God's Practical Advice For Marriage Part 3
Tom Shrader explores three principles for godly marriage: unselfishness rooted in 1 Corinthians 7, continuing to share dreams through ongoing communication, and practicing forgiveness as Christ forgave us. He emphasizes that sexual intimacy is central to marriage and that couples must prioritize each other's needs over their own rights, maintain open communication about their hopes and dreams, and choose forgiveness over bitterness when offenses occur.
“If you want a marriage that is unbreakable, then here's what you get: you get a man who's consumed with meeting the needs of his wife, and a wife who's consumed with meeting the needs of her husband.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Advice for Marriage
Recorded: 2000 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 56 min
Themes: marriage, forgiveness, unselfishness, intimacy, communication, dreams, sacrifice, reconciliation, married couples, struggling marriage, second marriage, divorced remarried, communication issues, sexual difficulties, relationship conflict, marriage restoration
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, 1 Corinthians 7:8, 1 Corinthians 7:9, 1 Corinthians 7:38, Philippians 2:3-5, Ephesians 4:25-32, Matthew 18, John 7, 1 Corinthians 5:14, Colossians 3:13
Theological Themes: sanctification, biblical marriage, christian ethics, covenant relationship, sexual purity, marital theology, redemptive love, spiritual restoration
Full Transcript
Well, good evening. It's good to see you. Did you have a good afternoon, I hope? The fun and the games are over. Tonight we're going to talk about sex.
Here, let me just remind you what we're doing. We're talking about marriage. We've looked at marriage as unconditional. Marriage should have realistic expectations. Let me tell you something that I know about you. I spend a lot of my week with men and women who are not Christians or who are really struggling. And I spend a lot of time with people who are Christians. I also know that we come with so many different backgrounds.
When we're talking about God's plan for marriage, and we start talking about marriages to be heterosexual, marriages to be relational, intimate, forever, I know that there's some of you who have violated that principle. There's just no question in a room like this, you have people who are not with your first spouse, who have maybe even within the context of this marriage violated some of those principles. My mission here is not to dump guilt on you. My experience is you already feel guilty enough. You don't need a short little guy from Arizona dumping more guilt on you.
Moving Forward Despite Past Failures
But what I do want you to do is to understand that because you've had failure in those relationships in the past, while it's an indicator that you'll fail again, second marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages. That's a statistic from the Census Bureau. That's not me. Third marriages more than second, fourth more than third. You need not fall into that pattern.
This is a point where you can draw a line in the sand and say, not from this day forward. While we have to talk about these things and sometimes scratch a scab, which is a difficult thing to do, we do it so that we'll get great healing and so that you'll understand the extraordinary power that you have in the midst of the relationship you're in right now.
I'm absolutely convinced. I don't care what the condition of your marriage is. If it's good, God can make it better. But if it's bad, maybe you came up and this is desperate. I want you to understand, God does incredible, awesome, impossible, powerful things. And one of those is to change people's hearts and to take people who can barely look at each other and let them fall in love again. What you need to do in this process is simply look at the relationship you're in now and from there, we go forward.
Marriage Requires Unselfishness
Here's the third point. Marriage requires unselfishness. Listen to these words from 1 Corinthians 7:
"The husband should fulfill his marital duties to his wife and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except for mutual consent for a time so that you may devote yourself to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you."
Though this passage speaks primarily of intimacy sexually, the application touches every area of life. The two of you are to become one. You are to set aside the concerns about your rights and be concerned about meeting the needs and wants of your mate.
The Primary Reason for Marriage
Let me give you my theory, then I'll come back and explain to you that I think it's biblical. But everywhere I go, people want to argue about this. The primary reason to marry is sex. And nobody talks about this. But it seems to me that that's what Paul's saying.
Now, I have backed off in the sense that when you say primary, I've got all sorts of people that they want to argue with. Well, this makes me whole and all this stuff. I got you. And this is a deep companion. Got all that too. But everything in a marriage relationship, everything that Susan and I have, we could find in other people or other relationships apart from the sexual part of it.
The Context of Corinth
I want to ask you to open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 7. We'll build this case and then we'll talk just briefly about it. Here's what Paul's saying. Paul's writing to this church at Corinth. And Corinth is an awful city.
Athens was the city of intellectual power in Greece. Corinth was a city of really decadence. North and southern Greece are held together by this little strip of land. And on this strip of land is Corinth. The ships that carried goods from the Orient to the Rome, one author said, all the goods that went from the Orient to Rome went through Corinth. The reason is this: to circumnavigate that area is about an extra 200, 250 miles. A very dangerous sea.
So the sailors would come, they would unload the ship, take the cargo across this little strip of land that had Corinth on it, and then reload the ships on the other side and away they'd go to Rome. Here's this little metropolitan city filled with sailors. It was a pagan place. They worshipped the god Aphrodite. That's the Greek god. Same god in Rome as the god Venus.
