Give Space (Love & Marriage) // Ty Gibson

good morning story line according to the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates I think you should know that he said that there are four kinds of madness that are imposed by the gods now there's obviously some some fiction here he's believing in the ancient Greek gods and he's looked and assessed humanity he said you know what people are crazy and there are four kinds of madness four kinds of insanity that he identified that are specifically imposed by the gods number one is the madness of prophecy receiving visions and dreams and he says that this comes from Apollo this madness of going into visions and dreams and prophesying of the future secondly he said that prayer is a form of madness and all kinds of religious rites whatever they might be all of these kinds of things where human beings imagine that they are engaged in a spiritual practice that is supernatural Socrates says this is a form of madness imposed by the God Dionysos then he says that poetry is a form of madness which which I was about to take personal but I thought man he's about to get something he's going to drop something with number four he says that poetry is a form of madness that is imposed by the muses a group of artistic gods that travel around in a band and impose the madness of intoxication with poetic verse but then Socrates said there is the greatest madness of all and it is the madness of love and it is imposed by Aphrodite of course or eros the two Greek gods that suck and the others imagined were responsible for arousing in human hearts this uncontrollable urge to pair up with someone else for life and I mean it really does appear to be a form of madness I mean think about it for a minute what would cost to utterly different individuals distinct in their tastes and their personalities and possessing free will to say hey great idea let's move inside a structure with four walls and live there together for the rest of our lives with one another of course there are doors and windows that you can walk out of and crawl out of at times but seriously you have to keep coming back to that structure with the walls you have to be there with that person for the rest of your life what would drive people to do this socrates says it's madness it's imposed by the gods why would you do that to yourself now I've encountered a lot of perspectives on marriage over the years and one of them stood out to me that I heard in passing in the car in a radio interview I thought wow that's that's a very fascinating take the the couple was being interviewed a married couple interviewed by a guy and he said what's the secret of your good marriage and she was just quick to say well we just followed the Bible that's why we have a good marriage we followed the Bible the Bible says that when two people get married the two become one and I'm the one she said so we're doing pretty good and then on another occasion I read the testimony of a woman who underwent divorce and she said my husband and I we divorced for religious reasons he thinks he's God and I don't that was the end of that marriage the most painful thing I have personally ever heard in a marriage counseling session was when I asked each of the individuals to articulate what it was that they thought was causing this disintegration of their marriage and so painful to hear the words from this woman's lips when she said I'll tell you why our marriage is falling apart my husband doesn't love me he uses me to love himself Wow how penetrating huh what an insight to what was happening at least in that one marriage now all of these three cases that I've mentioned have something in common if you stop and think about it all of them have to do with control or power dynamics between individuals we're launching into a three part series on marriage and this is number one and I've titled it gives space give space within the parameters of a marriage relationship give space and I'm gonna suggest to you and here's my thesis for our time together this morning I'm gonna suggest you that love is the art of giving space for the sake of eliminating space love is the art the skill of giving space for the sake of eliminating space now the bible does have a very interesting narrative regarding the male/female relationship we're gonna go all the way back to the beginning and we're gonna see in scripture that there are very specific characteristics to the narrative of the male/female relationship with regards to marriage in Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 notice the words carefully you've probably read these words before but track with them again in our context let us this is God speaking within the triune God in the larger biblical narrative here's father son and spirit engaging in a conversation let us make human kind in our image in our image in other words let's make others who process reality the way we process reality this isn't the word image here isn't referring to merely a physical likeness it's referring to the fact that that God wants to reproduce others who can experience reality the way God experiences reality now if you pan way out in the biblical narrative were informed that God at the essence of his being is love God is love it's the most definitive statement in scripture about God it's the only really it's the only total identity statement about God you can say for example that God is just but you won't ever find yourself saying God is Justice the noun God is merciful not God it's mercy God is gentle not gentleness but God is love so that everything that is true of God listen now everything that is true of God