Happier #1 - Married and Content
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund kicks off the Happier message series teaching out of 1 Corinthians. Can we trust God in our marriages enough to allow Him to work towards our own happiness?
Message Transcript
All right. So let me start with the question, and this is not a trick question. If you had two different paths in front of you and one you believed would lead to an outcome that you thought would be happier for you, then the other path that you thought would lead to a less happy outcome, which one would you choose?
It's not a trick question. Most of us here would say, I’d choose the one that leads to a happier outcome. Unless you have some kind of deep-seated desire to be unhappy, you would say, “You know what? I'm going to choose option A almost every time.” But there's actually a deeper question that is not often asked. And that is, do I believe that God is for me and that the things that are prescribed in the Bible actually lead to a happier outcome, even if it doesn't seem like it when I first look at it?
There's a lot of time that we spend in life trying to produce happiness. In fact, I would say that a lot of our choices are us, figuratively speaking, standing at two options, saying which thing will make me happier? And we weigh the things at the moment and we say, I'm choosing this because I believe that the outcome will lead to greater happiness for me.
And sometimes it's even that we try to navigate our pain and our boredom in the choices we make. Some of us work hard not because we need to, but because we think that somehow it solves something in us that produces pain. Some of us shop, some of us drink, some of us engage in different sexual activities, some of us watch things and binge-watch, some of us have hobbies, and some of us work out. But they're all driven by the idea that in doing this, I will somehow be happier.
And the question that I really want to ask you isn't, what will you choose between happy and not happy, but what is it that you believe about God? Because if you believe that God is for you, then choosing His path makes the most sense. And it's not that we're the first generation to ask this question. If you go back to the beginning of the Bible, it begins with the Garden of Eden. And Eve, eating fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden was asking the question, is God really for me or is God not for me? And if God isn't for me, then this makes a lot of sense.
Today, we're beginning a new series that we're calling Happier, and it's a continuation of First Corinthians. We studied First Corinthians at the start of the year, chapters one through six, and today we start Chapter seven. And we're asking this question is God for us? And if so, how does it impact us in some of the areas that seem to matter most to us in marriage?
Next week we'll talk about singleness and First Corinthians seven addresses these things. And understanding the context here is important because in verse one, he makes this almost bizarre statement certainly to our modern ears. It feels this way. He says, now, for matters you wrote about, it's good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. I don't know about you, but I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that.
And what was happening was in chapter six, verse 12, he quotes Paul, who is the human author, quotes, and he says, I have a right to do anything. And so, there were some who were from a standpoint of sexual relationships, saying, I'm all about freedom. I can do anything. And then there were others who were saying, even in the context of marriage, the less that you're engaged in this, the more spiritual you can be, the closer to God you can somehow be.
It's not really a modern take, but it was probably the take of the Corinthians. And so, what I want to do today is just talk for a few moments about marriage and about what produces happiness. And certainly, a part of all of our lives is finding love and romance and even sexual fulfillment, and sex in the Bible is not something that's negative.
And again, this is part of this view here in verse one, it's really kind of like fire. And what I mean by that is fire, when in its proper bounds, produces heat, ambiance, something positive. But when it's outside of its proper bounds, then it produces something that is not entirely positive and can even have devastating effects. And so, what we want to do is try to understand a little bit about God's intention.
I was officiating a wedding some time ago, and often at a wedding, I'll end up spending some time where the groom and the groomsmen are all standing before they come out to the ceremony. And so, I was with the groom and the groomsmen, and one of the groomsmen was carrying on a little bit. And he said, have you ever noticed that all weddings have something that's very similar?
And he said this. He said he said weddings are similar in that the man always seems to wear black and the woman wears white. And then he said, and I have a theory, he said the reason I believe this is true is that it's her wedding, but it's your funeral. This is just a couple of minutes before he's out there saying, I pledge my life for the rest of time to you. And, you know, in a sense, he was kind of right, except not just for the man.
