Loving Hearts Needed, Extreme Marriage Pt.2

Let's get going on this next part here. One of the things I'd like to see is, while I've got something to talk about and to show you, is I am looking for interaction. And if you've got questions or comments or something, just go ahead and fire away. So, as we go through this, just keep that in mind. This isn't a lecture.

So the guiding relationship between husband and wife is the relationship between Christ and the church. That's key. And that comes all throughout this passage here. So the husband-wife relationship is modeled by, it's given as an example by Christ and the church.

Something as we look at these four kinds of love, It is important to recognize that the four kinds of love are not randomly listed. Not randomly listed. It goes from things that are more fundamentally spiritual to things that are more fundamentally physical. You see that? Things that start off as being fundamentally spiritual, then as you go through the four kinds of love, move towards what is fundamentally physical. So spiritual to physical is the first part.

Then as we look at this, the other thing that you look at is this passage points out this. Paul says this, and what he says is, for this reason, the husband is always asking himself, does she respect me? And let's ask one other question. Does the wife always know what that looks like?

No. No. I don't. That's right. A lot of times a lot of times the ladies will find you mean you don't interpret that as respect or you thought that was not respect and they'll be surprised. Okay. So one of the things that's important to talk about is between the two of them especially to talk about what says respect. to talk about what that means. I am, I am repeatedly amazed as Nancy and I counsel with couples, I'm repeatedly amazed that what respect looks like is different for different couples.

And, and also the fact that the wife does not innately know what that looks like. She, she needs to be informed on his part as to what that looks like and doesn't look like. Okay? She does not automatically know. It is not innate. It's something that must be communicated to her lovingly.

I'm serious because what happens you know you hear all these statistics all half the marriages fall apart by the way if it's the first marriage it's roughly 50% the second marriage roughly 70% and the third marriage roughly 90% of them go kaflui. So each time it's sequentially worse in the statistics.

But what happens is the couples never learn that this is the question that he's asking. And she doesn't learn, well, what does that mean? And so she continually will go never learning and him not communicating lovingly what that means. And so each of them is exasperated with the other because they don't innately know the answer. And the reality is men and women do not automatically know what that looks like.

She is always asking herself, does he love me? And we have the additional insight. She is always asking herself, does he love me? In those four ways. You see that? And guess what answer a woman wants to have in her heart? Yes. As a matter of fact, She wants a resounding yes. She wants a resounding yes. Okay.

The husband is always asking himself, does she respect me? And they need to talk about what that looks like. The wife is always asking herself, does he love me? The wife is, you know, seeing, boy, he seems upset and I don't know why. Guess what? The answer is probably. She's communicated disrespect and doesn't understand why, or doesn't understand that that's important to him. Or the wife who longs to have a resounding yes answer to does he love me is not getting the basis for answering that.

So that's the other part. Nancy and I will often play a game with couples when we're counseling. We will say, okay, you tell him three things he does or could do that tell you that he loves you. And we will usually sit down and go through a few of those and then we'll tell him, keep doing that. Because just in the same way that gals don't know, what respect looks like, guys don't automatically know what love looks like. And here's another interesting thing. We almost always when we play that game with a couple find that there's a surprise. The guy says, that says I love you. amazed, right? Astounded.

And it will vary from one couple to the next. We're giving principles here that are big biblical principles. But the other thing that each couple must do is to personalize it for each couple. Because what says respect and what says love is going to be different for each couple.

I had a fellow call me, this is probably a few years back, a fellow called me and he said, you know, I've been working at something very hard for years, thinking that that expressed love to my wife. And then you went and talked about this and I've just discovered, but what I've been working at very hard for a long time, doesn't communicate to her that I love her. So very interesting. And I think this happens a lot in couples and why there's this disconnect. And that's because they don't talk to one another about what these look like specifically for each one. And it changes over time. A couple gets married and there's just the two of them.

How many relationships do you have where you've got two people? You've got one relationship, right? Now, a kid gets in the mix, right? I just added one kid. How many relationships have I got? Three. Three. Ooh, woo! Now, one kid triples the number of relationships. What if that kid skips a friend? Yeah, woo! Yes. So what you have now, I throw one more kid in the mix. How many relationships have I got? Six. six. So I went from one to three to now six.

