Introduction:
A. There is an old joke that goes like this: “Do you know what the hardest years of marriage are?” 1. Answer: “Those who follow the wedding!”
2. Once when I was looking through my card file for material on marriage, I had to laugh when I noticed that the next card in my file after “marriage” was on the subject of “martyrdom.”
B. If you’ve known me for a long time, or listened to my sermons for a while, then you probably know that I’m optimistic and idealistic.
1. I love to paint with large, positive strokes.
2. I love to preach inspiring and optimistic messages.
3. My goal is to aim for perfection and challenge us all to raise our sights to the highest possible goals.
C. But when it comes to the subject of marriage, I have a feeling it would be a disservice to you if I start in the realm of the ideal.
1. As we go through this series on marriage, I want us to understand God’s commandments regarding marriage, and I want us to aim for an ideal, but as we start the series, I think we need to start with reality.
2. Today, I want us to take a realistic look at the difficulty of marriage, and I hope that we come to realize that all marriages are imperfect, but they are worth all the effort required to make them healthy and continue to grow.
3. Personally, I am extremely grateful for my marriage to Diana.
4. Fortunately, we’ve never had a bad marriage, but we need to keep working on our great marriage to make it even better.
D. In our text in Matthew 19, Jesus has been asked a question about divorce. The question is: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?”
1. In other words, can a man or woman leave their partner if they want to?
2. Jesus answered: Have you not read that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said: For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife? and the two will be one flesh? So they are no longer two but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (19:4-6)
3. So what was Jesus’ answer to the question, “Can a man leave his wife because he feels like it?” His answer is a resounding “NO!”
4. Jesus takes us back to the very creation of man and woman and declares that God’s intention for marriage from the beginning is permanence.
a. What God has joined must not be torn apart.
5. The Pharisees asked, “Then why did Moses command that a man give his wife a divorce certificate and send her away?” (vs 7)
6. Jesus answered: “Moses allowed you to put away your wives because your hearts were hard. But it wasn’t like that from the beginning. I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for marital infidelity, and marries another woman commits adultery. (vs. 8-9)
a. Jesus then explained that Moses gave this teaching as a concession due to the hardness of people’s hearts, but divorce was not, and is not, God’s plan and hope for mankind.
7. After hearing all this, the disciples of Jesus made a sobering comment: “If this is the situation between husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” (vs 10)
8. From your point of view, if divorce was not a possibility, then it would be better not to get married
9. I want to challenge ourselves and our culture to approach marriage with that kind of commitment and vision.
10. We must enter into marriage with a commitment to make the marriage covenant work.
11. For the rest of our lesson today, I’d like to help us sort through some marriage myths that encourage us to give up when we face difficulties in our marriage.
MYTH #1: PEOPLE CAN HAVE A PERFECT MARRIAGE
A. Or to put it honestly, there is no such thing as a perfect marriage.
1. Has your marriage had or had problems? Be honest! Of course it does, it goes with the territory.
2. The fact is that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage, because to have a perfect marriage you have to have two perfect people.
3. I don’t know anyone who can bear that label, not even me!
4. There are various degrees of marriage, from horrible to pretty good.
5. Even the best marriage has room to grow.
B. When I meet with an engaged couple in premarital counseling, I try to convey the point that when two imperfect people marry, the result will be an imperfect marriage.
1. That is a simple and realistic fact of life.
2. The average engaged couple has a hard time taking my comments seriously. (I know I did when I was engaged)
3. The eyes of the engaged couple shine with love. They are excited about the wedding.
4. They often comment, “Isn’t it amazing how much we have in common, how we enjoy the same things, how much we think alike?”
5. It’s hard for them to imagine that in a few months, if they were honest, they could be saying, ‘Isn’t it amazing how different we are, how different we think, how different we are? our responses to life?
6. A preacher I heard about has stopped doing premarital counseling. Instead, it requires each couple to agree to postmarital counseling. He has found that couples are much more receptive to his help after they have begun to experience the challenges of marriage.
C. So, marriage is not easy. All marriages face many challenges. Some challenges are the same for all couples. Others are different.
