Hope Church LV Sermons
The Social Network :: Relationship Status Married
"God made us for relationships. Every human being on the planet has been created for relationships. God made us first and foremost for a relationship with Himself. Life is to be lived out of the overflow of a relationship with God, but then He designed us that that relationship with Him would spill into our relationships with others." So we began a series just a few weekends ago simply entitled, "The Social Network." We began to ask one simple question and that question is, "What is God's perspective on my relationships?" And we gave a foundational defining statement that I want to put back up on the screen and I want you to read it out loud with me again this morning. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. "My capacity for loving others is born out of my love relationship with God." Very important. We spent two weekends talking primarily about our love relationship with God. Why? Because the help of every other relationship in my life is built upon the help of my love relationship with God. That's the way God designed relationships to work. He designed us to live our lives in fellowship with others, but to do that out of the overflow of our love relationship with Him. So we spent the first two weekends focusing on a love relationship with God. Then we began to transition last weekend and apply that to the other relationships in our lives. Last weekend we talked about the relationship status of being a parent. This weekend we are talking about the relationship status of being married. The first relationship that God created after our relationship with Him is the relationship of marriage. And the reality is that next to my relationship with Jesus Christ, if you're here today and you are married, next to your relationship to Jesus Christ, the most important relationship in your life is your relationship to your spouse. My most important relationship next to my relationship with God is my relationship to my wife, Christi. And the reality is that every other relationship in my life is built on the foundation of those two relationships. But it's my relationship with God and then my relationship to my wife that is the foundation for the help of every other relationship in my life. So I want to give some statements this morning about marriage. And here's the first one that I want to make today. God has designed marriage as a radical love relationship. Say that out loud with me. God has designed marriage as a radical love relationship. If you look up the word radical in the dictionary, the word radical means that which goes far beyond the norm. When we use the word love, often we water it down by the way we use the word love. When we talk about marriage, when the Bible talks about marriage, the love relationship that is described in the context of marriage is a radical relationship. It's a radical kind of love. And the word love is the operative word in the New Testament describing the relationship that exists between a husband and a wife. Let me show you a couple of verses. First of all, Ephesians 5-25, look at this verse on the screen, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her." A couple of things to note about that, number one, it's a command. It's not a suggestion. It's a command. Husbands, love your wives. But then as if that doesn't raise the bar high enough, the just as clause blows it out of the water, right? Husbands, you're commanded to love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. I would say that's a radical kind of love that we're talking. This is not just a feeling. It's not just an emotion. It's not just an attraction. It's a radical kind of love that we're commanded to demonstrate to husbands. But look at Titus chapter 2 and verse 3. Look at this on the screen. It says, "Older women," and I'll let you decide if that's you or not, "older women, likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good. So that they may encourage the young women to, what, love their husbands." The word "encourage" here is in the present tense and it literally could be translated "train." It says, "The older women in the body of Christ are to constantly be training the younger women how to love their husbands." Now why would a man have to be commanded? Why would a woman have to be trained to love their spouse? Is that not why we got married to start with? I mean, didn't we fall in love, isn't that what marriage is all about? Well it is, but the kind of love the Bible is talking about is more than just what we say when we fell in love. It's more than an emotion. It's more than a romantic attraction. It's more than a feeling, it is a radical kind of love. It is God love. It's God's love literally in and through us. You see, husbands are to love their wives and wives are to love their husbands with the very love of Christ. It's why in the New Testament, the New Testament writers often chose the marriage relationship as an illustration of God's love for humanity. When a husband and a wife are loving themselves, are loving each other out of the overflow of Christ's love in them, it is a beautiful picture and a demonstration of the very love of God for humanity. Now the most comprehensive description of this kind of love in all the Bible is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. If you have your Bible, you can go ahead and begin turning there. