Okay. We found him. Here, bud. Okay. You ready, sir? Come on up. Roll Tide. That's right. Roll Tide. Absolutely. Okay. All right. OK, let me read tonight from Ephesians. Go back to Ephesians chapter 4 this time, picking up at verse 25. So here the word of the Lord again. Therefore, putting away lying, each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer. Rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you. Therefore, be followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. That's the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Thanks be to God. Amen. Lord, we thank you for giving us your word. Help us truly to be thankful for everything that you've revealed to us. And we pray that you will help us to believe the things you have spoken to see the wisdom of your word and to be able by your grace and power to follow it all our days. Help us and our children to live faithfully and thus to live with joy and gladness for Jesus sake. Amen. As we've kind of gone through this really, really brief study of marriage, I imagine if you're like me, you kind of sit there and you think, boy, you know, I wish I'd known this 30 years ago. And that's yeah, me too. That's that's the way I feel. It's all part of the pain of studying topics like this after you've been in the relationship longer than a week or longer than a decade. And this is the way it is with many things, isn't it? It seems like we learn how to do something after we've messed up so much, it seems impossible to straighten it out. And that's a feeling that we have every now and then. It can be very disheartening and discouraging. And you wonder, why didn't, Lord, why didn't you show me this before? And sometimes the reality is he did, but we thought we knew better. We thought we had a better way. Very often our problems end up being when you go back and think about them, it's a result of our own arrogance and pride and our refusal to do what the Lord told us to do back in the beginning at the first place. And often the best way was not unknown or untried, it was just not chosen. And it was not chosen for one reason or another, because we thought we knew better. So here's the lesson. You never know better than God. You're never wiser than God. You never have a better idea than God. You never know how to do something in a way that will work out better than the way God told you to do it. That's just the lesson. So if God says, this is what I want you to do. You do it. You don't sit back and say, no, why would he ask that? Why would he say that? I'm just not sure about these things. I just have all these kinds of problems about. Stop it. Do what he said, do what he said to do. He is right. You were wrong. This is really easy. I mean, we're not talking calculus tonight. You know, this is real, real simple. God knows more than you do. And I hope that's not a shock to you, but it's the truth. God knows more than you do. And he, therefore, when he says it, it ought to be done. So if God says, don't let the sun go down on your wrath, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. He means it. So why did you do it? And then you act surprised that things got worse. You can't figure it out. I don't know what we should do. When God says, flee immorality, flee fornication, you flee it. You don't walk into places and situations that you know ahead of time you're going to be tempted. You don't put yourself willingly in a place of temptation. It's not wiser to do that than it is to flee fornication and immorality. When God says, he who spares the rod hates his son, that's the truth. Don't, don't tell me no, no. For me, it's I love them too much to do this. No, God's already told me what's wrong with you. You hate your children. Don't, don't turn that around. That's the truth. When God says the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. It's not wiser to you to think that lesser, a lesser degree of love is sufficient. And when God says that the wife is to honor their husband just as the church honors Jesus and obeys Him, then it's not a better way to dishonor Him and ignore Him and think that'll be good for Him and teach Him a lesson. That's not the way things work. God knows best. He created us. He knows what is best for us. And He loves us. Do you really think He would command or He has commanded things of us that would be bad for us. You want to say that? Raise your hand. You really want to say that? All right, well, then why don't you do it? You know, we acknowledge, and if I say, what's the one truth the Bible makes very plain about God? Even the children would say God is love. And that is fundamental, but nobody believes it. Because you act like that when he tells you to do something, it's probably not going to work out. It's probably not the wisest thing to do. And you try to figure out all kinds of ways to get around doing that thing that he told you to do. Because you're afraid of doing what he said, because you're afraid that's going to get you in a bigger mess or it's too difficult or it's going to hurt too much or it's going to do this or that. And at bottom, what you're really saying is, I don't believe God loves his love at all. But God is love. And therefore, when he tells you to do something, he's saying it in love because he desires you to have his joy and happiness. He is the ever blessed one, which means nobody's happier than God. Nobody has a better time than God. And he wants you to live