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SUCCESSFULLY SINGLE , to listen to Jeff's personal testimony please click here.
2. Before You Say “I DO” (Again)
In this message today, I want to take us all through a cycle that more and more people are experiencing. It goes like this:
- singleness,
- courtship,
- marriage,
- marriage breakdown,
- divorce,
- singleness again,
- remarriage.
At the beginning of that cycle, we start as singles yearning for companionship. Now, last week we discussed contentment as a single. Why? Because marriage won’t
- heal your dysfunctions,
- complete the character you lack, or
- fix your problems.
o Marriage may ADD some problems, however!
o The apostle Paul even celebrated the single life.
So, we’re learned last week: you can be happy and whole as a single. BUT - that certainly doesn’t mean that the longing for marriage that most singles feel is somehow bad or wrong. In the same passage where Paul celebrates the single life he also says:
1 Cor 7:36-38 if a man thinks he ought to marry his fiancé because he has trouble controlling his passions and time is passing, it is all right; it is not a sin. Let them marry.
In Genesis, God says:
“Look, I created you male and female. I created you to be community creatures. I created you with an inner desire to find a mate with whom you could have physical, emotional and spiritual connection. ”
So after last week, you might think God’s Word is a bit schizophrenic on this score. I knew two Bible college roommates in my dorm who were best friends. The joke was, one was a committed, staunch bachelor and the other was engaged to his high school sweet heart. So someone tacked up this sign on their door :
- Prov 18:22 He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD.
- 1 Cor 7:1 It is good for a man not to marry.
We can hold these two ideas together, can’t we? It’s like God says to singles:
- You are a whole person before me and being single is a privileged calling
o AND he ALSO says:
- You are a community creature made to reflect unity in diversity in the sexual bond.
Think about the Garden of Eden, were God says to Adam and Eve, “of any tree in the garden you may FREELY eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil you must not eat”. Creation is always FREEDOM within LIMITS. And it’s like that for the single. When you consider a spouse, God says, the whole world is your oyster, happy hunting!
Can find a mate in your hometown?, go elsewhere. “ANY tree”. Cross a border if you have to. Heck, I didn’t find any good women in Canada, I had to come here. You’re free, God says, any tree! Go, find and form a bond of mutual sacrifice, servanthood, love, and intimacy.
Ah, but here’s the limits:
- If you’re a Christian, you must form these unions in Christ. They are spiritual unions. One man, One woman, ONE FLESH.
o You have the whole world in front of you, why settle for someone who doesn’t share your most profound loyalty – devotion to Jesus Christ? And not just in name only*, but real, profound, heart felt commitment to Christ? Paul expresses the freedom and limit very succinctly in
o 1 Cor 7:39 A woman is… free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord.
Simple. But how many Christians ignore this injunction? Lots. And lots of them then wonder why, after the sexual buzz cools off some they are so unhappy, why they feel alone, come to church alone, pray alone, make decisions with children and money alone, or worse, in constant conflict.
You see, Single, God would spare you one of the greatest agitations in marriage – building the marriage on two different spiritual blueprints. Some of you, this situation can’t be helped, because you became a Christian AFTER you got married. But when you’re single, you have the world before you, the choice is yours! Choose well, God says.
BECAUSE: PS – “I hope none of these unions break down.” They are sacred, and my Will is that they last.
In the Old Testament Book of Malachi 2:16 God says,
“I hate divorce.” Now, understand, I don't hate divorced people, what I mean is,
I hate it when promises are broken and a sacred covenant is torn up.
I hate it when people get betrayed and violated and hurt and then discarded.
I hate it when children are left fatherless or motherless.
I hate it when once-tender people are filled with vile bitterness and hostility.
I hate the anguish of divorce - I hate it.”
I hope you would agree with God on that! But you know what? God’s always known it’s going to happen. In the fifth book of the Bible, God set up a permission for divorce in some cases because it was the lesser of two evils. See, God knew after he set up the whole beautiful ideal of marriage, that there would be breakdowns.
WHY? Well, look inside the anatomy of a marriage breakdown what do you see?
Sometimes you see really poor selection going on. Superficial, careless, hasty spouse selection.
Sometimes you see unwillingness on the part of two people to do conflict resolution.
Sometimes you see just good old fashioned promise breaking. Someone makes a vow before God and everybody and then later cashes in for a sexier version, or a richer version.
Sometimes , you see spouses who turn angry, bitter, hostile, self-centered and controlling to point of obsession.
Sometimes there’s drug or alcohol abuse that eventually turns a partner into a lying, out of control child.
What’s the connective thread Allen Creek? Well, Jesus said it best when he said in Matthew 19:8
“Listen, the Law permits divorce because your hearts grow hard.”