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is even in the realm of literature, a respected text of Scripture. It's often seen as one of the most beautiful, poetic, balanced portions of Scripture in all the Bible. As a matter of fact, when I was in 11th grade English, I had an 11th grade English teacher that was one of those English teachers that took it really serious. I mean to the point that she would just lose it in the classroom if we use one of those words like "Aint" or "I'm fixing to," you know, all those good southern terms I grew up with, those things that people I hear look at me kind of funny when I say, "Well, when we would mention those in her class, she would just literally lose it in the classroom." And she loved the beauty of the English language, she loved poetry. Matter of fact, one time she made us, gave us an assignment to write a poem on the subject of freedom. And I love to get her every once in a while, you know, just as much as I could, and I wasn't always the... I was always a good student, but I like to have fun in the classroom, too. And so I wrote my poem, she was imagining this poem about freedom and all the things that America has celebrated. So here was my poem, I said, "The freedom of which I'm about to tell is not about flags or the Liberty Bell, it is that freedom which comes each June when the school bell rings its final tune." And then I went home for several paragraphs and here's how I closed it. I said, "There it goes, the bell just rang. It's time to kick off summer with a bang, as the great Dr. King spoke in the past, thank God almighty, we're free at last." Now, she didn't like that a whole lot, but I did get an A, so that was the best part of it. Now, she, after that, required us to memorize 1 Corinthians chapter 13. It was the first time I had ever really paid attention to this text of Scripture, but the beauty and the poetry of the language that is used, but beyond the poetic beauty of this text of Scripture. But we're about to read, is an extremely powerful truth. I want to give you a couple of things about this text before I read it. Here's the first thing I want you to know about it. All 16 of the descriptions of love in this text of Scripture are verbs. Here's what that means. The description that God gives us in 1 Corinthians 13 is not about what love is, but what love does and does not do. Love is an action word, it's not a passive feeling, it's not a responsive emotion, it's a word of action. Secondly, all 16 of the verbs are in the present tense. Now here's why that's significant. It implies continuous action or that which is always the case, meaning as we read these verses, as it says love is patient, love is kind, you can literally translate it, love is always patient, love is always kind, or you could say it this way. There's never a moment when love is not patient, meaning anytime I'm not behaving the way these verses describe, I am not loving, and therefore not fulfilling God's design for my relationship to my spouse. Now let me just give you a third thing about this. What we're about to read is not just specific to marriage, this is the way we love everybody. So if you're here today and you're not married, there's application here beyond the marriage relationship, but these words are only intensified in the context of marriage. So with that, let's read 1 Corinthians 13, beginning in verse 4, love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous, love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never fails. Now before I unpack these verses, I want you to just kind of draw in clothes here and I want to say something to you. If you will listen carefully today, I'll be honest, what you're going to hear me do today from an oratory standpoint, you're not going to walk out of here and go, man, that's the best sermon, best, best ever preached. But if you'll listen to the Holy Spirit of God today and take the words of truth and apply them to your life, what we're going to read and look at this morning will change your marriage and it will change your home. It'll change your home. There's a lot of you who want desperately God to do something in your marriage and in your home. We just read the key. Also, let me say to you before we read these, or before I unpack what we've read, this stuff is deeply convicting. I've spent a number of hours this week in this text of Scripture and I'll just be honest with you. They'll warm me out, they'll warm me out. You see, the Word of God is a mirror. And what we get to do when we take God's Word and open it is we get to look into that mirror. And when you look in the mirror, it shows you what's wrong. And my prayer for you this morning is that as we open these words and as we unpack them and you take a good look in the mirror and you ask the Spirit of God in you to fix what's wrong. So let's unpack it. We've got a lot of territory to cover. Here's the first one. Love is patient. The word patience is a word that means to be understanding towards a person. This particular word patience is used in the New Testament only to refer to relationships. This is not a word that refers to patience with circumstances or situations in life. This is a very relational term. It refers to patience with people. It means to be long-tempered. To calm willingness to accept situations involving others that are irritating or painful. And yeah, see, it's just the first one, there's 16 of them. Welcome to my week. First Thessalonians says we're to be patient with everyone, not just our spouse. Our attitude's