"A Little Bit of Heaven on Earth"

Ephesians 5:21

      Dear Friends in Christ,  

Some years ago the Saturday Evening Post ran an article entitled “The Seven Ages of the Married Cold.” It revealed a series of reactions that a husband gave to his wife’s colds during the first 7 years of their marriage. And this is how it went: The first year when his wife came down with a cold the husband said, “Sugar Dumpling, I’m really worried about my baby girl. You’ve got a bad sniffle and there’s no telling about these things with all the strep going around. I’m putting you in the hospital this afternoon for a general check-up and a good rest. I know the food’s lousy, but I’ll be bringing in your meals from Rossini’s. I’ve already got it all arranged with the floor superintendent.” Second year: “Listen, Darling, I don’t like the sound of that cough so I’ve called Dr. Miller to rush over here. Now you go to bed like a good girl, please, just for Papa.” Third year: “Maybe you’d better lie down, Honey – nothing like a little rest when you feel lousy. I’ll bring you something. Do we have any canned soup?” Fourth year: “Now look, Dear, be sensible. After you’ve fed the kids, gotten the dishes done and the floor finished, you’d better lie down.” Fifth year: “Why don’t you take a couple of aspirin?” Sixth year: “If you’d just gargle or something instead of sitting around barking like a seal all evening!” Seventh year: “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing! You trying to give me pneumonia?” That’s the decline of marriage as seen through the eyes of the common cold.

The great British general Bernard Montgomery once gave the following advice to his troops. He said, “Gentlemen, don’t even think about marriage until you have mastered the art of warfare.” Indeed, there does seem to be a lot of warfare going on in many marriages these days. The American home in many instances has become a veritable battleground where husbands and wives go at one another with all the ferocity of two wild animals fighting over a dead carcass, and sadly, in so many of those cases the children are the ones who are being torn asunder.

All of which is very good reason why I want to spend some time examining the whole subject of marriage today as we continue our study of the 6^th Commandment as part of my “Back to the Basics” sermon series that I am currently preaching. The 6^th Commandment, of course, is “You shall not commit adultery.” So since this commandment deals in part with unfaithfulness in marriage, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some of the key ingredients that we could mix into our marriages to help fortify them against things like adultery, conflict, abuse, and divorce.

And the first of those ingredients and perhaps the most obvious is love. But as we all know, love can mean different things to different people. For example, a little 1^st grade boy might say that he is in love with that cute little girl who sits across from him. Or in the course of an evening I can tell my wife that I really loved the meal that she prepared for supper only to tell her that I love her when we go to bed later on. Now obviously I love her in a way far different than I love the food she prepared for our evening meal.

Well, nobody understood these different levels of love better than the ancient Greeks who actually had 3 different words for our 1 word love. The lowest form of love, according to the Greeks, was known as eros from which we get our English word erotic. This was a sexually motivated a love, a love based purely upon physical attraction – not exactly the kind of love that you would want to build a lifelong marriage upon because our physical qualities have a way of fading over the course of time. For example, here is a picture of me back when I was in college (show picture of my head on the body of Arnold Schwartzenegger) and look at me now. I’m thankful that my wife and I had more than eros love for one another when we got married or she would have left me a long time ago.

The second form of love according to the Greeks was known as philia. This is the kind of love that exists between friends and while I would hope that those of you who are married would always think of your spouse as your very best friend in life, that’s still not quite the kind of love that you want to build a marriage upon. For that you want the highest form of love which, according to the Greeks, was known as agape. Agape is a self-giving, self-sacrificing kind of love. It’s the kind of love in which you always place your partner and their needs and their desires ahead of yourself and your needs and your desires. This is the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated for his bride, the Church, when he willingly gave his life into death on the cross to pay for all of our sins so that we could one day spend eternal life with him.

Some years ago I ran across a beautiful example of agape love that came in the form of a fellow with a rather unusual name. His name was Robertson McQuilkin. As a young man he had dreamed of becoming the president of Columbia Bible College in Columbia, SC, the same position his father had held when Robertson was younger. And sure enough, his dream came true. And as he assumed his position as president of this Christian college, he sensed in a very strong way that this was God’s calling for his life. It was definitely what God wanted him to do. And he did it well.