In this whole process you have this metropolitan area. Corinth did not produce one great thinker. It was known for debauchery. In fact, in ancient Greece, if you saw a man or a woman who was from Corinth, a Corinthian was depicted in ancient Greek plays, they would be depicted as either a drunkard or a prostitute. They worshipped Aphrodite. They had a temple there with 10,000 temple prostitutes, male
and female, who would ply their trade in their worship. So this is just this awful place. As you know, in our culture, pretty soon the culture starts to affect the people. And you start to see the problems.
For example, many of you are church people. And in your church you start to see problems from the world that creep into your church. That's natural. That's the flow. And in a sense, that's good. Because that means you're reaching out and God's using your church to touch people.
Well, in Corinth, you're starting to see in the church there some of what you saw in the culture. And one of the problems that they had, the two longest letters that Paul writes are 1st and 2nd Corinthians, dealing with this church that's got all sorts of problems. Paul starts a church there and then he leaves. He gets wind that there's a man in the church who's having sexual relationships with his mother, probably his stepmother. He writes back to this church and he's dealing with this issue. And he addresses that issue. He rebukes that person.
Paul's Teaching on Singleness and Marriage
But then in 1st Corinthians chapter 7 he said this, "Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it's good for a man not to touch a woman." Now what he's saying there is, touch is a euphemism for having sex. A man, a single man, ought not touch a woman. But now we're talking about male-female. Now we're going to talk about husband-wife.
Look at verse 2. We're going to skip here. So that's what he sets forth in verse 1. Verse 2 he says, "But because of immoralities let each of them have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband." He said, it's good for you to not touch, but because of immoralities I'll allow marriage.
Now look at verse 8. "What I say to the unmarried and to the widows is it's good for them if they remain even as I." Now as he says to the single women, and to the unmarried, to the widows, he said it's good for you to stay single. Look at verse 38. He says it again. "So then, both he who gives his own daughter, virgin daughter in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage will do even better." So here's what he's saying. If you get married, that's fine, that's good, but it's even better to stay single. And we've really lost the sense of it.
The Purpose of Marriage
Now if you come back and you say, there's the value, there's the superiority of singleness. Now look at verse 9. "But if they do not have control, let them marry, for it is better for them to marry than to burn." And he's talking about sexual desires. He says in this whole process, this is what I want you to understand. That if you're single, and the sexual aspect is something you have under control, then it's better for you to stay single. If you marry, the reason to marry, you see what he's saying here? The reason to marry is sexual.
Now here's what I know, which means we have a problem. We live in a world that's got a lot of sexually active singles and celibate marriage. This is a problem.
The Crisis of Sexless Marriages
I had a guy, couple comes in one night, we're going to meet with them. This guy comes in, and I'm telling you, this guy walks in and he is just, he's tanned, it's like he's chiseled out of stone, he's a stud. He walks in, it's like looking in a mirror. I mean, I'm looking at this guy, I'm going, wow. Look at him. And behind him is this cute little wife, and she's just bouncy, cute, and she's just perfect.
Sit down, and we're getting nowhere, and I don't have a lot of time, and I'm just saying, how's your sex life? And she begins to tear up, and she says, he hasn't made an overture to me in seven months. I've done everything I can, and I can't get this man to touch me. It is alarming to me. And I'm talking about epidemic proportions of the number of Christian couples that come into our office that are sexually celibate. That's not God's plan.
God's Design for Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
In fact, if we go back to the part that we talked about, he talks about fulfill your marital duty to your wife, wife to her husband, don't deprive each other except for mutual consent, and to devote yourself to prayer and fasting. So he says, listen, you ought to be sexually active. The only reason to stop is to pray and to fast. So when I come in, Susan says, I don't think so. I say, I better not see a Twinkie go down your throat tonight. You're fasting, I assume, right? Yes, sir. Fasting.
I want you to see what he says. Do you see what he says? Do not deprive each other, now listen to this, do not deprive each other except by mutual consent. See, what we see, and typically it's the guy, although we're starting to see more and more, we're starting to see the women in this situation, but the guy is victimized in the sense that the woman uses the sexual aspect to pound and to leverage him. He said the only reason that there is not a bucket load of sex going on in your relationship is because the two of you agree that we aren't going to be involved in this.
And then he adds a verse. See how perfect this is? "Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you." Well, why is that? Why is it that Satan will tempt you? Because in the first place, you said the reason you're getting married is for the sex. And if there's not sex in that relationship, you're going to be tempted. That doesn't give you an excuse. What it does is explain the human side of our nature. When we look at sex and marriage, it's important for us to understand that they go together.
The Superiority of Singleness
It's important that God says, and we understand it, that it's better to be single. Now, everyone in this room, generally, there may be a couple of exceptions, have said, yes, I understand it's better to be single. In fact, I was teaching a lesson on singleness. And one of my points was the simplicity inherent in singleness. As 1 Corinthians 7:28, this is from the NIV. "If you do marry, you haven't sinned. If a virgin marries, she hasn't sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life and I want to spare you this."
In the front of my notes, I've written there in big letters, "Amen." My daughter came in and distracted me and I came back and you can see different handwriting—Susan's handwriting—and it says, "What do you mean by this?"