supposed to be towards everybody. And any time I'm not demonstrating this, let me tell you what's happened, I've stopped loving. Chrysostom, one of the early church fathers, look on the screen at what he said. He said it's a word which is used of the man who is wronged and who has it easily in his power to avenge himself. But we'll never do it. It's the opposite of quick-tempered. It's the opposite of irritable. It's the opposite of resentful. This expression means that love, listen, never retaliates. Love never tries to get even. You ever try to get even? The supreme example of this is obviously God Himself. And Peter chapter 3 and verse 9 says the Lord is not slow about His promises, some count slowness, but is, what does it say, patient towards you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. Aren't you thankful God is patient with us? Eighteen years of my life, I rejected the gospel, I rejected God's plan for my life. I said, God, I can handle it on my own, God, I can do it my way. But I want what I want, I'm going to live for what I want. And all those years, God was patient. It wasn't until I was a freshman in college that God radically began to change my life. The patience of God. Why is that? Because God loves us. The kind of love that God desires to demonstrate through us is a patient love. So what I want to do with each of these is give you the principle, then I want to ask some questions. And I've actually put the questions on the screen because you may want to write them down and take these home and think about them. Here's the first set of questions. Do you love your spouse? When wronged? What is your first response? Is it to retaliate? Is it to get even? Is it to be patient? Second, love is kind. Love is kind. The word kind means willing to help or assist and it could be translated a rendering gracious service to others. This is not just a feeling of kindness, this is an action word. It's active goodness or generosity. Let me give you a quote by Matthew Henry. He said that this love not only seizes opportunities to do good, but it searches for them. Love is kind, it's active goodness. This is not a kindness in response to kindness. This isn't just, well, they did something for me and I got to do something for them. This isn't that kind of kindness. This isn't a kindness to receive kindness. We can all put that one on, right? When we want something, when we need something, when we need some help in an area, what do we do? We demonstrate kindness, right? We lay it on thick, right? That's not this kind of kindness. This is not kindness in response to kindness or kindness to receive. This is not even kindness because I've been asked. This is kindness because I love. Let me give you a definition. Kindness is loving my wife by intentionally living on the lookout for opportunities to graciously serve her. We've talked about this principle of generosity before. This word is very closely linked to the principle of generosity. So we do this, we say I'm living my life on the lookout, ready to make a difference. That's this principle. Kindness is living with my spouse, always on the lookout for things I can do to serve my spouse. The reality is often we will go out of our way to be kind and serve our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, our children, our small group, while we take our very spouse for granted. I'll be honest with you. This one nailed me this week, and it's not easy to have to get up and preach this with your wife sitting right here on the front row. Hey, here's the reality, as a pastor, God's called me to serve other people. It's what I do with my life, but you know what I'm guilty of sometimes? I'm guilty of so serving others that when I get home I'm spent. Let me tell you what I encourage our pastors to do here at Hope. Okay, sometimes we have to say no to serving you, so we can say yes to serving our wife and our kids. I mean, that's the bottom line, and that doesn't mean we don't love you. It just means here's what we know. The health of that relationship is key to us being healthy to serve and love you. It's key. It's not just true in ministry, though. It's true in your life, man, you can serve and be kind and go out of your way all week all day long, and then get home. And you're hoping they don't even ask. You're not on the lookout. You're hoping they don't even ask. What are the questions? Are you kind to your spouse? Do you constantly look for opportunities to serve your spouse? Number three, love is not jealous. Jealousy means to be moved with envy, grieved at the good of others. The two kinds of jealousy, one is I want what they have. The other one's even worse. I wish they didn't have what they have. Where does jealousy raise up inside a marriage? It happens when there's competition. Love doesn't compete. The Scripture says you are one. You're one. The honoring, the exaltation, the blessing, the favor of one is the blessing, the honor, the favor of both. Love is pleased when others are honored and uplifted. Love doesn't take that personal when it's not me. There is a spirit of competition in a marriage that will always be quarreling. They'll always be the attitude of trying to one up the other one. Well, I did. Well, let me tell you what happened. Well, let me tell you what happened to my well. Look at James chapter four and verse two. It says you are envious and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. There is a problem in many marriages. Hear the questions. Are