A New Marriage Makeover

if you have your Bible and I hope you do. Turn to Colossians chapter 3 and let
me, we're going to resume our study in the book of Ephesians, which we started last
fall. We're going to resume that in two weeks. In fact, two weeks from this morning
we'll be picking up in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 11 and we'll continue our study
through Ephesians. But this weekend next week With Valentine's Day coming up on
Saturday, husbands, Valentine's Day is Saturday, a little heads up, we're going to
take some time to just look at the subject of marriage and look at a New Testament
passage that is not specifically about marriage, but that, as I think we'll see,
has a lot of application for the marriage relationship. And let me just say a
couple things as we start this. First of all, I know we have many here this
morning who are not married. And you're thinking, oh, well, I came and it's married
Sunday, and I'm not married, so this isn't going to apply to me. And it can be a
difficult subject to deal with when you're sitting here thinking, I don't know that
this applies. In some cases, there are people here who are longing to be married,
and for whatever reason they're not. There are some people who have been wounded in
a marriage relationship. I think the passage we're going to look at, while we're
going to be applying it specifically to the marriage relationship, you will see it
has broader impact than just marriage. So if you're listening clearly, you will be
able to find ways in which this passage applies to relationships that you have that
are not marriage relationships. In fact, my prayer has been, as I've been preparing
for this, that the Holy Spirit would do his work, that while we're talking about
marriage, the Holy Spirit would be saying, yeah, but for you, unmarried person, this
is what you need to be hearing and listening to. This is the context for your
life. And then secondly, I just want to make this observation. The Bible is a book
that is about relationships. You stop and think about what the Bible's big story is.
You can sum it up into two categories. It's about loving God and loving our
neighbor. In fact, when Jesus was asked, which is the greatest commandment, he said,
you can sum up all of the law in the prophets in those two commands. Love God,
love your neighbor. So everything in the Bible is about loving God or loving our
neighbor. It really comes down to that. And when Jesus said that,
the first question that somebody raised was, who is my neighbor? And they were
really saying, do you mean everybody? because they were looking for some way to get
off the hook for having to love everyone. And he tells the parable of the Good
Samaritan, and the point of that parable is, your neighbor is the person who is
near you in need. If there's somebody near you in need, that's your neighbor. Love
them, serve them, care for them. And what I've found, after almost 47 years of
marriage, is that most often the person who is near me in need is my wife. And
most often I am in need around her. And so the first place to apply this
commandment to love your neighbor is in your home. It's so interesting to me that
we can do a good job of loving the person who lives next door or being kind to
the person who we have a casual relationship and then it's harder with the person
that we're closest to. Maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you've been in a time of
intense fellowship with your spouse. You know what I'm talking about? Where the two
of you are not seeing eye to eye and maybe the tensions and the anger is there
and all of a sudden there's a knock at the door and you've gone from talking
sternly to your spouse to go, hello, right? Somehow you can make that transition and
you can be nice to that person even if you're having a hard time being nice to
your spouse. I used to think that the Bible had just a few passages that talk
about marriage. Ephesians 5 talks about it. 1st Peter 3 talks about it. Colossians 3
talks about it later in this chapter. Genesis 2 talks about marriage. There are a
handful of passages that deal with it specifically. But what I began to realize is
that everything that says love your neighbor is first about loving your spouse and
then broadening the circle out beyond that. So the person who is around me in need
most often is my spouse, that's who I'm to love. So when I'm reading passages in
the Bible that talk about how we are to love one another, the first question I
should be asking, am I doing this at home with the people under my roof? And these
first 14 verses in Colossians 3 that we're going to look at this morning talk about
how we honor God in the way we relate to one another the marriage relationship is
one aspect of that it's one application of that but as I said it's broader than
that and I'll say this if you can figure out how to consistently love the people
in your home loving your the strangers is often easier so this is the proving
ground this is where we tested out and here's the big idea that we're going to
look at as we look at these verses this morning. For your marriage to be a
marriage that is pleasing to God, you have to start with a different mindset about
your marriage. And it's a mindset that will lead you away from the patterns and
habits that are in the flesh and will motivate you instead to cultivate godly
character. Let me say that again. If you want a marriage that is pleasing to God,
you need a different mindset, and it's a mindset that will steer you away from the
patterns and habits of your flesh to cultivating a godly character.