What I mean by this is really simple, and it's not me; it's what the apostle says. Life is simpler if you're single than if you're married. This is 101 stuff. It's just really simple. When you take two fallen people and you put them together, you have problems. You have issues.
If you drive from here to Spokane by yourself, you'll stop when you want, where you want, doing what you want, eat what you want. But you just put another person with that and it simply complicates issues. As simple as where you want to eat. I hate these discussions. "Where do you want to eat?" "I don't care." "Okay. Well, let's get Chinese tonight." "I don't want Chinese." "Okay, look. You care. That's the whole point. You care. What do you want?" "Doesn't really matter and I'm not even hungry." "Well, why don't we get Mexican?" "Perfect." "But I don't feel like Mexican."
Let me go. Just tell me what you want, or vice versa. I'll come home—this is one of my conversations I don't like. I'll come home and I'll say to Susan, "What's for dinner?" She'll say, "What do you want?" I'll say, "Lasagna." "We don't have lasagna." Now why ask me what I want? Tell me what the choices are. Why are you putting me through this exercise? You're just going to shoot down all the things I want and then tell me what we're going to have? Just tell me.
The Challenge of Two Becoming One
In this area that we're talking about, when we talk about the issues that we're dealing with in marriage, one of the great indicators of the vibrancy of your marriage is your sexual intimacy. And I understand in this room we've got some older people. I have a friend who took a class at UCLA and there was a part-time teacher, professor who was 80 years old and he was teaching some class on the culture. One of the questions was to the professor, "Doctor, when do men lose their sex drive?" And he said, "Sometime after 80." That was his answer.
This is a gigantic issue. When Paul says it's simpler, it's easier to be single, what he's saying is when you put two people together, you have the conflicts and the demands and the difficulties and the adjustments that are not present in the single life.
We had a chance today to go up to Coeur d'Alene State Park and Janet was our guide and Janet is single. And I just asked her, I said, "What's the single gig like? What's it like?" And she said, "You know, I don't really even think about it." And then she began to talk about it and she spoke to this very issue, unconsciously probably, but she just talked about the simpleness of it. And even, she said, she talked and looked at her friends and saw just the difficulties that are there.
Listen, being married is difficult because you're taking two people and bringing them together. And typically, the old axiom is true: opposites attract. And typically, you're bringing together two people with very different interests. Very different likenesses. I just find a lot of what Susan is—and I mentioned before, Susan's great—she loves the little Home and Garden shows and all these kinds of things and these little fix-it and all these things. And Bob Vila, to me, is like a giant waste of time. Why would I look at this? But she loves to watch that stuff.
There's this other thing. I tend to like music and I like noise around. Even in our room now, we've got the radio on and you only get a few stations and I got that station and she's just across the room, just going, "Why don't you just turn that off? We'll just have quiet." And I said, "Well, I don't want quiet. I want to listen to this music." "But I don't want to listen to it." "Well, don't listen to it." "But I can't help it." See, this is really simple stuff.
The Heart of the Matter: Unselfishness
But when we're dealing with people, at the core of this is a spirit of unselfishness. You're in 1 Corinthians, just flip, if you would, to the book of Philippians. You're just moving to the right a little bit: 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. In this process, Paul is writing. Here's what he says in Philippians 2.
He says, Philippians 2:3: "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but for the interests of others." In fact, verse 5: "Have the attitude in yourselves which is also in Christ Jesus." Some of your translations will say, "Have the mind in you that was also in Christ."
And then here's the model: "Who although He existed in the form of God"—in other words, He was God—"He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. He was God. He is God. But He emptied Himself, not of His glory, or not of His deity, but of His glory and took the form of a man being born on this earth and being obedient to the point of death."
When we look at Jesus Christ, we look at Jesus Christ and He gives you His purpose statement in life: "I came to serve, not to be served." If you want a marriage that is unbreakable, then here's what you get. You get a man who's consumed with meeting the needs of his wife, and a wife who's consumed with meeting the needs of her husband. And I don't care what comes into that marriage or what comes into that relationship, there's no way to pull it apart. There's no way to break this.
Grace in Marriage
And out of this comes extraordinary trust and a great sense of allowing the other person to screw up. I frequently will talk to couples and as they're describing what they're going through and always the guy in this process, I listen and I listen to him and I'm thinking, "Oh man, that sounds like something I'd say. Oh man, I did say that the other night. Oh man, that's terrible." And as I'm listening to it, I'm going, "Okay, how come they have this conversation and they end up in our office and I have—"
it with Susan and she says, you know why? I'll tell you why. Because when I say something extraordinarily stupid and I say something extremely selfish, you know what Susan kind of does? She goes, you know what? That's just Tom and he doesn't really know what he's saying and I know he really loves me and I know he really cares for me and I know he doesn't really mean that so I will let this little jerk alone for a while. It's allowing the person to be who they are. See, it's allowing them that freedom and that freedom that begins to conform.
By the way, again, and even some of you, I don't, we never did the beginning, how have you been married, how long and all that. Anybody in here been married less than five years? Any of you? Oh, a few. Okay. See, even in there, there's really an issue in that thing because now we talk about unrealistic expectation.