is true of God because God is love there's not anything that is true of God that is contrary to or even adjacent to love love is the totality of the divine identity god is love and then everything else is merely so many expressions of what love looks like in action in relational dynamics so the scripture says that God in a conversation between the three the Godhead the Father Son and spirit let us make mankind in our image let's make others who can love like we love I'll suggest to you let's make others who can process relationship the way we process relationship let's produce others who experience the the joy and the ecstasy of being completely freely given over to the other and yet not Ella gated to the other let's produce others who can experience love the way we experience love let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness now watch this and let them have dominion over all the earth let's make them let's create them and let's give them and this is the operative word at this point Dominion let's give them Dominion now I want to I want to ask you in order for an all-powerful God an Almighty God an omnipotent God to give them some them any them Dominion what would God necessarily have to do in order for them to have dominion what would an Almighty God necessarily have to do well God would have to voluntarily receive God would have to back up from being in control in order to give control to others and the ancient Hebrews had a word for this it's an odd word it's a strange word that word is sins Zim's um everybody say zim zam zim say it again it's a fun word to say say it fast five times if you want I don't care zum-zum zum-zum zum-zum zum-zum there I did it not zum-zum zum-zum and Zemzem is an ancient hebrew concept that entails the idea of contracting or receding or backing up in order to create a space for someone else to be who they are are you tracking with me in order for an all-powerful God to create a world in which others have dominion God would have to necessarily kind of dial down his power he'd have to back up to some significant degree in order to give the others the capacity for self-governance well after all gods says let's make them in our image let's make them so that they process reality and do relationships the way we process and do relationships so in order to do that gut says let's give them Dominion now this is a theme throughout scripture the God of the Bible is a god of delegation the God of the Bible is not a control freak he's not a micromanaging control freak the god of Scripture for example in Psalm 116 scripture says the heavens even the whole heavens are the Lord's but the earth he has given to human beings that's delegation language that's God saying I'm not going to be in control not in an exaustive sense at least that doesn't mean that God isn't going to be interactive or exert influence doesn't mean that there's not such a thing as divine providence where where God doing all the good he can to the degree he can is orchestrating behind the scenes but he's always orchestrating in order to influence not to control God's providence in other words can actually be denied scripture is full of examples of God trying to get a human being by his providential arrangements to move in a certain direction and that human being simply saying no thank you and going the other direction this is called sin this is called rebellion and it's a concepts in rebellion that is only possible if the will of even Almighty God can be refused and according to Scripture omnipotence is not equivalent to Omni control do you hear the difference in the nuance so God is love therefore God is necessarily a delegator God gives space God recedes God backs up Abraham Joshua Heschel a Hebrew scholar that's Adel like to read building on this concept at one point said the absence of God is an illusion God is always present in the human realm but voluntarily invisible so as to allow you and I to have viable existence I mean just imagine for a minute if Almighty God in all his majesty and godness were just to show up right now in this building bursting through the ceiling what would our response be we would necessarily by virtue of the fact of his overwhelming ontological transcendence of us we would find ourselves immediately in a state of panic fear and slavery we would do anything he says simply because our senses would be overwhelmed by who he is so God in humility and love he backs up and he says I want you listen carefully you guys I want you to be you and I want you to think through the implications of all the realities that you are encountering and voluntarily choose to be who you choose to be now this is dangerous business I mean God could have made a world that is in fact micromanaged God could have made a world filled with computers that are programmed to do exactly what God wants them to do he could have made a world of slaves that move at the crack of the whip but God said now I'm going to create the man and the woman in my image to think to feel to relate the way I do and then I'm going to back up and give them dominion super risky but it's the only path to love and that's God's ultimate goal and objective so zim zam is this idea that God God recedes he backs up in order to create space for the viability of other free wills okay now as you go on in the biblical narrative this idea of Dominion as we continue reading the story becomes an astounding perspective on human relation relational dynamics so God created humans in his own image to love like God loves in the image of God he created him male and female he created them now this is very fascinating God created them