Marriage as Commitment and Priority

Welcome to Gospel in Life. You're listening to Cultivating a Healthy Marriage with Tim Keller. This short podcast series features the messages from the most popular sermon series of Dr. Keller's time at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Preached in 1991, this series was the basis for the best-selling book by Tim and Kathy Keller, the meaning of marriage. With your single, married, widowed or divorced, this series helps you learn how to apply God's wisdom about marriage to your life. The title of the sermon tonight is Marriage 3. I forget this is the summertime, the end of the summer. You see a lot of sequels. Here's child's play 3. There's Terminator 2. There's Rocky 85. And there's Marriage 3. I figured you'd be in the swing of it. Please start with me to Ephesians 5. Those of you who come to the evening service know that this is part of a series that we started 18 years ago or so on the Book of Ephesians. We're moving through the Book of Ephesians at the pace of a geriatric slug. Very, very slowly through the Book of Ephesians. We've come to the classic text the longest, the most famous text in the entire Bible on the subject of marriage. Let me read to you again from Ephesians 5 verses 21 to 32. Then we will take it from there. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Why submit to your husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior? Now as the church submits to Christ so why should submit to their husbands in all things? Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave, hers himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without staying or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church. For we are members of his body, and for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband. This is God's word. There's a lot of stuff to say about this passage, but here's how we've been dividing it. Let me remind you of where we've been. Let me give you a quick recap of the headings. We're looking at marriage in this passage under five headings. We're looking at the power of marriage, the definition of marriage. You know what, it's six, isn't it? The power of marriage, the definition of marriage, the priority of marriage and the purpose of marriage, the structure of marriage and the mystery of marriage. We mentioned that last week. I won't tell you what all those are, but that's what we're doing. We're moving it through it. So far, we've only looked at the first two. Today, I want to get to tonight. I want to get to the third. When the first two are the power of marriage and the definition of marriage. Quick recap. Remember what the power of marriage was? The power of marriage is in verse 21. 21 is actually a bridge. For those of you who are here at May and June, when we were looking at the verses of chapter five, verses 18 and following, what it meant to be filled with the Spirit, verse 21 is a direct link from the passage on being filled with the Spirit to the passage on being on what it means to be married. What is a good marriage? There is a link. The one assumes the other. You know what the link is? The link is causing a fact. The cause of a good marriage is being spurred of film. So verse 21, which is the end of the passage that we looked at. Verse 21 is talking about the fact that when you're filled with the Spirit, there's a Spirit created unselfishness, a willingness to submit to other people. A woman is to serve other people, not to be defensive, to have a servant heart. And that is the basis for any kind of healthy marriage. Now we talked about that, but let me just make a couple of observations to make sure those of you who weren't here know where we're going, where we've been, and those who were here have a clearly in mind. There is a Spirit of servanthood. There's a servant heart, which is the foundation for any kind of decent marriage. That's why verse 21 comes before everything else. Well some people have asked me, what do you mean? What is a servant heart? What is that? What is that kind of vague? All right, let me give you at least three critical aspects, without which a marriage will not run. These three things, which are really just constituent parts of a servant heart, are like the oil in a car engine. Try to run an engine without a oil. Just try it. Don't put any oil in there. No lubrication. What basically happens, of course, is that the friction, attention will destroy the engine so quickly, it'll get so hot and overheat so quickly. There's got to be something in there that in a sense acts as a buffer because, obviously, friction is put attention all about. Motion and movement, something has got to absorb that. What absorbs it? What absorbs it? Is this servant heart? And let me give you three constituent parts to it. The ability to hear criticism without being crushed. That's a lack of self-defensiveness. Secondly, the ability to give criticism without being, without crushing, without crushing. Thirdly, the ability to forgive people without residual anger. In other words, to forgive people and really let it go. That's what I mean by a servant heart. The ability to take your mind off yourself when you're giving criticism, when you're receiving criticism, when you're forgiving. What does that come from? As we said last week, this, well, we can't go back into all the spiritual fileness, but what it means to be spiritual means that the spirit of God is illuminating your heart and making very real to you the work of Jesus Christ. And if you remember that from June and May, when Jesus' work for you becomes very real, the example that always comes to my mind is