you in competition with your spouse? Are you pleased when your spouse is honored? Do you desire the success of your spouse? I'm going to take the next two together because they're so closely linked. Love does not brag and is not arrogant. The word brag means the idea of superiority over others. It's the expressing of an excessive display. The word arrogant simply means to puff up or to inflate. So here's the principle. Arrogance is an attitude of superiority, a feeling that I'm better. Everything is displaying that on the outside. So he's saying here, it's not right to display it on the outside, but it's not even loving to feel it on the inside. I'm not to be arrogant. I'm not to have an attitude of superiority and I'm definitely not to display superiority in my marriage. Here's what Adam Clark said, love does not desire to be noticed or applauded. You see, when I'm needing to be applauded and noticed, it's because I'm not loving. I am loving, I'm just loving me. It's not loving my spouse, it's loving myself. Here's the questions. Do you have an attitude of superiority in your marriage? Do you think what you do is more important? Do you always have to be the center of attention? Remember what we said about these principles? These are not just some of the time principles. These are all the time principles. Whenever I'm not acting this way, I'm not loving. Next one, love does not act unbecomingly. The phrase act unbecomingly means to behave indecently or in an ugly manner. It's the exact opposite in the Greek language of the word appropriate, meaning that in loving others I should never act inappropriately. Love is never rude. Love is always considerate of the feelings of others. It means that if I'm loving my spouse, I'm always considering how my actions are affecting her. You see, if I'm rude, I'm not loving. And what that really means is I'm not living in dependence on Jesus, because let me tell you what, Jesus is never rude. So as soon as there's rudeness, as soon as there's not being sensitive to the feelings of let me tell you what that is, that's just plain old me, right, without Christ. Here are the questions. Are you ever rude to your spouse? Are you careful not to offend your spouse? You see, sometimes we take that for granted. They'll get over it. Things we would never say to somebody at work, things we would never even say to the server waiting on our table at the restaurant, we somehow feel the liberty to say to the people we are supposed to love the most. We wouldn't dare want what we say sometimes inside our home recorded, because we don't want people to know we actually talk like that sometimes, right? The next one, love does not seek its own. You fix this when you fix 90% of the problems in marriage. Seek its own could literally be translated selfish. Love is never selfish. It's not about me. Philippians 2, 3 through 4 is a great text of Scripture on this subject. Think, listen to this, and I want you to think these verses in the context of marriage. Look what it says. And nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another. Think about it, regard your spouse as more important than you. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of your spouse. Well, I'm just making up my half of the bed. That's your half. I'm busy, too. Yeah, I had to live with this all week. You only get it for about 45 minutes this morning. Here's the questions. Are you selfish towards your spouse? Are you seeking your spouse's interests above your own? Next love is not provoked. The word provoked means to be irritated, roused to anger, to lose one's temper, to be touchy. When you love your spouse, they don't have to walk on eggshells around you. This one was really a big deal for Christian and we first got married. I brought in, I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I brought into our marriage a very bad temper. I mean, I had a bad temper. Through high school and into college, I didn't play college sports, played intramurals in college, but in high school sports and college intramurals, I can't count on these hands a number of games I've been thrown out of. I had a bad temper, man. I get in basketball, man. I get my two texts and be sent to the locker room a lot. That's just the way I just had a bad temper. I brought that into my marriage and I always excused it because I'd seen it. My mom had a little bit of an issue with temper and my grandfather had a real issue with temper and so I always just said that's in my family, my bloodline. I just kind of glossed over it as it's just who I am and the reality is it is who I am. What God had to show me early on in marriage is it's not who He is. It was a serious issue in our marriage. Our first year of marriage, year and a half, we were young couple living in a college-married student housing and my wife packed her stuff up twice head at home to mamas. I mean, she'd had it. She was done and I don't blame her. It's a miracle of God that God intervened in our home and began to do some work in both of our hearts and do a deep work of transformation that gives us the joy next week of being able to celebrate now 19 years of marriage together. But it began with God beginning to deal with me in the issue of loving my spouse and saying hey, temper is sin, it's not just a character flaw, it's sin against God and it's not Christ in us. Do you hear the questions? Do you regularly lose your temper with your spouse? Do you blow up often? Do you have a short fuse when it