I
want to preach to you about an arm and a leg, and you say, “What is that about?” Well, I heard a story of a young man one
time, that desired to get married, and that's a good thing. And so he went out and he found a young
girl, and he brought her home and introduced her to his mother, and his mother
said, “I don't like her.” So he went
out and she didn’t like the next one.
And finally, the fifth girl that he brought home looked very similar to
his mother. Talked like his mother, and
she dressed like his mother. Acted very
similar, and he brought her home, and his dad couldn't stand her. I don't know what that says, but Barbara
Bush said, “Success does not depend on what happens in the White House. It depends on what happens in your house.” And that's true.
I
want to read you a statement from My Life Today. “A house with love in it, where love is expressed in words and
looks and deeds, is a place where angels love to manifest their presence.”[MLT-84] That's a beautiful statement. Do the angels enjoy being in your
house? Do they wear earplugs? Do they enjoy what happens within your
walls? How are things? I'm not aware of whether your marriage was
made in heaven or not. I don't really
know that, but I do know that 100 percent of the maintenance work has to be
done right here on the job. On the
spot. On site. Some couples have enjoyed 50, 60 years of
happy marriage and others may be thinking that they married a lemon. Your marriage is in the repair shop more
than it is at home, and you wish that your lemon would be recalled by the
manufacturer, but it doesn't happen.
Marriage
undergoes a lot of changes. Change is
imminent. It's inevitable. There are many changes in marriage that are
taking place. One couple, she said, “We
never communicate anymore.” He said, “What
do you mean? I text you a message. Didn't you get it? You didn’t fax me back.”
We have more and more tools than ever before to communicate. Let’s use them, whatever it takes.
God
never changes. Lamentations chapter 3,
verse 23. “For
His compassions never fail. They are
new every morning. Great is Thy
faithfulness.” God never
changes, but times do change and we have to do things to maintain our
marriage. We can always depend on God's
faithfulness. Can your spouse depend on
your faithfulness? That's the
question. God's love is always there
for us. It's always there for our
marriage. He united you together and He
will do the maintenance work if you will allow Him to do that.
There
are many changes in marriage. One that
I would like to talk about are role changes.
We’re used to the wife doing this and the husband doing this, but so
often today that begins to bleed across and it's not a clear distinction
anymore. Marriage is more democratic, more
flexible in today's day and age. Many
men even run the vacuum cleaner. Some
men do most of the cooking. I called
one home last week. I won’t tell you
who it was, of course, but the man answered the phone and he said, “Merritt's
houseboy.” I said, “Why did you do that,
Clar...” or whatever his name was. He
said, “Well, I am. I'm cooking right
now.”
Families
have wheels under them. We move. We move about every six to eight years, on
the average, here in America. Because
of employment or family needs. Health
needs. Retirement. Whatever. The kids move, we move.
Don’t ever follow your kids, cause they’re going to move and move and
move.
Number
two. There are uninvited changes in
marriage. Illness comes. What do you do? You marry for in sickness and in health, but you hope it’ll be health,
but sometimes it doesn't always happen.
There are financial troubles. My
401(k) lost about 5 thousand dollars over the last 3 months. I pity the person that lost 2 hundred and 50
thousand dollars. Often couples who
file for bankruptcy also file for divorce, so manage the money if you can. Keep your job. If you have a good job be fireproof. Do your work.
Number
three, there are normal changes in marriage, and let's look at several of the
stages of marriage. Several of the
seasons of a married life.
Number
one is the beginning stage. That's the
honeymoon stage. You just got
married. You get acquainted with each
other. She's a doll. He's so handsome, and they make mutual
friends together. They merge 2
individuals into 1 couple. They merge
their careers. They begin their careers.
They negotiate guidelines. It's the honeymoon stage. It's a great stage.
Number
two is the children stage, where you have preschoolers at home and there you
have diapers to contend with, and praise the Lord you don't have to contend
with cloth diapers like my wife did.