You boil down the dissolution of marriage unions to it’s most basic component and it comes to this: the hardness of human hearts. Clearly, that’s not God’s design. That’s God’s concession. His creation design, Jesus said, is for unions that reflect the faithful, steadfast, love in God’s own Triune nature. The upshot of this teaching is simple:
Look, if there's pressure in your marriage, if there's some stress cracks in the foundation, don't tag the furniture and call the attorney!
See, in Jesus day people were divorcing for just looking at them funny, the stew’s too salty, the tunic’s not pressed, whatever. Jesus is saying,
did you all the miss the memo? Marriage unions were meant BY GOD to be permanent! Don't just go filing for divorce and run from this stuff. Face it! Deal with it.
When problems come, do NOT drift. Do not store resentment. Do NOT be passive. If you take Jesus seriously, you make a fuss! You raise your hand. You fight for what matters to God!
(BLACK) ILLUS: I’m told there’s certain safety precautions that all sailors need to know. Like the use of signal flares. Now, here’s me, OK. Landlubber. Born and raised on the prairies. Thinks Lake Ki is an awful lot of water in one place. So imagine I’m out in the middle of the Sound on a sailing boat, and I ram an object and start taking on water – I’d be lost. What would I do?
- I’d probably just jump ship and watch it go down.
- And then I’d say, we’ll I guess that was inevitable!
But someone who knows a thing or two about sailing would say,
Rick, you fool! That was not inevitable! A prepared sailor always has a signal flair. We are liking to shoot the signal flare BEFORE the boat sinks!
What Jesus teaching on marriage tells us is, if you make a covenant to stay faithful to the grave, and you get part way in and realize, oh boy, there’s problems (secret resentments, unmet expectations, unhappiness) – shoot the signal flare fast! Light up the sky!
Call the church.
Call your small group leader.
Call a staff member.
Call an elder.
Find another couple in the church whose marriage seems to be sound and whose love you can trust. Walk over to their house, knock on their door, and say, “There's some pressure building in our marriage, and we want to act on it right now before we give in to hardness of heart.”
Johnna and I have done this before. We’re no different from you, we need help to have Jesus mind on our marriage. We’ve been in someone else’s living before hammering this stuff out. You think you’re the only ones? You’re not. You think you have no chance at a great marriage because of things you said, because of sins you committed? Bull.
That’s a lie and that’s the devil talking to you.
There is hope for every union – no matter how troubled – to become a God honoring, loving one. Now, it’s not going to be easy, and there will have to be confession and repentance and changes, but friend, God cheers for these unions, and provides the resources to build them.
So we’ve covered singleness, marriage, and marriage breakdown. Now, let's say that the marriage does end. Let’s say you don't shoot the signal flares or you do it and you don't follow good counsel. Or lets say you had a spouse just dead set intent on breaking up the marriage and you couldn’t stop it.
Now, let’s say, you’re in that painful courtroom where papers are exchanged and attorneys are smiling, and your marriage is over.
You're single again. Now what?
Friends, I think you can look at divorce in one of two ways.
- You really can look at it as the ultimate, unpardonable sin and failure, and you can hang your head and put a sign around your neck that says, “Shame”.
- Or, you can look at it in a way that’s more biblical. You can say,
o “God set his ideal for marriages to last to the grave, and for a whole bunch of reasons, my spouse and I didn't make the standard. We didn't live up to the ideal. What can I learn? And is it possible that after divorce, God might say, I could try again?”
Well, you search the Scripture and I think it’s clear: divorce is NOT the unpardonable sin. Some Christians do think that way, or they feel that a divorcee should never remarry. The reason is that Jesus said if you remarry, “you’re committing adultery.”
(What did he mean? We’ll talk about that in Extended)
For now, let me say I don’t think Jesus is teaching that a divorced person is never free to remarry. BUT, based on Jesus Teaching, if you’re divorced and single, and Christian, I think you need to face some things head on, before remarriage should even be an option for you.
Let me list three R’s that you'd better face before you think about remarrying:
1. THE FIRST IS REPENTANCE .
This is very hard, but it means, you confess before God the part you played in the breaking up of your union. It is a part that you have to own and turn from.
Maybe it was that you made a mistake in the selection process, impatience, ungodly criteria were used.
You valued many things over godly character.
Maybe it was immaturity.
Maybe it was selfishness when your needs weren’t met the way you wanted.
Maybe it was that you didn't trust God through a tragedy, and to protect your heart from further damage you gave up.
Maybe you caudled sin when you should have confronted it sooner.
Maybe it was some other kind of sin, but, friend, you played a part.
It might be a two percent part. It might be an 82 percent part. You might have committed gross sin, you might have turned a blind eye to gross sin and called it being ‘nice’. You played a part in the demise of your marriage, and you'd better own it and you'd better face it before God and you'd better grieve over it.
The truth is, some of you have so convinced yourself that your divorce was the lesser of two evils that you never grieved it. You worked the justification so deep that you took on a cavalier attitude and never really mourned the failure.
