The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 7: How to Fight

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

When in conflict, you can be right or you can be married. Click Series Resources to download the series journal, watch RELATE and more.

All right. Who's ready to pick a fight? You ready for this? All right, grab your Bibles. We're going to dig in. We are following this couple. We saw who they are. We see a meet, date, fall in love, get married, make that vow. Last week was the honeymoon. That was a lot of fun. And now we are going to talk about how to fight. Now, some people will ask me, do Christian couples godly men and women? Do they fight? Some of you fought on the way here. I know it. You know why? Because it's Sunday. There is nothing like a good on the way to church. I can't stand you. I can't believe you. I'm always waiting on you. Into car honging horns. Get the kids ready. Get the church just fussing. Don't even walk together to the door. Then you get here and people say, how you doing? We just blessed and highly favored, pastor. You bunch of liars. Me too. I understand this. Here's the reason, man. Does God know what he's talking about? We get one chapter on the honeymoon. We get two chapters on how to fight.

about 25% of the whole book is on how to resolve conflict. Why? Because about 25% of your marriage is usually in conflict. God knows exactly what he's talking about. But I want to tell you this, your marriage is worth fighting for. And what I want to convince you of is there is a way to fight fair, and fight's not even the right word. It's more like resolve conflict. You remember back in chapter 2 verse 15, he says, catch for us the little foxes that are eating the blossoms in our garden, that when you get this thing right, it's you two on the same side against the conflict, not you two in your corners trying to duke it out. And fighting often can be an opportunity for God to do some significant work, not only in your marriage, but also in you. And so all couples fight.

Well, dead couples don't fight, but all living couples fight. And how many of you know that God often uses your spouse to help you be the version of you that God had in mind? when he came up with you. That marriage is the left lane of sanctification. That I did not know how selfish I was, what a slob I was, how mean I could be until I got married, because when I was just living with me, everybody in my house was getting along just fine. And then I got married. And, man, we've been married.

I think it was about five or six weeks, okay? And I had gotten home from work, and I was about to go to the gym, and I was sitting on the couch, putting on my gym clothes, my gym shoes. And Gretchen comes in with a little weep-eyed and sits down on the couch. across from me and says, we need to talk. And how many of you know when your wife says, we need to talk, she don't mean we need to talk. She means I need to talk and I need you to listen.

That's what that means. And then she just says, this is not working. And honestly, I thought she was talking about the remote. I was like, what do you mean this is not working? I thought I was crushing it. I mean, if you would have asked me 20 minutes before that, I would say, I'm killing this whole husband thing. And I looked at her and I was like, what do you mean this isn't working?

It's working for me. We got married. I still do everything I want to do. And I invite you to come be a part of it if you'd like. Turns out she was right. We've been having a version of that discussion now for 21 years, all right? Now, I just need you to know this. When you got married, you married a sinner, and you are a sinner.

And God is glorified when two sinners reconciled unto him know how to live in reconciliation with one another for a lifetime. Everybody we marry, I need you to know this, there are no move-in ready. spouses, everybody's a fixer-upper. And so God's got a lot of work to do in us. So check it out. We're going to pick it up, chapter 5, verse 2. She is speaking. Remember, this is fresh off of their honeymoon, okay?

The next verse we get post-honeymoon is this. This is her speaking. I slept by my heart, meaning Solomon was awake. A sound, my beloved is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one. For my head is wet with dew and my locks with drops of the night. He's been out working all. day. He comes in late at night later than she expected, and he's knocking on the door,

probably very gently, saying, open to me, my sister, my love, my perfect one. What you think this brother wants? You think he wants to talk about who's running carpool tomorrow? Uh-uh. No, no, no. Now, don't look at your Bible. Don't look at your Bible. How do you think she's going to respond? I mean, again, this is the woman. Remember, she said things to him like, come upon the mountains of be through my stag. Remember that? Blow upon my garden. That's what she just said last week.

And here he comes, working all night, knocking on the door, talking all the sweet, hey, baby girl. And here's how she responds. Now, you would think, based on how she has responded in the past, that we were about to see the raciest text ever. Like she's going to sling open the door, just dressed in some flock of goats.

You know what I'm talking about? Instead, here's what she says, verse 3. I put off my garment, how could I put it on, I've bathed my feet, how could I soil them? That's Hebrew for, I got a headache. That's what that means. The Bible does not tell us how long they have been married, but ultimately right here, we have a conflict. We have a conflict. You see, he wants sex, she won't sleep.

By the way, this book was written, this song of Solomon was written 3,000 years ago. You think the Lord knows that he's talking about? ever had this conversation? One of them wants sex, one of them won't sleep, and we have a conflict, and ultimately what's going on here is both of them are being selfish. Because Solomon's out working all day, working his fingers to the bone, that's what it means when he says his locks are wet. I means he's been sweating. He's worked deep into the night, and he's got in his mind, I'm going to come home and I'm going to rat-a-tat-tat-tat on the door, and I'm going to say, my perfect one, my darling, my love, and she's going to open the door and just be so excited to see me and say,

won't you come on in, I've been planning some Ingetty for you. Turns out when he knocks on the door, she's like, you can getty up out of here if you ain't going to be here on time. How you think you're just going to work all night, miss dinner. I texted you about 53 times. You didn't text me back. I've been hanging out with the kids, not any adult conversation all day long, and you just walk in, walk by all the chores, and just think you're going to roll up in here, rub my back a couple times, and Shazam? I don't think so, Scooter.

