Marriage Conference 2021 Pastor Holland Davis

[Music] and so today i'm going to talk about the three rings of marriage there's the engagement ring the marriage ring and the suffering uh no i'm just kidding that's not what i want to be talking about i'm going to talk about the four keys to having an enduring marriage the four keys to an enduring marriage and so if you're turning your bibles to matthew 18 uh the rabbis have a teaching method called stringing pearls and they derive it from the song of solomon and v in chapter one verse ten that says your cheeks are lovely with ornaments your neck with chains of gold or little in the hebrew it's strings of pearls and so that word strings of pearl in the hebrews is kauruzim and it comes from the root word kores which means to rhyme and so there's this idea of topically rhyming one text with another and when you put them all together it paints a picture of these revelations from god that are being strung together like a pearl necklace and they revealed the beauty of god's plan to us for this afternoon in the area of marriage and so we're going to be looking at matthew 18 and we're going to join together a series of revelations from god on the topic of a marriage that endures and the first pearl i want to look at is found in matthew chapter 18 verse 4. matthew chapter 18 verse 4 and it says that therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven now the disciples came to jesus asking who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and that's what elicits this response from jesus and what jesus says is that greatness requires humility greatness requires humility and so if you want a great marriage you need to be humble in your marriage if you want to have a great relationship with your husband with your wife that means both of you need to be willing to humble yourselves to one another peter said it like this in first peter 5 5. likewise you younger people submit yourselves to your elders yes all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility for god resists the proud but gives grace to the humble it's interesting because when peter says to be clothed with humility that word clothe means to tie on a garment and it's the idea of tying on an apron and what do you do as you're tying on an apron you're preparing to what serve one another right you don't put an apron on just to kind of go throughout the house unless you're kind of into that kind of thing um but you know but it's something that you do in order to prepare to serve one another and so you tie this apron over your clothes so you don't get dirty as you're serving others what is it that keeps your heart clean as you're serving other people humility what is it that protects your heart as you're serving someone that might be difficult to serve humility and of all the articles of clothing hanging in your closet i'm not even going to ask who has the biggest part of the closet don't want to start any fights right now but none is more important to have an enduring marriage than the apron called humility humility so what is humility what does it mean to humble yourselves and the word that is used here in the greek literally means to make yourself insignificant to make yourself insignificant it doesn't mean that you are insignificant because we're all significant to god and we're all significant to one another but it means that you make a conscious choice to become insignificant in order to serve the needs of your husband or your wife that they would feel that they are the most significant person in the room when you're in the room with them jesus is our greatest example of this paul writing to the philippians said this they said let this mind be in you which was also in christ jesus who being in the form of god did not consider it robbery to be equal with god but made himself of no reputation how do you do that how does the creator of the universe the one that made everything that you see the one that is the most powerful person in creation how does that person make themselves of no reputation taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even the death of the cross as i counsel couples so often the issue will come down to this one simple fact that one or both people have decided that their needs are more important than any other need and so they begin to stop humbling themselves to one another you're here to meet my need oh no no no you're here to me my need and then begins the disagreement they stopped making themselves insignificant to make the other person the most significant person in the relationship and here's the thing guys wives know when your career they sense that when your friends your x-box are more important than they are and ladies the guys know as well when they no longer have first place in your heart they sense that they know that as i tell my church often when you go through the scriptures from genesis to revelation you begin to get a picture that the number one thing that god has always wanted with one with mankind is oneness to be one with with man to be unified with man to have this union that is inseparable that there's nothing in between and so because that's what god wants with us the only way the only relationship that we have that comes the closest to describing the awesome wonder of this union this oneness of of love that we've been invited into in relationship is that of marriage and so in the same way that god wants us to be one with him he's created marriage that we might understand what it means to be one with each other that there's no separation in between us that there's nothing that gets in the middle between you and the person that you're married to and you might say but they're so selfish how can i make them the most significant person in the room they already think they're insane they're the most significant person they're selfish but what i