Unrealistic Expectations in Marriage
I got a call one night from this gal and they had been married about three months and she calls on the phone, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, well, we need to get together. We need to see you right away. And I said, well, right away is not good. My football is on. And no, we need to see you right away. We need to come in right now. And I said, why can't it be, okay, come on, okay, come on over.
So they come in the door and they've been married three months and she's crying and she's weeping and they come in the door. He's behind her and he's kind of going, I don't, I don't, I don't know. So they sit down and I know talking to him is a waste of time because he doesn't understand what's going on. So I said to her, what's the problem? What's the issue? This is never going to work. I said, well, honey, it's only been three months. I know, but it's never going to work. What's the problem?
I thought he was a godly man when I married him but he's not. And I said, are you a godly man? And he said, I thought I was until I married her and I'm not. Isn't that funny? So I said to her, because again, at this point, that's the end of his role. He's got nothing more that he can say. He's done. So I said to her, honey, what's the problem here? He's not a godly man. I said, what do you mean? He said, I thought I was marrying a godly man. I said, why is he not godly?
And she said, well, we study the Bible together only on weekends and we pray together every night but not always every morning and we're just not having the family devotions I thought we were and he's not a godly guy. I'm thinking, wow, the gals are lined up waiting for this guy. But there you go, what we talked about this morning, unrealistic expectations. You know the problem? And I told Him, I said, you know the problem in this? The problem in this is when we were meeting, you said you wanted a godly husband, he said he's a godly husband but I never asked either one of you what it meant to be a godly husband. See, it's that freedom. It's that discussion.
Share Your Dreams
In fact, it leads us to the fourth point and that is to share your dreams. Number four, continue to share your dreams. To this point in your relationship, you understand these people are just getting married. To this point in your relationship, you've communicated openly and honestly, regularly with one another. Don't stop now. Communication is the key to a successful marriage. You must continue to listen to one another. You must share your thoughts, your dreams, your ideas, and your feelings.
When we talk about communication, we typically talk about talk. Gary Smalley, and again, Smalley, I don't know where he gets his stuff, but Smalley says that a man speaks about 10,000 words a day, a woman about 25,000. Well, I don't know about you, but in my deal, I got pretty much 9,999 of them spoken by about 4:30 in the afternoon. So when I come home and I'm talking to Susan and she's going, how are you doing? I'm going, fine, and that puts me at 10,000. And yet, I know she really needs this and I'm just not very good at it. Susan's been so good at just accommodating in those areas.
But I remember when we started Priority Living, and Priority Living is a key ministry for us, that's our teaching ministry in the marketplace, and she wanted to know early on, and I remember coming home one day from a board meeting, and it's an early time, and you know, ladies especially, you can relate to this, there's a lot of stuff coming, our income's related to this, what's going to happen? So she said, how was the board meeting? And I said, good. Who was there? I said, the board. What did you talk about? Board stuff. And it got so bad in the conversation that she said, you know, was Bob there? Yeah. What was Bob wearing? Pants. I mean, I don't know. We want to talk about it, see?
But that whole idea of communication, and it's a two-way street. Let me read this to you again. To this point in your relationship, you've communicated openly, honestly, regularly. Don't stop now. You must continue to listen to one another and to share your thoughts and your dreams and your ideas and your feelings.
The Need for Ongoing Communication
It's absolutely phenomenal to me. Last weekend, we, meeting two friends and myself, drove up to Pine Top. It's about a three-and-a-half-hour drive. We spent two days up there, play golf, stay in a cabin, and then we drive back. So we had seven hours in the car. There was never a moment of silence. There was never a time we weren't talking. And the same thing I know would be true if Susan went off with one of her friends, and there they go, and they're going to drive up to Pine Top and back. They're going to talk all the way.
And part of the reason, but it's interesting, in our relationship, we had a date one time, and we were going to drive down to Tucson for something and back. And we just talked all the way down. We're dating. Talked all the way back. Now, we get in the car, about halfway down, there's Casa Grande. We get in the car and not really say much. We get to Casa Grande,
I'll say, "You got to go to the bathroom?" Well, no, do you? Well, I think so. "Want a cup of coffee?" I don't think so. All right. And then we go to Tucson and we're done talking.
You wonder once in a while, why is that? Part of it is, a lot of the things that are in life, we've already settled them. We've already talked about them. When we had a magnificent dinner tonight, because Heather was at our table and we're telling her stories about her mom and her grandmother, she was talking, and I stepped out. It just gives you a sense of what things were like when her grandmother died.
So her grandmother, born around 1880, 70 in there. When her grandmother died, they were going through her things and they found a little box with a ribbon around it and it was labeled, "String. Too small to use." Isn't that magnificent? They found in there, ration books from World War I and wrapped around it was World War II and wrapped around it was a little sign that said, "In case of another war." And we're throwing out clothes that we've worn once.
The Challenge of Continued Communication
Well, as you grow as a couple, you've resolved that. Now, Heather can't tell me that story at dinner tomorrow night. The more time you spend with people, you've just kind of dinged these things out. You've talked through a lot of issues. But it's critical to keep talking, especially about dreams.
