Old Marriage, New Marriage

I love how everybody just knows their role on a trip in the car, don’t they? Everybody just knows their role. I love how snack distribution is a legit important job in the car. It is. It’s a really legitimate job. I was recently on a long car trip with my family, but without my wife and my son had to hand me a sandwich while I was driving, and he just handed it to me wrapped. That’s a rookie error right there. No partial unwrap, right, so that I can maintain a hand on the wheel. No napkin on the center console. You got the fries in the extra cup holder. None of that, didn’t have any of those things. I had to do all of that with my free hand. We are blessed to be alive today. And I knew right in that moment that I had married just the right woman. I drive because she doesn’t like to drive, and she moves snacks through the vehicle like she’s got a degree in food distribution. It is perfect. It is perfect. But you know what’s not perfect, everything else. Everything else is not perfect. Now, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got a great marriage. Uh, but a perfect marriage? Far, far from it. Everything in our relationship is very much a work in progress.

And if you are married, you know that that’s the case for your marriage, too. We are works in progress. She does not thrive when I am harsh with her and sometimes I am. I don’t like it when she’s disrespectful to me and sometimes she is. We’ve been married for 24 years now, and sometimes you think we just started working on this last week, right? Every marriage is like this. Every marriage is a work in progress because every person is a work in progress. And if you take two people in progress, you put them together, of course, that relationship is going to be. If you take two broken, sinful, flawed people and you unite them into a relationship that creates a spiritual bond so tight that the Bible describes it as a one flesh union, you’d expect that those sins that you have would grate together. And that’s exactly what happens. That’s what happens. If you’re an impatient person, so if you are a naturally,sinfully impatient person and you are married to a person who is slow to make decisions about everything, then you’re going to find that the impatience within you bubbles up all the time. It’s constantly going to flare up. And that’s true of all sins, all sins, all the rawness of sin is exposed in a marriage relationship. And that exposure is actually a gift from God.