He was right for both people. Because when you marry, there's a sense in which you die to yourself just a little bit and say, now my life isn't just about me, but it's about something more than me. And if your goals for marriage aren't a little bit of I'm taking something of myself and giving it away then your marriage in many ways will be not fulfilling.
And it's counterintuitive because what we tend to do is we tend to think it's the more I insist on getting things that the happier I'll be rather than the more I give myself away, the happier I will be. And some of us, what we do is we enter marriage with a goal of sexual fulfillment. Some of us maybe enter marriage with the goal of companionship.
And that's even a biblical idea going again all the way back to Genesis where the Bible says it's not good for a man to be alone. Some of us enter marriage with the idea of completion, where we say this person will help me. And this, again, has some biblical idea. And Ecclesiastes says that two are better than one.
But I would suggest that the most dominant rubric in the Bible for marriage is that it's a mystery that there's a sense in which it's a gospel reenactment of Ephesians five. It says that marriage is like a mystery, that the husband and wife are like Christ in the church. And what that means is that there's a giving that takes place in a marriage that isn't necessarily all about what we get.
And so, the three dispositions that we see in First Corinthians seven for a happier marriage, I believe, are things that can help you, help me, experience maybe a little more happiness than we tend to think. And here's the first one, and I'm just going to say this is in verses two through six, satisfy your spouse. Now, these are verses that don't get taught very often in church.
I've been around church a long time. I don't think I've heard messages on this very often. Let me just read this really quickly. “But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent.”
Now, we're not one of these churches where people say things like Amen and preach it. But if we were, I would guess that some of you right now would be saying, preach it because you're saying, I haven't heard a message on this and this sounds kind of good. And what this is saying, and the reason I use the phrase satisfy your spouse, what this is saying, really simply is, that if you are married, your spouse’s only righteous, God-honoring outlet for their sexual fulfillment is you.
Think about that for a moment. Abstinence should only be agreed upon, temporary, and for a grander purpose for a time. And this isn't just about our sexual intimacy, by the way, because I believe that this is also something that says your satisfaction, if your spouse says to you something along the lines of, I don't feel like we connect anymore, your spouse's only righteous outlet for connection, affection, romance, and courtship, is you. And the call here is to say satisfy your spouse. Prioritize this. Don't neglect this in life.
I heard about a couple where the husband was having some health issues, and so they went to the doctor. And as they were in the doctor's office, the doctor seemed concerned and he said a few things. Then he asked to meet with the wife alone. And when he met with the wife alone, he said to her, you know, your husband is under a lot of stress, and it's causing health problems. And so, what I want to encourage you to do is to try to take as much stress out of his life as you can. Make him a nice breakfast, don't say anything that's going to cause stress, anything that's going to cause hardship to him, try to make him a nice, healthy dinner, try to make love several times a week, and just try to make his life better. So, she laughs. She went and got in the car. As they were driving home, the husband said, so what did the doctor say? She kind of looked at him and she said, you're going to die.
I mean, some of us feel like we would rather have our spouse die than do what the Bible says here. Okay, listen, I'm just the mailman today. This is all in the Bible here. And some of you are saying, well, look, we have different drives, we have different things. And if I do this, if I give without expectation, what will happen?
But do you see this is why it's a mystery? It's gospel reenactment. What did Jesus do in coming to this earth? He gave without a guarantee of what we would give to him. And what biblical marriage is, that time saying, I will give without any guarantee, without any expectation, without any demand, what it is that will bring goodness to your life. Some of you should have said, preach it right there, but we're not that kind of a church. I get it. All right.
Here’s the second thing. Satisfy your spouse. I also would say that this says this and that is be satisfied with your spouse. And this is the portion that you heard read earlier, which is this whole idea of to the married, I give this command, not I, but the Lord.
And that whole thing is not saying that one's authoritative and one isn't. It’s saying Jesus initiated some of this. Paul seems to have initiated some of this, but it's all biblical. And what he does here in verses 10 through 15 is he basically says that divorce is not your best option. Now I realize in saying this, that this is challenging in our culture. And certainly, when you study the Bible, what you see is not that the Bible is anti-divorce, it's certainly not anti-divorce. But what it is, is an anti-mindset that says I trade up when it's no longer good for me.