My generation, and we were a screwy generation. We are the worst generation. We've got the greatest generation before us. You've got the worst one right after it. That's us. We had an anthem, and our anthem was, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," and we tried to find it everywhere.
We tried to do everything there was. I'm 50, and we were self-absorbed, narcissistic, selfish people. And in our generation, the one thing that was good though, there was a sense of idealism. There was a sense of, "Yes, we'll make a difference. Yes, our fathers fought this World War II, but we're involved in a war now that may not make a lot of sense." And there were families broken over that. And to this day still are.
Rediscovering Dreams in Marriage
But we were an idealistic generation. We were dreamers. You know what is sad? I think a lot of my peers have lost their dream. We don't dream big anymore. We're 50 years old. You know what that means? You know what God's done to us? God's given us a treat, and the treat is, He's given most of us another 20 years.
The man who spoke before me in Houston, listen to this statistic. Think about this, and think about what it means. Of the girls born this year, 50% of them will live in the 22nd century. That's an extraordinary number. If you are a woman now who's 40 years old, and you do not have at this point a heart problem or breast cancer, your life expectancy is 93.
Some of you say yuck. But you know what that means? What God's given our generation is literally a second adulthood. They used to die at 50, 55. Now we'll live to 70, 75, and 80. We have a whole world ahead of us. What are you going to do? And I'll just tell you something, and I'm going to talk at length about it tomorrow morning, but there's got to be something more than just walk the beach.
The Roof Decision: A Marriage Conversation
Susan and I one day, and this was a few years ago, we come home, and there's stains in the ceiling, which I'm saying, "Man, we've got a problem. There must be something leaking. You better get up there and see what that is, because I don't know." And so she said, "Well, goof, it's obviously a leak in the roof."
And so I get this guy, I've got this guy that's a friend that's a roofer, and so he comes over, and I said, "What's the deal?" He said, "This is not good." And I said, "What's the problem?" And he said, "Well, we had this shake roof, wood shake roof, and under it, it didn't have plywood." He said, "This is going to be a very expensive process. We're going to have to take this thing off."
And I said, "Well, what if we have another option?" He said, "Well, you've got one other option. We can try to patch it, but that's not going to last very long. We can try to slide some metal shingles in there and some other things, but it's not going to last very long." And he said, "Maybe a year or two." And I said, "All right, let us think about it."
That night, Susan and I had one of the most fascinating conversations about how long are we going to stay in this house? Should we put a roof on this house that's guaranteed for 25 years, or should we put a for sale sign out in the front and say, "You know, we're going to move?" Are we going to be here two years? Are we going to be here 20 years? "Honey, where do you think we'll be? What do you think we're going to do?"
The Essence of Moving Together
And I remembered the marriage ceremony, and I thought, "That's exactly what I was trying to say here. You've got to keep talking about those things." Every time, without exception. Because we vacationed in northern California at a place called Sea Ranch, and Sea Ranch looks very much like this. And the same thing happened to us yesterday, when we got on the beach.
We got on the beach, we took a morning walk, went down by Moe's restaurant down there, and just walked all the way up to the beach and back. And inevitably, within a short period of time, we're talking about where do you think life is going to be? Where do you think we'll be? Do you think we should move? Maybe we ought to move.
"Where do you think we'll do ministry? Do you think there will ever be a time when we'll be in Phoenix sometime, and maybe in a great place like Cannon Beach during the summer? What do you think is ahead? What do you think is going to happen to the girls? What would it be like to be a grandpa?" All of a sudden, you have all these conversations.
That's the essence of two people moving together. Dreaming. And I want you to know, this is not about getting a pension, and getting out.
Here's the last point for tonight. It's the fifth point on your list. It is gigantic. Forgive each other.
Every marriage, and again this is me in the marriage ceremony. Every marriage, in fact every relationship, provides infinite opportunities for forgiveness. In your marriage, there will be mistakes, failures, wrongs. Decide now you'll forgive each other.
And again, some advice from the Apostle Paul. He writes, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Just as God has forgiven your sin, not based on your deserving or earning that forgiveness, but based on His mercy. Decide now you will forgive each other.
The Christian Walk: Don'ts and Do's
Would you turn to that passage please? It's Ephesians chapter 4. It's a marvelous passage. The Apostle writes to this church at Ephesus. He spends the first three chapters of this book laying out these great doctrinal truths. And then when he gets to chapter 4, he says, "Therefore, walk in a manner worthy of your calling." In other words, because you're a Christian, live this way.
When he gets to the latter part of chapter 4, he talks about what we call the Christian walk. Now, when we talk about the Christian walk, what it means literally is the way we conduct ourselves. Here's what he says, verse 25: "Therefore, lay aside falsehood, but speak the truth." See, when we talk about this, here's what he's saying. He says, don't do. Don't do.
You've heard it said all the time about Christianity: "Well, it's just a bunch of don'ts. It's just a bunch of don't do this and don't do that." No, it's not. Are there a bunch of don'ts? You bet there are. But see what he says? Don't lie, but do tell the truth.