That's a horrible time. We’ll go
on to another subject.
Number
three. The school family. Renegotiating workloads. Who’s going to provide transportation back
and forth to school? Who’s going to
help with the homework and who's going to, how are we going to pay all this
tuition, and there are all kinds of challenges with that.
Then
you enter the teenage years and some people would just as soon skip this one. Who is in charge and what about all those
rules we had? Do any of those rules
exist anymore? And what about dating and
temptations and challenges and trying to deal with their friends and their
problems, and trying to deal with their haircuts and their music and their
hardware and their tattoos that they want to get.
Then
you have the empty nest stage. The kids
graduate. They get married. They split up into various segments of
America. Some live here. Some live over there.
And
then, “Dad, I need some money.” The
assistance stage. Dealing with your son-in-law.
Dealing with your daughter-in-law. Having an older single adult child that's
still in the nest and appears to be anchored to the thing. When is he ever going to move out? And wishing the nest was empty, and when are
they going to move all their stuff out of our house? Wishing that.
Then
there's the post-parental family. Now
that the 2 of you are home alone, what do you do? You sit there and stare at each other all day. Got to find something, got to get out of
this house, and you negotiate brand-new marital relationships. You negotiate your time and your work
schedules and adjust to retirement and adjust to all that money and to the
honeydew lists.
And
for a marriage to endure all of these changes you need stability. You need God's blessing and you know how you
get God's blessing? Obedience. We don't earn salvation by obedience, but
you get God's blessing by obedience. Obedience
unlocks God's storehouse of blessings.
In
Numbers 36, if you would care to come there in your Bible, there is an
interesting story. Take the example of Zelophehad’s
daughters. Have you ever heard of Zelophehad? I'm glad my name is not that. In numbers 36 they were instructed that marriage
is to be kept within certain legal boundaries and you can read this story in Numbers
27, in these 2 chapters. All four girls
went to God's church. They consulted
with the leaders of the church to find God's will and I believe they followed
God's will. These noble women sought
the instructions of God concerning their future, and they did not look for a
husband outside of God's parameters.
They obeyed God, and I think He richly blessed them, and if you need
God's blessings in your home then you need to obey God. You need to put God first and then have
patience that God will answer your needs.
If
I were to ask you how many marriages fail because of divorce, you would give me
that statistic, wouldn't you? It’s 50
percent. 50 percent. One out of every 2 marriages fail. More than 3 thousand children and teenagers
every day see their parent’s marriage split up.[warm2kids.com]
But
there is good news, and I sought for this and I found it, and other research
has been done and if you are a true born-again Christian, and you marry another
true born-again Christian, and you are from the same church, the same
denomination, and you received premarital counseling and you attend church
regularly together and you pray regularly every day together, that that type of
a couple experience 1 divorce out of every, nearly 39 thousand marriages. That’s a lot, and I've got the reference on
the website.[Dr. Tom Ellis, chairman of the SBC’s Council on the Family]
Ephesians
chapter 5 and verse 25 gives us the example of how this could happen. Ephesians 5:25. Let me read it to you. It
says, “Husbands,” and a lot of this is on the
shoulders of the husband, “love your wives.” Now this doesn’t mean for you as a husband
to love your wives. This is saying, “Husbands, love your wives,” if I'm pronouncing it
correctly, “just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself
up for her to make her holy.”
That's beautiful, isn't it? You
have the same love that Jesus had for the church for your wife and watch what
will happen. If you both are active in
the same faith, if you're both active in your religion at home and you both are
involved in your community and you both pray together, you study the Bible, you
have a Christian home, you’re active in the church, you’re going to stand an
exceedingly high chance of marital happiness.
You want your marriage to be fireproof, don't you. It will be if Jesus is in the hearts of both
people. So begin your marriage right.