And so you start seeing how this thing starts growing. There's a lot more now to manage. And so what respect and love looks like gets to be real different. And so it will change with the stages. And quite often, the wife will have the question in her mind. The question, does he love me, gets more complex when the kids come along. Why? It's because she looks to how he treats the kids to answer the question, does he love me? And there's all these additional relationships in the mix. See that? So, very important question. something else for singles.

When we do the single seminar, and this is just a quick summary, but because of the sequence of these four kinds of love, what we tell them is, as you move into a marriage relationship, the first three kinds of love will be important to express. So the question is how do I know if this relationship is supposed to move ahead and turn into a godly marriage, a Christian marriage? And here's how you know. Is the man, the husband-to-be, Does he initiate the first three kinds of love? You got that? Initiate the first three kinds of love.

And does he explore those with the bride-to-be? And then the question is, how does she respond to that? Does she respond by saying, yes, he loves me to those? Does she respond by her submission and respect in that situation? Right? So that's going to tell you if the relationship ought to proceed.

The two of them will look at his initiating of the expressions of love and other people will see it as well. And they'll say, yeah, that's working. That's biblical. What happens when couples do the usual thing for a modern era and they say, let's live together and we'll see if this thing works. what happens is they're going in ignorant of the essential first three kinds of love and then they're moving in to the fourth kind in the wrong way and then just trying to see if the plumbing fits. Right? So for singles this is the way it needs to start.

The first three kinds of love being expressed by the fellow who's anticipating being a groom, and then how does she respond to that? And does everybody see, yeah, I see it. Does she see it? Does he see it? Right? So that's how you know, because what's going to happen, once they walk the aisle, and say I do, it's going to be the first three kinds of love, plus the fourth one. But you don't want to, if the first three aren't working, you don't want to move ahead.

So par what that says is the man is the initiator. He needs to know how to initiate the first three kinds of love. Okay, the next one is the being and beginning principle. The beings are the first three. And then finally, what you see is how did things begin? The man leaves his mother and father and is joined to his wife. So being comes before how things began. That's the other principle there. Okay, so you have the four kinds of love, sacrificial love, sanctifying love, caring love, and bonded love in the marriage relationship. The husband is the one who is responsible for the degree and kinds of love in the marriage.

He has got his hand on the spigot, so to speak. Because he is the initiator of love. Does he want more love in the marriage? Guess what? That's his job. That's his job. The guiding relationship here of the husband is to the wife as Christ is to the church. Now, there's one more. You have it on page 2.

And the unconditional love is foundation principle. The unconditional love of the husband for the wife, sacrificial, sanctifying, caring, and bonded love is the foundation for the marriage relationship. And I can also add to that, and this isn't in your handout, but would fit there just as well. Unconditionally being subject to and respecting of the wife for the husband.

In other words, her response then to His love initiation. Now, on top of that is companionship love. On top of that is romantic love. Do you see that? It is a foundation for the relationship. What happens in our culture is people try to make the top two the whole thing. And why do the marriages then fall apart? is that there is no foundation. There is no foundation. Now, think about the foundation. What is the foundation for the unconditional love of the husband for the wife?

It's based on the relationship between Christ and the church. Is that eternal? Yes, it is eternal. So better to have an eternal foundation based on absolute truth of what God has revealed than try to say, let's get romantic and companionship love under this thing when it's missing. If you don't have a foundation, there are going to be problems. Right? So, very important. This comes from a larger principle in the Christian life, and that is we put our faith in the facts. The facts is revealed in God's Word. Feelings go on top. Feelings go on top.

What often happens is, you know, the feeling's gone. I think there's even songs like that, right? The feeling's gone. You know, I don't love you anymore, which is all about feelings, right? And, but the reality is the feelings you put on top of faith in the facts.

Now, how does this work? Does this mean, all right, I love Nancy and because that's what it says and that's what I'm supposed to do. And so I put my faith in the facts. So I love her. Okay. We're done, right? The reality is what this does is it gives a solid foundation for the feelings. And it gives stability and permanence to undergird the feelings. And now the feelings, they're free to be expressed because they're safe. They're solidly founded.

So here's this lady, Nancy there, I've been married to her for 38 years. That was after getting over, not liking each other, right? So that was 40 years ago, right? So 38 years we've been married and I'm crazy in love with her. I mean, I'm just bonkers about her, right? But I'm free to be crazy in love with her because there is a solid foundation.