The Escalation of Bitterness
And then in verse 31, he says this: "Let all bitterness and rage and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all sorts of malice." There is in the words there—we're not going to take the time tonight—there is in those words an escalation that takes place. It starts with bitterness, it moves to wrath, it explodes to anger, it becomes clamor, and now it's slander. When I get to slander, I have one thing in mind, and that's to assault and destroy the other person whether it's true or not. And it becomes malicious.
And he says, here's what you've got to do. You've got to get rid of all bitterness. Now let me tell you something. I am not really good at many things, but I believe I am a world-class forgiver. I believe I am one of the best forgivers you will ever see. And I don't say this about many things.
How God's Forgiveness Changed My Life
And the reason is, verse 32 is so real to me: "Be kind-hearted and tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you."
I lived for years with the motto that said, like many of you, I don't get mad, I get even. You screw me and I will screw you to the wall. Bring it on baby. Bring the best you've got. And if you're going to take advantage of me, you will pay the price. But in 1980, I understood for the very first time how much God had forgiven me. And all of a sudden I'm saying, how could I possibly hold that against somebody else?
I had a guy the other day, he said, "I feel absolutely awful about something that I did to you almost 13 years ago." And he laid it out. And I said to him, "I'm sorry, I don't remember that." He said, "You've got to be kidding." And I said, "No, I don't."
The Root of Bitterness: A Backyard Illustration
It all goes with this. It's this root of bitterness. It's this little incident that takes place. And it gets in there and it grows. Let me give you a great illustration. I love this illustration.
I don't go out. We have a backyard. And you can see the backyard from our bedroom and from the living room, so I see no reason to go back out there. Because I can see it if I want to go back there. I probably go in our backyard maybe three times a year, max. There's no reason to go out there. And we have this grass area and there's a guy that cuts grass and the other stuff.
Actually now, Susan came in one night and she said, "Do you care if I buy a lawnmower?" And I said, "Only if you expect me to do anything with it. I'm not going to go. I'll carry it out of the car for you. But I don't want to know where it is and I don't know when I'm going to keep it because I'm not going to use it. I don't want to know about it." She said, "Okay, I think I'll get one."
Well, I'm in my office one day and the girls come in and they said, "Dad, have you been out behind the cabana lately?" And I said, "No, I haven't." And they said, "It's pretty bad back there."
The Radical Surgery Solution
And the cabana is a little strip in the back. There's a strip no wider than this. And it's covered with plastic and rocks. That's what we do with our landscaping in Phoenix. So it's plastic and rocks. And I go back there and it is probably knee-high with gnarly, grassy stuff.
So I thought, well, I'll do something. So I go out and I change clothes and I start to pull this. And I've got no chance. I have no chance of getting this out. So I call the guy. It's a weed guy.
And I said, "You know, you need to come out and take a look at this." And he comes out and he looks at this. And he said, "I've got some bad news." And I said, "Well, what's the problem?" And he said, "Well, what you've got down there under that plastic is a root system that's so complex. The only thing we can do is radical surgery. We have to take all the rocks out and all the plastic out. We have to scrape all of this out. We've got to put chemicals all down in there, something to kill all this stuff. And then we'll cover it with plastic again and then rocks." And he said, "What do you want to do?" And I said, "Well, I want to thank you first because you just gave me a great illustration." He said, "Really?" And I said, "Yeah."
I said, "I think there's a great story here." And he said, "What is it?" And I said, "Well, I need one more piece of information. How did this happen?"
And he said, "Well, when the man was cutting the grass, he would come along the edge and it would flip pieces of grass over onto this rock and the plastic. And if somebody walked on the rock and crushed the plastic, somehow this grass would get under that plastic and it would act as stolons. And under the right conditions, when the moisture was right and the temperature was right, it would grow all over and then it would just overpower and just spray."
And I said, "That's it, I knew it." And he said, "Knew what?" And I said, "It's a perfect illustration of the root of bitterness." And he had no idea what he was saying, but you know what I'm saying, don't you?
The Root of Bitterness in Marriage
You're in a marriage relationship and all of a sudden somebody does something. It's not that big a deal. In fact, even if it's not big enough, it's just not. It's not that big a deal. But here's what happened. It flips into your heart. And it sits there. And it sits there. And under the right circumstances, it explodes. And the only way to get rid of it is radical surgery.
You get a call one night from a gal and she said, "My husband has a gun and he's in the house, you need to come over." I said, "Well, I'll be right over." And so it's like 1:30, so I get there and the police are there. And so I walk in and she said, "My husband's in the room." I said, "I'm much more concerned about where's the gun?" She goes, "Oh, they got the gun."
So the police leave and we're there. And I'm sitting there. Just sitting, and she's here and he's over here and he's talking. And I'm not hearing much new and he's talking and all of a sudden she explodes. She comes out of that chair and she is ready to go. And I'm thinking, "Wow, I must have dozed or something because I didn't hear anything. I missed it."