I
would like for you to come to Deuteronomy, chapter 24. I doubt if one of you has done this, and I'm
going to ask you to raise your hand after we read this verse. Deuteronomy 24, and I want us to look at verse
5. “When a man
has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any
business. He shall be”
what? “Free at home,”
for how long? “For
one year.” To do what? What does it say he should do? “To make his wife
happy.” To make his wife happy. Never forget your goal. Your goal is to make your wife happy. That's your goal. In fact both of you need to have that goal, to make each other
happy. In most marriages there will
come a time of disillusionment and disappointment. You think, “Do I even know this person I married? This is awful. Why did I do this?”
But
you know I'm going to tell you a secret to a great marriage. Stick it out. Make the discovery of who you did marry. Discover who they are. You learn to love that person. Communicate together. Look at Genesis, chapter 2. Adam and Eve did it bad. Verse 22.
“The Lord God made a woman from the rib that He
had taken out of the man. He brought
her to the man and the man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh. She shall be called Woman
because she was taken out of man.’ For
this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united, or cleave,
to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” How long did Adam and Eve's marriage last before they fell into
sin? Well, several people have asked me
that question and I don't know. It's
not in the Bible, that I can tell. I
think it might've only been just a few weeks.
Not long at all, and they fell, she ate the apple or whatever was, and
they sinned. In the short time they both
sinned, and the first thing they tried to do after they sinned was to cover up
their differences. They got some fig
leaves and tried to cover the very things that made them different from each
other, and it is our differences, sometimes, that attract us, and as soon as we
are married we start to change each other.
The goal of many a wife, or many a husband, “If I could just change him
or her.” Don't try to change each
other. If you want to change somebody,
change yourself. Don't try to make him
just like yourself. You don't need 2 of
you. You don't need 2 people that think
identical. Trying to change your spouse
is a major cause of pain. Differences
can be creative. So don't squelch the
differences. Celebrate the God-given
differences.
Look
at Hebrews, chapter 13 in your Bible. Hebrews
chapter 13 and verse 4. “Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure,
for God will judge the adulterer, and all the sexually immoral.” You need to keep your love pure, and to do
that you need to keep your eyes pure.
You need to keep your body pure.
You need to keep your hands pure, your speech pure. Make sure your speech is soft and tender. Honor each other.
First
Corinthians chapter 13. Our scripture
reading describes love by describing what it isn't. “It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is
not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.” All these negatives describing what love is,
and finally it gets into verse 6. “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. It always protects, always
trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.” So don't get in a rut.
Openness is essentially a willingness to try something different.
There
was a man who purchased a radio one time.
He brought it home. He put it on
top of the refrigerator. He tuned it in
to WSM. Got it tuned in perfectly. Set the volume. Pulled all the knobs off the radio and threw them in the
stove. He had tuned in the only station
he ever wanted to hear. Some marriages
are kind of like that rut. They're
rather dreary, because either one or both have stopped growing. They have stopped expecting. Stopped hoping. Stay open, and the newness of marriage will continue to be new for
you. Adapt. Be flexible. Change
together. Grow together. Keep your marriage fresh.
Now
there's a price to commitment. It may
cost an arm and a leg, and that's the title of the sermon. One day in the garden of Eden, Adam said to God,
“I'm lonely. I don't have, all these
animals have a companion and I don't have anybody,” and God said, “Okay. I'm going to give you the perfect woman. She'll be beautiful, intelligent, gracious. She'll cook for you. She'll clean for you. She will never say a cross word,” and Adam
said, “Well that sounds good to me.
What will it cost me?” And God said,
“An arm and a leg.” And Adam said, “What
can I get for just a rib?” He got
Eve. Well, be committed to your wife.
