Sermon Tone Analysis

Please open your Bibles to .

Follow along as I read Genesis 23.

A long marriage is a great blessing.

You ever want to ruin your day?

Go home and watch the Disney cartoon Up!

Actually, only watch the first 15 minutes of it.

It’ll break your heart, ruin your day.

During this first 15 minutes of the movie, there’s no words, just images.

It tells the story of this young couple who fall in love.

They have dreams.

Dreams of having children.

Dreams of traveling the world.

It’s done very well.

You watch it, and you can see a glimpse of your own marriage in it.

You see a young couple in love with a growing marriage.

During this first 15 minutes of the movie, there’s no words, just images.

At one point, the wife, becomes pregnant.

They nest.

They decorate room for the child.

Then the next scene is the wife, in the hospital and in tears.

No child.

There’s dreams of traveling.

Visiting an exotic location.

They save for this vacation.

They have a jar that fills up with change.

Then life happens.

Tires need changed.

Homes need repaired.

Medical bills are due.

Each time, that jar gets broken and they have to start over.

Meanwhile the couple gets older.

The wife falls.

Her health declines.

Then the wife dies.

It’s hard to not watch it and not cry.

I mean it’s a cartoon for crying out loud.

But it’s so real.

Those first 15 minutes of Up! are hard to watch because it captures so much of life.

I don’t know who came up with these ideas.

Tradition says that on the:

1st year - you give paper.

Paper?

I’m pretty sure, that after the first year of marriage the last thing your wife wants is letterhead.

Especially considering that the first year is often the hardest year of a marriage.

There are certain milestones that we celebrate in marriage.

There’s the first year anniversary.

It’s a big deal.

That first year many times is the hardest year of marriage.

You appreciate marriage so much.

The husband and wife are learning to live with each other, learning to build a home, a family and develop traditions together.

The 2nd year is cotton.

Nothing says two years of happiness like a white undershirt.

3rd year - leather.

4th year - fruits and flowers

Maybe some of you wives would be happy if your husband volunteered to do the grocery shopping.

But more often then not it’s a bad idea.

Anytime Amanda sends me to the store to get her something, she better have her phone handy.

Because I’m texting her pictures of stuff because I don’t want to mess it up.

5th year.

Now we are getting somewhere.

It’s a big deal.

It’s half a decade.

The gift? - Wood.

Ed Burke, Tom Bostwick, you guys are handy.

But for the rest of us, my wife doesn’t want a 2 x 4 as a present.

10th year: Tin or Aluminum.

Unless it’s a new car, I can’t think of a whole lot of aluminum.

The 11th year: steel

That’s just fun to think about.

Honey, I got you rebar.

The gifts get fancier and more rare as the years progress.

14th year - Ivory.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much illegal.

15th year - silver

35th year - coral

We could do better

40th year - Ruby

50th year - Gold

60th year - Diamond.

I’m sure my wife would be pleased with just doing year 50 and 60 over and over again.

As we look at these traditional gifts we go a long way from year 1 which is paper, to year 60 which is diamond.

That’s because there’s something special about a long marriage.

You’ve got two people, who’ve put up with each other for so long, and loved each other so deeply.

When I get the opportunity to marry a couple, when it comes to planning the ceremony, sometimes, the couple asks if they can write their own vows.

And I always say no.

The reason is because when people think of writing their own vows, they confuse it with professing their love for each other.

They tell a story about how they met, and she knew he was the one, or he knew she was the one.

But the vows aren’t where you simply say, “You’re the one.”

I think about the vows that a couple say during the marriage ceremony.

The vows are an oath.

They are a promise.

They aren’t pretty.

· I, Bradley Phillip Bogers, take you, Amanda, to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death; as God is my witness, I give you my promise.

They reflect the life of a marriage.

I, so and so, take you, to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death; as God is my witness, I give you my promise.

You see these things in that cartoon Up!

Because life isn’t always pretty.

There’s lots of great moments.

Birthdays, first homes, children, graduation days, more weddings.

There will also be fights, debt, sickness, heartache.