So I want to read Colossians 3, the first 14 verses. Let me pray before we go in
here. Father, we need your spirit now to come and to be our teacher, to open up
our hearts and minds, not just to be hearers of your word, but to be doers. And I
pray that for all who are here, both married and unmarried, that you would speak to
us by your spirit. Give us wisdom, I pray. I ask it in your name. Amen. Again,
we're going to ask you to stand as I read these verses. So if you would, this is
Colossians chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. Here is the word of God for the people
of God. The Bible says, 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.
Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. Sexual immorality,
impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
On account of these things, The wrath of God is coming. In these, you two once
walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away.
Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its
practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after
the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and
uncircised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all.
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts,
kindness,
humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint
against another forgiving each other as the lord has forgiven you so you also must
forgive and above all these put on love which finds everything together in perfect
harmony we'll stop there may god bless this reading of his word you may be seated
the grass withers the flower fades the word of our God will last forever.
Something that is new in our relationship over the last couple of years is that as
we travel, Marianne and I, if we are doing car trips, we have made it our purpose
to look for a new wardrobe everywhere we go. We want to go shopping and see if we
can find new clothing and we are looking specifically for hidden gems at our
favorite fashion boutique which is goodwill we love going to the goodwill have you
been to the new one on chanall i mean pretty chic right two two years ago we did
an eight -week sabbatical some of you remember and we did a massive road trip we
left here we went to fort worth we went to carlsbad caverns we went to the grand
Canyon. We went to Huntington Beach in California. We came back through Las Vegas
and up to Yellowstone and then Mount Rushmore and back down here. Then we did a
loop on the east coast. We went to Lake Michigan and we went to Brooklyn and we
went to Coney Island and came back. And in addition to looking for cheesecake
factories along the way, because you know I'm trying to eat at every cheesecake
factory in America, we looked at multiple Goodwill's. We would pull into a city, and
Mary Ann would get out her phone to look and find out where the Goodwill stores
were. And as we've traveled, we picked up some treasures. In fact, these shoes that
I'm wearing are Goodwill shoes. I wore them this morning. I think they're about a
half -size too big for me, but they were such a deal. I could not resist them.
I mean, it was nine bucks for these shoes. I could not say no to that, all right?
So the passage we're looking at this morning is not about how to find treasures and
bargains at the goodwill, but it is about how to have a new marital wardrobe,
how to put aside some of the clothing you used to wear and to put on new clothes.
It's talking about getting rid of the things you've accumulated over the years that
are not good for your marriage, and instead putting into your closet and into your
wardrobe new character. The Apostle Paul is addressing this, he's addressing some of
the toxic sin patterns that are not pleasing to God, patterns that show up in the
church and patterns that will destroy relationships ultimately destroy us,
not just our relationships, but they will destroy us. And he provides, in addition
to a list of the patterns that we should be putting to death, he also provides a
list of patterns that we should be cultivating. And like a wardrobe, he says, some
of what you've been wearing each day, you need to take off and put in a pile and
burn it, and some of you need new clothes that you can be putting on and start
wearing. But before he gets to these lists that we see in this passage, I want you
to notice what he says in verse two, because the first critical step in order to
have a marriage that is pleasing to God is found in verse two, set your minds on
things that are above, not on things that are on earth. A new marriage makeover
begins with a new mindset about life, about God,
about marriage and the mindset you need to have in your marriage is is you need to
replace what is your default mindset your default mindset or at least mine is is a
me first marriage my default mindset is to say the purpose of this marriage is to
make me happy if I'm not happy something's wrong with my marriage and probably it's
my spouse's fault I need to fix my spouse, I need to fix Marianne,
so that I can be happy in the marriage. That's my default setting. That's the
mindset that I started marriage with. And if that's your mindset in marriage,
you're in for a hard marriage. Because a me -first mindset when it comes to marriage
is a mindset that will ultimately put you at odds with one another and create
isolation in your marriage. What Colossians 3 tells us about all of life,
but again, we're applying it to marriage, is that we're to have an eternal
perspective on things. We're to look at life through the lens of eternity.