and gave them Dominion but notice in the passage that it is a shared Dominion he created them and he gave them the man and the woman Dominion this is what I'm gonna call a shared Dominion but it's more than a shared Dominion notice in the passage that is a shared Dominion that is focused on a shared objective so picture the man and the woman Adam and Eve God has created them he's given them Dominion and they are created in the image of God to think and to feel and to relate the way God thinks and feels and relates and they exist in adjacency one to another I mean there are two of them there's not one of them this is not a relationship merely between Almighty God and a human this is now a relationship that is both a vertical and necessarily horizontal and if they're going to live in God's image they're going to have to relate to one another the way God relates to them and how does God relate to them with Zemzem with space so the man cannot cancel out the identity of the woman and the woman cannot cancel out the identity of the man in order to exist to live in God's image there are two individuals and these two individuals are focused together as a unit they're focused outward because the Dominion they were given is over the world not over one another they have a shared co-regency over the earth and they are in dominion over it but there's necessarily the free space between them that can only be crossed voluntarily that free space between volitional sentient rational beings that free space between that's where love occurs by the voluntary choosing of each of the individuals to move out of themselves over to the other in any kind of micro kindness deference humility acceptance thank you please you're cool so are you that entire process is voluntary and they are together in dominion over a shared objective but then sin entered the picture and when sin entered the picture we have the introduction of a principle a new psychological dynamic a new relational dynamic sin isn't merely the breaking of rules on tables of stone it's it's not an arbitrary designation sin is a word within the biblical narrative that describes what it looks like for a human being or human beings collectively to operate outside of the parameters or contrary to the parameters of reality itself as God created reality to operate God made them in His image to love like he loves sin is the absence of love in relational wherever a human being is possessed of the impulse to self-will or dominance over another sin is occurring in that relational dynamic so once sin enters the picture and we won't cover all of that ground because we have a very specific goal here when sin into the picture one of the descriptions in the section in chapter 3 of Genesis where the curses are delineated and articulated by God God essentially says okay now that you've introduced this this new principle of self-centeredness in to your psychological makeup now that you're turned inward on self each of you will be a threat to the other now that you're for you rather than for her rather than for him your natural flow of thought and feeling and relational thrust is going to be self-preservation over against her against him so selfishness is introduced and God says okay something's gonna go down now this is an arbitrary God isn't saying hey so now abracadabra I'm going to impose a curse on you God is saying the curse is intrinsic to the principle of sin itself sin itself produces a certain kind of outcome well one of the outcomes is God speaking to the woman now speaks to the man as well in the passage but your desire God says to the woman shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you now the word desire here is difficult to understand if you just look at this passage in isolation that sounds like she digs him but he doesn't dig her right it sounds like all she really wants you but he's mean now that kind of dynamic does occur but that's not what this is talking about another translation says it this way you will desire to control your husband but he will rule over you in other words what is being described here is that now that the equilibrium of love has been broken up and each has turned inward with self-preserving impulses now the one with the muscle and the might is going to dominate the other and this is describing essentially from this point forward the plight of womankind down through the ages women find themselves in a position throughout human history in which they are dominated by the ruling impulses of men simply because the power differential is on the male side so we know that's what this passage means because when you come to chapter 4 verse 7 notice the language describing what sin is if you do well God is speaking here to Cain if you do well will you not be accepted and if you do not do well sin notice here sin lies at the door at your door the the Hebrew here is like a like a crouching beast a crouching lion a tiger that is about to pounce on you sin is crouching at your door and it its desire is for you sins desires for you but you should rule over it so here in this patch is it's the same Hebrew word that is used earlier in chapter 3 - the woman your desire will be to your husband and hear that word desire means control dominance not desire as in a particular affection for but a desire to dominate so sin in chapter 4 is described as the desire to rule now this is this is a pretty heady idea and we don't normally think about sin in this way we think of sin in a more arbitrary sense that that God has rules if you break the rules you're a sinner what I'm suggesting to you is that God's character of love is the template of all