that life that he has. You must share in his life. And that's what he wants. That's what eternal life is. It is the life of God sharing the life of God. And that doesn't mean just unending life, which sounds a little boring. It means joyful, full, fruitful, amazing life forever. That's the way God lives and that's what he wants. He really is all wise. And therefore if he says it, that's best. You're not going to figure out a better way to do it. He really is all holy, so that if he tells you to do it, that's a good thing, not a bad thing, because the all holy God doesn't command you to do bad things. He doesn't tempt you to evil. He doesn't lead you into sin. So to ignore God's ways is simply to say that he's a liar and a fool, and that's the way you believe. And every time you don't do what he says, that's what you're saying. And I don't think you want to say that. If I have any, you know, that's my judgment of you. I don't think that's what you want to say, but you need to realize that's what you are saying. Every sin is blasphemy. Every one of them. So to refuse to live as God has told you to live is suicidal. It's the equivalent of having a big butcher knife and every minute or so just stabbing yourself as hard as you can. What would you think of a guy who told you that he decided that taking a daily dose of arsenic was going to be good for his health, and then after a few weeks was shocked that he was dying? You'd go, you know what? You're an idiot. I have no sympathy for you, because you're an idiot. You ignore everything that everyone knows about arsenic and the body, and then you want me to be sorry that you did this to yourself, and then you want me to be sorry that you're dying. Well, you see, that reality is what the vast majority of people are doing around us, the equivalent of that, except it's worse. They refuse to do what God says to do, they think they know a better way of living, and then they're shocked over the fact that their lives are a mess, their relationships are destroyed, and they are filled with despair. The only way of life is following God's commandments. The only way to prosper is to do what God has said. The only way to be happy, like you dream about, like you long to be, is to live as God commands you to live. And if you refuse to do this, then your life is going to be extremely unhappy, barren, full of bitterness, frustration, and death. That's the way it is. And it won't change. God has created you after his image. You will only prosper when you become like him, holy, righteous, faithful, learning to love as he loves. Now, I want to kind of conclude our study tonight by talking about some things that we can do to repair marriage because I've had couples that have been married over 30 years and sometimes longer. sit down and say, you know what? We cannot go on. We're not going to go on with this. The bitterness, the frustration, the disappointment and the neglect that's piled up over all those years has gotten to be such a huge pile that they just have gotten to the point where they just want to give up. It doesn't seem possible to deal with. If I say, well, you've got to confess your sins. It's way beyond that. It's way beyond that. Did you ever see, I don't know that this is still on. I only watched this once because I couldn't bear it. It was hoarders that go into these people's homes that have never thrown anything away in their lives. And literally you have this little path that you have to walk through and every room is stacked I just watched it and just sat there going, no. Everything was like a horror movie. It was just horrible. Couldn't watch it. And thinking, what would you do? And these people are supposed to go in there and clean that out. I'm thinking, how? Just light a match and walk away whistling. Well, that's what these couples feel like. They're at that point. Their homes are so full of garbage that's been there for years that they've gotten to the point of saying, there is no hope of cleaning this out. So you know what? We've both decided to light a match and burn it up. And we just go in. We're done. We can't do it anymore. The pile of offenses is so high. The hurt is so deep that it seems impossible to fix. Now, what I'm afraid of is that there are a lot of people who are in this position. Now, I hope that that doesn't include a single one of you, but you probably know someone that is getting to this point. And it may be that you might, God forbid, get to this point. Well, this is what I want to talk about. How do you repair a situation like this? What do you do? when you have a marriage that's been battered and damaged and filled with the garbage of sin for so long that nobody's ever taken out and dealt with properly that it seems impossible. And the truth is life is life. I mean, life in this world is lived among sinners, people who have not yet been made perfect in holiness and still live with the effects and consequences of sins. The only candidates for marriage are men and women who've been scarred by sin and corrupted by sin. And they're not completely free from sin. And therefore, when you marry them, they're going to sin against you. And you're going to sin against them. There's no way to avoid these problems. Every marriage, every family have to deal with the reality of daily sin. Day by day, every day, there's sin that crops up. And if you're struggling in your marriage and things are not happy and not like they need to