Now, you've got to go to seminary to see that all of that is in these verses right here. but that's ultimately what's going on. You see, whenever we have a conflict with anybody in general, but particularly in our marriages, ultimately it comes down, in this case, they're just being selfish. They're thinking about them and not the other. That's what they're thinking about.

They're thinking about what they can get, like a contract, instead of how they can serve, like a covenant. And I know, I know that if I line all of us up, if everybody took a turn here, and we all came up on stage and took the microphone. And I asked you this question. Describe to me what happened in your last conflict. I know what you would say.

You would say, well, let me tell you what happened, okay. This woman I'm married to, she's crazy. And let me tell you what she said. Let me tell you what she did. I didn't deserve this. That's what you would say. You would say, that, my wife, and then the wives would be like, well, listen, let me tell you about him.

He makes me crazy. I wasn't like this before I hadn't met him. I used to be like a normal sane person, and this man makes me into a crazy person. and every single one of us to have a tendency to do this, if I were to say, what causes fights and quarrels among you, you would say, oh, that's easy, it's him, it's her. In James, chapter four, the brother of Jesus,

asked this very specific question, this very same question, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? And again, we all want to point out there and say they do. But then he answers his question. Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? you desire and do not have every time there's a conflict we all want to say it's you and what james is saying is do you know what the only common denominator in every fight you've ever been in is is you that it's not that something happened out there is that something's going on in here

and then he very simply says you desire and you do not have in other words you want something and you're not getting it and the moment you're you can begin to realize, no matter how extreme the conflict is, fundamentally at the bottom of it all, is simply this. You want something and you're not getting it. She won't sleep, he wants sex, they're not getting it, there's a conflict. Now the question is, how do you resolve this? Now, you've heard of the fight or flight response. That's also true in conflict. There are somebody, some people who are fighters, any fighters in the house, you know, okay? Liars, all right, you're liars.

I am, by nature, I kind of love to fight. I don't know why, I'm just sort of into it, okay? And so some of you see conflict and you fight. Some people are flight. You're like a turtle. Anytime something's, oh, I'm just, I'm out of here. You're out, okay? That may not be great either.

And some of them are kind of like smack and run. That's probably the worst, all right? And I mentioned this to you before. A really good, godly marriage conflict resolution looks like a friendly game of tennis. Just a nice friendly game of tennis. And the ball is the conflict. The ball is the issue.

And you just sort of friendly, hey, I just wanted to bring something up here. Hey, can we just talk about this? And you hit that thing over. And they're like, oh, I hear you, but have you thought about that? And there is this back and forth, friendly dialogue. There can be some emotion and all that for sure, but you're not trying to kill each other. The two extremes are is when one spouse in conflict says, hey, I thought, maybe we talk about if you want some Engetti, maybe you could get home on time. And he's like,

what? And he just slams it in your face and it throws the racket. That's called abuse. People won't play tennis with you if you treat them that way for very long. And then the other extreme is somebody hits the ball over and it just never hit back because you're not even playing the game anymore. You're just kind of on your iPad in the corner of the court. Those are the extremes. So that is not God's ideal for the way that we manage. conflict. You see, again, because the reality is when you got married, you married a sinner. There are no, nobody's moving ready. Everybody's a fixer up, and when I used to do a lot of premarital counseling, I don't do as much anymore, I would tell people, I would say, hey, listen,

there's only two potential problems in your upcoming marriage. There's only two potential problems. And it's you and you. And if you guys are perfect, there'll be no problems, but since you are not, there will be problems. So we have a conflict here, and I want you to see. how they resolve this conflict. She's going to speak, but I want you to see his response. She says, my beloved put his hand to the latch and my heart was thrilled within me. I arose to open to my beloved and my hands dripped with my fingers with liquid my on the handles of the bolt.

Here's what he does. He does not react to the situation. He responds in love. That is so key. what he gets is rejection but he does not reject her back instead the very thing that separated him from fellowship with his wife the bolt on the door instead of kicking the door down and saying there'll be no locks in the kingdom not that's not what he does and he doesn't try to justify what he wants and he doesn't try to tell her how to feel instead what he does is there is a there is a grace-filled

response here he does not react to the situation because when we react to the situation situation, then what we do is we take the ugly thing our spouse has done to us and then we re-inact it back to them. And I'm telling you, it's easy to hate hateful people, isn't it? It's easy to yell at people that are yelling at you. But what he does is responds in love. And ultimately, this is a picture early on in the conflict, by the way, of how God treats us when we reject him.

that the very thing that stands between this husband and this wife in fellowship, this, this latched door, when she gets to that thing that is the barricade between them, what she finds is that he has anointed it with something sweet. The thing that separates us, our fellowship from Almighty God is sin, and what God did is sent his son, Jesus Christ, to anoint the cross with his blood so that we could be reconciled to him. This is how we fight. You see, because at the cross, I want you to think about this. At the cross, Jesus did two things. One is he took responsibility for things that weren't even his fault.

Our sin. He never sinned. And yet he paid the price for things that were not his fault. This is why when you're married, fault is irrelevant. You take responsibility for your marriage. And then secondly, he could have been right. and instead of being right, he came on a rescue mission for us. There's a big difference.

He could have showed up and say, hey, look, this isn't my fault. I'm right here. You're wrong. I'm perfect. You're a sinner. You go to hell. I'm going to heaven. Peace out.