When did marriage get started? There in the garden, the world was not even a week old and God established marriage and it was before the fall by the way, before anybody sinned. So marriage isn't some sort of a punishment for sinning. So here is this institution we call marriage established when the world was young, and then let's look at marriage the other direction. What would be the significance of marriage on into eternity?

Christ and the church on into eternity. So I can look back on something that has a foundation since the world was very young and goes on into eternity. That's a solid foundation. I can put faith in the in the biblically revealed facts that started when the earth was young before the fall and goes on into eternity. That's cool. The feelings are free to be, you know, intense and extreme because they're safe.

We're not worried about you still got feeling, you know, I don't know my blood sugars down, you know, so we don't have that. feelings are founded on faith in the facts and the facts are solid. Our experiences are to be based on faith in the facts. Our traditions are to be based on faith in the facts. Our relationships are based on faith in the facts.

So this is key. This is an important thing because our culture teaches us that feelings are what count. How can it be wrong if it feels so right? Trust your feelings, Luke. Right? So it's our culture teaching us that, boy, it's all about the feelings. This says, no, it's faith in the facts. Feelings on top. Feelings built on top of that.

Now, the last part of the passage, this mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself. The wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Let's look at the word mystery. What's a mystery in the New Testament terms? Previously not revealed, but now revealed, right?

So, Colossians 1.26 tells us that. The mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but now has been manifested to the saints. That defines the use of the word mystery. And by the way, that's how the Bible uses mystery from the Old Testament to the New. All throughout the Bible. So if you learn that principle, you can apply it everywhere you find the word. So when he says this mystery is great, he's not saying, boy, this is really, really mysterious.

Right? He is saying, here is a revealed truth that is huge in its significance. That's his point. It has far-reaching implications. This mystery is huge in its implications and its significance. This is major. If people miss this, They missed out on what Christian marriage is all about and why Christian marriage is intended to be different. This is key. This mystery is great. This is a great, tremendous revelation is what he's telling us. Okay.

Not, this is really, really mysterious and who can figure it out. See, God does not intend for marriage to be, you know, being stuck in the same old rut. I am speaking, real interestingly, this is the same phrase in the Greek that Christ used in the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount. He says, but I tell you, when He's spelling out. So this is words from God. This is revelation from God. Just like when Christ corrected things there in the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. with reference to Christ and the church.

Genesis 2.24 conveyed a key truth and Jesus quoted that to answer the question about divorce. Paul is telling us how that fits in relationship between Christ and the church which hasn't been revealed before. The relationship between Christ and the church and the husband and wife is huge and he's saying this is a huge revelation.

It isn't, okay, Nancy and I go down and we just fill out the marriage certificate and paid our money and had some blood drawn and said, yeah, you don't have some terrible disease so you can get married. So no, that's not it. That's all the legal stuff. Instead, what's happening is we get to live out every single day, the eternal romance of Christ in the church. That's really huge. That's big.

So, when we look at it, when this world has long since passed away, when this is all gone, when this world's heavy burdens are not even a passing thought, boy, I don't know what that guy was thinking, anyway, when this world's traffic jams and headaches and disappointments are not even a memory, in the snow in the driveway. When we've quit wondering why we worried so about the problem that distracted us, when all that's passed, these things, these four kinds of love will still be of significance. What will Christ be called even on into the new heavens and the new earth? to be called the Lamb, even into the new heavens and new earth. We won't remember all the things that caused us so much grief and caused us to get concerned and to cry about things and, you know, why this hurt and that hurt, but we will remember that He paid the price and He'll be the Lamb.

Sacrificial love will go on into eternity. So this isn't love like, okay, it's a little hormone that I feel, or I feel love for you when I've had enough food in my stomach that my blood sugar level goes up. This is love that's forever. This is love that has no ifs. This is love without because. There will be sacrificial love, sanctifying love, caring love, and bonded love. And now we need to talk about what joined means.

Joined in Genesis 2.24 and at the end of this passage here. Leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife.

That one. That in both the Hebrew and the Greek means to glue ultimately. There's an intensifier there in the Greek. I kind of paraphrase that as super glue. Extreme joining. So the husband being joined to his wife is not a post-it note marriage. Let's see if it sticks. It's an intensive joining.