I know it doesn’t feel like that, but we’ll get there. We’ll get there. But here’s the thing it’s not what we expect. It’s not how we enter into marriage. We don’t expect that rawness to come up. And that’s mainly because we don’t talk about marriage biblically very often. We talk about marriage romantically. And by the way, this is where I’m going to be accused of being an unfeeling, uncaring man. And oh, poor Rachel. I mean, let me just say this romance is important. There should be plenty of romance, plenty of feelings of love. What I’m suggesting, though, is that these good feelings, the celebration, the positive views of a future united to a soulmate are not sufficient. They are good, but they’re not sufficient for understanding what marriage is supposed to be. Too many people today have a view of marriage that aligns with the wedding clothes and not the biblical marriage clothes. Now, I’m going to take you on an extended metaphor here, so follow along with me. Okay, this is kind of the metaphor for the entire series. The average bride tries on 4 to 7 wedding dresses and spends an average of somewhere between $1700 and $2500 on a wedding dress. A beautiful, perfect, well thought out, picked wedding dress. Ladies, I don’t know if you know this, but guys are literally pointing at computer screens going, I’ll just wear that. That’ll be fine. I’ll take that. They’re making sure that the colors match because that’s important, right? You got to make sure everything looks just right. All the colors have to coordinate. The guys have ties that match the bridesmaid’s gowns. You think about all the backdrop, you’re always thinking about the backdrop. You just want everything to look so perfect for that moment. And it’s all fine. It’s all good. All that time, all that money spent, it’s all fine. Yes, that dress will live in a box in your garage for the rest of your life for some reason, I don’t know why, but it’s fine, because we can spend some money to celebrate. The wedding clothes are a reflection of a celebration of love between two people. But as important and lovely as those clothes are for that day, they are not the clothes that you need for a lifelong, God honoring marriage. Wedding clothes are extravagant. They’re neatly tailored, they’re designed to show perfection. But the clothes that we need to wear for a great marriage are humble. And oftentimes when you first put them on, they’re ill fitting. They don’t fit you quite right. If you think marriage is always going to look and feel like an extravagant, perfect display of love, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. And I think a lot of people are sorely disappointed. We need the proper clothes for a great marriage, and that’s what this six week series is all about. We’re going to look at a portion of the letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the Colossian church. It’s in Colossians 3:5-17. If you have your Bible, you can open there. You heard it read earlier here in the service. This passage in Colossians is not about marriage, per se. It’s about how the gospel changes how we relate to all people. So if you’re not married, don’t tune out. There’s going to be plenty here for you. There’s plenty in this passage for you. The Lord has so much for us. I’m just going to take what we find here in this passage and I’m going to apply it specifically to marriages, because marriages are uniquely hard. We read that God wants us to be kind and gentle, right? The bible says that of all relationships we should be kind and gentle to one another, forgiving one another, right? We should be kind and gentle. So we go, yes, I am going to be kind and gentle. And we are to everyone except our spouse for some reason. Why is that? Why is it that our spouses do not get the kindness and gentleness that other people get? Well, it’s because this relationship is unique to all other relationships. With everyone else it’s us and them, and I can do the us and them for a long period of time, or at least short spurts of time, but with your spouse, it’s we and it’s constant. It’s always us. You act as one. You’re spiritually bonded together in a covenant before God. From Genesis 3, we know that the effect of the fall into sin put a curse on this marital relationship. Remember the curse that was given to Eve? That your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. So she is now going to desire to take her husband’s leadership position, and he, in turn, is going to respond by ruling harshly and being harsh with her in response. Sin has a direct damaging effect on this most intimate human relationship. But in Christ, we have the reversal of that curse. We’ve been given everything we need to repair this damage and to see healthy marriages flourish. And my goal in this series is to help all of us put on the character of Christ so that the marriages here at Calvary flourish. Today, we are not going to be looking at specific characteristics of God honoring marriage. We’re going to lay the foundation for that first, because despite what some think, the Lord is not concerned about simply shifting your behavior patterns.He’s not concerned to make sure that you’re just nice to one another and that everything works properly. He’s concerned with transforming your heart. That’s what this is about. It’s about getting at your heart. And that’s true of marriage, too. You don’t just need better communication skills or more date nights on the calendar, as good as those can be. I mean, you saw we’re planning some date nights. We think those are good. It’s good to have time together with one another. But marriages that flourish need to be made new and conformed to the pattern of Christ, to the grace of Christ and that takes new hearts. We got to be reborn from within. We got to be transformed from within. So we’re going to look at the difference between old marriage, BC marriage, if you will, before Christ marriage and what has Christ done to our marriages? New marriage, AD marriage we can see the difference looking at three instructions that Paul gives us in Colossians. The first instruction, I’ll summarize like this, eyes up not across, eyes up, not across. Here’s what I mean, the key to a flourishing marriage is pursuing the right goal, and every pursuit requires looking in the right direction. If you’ve got a goal, you got to look at the goal in order for you to be able to get where you’re going. Before we get to chapter three, verse 5 to 17, our main passage, let me take you back to chapter two.

Paul writes this, therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. So, Paul spends the first half of the book of Colossians describing the salvation and new life that we have in Jesus Christ. So, he talks about Jesus’ deity, his sacrifice for us on the cross, and his triumph over the grave. And then he says to Christians, you were once alienated. You once did not have that relationship with God. You were hostile in your minds. That’s his phrase. You were hostile in your minds against God. But that same God has reconciled you to himself through Jesus’ sacrifice. And so, we have this whole new relationship with our creator God because of Jesus. Here in Colossians 2:6-7 there’s a shift in Paul’s argument. He moves from talking about our salvation in Jesus to our walk with Jesus that follows from this new relationship that we have with God. As you received Christ Jesus as Lord so walk in him. I need you to hear the flow of that argument. This is the really important piece of this that I need you to hear. I need you to hear the flow of it. Because the order of operations here is indispensable.

First, a person receives Christ Jesus as Lord. So there’s a commitment to Jesus as Lord, meaning he’s now the director. He’s now the captain of your life. That’s what Lord means. He’s master. He’s the captain. He’s the one I follow. He calls the shots. And then because of that commitment and the transformation of your status with God as a new creation in Christ, you’re now called to walk in him. Walk in him means to to walk like him. To walk in his steps. To walk in his power. You’re rooted and you’re built up in Jesus, meaning he’s the foundation for your life. He’s the source from whom you draw all of your strength and your courage and your discipline. And you get your marching orders from him. You say, Lord, where do you want me to go? And he’s the one that takes you there. Here’s the thing. You can’t walk in Jesus unless you are first transformed in your heart and mind through a relationship with Jesus. Can’t do it. One has to come before the other. And this may seem a little bit technical, but let me explain why it’s important to establish this before we start diving into all of the practical matters of marriage. So many couples that I’ve talked to, so many over the years who are hurting because things are not going well at home.