comes to your spouse? Next one, love does not take into account a wrong suffered. I like this one, it's an accounting term. Isn't it just like God to take this beautiful poetic passage of scripture on love and drop an accounting term right in the middle of it? It's the Greek word logizo my, we get our English word log, I'm logging something into the ledger. When you put something down in the ledger, you enter it into the ledger so that it will not be forgotten. We got some ledgers in our marriages I'm afraid. You see love doesn't keep a record. Do these kind of phrases ever come up in your arguments with your spouse? Well you never, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or, well you always, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or every time you, you know how only we can use the words like never always and every time as if we're keeping a record? Let's be honest, that's the only place those words come from. I'm keeping a record and when I need it, I'll pull it out, it's right here in the ledger. I got it every time right here. You see love doesn't keep score or love doesn't keep a record. To love means that we wipe the record clean and never hold things against our spouse. Aren't you glad God didn't like that? The Bible says in Romans chapter 4, "Blessed is the man who sinned the Lord will not take into account." The same Greek word la gizomai, meaning that when I became a believer in Jesus Christ, God wiped the slate clean. When God goes to the ledger, it says righteous, not because I am, but because Christ imputed that to my account and God has wiped the record clean. If God so loved us and forgave us of the multitude of sin against Him, how can we not demonstrate that same forgiveness? Over those issues in our marriage, listen, there are some of you today and you are holding on to things that happened in your marriage a long time ago. And in some of those situations, the person that you're holding those things against is not even the same person they were back then. Christ has changed them, but you haven't let it go. Let me tell you what today is. Today is the day for you to let it go. The only person you're hurting by not forgiving is yourself. When you're robbing yourself of the kind of intimacy that God desires you to enjoy in your home, here's the questions. Have you forgiven your spouse for past wrongs and failures? Have you forgiven them? Go back one slide to that Ephesians 4 verse, guys. Ephesians 4.30, look what it says, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. That's a pretty high standard. I'll give you the next one. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. The word rejoice means to be glad, meaning that love doesn't find joy in the weaknesses and shortcomings of your spouse. How do we do that? Well, the most obvious way is by talking about them with others. We're getting our little group of friends and we have some fun about the weaknesses and the failures of our spouse. The Bible word for it is gossip. What the Bible says here is it's not loving. It's not loving to celebrate the weaknesses and the shortcomings of your spouse. The questions are simple. Do you celebrate your spouse's failures and weaknesses privately or with others? Do you find joy in those things? The next one, love rejoices in the truth. Now, this word rejoice is not the same word that's translated rejoice only a couple of words before. This word rejoice is a very relational word, it literally means to rejoice together with someone else, to share in the joy of another. And here he says we're to rejoice, although we're not to rejoice in the failures, the unrighteousness, the weaknesses of our mate. The Bible says here we are to celebrate with them the truth, meaning love celebrates God's activity in the life of your spouse. There's a verse in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, this is what it said, "Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another." Both of these are imperatives, both of them are in the present tense, meaning that we are to always be encouraging and building up, again, this is applicable beyond marriage, but it's definitely applicable inside of marriage. I'm to always be looking for opportunities to celebrate what God is doing in the life of my spouse and to encourage, that word "encourage" is a great Greek word. It's the Greek word paracaleto, it means to come alongside and build up. Here's what's interesting about it. In the noun form, it's the word paracletos, and it's the Greek word that is the name of the Holy Spirit of God, meaning that the Holy Spirit of God is the one who God put in us to be that encourager, to encourage us in what God is doing and to build us up. But the Bible says in our relationships with each other, we're to do the same thing, we're to come alongside and encourage and rejoice and celebrate in what God's doing in the life of my spouse. Here's the question, "Do you celebrate God's activity in the life of your spouse by intentionally rejoicing in spiritual victories? When's the last time you came to your spouse?" He said, "Man, I say God at work in you. Let me tell you how I've seen you grow. Let me tell you what I've seen God do." I'm going to take the next four together. He almost has a firing mode in verse 7 when he puts these four things together, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Obviously, here in the context of all things, he's talking about all things that are consistent with Scripture and