when I talk about 16-year-old girl years ago in my church and she didn't have any dates. Nobody was asking her out. And Jesus, "Yeah, I'm a Christian. I know I'm going to live forever in heaven. I know Jesus loves me and cares for me. I know he died for me. I know he gave himself for me. I know he lives in me. I know that I'm his child. I know that I have his ear. I know that he comforts me and will take care of me. But what good is all that if you don't have any dates?" Now, she wasn't quite the eloquent. But you see, at that moment, she was saying, "Inal, actually, yeah, I know what Jesus has done for me. But right now, my heart is overwhelmed with the beauty of the beauty of the prospect of being a desirable woman." That's what she was saying. Whereas when I think about the fact that Jesus loves me, cares for me, that doesn't thrill me. This being-spirer-filled means you're in touch with reality. Reality is who cares what a drippy 16-year-old boy thinks about you and the king of the universe says, "You are mine and I will stand with you and for you for all eternity." What kind of absolutely insane person could possibly put those two things up against one another and have the pimpley face 16-year-old win? And yet, I mean, there's nobody in this room that hasn't been through that. What does it mean to be spiritual? It means that your head is on straight. You're in touch with reality and you realize what Jesus Christ has done for me is everything. The Bible says that there's actually two-that every human being is religious. It says this in Romans 1. That there's actually a systemic structure. There's a systemic religious structure to everybody's life. Every one of us, down deep inside, has a way in which we think that if we behave, things that if we get to them, then we'll be fulfilled. Then we'll have Nirvana. Then we'll be saved. Every one of us says, "I will be able to accept myself if I get this." We've talked about this before. Every human being, Romans 1, says, "has got something, some form of religion, something they worship, something they say if I get that, then I'll be alright." The gospel says, "Not your performance, not success, not relationship, not love, none of those things will ever satisfy you. You can know who you are. You can be secure when you realize that Jesus Christ is dying for you and you're resting in what he's done for you." When that happens and when you see the work of Jesus Christ for you, when your spirit is filled, that gives you the ability to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. You see when it says in verse 21, "Out of reverence for Christ, literally out of the fear of Christ." You can submit, you get this unsufficalness because Christ is so real to you, you're continually an awe before the reality of Him. So how can you receive criticism without being crushed in your marriage or anywhere? The way is because in your heart you're thinking this, "Well, Jesus is my priest, Jesus is my friend, Jesus is my king, Jesus is my brother. I can handle this. He loves me, He cares for me, He'll show me." So you can take criticism without being destroyed. You've got to create a little security for your moment of great vulnerability. Or how can you give criticism without crushing? Well, you think like this, you say, "Jewel." I was a sinner. I am a sinner. I should be cast off. See, you're using the gospel on yourself. It's say I should be cast off, but Jesus, gentle, gentle Jesus, has put up with me for so long, and he continually shows me the truth, and I continually turn my back on it, but bit by bit. He's cooked for me, and he's been patient with me, and he's brought me along. How then could I be any harsher with this person than he has been with me? Now, somebody's out there saying, "Sure, sure." Your wife yells at you, and you're sitting there thinking about Jesus' grace as your brother, and your friend, and your cradle of security, and you're on as great as the dawn of the day. Well, look, in the beginning, when you're trying to reorient your life, when you're seeking to live your life and have your relationships, living it out of the matrix of servanthood, out of the matrix of the gospel, you do have to talk to yourself like that. But I want you to realize that this is not a mindset that you can turn on this week, right away. You better get started now because it takes time. I tried to refer to this in a sermon earlier, one of the earlier services. It goes like this. Most of you realize, I guess, when I'm prepared, I quote from all sorts of people, "When I'm not prepared for sermon, I just quote from CS Lewis." Why? Because CS Lewis is somebody that I've read, I've read everything, that he's ever written over and over and over and over again, ever since I became a Christian. Now, some of you are like that. There's a couple of books that you master an author. You know what it's like to do that. Another guy is George Witchfield, that I've just read his sermons and read his sermons and read his sermons. Now, what happens after a period of time is that you not only get to master the person's works, but you actually begin to understand how that guy's mind works. You know what he thinks, even though you've never read anything he said about the subject, you know what he would say. Right? When you meet a character and you say, "I know what he would say about that. I know what George Witchfield would say about that in a sermon." Why? Because I've read thousands of his sermons, not thousands, but I've read his sermons thousands of times. What happens is you get an author that really speaks to you and you just read the stuff and you read the stuff. And