do, this is what you're facing. You're facing the consequences of sin, the sin of non-glorified sinners living together in an intimate relationship. And it can get incredibly messy, as messy as those homes on that terrible TV show. The vast, and you need to realize, this is not unheard of, and it's not unique, it's not exotic, and it's not rare. It's extremely normal and unexceptional in the vast majority of marriages, and of course I'm speaking here, at least I hope I'm speaking in the vast majority of non-Christian marriages, that's the way they are. And even Christians, however, are facing these kinds of problems. But this is so, no matter, this is the way it is, and you know, as I say, these are not, but the thing is, they don't need to have years and years of counseling like you tend to want to tell these people. I tend to want to say, you know what, listen to this, I don't think I can say anything to you, please just leave, and call somebody else. And that's the way you feel, because it seems like This is so complex, so tied up in knots, too many knots here to untie that I just don't know what we can do. But you have to realize, well, no, the solution here is really, again, it's very simple. It's just exactly what we have to do in any other way when we come to dealing with sin. The vast majority of problems are repaired by repentance and forgiveness and restitution where necessary. And being willing to grant the mercy of casting the sins of others behind your back and starting afresh. In other words, if you were given the task of cleaning up one of those homes, that where nothing's been thrown away for 30 years, as garbage of all sorts, all old newspapers, magazines, beer cans, coke cans, bean cans, candy wrappers, and all sorts of trash piled everywhere. What's the first thing you should do? You know, I mean, I'm assuming you're not allowed to burn it down. You don't have the choice of just walking away and saying, I'm not touching that mess. Before you start mopping floors, before you start repainting the walls and maybe repairing the damage that's been done through that and getting some new furniture, the first thing you have to do is throw out the trash. You gotta get rid of the garbage. You have to deal with the garbage and clear it away before you can do anything in regard to rebuilding, redecorating, remodeling that house and getting it livable again, where humans can live in it. And so in the same way, it's not unusual for marriages that are over a decade old, and sometimes not even that old, to have collected a lot of garbage. Old offenses, hurts, thoughtless acts, words, carelessness, pride, selfishness, all have contributed to these huge piles of trash that are just sitting there in the living room, in the halls, in the bathroom, in the bedrooms, in the guest room, everywhere you look. Because they've never been dealt with properly. And you can't even, if I were to ask you, why are you bitter against your husband? Why are you so discontent with your wife? You couldn't even remember all of them. All you have is a memory that, yes, he's just done this forever. And I said, what particularly? I don't know. But it was done. And it is. I mean, the evidence is there. But you can't even tell me anymore what happened. It's been so long, there's been so much, there's been so many. And if we sat down your husband and said, now confess your sins to your wife, he wouldn't know where to start. And if I turned to the wife and said, please confess your sins to your husband, she would go. I don't know where to begin. It's too much. There's too much garbage. to even get started. Maybe from time to time, either the husband or the wife made an effort to clean it up, but the other one didn't help and so you got discouraged and you just gave up. And so you ended up living, you know, clearing out just a little space where you can live. And you have little paths to get to the kitchen, a little path to get to the bathroom and so forth. But you have your own little space and he ends up having his own little space. And every now and then you get together to do something together like go to church or go to a birthday party of one of the children or the grandchildren. But most of the time, you're just living in your little space and hoping that the other one doesn't say something to set you off. Now, what's the solution to this terrible situation? You know, honestly, I got to the point where I just said, you know what you need to do here? Do you know what a dumpster is?" And they said, yeah, there's a dumpster outside, you know, down the street. I said, what I want you to do is to shovel all this stuff, every bit of it, into that dumpster. Just put it all there. Take it all out. Throw it out. Don't even look at it. Don't catalog it. Don't go through it. Don't analyze it. I just want you to take all the things that he has done to you that you can't even name. So don't worry. You got this huge pile, right? Yes, a huge. OK, just take it all and throw it in that place. I said, Hub, you do the same thing. All the things she's done that's aggravated you, that's distressed you, that's disappointed you, I want you to pick them all up, carry them down to the end of the road and dump them in the dumpster. And then light a match and burn them all up and forget them. And I made up, I said, this is what is called, you know, the old Christian tradition of dumpster forgiveness. They go, really? I said, yes, it's