They are looking for a method. They’re looking for something they’re missing in the relational dynamics. They want to they want to uncover or get a little bit of advice, show us what we’re doing wrong so we can start doing it right. Speak into this a little bit, what are we not seeing so that we can get the monkey wrench out of this thing and build. So give us a method, give us some steps, some things that we can do. And that can be a good place to start if we are on the same page spiritually. But for some folks, a little bit of discussion reveals that their goal isn’t to pursue Christ individually or even collectively in their marriage. They don’t see their marriage as a union before God, or as a context in which they worship Christ together. They want to fix the problem, but they don’t understand the problem. They want the pain to go away, but they don’t understand where the pain is coming from. And they don’t understand where the pain is supposed to be driving them to, that the pain is actually a tool in God’s hands to drive them toward him. They think the pain is coming from the behavior of their spouse or bad patterns learned growing up, or no longer being in love, or from some misunderstanding of each other’s love languages or signals or something like that. But what they don’t see is that they, as individuals, need to be rooted and built up in Christ and establish their commitment to Jesus, and then live out that commitment in the context of their marriage relationship. I tell you right now, I feel very confident saying in a room of this size that there are some married couples here in the room this morning that are struggling because one or both of you have not yet received Christ Jesus as your Lord, and so you’re not committed to walking in him. And I feel for you. I feel for you, I do. My heart hurts for you. I’ve spoken to people like you for many years now. I chose to do this series largely because of you. I’ve sat with couples just like you, and I’ve listened to your stories. I’ve heard your pain. You’re trying to fix your marriage, but you can’t figure out what to do because you’re trying to fix your marriage to look like what you think it should look like. You’ve got a vision in your head of what your marriage ought to be, and you’re trying to fix it in your own image. And what you need to do is fix your marriage to be what God designed it to be. That’s what you need. You need to fix it the way he’s built it. You need to stop pursuing marriage made in your image and start pursuing a marriage made by the one who actually made it and crafted it. And that starts with your heart. If you don’t know, love and follow Jesus, you don’t have his gracious salvation and you don’t have the tools you need to develop a great marriage. And so I want to invite you to surrender. It’s hard to do. I want to invite you to surrender, to admit where you are wrong, to repent of your sin, and to trust in Christ as both your Savior and your Lord, your master, the one you’re going to follow. And if you and your spouse will both trust in Christ, you will be made new by the power of the Holy Spirit, and you will be able to walk in Christ. This is the first step to fixing your marriage. I don’t want anybody over the next six weeks to be looking for a few tips and methods to a great marriage. The Bible really doesn’t provide those. It doesn’t say here’s a few tips and tricks. Here’s a few things you can work on to have a better marriage. What you need is a greater commitment to walking in the steps of Jesus, rooting yourself in the gospel of Christ, and following after Jesus as Lord. And when you do that, you’ll put your eyes in the right place and you will actually see transformation in your marriage. Here, I’ll explain what I mean by eyes up, not across. Look what Paul says in chapter three, verses 1 to 4. This is right before our passage. He says this if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Do you see how the new goal and pursuit of a person in Christ? It’s to seek the things that are above. Seek the things that are above, not the things that are on the earth. You might call this the head turn of the gospel.

Okay, this is where your head shifts. When you have the gospel. Because I’m pursuing Jesus, I don’t look at the things on earth the way I used to look at them. The worldly values are different from the values of Christ and His kingdom. But those worldly values are really good at creeping in. They’re really, really good at creeping in. We’re constantly being tempted to take our eyes off Christ and put them onto what the world tells us is important, or how things ought to be. And that’s true of marriage. In my opinion, marriage is one of the most attacked and damaged institutions in our culture today from worldly perspectives on it creeping into it. No fault divorce laws of the 60s and 70s opened a floodgate of divorce. Families are torn apart because of it. Subsequently, entire generations of young people began to look at marriage in a negative light. They didn’t see it as a good thing, something that they wanted. So numerous articles today refer to marriage as an outdated institution. That’s the phrase that they use. They see it as a man-made cultural relationship that has run its course and now has lost its usefulness. If you want a worldly view of marriage, it is not hard to find. You can certainly find it out there, but it won’t tell you what a great marriage is supposed to look like or how to build it. Paul says we need to take our eyes off of the world, across from us, and put them up onto Christ. That’s where our eyes need to shift. That’s where our head needs to turn. And he’s not just talking about marriage here. He is talking about everything. Okay. But everything includes this foundational human relationship.