There are instances in the Bible where divorce is understood and embraced. Matthew 19, Jesus’ teaching, says that you shouldn't divorce except for, and then he uses a Greek word because the New Testament was originally in Greek, pornea, and it means in some translations, marital unfaithfulness. But it's actually a broader word. It means sexually deviant behavior that's persisted in. That's what it means. And so, Jesus says when a spouse is persistent in some kind of sexual unfaithfulness or deviant behavior you have the freedom to move away. And here in First Corinthians seven, what we get is the desertion clause, if you will. And this is where the person who doesn't want to stay married leaves and this other person is now free, and it says an unbeliever who leaves. And that's caused some people problems.
But in Malachi, we're told that when somebody divorces the wife of their youth or the husband of their youth, the spouse of their youth, it's stated in a male-female way. But what it means, it says, is that there's not even a remnant of the spirit. In other words, this person is acting like an unbeliever. So, when deserted, you, I believe, could say we're not bound. And certainly, most people who have studied the scriptures would add things like abuse and being in danger. And the reason that I state this is, again, to say some of us, our stories will be that we're divorced or that we need to get divorced.
And it's not that God's against that. It's that God is against the mindset that says, when I get tired and I want to trade up that, that's what I do. And yet that's exactly how some people approach marriage, it is with the mindset that says, this is good, well, now I have better options. Maybe I'll trade up. And do you know how you see this?
If you've ever had a car that you decided it was time to move on from, do you know how cars work? If you buy a car, you get a car. And when you first get a car, even if it's not awesome, when you first buy it, you're still saying this is better than any other option I had. So, I bought it, and I like this car well enough to have bought it. And what happens is you drive it for a while, maybe years, and then at some point you start to say, I don't like the upholstery. This is a little dirty. There's something not right here. You know what? It's time for a new car. And what a lot of us do is we trade perfectly good cars early to trade up for a better car because we can. And what we do is, we simply talk about all the things that are wrong with our existing car in order to make us feel better about getting a new car.
Now in cars, that's fine. But what some of us do is we do it with spouses and we start to nitpick and find everything that's wrong so that we feel good about our desire to move on and what the Bible's doing here is it's saying, no, learn to be satisfied with your spouse. We do this with places of employment. We do it with people who work with us, where you go to work somewhere and it's perfectly fine, and then all of a sudden you want something else. And so, you find everything that's wrong with the place so that you feel good about moving on. We can do it with our spouses.
And the idea here is to say no and learn to be satisfied with your spouse. You chose this spouse. And if you knew today that the car you're driving is the only car you could have for the rest of your life, you would cherish it and take care of it and handle it differently than if you said, I can trade out of this as soon as it doesn't suit me.
And what marriage is, biblically, is saying, we're making a commitment for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. To say we will endure again doesn't mean there's never an out, but it means that that's the default commitment and some of us are here and we're saying, you know, I was married for a while and now I'm divorced or I was married, my spouse passed away and I'm just sad around this whole area.
I like how C.S. Lewis talked about it. If you're not familiar, C.S. Lewis was a professor and he was single until he was fairly old. And then he met and married a woman named Joy Davidson. And shortly after they were married, it was found out that she had cancer and she died fairly quickly.
He writes about it in his book Grief Observed. And one of the things that he indicates is that as sad as it was, he had learned that he wanted to say, I'm so thankful for the chance that I had this relationship. Even for a short time, rather than focusing on what I don't have. And what some of us do is we forget the good because it was shorter than we wanted or because it didn't end well. Instead of being able to say, I can share some of the good that's here.
So, First Corinthians seven tells us to satisfy our spouse. It tells us to be satisfied with our spouse. But here's the challenge. No matter how much you commit to saying, I'm going to do these things, it will be hard to do them well, because if you're married, you know how this works. You get into a relationship and there are days where you say you haven't done anything for me in a while. Why should I do anything for you? And it's easy to find fault.
And this leads me to the third disposition that I think this text talks about. And I'm just going to say to sanctify your home. Now, notice in verse 14, that there's this word used that says the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband.