We're to have a gospel mindset when it comes to life, a mindset that says my goal
for my marriage is to have a marriage that honors and glorifies God, first and
foremost. It's not that my happiness is not important. It's just not primary.
It's not the first thing I should be looking at. It's true for all of life. A
gospel mindset is the mindset we should carry with us through life. We are not our
own. We're bought with a price. We are here to glorify God. It's our chief
responsibility. Sometimes life will be pleasant. Sometimes life will be hard. But no
matter what, our mindset should be a mindset that says, I am here to put the glory
of God on display through my life, and in this case, through my marriage. If you
have any other mindset about your marriage, you may be able to make some temporary
adjustments to make things a little more harmonious in your marriage, but you'll
never get to the kind of marriage that is ultimately honoring to God. Years ago,
there's a book that came out by a guy named Gary Thomas. It's a book called Sacred
Marriage. And I remember when I first saw the book, I zeroed in on the subtitle.
Can we zoom in? It says, what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than
to make us happy? And I remember reading that and said, who told you you could
step on my toes like that, right? because my approach to marriage was it's about my
happiness. And in reading that, I had to do a recalibration, a new mindset to say,
no, my marriage is about something bigger and more glorious and grander than just my
happiness. It's about God being glorified. If marriage is a picture of God's
relationship, the bride and the bridegroom, his relationship with us, if it's a
picture of his relationship with his church, then there's something much bigger than
just my happiness that's at stake here. And that paradigm shift for me brought about
a new perspective on marriage. It was a new mindset for me. And it's the mindset
we have to have in marriage. A real change in marriage has to begin with having a
new mindset. If there's going to be a permanent lasting real change in your
marriage, your heart and mind have to be reset.
mindset shift as you approach issues in your marriage, you're building your marriage
on sand.
If you go right to behavioral change, it's like skipping the part of the recipe for
the cake where they say, turn the oven to 350. Like you can look at the recipe
and say, well, I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to put these
ingredients together and make the batter and put it in the pan and put it in the
oven. If you skipped turning the oven to 3 .50, all the rest of it, you're going
to get cake batter. You'll never get a cake. If you skip a new mindset about your
marriage, you can make adjustments, but you'll wind up with marriage batter and never
a marriage cake.
If you address behavior without addressing your heart and mind, you'll get short -term
improvements, but you'll never have the kind of marriage God wants us to have.
Because ultimately, listen, God's more concerned with your heart than he is with your
behavior. It is out of your heart that your behavior should flow, but ultimately
what God looks at is the heart and the behavior is just a sample of what's in
your heart. He wants your heart to change and he wants you to have a new mindset
because that's how permanent change happens. In fact, this is talked about in lots
of places in the Bible. Let me just show you one other place. In Romans 8, the
Bible talks about having a right mindset, a mindset on the spirit, not a mindset on
the flesh. Here's what it says. For those who live according to the flesh set their
minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit set
their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is
death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. A mind that is set
on the spirit puts God and his purposes at the center of your life, the center of
your marriage, and it puts your desires on the back burner. So we need to ask
ourselves this question. It's a critical question. Do you want your marriage to be
for God's glory or for your benefit. Now, it's not that those two are mutually
exclusive, although sometimes they are. Which is the priority for you?