just something the church has done forever. You ask for dumpster forgiveness and grant forgiveness to each other for that whole dumpster load of garbage that you've collected over the years so that you can start afresh to rebuild your house and promise together to keep it clean this time. OK. That sound alright? Start over and do it again. Just start over. Paul puts it this way. Forgive one another just as God in Christ Jesus also forgave you. You have to forgive like God forgives you. And when God forgives you, he forgives you a lot more than you can remember and confess, right? Can you confess all your sins, every one of them? You don't even know them all. What do you what do you do when you go to before the Lord? You do something like David, you just say. I can remember some things, but I've forgotten a vast number of things, and Lord, all I can do is lay them all before you and beg you to forgive me and cleanse me and wash me whiter than snow and cast them behind your back as far as the east is from the west. Put them far away from you. Don't ever look at them again. Don't hold them against me. Let me start over with you. It's an old tradition. It's lasted for thousands of years and God authorized it. It's called dumpster forgiveness. When your sins are too many to count and you can't list them, you can still confess them and you can mean it. And when you do confess those things that you might remember, you then say, and then I know that there are thousands of things that I've done to you that I don't remember. I can only tell you that I'm so ashamed and sorry that I did them to you. And I've caused you to be this way toward me. And that's what I want you to forgive me for. And you ask forgiveness for all of them. And so you confess. Your lack of love and thoughtfulness, your pride and selfishness, your failure to love your wife as Christ loves the church. And you ask your wife to forgive you and give you the mercy of a fresh start. And then the wife turns to the husband and says, I want to confess my lack of love and respect for you, my pride and selfishness, my failure to honor you as the church honors Jesus. And I would like you to forgive me and give me the mercy of a fresh start. You throw out the garbage and in mercy, burn it up. so that the house, that is your relationship, is cleared so that you can, you know, mop the floors, refinish them, paint the walls, put some new pictures up, clean out, you know, dust a little bit and get it all ready for a fresh start, a new beginning. Now you say, I don't know, that sounds too simple. I can tell you it isn't. It's really hard. And here's why. This means that you have to give up this feeling of superiority that comes with being bitter against someone. For a good reason. It's a delicious feeling, you've all enjoyed it. Someone does something to you and doesn't ask your forgiveness. And so you have grounds now to be really angry toward it. And if anybody ever mentions his name, you can go, oh yes, that person, I'm very well familiar with that man. And they can go, what, what, what happened? You go, oh, I don't want to talk about it. Oh yeah, we know that trick. You just did that to make me ask. I don't want to talk about it. Well, no, no. Tell me, what did he do? Well, I'll tell you, but I hope you don't tell anyone. You're only the 451st person I've told this week. And so you go and you get to feel and tell them how injured you have been. Your holy little pure soul has been damaged by Mr. Inconsiderate, who tramples on everyone's feelings without the second, without the least thought. And you poor soul, you've suffered so severely, but you kept it to yourself, except with the 882 people that you've told. and your mother that you called and spent an hour on the phone crying about. It's a delicious feeling to feel more holy than other people. And it destroys the church all the time because all of us like it so much. And it's almost bad when someone comes and asks your forgiveness because then you know I have to forgive them when they ask me, at least that's what Jesus says, but I think I'll put it off a little bit and I'll say, you know, I'm sorry, I just can't talk about this right now. And you take a deep breath with your mouth closed through the nose, you know, and the poor guy is standing there saying, well, I'm sorry, I just want to ask you if you'll talk. You put him off so you can feel superior at least another week. This is a wickedness. And people do it all the time. And husbands and wives do it to each other. And that's the most disgraceful of all. Even if you haven't made a catalog of all the garbage, like some people have. I mean, I actually asked one lady one time, I said, so do you remember what she said? She goes, yes, just a moment. She pulls out this file. I said, yes, I have it all documented right here. I said, I don't want to see it. I was just asking a rhetorical question. And I'll never ask that again, no. Yes, she actually had catalogued it and documented it and had it certified by a local accountant, I guess. I don't know what in the world. She was not going to forget this, not a single one. No, no. She went over it every night to be sure that her anger never cooled off. But even if you haven't done that, You want to hang on to these offenses, the offenses of others, and refuse to forgive them so that you can have a reason to feel more righteous than they are. It is the old pharisaical germ. It's still in