after a while you've gone beyond just the words of the book or the sermons and you've come to penetrate to the way the guy's mind works. That's what happened in my case with a couple of these authors. And that's the reason why when I'm just speaking extemporaneously, when I'm just speaking out of my heart, he comes out. Why? He's in there. Now, that's an image. Most of you know how that works. A lot of you may have people like that in your life. Authors, people that are just sunk down so deep that you know how they think you know how to look at life through them and their ideas and thoughts are in there so deep they just come out spontaneously. Do you realize what would happen to you and what would happen to me if we started to relate to Jesus like that? If we were so saturated in his promises to us and his summons to us and his encouragement to us and what he says about us in his word, if that had sunk down as deep as what I'm talking about to the place where not just the words but the very way his mind works and the very way he thinks about you becomes intrinsic, inherent, spontaneous, reflexive, instinctive to you. That's when you develop the servant heart. When somebody gives you criticism, of course you're not consciously thinking, Jesus is my brother, Jesus is my friend, he loves me. His opinion matters more than anything else. I don't have to be scared to receive this kind of criticism. This is not the end of my life. This isn't the end of the world. I know who I am in Christ. You don't think that consciously and yet you're thinking that because what it's doing is it's giving its cast to everything you do, everything. There's a stability I keep talking about. There's a poise there, a deep kind of cosmic spiritual poise. It's like I don't have to be afraid of anything anymore, emotionally. It's sunk down in there. It's part of you. You're thinking like he thinks you look at yourself through his eyes. You look at the world through his eyes. It's only when you've taken the time through prayer, through Bible study, through come into worship, through reflection, through meditation, through fellowship of other Christians and continually talking about these things together. As time goes on, it sinks and it sinks and it sinks until the gospel dwells in you richly and eventually, eventually, that will become the power in all your relationships and the power for marriage. The ability to submit to one other to really forgive, to give criticism without crushing, to take criticism without being crushed, only possible if you believe in Jesus. But I don't just mean believe in Jesus, but that you're thinking about him and you're thinking through him and you're thinking of him continually, almost unconsciously. Otherwise, otherwise, otherwise, your heart, my heart is so hard and we are so prone to disbelieve anything Jesus says. Even though intellectually you do yet, you reject it at a deeper level. Then I'm afraid 16-year-old Pimpley-faced kids are continually beating Jesus out in our hearts. You understand what I mean? The power of marriage is an unselfishness which is created by the spirit. Secondly, we talked about the definition of marriage. The definition of marriage, and since I spoke on that last week, I can give you a little concise thing. The essence of marriage is a covenant, a legal commitment. Somebody after me said to me, but that still doesn't tell me what is a legal, what makes a marriage a marriage? Is it a minister? There's a difference of opinion on between Catholics and Protestants on this, and I'm absolutely, absolutely believing that the Protestant approach is right. Catholic Church will say, "Only a priest can marry somebody." Isn't that right? Protestants will say, "A priest can marry, a minister can marry, just as to the piece, marriage is marriage." It doesn't matter whether it's a captain on a ship, it doesn't matter whether it's a justice to the piece, marriage is marriage. Why? Because looking at the Bible where marriage comes up, marriage pops up originally was given to Adam and Eve. It wasn't given to only Christians, it was given to human beings as human beings. Therefore, it's not a church ceremony that makes you married, though it can. It's not jumping over a broom that makes you married. It's not stamping on a glass that makes you married. It's not the rings that make you married. What does it make you married? What makes you married is this, a permanent and exclusive public legal commitment to share your lives together, all aspects of it. It's got to be permanent, it's got to be exclusive. Some people say it's time to have renewable contract marriages. You get married for three years, you have an option for three more. You've heard that. Now that might be interesting, but that's not a marriage. By the Christian definition, even a pre-nuptial agreement, to be honest with you, radically cuts at the root of the Christian definition of marriage. The Christian definition of marriage is a permanent and exclusive promise to share every part of your life with somebody else. It's got to be a public legal commitment, a permanent exclusive public legal commitment to share your life with somebody else, every part of your life. If you say no, it's not permanent, it's every three years, it's not marriage. If you say it's not every part of your life, just hear it here and here, because it's a pre-nuptial agreement. You don't get this or that. All those things get at the root of marriage. The Christian definition of marriage is permanent, it's exclusive, it's a legal public binding, permanent exclusive commitment to share every part of your life with somebody else. Now