And I said, "Sit down, just relax." And he's talking a little more and bam, she came out of that chair. Here's what it was. He knew exactly where the buttons were. And he knew. They were phrases that didn't mean anything to me. He knew he could go in and go bink and boom, she'd explode. Some years of root of bitterness. You have to deal with these issues. They have to be handled.
The Foundation of Forgiveness
You have no right to be bitter. Here you go, this is the NIV: "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as in Christ God forgave you." God forgave you when you did not deserve it. Do you understand that you couldn't stand before Him and say, "Gee, I'm not guilty"?
We are guilty. We're lost. We're sinful. We are not worthy. I get so frustrated when I hear people who treat God as though He's some sort of cosmic Santa Claus that owes them everything. You and I are lost, sinful people. And it's not that I have a low self-esteem. I understand what the Scripture says. I love myself as a natural man and I hate God. That's what Romans 3 is. No one is good. No, not one. No one seeks after God.
But God in His mercy saved me. He saved me not because of me, but in spite of me. How could I hold a grudge or fail to forgive someone else when the Creator God of the universe, the perfect holy God, forgave me for my sin?
We talked about the cross. Again, I hadn't been a Christian very long and I heard somebody say, "Do you understand that if you were the only person on earth, Christ would have come and died for you?" And I thought, "I don't know if that's right or not." And you know what? I don't know if that's right or not.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
Here's what I know. Think about this. If I were the only person on earth and Christ were coming to die for me, that means I would have to have been the one to drive the nails. I would have had to have been the one to shove the thorns on His head. I would have had to have been the one to stab Him with that spear. And in that context, think about it that way, I would be killing the very lamb that would give His life for me. It's an extraordinary thought.
How am I going to hold a grudge against anyone when God has forgiven me?
Steps to Forgiveness
Let me give you a couple of steps to forgiveness because I know how tough this is. Number one, from Matthew 18: "If a brother sins against you, go and show him his fault." In other words, you take the initiative here. If somebody sins against you, you've got basically three options. Number one is to forget it. Forget it. If somebody sins against you, you forget it. Number two is basically the equivalent, and that is to just let it go. The third option is this: if you can't let it go, to confront it.
Here's the second thing, because you're bound to be offended. You go to that person. John 7, Jesus says: "Stop judging by mere appearance, but make a righteous judgment." In other words, determine the cause. If somebody offends you, determine why it is.
I know this is a lot. Let me just take you through it, and it will be on the tape so you can grab it from there. Try to figure out what it is that they've done to offend you.
Understanding the Source of Offense
Number one, they were, again, we come back to this a lot, was it misplaced expectations? I had a guy that came to me one time. This is a really weird thing. He said, "Would you be my friend?" I said, "Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I'm your friend. We're buddies."
So he comes back, absolutely true story, he comes back two or three weeks later, and he said, "You're a lousy friend." I said, "Okay, what do you mean?" He said, "Well, when I say somebody is my friend, I expect them to golf together, and talk together, and go to dinner together, and call each other every day." He said, "You haven't done any of that." I said, "Hey, I got a bunch of that stuff already in my life. I don't need more of that."
See, he talked about friendship, and he defined friendship differently than I did. Somebody could have offended you, and it was just expectations that weren't realized, so you can handle that real easy. You just agree on reasonable
expectations. You say, "Oh, this is what I meant."
Somebody offended you, here's the second thing. Maybe they just don't understand God's standards. They're ignorant. Which is alright. What you don't want to be is stupid. If you're ignorant, we can help you. If you're stupid, you're just stuck there. There's nothing we can do about that. You're stuck on stupid. We can't help you with that. But if you're ignorant, it means I just don't know.
You live in a time where I'm telling you people are ignorant of the things of God. I had a guy, 32 years old, and I'm having breakfast with him one day, and he's saying, "I've been to a couple of your classes, and I get the feeling that since I'm single, I'm not supposed to have sex." And I said, "That would be kind of a general theme that would run through what we teach."
And he said, "I've never heard that before." And I said, "Are you kidding me? What do you think, I'm an idiot here? I was born, but not just yesterday. I mean, I've been around." He said, "Tom, the first girl I ever slept with was on my 16th birthday, and my dad put it together. We smoked dope, and I slept with this girl." He said, "I've never had anybody say it was wrong. I've slept with half of the gals in Tucson, and nobody's ever said to me this is wrong. And I just can't buy it."
But I said, "Well, now that you know that, you need to take God's standards and apply it." See, somebody could be sinning because they're just ignorant. They don't get it. So what you do is you take them to this. Now, get ready, because they're going to say, "Who made you king?" Don't ever come at them—I don't talk about attitudinal things—but now I come in and they say, "Who are you to judge?" Well, I'm not judging. If you're sleeping with somebody and you're not married, God says it's wrong. If you're stealing, God says it's wrong.
The Third Cause: Rebellion Against God's Standards
Here's the third cause of forgiveness, and this is the one we want to deal with. Somebody's rebellious to God's standards. If that's the case, then you have to confront them in their rebellion. You have to tell them what it means. You have to deal with this. And you're going to have different people that you'll handle in different ways.