Your benefit or God's glory? It's a crucial question. And it's one you keep coming
back to over and over again in marriage. This is not like the set it and forget
it, add on TV. You don't just set it once and then it's set forever, you are
constantly resetting your mind in all of life on the glory of God being what you're
living for. Because you're constantly being pulled away from that by the culture,
by your own appetites, and by the evil one. And you'll notice that this passage
says, you have the responsibility to set your mind. If you're not intentionally,
purposefully setting your mind, someone or something else will set your mind for you
every day. If you don't deliberately, purposely, wake up in the morning and say,
Lord, this is your day, I'm here to serve you today, direct my paths,
help me to serve you, then something else will set your agenda, will set your
heart, will set your mind. your circumstances, the culture,
you either keep setting your mind or the culture will do it for you. And you keep
resetting it. So that's a starting place. If you want a marriage that glorifies God,
you have to start with that as your priority. And I've talked to enough couples
over the years where their priority has been their own happiness, their own desires,
their own fulfillment in marriage, and I've had to say to them, you have the wrong
purpose in mind. Again, it's not that that is invalid, it's just can't be primary.
So you start by a resetting of your mind, set your mind on things that are above,
not on things that are on earth. And then once you do that, here's what the
passage tells us we need to do. We need to mortify the flesh.
We need to put to death those things that are, we need to get rid of an earthly
way of thinking is the way that this passage talks about. Look at Colossians 3 -5.
Put to death what is earthly in you. And if you wonder what he's talking about
when he says, what is earthly in you, there's a list here, and it's not a
comprehensive list, but it's a good starting point. You want to know what's earthly
in you? Well, these are the things we're to put to death. Sexual immorality.
That's any perspective on sex that does not align with God's design for his people.
And by the way, it's not just your behavior, it's your thought life as well. It's
what your eyes wander to. So you're to put that to death. Impurity. Impurity is
whatever leads you away from purity or holiness in your life. Passion. He's talking
about a life that is controlled by appetites or desires or passions. It's not that
passion is wrong. It's that being controlled by your passions instead of being
controlled by the Holy Spirit is problematic. Evil desires, that's a desire for
anything that is contrary to God's will. And then covetousness, which is an
interesting thing to have at the end of all of this, because it doesn't seem to
fit, and yet covetousness is essentially saying, I want what God has told me I
can't have.
So it really is an encompassing term. There's a reason why do not covet is one of
the Ten Commandments. John Piper says covetousness is desiring something so much that
you lose your contentment in God.
The Bible calls these things, that which is earthly in you. In other words, when
these attitudes or practices become habits, when they become a regular part of your
relationship, you're acting not like a child of God, but like a fallen, sinful human
being. And the makeover, God is engineering for your life,
and my life is going to demand that we must be on continuous alert and doing
continuous battle with these earthly desires that are still in our hearts,
that still dwell in us, and we have to continue to go on the offensive against
them and put them to death. You can't have a God -glorifying, God -honoring marriage
relationship if sexual immorality remains a part of your thinking or your practice,
if impurity or passion or evil desire or covetousness, if those things remain
present. And I talk again to enough couples, whereas we're talking about their
marriage relationship, I find that the world's perspective on sexuality has interfered
with their marital harmony and oneness. They've been shaped in their thinking about
sexuality and desire by the world, not by the word of God. They are coveting, they
are seeking something that God has not given to them. And these are not things that
we can coddle. Notice that verse 5 does not say, manage these fleshly desires.
Tone them down a little bit. Tame your desires. That's not what it says. What does
it say? Put to death, mortify them, hack them to death with a butcher knife.
That's what it's saying. We must put to death earthly, carnal,
sinful practices. You mortify them, you don't manage them. If you think, well, I'm
just going to keep them over here so I can go pet them every once in a while,
you know, like we'll keep it in a cage like a pet tiger. Well, that pet tiger is
going to get bigger and bigger and going to break out of the cage and kill you.
You can't manage sin. You have to mortify it. So here's what I want to do.