That's what God has in mind. So what God has in mind is something, that's why we call it extreme marriage. God has in mind something very different from what the world considers. The world says, well, let's live together before we get married so we can check it out and see if it works. And by the way, that will decrease the chance of the marriage working if there's a subsequent marriage, and especially the more different partners that happens with. So let's talk about extreme. We have extreme snowboarding, extreme maybe street luge, you might think of some other extreme sports. Now, let me tell you about extreme bridge jumping.

This bridge I used to jump off of and down into the river below head first. Now the river below is shallow as you notice. So that was extreme. I used to jump off of that bridge into the river, and what we would tell people is just go down, you put your fingers out like this, and just as soon, and now don't wait, as soon as you feel the cold and the wet, you immediately arch your back and put your hands back as fast as you can. And don't hesitate. hard and fast as you can so that you will go like this and go sideways.

And there was one guy that I think he was a little inebriated and he tried to do what we were doing and didn't work out so well. So anyway, that was my attempt at extreme. But just so you won't worry about it, this is up in the farm country, and just so you aren't too concerned, we never did get into bovine bungee jumping. We never did that from the bridge.

So that's extreme. Oh here's an extremely muddy girl with a jeep. Here's extreme flying in a wingsuit. How about that? And that's actually slowed down because we're going 120 miles an hour. I think for this, forget the health insurance. You need life insurance.

But what God has in mind is extreme merit. What God has in mind is God's design is for each believing husband and wife is extreme marriage, not just two Christians getting married in the regular usual way and living out some kind of a life as if two Christians got married. God has an intent and a design in the husband wife relationship. that is nothing like this world comprehends and is frankly not like what even most churches will talk about. Most churches don't talk about this stuff. So because what God has in mind, imagine this relationship where the wife knows because of the way this guy lives that he would die for me.

I know it because he lives each day, like he would die for me. I know that he loves me deeply because we have spiritual intimacy. Spiritual intimacy. I know that he cares about me because he cares about my physical and emotional needs. As a matter of fact, How does physical intimacy make sense to a woman? It makes sense because she has a yes answer to the first three kinds of love.

You see what often happens, because men and women are wired differently, What often happens is guys can go from, okay, we're watching the football game and it's over, terrible game. Click the thing off. And then all of a sudden the guys, you know, he can instantly get the hots, you know, and, and that for a guy that can, can happen because of the way guys think. But for the woman, what Paul has revealed here is really important.

For her, she needs a yes answer to the first three kinds of love before physical intimacy will make any sense to her. This is a key, important thing. What often happens is the guy sees physical intimacy as urgent. And for her, she's wanting to have a yes answer to the first three kinds of love before it's going to make sense to her.

Okay. It's marriage way, way beyond the edges of human capacity. That's why, you know, if somebody tells us, Oh, we can do this. You're in trouble. Okay. God's intent is also marriage way, way beyond anything this world can or is ever going to comprehend. Think about this.

God intended from the very beginning that there be marriage before the world even had sinned from Adam sinning. before the earth was cursed. God intended marriage from the very beginning. We have additionally now revealed this eternal relationship between Christ and the Church. Ultimately, where is this relationship between Christ and the Church headed? What's that? It's going to be in heaven with the Lord. Will that be tainted?

So what's interesting is the beginning of marriage was untainted and where marriage is headed is also untainted. Very interesting. So we have connections on both ends that are untainted and perfect. And so what the Apostle Paul is pointing into by looking forward and looking back here is, here's a marriage. Does that mean your marriage is going to be perfect? No. But what it says, I have a connection to perfect and untainted marriage both ways, both directions. There is a slice of heaven, if you will, a slice of Eden and a slice of heaven that God has made possible here in this marriage relationship. That's the connection at each end for marriage.

Amazing stuff. It's amazing what the Lord has designed. So we have the four kinds of love. Extreme love. This is not just, I love you because... I love you quite a bit. This is love that is baffling. This is love that makes us wonder. With these nails, Heidi went. This is amazing love. This is gracious love.

So how do you like your love? Do you like it wimpy or non-wimpy? This world's idea of love is insipid. The only way it's extreme is that it's really, really wimpy. I love you until. I love you if. I love you because. This world's love promises to climb mountains and then quits when the climb gets a little steep.