us. And we love it. Because as long as I refuse to forgive and I can hold on to my bitterness, which is another enjoyable thing, it gives me a reason to feel hurt. And it gives me a reason to make you feel sorry for me. So that when I tell you, you feel sorry for me and I like you feeling sorry for me because that's that just feels good because nobody appreciates me. You know, nobody loves me like I love them. Nobody is thoughtful like I try to be. Nobody knows what I suffer unless I, unless they force me to tell them. Self-righteousness and self-pity are sweet to the embittered Pharisee. so sweet that they refuse to grant forgiveness when it's sought. Because if they get granted forgiveness, they'll lose all the grounds that they had to feel sorry for themselves and feel superior to their husband or their wife or their neighbor or their brother or sister in the congregation. Forgiveness, you see, costs you something. It costs you your self-righteousness and your self-pity. And when you give up your self-righteousness and self-pity, you're going to be free from anger. You're going to be free from bitterness. You're going to be free from the frustration and the poisonous spirit of revenge that drains you of the ability to love and drains you of peace and joy. And why would you give all that up? Forgiveness costs you. But there's no better bargain in all the world. There is no substitute for mercy. psychiatric care, drugs, changing your diet, taking yoga, cannot help you unless you repent. All of the things are like thinking of a house full of garbage. The solution to a house full of garbage is to go in and polish the silver. That's not the solution. That won't work. Nothing but repentance and forgiveness solves the problem. And when you're willing to do that, that gives you a place where you can begin to rebuild on the right foundation, the foundation of our Savior, and have the life that you want. It's still possible, even after 40 years. It's still possible. But it costs you giving up your bitterness and your anger and your vengeful spirit. And you can begin that. You see, the good thing is you don't have to take, you don't have to commit to five years of counseling and all the rest. You can begin today and it begins to work right away. When you deal with sin appropriately, things get better. When you begin to talk together and to seek to grow in understanding and have sympathy for each other, Things get better and you can begin to love one another sincerely and have your love received and reciprocated and things get better right away. They won't be perfect. There'll still be a lot of work that needs to be done. Some of the plaster may need to be repaired. Some of the glass might need to be replaced. Some of the furniture needs to be replaced, surely. But these things can be done only if all the garbage is taken out of the house and dealt with. And thanks be to God, that can be done. That's the work of just a few minutes, not the work of 50 years. All it takes is the humility to confess your sins and seek forgiveness and the mercy to grant forgiveness when it's sought. This is not rocket science. It's straightforward two plus two. Rhythmic. Cyphering. And that needs to be done in a lot of homes. You know, even if you've only got, maybe this only been a rough couple of years for you, but as you sit there, you know, you got something deep down as you still kind of are a little bit, you know, against him and maybe he's sitting there thinking, yeah, but you know, she still needs to go to the moon with on that one. I just don't, I'm still a little bit miffed about that, that she did. All right, well then there we go. Maybe you still know exactly what it was. Maybe it was a season where you both did things and now you can't recall exactly what it was. But it doesn't matter. It's there. It's between you. And you deal with it. And deal with it. And deal with it today. All right. But once that's done, What do you do then? What then? How do we maintain and grow in our relationship as a husband and wife? Well, you see, the book of Ephesians is telling us here, and Paul is actually telling us, we read it and we should read it as, of course, direction to the church. But you can see that he's talking about, he centers this around husband and wives. And so you start there and mows out what the way you treat your neighbor. You know, you love your enemy, you love your neighbor, you love your husband and wife, you love your children, and it goes out the same way. You start with her and move out from there. And he tells us and gives us directives here in Ephesians. Again, they're not complicated. They're not hard to understand. It's not an intellectual problem that we have. These are not even hard to implement. They're straightforward, easy to comprehend, and it takes humility and a willingness to submit to the Lord to do them. And that's that's it. But listen to what he says again. I mentioned these along the way, but hear it one more time. Stop lying to one another and tell each other the truth. Remembering that you are members of one another, that you are one flesh now, one your bone of bone and flesh of flesh, you are one and God has made you one. You are, in a mysterious way, the two have become one, but you're still two, just as truly as you're two. So really, are you one? And in fact, since the union was brought about by the indwelling of the spirit and the work of the spirit who brings things