find is interesting is nowhere in the scripture is selfishness given as a reason not to humble yourself we're not told to humble yourself unless they're really selfish in which case you have to defend yourself you have to take care of yourself rather look at the example of jesus he was god and yet he gave up his reputation he willingly gave up his freedoms and he did it so he could serve you he humbled himself to the point of dying on the cross to pay for the mistakes that you made that he didn't even do so if you want an enduring marriage be willing to humble yourself and notice paul says even to the point of death dying to yourself dying to yourself there's been many times as over the years of our marriage that i've gone to the lord it's like lord this is so hard i just i'm dying inside he's like yes that's right that's the point i want you dead inside so that i can live through you so i can be alive in you and see as long as there's this little bit of fight in me where i'm fighting for my rights fighting for me time my fighting for what i deserve what i think i deserve the lord is just gonna keep working until i can say like paul i am crucified with christ nevertheless it's not i who live but christ who lives in me and this life that i live in the flesh i live by faith trusting in the son of god who loves me and gave himself for me it requires humbling yourself to the point of death the second pearl is found in matthew 18 6. it says whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea woe to the world because of offenses for offenses must come but woe to that man by whom the offense comes now this word offense here is an interesting word because it means to trap or to ensnare and it's actually the greek word scandal on it's where we get our english word scandal from and so the idea is that through our actions we scandalize someone we scandalize something and sam did a great job of naming all the different offenses the ways that we can scandalize each other in our relationship and so jesus is talking about those who scandalize others through their actions and by scandalizing them causes them to sin causes them to stumble in their relationship with god when adultery comes into a marriage it scandalizes the relationship it brings a scandal to that marriage when there's drunkenness or or getting high it scandalizes a marriage pornography scandalizes a marriage it causes a scandal bitterness complaining scandalizes a marriage you know the bible says out of this one tongue in our mouth comes blessing and cursing it shouldn't be so and just consider this for just a moment you are one flesh with that person that you're scandalizing with your words that you're complaining about that you're tearing down to your friends behind their back and what happens is you create an environment around you and around the person you're one flesh with that makes it very difficult for them to be blessed and for you to be blessed because all people think about oh she's talk she's always complaining about her husband oh he's always complaining about her wife his wife or her wife he's always complaining and that's what people begin to form their opinion about your husband or your wife the person that you're one flesh with not realizing really just pure wisdom just selfish enlightenment right that person that you're one with you want everybody think that they're the best person in the world because then they would know that you're the best person in the world for picking them and oftentimes we forget that we scandalize our relationships and it brings shame and separation into a marriage that god says is the most important relationship a person can have in the world and jesus says woe to the person who scandalizes their marriage woe to that person why because not only is the offending person sinning against god and their wife or their husband but their actions begin a series of events that often leads to the offending person sinning against god and their husband and wife in retaliation for what's been done to them and so you complain about them that they start complaining about you you sin against them they start sinning against you and it's all because you began this process it could result in bitterness hatred unforgiveness anger and in some cases the offended party will go out and do the same thing that's been done to them i'll get even for for you cheating on me i'm going to cheat on you and there's this self-justification that happens and that all that does is brings greater heartache greater destruction because two wrongs never make it right it only makes a bigger mess a more complicated mess now i'm not justifying the actions of the party who's been offended i'm not saying that you're off the hook because you've you're doing it because of what's been done to you please don't hear this and say i did what i did because you started it you're the problem and i'm justified because of what's been done to me because another way to scandalize a marriage is through blame just blaming one another blaming the other person scandalizing the other person and what i often tell couples is remember it takes two people to ruin a marriage it's never just one and so if you want an enduring marriage stop scandalizing your marriage stop scandalizing your husband stop scandalizing your wife stop making them the problem stop blaming them if you need help get help if you need to forgive then forgive whatever you need to do do it whatever you need to get rid of get rid of it jesus said it's better to cut your hand or your foot or even pluck out your eye than it is to be cast into everlasting fire now he's not saying do this literally but what jesus is saying is that my priority his priority is to save to sozo that word sozo means to make whole to heal to give life to your marriage that's his priority not to scandalize your marriage and so as a follower