how you do that, whether it's with a minister, whether it's with a captain, a justice of a piece, with a jumper over a broomstick, with the exchange rings, it makes no difference. Therefore, even in this culture, which is definitely afraid of obligation and commitment and responsibility and discipline, it all likes to talk about self-realization and self-actualization and growth and potential, but it hates to talk about discipline and submission and obligation. Therefore, this is the place at which the Christian understanding of marriage has a head-on collision with the society. You should not give yourself to somebody, unless you've got that kind of promise, and unless you're willing to give them that kind of promise. See, if you're not willing to make a permanent and exclusive public legal commitment to share your entire life with somebody, then you don't really love them enough to really be married. And the Bible says, you should not give yourself to that person until that person is willing to make that promise to you and you are willing to make that promise to that person. That's the definition. We looked at it last week, it's kind of scary, but there it is. And I must tell you that a number of people have questioned me about it because you see the implications of what we said last week. The implications of this idea that marriage is a cleaving, that's in verse 32, is that public commitment and that essentially marriage love is a commitment, therefore, somebody, well, somebody says, you've de-romanticized marriage in my eyes. So, what does that mean? Well, what did I say last week? I said that therefore, the essence of love is a commitment. Love is an action first. It's a commitment to invest yourself in another person and meet their needs. And it's a feeling second. One of the weird things about becoming a pastor is that when you become a pastor, for the first time in your life, you are bound and obligated to be friends with all sorts of people that you really wouldn't choose to be friends with. I don't really know of anybody else who's obligated. Doctors, for example, have to treat people they wouldn't ordinarily like, but they don't have to like them. They don't have to be friends with them. I don't have anybody else who basically suddenly gets a body of people. And the job description is you have to be friends with a lot of people that you would not ordinarily choose to be friends with. It's, therefore, in a sense, pastors have a kind of unique experience to talk about. You would be surprised at how selective you are. People that you You don't like that much, you just don't spend time with it. You don't invest yourself in them. You don't give yourself to them. You don't listen to their problems. You don't go to see them at 3am in the morning. Now one of the things that found I found interesting in my earliest days. You know, Kathy and I moved into a new situation. I got a job as a pastor. I had basically a hundred and fifty people and I started to pastor them and there's a good number of them or people that if I was just living as a private individual in that town, I would have chosen as friends and there were a lot of people that would never have chosen as friends. Not so much I didn't like them. I just don't have that much in common. You're not quite the same. You don't have the same interest. You don't have, there's no spark. You know, it doesn't matter. There's no spark. This person is a member of your church. You're the pastor in a small town. This person's got a problem. You're there. This person's in the hospital. You're there. This person's got to talk to you at 2am in the morning. You're there. This person's son runs away. You get in the car and go chase him. This man's, this man's wife has run out on him. You get in the car and go find her. And that's the way it is to be a pastor, especially in a small town and a small church. You invest yourself. You give. You do the actions of love for people that you really have no particular affinity with. And then after a couple of years, a big surprise comes to Kathy. You know, our day off, which I took every couple of months, I take a day off. And on the day off, she would say, "What do you want to do? What do you just want to do? Socially, what do you just want to do?" For fun, I would say, "Well, let's have John and Mary Dole over." And she would say, "Why?" Why in the world would you want to have John and Mary Dole over? I mean, that's work, isn't it? The reason you see John and Mary Dole, if you mean everybody knows all the problems they have and how obnoxious they are and the difficulties, the difficulties they have and why when you don't have to be with John and Mary Dole, why in the world would you choose to be with John and Mary Dole? And I realized I'd come to like them. I was the only person in town that liked them. But I really did like them. Why is it just because, oh, obviously, as a pastor, of course, you just have this natural ability to like people and love people because you're more holy, you're more godly. That's why you're a pastor. It's your job to be more spiritual. It's not true at all. It really happened. You know why? Because I've been loving them. Even when I didn't like them. Marriage is one of the most profound human relationships, but it's one that at times can be difficult and painful. We'd like to briefly highlight a resource that provides help for anyone who wants to have more loving and stronger relationships. Tim and Kathy Keller draw from biblical wisdom and their own experiences to offer a year of daily meditations for couples in their book, The Meaning of Marriage, A Couples