1. Some face difficult problems, such as spousal abuse, substance abuse, mental illness, workaholism, and other destructive behaviors.
2. Even if they face nothing as difficult as that, the healthiest couples face problems such as: differences in family backgrounds, problems with in-laws, financial difficulties, different temperaments, irritating habits, different approaches to parenting, and the complex area. of sexual adjustment.
3. I have yet to meet a couple who have not had to face some of these realities and find their own creative ways to deal with them.
4. Those marriages that seem perfect can be very good, but they have reached that point through a painful process of perfecting.
5. Other marriages that seem perfect can be rather miserable, and people are simply hiding their pain and problems.
6. So remember, there is no such thing as a perfect marriage.
MYTH #2: THERE IS A PERFECT PERSON YOU MARRY
A. The myth goes like this: If you marry the right person, you will have a wonderful life together. Period! Your problems will be minimized. Yours will be a fairytale love story. These types of marriages are populated by handsome men and beautiful women who have lovely children. These people live in beautiful homes and have substantial incomes. They are successful in their work. Harsh words are never spoken. Disagreements are few and far between. If they are both Christians, God will see to it that nothing happens to this family.
1. Have you bought that myth?
2. If so, when things start to go wrong in your marriage, and they will, you might conclude that you’ve married the wrong person!
B. If you believe this myth, then you’ll begin to think that maybe the perfect person for you is still out there somewhere, and you need to trade the one you have for a better role model.
1. The truth is that there is no one and only perfect person for you to marry.
2. And the truth is, you may have made a bad choice and married a very imperfect person.
3. But there is no such thing as a perfect person, and you can work to make any marriage better than it is.
MYTH #3: WE ARE TOO INCOMPATIBLE TO MAKE THIS MARRIAGE WORK
R. The truth is that we can be very different, and our marriage can have many problems, but these do not have to doom the marriage to failure.
1. Problems don’t have to break up a marriage, in fact, they can stabilize and strengthen the marriage as the couple positively work through their problems and incompatibilities.
2. Current marriage statistics indicate that too many couples, when faced with the normal routine problems of marriage, give up and say, “Well, I guess we’re incompatible!” And they head to divorce court.
B. The Swiss psychiatrist, Paul Tournier, suggests exorcising the term “incompatibility” from our vocabulary.
1. He wrote: “The so-called emotional incompatibility is a myth invented by jurists without grounds to ask for a divorce. It is also a common excuse that people use to hide their own feelings. I just don’t think it exists. However, there are misunderstandings and errors that can be corrected when there is the will to do so.”
C. As I have been saying today, all marriages, even healthy ones, have their problems. However, in marriages that are healthy, those issues are adequately addressed.
1. Successful couples will work to adjust, doing their best to understand each other’s feelings and opinions.
2. Successful couples nurture their love, which can still be there even when there are seemingly irreconcilable differences.
3. Successful couples realize that marriage is a relationship between two adults. It is not for children, nor for people who act like children.
4. Unfortunately, some of us who are chronologically adults are still emotionally adolescents.
5. If we are going to have vital marriages, we must approach them as adults, knowing that maturity is the ability to postpone immediate gratification for the ultimate good.
6. As mature adults, we can develop a loving relationship looking for the well-being of our partner instead of our own personal happiness.
D. The apostle Paul eliminates all our sentimental and false definitions of love when he writes in I Cor. 13:4-6, (Philips Translation) “This love I speak of is slow to lose patience – it finds a way to be constructive. You are not possessive: you are not eager to impress or harbor inflated ideas of your own importance.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantages. It is not delicate. He does not take into account the evil or wallow in the evil of other people. On the contrary, he rejoices with all good men when the truth prevails.
Love knows no limit to its resistance, knows no end to its confidence, its hope does not fade; can last longer
anything. It is, in fact, the only thing that remains standing when everything else has collapsed.”
1. Love is the antidote to incompatibility. It helps you adjust to your partner.
2. Love removes the self-pity, rancor, and petty criticism that destroy the husband-wife relationship.
3. This is unconditional love. Don’t come to an agreement that says, “I’ll scratch your back, if and only if you…