I want you to look at the list that's here and just ask yourself the question, are
any of these things present in my life and what am I doing to put them to death?
Don't make excuses for these things. What's on this list has to die. Your marriage
will never be what God wants it to be, will never be pleasing to him when you're
harboring and not warring against sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and covetousness, which is idolatry. And if you're thinking, well, I can have a
great marriage without having to really get rid of these things, I just keep them
under control. That's not going to work.
And as I said, we live in a culture where the things that are on this list are
being normalized, they're being celebrated, they're being marketed. You are bombarded
with temptation here, and it will destroy your marriage relationship. Last month, a
well -known Christian author who'd been married for 55 years had been in ministry for
decades. This author confessed to an ongoing eight -year affair with a woman who is
not his wife. Last year, another well -known pastor, author, husband,
father of four children, a grandfather, confessed to an ongoing, inappropriate,
romantic relationship with a younger woman. All of us know people who have ignored
what the Bible says about these practices, and if you're sitting here thinking this
morning, well, I don't need to worry about this because This is not an issue for
us in our marriage. I guarantee there's an enemy who is delighting when he hears
you say that because he will say, aha, I have found an opening here. You must be
on guard, you must be vigilant, you must be fighting against these sinful practices
that will keep popping up in your marriage. Your marriage mindset needs to be, these
things are off limit for me. In order for my marriage to thrive in order to
glorify God. These things need to be gone. And that's not the only list that's here
in this passage. There's another list. In fact, this is a list of what I call the
sins of the temper and the sins of the tongue. It's in verse 8. So Paul tells his
readers here that they must put away anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk
as well as lying. You see that in Colossians 3, 8, and 9? These are sin patterns
of the temper and sin patterns of the tongue. Anger, wrath,
and malice deal with your temper.
In fact, anger, sinful anger is when you seek to punish another person because you
don't get your way. Anger is when you emotionally or physically lash out against
somebody because you didn't get your way and you're not happy. Wrath is when there
is a sudden outburst of that anger, violent and big. Malice is an attitude of
wanting to harm another person because they have hurt you.
Malice is anger on steroids. You're not just mad. you want to bring harm or hurt
to another person for something they did that you don't like and these words respond
or speak to the wrong way to respond when we are hurt or we have unmet
expectations or we think we've been wronged you are not to respond when you when
you've been hurt we are not to respond with anger wrath and malice but that's what
too often happens we We get hurt, and our response to that hurt is to lash out in
anger, and it's really a defense mechanism to try to keep from being hurt again.
That's why we do it. And all of this starts on the inside. It starts in your
soul. And if you're wondering this morning, if you're sitting there thinking, I don't
think I have anger issues.
Just ask your spouse. Do you think I have anger issues? And if your spouse says,
yes, you do, and that makes you angry? Well, bingo, right?
Anger, wrath, and malice are heart attitudes that say, I must do this to protect
myself from being hurt. And then there are the sins of the tongue that follow that,
which include angry words or outburst, lashing out, lashing out, seeking to hurt
somebody. Slander. Slander is when you say things designed to tear another person
down. Whether they're true or not, you're making comments about somebody designed to
hurt them.
Obscene talk or abusive speech. These are words spoken to try to harm somebody.
And let me just, very simple question here, do you ever curse at your spouse? Do
you use profanity or swear at your spouse in anger? That's abusive speech.
And it's not something that you just say, oh, well, everybody does that. No, you've
got to address this. I had a call this week from a young husband who lives out of
state. Somebody I know who said,
do you have any books or anything you can recommend on anger or a counselor you
can recommend? He told me that he'd been under a lot of stress at work, and on
three occasions over the last six months, he had had an explosive episode with his
wife where he had lashed out at her in anger with angry words and with obscene
talk. He said, I used words, I'm ashamed that I used. In fact, the most recent
episode he had had, his wife had decided, I don't feel safe here and she had taken
the kids and left for the night. Now, this husband is seeing the fruit of this
kind of a destructive sin pattern when it's allowed to remain in your marriage. If
this is a part of your marriage, big, small, doesn't matter. The Bible says life
and death are in the power of the tongue.