Malachi,
chapter 2, right before the book of Matthew, gives us the secret. In fact, God attended your wedding,
according to Malachi chapter 2. Look at
the next-to-the-last page in the Old Testament. Verse 14. Malachi 2:14. “You cry out, ‘Why
has the Lord abandoned us?’ I'll tell
you why. Because the Lord witnessed the
vows that you and your wife made.” God hears the vows that you make at your wedding. He witnessed the vows that you made on your
wedding day, when you were young. “But you have been disloyal to her, though she remained your
faithful companion, the wife of your marriage vows.” The wife of your youth, you were disloyal to
her. Gentlemen, be loyal to your
wife. Give all you have and a good
marriage will be the result.
J.
Paul Getty, who I am told is one of my relatives. I've never met him. Don't
know anything about him. He once said, “I
would give my entire fortune for one good marriage.” I don't know as he ever got it.
You can't buy happiness. That's
not the way that you can do it. You
must be willing to give yourself. Not
your money. Not your possessions. Give yourself. You will get the best if you give the best.
A
happy man marries the girl he loves, but I'll tell you, a happier man loves the
girl that he married. Love your
wife. You need to come at marriage with
a good attitude. You need to keep positive. Growth is going to happen and that growth
needs to happen with you. You be the
right person. You control
yourself. Allow Jesus Christ time to
develop your home into a mature place of fulfillment and happiness, and He
will.
First
Corinthians 13 verse 8 says, “Love never fails.” You need to allow the love of Jesus to come
into your heart and make you what you ought to be. You see, marriage is not really a contract that God wants
broken. It's a commitment for you to
keep, Zig Ziglar said, “I have no way
of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many
people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make their
marriage happy and successful. I'd be
the first to admit that it is possible that you did marry the wrong
person. However, if you are committed
to the wrong person and you treat the wrong person like the right person, you
could well end up having married the right person after all. On the other hand, if you marry the right
person and you treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up
marrying the wrong person. I also know
that it's far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry
the right kind of person.” You need to
focus on what you are and not what they aren't. So in short, whether you marry the right person or the wrong
person is primarily up to you and your commitment.
Allow
me to illustrate unconditional love.
There are a lot of people today that are losing their jobs. I heard down in Dalton, Georgia that the
Tecumseh engine plant went out. I heard
that a carpet mill is shutting down an area.
A lot of people are losing jobs out there, and there was this man who
needed more money. And so he told his
wife, “On Friday I'm going to go, and I'm going to ask for a raise. We need it.” Friday came. He met with
his boss and the boss agreed. “You
deserve a raise. You've worked hard
here, you been a faithful, long-time employee. I'm going to give you more than you asked for,” and he gave him a
big raise. Well the man just went home
so happy, and when he got home he entered his house, and his wife had the best
china on the table. She had candles
burning. The best silverware was out. The aroma in the home was beautiful. It smelled so good and he thought, “They
must have called her and told her the good news.” But she didn't know. And
so he sat down and he told her the news and they had a terrific meal, and
beside his plate was a beautifully lettered note from his wife which read, “Congratulations
darling. I knew you would get the
raise. I love you.”
After
the meal was over she got up to go into the kitchen and get dessert and as she
got up another note fell out of her pocket, and he bent over and picked it up,
and he read it and it said, “Don't worry about not getting the raise. You deserved it. I still love you very much.”
That is unconditional commitment.
“I love you whether or not. It's
okay.” If you have that type of love
for your spouse, you will have a great marriage, eventually, so hang in
there. Don't leave the marriage that
you have. Does your marriage have the
advantage of that commitment? Are you
willing to give an arm and a leg and a backbone and a rib or whatever it takes
to have a good marriage? To become the
right person? I'm not talking about
changing them. I'm talking about you
changing yourself. You being the right
person.
You
know with Jesus in your heart your lemon will become lemonade. You'll have a wonderful and a happy home,
and God can give that to you. You be
the right kind of person, and Jesus will help you to do that.
Let's
sing our closing hymn. Happy The Home
Where God Is.
Hymn of Praise: #30 Holy God, We Praise Your Name Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:4-7 Hymn of Response: #655 Happy the Home
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McDonald Road Sermon transcribed by Steve Foster 11/9/08