Fruitful Marriages Pursue Mutual Joy

Introduction

How many of you are blessed? As you know, I love to take the simple words that we say and bring them to life for you. Blessed is the word I want to start with today. Blessed in the New Testament is the Greek Word:

Makarios - Blessed, Happy, Fortunate

And this is probably what you think if you say that you are blessed. Oh yes, I’m happy, fortunate, blessed. Thank you Lord for the blessings you have given to me.

The problem though is that Jesus says some things about being blessed that may not make sense in our heads when we hear them and I’m talking about the beatitudes, which instead of saying blessed at the beginning of those, it would be just as appropriate to says, “Happy is He.”

So let’s try that real quick.

“Happy is he that mourns…”

“Happy is he that is persecuted…”

“Happy is he that is poor in spirit…”

Now that doesn’t sound like happiness to me. And therein lies the problem. Our view of happiness and the Bible’s view of happiness is too different things. Keep this in mind because today we are talking about joy in marriage.

If you are just joining us today we continue our series called A Fruitful Marriage. This series is focusing on marriage, but its eye is on all relationships, so if you are married, seperated, divorced, widowed or just single as a Pringle, you should be able to draw truth out of the message and apply it to your life as we look at God’s word together today.

Ephesians 5:18–33 (ESV)

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Today I’m starting our passage out a little further back in the context. Even though I mentioned it on the first week that this passage is actually rooted in the context of being filled with the Spirit, today, I want to zero in on this thought.

As I was preparing to preach this series, I had one thought that really captured my idea of where this series would go and it was this…

Fruitful marriages result from fruitful people. If the Holy Spirit isn’t working in your life, it’s doubtful that he’s working in your marriage.

In other words, when we are fruitful, that fruitfulness will carry over into our marriage. If the Holy Spirit through us is producing the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, etc, in our own lives, they will show up first and foremost in our marriages.

This passage is the key to understanding what will cause your marriage to produce fruit…and not just any fruit, but fruit that lasts. What we want to see in our marriages are the fruits of the Spirit, it’s the character of a good marriage. Last week I talked about the first of these fruits, which I believe to be the foundation of a good marriage, which is love.

Today I want to focus on the fruit of joy. Now joy is perhaps one of the more misunderstood fruits, in the church. I’ve said this before, but I disagree with a lot of popular teaching that tries to put joy and happiness as almost opposite things. These two words are synonyms. In fact you cannot define one without using the other. Joy is happiness. Joy defined in the Bible is the experience of gladness. This is what it means, whether you like it or not.

And we are told that the joy of the Lord is our strength. We are told that the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. We are commanded to rejoice throughout Scripture. Joy should be a huge part of the life of a Christian.

Now contrary to the world’s definition, joy is not giddiness. It’s not about whether you are bubbly or not. That’s got nothing to do with true joy. The bible gives us every indication that joy can be found in the midst of our suffering. That type of joy is something deeper that produces gladness in our hearts knowing that God is with us in our suffering and that every bit of suffering we experience on this earth is not without meaning. That’s true joy.

So while the way we think about joy should change to be something different than how the world defines it, I will use the words joy and happiness interchangeably today because I believe them to be very similar in scope and meaning.

So with that said, let’s look at our passage. Paul gives a command to not be drunk with wine. Let’s not overlook that. Drunkenness leads to a false happiness. The joy of a drunkard is not an enduring joy but a fleeting one. He’s not saying you can’t drink any alcohol, but he is saying that false happiness pales in comparison to the true joy found in the Holy Spirit. Drunkenness may feel good for a moment, but it will not sustain you through your problems. So Paul starts off with this concept and he pits it against being filling with the Spirit. If drunkeness produces a false joy, being filled with the Spirit produces true joy.

Paul lists three clauses in the sentence structure of this thought. He says be filled with the Holy Spirit and this is what it looks like in the life of the church…

Addressing each other in songs and making melody in your heart.

Giving thanks always, for everything.

Submitting to one another.

That’s the thought that undergirds his teaching on Husbands and wives. And the last one, I believe is one of the keys to marriage, so we are going to spend our time here.

Here’s my big thought -

Mutual Submission Produces Mutual Joy

Now here’s where things get a bit messy for some people. The word submission is a hot button word in some Christian circles. And I understand why, these verses, particularly the verse that commands wives to submit to their husbands have been used to cause not joy, but sorrow.

I believe this is because we do not have a proper understanding of how upside-down the kingdom of God really is. Jesus tells his disciples that hierarchy as you know it doesn’t exist in the kingdom. If you want to be the greatest of all, then you will be the servant to all.

Some people though have ignored Jesus’ teachings on the subject and tried to turn submission, and in particular wifely submission, into slavery. That’s not what this passage teaches us. It teaches us mutual submission. We cannot divorce this passage from verse 21, which says, that we are to submit one to another.

It’s through mutual submission that we are proving that we are filled with the Holy Spirit. When we mutually submit to one another, we are walking out the commands of Jesus to serve one another. Why is that? You can’t serve someone you are rebelling against. The church can’t serve Jesus if it’s not willing to obey his commands.

Submission if you were to define it, means to lower yourself, put yourself under, or we might say to humble yourself. Paul says this in Philippians and I think it connects with our passage.

Philippians 2:3 NIV

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,

When we value others above ourselves, I think that is the heart of submission and it’s a choice. It’s you choosing to put your spouse’s values above your own. I believe it’s the overarching theme of this passage. Husbands are valuing the wife above himself when he loves her the way Christ loves the church. The wife is valuing her husband over herself when she submits to him just as the church submits to Christ.

This is a mutual submission. It is you valuing your spouse above your own wants needs and desires. This is the heart of a Christian marriage.