So I'm going to give you a Bible verse to memorize if anger's an issue.
And again, if you're not sure, just ask. It's a good verse to memorize whether
anger is an issue or not. It's Ephesians 429. Here's what it says. It says,
let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth,
but only such as good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace
to those who hear. Seriously, memorize that. In fact, do we have that?
Can you put that verse up? Let me read that again. Let no corrupting talk come out
of your mouth. Maybe I didn't give you a slide for that. No slide? Okay, sorry.
Ephesians 429. Only such as is good for building up, fits the occasion,
and gives grace to those who hear. The words that you should be speaking in
marriage are not corrupting words, but words that are good for building up,
fit the occasion, and give grace to the other person. Instead of angry words,
that should be your pattern for speech. Put off anger, wrath, malice, slander, and
abusive speech. Put on speech that builds others up. Speech that's appropriate for
the setting you're in, speech that gives grace to others. And there's one other sin
on this list. It's lying to one another. Some of you think that lying simply means
not telling the truth. It does, but it means more than that. To lie is to say
anything with the intent of deceiving another person.
Or to not say something, to leave out information. That's why when you go to court,
they say, put your hand in the Bible, do you swear to tell the truth? Yes. The
whole truth? Yes. Nothing but the truth? Yes. It's the whole truth. Sometimes a lie
is because you're telling a half truth. I learned this years ago. Back in the olden
days, when you went to the grocery store to get the groceries, they would give you
a receipt, but the receipt would just show the amount of money that you spent on
the item. It did not say anything about what the item was. It just said 429, 377,
you know, you just had the list like that. You didn't know what the items were. I
didn't realize that they had upgraded the equipment and they now listed what you had
gotten at the grocery store. So Marianne had sent me out one Saturday afternoon.
Actually, I said, let me go. I'll go to the store for you. I went to the store
and I had her list. And we had gone over the list because I needed to know, do
you want the store brand tomatoes or do you want name brand tomatoes. Do you want
the big size? Do you want the small? I had the list down. I knew what to get. So
I went to the store and I was shopping and while I was shopping, I was in the
produce department. I saw some grapes and I said grapes are always good. We need
grapes. So I got grapes and add them. They were not on the list, but I added it
to the cart. And then I got to the chip aisle.
There were no chips on I could have skipped that aisle. I didn't need to go down
the chip aisle because there was nothing on the list in the chip aisle. But I felt
drawn to the chip aisle. I just, there was kind of a call to go into the chip
aisle. So I wound up in the chip aisle. I'm walking down the chip aisle, and there
were some, there were Cheetos there that looked like they had my name. It looked
like for Bob was written over the top of them. I looked at those Cheetos. I wanted
those Cheetos, and I thought, you know, I'm a big boy. If I want Cheetos, I can
get Cheetos for myself. I felt embarrassed and ashamed to even have to say that,
but I knew I was going to be in trouble if I bought the Cheetos. So I bought the
Cheetos. I put them in the car. I put them and went on and got home. When I got
home, the first thing I did was I took those Cheetos out of the sack and I hid
them in the garage where no one would find them but me. I would know right where
they were. I did not want to be caught with Cheetos in the house. I've come into
the house with the groceries and there is, I put them down, and Marianne says,
did they have everything that was on the list? First question. I said, no, they
didn't. There were a couple of things that were missing. True. She said, did you
get anything that wasn't on the list?
I said, yes, I got grapes.
I just told the truth. Not the whole truth. Again, I did not know that the grocery
store now had given her a printed list of everything, which she looked at and read
and said, what about the Cheetos? And I was busted.
At that point, I had the choice of saying, I didn't buy any Cheetos. Did they put
that out? I'm going to go back and get my money back. But no, I was busted. I
fessed up and said, yes, I bought some Cheetos there out in the garage.