of creation so in other words when God created the whole world and he created the man and the woman and and gave them Dominion God was replicating listen now God was replicating on all levels of biological psychological emotional and relational creation from the ground up to the micro to the macro God was in creation God was actual izing his love in material form so anything from the beauty of a flower that turns to the sunlight and draws up through the process of the the the the nourishment of the flower the whole process is at every level throughout creation circle after circle after circle of outgoing incoming dynamics going out coming and going out coming in the voluntary movement and it's just basically God artistically in material form producing his own character on all levels of creation the highest level of that reproduction of God's character of love is in volitional rational human beings who have the capacity to say yes or no at any given moment in any given relationship that autonomy that ability to say yes or no is the wonder of the image of God in the human being now we live in a world in which saying no is oftentimes overpowered by I don't care if you say no I'm gonna do this to you anyway and the Bible in chapter 4 of Genesis is describing sin at its ugliest as the impulse to exert control over the impulse to dominate now with the man and the woman was turned toward one another you remember earlier we said God gave them Dominion and it was a shared Dominion and their Dominion was focused on a common objective outside of themselves let them have dominion over the earth over everything so they're shoulder-to-shoulder the man and the woman Co Regents shoulder to shoulder looking out over the world suddenly now they're turned toward one another as adversaries now suddenly there are power dynamics that will produce pain and suffering it goes something like this in the genesis of three accounts in is described as producing a cyclical ongoing generational curse the ongoing cyclical generational curse is the abuse of power in the passage and human history is is not just punctuated with this it is defined by the abuse of power and the primary foundational abuse of power in human history according to Eugene Chow a philanthropist pastor somebody who cares about the things that are taking place real time in the world according to Eugene show the oldest injustice in human history is the way that men treat women now history is defined by the upsetting of the power dynamic that was turned outward to steward the world and now has turned inward in the relational dynamic to control one another unless you think that we live in a time where all of that is in the past just in 2019 the World Bank Group women in business and law in 2019 just last year reported because they keep their finger on the pulse of these dynamics and politics and business and commerce and economics only six countries currently in the whole world only six countries currently give women equal rights with men and at the current rate it's estimated at the current rate of progress that women won't achieve full equality worldwide until something like 2000 73 and I think that suspect personally because I don't think that human social programs are sufficient to uproot the selfish impulse from human hearts to the point that we would voluntarily choose not to dominate one another if we are in the position to do so I think the human race needs a power outside of an above ourselves to be introduced I think the world needs the gospel I think the world needs a savior to come in and to put to rights everything that is wrong but what I'm suggesting to you is that the foundation at the foundation of what is wrong with the world is the abuse of power now one of my favorite books in fact anybody who knows me knows this is required reading you can't be my friend unless you read this book we can be acquaintances you can say hey I'll say hey back I may even have pizza with you but you're not my friend unless you read this book that's an exaggeration for effect I still like you I'm simply trying to say this is a really important book you should take the time to read it I believe everybody should take the time to read it half the sky by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn and this book half the sky the title of the book is simply a poetic metaphor for the fact that under half the sky are females half the human race are made up of women and what the book does is it is it tracks a lot of the history of what it's like to be a woman down through history but more specifically it gives attention to what is like to be a woman right now on planet earth in many countries around the world and it's in that sense it's kind of an assessment of the state of females I'm not gonna give you all the statistics that are uncovered in the book but I'm gonna say that this is as hopeful as it gets and it's not hopeful this is 2020 right now and the best that we can say is that the tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings quote-unquote from half the sky I mean the best we can say right now is that women are in the process of coming out from under the abuses of power that have dominated history to their disfavor you say oh no none of that's true well me just tell you that right now in the world in the world in which we live in that every single year three million young girls undergo genital mutilation in various countries around the world including in the United States that right now in our world there are countless millions of women to whom this brutal act is been done already in order to make sure that they cannot experience