When you follow Jesus, your old self died with Jesus. You’re no longer who you used to be. Your spirit is now alive, and you begin to follow after Christ. He’s your life. So why would we look anywhere else to learn about marriage? Why would we do that? But we do, don’t we? We look all the time to other places to try to understand this relationship, especially when you’re frustrated. Boy, when you’re frustrated, your eyes will go to all sorts of different places, won’t it? When you’re feeling frustrated, you’ll try to get information from anywhere. When you’re frustrated with your husband, it’s tempting to listen to the voices that tell you that you’re the victim and he’s the problem. It’s not true. You’re both the problem. Doesn’t that feel good? Does it feel good that you’re both the problem? But it’s true. It’s true. We’ll get to it. When you’re frustrated with your wife, it is tempting to listen to the voices that tell you that she’s not meeting your needs. And you really ought to be with somebody who respects you and treats you the way that you ought to be treated. It’s not true. The lack of respect you feel as a husband is the fault of both of you and as the shepherd leader of your home, you probably haven’t been cultivating your wife’s spirit in a way that would result in the respect that you want. It’s hard to hear it. I know. It’s hard to hear it. But we need to hear true things so it will wake us up to the fact that we have our eyes in the wrong places. Our eyes need to be above on Christ. We need God and His Word to tell us how to make this marriage relationship flourish, because it’s not going to flourish unless he tells us how to make it flourish. Colossians 3:5-17 will show us how to shed the false notions of worldly views of marriage and put on the character of Christ. If you don’t yet follow Jesus, you won’t be able to do the next two commands for any sustained period of time. Now, you might be able to sustain it for a little while, just kind of muscle up and do it for a little short period of time, but you won’t be able to do it for any sustained period of time. But if you have Christ and you’re looking to Christ, and you’re pursuing Christ as Lord, and he’s your master and he’s the one you want and he’s working in you, by the power of his Spirit, you will be able to do two things. The first thing you’ll be able to do is put to death. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. You say, put to death. What? Kyle, it’s a terrible place to stop. I know, I know, we’re going to get to all of it. We’re just laying the foundation today. We’re going to discuss and apply all this stuff for the next five weeks. But today, I just wanted you to see how to get our eyes on Jesus so our marriages can flourish. And I want you to see the pattern. I want you to see the pattern of transformation for those of us who are in Christ. And it starts with putting to death those ideas and impulses and arguments. Those thought patterns that are in our minds, that are earthly. Gotta put them to death. It all starts with your mind, right? It all starts here. If you’re wondering where’s all the trouble coming from? It starts in your mind. You want a great marriage? You need your mind to change. Remember verse two. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. It’s those earthly ideas that have crept into your marriage that are wreaking havoc and causing so much pain for you. And Paul says that we need to put those to death. The old word for this, the old theological word for this, is mortify. Okay? It’s where we get our English word mortician. Your old ways of thinking and worldly pseudo advice that’s creeping in needs a mortician to put it in a box and putit six feet under. That’s what needs to be done with that worldly way of thinking. There’s only one way to deal with lies and sinful thinking that’s taking your eyes off of Christ and undermining your marriage, and that is to put it to death. Okay, let me tell you what this doesn’t say. This doesn’t say put on hold what is earthly in you. Put it on a shelf. Keep it around, keep it near you. Make excuses to yourself as to why you are justified in acting sinfully toward your spouse. It doesn’t say that does it? You can’t try Jesus’ way and see if it fixes your marriage, and then revert back to your old ways of thinking if you don’t get what you want. If that’s your approach, then sin is still very much alive in you. You won’t fix your marriage, and I would invite you to consider whether you actually know Jesus at all, if that’s your approach. You know what else it doesn’t say? It doesn’t say, put a little earthly wisdom into the mix. Okay. Put a little work, you know. Yeah. You have a bible. Great. Yeah. Jesus. Awesome. But let’s get some different views, some different viewpoints in here. Let’s get this into the mix here a little bit. Take a little Bible where it helps, especially if it helps you address where your spouse is wrong.