And here's the thing about that. That's a funny story. It's one. But you know what?
You come home and you don't tell the whole truth and your wife starts to go, what
else isn't you telling me?
What other things is he keeping from me?
When you're lying to one another, when you're not telling the whole truth, you are
sowing seeds of destruction in a marriage relationship. We have to tell the truth.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth. And we have to speak the truth in love.
When trust is destroyed in a marriage relationship, it takes a long time to rebuild
what has been destroyed.
Now, you may have been thinking, okay, I see all this list of everything from, if
I put the list back up there, the list of everything from from anger and wrath and
sexual immorality, all of it, you may think, yeah, some of these things are present
in my life or in our marriage, and I've tried to get rid of these things, but
they just keep showing up, no matter how hard I try. I get it.
But if you're surrendering to this and saying there's nothing I can do about it,
what you're saying is, I can't control my anger or my passions or my immorality or
my abuse of speech. I don't have power over these things. You're saying I'm a slave
to my sins.
They control me. I can't control them. And you're right. The only way you can get
victory over these sins is through the power of the Holy Spirit. You can't do it
on your own, but God, by His Holy Spirit, can give you a new mindset, a new
heart, and a new ability to resist sinful patterns. If you do it on your own
strength, you'll fail. With God, all things are possible. The Bible calls this a
spiritual battle, and we have to wage war, because these things keep popping up like
whack -a -mole. You just have to keep banging them down, but this is where the
battle begins. It begins with you saying, I'm done with this. Sexual immorality, I'm
done with you, impurity, done. Ungodly passions, done. You have to have the mindset
that says, this is not who I am as a child of God. This is not who God wants me
to be. It's not who I want to be.
I want you to look at that list for just a second. Ask yourself, which of these
sin patterns are present in your marriage,
things you brought that need to be uprooted and exterminated in your life. Which
would your spouse identify?
Is there sexual immorality? In your thought life, impurity, passion, evil desire,
covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk or lying?
This is not an exhaustive list of issues in a marriage, but I will tell you,
anger, immorality, lying these are common marital termites that destroy relationships
and this morning you can ask god to give you the strength right now to draw a
line in the sand and say i want there to be a turning point in our marriage i'm
going to cultivate a new mindset for our marriage beginning right now and then ask
god this morning to give you specific steps you can take this week to begin putting
to death these things.
In fact, I want to pray for you. Father, as we look at this list, there are
people here who are feeling guilty or convicted, I know, because there are these
things present in their marriage. Lord, would you strengthen them? Would you remind
them of your love for them and the power that is available to them? give them the
strength and the courage to begin to address these issues and then direct their
steps this week so that they can say no and put to death the things that are
destroying their marriage. Amen.
Okay, one last thing to look at before we're done this morning. We've seen the
things you've got to put off, but there are things you've got to put on. It's one
thing to take off the stuff that is destroying, But if you don't put on what you
need to put on, you're not going to do yourself any good. The last half of the
battle is this battle to say, I'm going to replace what is unhelpful with what is
good. And I'm calling them grace gifts, cultivating grace gifts. If you're going to
begin the work of replacing bad habits, you have to cultivate new ways of
interacting with your spouse. You have to put on as God's and ones, compassionate
hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another,
and then forgiving one another. That's quite a list. This is a total character
makeover, and it begins with a new wardrobe. A lot here to cultivate,
telling us to put on compassion. Let me just explain a few of these words.