It's not my problem. But instead, God made Him who was without sin to be sin for us, that we would be made the righteousness of God. And so this is how, this is Solomon's response. Now look what happens to her. Verse six, she says, I open to my beloved. But my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke.

I sought him but found him not. I called him, but he gave no answer. You see, a grace-filled response wins the heart. A grace-filled response wins the heart. You will never yell your spouse into submission and win the argument. In fact, listen to me, you don't, when you have a conflict, you don't want to win. You know why? because if you win, that means he or she lost.

That means you're the winner and your spouse is a loser. And you don't want to sleep with a loser. You don't want to live with a loser. You don't want to treat them like a loser. You see, it's easy to be mad at people when they act mad back at you. It is really hard, it is really, really hard for this fight to escalate and escalate and escalate if you don't fuel the fight. Now, I'm not saying you don't discuss it. I'm not saying you don't talk about it.

We'll talk about that in a second. But when you are in conflict with your spouse, you can be right or you can be married. Those are your options. And I mean that. And again, the example is Christ. He could have been right, but instead of being right,

he decided to be the Savior. And when we are in conflict with our spouse, when we are submitted to one another out of reverts for Christ, it basically means you are laying down what you think is right in order to be righteous towards your spouse. This is how he acts towards her.

And it should, changes her response. Now, sometimes I know people will say to me and they're like, well, but if I do that, if I do that, he'll get away with it. If I do that, she will never change. If I do that, then I'm just going to have to live like this forever. No, no, no, no, no. Watch what happens here. But I got to explain it because it's kind of weird. Verse seven, the watchman found me. She's out looking for her husband. The watchman found me as they went about the city. They beat me. They bruised me. They took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls. All right. Now, husbands, what this doesn't mean is you can't say to your wife,

all right, you know, if you don't let me in there tonight, the elder's going to beat you up. No, that's not what that means, okay? The watchman represented God's authority in the city. I think this is like poetic language. I don't think there's actually some dudes beating up the queen because the king would kill anybody that ripped off the veil of the queen. But ultimately, what the Bible is saying here is this. This is very important. It is not your job to change your spouse. Say it again, it is not your job to change your spouse. That's the role of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, and he does not need your help.

It is not your job to convict your spouse. It's not your job to discipline your spouse. It's not your job to sanctify your spouse. That is not your job. Now, I know, there's a whole bunch of wives that are like, well, what am I? You don't understand what I'm working with here. I understand, okay? Your job is not to change your spouse.

That's the job of the Holy Spirit. Your job is to love your spouse. the way Christ loved you. And the only hope for change in your spouse is for you to love them the way the Lord has loved you and to display the gospel before them. And ultimately what is happening here is Solomon is saying,

it is not my responsibility to change her heart. Only God can do that. So I am going to love her. I am going to respond to the situation in love, not react to the situation because I'm not getting what I want. And then I'm going to trust God to do what only he can do.

in her life. Now does this mean that you get walked over? Absolutely not. I want to give you a couple of tools that you can use in order to have some gospel-centered conversations when you have conflict in your marriage. One of them is this. One of them is this. It is a good and right thing for one spouse to tell another spouse this. I feel, fill in the blank, when you feel in the blank, okay? I feel, I feel devalued when you say you're going to be home at this time, and then you don't let me know, and you come home later. Now, here's what's key here. Now, what you're not saying is, you make me, like you make me so mad or you make me so disappointed, because you are responsible for your own feelings. Did you know nobody else can make you feel

anything? All they can do is stir up what is already in there. And so, It is a very helpful thing for you to say things like, when you correct all the details of my story that I'm probably lying in a little bit just to impress everybody in public, it makes me feel so disrespected. And then continue and say, and I'm not even saying that's your fault.

That's in me. That insecurity is in me. Let me share with you some things that are wrong inside of me that God still needs to flush out in me, but I'm just telling you is that when you do these things, When you talk to me that way in front of the kids, these feelings come up inside of me. And ultimately what you're saying to your spouse is not stop it, change your behavior. What you're saying is, I need your help.

There's some ego, there's some insecurity, there's some fear inside of me. I mean, I can just tell you just transparently when Gretchen and I first got married and we would get into a spat. And one day she got in the car and drove off, and I was like, you can't do that. You just can't do that. And it's not your fault, but I'm just telling you you can't do that. because when I was in high school, I watched one of my parents drive off and they never came home. And so I'm just telling you when you do that, there's some fear and insecurity and some stuff in here that gets all stirred up. So you can call a timeout, no problem, we can go to our own corners and pray about it.

That's all fine. And what I'm doing there is just being vulnerable and saying, here's some information about me. I'm trusting that you will love me enough to pay attention to that and not use that to try to kill me for the rest of my life. that's a different conversation when you fill in the blank I feel fill in the blank now husbands wives you're usually pretty good at this husbands let me just give you

just a little pointer here and when your wife is talking about feelings then you respond talking about feelings don't ever answer facts for feelings do you understand what I'm saying because she may say I feel fat and that's a feeling and go well don't eat so much fat

don't do that just stay in the feelings, okay? Why do you feel that way? I don't feel that way. Now, also, according to Ephesians chapter 5, I think almost every, there's probably one outlier somewhere, I just can't think of it, almost every conflict ultimately boils down to this, is that she feels devalued and he feels disrespected. That's it. Now, there is, for sure, the spectrum is wide. Sometimes it's little like just because somebody didn't call or they said something insensitive. And then sometimes it's way over here and it's, you know, like infidelity, those kinds of things. But ultimately, if you think about this, it boils down to the fact that oftentimes the reason there's conflict,

the foundation of it is that he feels disrespected, she feels devalued. And so one of the things I would highly encourage you to talk about is this. It's today. You could practice this. Honey, when you, fill in the blank, I feel fill in the blank, and then try to go one more sentence as to why you feel that way because your emotions are your responsibility and just share that. Now listen, husbands, let me tell you,

when your wife says this to you, okay? When your wife says this to you, when your wife says to you, when you spend all your time surfing instead of being at home, I feel like I'm not that important to you, okay? When she says that, then here's what you say. You say, thank you for sharing that with me.