pleasure in the sexual act lest they imagine they are equal to the man having sex with them that's the whole goal of the act and hopefully they will experience pain in the act of sex in order to keep them in their place three million per year this is still being done on planet earth right here in the United States alone one out of four females will be sexually assaulted by the time she's 18 years old every three minutes in the United States another woman is raped so no we're not out of the woods this isn't in the past we're in a situation in which air everywhere you turn if your eyes are open there is an awful power differential that is constantly being leveraged for abuses of power and women aren't the only segment of the human race that are constantly faced with abuse of power but they are the primary individuals in human history and even now that suffer such now there are some cultures that are advanced and some that are not so the book informs us and I'm quoting now from half the sky when anesthesia was developed to lessen or to deaden pain when you're undergoing surgery or some kind of horrible event when anesthesia was developed it was for many decades routine retreat routinely withheld from women who were giving birth since women were supposed to suffer I mean it's just been in the lifetime of a bunch of the people in this room including me that doctors and hospitals finally said ok I guess she doesn't have to suffer so let's give her anesthesia too it was only for men who were suffering let's make sure the men don't suffer but well there was a one of the few societies to take contrary view was the Hui coal tribe in Mexico talk about being ahead of the times check this out the hua coal believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's hmm and with each painful painful contraction she would give the string a Yank so that the man could share the burden of childbirth somebody had to do it and these people are definitely ahead of their time what I'm suggesting to you is that freedom is the operating system of reality and the only premise upon which voluntary exchange of love can occur now going back some 400 500 years before Christ's Plato constructed regarding the nature of freedom and why it's so important in a society he's talking here this is from the Republic and he's talking here about political systems and social order and he says in this dialogue that he's constructed between two individuals between Socrates and an understudy where freedom is the individual is clearly able to order himself his own order for himself his own life as he pleases it's a question and then Socrates in Plato's constructed dialogue says clearly do you hear the question do you hear the answer that that that in a society where individuals are free then they're making their own choices about the kind of person they're going to be clearly Socrates says now watch this then in this kind of state in this kind of society our Republic a democracy there will be the greatest variety of human personalities question mark right the the Protege the student is asking Socrates you know freedom is a good thing right Socrates well yeah it's a good thing when people are free they can make their own choices next question while while Socrates wouldn't it follow then that if people are free to make their own decisions that this would produce variety of personalities Socrates responds yeah there will be there will be there will be a variety of human personalities what does get being articulated here is that freedom is the relational incubator in which the beauty of individual personhood grows it's the most incredible thing imaginable if we can just process it a relationship in which there is a guarded space a marriage in which there is a guarded space of freedom between is the best possible environment in which each of the individuals in the relationship can flourish so much so that Plato would go on and articulate that listen erotic love he simply says is not sufficient for the marriage relationship friendship love is better but not sufficient in of itself and he essentially builds this construct and says that erotic love or sexual love and friendship together equal the highest earthly bliss that human beings can know where I am not obligated but I freely give myself over and the surest way to kill love is to try to control it that's what Plato is understanding in his articulation of what a democracy would look like and what would be the benefits of it so I'm gonna suggest to you something groundbreaking for me at least because I'm not speaking just academically theoretically here this morning I've actually experimented with these models I tried to control sue when we first got married it didn't work she made it absolutely abundantly clear that there's no amount of exertion of my immature power dynamics that we're gonna bring her under my control so rather than just giving up I retooled and I realized that I don't even want control of this human being and the very impulse to dominate of itself is the problem that lies at the core of all matrimonial misery so I'm gonna suggest something to you to ask you to take us on board consider the possibility that the husband's number one job is to protect the wife from his control I'm a married man I have a wife my job is to protect you from me to protect you from my impulse to control you that's my number one priority and the wife's number one job is to protect the husband from her control and I'm building this construct on the Genesis 3 account that the sin problem is a problem of power dynamics gone terribly terribly wrong the sin produces the generational curse of the abuse