Devotional. The book is a 365-day devotional that includes stories, daily scriptures, and prayer prompts that will help couples draw closer to God and to each other throughout the year. If you would like to make a gift to help gospel and life share the love of Christ with more people, we'll send you a copy of The Meaning of Marriage, A Couples Devotional, As Our Thanks. To request your copy, simply visit gospelandlife.com/divo. That's gospelandlife.com/divo. Now here's the conclusion of this episode of Cultivating a Healthy Marriage. And you see, you don't have to bother whether you like somebody. That's not what a Christian worries about. What a Christian does. If you love people, eventually you come to like them. It works reverse too. I told you the one thing I once read where it said at first, the Nazis killed the Jews because they hated them, but then after a while they hated the Jews because they'd killed them. It works the other way around. You see, what happens is, in the beginning you love somebody just because you have to. The more you love them, the more you love them, the more you give yourself, the more you make a decision to invest in them, the more you find your heart tied up to them. You know why? Because the Bible says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be." Where your treasure is, there will your heart be. When you invest in somebody, that's you're putting your treasure. You're putting time, which is a tremendously valuable. You're putting emotion, which is tremendously valuable. You invest and you invest in that person. And of course, you may still feel a hostility of that person, absolutely tramples you and is very cruel. And that's not usually what happens. Usually you find the people that aren't terribly lovely. If you love them, you will come to love them. Now, I'm using the word "love" in an equivocal way. The way the modern society thinks of love, you're thinking of a feeling. But that's not the way the Bible ever uses the word "love." You love them and you come to like them. You invest in them and you find that they get more and more lovely to you. I'm trying to tell you this. You don't go ahead and get married to somebody who you don't like. But I can guarantee you this. Whoever you marry, you will fall out of like with. It is an absolute necessity. Not only that, you will start to fall out of like with that person. In most cases, before you marry them, in the courtship or in the engagement. And that's where most people say, "I guess I shouldn't marry this person. I fall out of like with them." Well, friends, your emotions come and go. And if the essence of marriage is a covenant, a commitment. Then you will find that, in spite of the fact that you kind of love this person, you feel a lot for them, you might be attracted to them, you're great friends. The fact is, your emotions will come and go. At a certain point, a marriage will not work. Or even a potential marriage will not work unless you make a decision to invest in that person. And when you find that your heart gets dry and you look at the person and you don't feel any particular like, you invest in them, you give to them, you love them. You are tender, you are cherishing, you listen, you serve. And what it does is it gets you through those dry times. Not only that, it begins over the years to eliminate the dry times. That's not the way most of us do it. When the dry times we fall out of like, when that happens, we start to say, "I guess this isn't the one for me." Is that the romanticized marriage? No, you want to marriage it's things. What you do is you decide to love. You decide to love. That's the way it's got to go. It starts with romance. It will end in despair unless at some point you make a decision to invest because where your treasure is, there will your heartbeat. The definition, the essence of marriage, is a legal binding commitment. Permanent and exclusive to share your entire life with somebody. Thirdly, the priority of marriage is actually the shortest of all of the topics. That's the reason I feel I can get away with the longer recap. The priority of marriage. The one thing I just want to say about comes when it says, "A man shall leave his father of mother and cleave to his wife." This is what the Bible teaches about the priority of marriage. Very important. It goes like this. Our society is hard for us to understand the importance of the relationship between a child and a parent. If you came here from another non-Western society, if your parents came from a nation or a Latin society, you can understand this better. There is no society like America and Western society that more de-emphasizes the obligation of children to parents. Almost everywhere else in the world and almost everywhere else in history, your obligation to your parents is a tremendously strong one. And it makes sense. Just think of how foundational your relationship with your parents is. It shapes you so profoundly. You live with it forever. What could be a more profound and more primary and more foundational relationship than the relationship between a parent and a child? God serves notice in Genesis 20 and right here in chapter 5 verse 32, 31, where he says, "A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife." He is serving notice. He is saying in the strongest possible way, an oriental in Asian readers who originally read this, were probably shocked by it. You're not shocked by it, but you should be. What I'm saying is, God did not put a parent in a child in the garden. He put a man in a woman in the garden, a husband and a wife. What that means is the primary relationship in your life once you