consistent with God's desire, but love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Let me give you a one sentence description that John MacArthur gave that I think really summarizes these four. He says, "Love bears what is otherwise unbearable. It believes what is otherwise unbelievable. It hopes in what is otherwise hopeless. It endures when anything less than love would give up. Love will not stop loving. It bears all things. It believes all things. It hopes all things. It endures all things." And that leads us to the last one of these that Paul gives us. Love never fails. Here's what that means. You don't fall out of real love. Love's a choice. It's not a feeling. It's not an emotion that you fall in and out of. It's a choice. Real love never fails. The word fails here means it's the image of a flower that is decaying and withering and falling to the ground. What the Bible says is real love never does that. It doesn't mean emotions don't come and go, but real love never fails. And I know what you're thinking. Pastor, that's not possible. I mean this stuff we've read this morning. Always, really? We're human beings. It's not possible. And can I be honest with you? You're exactly right. As human beings, left to ourselves, the kind of love that this describes, it's not possible. And that's why I want to give you this second defining statement. This radical love relationship is only possible out of the overflow of Christ in us. You see, this kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is not possible apart from Christ, but with Christ, all things are possible. This love is possible. How do I know? Because it's who Jesus is. Just read the New Testament. It's who He is. It's the way He loves. And now He desires to love in and through us. It takes us back to our original defining statement. Look at it again. My capacity for loving others is born out of my love relationship with God. You see what we've been saying? Here's what we're saying. The kind of love that God desires you to experience inside of your marriage is only possible. It's only possible out of the overflow of Christ in us. And as Christ manifests His life through us, there can be a radical love relationship that is unexplainable any other way. The Bible tells us in the book of Romans that when we became a Christian, God by the Holy Spirit poured out His love into our hearts. That little phrase poured out in Romans 5 is in the perfect tense. It means it's something that happened in the past with ongoing, continuous results. Here's what that means. At the moment of conversion, the Holy Spirit of God came to live inside of me. Here's what that means. All of who God is. All of His capacity to love. Now resides inside of me. But it has ongoing, continuous results as I choose to live out of the overflow of an intimate love relationship with Jesus. All that God is desires to manifest His life through me. That's why the Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit is. What's the first one? Wow. The evidence of the Spirit of God, the life of the Spirit being manifest in us. The first defining characteristic is radical love. So I'll close with this statement. The greatest thing you can bring into your marriage is your personal love relationship with God. The greatest thing you can do tomorrow to love your spouse is get up in the morning, turn the Word of God, and spend time falling in love with Jesus. And as you do that, he through you will love your spouse like you never dreamed possible. It's radical. That's God's perspective on marriage. Let's pray. Lord, beyond the words of a preacher, would you speak? Would you take these principles right now and God this truth and would you pierce the heart of husbands and wives? Lord, I pray right now that there's not a single spouse in this room thinking while I hope they heard that. God, I pray today I heard it. We're going to close a little differently today. If you're here this morning and you're married and your spouse is able to be here with you today, I don't know how long ago it's been, but at some point you approached an altar together as a couple and you confessed to love each other. We're going to take the front here this morning, this front section here in front of the stage and in the aisles. We're going to make it that altar today. And if God's spoken to you this morning, here's what I want you to do. I want you to grab your spouse by the hand. I want you to come right down here to the front. I want you to kneel and I want you to just begin to pray and surrender yourself to a fresh new love relationship with your spouse and just surrender to God. While some are coming to do that, we're going to sing a song of worship. We're going to honor God in song. We have some pastors to my left and right. I'm going to be right here. If you're here today and maybe you have a spouse that doesn't know God, a spouse that is not walking with God and you want us to pray specifically for you and your family, then we're going to be right here to pray for you. There's some pastor Travis over here on the left. Pastor Jay is going to be over to right. You just come and we'll pray for you and your spouse will intercede on your behalf. If you're here today and you don't know Christ and you want to come, we'll pray and talk with you and share with you how you can know Christ. If your marriage is in crisis and you want us to pray for you, we're right here. We'll pray for you. God have your way in this time. Would you speak?