of jesus my number one priority in my marriage is to bring life to it and to do whatever it takes that means if my wife is offended because i watch certain shows i'm going to stop watching them if my wife is offended because i spend too much time doing certain activities i'm going to stop doing them that means if my husband is offended because i've maxed out my credit cards because i've gone to nordstrom's rack too many times i'm going to up the limit i'm just kidding i'm going to do whatever it takes to remove any separation between me and my husband or my wife that's the key to having an enduring marriage now someone who's in ministry my wife will tell you there's been many times that i put other things in front of my wife other things in front of my kids i remember going to a church and i was talking to a guy that was on staff with me at calvary chapel costa mesa and he asked about my son he was my son's bible teacher he said how's your son doing he says he oh he's doing great he's married you know he's all that's great he goes i said why do you ask and he goes well he would come in every week and he was so concerned for you he would tell us how you were working constantly at the church and how he never got to see you and you might as well just take in a baseball bat to my head because i realized that i had allowed something to get in between me and my family that never should have gotten in the way of my family i'd become out of balance and in doing so i offended my son whatever you need to do do it get rid of it the third pearl is found in matthew 18 15 it says moreover if your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault between you and him alone if he hears you you have gained your brother and this is the classic text of dealing with someone who has offended you matthew 18. and we often make this text about confrontation and accountability but i want to point out something to you that jesus makes it about something else what he makes it about is gaining your brother about restoring relationship and when a scandal comes into a marriage usually the offended party wants to get counseling but their purpose is not to restore relationship their purpose is to blame the other person and to make the other person accountable and they'll use the counselor or their friends to gang up and force the other person to change whatever behavior is offending them and i've had many wives come to me and and tell me this in church i wish you would preach on this subject so you could you know tell my husband what's going on put him in his place but you see the goal isn't to restore relationship the goal isn't to restore a husband or to restore a wife or restore a marriage the goal is to punish i want to punish them i want to make them pay for what has happened which is why 40 percent of all couples who go to marriage counseling end up in divorce because they're not there to restore they're not there to regain a relationship they're there to justify themselves and blame their partner what did jesus say in mark 8 he said for whoever desires to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul or what will a man give in exchange for his soul now before you say that jesus isn't talking about marriage that he's talking about the gospel in this passage let me give you the context that jesus is talking about discipleship and the cost of following him and that includes your marriage that includes your relationship with the most important person in your life and the goal of remaining faithful to that person of being faithful in your marriage and jesus goes on to say in uh mark 8 38 for whoever is ashamed of me in my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him the son of man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with his holy angels and that word of shame can literally be translated to feel remorse to feel remorse to wish things were different and i've often heard people say oh if i only had a godly man or if i only had a godly woman instead i got you but notice he refers to the generation as adulterous it's a term that's synonymous with marriage you feel this remorse you wish you had something else go out and get it illegally the implication is i'm not satisfied i'm not satisfied with jesus therefore i'm justified in being unfaithful with jesus and the same can be applied to marriage i'm not satisfied with my husband or my wife therefore i'm justified in separating myself from them and there's a lot of ways that we can separate ourselves from each other watching tv going in separate rooms being apart from one another making sure that when one person's home oh i gotta go do something i gotta take off and jesus says no if you're not satisfied with me and how i'm working in your marriage today then i won't be satisfied with you when i return with my father in glory in the scripture there's a law called the law of reciprocity and that is to the same degree that you judge you will be judged to the same standard that you judge you will be judged according to that standard and unfortunately the person that we tend to hold the highest standard of judgment towards is the person that we should be showing the greatest amount of love and compassion and mercy towards and that's our husband and our wife if you want an enduring marriage you need to make the priority of your life to live in such a way as to gain your husband and your wife to restore relationship when it's interrupted to do whatever it takes to maintain the strength and the unity that has been entrusted to you to steward that to manage that to be an overseer of that and not allow anything to get in the middle of it or to jeopardize it this year we're going to be celebrating 38 years of marriage and i can tell you it has not been an easy road there was a point in our marriage when we thought you know we're not going to make it i can even