get married has got to be your marriage. The primary person has got to be your spouse. No other person should you be investing more time and money and energy and creativity and emotion in, then your spouse and that relationship. It comes out a couple ways. It says, for example, in verse 28, "A husband ought to love his wife as they love their own bodies." You know, your health is foundational to everything you do. If you decide to put your work ahead of your health, what happens? If you decide it's more important for me to get this job done and to make money and to do my career than it is to eat properly and sleep well eventually. If you put work first and health second, you'll eventually have neither work nor health. And so this is God's way of saying, this is Paul's way of saying, that marriage has to have the first priority. I'll put it this way. Marriage is the vortex. It's the center of your life. When you're married, it has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. Some of you have heard me say this, if you're a come to a wedding, I try to say it constantly at weddings. If everything around you is weak but your marriage is strong, it doesn't matter about the rest of life. You move out into the world and strength. If everything around you is strong but your marriage is weak, it doesn't matter what's out there. You move out of the world and weakness. Can you follow that? Your marriage is the center of everything. It's the vortex of your life. If you neglect it, you'll lose everything. And therefore when Paul here says, "I'm am I not a man." as leave his father and mother, he is certainly saying, the reason you look at my watches, there's no clock back there tonight, just for you to wonder why I'm doing that. When Paul and God says you have to leave your father and mother, what he's really simply saying is be very careful that nothing comes before your marriage and your life or it will introduce tremendous misery and pathology into your life. Now what are the things that can come before your spouse? Well, one of course is mentioned right here, your father and mother, I'll talk to you about that in a minute. Your career, put your career before your spouse and what happens, you lose both. Another one is your children and this is a particularly bad one today because of the high incidence of divorce, we're almost getting back to the place where the parent child relationship is becoming because the marriages are so bad, more and more people are getting their main primary emotional and personal nurture through the parent child relationship instead of the husband/wife relationship. If your children come before your spouse, if you love your children more than your spouse, if you get more out of your children and they're loved, then you get out of love for your spouse, that will again, it breaks the biblical principle and the biblical principles bite back. When you break them, they break you because it's not like this is busy work that God just plays down, this is the way things are, you break them, things go wrong in your life and an awful lot of research on child abuse has not come, a lot of research on child abuse has revealed that so many people that beat their children and that are abusive to their children don't hate their children too much, they love their children too much. Their children, their child is the person from whom they get most of their love in the world. If their child does not love them, if their child is not the hay property, their child is not given the things that they need because they're not getting it from anybody else, they go crazy, well children are children, children are not going to be mature, they're not going to be able to give you the love that you need. And if your children become more important to you than your spouse, you're in for tremendous pathologies and dysfunctions as they say and all those sorts of things in your life. If your career comes before your spouse, you're in trouble, if your children come before your spouse, you're in trouble. Friend, if your friends come before your spouse, you're in trouble. If you've got friends of either sex, of either gender, who you enjoy being more with more than your spouse, who you can share with, who you feel understand you more than your spouse does, you're already in a tremendous amount of trouble because we'll talk about this next week because the main purpose of marriage is friendship. And therefore again, you, again you haven't left. Your spouse is not the number one and main thing in your life in that relationship. But maybe the most important thing, and this is what I want to mention before the time is up. When the Bible says you have to leave your father and mother to cleave to your spouse, it's a profound statement. There's many ways in which people's marriages have been absolutely destroyed because of leaving problems because they haven't left. But there's many ways in which those problems can take shape. Now some people think, well, I know somebody like that. I know somebody who is still, they're married, but they're still financially dependent on her father or his mother or something. And that's true. It's all sorts of problems in the marriage. Or I know somebody who is still emotionally dependent on his or her parents. And so they don't make a move without finding out what mommy or daddy think. And of course that creates problems. And that's right, those are obvious. When you have got a marriage and one spouse or both are still very concerned to find out what the parents want, more concerned to find out what the parents work than what the spouse wants, it creates all sorts of