Friend, look: this isn’t about feeling shame forever, it’s about getting your heart on God’s page and not your own. It’s about your worldview, your values. What place does marriage hold? The same as God? If your future is going to be different than your past, your heart needs to reflect God’s heart and so you better get in touch with his sorrow when a one flesh union gets ripped apart. That’s Repentance.
2. THE SECOND 'R' IS RECONCILIATION .
Why is this so critical? Because without reconciliation, you will never be free. Now, some of you see that word and think, Rick, I can’t reconcile with my ex are you kidding. Well, listen, reconciling doesn’t mean remarrying your ex. It means that you follow Christ down the path of releasing the bitterness of offenses accrued in that failed marriage.
A dear friend and leader in this church got divorced many years ago, and after a while she found someone else and was considering marrying again. But then, God did something. She wrote to me this week:
I was convicted that I had to face the past in order to move forward into the future. I had to trust God to free me to Marry my new boyfriend or to begin the reconciling process with my ex. This entailed resurrecting my love for him (a daunting prop!).
But I wanted to be right w/God more than "with" a man. More than that, I was in love w/God more than man...still am. So I went back to PA to see what was up. I say that lightly now, but calling into the unknown was potentially the most difficult confrontation I've ever had to meet.
I had help. I sought out counsel. When I got there, he had moved on. He had already remarried and had a baby. We confessed, received and extended forgiveness. He said, "God bless you, and thank-you" I wished him the same...then an odd thing happened...I grieved the marriage that I had lost.
Returning to WA, my boyfriend was waiting. He waited through all the unknowns. He also, had given me up to the Lord. The clean slate of freedom, it's a beautiful thing.
Wow. THAT’S honoring a spirit of reconciliation and trusting God. You know some people, the moment they hear the gavel - boom, divorce - run out and they think,
“Okay, now I'm all set to pursue a new relationship. I’m free.”
But they’re not free. They find out after they’ve run straight into the next relationship and lo and behold, THAT NEW marriage is being adversely affected by those remaining toxins towards their former spouse. The children pay a price!.
Jesus taught that you cannot become whole relationally or with God until you bring a reconciling spirit to your neighbor and guess who that includes? Your former spouse. Until you can say to that person,
“You know, I've repented to God, but I just want to acknowledge before you the part I played in the demise of our relationship. I’m sorry. I want to let the hatred go. You may not be able to say these same things, but I can’t live with the toxins in my spirit.”
Look, this does not mean you will remarry and ex. It might not even mean you can be friends, if there's all kinds of dysfunctions involved, drugs, sex etc. But in your spirit, the bible would say, you have to get to the place of being at peace. Yes, for the kids sake, but also for you. You reconcile so that you can be toxin free. And to obey.
The first 'R' is for repentance, the second is for reconciliation,
3. And the third ‘R’ is for remaining single .
This is most likely the hardest “R” - remaining single UNTIL you’ve reestablished certain godly priorities. For example. Don’t marry again until you’ve:
reestablished the priority of a growing relationship with God,
reestablished some relational connections with friends and family,
reestablished some emotional equilibrium from the unrest and torment of divorce
reestablished the priority of Christian marriage and sex.
If a person jumps right back into marriage there’s a very good chance it’s marriage on the rebound. You’re still destabilized from the divorce, and marriage seems like a life raft.
Friend, I say this in all love: remain single long enough to settle into the security of knowing God. If you don’t know God, if you haven’t accepted God’s gracious provision of forgiveness through Christ, if you don’t know the peace he offered, then now is a great time for that to happen.
- Accept Christ!
Now is the time to get centered in God so that he’s your security and you don’t have to rush into remarriage prematurely. And now is the time to grow in him, so you’ll have the resources to deal with your own hardness of heart. If you give marriage another go, that hardness of heart will come up again - know that.
CONCLUSION
When is remarriage unbiblical or ill-advised? Well, simply, it's when a divorced person hasn’t faced the three “R’s” –
- they will not repent,
- they will not reconcile and
- they will not remain single long enough to regain godly priorities.
If not, you’re running head long into that situation that Jesus spoke so strongly about: that musical spouses mentality, where, if things get bad, I just trade my spouse in. Jesus said, that serial monogamy thing, is just adultery by another name.
Now, here’s some closing questions for us as a church.
Can we be a place where singleness is honored?
Where we don’t pressure people into quick remarriages before they’ve had a chance to repent, reconcile and remain single for a bit?
Can we be a place that encourages singles to select mates well, where we cheer people on to remain sexually pure until they find that mate?
Can we be this center of marital health and wholeness, marriages that reflect Christ’s relationship with the Church?
Can we be this life giving, mature community that treats marriage with enough honor that we would never be caught letting the boats sink before we shot off some flares.
Can we be a place where people who have had marriage failures are loved and accepted and not treated with second class status?
Grace?
I hope the answer to ALL these questions is yes, because that would make us a biblical community, a Jesus emulating community, a community that will breath life into every person that enters it.