And if you walk out this type of submission in our marriage, it will produce joy.

Why?

We reap what we sow.

If We Plant Joy In Others, We Will Reap It In Ourselves

Now, the law of sowing of reaping is universal. Whatever you plant, that’s what you will reap. This is true in life and in your marriage. You can’t plant tomato seeds and expect to reap cucumbers. And in marriage, too many of us are planting the wrong things.

If we plant complacency, we will reap apathy.

If we plant complaints or nagging, we will reap bitterness.

If we plant silent treatments, we will reap loneliness.

If we plant frivolous spending, we will reap bankruptcy.

Whatever we plant, we will reap. It’s a law of nature and a spiritual law all wrapped up in one. We will reap a harvest of something, the question is always, what did we plant?

I want to plant things like joy.

Which leads me to this thought. We can’t just plant joy anywhere, because we will most certainly plant it in the wrong place.

If you plant joy in your own life, you will reap self-centeredness, but if you plant joy in the life of your spouse or friend, you will reap true happiness.

This is the essence of a life lived out by mutual submission. When we submit to one another, we are planting something. I believe what we are planting is joy in each other. The way that I plant joy in my marriage is by putting Autumn’s interests, wants and desires above my own. When I do that, what I find is that it brings me great joy.

The best way I can describe is it that you may be able to relate to is this. At Christmas, having kids, I get much more joy now seeing the looks on my kids faces as they open the gifts that I gave them than I do when I open my own gifts. I’m thankful for my gifts, the ones they picked out and what not, but man, the joy I get when their face lights up when they get that perfect gift, it’s almost indescribable.

That’s what marriage should be like.

Why do not want to give or serve or value our spouse above ourselves? It comes back to self-centeredness. When we make marriage about what I get out of it, you will end up with nothing. As soon as we start to see marriage the same way God sees it, we will start to give into it rather than take from it.

This idea of sowing into relationships is a biblical idea for all of your relationships, not just marriage. Listen to what Paul says in Romans.

Romans 15:2–3 ESV

Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.”

In other words, Paul is saying that because Christ came not to pursue his own pleasure, but to please others, we should treat our neighbors in that same way. To go back to the words of Jesus, love your neighbor as yourself. And to repeat Paul in this passage, love your spouse like you love your own body. These are all out-workings of the same teaching or philosophy that Jesus had.

Contrary to some of these liberal Christians, Paul teaches Jesus. Some people want to put Paul and Jesus against each other, but Paul teaches the same truths that Jesus teaches. They aren’t working against each other, they are both teaching us what the gospel truly means.

The gospel in marriage means we will pursue the joys of our spouse. That means literally that I will look for ways to create joy for Autumn. I will ask her and find out what brings her joy and then I will do those things.

And the beauty of marriage, is that in a healthy marriage, Autumn is concerned with what brings me joy and she’s constantly working to bring joy into my life. So in the end, I don’t need to be concerned with my own joy, Autumn is taking care of that. She’s looking for ways to increase my joy and happiness and that’s the beauty of a fruitful marriage - Joy is being produced because both of us are planting joy in the other’s heart.

When I talk about planting joy, what does that look like practically? We have to be constantly…

Providing a Safe Place For Joy To Grow

In any garden, you need to have the right conditions for growth. You have to have water and sunlight and good soil. In a marriage, for joy to grow, you need to provide space for it. That means you need to get rid of the weeds.

Getting Rid of The Weeds

Getting rid of the weeds is just proper gardening. In order for things to grow, you need good soil. You have to weed out the garden of your marriage. What things are you holding onto that are choking out your marriage. Past failures, regrets, things that were said, bitterness, envy, hurts. What are you holding on to? You need to get rid of those things. It’s time to forgive.

Spending Time In The Son

You also need to put some sonshine in your marriage. Get together and spend time with the Lord together. If you want joy in your marriage, remember that joy is a fruit of the spirit. You need the Holy Spirit in your life and in your marriage. So spend time with Him! I know so many couples that complain about their marriages but they refuse to pray together. They refuse to do devotionals together. They refuse to worship together. All that creates is cloudy days. You need the Son in your life!

Watering With Words

This is incredibly important and we will revisit this more in the coming weeks, but our words are powerful. They are either nourishing like water or they are toxic like poison. What are you putting into the ground of your marriage? Is it toxic? Is it destroying the seeds? Is it causing the soil to become bad?

When we encourage our spouse, when we speak encouraging words into our relationships, you will see things bloom that you never thought were possible.

I’m a huge believer in this. I have tried my best to convince Autumn that she is beautiful and wonderful and lovely since we started dating almost 19 years ago. It’s been amazing to see how this has shaped how she sees herself now. She is much more confident in who she is…why? Because I built her up rather than tearing her down. If I had spent the past 19 years telling her constantly what she was doing wrong, how do you think she would be different today? She would be a basket case. Our words are powerful. Choose your words carefully in your relationships.

My contention is this, if you will spend time focusing in on these things, you will start to see joy come into your marriage. Now, be mindful, just like planting anything else, it takes time. It won’t appear overnight or even over a month. Sometimes it will take years for these things to take effect. Hang in there.

Conclusion

To close today, I want to end with a time of prayer. I’ve got some prompts prepared for us and I want to give you some time to pray and ask the Lord how he wants you to apply this word today. What relationships is he highlighting that you need to work on. Let’s spend some time seeking his will for your life and then I will close us with prayer.

Prayer & Journaling Prompts

Father, what weeds are you trying to remove from my relationships?

Lord, who can I build up with my words this week?

Jesus, where can I find some quiet time to spend with you this week?

Let’s pray. I will be available up front for ministry should anyone need prayer this morning.