And then you know what you say next? You say this. You say, okay, shall we practice? Because I get it, man, I get it. You know what my response always is? The first thing I think is you shouldn't feel that way. No, no, no, no, no. No, no.

No, you shouldn't feel that way. Because I like to measure me against my own intentions, not my actions. You ever do that? And so one of husbands, we're the worst at telling our words, wives how to feel. And I know it can go the other way sometimes, but we're the worst that say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, you shouldn't feel that way. Don't ever tell anybody how they should feel. And just because your intentions were one thing, that doesn't necessarily negate the pain that you caused when you did that thing. You see, and I can tell you what, I've never talked Gretchen

into feeling the way she ought to, and it go well for me. I mean, Gretchen will share something, you know, you work too much and it makes me feel like this. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, stop. That's not how you should feel. Listen, I took all the information that you gave me. I ran it through my grid, and I don't feel this way. Here, come to the whiteboard. See, if A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C, so you're not feeling right. Not one time ever has she been like, oh, my goodness, thank you so much. You are a prophet of the Lord, and I am so blessed to have you.

Not only could you point out my exterior sin, but my interior sin, and I don't even know how to feel right. Come to the mountains of B through Youngstag. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever. Okay? In fact, one time when I was trying to tell Gretchen out of field, she helped me a ton with this. She was like, listen, because I was telling her, you shouldn't feel this way because those were not my intention. And she said, babe, if I was standing in the driveway and you backed over my foot with the truck and broke my foot, but immediately got out and said, I didn't mean to

so it doesn't hurt anymore, right? Wrong. It would still hurt. It's very, very, very important. One other thing, Gretchen taught me many things, one of the thing that she taught me in regards to a grace-filled response, and I would just give this to you as a tool, all right? One time, years and years ago, maybe a decade or more, I just remember, we're standing in the kitchen, we had a Saturday wide open, we had all these hopes and dreams of how great this Saturday was going to be, and we hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and it was already in the tank. You ever been there? I can't even remember what we were fighting about, because that's usually how it goes. And she was like, man, I was like, you always, you never, it just wasn't going well. And I mean, the kids aren't even out of bed yet,

right? And she says to me this, changed our marriage. She says, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to go into the bedroom and I'm going to take a minute and I'm just going to do this morning over. And when I walk out, I am going to be so happy and it would be really awesome if you were happy to. And I was like, well, that's crazy. All right? And she goes into the bedroom and I'm just kind of waiting around. And then she comes out and she's like, good morning. And I was like, good morning, my darling, my love, my perfect woman. and I'm telling you, we call that now, we just termed that a do-over. And about three or four times a year, we don't do it every day, but there are times when we know we're just hitting this rut and she or I, one of us, initiate her idea and just say,

can I just get a do-over? And then again, we'll take a second, and then that is just a grace-filled response. A grace-filled response changes the heart. So this is what he does towards her, and he trusts that God will take a grace-filled response. care of the outcome. Now, she's going to do what a lot of people do. She's going to run to her friends. It says this, I adjure you, old daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved that you tell him, I am sick with love. What she is saying is our relationship is a covenant. It's not a contract. I still love him. I'm still committed to him, even though we are in a conflict.

In verse 9, her friends give her terrible things. They give her terrible advice. They say this. they say, what is your beloved more than another beloved, oh most beautiful among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved that you thus adjure us? In other words, her friends are teeing her up for her to talk junk about him. Listen, do you have friends in your life

that love you enough, not to tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear? Because I'm telling you, and Christian folks can be the words. You just call it prayer request, but ultimately what you're doing is gossiping about your spouse. That is what she is being teed up for here by her friends, and yet she never takes the bait.

What she's going to do is even before they have reconciled, even before he says he's sorry and she's sorry, she is going to speak highly of her husband. Wives, how do you talk about your husbands? Because these days, somehow we have traded in honor and respect for criticism and cynicism. And you've learned it well. Every Disney movie I see, they don't lift up the, they kill off the parents in the first scene,

but if the parents make it through the first scene, then all they do is like, dad is an idiot and the hamster's the hero. If the zombie apocalypse happens, don't go find the husband, find the gerbil, he'll save the day. It's true. And people can talk about their spouse, tear them down like it's a sport, and husbands, how do you speak about your wives? I mean, do you tear them down and disrespect them in the way you talk about them? The tone matters. The way we talk about one another matters. The Bible says that the tongue has the power of life and death,

and the reason that some of your marriages are dead is because you killed it with your mouth. Notice what she says. Again, they are still in conflict. And she says about him, My beloved is radiant and ruddy. Ruddy means handsome. Distinguished among 10,000.