together like that, you can almost say you're three in one, like God. Because the spirit becomes the third party in the relationship. If we're truly members of one another, if we're truly one flesh, then lying to one another is simply injuring yourself. You're not gaining anything by deceiving each other. You're only destroying yourself and your mate. So speak the truth. And speaking the truth builds up you and your mate. And so do it. Avoid lies. Speak the truth to one another. And then Paul says, be angry and yet do not sin against one another. Don't allow the sun to go down on your wrath. Paul wants to make it impossible to be angry with one another for an extended period of time. Sin is going to be a reality. Anger is going to be a reality. And you see, people say, oh, I know I sinned. I got angry. Well, maybe you did. Usually you do. But anger itself is not sinful. And in fact, we need to cultivate and learn how to express righteous anger, be like God. God is angry and he doesn't sin. He wants you to be like that. You need to get angry at the right things. The problem we have is we get mad at the wrong things. The things that ought to make you angry, you don't get mad about, you know, so that people get on and blaspheme God. And we laugh because they told a joke. Somebody calls you a name and you're ready to fight. You know, hey, it's backwards. God said, let that go. Somebody called you a name, mistreated you, treated you unjustly. That's no big deal. But blasphemy, that's pretty bad. Why'd you laugh at that joke and get mad when you ought to overlook that? But you should never overlook this. We're all backwards. We get mad at the wrong stuff. And you have to teach your children the same thing. I don't want to squinch all the anger in my children. That would be to make them like zombies. They're not supposed to be zombies. They're supposed to be like God. They need to learn how to be angry and sin not. That's not an easy lesson. I know that. I'm not saying I've learned it. But I'm saying we gotta learn it. Learn what sin is. Anger is not sinful, though it usually is. It leads us to sin. So God says, Paul says, be angry at sin not. It's impossible not to be angry if you've got a righteous head on you. If you've got a righteous heart, you're going to be angry. And you should be. But you must not allow the anger to lead you to sin. It's impossible for two people living in such an intimate relationship as marriage without denting each other's fenders from time to time. That's going to happen. I mean, you can't go and play bumper cars and get mad that somebody ran into you. You can't get married. You can't get married and get upset that your wife or your husband upset you. That's life. That's the way it's going to be. The issue is, how did you respond to that? What did you do about it? We must not allow the anger that flares up to lead us to sin. You can't let it continue. You can't let it go all night. So Paul, as I mentioned this morning, I think, or yesterday or sometime, he sets a time limit to your anger. He says, okay, you can be angry till 6.30. I'll give you 6.30. But at 6.30, you better deal with it or you got a problem. You got a problem with God because he's coming after you at 6.30. He ain't happy. So you put it on the clock, mark it on the, you know, take the face off your clock and mark 6.30 and say, this is when anger ends. This is end of anger hour. Daylight savings time, anger ending time. That's right. You got till sundown. And you've got to deal with it. Think of anger as a fire. And if you leave it, you don't leave untended fires. You just don't. They can cause you a lot of trouble. You got to deal with the fire properly and you're supposed to put it out. Smokey says, you know, you put it out in the proper way. Don't leave them. Don't leave them untended because they could cause a great deal of damage. Anger that's allowed to keep burning is going to cause a lot of damage. Bitterness, suspicion, sinful jealousies, envies, all kinds of offenses can and will result from untended anger, unrestrained anger, anger allowed to burn. So, don't do that. This is why we have to deal and end our anger at sundown. Otherwise, Paul says, and this is striking, you're going to give the devil an opportunity. Now, I'm not one of these people that sees everything that happens something Satan did. You know, Satan did that. And if your child screams or something, I think they're demon possessed. I'm not one of those people, though I know some of those people. I'm not one of them. I don't have any sympathy for their view. But the Bible does talk about the devil being anxious to get you. And he'd love to do it. Remember, Jesus tells Peter, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat. You need to know that. And Jesus basically is saying, and I've got connections, so I have to know that's true. He has asked for you. That he could sift you like wheat. But what does Jesus say? But I pray for you. So you're going to be okay. But you need to understand. I prayed for you. And that's why you're going to be okay. Well, Satan desires to sift us like wheat. And I'm not trying to make us somebody, you know, big and important inflate our importance and make you get the American Idol syndrome in the church and all that. That's not true, but I honestly love the CREC so much and what God is doing, and you are a wonderful example of what is going on over the country. I know a lot of our brothers