convey this—although we don't want to miss birthdays and anniversaries, that's not a good idea—but it is in the casual routine of apparently inconsequential events that we make it clear that we're not taking our spouses for granted. In the sixties, somebody sang the song that when those little things that you do make me glad that I'm in love with you, the way you walk, the way you hold my hand, the way you talk, and make me understand you.

No, I love those little things that you do. It's in the little things. It's the little things. You go and sit with a family in the loss of a loved one, especially in the loss of a mother or a father, and you listen as the children begin to articulate some of the immediate and early reflections upon the life of the one who has just gone. And in those encounters, just listen carefully, and you will find out the kind of man and kind of father, kind of husband that guy was. It won't be necessarily in the funeral when everybody's had a chance to clean it up, spruce it up, and say it right. It will be in those unguarded moments that you will find out what they're really like, and it will be in those unguarded moments that people will discover for themselves what you and I are really like in relationship to our responsibilities tonight. Gotta pull the weed, you see.

I got a great illustration of this in my files. I may have shared it with some of you before, but I love it so much. It came out of Wally Pepin's marriage for all those years before he recently remarried. And just a matter of days before his wife passed away, they had gone on a trip down to the Mahican State Park. But in response to this trip, he received this little note. It reads as follows, "'Dear Wally, I want to say thank you for a wonderful time away.

The beauty of the mountains and the golf courses were superb. The time with you was wonderful. You are my beloved husband, as well as a fun companion and friend. Thank you for the beautiful little box with stationery in it.

This is a sheet from it. I love the dainty design of it and the pretty color. The Lord gave me the very best when he gave me you. I love you more now than the day we were married.

All my love is yours.'" And what I find most stirring about that is not so much the content as the context. Because it's not a note from a young wife in an early blush of marital excitement. This is written by a lady in her seventies, who by this time had been married to this man for forty-nine years.

I can pretty well guarantee that in the course of those forty-nine years, they must have written enough letters to one another and notes so as to be able to wallpaper their house. Let me just mention, as I did last time, the next weed to which we'll come and give you one illustration of it. A real ugly weed that interferes with the progress that is essential in a kind of Ephesians 5 marriage is what we might refer to as the comparison trap.

The comparison trap. It's a beauty, and it's often very subtle. You know, for example, the wife said, I saw Jerry down at the tennis courts. Brief pause. Now there's someone who has managed to keep a waistline.

Okay? Doesn't come out and say, You know what? You couldn't buckle your belt if you tried, Henry.

No, no, I saw Jerry down at the courts. There's someone who marries to keep a waistline. And so the husband instinctively sucks in his gut, tries not to buckle under the routine comparison of his belt size to every scrawny, malnourished character on whom his wife happens to set her gaze.

And it's often worse for the ladies, you know. I've had so many girls tell me about this. And I got a great illustration of it that came from somebody again out of state. I'd made reference in something that I was saying to the importance of delighting ourselves in the wife of our youth. Not delighting ourselves because our wife looks like a youth, but delighting ourselves and rejoicing in the wife of your youth.

So as not to get into the trap of comparing our spouses unfavorably with others at the level of intellect or status or buying power or business acumen or whatever it might be. And I had this letter. Dear Mr. Beck, While listening to your reference to Solomon's instruction to enjoy the wife of one's youth, I remembered an incident which I thought you might like. The night my husband and I met, I wore the kind of skin-tight, bright purple jumpsuit which only looks good on someone as young and slender as I was then.

Shortly after giving birth to our eldest daughter, I felt enormous, old, and depressed. Tearfully, I told my husband, inside I'm still the girl in the purple jumpsuit, but outside I feel like a whale. My husband launched a secret mission to buy me a new purple jumpsuit.

I had given the old one to the Salvation Army in a fit of closet cleaning. As purple jumpsuits were not exactly in season that year, he had to go to seven different stores, explaining persistently to each puzzled clerk that yes, it had to be a jumpsuit, and yes, it had to be purple. Finally, he found one—one size fits all— and presented it to me with a card I cherish, which read, "'Sweetheart, you'll always be the girl in the purple jumpsuit to me. I hope you are encouraged to hear what a joy a loving, godly husband can be.'" And I was encouraged, and I hope you are encouraged. And I firmly believe that as our culture increasingly disintegrates at the level of the family and marital fidelity, that one of the great bridges into the postmodern mind is going to come—and don't misunderstand me when I say this—is going to come not as a result of our ability to articulate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which ability we need to possess and which articulation we need to give, but one of the great bridges of opportunity is not going to come as a result of that, but is going to come as a result of husbands and wives living in such a way that even at the level of adequacy, it will prove to be so strikingly different from what is representative in our culture that people will literally be banging down the door of your house to find out what is the key to doing what you do. And in that moment, you will tell them about Jesus, and then they'll say, But I thought that Jesus was just another man." And you'll say, Oh no, have you ever considered the evidence for the resurrection?

And they'll say, Oh no, and then you'll tell them of that. But the door opener increasingly is going to be husbands and wives who are prepared as an expression of self-sacrifice, first to the Lord Jesus, and then to one another, to live radically different lives to the glory of his name. As we've heard today from Alistair Begg, it's little things in marriage that can make a big difference if we want to continue to pursue the oneness that God has designed for us. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

He'll be back to close in just a minute with prayer. On Truth for Life, we often invite you to open your Bible. The reason is because our mission at Truth for Life is straightforward, to teach God's Word without adding to it or taking away from it.

It's teaching that is grounded in Scripture, teaching you can trust to be true. Studying God's Word together is one way to enhance your marriage. And to help you do that, we now have Alistair's daily devotional titled Truth for Life, 365 Daily Devotions, available for purchase. This devotional will guide you through daily Scripture meditations for a full year. Alistair's corresponding commentary will encourage you to consider how to think differently and how to reorder your affections based on what you've learned. You'll find the book at truthforlife.org slash store.

It's available for our cost of eight dollars and shipping in the U.S. is free. There's another book we want to tell you about today. It's titled Gospel Shaped Marriage. The subtitle is Grace for Sinners to Love Like Saints. This is a book that provides straightforward clarity directly from Scripture to give couples certainty about God's purpose and freedom.

For marriage, when you read the book, you'll get a better understanding of how God equips you to create a healthy, loving marriage. Request the book when you give a donation to Truth for Life. Just click the image in our app or visit our website at truthforlife.org slash donate. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at P.O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio, or call 1-800-844-7200.

Cleveland, Ohio, 44139. Now here is Alistair to close with prayer. Our God and our Father, we thank you tonight that your Word is intensely practical. We thank you for the straightforward words of Paul and for the clarity with which Jesus spoke. And we thank you for the examples around us here in our own church family of those who, by your grace, have weathered the storms, made it through the valleys, battled, in many cases, to new frontiers and new days. May their tribe increase. We know we're not perfect.

We know we haven't got it absolutely right. But we pray that we might bring our regrets and our failures, our imperfections and our inconsistencies to the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And laying down our burdens may go forward in the power of the Holy Spirit to live as lights in a dark place. We thank you that there is tremendous encouragement in your Word, tremendous encouragement from being united in Christ, enjoying the fellowship of the Spirit of God. And we pray that we might draw deep from these wells, as we face this week, and as we face all of our tomorrows. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening today. So how can we be sure to enjoy marriage and not simply endure it over a lifetime? Join us tomorrow to find out. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.