His head is the finest gold. His locks are wavy, black as a raven. They hadn't created just for men yet, so this means he's a young man. But ladies, how do you talk about your husband? And I know some of you'd be like, well, I can't say his locks are wavy because they wave by back in 1998. Okay, but you just got to come up with your own thing. Be like, see my husband, his head shines like a disco ball in the 70s. Whatever it is, whatever your thing is, just come up with it.

She says his eyes are like doves. Remember, that's what he used to say about her, and he was saying, I'm safe, and now she's saying that about him. His eyes are like doves beside the streams of water, bathed in milk sitting beside a full pool. His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet-smelling herbs. His lips are lily, dripping liquid my mar. His arms are rods of gold. She's saying, my man is buff, set with jewels. His body is polished ivory, bedecked with sapphires.

And again, I know some of you like, well, my husband's body ain't polished ivory. It's more like moldy jello. It's kind of hairy, and it jiggles a lot. All right, whatever, man. Did you know this, that just because something's true doesn't mean you need to always say it? How many have heard, honesty is the best policy? That's not what the Bible says. Ephesians 429 says this, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth,

but only that which is edifying for the benefit of the hearer. In other words, I'm not saying you lie, but honesty is not the best policy. Encouragement is. The Bible says love keeps no record of wrong, and sometimes we are. an expert on everything that's wrong with our spouse, and you should become an expert of some things that are right with your spouse. Now, fellas, you could do a push-up or something. I'm going to be honest from up here. It looks like you might go to the gym a couple times. Anyway, verse 15, his legs are alabaster columns set on bases of gold. Don't skip leg day, boys.

All right, you look like a carrot when you grow up. You don't want that. His appearance is like Lebanon choice as cedars. His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. So not only is she speaking life into their marriage, she is saying that his mouth is most sweet. That's for sure talking about kiss him, but it's also talking about the way he talks to and about her. Do you realize that the way you talk about your marriage, I don't have words to fully describe to you how important it is.

Jesus says out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Do you know what this means? this means if some venom comes out of your mouth, the reason is because you've got some venom or contempt towards your spouse in here. I've shared this illustration a thousand times. If I take this water bottle and shake it up, what comes out? Water. Every service, there's some spiritual bottle. Jesus, no, Jesus, it's water. Whatever's in here comes out when it's shaken up. And so if you say things, well, well, well, it wasn't my fault. I mean, I didn't mean to. I was angry, it just slipped. All that means there's something slipped out of here that was in your heart.

Words matter. And in fact, those kind of words are called careless words. And Proverbs 1218 says, careless words stab like a sword, but wise words lead to healing. Careless words stab like a sword. Careless means, I didn't mean to. I was just mad. I didn't mean for that to hurt you. If I brought a sword to church this morning, which I have a couple in my office. And I just had it, and I was just careless with it. And as I was preaching, I was slinging it around, and I accidentally just stabbed Henry. And I went, my bad, bro. I was just being careless. That's on me. I'm so sorry. That would make nothing better. And in fact, it would take one second for the stabbing to occur. And he would remember this day in church for the rest of his life. Because he would have a big scar right

here to be like, what happened? You're going to believe it, man. I ain't sitting on a run row anymore, I can guarantee you that. I'm just trying to learn how to fight. The brother stuck me with a sword. We'd be in the news. It'd be a whole event. And then to healing, we'd take a long time, a long time. Every single one of us can go back to some point in our life where somebody, is usually an authority in our life, said something careless about us, careless to us, called us a name, cursed us. I don't mean cussed, I mean cursed to us. And those things stab and leave scars. People that love each other don't want to do that to one another. And one of the wisest words, one of the wisest things you can say to your spouse is this, I am so sorry. Now just, I'm telling

you, if you stab, if you get stabbed, you notice it takes a second to get stabbed and it takes a long time to heal up. The same thing are true with words. And listen, be careful what you say, man, be careful what you say. Because here's what happens. You want to watch what your ears hear about your spouse. And if your mouth says some awful things too and about your spouse, your ears will hear them and then your brain will begin to believe it and your heart will feel it. And this is just true. You don't make love to people that you don't like and you don't like people that you don't respect and you don't like people and you don't respect people that you talk down to.

That you don't make love to people that you don't like and you don't like people that you don't respect and you don't respect people that you consistently don't, that you consistently talk down to, pay attention to your mouth, to your words. And then I think this is the theme verse, or maybe of the whole book. This is my beloved and this is my friend,

old daughters of Jerusalem. This is my beloved and this is my friend. What she is saying is, we're going to put Jesus in the middle, we're going to act like it. And so, for sure, the foundation of any good and godly relationship is Jesus. But the way it plays itself out is the foundation is a good friendship. A good friendship. That will be the foundation of your marriage. You need to be good friends.

I always get some young single guy going, nope, foundation of my marriage is going to be sex. The people giggling are married people, okay? They're like, yeah, right, good luck there, Romeo. I mean, seriously, if you are, let's just say you are Casanova and y'all do it every day for an hour. I hear some people in front row laughing. An hour. What are you going to do for an hour? Okay, let's just say every day for an hour.