are struggling, a lot of the churches are struggling, but the Lord is blessing in amazing ways. And what that means is we have targets on our backs, and our children have targets on their backs, and your marriage has a big target on it. And Satan would love to have an opportunity to split you up and to alienate you, get you bitter about something the pastor says, or the elders do, or somebody in the church does, so that he can destroy what God is working here, or seek to disrupt what God is doing. Don't be naive about that. We don't have a king's axe against that. Satan is seeking an opportunity, and Paul says, you know, one of the ways you'll get it is if you let your anger continue to burn. I can guarantee you're going to give Satan an opportunity and you better not. Because I'm going to hold you accountable for that. He's saying, basically, God's going to hold you accountable for the divisions that occur when you refuse to do what he said to do. Deal with your anger. Don't allow the devil to destroy you like he did Adam and Eve. And then Paul goes on. Don't steal from one another, but rather do what you've been called to do. You've been called as a husband to build up your wife. That's not an easy task. You need to spend time thinking about it and working and learning how to do it because your wife is not just a woman. She is that, but she is a particular woman. And not all women are alike. That shocks men a lot, but that's the truth. Women are different. And so what really helps your wife wouldn't help my wife or somebody else's wife, but it really helps her. And you've got to know what helps her. You can't be reading, you know, don't go get a magazine that says 20 ways to encourage a woman and then start going around doing it and then saying, I did them all and she's still mad at me. Well, you see, the problem is you didn't marry a woman, you married that woman. And that woman needs to be loved in a particular way. So you've got to learn how to do this. This is not something that is easy. It does take time and thought and prayer. You've got to learn how to love her. You've got to learn how to encourage her. And don't steal from her the things that she needs by withholding what you ought to do. God has called you to provide for her in every way. And so you've got to learn how to do that. The same thing can be reversed now for the wives, because you've got to learn to honor your husband, and that's not an easy task. He's different from other men. You need to spend time thinking about him, working on him, learning how to do it, and then doing it. You have to learn how to love him sexually and every other way, just as he has to learn how to love you. You've got to learn how to encourage him, and don't steal from him by withholding things he needs because you refuse to do what God has said. He needs you in order to live. And you see, when you do this, you find that you have something with which to give. That's what Paul says. Don't let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. So when a husband, let me apply this now to marriage, when a husband is working with his hands, seeking to encourage his wife in all the ways that She needs to be encouraged in all the work that she particularly needs to be in the ways that she needs to be loved. Then you're investing in her. You're making deposits in her, making her wealthy so that she has abundance so that she can give to you and give to the world. And the same for a wife. You learn how to love your husband, you learn how to encourage him, and you start making deposits into his account. And all of a sudden, he's got enough to help you, he can help all these people around. This work returns compound interest. Don't steal. Work with your hands so that you can have wherewith to give. Faithful marriages are not simply for the enrichment of the husband and the wife, but for the enrichment of the world, and that's how it happens. And then, fourthly, be careful with your words. Say things that actually make things better rather than making things worse. Think ahead of time. Will this help the situation if I say this at this time? Ninety percent of what you say would be stopped at that point if you answered honestly. Our words are powerful instruments for good and evil, remember, so guard them carefully. Watch what you say and how you say it. Think before you speak. And when you speak, have it as your goal to meet a need rather than multiply the needs. Speak so as to heal and restore and encourage and build up. And we do this remembering that our words are one of the means that God uses to impart His own favor and blessings. We've become means of grace to one another by our words and our actions, of course. So you want your husband to grow in grace and faithfulness? Speak to him with words designed to encourage that. You want your wife to grow in holiness and beauty? Speak to her with words that have that as the goal. Careful words transform worlds and homes and relationships. And then fifthly, make it your concern to avoid offending the Holy Spirit. Isn't it amazing? What Paul says, you've got all these things and you're going, yep, yep. OK, got that. Yep, I got that. Yep, yep. That makes sense. But no corrupt communication. OK, I got that. It'll be hard, but I know what you're talking about. And then he gets to 30 and he goes, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you've sealed for the day of redemption. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit. What? I don't want to make God sad. I can't do that. I mean, I'm just a little old me. Paul says, no, you actually do that. Because you see, God is love. He loves you. You don't believe it. But He loves you. You won't even think about it. But you've got to take it seriously. He loves you! And when you do things that upset him, he's just like you are when your child does something. You just go, what do you know about that? That's fun. Let's go have a beer. That ain't the way you react. What do you do when your child sins in grievous ways? It breaks your heart. And he doesn't think he's hurting you. He thinks, oh, it's just me. Don't worry about me. No, it's me. No. No, that's me. You're hurt here. I'm the one being grieved here. Why? Well, because I really love you. When Paul says, look, when you don't do this, I need to tell you something. You're bringing grief to the heart of God. Is that what you want to do? Is that your goal in life? You really want to make God grieved over you. You're not just making your wife grieve. You're not just making your children upset. The Holy Spirit is grieving over you. What have you done? You've upset the world. You think this is just a little thing? Just a minor little thing? You think it's just because she's so sensitive? Just too sensitive? It's no big deal. Watch the news, read your paper, go to the ballgame and enjoy. No, this is a big deal. God's upset. And if you're telling me that you grieve the Holy Spirit, that's a big deal. But that's what Paul says. I can hardly believe it. It seems like it's an impossibility. But what it tells me is, you know what? God really loves you. He loves you so much that when you sin, He goes away and grieves. And that's why you put away all wickedness and you replace it with kindness and tenderheartedness and forgiveness, unless you're willing to persevere in doing this day by day, you'll bring continual sorrow and frustration and destruction on yourself and on your marriage and in the process offend and grieve God himself. And you'll bring grief to the church. You'll grieve your friends. You'll grieve your family. You'll cause sorrow to spread. And I'm going to hear about it. And I'm going to be sorry. And everybody's going to be sorry because you refused to do what God said to do. Don't let that happen. This is how you're to live. This is how you maintain and deepen your relationship together as a husband and wife. It's not chemical engineering. It's straightforward and plain. You don't have to go to two years of counseling. All you have to do is humble yourself, submit to God, do what He says, and the only way of living is doing what God says. Follow His Word. It's simple. It's straightforward. It's uncomplicated. Do what He says, and you're going to live. And you're going to live with blessing. And you're going to live with joy. And now you say, well, but you know, I've tried to do some of these things. I really have, but it hasn't worked. I'm just so weak. I'm just so weak. I don't think I could do it. This is just too big. You don't know what I'm facing. I don't know how. Okay. I don't know what you're facing, but I know what it is to be weak. I can guarantee you. I know what it is to be weak. And the Bible says the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth. to show himself strong in behalf of those whose heart is loyal toward him. That's the weak one who will cast himself upon the living God and say, I can't, I really don't have the ability to do this, a strength in myself. I need you to be strong for me. And God is happy to respond to that because he loves you and he wants you to be strong and he will strengthen you. So be loyal to the Lord. Seek to strengthen, to seek the strength to do what he's called you to do and you'll have it because he loves you and he loves to show himself strong in behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open. Ask and you will receive. And Jesus says, You know, if you love to give good gifts to your children. How much more does the Heavenly Father love to give the Holy Spirit to those who seek it? He goes, think about this. You love to give good gifts to your children and look at you, you're a mess. You selfish pig. But you still love to give good gifts to your children as bad as you are. If that's true of you, how much more is it true of the Holy Heavenly Father who is love? Don't ever think that God's not willing to help. He loves you and he will help. Let's pray. Lord, help us to love you in the way that you love us. And thank you for promising and showing us so many in so many ways and so many places in the scriptures. That you're willing to do whatever it takes to help us to live faithfully. And we beg you to come and help us to live faithfully. Help us as husbands to love our wives. And help us to drop the bitterness and anger and the frustration that is built up. If it has, to drop it today, tonight, right now. And give us strength and humility to beg forgiveness. And Lord, help our wives to love us, as you've called them to, and to be patient with us and bear with us and to be willing to confess their sins as well and ask forgiveness so that we can be reconciled. Work in us, O Lord, and help us and strengthen us so that we can glorify you and shine forth your glory to everybody around us and show the world what it's like to have a God who is loved as their Father. Hear our prayers for Jesus' sake. Amen.