of power now this is the truth of the gospel that Jesus came to communicate in John 8:32 he said listen listen here's what I'm doing here here's I came all the way from heaven to God in the flesh dimming down the glory of my Majesty and my power I could just pull rank over you I mean I am God after all I could just command you into subjection I could force you into subjection and the god of the universe says no I'm gonna opt I'm gonna opt for truth leading to freedom what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna engage in a communication process with you I'm gonna teach you I'm gonna tell you stories I'm gonna enter in to your thinking and feeling process in order to bring your voluntary will back to me because you want to not because you have to Jesus the god of the universe comes to the world and says here's how I'm going to save you I'm going to tell you the truth and I'm gonna leave you free to respond to that truth and to the degree that you take on board and process and receive the truth about my love for you and the love of the Father for you to the degree that you know the truth Jesus says you will be made free the Apostle Paul understands this in 2nd Corinthians chapter 3 when he says hey our whole goal as a movement as a church is to to preach to communicate to the world the New Covenant we are sufficient ministers he says of the new covenant which is biblical speak for externally imposed law giving way to internally realized love the new covenant is God saying I don't want to control you from the outside in I want to love you into your salvation so Paul says our whole point is to to be ministers of the New Covenant the inside job of captivating the heart and mind from the inside and bringing us voluntarily to God not of the letter that is not of the outward imposed letter of the law but of the Spirit working in your heart so that you choose me not out of obligation because he says the letter kills it's only the spirit that gives life to the degree that religion is externally imposed it shuts people down toward God it doesn't open people up to God to the degree that the law of God is imposed on people people are resistant to that law so God does in the gospel what he did with creation Zemzem he backs up he dims down his glory in His Majesty in his power in the person of Christ he comes into the world so that we can assess who he is we can look upon his character his personality it's as if in Christ God is saying hey I am powerful I'm majestic I could pull rank I'm definitely you know so far above and beyond my creation that I could overpower you but no I'm gonna come to you in a form where you can assess my thoughts and my feelings and see how much I love you and if you like what you see you can voluntarily give yourself to me God in the gospel has created the Zemzem of space between himself and us so that according to verse 17 now where the Spirit of the Lord is wherever Jesus gets access to a human heart through the spirit there's going to be Liberty you know when the gospel is truly preached and when people are really receiving it when they're becoming more free not less free people begin to voluntarily choose what is best and beneficial in all their relationships not because they have to but because they want to God therefore in the gospel is constantly walking the fine line of exerting influence without exerting control and this is the secret which is to say the gospel is the secret to a good marriage we have the privilege those of us who are married if you're not married by the way and you want to get married if you're thinking wow I'm not married this wasn't for me yes it was this principle is the foundational idea not only of the gospel but of all human relationships if you really really really want to fall in love and stay in love and that doesn't mean that you're not gonna have ups and downs and all kinds of craziness I mean Socrates says that love is a form of madness but I'm going to suggest to you that love is more of a skill to be mastered than it is a feeling to be felt that's not to say that there aren't feelings but the feelings that come with love are not the thing itself they're a bonus they're icing on the cake they're not the cake the thing that is taking place in any good marriage is each individual giving legitimate space for the other to be exactly who they are so that all the love is chosen and voluntary and beautiful and each one under the influence of the other can flourish and grow and choose to constantly give each of them themselves back to the other not because they must but because love is the beautiful pulling back from the impulse to control so the other person can exist and grow and flourish and become everything that they're meant to be so this is part one of our love and marriage series thanks for your time hey thanks so much for watching we hope that message was a blessing to you God's Word is powerful it penetrates into our minds into our hearts brings about transformation in every aspect of our lives listen we don't want you to miss any content so again we want to encourage you to click on subscribe and track with the content that's going to be coming out week after week and if you'd like to partner with us in this global Ministry of taking the gospel of Christ to the whole world we want to invite you to become a partner in this ministry click give and join with us you

Channel: Storyline Church

Views: 7,506

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Keywords: storyline church, love & marriage, ty gibson

Id: xdbG-K4tNKA

Length: 47min 57sec (2877 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 23 2020