You said that 23 hours in today? You're going to have to talk and resolve conflict and figure out how to raise the kids. And I'm telling you, it's really hard to love somebody you don't like. but man it is amazing how you can walk through this life together when you are with somebody that you consider when you can say rightly this is my beloved and this is my friend old daughters of jerusalem so when they say to her who is your man that you would go chasing after him and be sick with love this is what she says all she does is she answers them in the affirmative of how great her husband is verse six they ask this question where has your beloved

gone, almost beautiful among women, where has your beloved turn that we may seek him with you? And she's going to say, my beloved, has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens, and to gather lilies. She's saying, I know where he is. Listen to me, this is very important. A fight with your spouse is no excuse for you to sin. Men, if your wife says no to you, that is no excuse for then you to go to pornography or to go to the strip club or to go out. We do boys and do something you ought not do. And wives, if you fight with your husband, that is not an excuse to go on a spending spree so you can kind of stick it to him a little bit. Being mistreated is never an excuse for any bad behavior on your part. And so she says, I know where he is. He's going

to go back to the place where we met. And then she says this, verse three, I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine. He grazes among the lilies. In other words, what she is saying is this. our foundation is a covenant, not a contract. I know we're in a fight right now. We hadn't resolved. Haven't even talked about it. Don't even know what he's going to say to me about this. But I am telling you what we do is when it goes wrong, I don't go looking for a new spouse.

I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine. You see, we live in a culture that says if you're not getting what you want right now, then maybe you need a new spouse. But what the good news of the gospel through the scriptures would say is that you can have a new marriage with your same spouse. You just gotta do it God's way. This is what she is saying. Now, I don't have time to get into it because this is a pretty minor conflict

compared to many of the things that you have been through. In, I did a sermon series called The Best Sermon Ever, it wasn't because I'm preaching the best sermon ever. I walked through the sermon on the Mount, and if you go back to week four of that sermon series, I talked about divorce and when divorce is okay. So in the Bible, there are times when it is, when it is permissible to get divorce,

but I would say that is always, always, always the last option and not the first response. Because divorce is like an amputation that God has joined you together. So if you're playing softball today and you twist your ankle, you're not like, oh, it hurts, take it off at the knee. No, no, no, no, no.

You would do everything that you could do in order to save that ankle. And so there are some cases where the Bible says it is permissible, it's abuse, It's abandonment and it's adultery, and even on adultery, I would say not every time. Now, they are about to reconnect. They are about to reconnect. And when they reconnect, I want you to notice what he says to her.

He starts out this way. You are beautiful as tears out, my love. That's the most beautiful city in the nation. What he doesn't do is he doesn't pout. By evidence of her action, she's out looking for him in the streets, it is evident that she is repenting. And so what he does is he doesn't say, hey, we need to talk about this.

Do you get that murder I left for you? No, that's not what he does. He doesn't bring it back up. He doesn't stir it back up. Again, love keeps no record of wrong. In fact, he just says this, you are beautiful as tears out of my love, lovely as Jerusalem.

He's saying, you're beautiful on the outside, you're holy on the inside. Awesome as an army with banners. Then he says, turn away your eyes for me, for they overwhelm me. This is what he is saying. I don't want to just make out, I want to make up. Then the next thing he does is he is going to repeat, word for word,

the same thing that he told her when they were, the same things he told her on their wedding night. If you missed last week, I promise all of these are compliments. Go back and listen to last week to understand why. Said your hair is like a flock of goats leading down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing. All of them bear twins. Not one among them has lost its young. your cheek are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil.

Here's what he's saying. Though we are in conflict, my love for you has not changed. I am just as committed and devoted and in love with you right now, even in the midst of conflict, as I was on the day that we got married. Again, this is covenant, not contract. Sometimes we get this question emailed. I've been married a couple times, got a bunch of money, should we do prenuptial agreement? not if you want me to marry you.

You're just signing up for divorce. So if that's what you're doing, then nope, not if you want me to do it. Because what they are saying is, all that I have is yours. All that I have is yours, and all that I am is yours. Verse 8, very tough and problematic verse,

we'll come back to. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number. I'll come back to that, I promise at the end. Verse 9, my dove, my perfect one is the only one, the only one of her mother, pure to her who bore her. He's saying, no one compares to you. The young women saw her and called her blessed, the queens and concubines also, and they praised her.

Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners? And then she says, this is very important, she says, I went down to the nut orchard to look at the blossoms of the valley, to see whether the vines had budded, whether the pomegranates weren't in bloom. Here's what she is saying. She is saying, I can see that God has been at work in our relationship to create some new growth. That's what she's saying. We all know, hopefully you know Romans 828, that God is at work in all things for the good

of those that love him and are called according to his purpose, and that God can use your conflict to point out in you, some of your own selfishness that you could repent of. When God is involved in your conflict, what begins to happen is, instead of you drawing a line in the sand, you use this conflict to draw closer together. Think about this. Do you know when I know that Gretchen really loves me? It's not when we go on dates. It's not. And we do, man.

We went out two nights ago. We went out Friday night. It was awesome. Got dressed up, you know, put some khakis on, went downtown, you know, trying to avoid all you people, but you all live there too. It's fine. And so we go and we eat this steak, man. It's awesome. And, you know, we sit close together and giggle at everybody and people wash and just judge them for the glory of God. That's what we do. It's like, look at that. Oh, my mom. And, you know, that's what we do. It's entertaining. Then there's this little rooftop bar. We go up there and we sit down

on this couch. She's got her head on my shoulder, you know, and the waiter comes on. It's kind of a fancy place where they got the little napkin over and they're like, this is a wise choice. You know what I'm saying? Get some wine. I don't even like it swirling around. Oh, romantic. Okay. In those moments, anybody can fall in love. I mean, anybody sitting under the stars, belly full of good steak, drinking a wine, I mean, incredible. You know when I know that I know that she loves me, like in that covenantal way?