And this is a word that is distinctly biblical in our culture. We don't talk about things being sanctified, but one of the ways to think about it is anytime you see the word sanctified in the Bible, think about it as the word set apart or the phrase set apart, because that's what it means. And here I don't believe that this is ultimately talking about salvation, although he does say, who knows if your husband will be saved or your wife will be saved. But what he's doing is he's saying, I want you to know that even if you're in an unequal home, even if it's challenging, that when you sanctify your home, there can be good things that happen for the kids and for your spouse that you don't even understand.
Well, it's happening now. The reason I say sanctify your home and not sanctify your spouse is in the original language, this phrase sanctified, is an imperfect passive. And what that means is, imperfect is something that happens here, and there are continuing results that happen over time. And a passive means that it's not something that you actively do. So, when he says who knows if your spouse will be sanctified through you or you will be sanctified, he's saying what you do now will have an impact that you can't see or project into the lives of your kids and your spouse. And it will be something that you don't directly affect and so what that's really pointing to is this whole idea of saying, even when I don't see what's happening, I'm going to continue to set apart my own life and my home in a way that I give God every opportunity to work.
Sometimes we sing a song around here called “Way Maker.” There's a line in there that says, even when it doesn't feel like it, God, you're working. Even when I can't see it, God, you're working. This is why I say the key question for many of us in life in general and specifically in marriage is, is my impulse for what will make me happiest the best thing? Or is saying, God, you have a pathway and even if it doesn't feel like it, even if it doesn't seem like it, this is the pathway forward, because I trust that you are for me and what you've given me to do is right and good.
And the reason I talk about marriage being like gospel reenactment, what I mean by that is, is that as you say, God, you have chosen to love me even when I'm unlovable because of my sin, what you do is you then say, I choose to love my spouse even when they're not acting in ways that are loving to me because of the love of God. And the way that you and I can say I'll satisfy and be satisfied with my spouse when I don't feel like it, is knowing that there's a God who has loved us in ways that we don't deserve.
And that is the mystery of marriage when we say something higher is going on here and I'll choose to give over getting. I'll choose to serve over being served. I'll choose to be committed over demanding commitment. What I'm doing is I'm entering into this marriage then with a sense of saying, God, your work, even if I don't feel it, see it, get it.
And what I can tell you is that there's no guarantee for happiness because sometimes the spouse is challenging. But when you and I choose to say, God, your ways are my priority, what happens is we live in a place where then the hand of God works in ways that we don't see or understand. And the more that you do that, the more that I do that, the more we can look back and say, God, I don't know how or why you worked in this situation, but you did and that produces happiness and one of the most important areas of most of our lives.
Let's pray together. I want to take a moment right now and just acknowledge that some of us are here, and we're in long-term, fairly healthy relationships. But there's still maybe a need just to say, God, how could I bring this marriage under the authority of your word?
And it may be for some of us, we're in an unhappy situation and the pathways seem starker. Maybe we're single right now, and we're saying this seems far away or not like part of it, but understanding the biblical mandates and ideas of marriage will help you when you get into a romantic relationship.
And maybe right now you're here, and God's way seems so foreign, so out of reach, so not part of what would be happiest in your life. And maybe today is just a day to say, God, I'm not even sure what this whole idea of standards is. But if you look at it, you know that you haven't met all of them. Bible calls it sin. And the way that our sin is addressed is not in saying I'll do better in the days ahead, but in saying Jesus has done for me what I can't do. And because of that, I can be filled with a love that allows me to live differently around people. And so, for some of us, maybe today is just a day to say, God, I haven't kept your standards, I haven't loved my spouse perfectly, I haven't kept your standard around my sexuality perfectly, and as a result, you need a savior.
And maybe today is just your day to say, God be my savior, God, I pray for those who are here and are hurting, those who are in a good place, those who are married and single. God, I pray for all of us that you would help resolve the fundamental question that your ways are best and that you are for us, and that we would choose your path forward, even if it doesn't seem like the best path to us. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great week.