problems. You know, conflict management is hard enough with two. It's impossible to three or it's four or it's five. Not only that intimacy is destroyed because when you feel that the person you're supposed to be opening up was completely, really is probably going to tell the parent much or most of what you've just said. You can't do it anymore. Well, that's obvious. But let me, it's a little bit more profound than that. Now careful. You may have a problem leaving your parents psychologically. You go left them emotionally. You don't talk to them all the time. You're not financially dependent on them. But there's other sorts of ways. When the Bible says, you must lead your father, mother, and cleave to your wife. It is saying that you have got to leave behind old family patterns. And in a sense, it's saying a marriage is a fresh start. One of the great things about the biblical teaching on marriage is that it is a fresh start. It's new. You do not come into your marriage saying, this is the way it was done. This is the way I was raised. This is the way men operate. As far as I'm concerned, because that's the way we always did it in my family. This is the way women, this is women's work, because this is what it was in my account. This is the way people relate it. That's the way it was. If you come in like that, you haven't left. And you can have all kinds of problems. It's pretty subtle. Give you an example. In Kathy's family, her father helped her mother constantly. And I know you start to, you know, you're getting tired and bored, but now you've picked up. Her father used to help her mother with the chores that had to do with the children. Like he would change diapers and he would sort of take care of, you know, clean up the mess and he would feed them and clean up and that sort of thing. So he helped her that way. And she heard her mother say, this is how your father loves me. He helps you with the children. In my family, my father never ever, ever, ever was asked by my mother to do any of those kinds of chores. He never even saw the inside of a dirty diaper. He didn't even know what was in there. He had vague, you know, ideas. He had seen documentaries and things like that, but apart from that. So and you know what? And I heard my mother say, now I'm not sure that either of us heard our mother say this out loud, but we heard our mother say, I heard my mother say, this is how I love your father. He works hard. He works long hours. He provides well for the family. My mother did not work outside the home. And so when my father comes home, when your father comes home, I don't ask him to do those things. I take care of these things. And I heard her say that. So now these two people, Kathy and Tim get married. Everything's fine until the first child comes along. And then one day I'm sitting there with a child and notice a funny smell, you know, and I say, Kathy, the kid needs to be changed and Kathy uses, you know, says something that was pretty, I've heard also, I said around her family, whenever a child is found to be, have a dirty diaper, she said, finders keepers. And what that means around her family is don't look at me, you've got the child. You're a parent, I'm a parent. Come on. I'm, you know, I'm fixing, I'm fixing a meal here. What do you want me to do? You got it? That's a big deal. It was a big deal. Because you see, when I heard her demanding, now listen, when I heard her demanding, why don't you just help out with the child? I heard her saying, I don't love you. I don't really think that you work that hard. It's not that important to me to show you love in that way. You see, I was reading what she was asking through the filter of my family. I hadn't left. I hadn't left. Meanwhile, when I refused to do it, when I said, come on, I don't like it. It's not my job. You can do that better. You know what you're doing. She didn't just hear me asking for help. It said, she heard me saying, I don't love you. And it took time. And we had to begin to realize, we had to begin to realize eventually, we had to leave. We had to start fresh. We had to say, what is right for you and me? How will you feel loved? You have to sit down and you have to say, I cannot react this way because I know that in a family of a wife loves a husband, she does this. Come on. This is a new wife. This is a new husband. This is a new family. A man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. But it goes even further. And this last thing I'll say, you can fail to leave your father and mother if you hate them because you're still being controlled by them. Here's a man who says, I'll never take my kids to church because my father always insisted on taking me to church even though I hated it. And he forced me every year until I was 19 years old and I'm never going to take my children to church. Instead of him thinking, is this church true? Is it right? Is it good for my kids? Instead of thinking about this on its own merits, he's controlled by his father. He's not doing it something because his father did it. Or a woman who says, I will not lay a hand on my children because my mother beat me unmercifully. She doesn't. Instead of sitting down and saying, well, would corporal punishment be a good idea or not? You can't do it because your mother did it. See, or somebody says, or somebody says, I'm never going to marry her because she reminds me of my mother. I'm never going to marry him because he reminds me of my father. So what? You're still being controlled by that? You leave your father and mother and you cleave to your wife. Marriage is a fresh start. Marriage is a vehicle of redemption. Marriage is so