Like when we get in a fight, argue about air condition. She wants it on about 62, and I don't want to give JAA all of her money, okay? And then we're like, and when I'm the worst, I mean, when I'm the worst, when I'm the worst, when I do none of the things that I'm talking to you about. You can write this down, I'm a much better preacher than husband. That's a fact. That's a fact. And yet, when I get in bed, go to sleep, wake up 3 o'clock in the morning,

if you're 47, you know what I mean, and look over, and there's my wife, my beloved, my perfect one, mouth open, just drooling. But you know what? I know that night she didn't feel all the flutters and butterflies and think, oh, isn't he sweet? No, he's thinking, she's thinking, what a selfish, can't believe he's, what a hypocrite. I know she's thinking all those things, rightly so. And yet, and yet it's not conditional based on a contract. It's covenantal because she promised I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.

That's how I know my girl loves me because she has said from the very beginning, she has said divorce is not an option. Homicide? Maybe. Divorce? Never. Goes on to say, before I was aware, my desire set me among the chariots of my kinsmen, a prince. He's going to take her out on another date. We'll get back to that next week. Verse 13. Return, return, oh, Shulamite. Return, return, that we may look upon you. Why should you look upon the Shulamite as upon a dance before two armies? That two armies thing is from the Old Testament. Jacob was going to go to war with this army and they reconciled and their armies became one army.

Here's what's happening. They are looking at her and they say, behold the Shulamite. This is a really big deal. Nowhere do we get her first name in the song of Solomon. His name is Solomon. Shulamite would have been the feminine version of the name Solomon. What they are saying is truly, as a result of this conflict,

we see that the two have become one. There's Solomon and the Shulamite. It would be like if you saw me and G and you would say, there's Joby and Jobelino or whatever. whatever the girl named for Jobius, okay? Like, we can't tell where one ends and the other begins. That's what they are saying.

And again, it's because, remember all the way back in chapter 2, verse 15, he says, catch for us the little foxes in our garden. It's not me against you, duking this thing out. You're not trying to win a fight. You're trying to win the heart of your spouse. You're saying, let's you and I get together and solve this conflict together.

Here's the point. When in conflict, you can be right or you can be married. Those are your options. You can be right or you can be married. And again, if you say, where do you get that? We get it at the cross. That at the cross of Jesus Christ, he laid down his life, not to prove that he was right. He laid down his life to reconcile us unto him.

Every time you're in a conflict with your spouse, you have that same opportunity. Your marriage is worth fighting for. and the key is to be more concerned about winning her heart or winning his heart than winning the fight. And the only way I know to tell you how to do this, it's not communication skills, it's not tips and tricks like the do-over and the win you, all that kind of stuff. Those are important tools. But foundationally, the only way I know to tell you how to do this is you have to know Jesus. Now, I want to jump back to verse 8 real quick, just because it's problematic. That's where that's where he says there are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number.

We've gotten this email several times, and it's a legit email. If you've been around Bible study and we start talking about Song of Solomon and you know other parts of the Bible, you will know that Solomon, by the time he was old, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. So you know the brother's got some issues. 700 wives? Give me a break. Okay? And you think, how in the world can we take advice from this guy when he had a third? thousand women. Let me give you a big fat warning. A big fat warning. And especially if you love

Jesus and you think your marriage is going just great. Let me give you a big warning. You walk away from Jesus and there's no telling what you can do with your life. I mean, you take your eyes off of him and you set them on other things and you move away from him. And I am telling you, you have no idea of the horrible things and the hurtful things and the hateful things that you are capable of. Solomon was supposed to be the wisest man in the world. He built the temple. Y'all, he wrote books of the Bible. He wrote the Proverbs.

I know you think you're spiritually mature because you lead a disciple group. But he wrote Song of Solomon and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. but you turn your heart away from the Lord, and I'm just telling you, you have no idea the kind of collateral damage you are capable of. You don't believe me? Don't we see of some pastor just about every month who goes down in flames? Please, I'm warning you. First Kings 11 says this, now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughters of Pharaoh, and then he lists out all the people, from the nations concerning which the law. Lord had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall

they with you. For, this is really important, especially in our day and age, before there tells us why God said Israelites don't marry people from other tribes and tongues and nations. For they surely will turn away your heart after their gods. This had nothing to do with ethnicity. Nothing. It had to do with faithfulness to God. Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods,

and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord His God. Let me give you a few things. I'm warning you. Number one, pride comes before the fall. Nobody's bulletproof, including me. And the person that scares me is not the person that says, man, I really better pay attention to this because I am capable of some things

that I can't even imagine right now. That person doesn't bother me. The person that scares me to death is the person that says, I got this. Because isn't the cross of Jesus evidence that we ain't got this and we need his help? Secondly, you stay close to Jesus. You stay close to Jesus.

You want to be a decent husband, wife, human. You abide in him for apart from him. You can do nothing. And if you walk away from him, if you take your eyes off him, you, me, we are capable of hurting the people that we love the most. You see, because it goes on to say that Solomon did some awful things like worshipped other gods. One of the gods he worshipped is Astereth. And he built a temple to her in Jerusalem. And the way you would worship that God, that little G God, is you would worship them by sleeping with temple prostitutes.

and in Jerusalem, he loads up that temple with prostitutes and goes with sleeps with prostitutes. Another one he worship is a God called Mollick. And the way you would worship Mollick was child sacrifice. You would burn babies. And you look at that and you're like, hold on one second. How in the world could this man get to a place in his life where he's sleeping with prostitutes and he's killing babies?