Right. Oh then it’s all about the Bible, right? Hey, I was reading here in the Bible right here about you. No problem there, right? Put a little Jesus in with your own goals. See if it helps. See if you get what you want. Friends, that’s called idolatry. It’s right in our verse. Let me show you the rest of the verse here. I’ll read the whole thing here. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. It’s right there. All you’re doing is making God and His Word do your bidding, which is to say that you have created a different God, one in your own mind. One who does not exist, can’t save you, won’t fix anything in your life, including your marriage that God can’t save you. The Puritan John Owen wrote a book called The Mortification of Sin, which is a great book if you love solid theology and very old English. And he writes this book in this book, he says, Owen says every unmortified sin will certainly do two things. Okay? So, every sin that doesn’t die that you haven’t killed, it will certainly do two things, he says. It will weaken the soul and deprive it of its vigor. It will darken the soul and deprive it of its comfort and peace. Some of you know that darkness right now, some of you know this darkness. Maybe you’re going through it right now. Maybe it was all that you could do to get here this morning because of this darkness. If your marriage lacks peace and comfort to the point where you feel like it’s weak, maybe it’s on its last thread. It’s because there are sins in the mind and heart of both of you, both you and your spouse that have been allowed to live. You’ve let them live. And by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in you, you need to call that sin what it is and put it to death. It needs to die. But that’s just the negative side, put to death, right? Just kill off the sin. That’s what we take off. We shed our minds of worldly things so that we can put on, Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. This is where I get the metaphor for marriage clothes. Our marriages need to be clothed with the characteristics that reflect our new lives in Christ. Now again, this is referring to all relationships. But certainly, it includes our marital relationships. You know, a lot of times when we want to know what the Bible has to say, we ask, what does the Bible have to say about marriage? And then we only go to those places in the Bible where marriage is mentioned, where we see the words husbands and wives or marriage and that sort of thing.

We say those are the passages for marriage, but we should actually go to all the places where all relationships between Christians are described. This very close, this highly unique, intimate relationship between husbands and wives needs the same instruction. It’s the hardest relationship in which to live it out. It’s very, very hard to live out these things in that marriage relationship. When Paul says that we need to bear with one another, right? He goes, you should bear with one another. Pick up each other’s burdens. He says, that’s all Christians. All Christians should be doing that for one another, bearing up one another’s burdens. Can you think of a relationship where you will bear more burden than with the person who always is within 30ft of you in your house for the rest of your life? Of course you’re going to bear burdens. Of course, you’re going to carry each other’s burdens around. Our marriages are designed to reflect the intimate love and the respect that we find between Christ and His church, according to Ephesians five. There is so much we need to put on as we cultivate a godly marriage that looks like that. It doesn’t happen automatically. You’re not going to automatically stumble into a perfect marriage. That’s not how it works. Two broken sinners saved by grace, made new in Christ, bonded together in a one flesh union given to each other as a gift and used by God to develop godliness and to prepare each one for eternity with Jesus.

That’s what marriage is. And a good marriage will have two people keeping their eyes consistently on Christ, not on the world. Not on themselves, not even on each other, but on Christ. They’ll identify and put to death those earthly lies and sins that creep in, and they will put on sacrificial love as shown to us by Jesus himself, by our Savior. Church I am very much in this with you. I need this instruction from God’s Word just as much as anybody in here. I may be able to find some truth and craft it into preaching, but this is not in any way the sort of a top-down thing where I’ve already arrived. And I’m telling you how to have the perfect marriage, just like Rachel and me. That’s not it at all. We don’t. We do not have the perfect marriage. I texted Rachel this week, and I asked if I had permission to just share freely from our marriage in these sermons, and she called me back because she said, this deserves a phone call, not a text. She gave me permission. There was hesitancy in her voice when she did. We have disagreements all the time. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we hurt. Sometimes we’re not quick to forgive. I’m going to encourage you. I’m going to encourage you as married couples over this next six weeks to put down your defenses. I want to encourage you to drop that facade of righteousness that you’ve erected so that other people do not see what’s really happening in your relationships, so that people will think that your marriage is far better than it actually is. In your small groups I’m going to challenge you to have the courage to share where you and your spouse have seen victory in Christ, and where you continue to struggle. See? Because lies and sin love to hide in darkness. It needs darkness. It needs to be quiet. It needs to be hidden because lies and sin grow in darkness. The great news of the gospel is that we are not saved by how well we’re doing. Our identities are not tied to our sinlessness because we are new creations in Christ. We are saved by grace through faith and this doesn’t come from ourselves. It is a gift of God given to us so that none of us can boast. We don’t need boasting, we need reality. We need to talk about how grace has saved us and made us new. So I encourage you to be real and honest with your brothers and sisters in Christ, so that you can root out and put to death what is earthly in you and help. We can help each other put on Christ. Would you pray with me?