much like salvation that Paul starts eventually. We can't look at it now, but later Paul starts to say, the more I think about marriage and the more I think about the dynamics of marriage, the more I have to think about salvation and how it redeemed. Redemption is the fresh start. Old things are passed away. Behold, the new is come. I know this sounds all very psychological and deep. You're supposed to think about your parents' patterns and you shouldn't impose your parents. That's real modern, isn't it? But no, it's not. It's ancient. The Bible's wisdom was here before psychotherapy. And it was saying long ago, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. Marriage has got the power to set the course of your life for your life as a whole. You cannot neglect it. Is the power to change you? Has the power to show you who you are? Is the power to tear you down and then eventually to build you up? Now friends, last thing, this is it, if you were married and you are getting scared by the things I was saying, he's saying, "What have I gotten myself into?" I want you to know that marriage is not a human invention to make you happy. That's what you're going to hear. Marriage is not a human invention to make you happy so that if it's not making you have anymore, you just discard it. Marriage instead was invented by God to sanctify you. That's the purpose of it, as we'll see, to make you wholly and without spot and blameless. I never ever, ever, ever, ever would have seen the depths of my sin that I have seen if I wasn't married. I never would have been in a position to see it. You know, it's ironic that that God actually takes your selfishness and marriage and uses it against you for your own good. The reason you have to finally, finally, come to grips with your faults, with your selfishness, with your prejudices, with your biases. The reason you have to finally come to grips with them is because they're ruining your life in the marriage. And the trouble is you've got to do something about it, why? Because it's just, it's simply the desire for emotional survival. Finally, for the first time in your life, you can't run. God brings you into confrontation with yourself and then says, "If you're willing to be filled with the Spirit, if you're willing to come to me, if you're willing to let me, my son, Jesus Christ, be your savior, way you see what will happen. Way you see." Now, a lot of people who are not Christians and who are doing understand all this dynamic have slipped through marriage and made a pretty good go of it, simply by, when they get pretty, simply by just putting a kind of wall around their heart so that the things that they've seen that are really painful, they just, they just bargain with each other. They say, "You stay away from that. I'll stay away from that. We won't have to, we just won't ever bring that subject up." So there's tremendous potential for change in marriage, but really, only people who understand the fullness of the Spirit will ever be able to capitalize on them. And those of you who are not married and you're saying, "What does this mean to me?" Come on, if you have a head on your shoulders, all these things we're talking about, all these things have to do with relationships in general. Marriage is the most intense one. But look at the relationships you're in right now. Apply these things now. Love is an action first, it's a feeling second. Right? Love will always be something that only a Spirit created on selfishness can possibly maintain. You've got to practice in your relationships now. You've got to practice so you'll be ready for the time at which you might have to, your life depends on it, which it doesn't marriage. What is Paul saying? "I'm an angel. Leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. This is a great mystery." The more we look into it, as we will continue to, the more we'll understand our salvation, the more we understand our salvation, the more we'll understand marriage. Okay? We'll continue this next week. Let's find prayer. Our Father, we thank you that you have shown us tonight again. More and more of the mysteries of this great institution, all of us have been touched by it. Those of us who have not been married or surrounded by marriages were the product of marriages. We have all sorts of fears and hopes about marriage. We pray that you will take this scripture that we're studying now. These words that we're looking at right now, and that you will mold us with them. So that the people who are considering marriage will walk into it wisely without distorted understandings of it. So the people who are now sitting in marriages can turn around and not be afraid of the faults that are being revealed by it, not be afraid of the conflicts that they're coming up, can begin to reorder their relationship along the principles that you've laid down here, Father, transform us and change us, and make us more like your Son. Teach us more of your salvation. As we continue to study these words about this greatest of all institutions marriage, and we thank you most of all that through Jesus Christ we've been married to you, that we are in your family. So now Lord, make us more and more like your Son for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Cultivating a Healthy Marriage. We trust you were encouraged and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God's wisdom to your life. If you'd like to find more Gospel-centered resources from Tim Keller, simply visit GospelUnlife.com. There, you'll find articles, sermons, devotional and other helpful resources. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. [Music]