remember telling my wife you can't you can't divorce me the bible says you can't divorce me and she looked at me she says i don't care what god says i'm divorcing you and i had to make a decision what am i willing to do to restore my relationship to my wife what am i willing to give up well i'm what am i willing to stop what am i willing to start and i went to the lord and it says lord we all agree divorce is not an option so that means the only option is change so lord change me change me and i can remember as i'm starting to change i started getting expectations on my wife you need to change too and so i started to tell her and the lord rebuked me i was in prayer and he said who does she belong to she belongs to you lord great you focus on you you leave her to me get your hands off her i said but lord we're married says i'll take care of it and it took time it took a couple years but the lord began to restore and rebuild our marriage he began to do a work in our hearts and it wasn't that we committed adultery or did anything like that we had just we were just so filled with our own selfishness that we had painted each other in a corner that made it really hard for any of us to come into a room without having a disagreement and if you know my wife she is she is beautiful and we are complete opposites i'm what i call tokyo tuscany i like a little about a modern flair i call what she does country crap it's like no longer i call it eclectic she's now she likes that word better she's eclectic we are complete opposites we didn't even have anything on our walls for 20 years because we just disagreed and finally i realized that you know i i want to have pictures on the wall so i'm not whatever you want to do honey i love it so she asked me what do you think of this oh it's amazing it's unbelievable i love it the fourth pearl is found in matthew chapter 18 verse 21 and 22. it says then peter came to him and said lord how often shall my brother sin against me and i forgive him up to seven times and jesus said to him i do not say to you up to seven times but up to 70 times seven now you can't go to a marriage conference without talking about forgiveness right and again this is the classic passage of scripture on forgiveness the servant who was forgiven a lifetime of debt is unwilling to forgive his brother a third of one year's salary which is no small amount i mean that's a lot of money no small amount yet he's unwilling to forgive but because he's unwilling to forgive the unforgiving servant is delivered to the torturers and he's tortured and the question i want to ask you today about forgiveness is have you considered the personal cost of unforgiveness have you considered what it cost you to not forgive have you ever considered that one of the reasons why you struggle with depression or anxiety is because of unforgiveness have you considered your health issues the aloneness that you feel even the distance you feel in your relationship to god can all be traced back to unforgiveness your unwillingness to forgive it can lead to exhaustion it can lead to isolation distraction and even sickness according to the chief surgeon of the cancer treatment centers of america refusing to forgive makes people sick and keeps them sick in the book the forgiveness project they reported they reported of all cancer patients 61 percent have forgiveness issues and of those 61 percent more than half have severe forgiveness issues and what they discovered is harboring unforgiveness creates a state of chronic anxiety that depletes the body's immune system of the natural resources it needs to fight off disease and so in the scripture when it says be careful that you don't buy and devour one another when it says that for this reason many among you are sick and dying he's talking about unforgiveness when a patient forgives they discover that it restores the immune system of the body and that they are able to respond to treatment more effectively now again this is not a christian organization although the person that wrote this book is a christian this is a medical organization that's just doing research and through medical science they've discovered the power of forgiveness paul said to the ephesians in ephesians 4 26-27 be angry and do not sin do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil paul's exhortation to deal with things the same day don't sleep on it why because you give place to the devil when you do that that word place in the greek is tapas it's where we get our english word topography it's not where we get tapas from the spanish word that means small portions of food for a lot of money but topography speaks of an area of land a territory that you give over to the enemy and when you refuse to forgive you're giving the devil a place an area of land in your mind which gives the devil an open door to attack you and your marriage and unfortunately many marriages end in divorce because of a refusal to forgive people want justice not forgiveness they want to protect their rights they don't want restoration and you might say it would be easier if they said they were sorry if they took responsibility for their actions and i agree it would be easier but the bible doesn't make repentance a condition for forgiveness rather the bible makes the fact that you and i have been forgiven as a condition for forgiveness we forgive because we've been forgiven in colossians three it says therefore is the elect of god holy and beloved put on tender mercies kindness humility meekness long suffering bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another even as christ forgave you so you also must do and jesus also said in mark 11 25-26 and whenever you stand praying if you have anything against anyone forgive him that your father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses but if you do not forgive neither will your father in