But then one day this very special and gifted man realized he had a tragedy developing right before his very eyes as his beloved wife was beginning to show the tell-tale signs of Alzheimer’s disease. And this was no slow moving case either. In just a matter of months she not only lost her memory of their life together, but she even reached the point where she no longer recognized him as her husband.

It was then that Robertson McQuilkin made the decision to give up his dream and resign his presidency at Columbia Bible College so that he could give his wife the full-time care and attention that she needed. Needless to say, there were those who disagreed with his decision. There were the realists who told him there was no point to what he was doing because any good old soul could take care of his wife, but not just anyone could be the president of Columbia Bible College. And besides, his wife didn’t even recognize him anymore.

Then there were the pious critics who pointed out that he was walking away from a calling that had been given to him by God himself. He was letting his personal concern for his wife get in the way of his service to the Lord.

But Robertson McQuilkin had answers for all his critics. To the realists he readily admitted that it was true. His wife no longer knew who he was. But, he said, that wasn’t the point. The important thing is that he still knew who she was and he still saw in her now forgetful self the same lovely woman he had married years before. Then to his pious critics who felt he was abandoning God’s call, he had an even better answer. He told them, “There is only one thing in life more important than a calling, and that is a promise. And I promised to be there for her ‘till death do us part.’” And so he was until, after 40 years of marriage, his wife went home to be with the Lord.

Oh how I pray that that kind of sacrifice, that kind of unselfishness, that kind of agape love will penetrate and permeate the marriages that are represented here today and that are listening in over the radio. But then a second ingredient that is necessary for a strong and healthy marriage is what I like to call mutual submission. I get that term from Eph. 5 where the Apostle Paul lays out for us God’s blueprint for marriage. In v. 21 he says: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Then he goes on to describe how this idea of mutual submission should work its way out in a marriage relationship. He begins with the wives and he says that they are to submit themselves to their husbands in the same way that the church submits itself to Christ. Now a lot of women don’t like that passage because they feel Paul is being a male chauvinist here, but he’s not being anything of the sort. When he says that wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ, we need to ask ourselves, “How exactly does the church do that? How does the church show its submission to Christ?” And the best answer that I’ve been able to come up with there is that the church shows its submission to Christ by striving to please Christ in all that it does. Now is that asking too much of a wife to do for her husband? I don’t think so…provided…and this to me is the key to it all so listen up, men…provided the husband submits to his wife the way Paul goes on to describe when he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So here we get back to that whole idea of sacrificial love, of the husband placing his wife and her needs and her desires ahead of himself and his needs and his desires. If a husband will do that, do you think that wife is going to have any problems wanting to please him in all that she does? I don’t. In fact, what happens here is that this becomes a beautiful cycle that just kind of feeds off itself and repeats itself. The more the husband loves his wife sacrificially, the more she’s going to want to please him. And the more she goes out of her way to please him, the more he is going to want to make sacrifices for her.

Let me give you an example of one time in our marriage when I saw this work…

Well, we have one more key ingredient for a great marriage that we need to look at, but our time for today is up, so we’ll have to do that 3 weeks from today. Next Sunday Vicar Karl will be preaching his first sermon so I hope you’ll come and support him in that. The following Sunday is our “Back to Church Sunday” and I’ll have a special sermon for that. And then the Sunday after that I also hope you’ll make every effort to be here for my final sermon on the 6^th Commandment, at which time we’ll not only look at the final ingredient for a great marriage, but we’ll also be talking about how Christian young people can best prepare themselves for this wonderful institution that was designed by God to bring joy and happiness and companionship into our lives rather than the sadness and hurt and conflict that unfortunately has found its way into far too many homes these days. And if that describes your home, my friends, I want you to know that it’s never too late, that God is the hope of the hopeless and the help of the helpless, and that he can do far more abundantly for you than anything you could ever ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within you. He did it at the cross when he reconciled the world to himself through the death of his Son. And he can do it in your marriage. So don’t wait any longer. Go for help. Give me or some other Christian counselor a call and discover that the Apostle Paul knew what he was talking about in Phil. 4:13 when he said, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

            Amen.