1 Corinthians 5:14, Paul said this: "We urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone."
We have two girls. We've raised these girls, I think, identically. The older one we've spanked. Haley, our youngest daughter, I never spanked. Not one time. And I'm a pretty strict—I'm a fun guy, you know that. But I'm a pretty strict parent.
We're coming through one day, and I'm looking, and I just had said to Susan, I said, "I need to spank Haley." She was about four or five. And I said, "I need to spank Haley. This just needs to happen."
So we're in there, and in our house in the summer—and the girl across the street, in our house in the summer, in Phoenix, you've got the pool, nobody wears anything but swimsuits, nobody wears shoes. Just like up here, I get out of these into the shorts as fast. Well, the girls are out in the pool, and they're going over—they've got a bunch of friends—they're going to go over to the neighbor's house. So they go running through the house.
And I say to Haley, she's the last one through, she's about four or five. I say to Haley, the youngest of the group, I say to Haley, "Where are you going?" She said, "None of your beeswax, Dad." And she just kept going. I thought, alright, now we're going to get a little spanking in. I said, "Haley, come back here." And she came back, and I said, "Haley, don't you ever give me an answer like that again. Don't you ever talk to me like that."
Different Responses to Confrontation
And I'm thinking, I can't spank her. And I turn to walk away, and I'm walking, and I'm on the tile, and I hear the wet feet behind me. Now listen, here's Haley, and I turn around, and she said, "Dad, do I need to go to my room, or do you need to punish me some way for what I've done?" "No, go play."
But see, some people, when you confront them with their sin, are just broken before the Lord like that. See, when we're dealing with forgiveness, you have to take some initiative with people. You have to talk to people, and you will be amazed how often people will take what Haley had. And that is, they will be broken. And then you demonstrate with them the forgiveness that we find in the Lord.
That's what He says. The Lord has forgiven you. How could I hold a grudge against you? The Lord's forgiven me. Colossians 3:13: "Bear with each other. Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you."
Martin Luther said this: "We carry the nails in our pockets used to crucify Christ." What he's saying is, when they nailed Him to the cross, it was indeed me who nailed Him.
The Marriage Imperative for Forgiveness
Let me read this to you one more time. Every marriage, every relationship provides infinite opportunities for forgiveness. In your marriage, there will be mistakes, failures, and wrongs. Decide now to forgive each other.
Some of you have been married a long time. And some of you, there's a root of bitterness in there so deep that you don't even talk about it. You're kind of married singles, really. You just kind of exist. Kind of grunt across the dinner table at each other. You've kind of learned to get along, taken the path of least resistance. And a lot of it's because there's bitterness in there and you've never forgiven.
You know whose fault that is? Yours. These things have got to get fixed. And I'll tell you why. Because in this world—I meet a lot of people who want to be evangelists. They want to evangelize their neighborhood and evangelize their workplace. And I've got no problem with that. You know the most effective evangelistic tool you have? A good, healthy marriage.
If the people around you are watching you and there's nothing in your marriage, you're going, "Why would they want that?" It's the very picture. That's why God treats marriage
The marriage relationship is to be held so sacredly. It's the picture of Christ, the bridegroom, and His bride, the church. There ought to be a sense in which people look at you and they say, "We want that. What is it unique about you? We know you have to have problems. We know there's difficulties. We know there's hardship. But how is it you get through them?" And all of a sudden you say, "It's not me. It's the Christ who lives in me."
What This Weekend Can Accomplish
I really pray that at a weekend like this, we can't fix it. It doesn't get fixed. But I'll tell you what can happen. We can open doors that allow these things to get addressed. Allow you to go back and be involved with the people at your church who can hold you accountable, who can talk to you about this stuff.
There needs to be in your life an unselfish attitude that's going to exhibit itself in a vibrant sexual relationship that's going to have communication with the heart of this. And there will be no bitterness. Will there be offense? You bet. But I will forgive. Why? Because I understand who I am in Christ and how He's forgiven me.
Closing Prayer
Father, please let us be men and women who love and learn. And as we learn, it's so clearly manifested in the way we live. The way we treat each other. God, I pray for the couples that are here tonight. I pray that our marriages wouldn't just survive, but we would grow and thrive.
I pray for those marriages that are pretty fragile right now. Maybe hurting. Or at least would acknowledge they're not where they should be. God, I pray that we would understand that the marriage counseling we need and the help we need is found in Your Word and in our relationship with You. That when we're in love with You, we're in love with our spouse. When we're following You and obeying You, God, we are right where You'd have us be.
Again, Lord, we thank You for the men and women that are here. We appreciate their commitment of time and energy, effort, and money to be here. We pray You use this weekend to change their life. That years and years from now, they will look back and they will say, "It was at Cannon Beach. Remember, honey? It was at Cannon Beach that our life changed."
God, thank You for the heritage that we heard about tonight. Heather's mom and dad. Heather herself. Jeff and Janet and the team that are here. Committed to providing an environment and atmosphere where we can teach Your Word in a relevant way to deal with practical everyday issues. God, we can see lives change because You're a God who changes hearts. Change our heart. We pray that to You tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.