Nancy and I had friends some years ago. Boy, he was really touched at the wedding. He was in tears at the wedding. He was so touched. Nancy was a bridesmaid. At the wedding out in the park, you know. Boy, that guy just really loves her a lot. Until she got breast cancer. He said, I didn't sign up for this. He took off with one of her friends. And she died. He wasn't around. That's wimpy love. That's wimpy love.

This isn't the kind of love we're talking about. He had a lot of feeling, but the feeling was not an adequate foundation. It depends on this world's resources and circumstances and feelings. It doesn't have the energizing of the omnipotent creator of the universe behind it, nor the life of Christ, nor the relationship between Christ and the church as the model. It lacks that.

This is extreme love, sacrificial, sanctifying, caring, and bonded love for the husband or the wife initiated by the husband. Initiated by the husband. He is the intentional initiator of awesome, gracious love that's incomprehensible. Love from the person of Jesus Christ. Love that is Christ as the source. Love that is Christ as the model. Jesus Christ living in and through us to carry it out.

I'm going to zip past this for now. We have some other material I'll just briefly mention. Intimacy in marriage and intimacy with Christ. We obviously aren't going to go through that today, but that's something that we do make available from time to time. We also have information on husband and wife as parents.

The question is, As children are growing up in the household, the man and the woman in the household, the husband and wife, are defining things for the sons and the daughters. What's a man? What does that look like? What's a woman? What's a husband? What's a wife? And even, what's an adult son? And what is an adult daughter? What do I mean by that? In our case, both my parents are still around. And Nancy's parents are both home with the Lord. Nancy's dad, I mean, he just got through mowing the lawn and putting the lawnmower away. The Lord took him. Right then, bang.

Um, and then, uh, but Nancy's mom was around for some years. And so what does it look like? And so our kids got to see, what does it look like when, you know, their mother supports her mom? What does it look like when I, as the father, support Nancy in that?

So the kids got to see that. And so really what's happening in the home is that the kids are getting definitions to what's a man, what's a husband, what's a father, what's an adult son, and what's a woman, what's a wife, what's a mother, what's an adult daughter. And each, the son and the daughter are learning either the direct role, if it's of the same gender, male and female, or the cross role. That is the daughter's learning, for example, what's a man. Okay. Cause that's going to give her an example, what to look for. Now, I have one question.

What happens, what do you do in the body of Christ? What do we do if these examples have not been the best in what we've seen? They might be real deficient. But if we have not had a good example either because there's a blank, I have no idea, or we can look at that and say, I don't know what it's supposed to be, but that isn't it. What do we do as Christians? Ultimately, if you look at it, almost all of us, to be honest, will have some way in which we're going to have blanks, or we're going to say, yeah, I got my blank filled in, but I don't like what I see. And so we have three resources to fill in those blanks. And that's even one of the reasons we're meeting here today.

What's a wife? What's a husband? We have three resources. You mentioned one of them, the Word of God. Can I have two more? Two more resources that we have to learn things that we either have no background for or the background example that we had was bad or at least inadequate. Yes, we have other believers to look to. So we can look and say, oh, I see how that's supposed to look.

So you're right, we have other believers, we have the Word of God, and we've got one other resource. Somebody tell me what that is. We have the Holy Spirit. So we have the Bible, which is inspired by the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit in each believer to help us to fill in the blanks where we don't have one or where the example we have is some either bad or inadequate. And we have the body of Christ to look to.

So we have those three resources. to help us where we don't have examples. We look at it and say, well, you know, my dad wasn't this or my mom wasn't this, you know, or boy, well, they're always, you know, going at each other. And I just never did learn how do you do this? We have those three things to learn from. And that's important. As Nancy and I sit down and counsel, almost In every situation, there's somebody somewhere in this relationship where there is no resource in the examples that they've seen. And so it's neat the Lord has given us a trio of resources to fill that in. Ah, that's what that's supposed to be like.

And when we point out the extreme marriage here a lot of cases what we're talking about is this is a marriage the Bible describes a marriage we may not have seen in our own household and I would say for a lot of us I maybe even probably haven't seen okay this is this is this is a marriage that is astounding and what God's described let's take about five minute break and we'll go for the last session