heaven forgive your trespasses again it's this law of reciprocity to the degree that you're going to judge you're going to be judged to the degree the the standards that you judge by you're going to be judged by those same standards now i have met a few people who simply refuse to forgive but as i've counseled people what i've realized is that most of us want to forgive i won't ask for a show of hands but i would guarantee to say that most of us here today with whatever is happening in our relationship in our heart of hearts we want to be able to release that person to forgive that person for what they've done so that we could rebuild and restore our relationship the problem is how do i forgive what does forgiveness actually look like do i forgive and forget is that what forgiveness is to forget what the person has done do i let bygones be bygones is that what it means to forgive and i've come up with a simple method of forgiveness i want to share with you that i've discovered is very effective because when i decide to not forgive someone when i'm unforgiving towards someone because of what they've done to me what am i doing i am judging them for whatever they've done i'm judging them for a sin but here's the thing it's a sin that was already paid for at the cross it's a sin that was already judged at the cross and so when jesus died on the cross he didn't just die for the sins that you did he died for the sins that were done against you it says that he bore upon himself our sin our transgressions but also our grief and our sorrows what our griefs and sorrows those are the things that are done to us sins that have been committed against us so when jesus died on the cross he died for all sin everything even the things that have done been done to us all sin has already been judged and so when i forgive what i'm doing is i'm giving back to jesus the right and the authority to judge i'm saying okay lord i want justice i want judgment but you've already judged this i'm not the judge i don't have all the information you don't have all the information we don't know why people do what they do we don't understand what's going on there are things that i do because of the way i've been raised the things that i've experienced in my life the heartaches things that i'm not even aware of until my wife goes wow you just you're just acting just like your dad right that's just a that always gets you right in the heart don't use that one that's a bad one but i realized that those in those moments that wow there's things that are programmed in me that i don't even realize until they come up in the heat of a moment and then i realize that there are things going on inside of me i'm not even aware of well if that's true for me how how am i going to know what's going on with the person that i'm judging through unforgiveness i don't know what's going on in their life i don't know what motivates them to do what they do so i have to be willing to give that over to god to give back to jesus the right and the authority to judge that person and so i'll often pray jesus i give back to you the right and the authority to judge so-and-so and i'll say their name for whatever they did to me and i'll say it out loud for offending me for hurting me for ignoring me for belittling me for disrespecting me and then i'll go the next step and i'll ask jesus to forgive me for all the things i've done because of what's been done to me because the truth is oftentimes we'll we will react and we'll sin because we've been sinned against it doesn't justify our sin it's still sin it's so wrong for us to do and so i need to confess that to the lord lord forgive me for whatever it is maybe it's gossip maybe it's slander maybe it's hatred in my heart or maybe it's something that i've done out of revenge a sin that i've done out of revenge or whatever the holy spirit brings up and usually when it's fresh i'll pray this a lot i'll pray it several times throughout the day as often as i need to up to 70 times seven in one day for those of you that like to do the math that's once every other every other minute every two minutes you pray that prayer 70 times seven that's what it means that's the number that jesus gave that pretty much covers everything that's going to happen throughout that day and what it does is it releases me first of all from the devil's manipulation i'm no longer giving him any territory in my life i'm not giving him any place in my life but secondly it releases the spirit of god to work in the situation and i can't tell you how many times i have just forgiven people just given back to god the right and the authority to judge and then all of a sudden things just start to change i don't know how it works but i know it does work and so if you want an enduring marriage learn to forgive and so the four pearls of wisdom on how to have an enduring marriage just to kind of recap this the first pearl is to be known for humility to humble yourself the second pearl is to stop scandalizing your marriage the third pearl to always work to restore relationship and the fourth pearl be forgiving because you've been forgiven and if you apply these pearls of wisdom to your marriage you will have a marriage that endures you'll have a marriage as what i like to call bomb proof the enemy can't attack you even if even if he tries it won't work because your relationship is bond proof it's based on the wisdom of god the word of god the power of god at work and maybe you're just here and you're saying you know what we're doing those things and i'm still waiting be patient be patient as long as there's breath there's room for god to work as long as you're both breathing god has the opportunity be patient and god will work i guarantee it

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Length: 45min 16sec (2716 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021