Compassion doesn't mean you feel sorry for someone. It means you feel sorry with
someone. You come alongside and you join them in their sorrow. You bear one
another's burdens. You weep with those who weep. If somebody is hurting, you are
hurting with them. You become a burden bearer with your spouse. You bear one
another's burdens. That's what compassion looks like. Kindness. Kindness is more than
just being nice. It means you will make personal sacrifices to help another person
thrive. You're proactively looking for ways that you can serve another person and do
acts that are helping them thrive. Humility. Humility is having the right perspective
on your own worth and value and not thinking too highly of yourself or not thinking
too lowly of yourself. Humility is summed up in Philippians chapter two where it
says do nothing from selfishness or empty or selfish ambition or conceit but in
humility count others more significant than yourselves let each of you look not only
to the interests of others or to his own interest but also to the interest of
others let me just say those two verses 85 % of marital problems are solved if
you're just applying those two verses. If the only fight you're having in marriage
is, no, you're more important than me. No, you're more important than me. If that's
the fight you're having, you're in pretty good shape. But most of the time, there
are problems in a marriage relationship because we're saying, I'm more important than
you. My way is more important than yours. So that's humility,
meekness, the ability to govern your passions and emotions. A meek person is not a
weak person. A meek person has self -control, even in settings where tempers may be
kindled. A meek person does not become the incredible Hulk when things don't go
their way.
Meekness goes hand in hands with patience, which is the last thing. A patient person
is somebody who can bear up in suffering. In fact, the old King James word for
patience is long -suffering. A patient person is somebody who can suffer for a long
time.
Patience is more than just not losing your cool. It's maintaining your composure and
your perspective. It's valuing relationships over your preferences and desires.
And then this passage talks about bearing with one another, forbearance. It talks
about the necessity of forgiveness.
And here's what all of this is telling us. To make forward progress in a
relationship, you have to start with a new mindset. You have to be committed to
putting off the sinful habits and patterns. And the good news is that when you put
these things to death and begin to cultivate this list in the spirit, you are
aligning your life with God's purpose and design for you.
His purpose is for you to be conformed to the image of Christ, and he enables that
purpose through the power of the Holy Spirit. So again, look at this list and ask
yourself the question, which of these am I lacking in? If I were to ask my spouse
to pick the one that is my weakest one, which one would my spouse pick for me?
And then what can I do to begin cultivating a heart of humility or kindness or
patience or meekness and again I just want to pray Father would you by your spirit
apply this to each of our lives and show us the specific steps we can take to
cultivate godly character in our lives we ask it in your name amen this passage
that we looked at is summed up in verse 14 where it says above all put on love
which binds everything together in perfect harmony this is not talking about romantic
love it's talking about self -emptying self -sacrificing love about agape love love
that says i'll put your needs ahead of my own and next sunday pastor cole is going
to pick up this passage right here and he's going to take us a few verses beyond
to continue looking at how this passage applies to marriage
that need to be put to death, like sexual immorality or covetousness or anger or
abusive speech or not being honest with your spouse, are there grace gifts that need
to be cultivated in your life like compassion or kindness or humility or meekness or
patience or forbearance or forgiveness? As we prepare to go to the Lord's table for
communion this morning, I want us to pause and ask God, how would you have me
respond to what I've heard here this morning? So pray with me. Lord,
this is a passage that every time I come to it, I'm convicted. I'm aware of how I
fall short of your glory.
And Lord, I thank you that this passage is telling us that by the Holy Spirit, we
have the power for our lives to be different. We have the power for our marriages
to be different. And Lord, I pray that all of us here this morning we would be
recommitting ourselves to a marriage that honors you, that glorifies you, a marriage
that puts your glory on display, a marriage that's not a me -first marriage, but a
Christ -first marriage.
Lord, I want to pray this morning for any who are here who have not put you first
in their lives yet. They've not yet made the decision to follow you, to walk with
you. They are trying to fight the issues of the flesh in their own power,
and they're finding themselves frustrated. Lord, I pray that they would see that
before anything, trying to fix anything in their own lives, they need to be rightly
related to you and that you offer them eternal life if they will confess their sins
and believe that you have sent your son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Lord, I pray that if your spirit is drawing them today, that they would not harden
their hearts, but that they would respond. And Lord,
I pray that all of us would have a joyful, thriving, God -honoring marriage
relationship. I ask it in your name. Amen.