How could that happen? And I'm just telling you to turn on the news. It happens every single day in America. you walk away from Jesus and you have no idea what you were capable of. And then, which leads to the question that we get an email that says, so how can we trust it? Why would we listen to Solomon if he was such a hypocrite? And I'm telling you a couple of things.

One is that God can speak his perfect inspired word through imperfect sinners. He's made a living at it. If you look at the disciples themselves, Matthew extorted his own people for the sake. of Rome that Paul, who wrote most of the epistles, that he killed Christians, and God used those men, those imperfect men, to give us his perfect word. It does not change the authority of the word of God. Think about it this way. If you went to the doctor and you walked into the doctor's office, and there he is, 200 pounds overweight, just smoking a cigarette. And he looked

at you and said, you know what you need? You need to lose some weight and quit smoking. And you're like, who are you to tell me what I need to do? Even though that man is a hypocrite, it does not change the truth of what he is saying to you. And God uses crooked sticks to make straight lines all the time. And so the only way, the only way that we are going to be able to make it when we have conflict in our marriage, I'm telling you,

the only way that when you get into it with your wife or husband and you hopefully you say, you know what the problem here is, I'm not getting what I want. Now if you say it out loud, it's not like a three-year-old, but that's what you're thinking. The problem here is I'm not getting what I want. And so instead of reacting to the situation, I'm going to respond in love.

I'm going to respond with grace. I'm going to respond with forgiveness. I want you to know you can't give it if you ain't got it. And so the only way that you are going to be able to respond in grace and love and forgiveness to your spouse is you have to know the ultimate source of grace and love and forgiveness. And his name is Jesus Christ. because every single one of us were born into conflict with God. We were born enemies of God because of our own wretchedness and sinfulness and depravity.

And God did not react to us. When he rejected him, he did not reject us. Instead, he sent his son, Jesus Christ, not to just be right, but to be our redeemer. And Jesus came and he lived a righteous life. and he went to the cross and he died in our place and he took responsibility for all of the sin of the world and zero of it was his fault but it wasn't about fault it was about love and grace and mercy and on the cross he endured the full wrath of God he became sin that we could become his righteousness he pushes up on his nail pierce feet and he says to tell us die it is finished

that means paid in full. And for anybody that would believe, for anybody that would just trust, okay, my way's not working, my actions aren't going to be enough to reconcile me with God. It's not about what I have done or even the good things I might do,

but I'm going to believe, I'm going to trust that somehow when Jesus says it is finished, when he said paid in full, that counted for me and my sin too. And the Bible says, if you put your faith in him, if you trust that what he did on the cross somehow counted for you,

then you will be reconciled with God. And I want to give you the opportunity to do that. I know we got a lot of visitors. I know we got a lot of people checking out this series because it's fun and funny. We're talking about sex or you're trying to tighten up your marriage or whatever it is. But if you miss this, you're going to miss the whole point. That the only way, the only way for you to make it, just in this life and especially in your marriage, is you have to know Jesus.

My question is, do you know him? The good news is, the good news is is that when we were running from him, when we were barred from fellowship with him, he anointed that thing that separated us from him with the blood of his son. And if you would put your faith in that, then you are reconciled to God.

You could do that right now. It's as simple as this, whether you're in any of our campuses or watching online, it's as simple as just admitting it. Hey, I'm a sinner in need of a Savior. I don't need to just do better that I need to become alive.

I admit it. And then I believe, I believe when he died on the cross, it counted for me. And I am ready to confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I want to give you the opportunity to put your faith in Jesus right now.

Would you bow your head? Would you close your eyes? And no matter where you are or who you are, when you're watching, if you were ready to do that right now, if you were ready to surrender your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, admit it, I'm a sinner in need of a Savior.

I believe that somehow when Christ died on the cross, that counted for me. And I am ready to confess him as Lord and Savior. Then I would ask you, would you lift your hand in the air? Would you raise your hand high? Would you, in your heart say to the Lord, Father, here I am. I believe that when Christ died on the cross, somehow that counted for me. Our good and gracious Heavenly, Father God, we love you more than anything because you first loved us. And God, I thank you that you did not wait for us to get our act together before you would rescue us.

but you demonstrated your love for us and this that while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us. And Lord, I pray, Spirit, that you, that you would overwhelm people with your love. And in this very moment, they would surrender their life to Jesus, knowing that you forgive, and then you adopt, and you make all things new. And God, I want to pray for some marriages. God, they are not in just a light conflict over air condition or, you know, what happened to the bedroom last night.

God, it feels like they are hunkered down in a battle. And Spirit of God, I pray that you would convict and you would comfort. God, I pray that you would lead some husbands and wives to say some wise words to one another, and they would say, I am so, so sorry for the carelessness of my words. And God, you would bring healing. Because for sure, Lord, if you can breathe new life into your dead son in that tomb, then you can breathe new life into some marriages. And if the tomb is empty, anything as possible, including reconciliation.

And we pray this really in the only name that matters when you pray. We pray this in the good, strong name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. And for you would please stand as we respond. Just like we do every week, the gospel demands a response. We respond by bringing our first and best, our ties and offerings. We respond by praying. I would encourage you to come and pray.

And we respond by singing, by lifting up our voices like one big prayer all over the city and all of our location, singing the same songs at the same time that we would join our voices together to him. So let us bring, let us sing, let us pray. Let's respond.