The Joy of a Christ-Centered Covenant - part iii
Series: A Meaning-Full Marriage
Title: The Joy of a Christ-Centered Covenant - Part iii
Text:
Quotes
• One woman to another at the office, “Did you wake up grouchy today?” “No, I just let him sleep in.”
• There is only one thing harder than living alone, and that is to live with another person. - Ingrid Trobisch
• Love, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest. - Helen Rowland.
• Marriage is neither heaven nor hell; it is simply purgatory. - A. Lincoln
• There are two kinds of people at parties—those who want to go home early and those who want to be the last ones in the place. The trouble is that they’re usually married to each other.
• Parson’s Rule: At whatever stage you apologize to your spouse, the reply is constant: “It’s too late now.”
• A good marriage is the union of two forgivers. - Ruth Bell Graham
• Marriage should be a duet—when one sings, the other claps. - Joe Murray, Cox News Service
• Before you marry, keep your two eyes open; after you marry, shut one. - Jamaican proverb
• The German poet Heinrich Heine bequeathed his entire estate to his widow on the condition she remarry—“So at least one other man will regret my death.”
• Even if marriages are made in heaven, man has to be responsible for the maintenance. - John Graham in Alma, GA, Times
• Don’t buy the house; buy the neighbor. - Russian Proverb (Don’t marry the woman [only] but the family.)
• Marriage is a journey toward an unknown destination—the discovery that people must share not only what they don’t know about each other, but what they don’t know about themselves. - Michael Ventura
• “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her,” said mystery author Agatha Christie, who was married to one.
• What is the recipe for honeymoon salad? Lettuce alone without dressing. - The Bell, the Clapper, and the Cord: Wit and Witticism, (Baltimore: National Federation of the Blind, 1994), p. 11.
• Marriage is when you agree to spend the rest of your life sleeping in a room that’s too warm, beside someone who’s sleeping in a room that’s too cold. - Contributed by E. J. Graff
• Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it. - Helen Rowland, quoted by Robert Keeler in The Toastmaster, Reader’s Digest, June, 1994, p. 130
• Overheard: “Marriage is nature’s way of keeping people from fighting with strangers.” - Alan King
• In colonial days, a Boston sea captain named Kemble was sentenced to spend two hours in the stocks for kissing his wife in public on Sunday, the day he returned from three years at sea.
• Abigail Van Buren says at the top of her list of the ten most common problems she sees in “Dear Abby” letters is: “My wife doesn’t understand me.”
• The “Four D’s of marriage” according to author Fay Angus, are “depression, despair, drink and divorce.” - Fay Angus
• You may win the argument, but if there’s blood on the floor, you lose anyway. - Anon
• If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag. - Zig Ziglar
• Commuter to seatmate: “Actually, my mother-in-law and I have a lot in common. We both wish my wife had married someone else.” - H. Bosch in National Enquirer
• Barr’s comment on domestic tranquillity (Donald Barr), “On a beautiful day like today, it’s hard to believe anyone can be unhappy, but we’ll work on it. - From The Official Rules
• It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only 2 people miserable instead of 4. - Samuel Butler, of Thomas Carlyle, in the Book of Insults, Ancient and Modern, by Nancy McPhee
• Many girls marry men just like their fathers, which may explain why many mothers cry at weddings.
Starting Points:
(1) Marriage is the institution created by God -
(2) God's created intention is confirmed by Jesus Christ -
(3) The gospel of Christ allows us to understand marriage - ,
See God's mercy in Hosea as:
Make Sense!
It was King James I, I believe, who became annoyed with the irrelevant ramblings of his court preacher and shouted up to the pulpit: “Either make sense or come down out of that pulpit!”
The preacher replied, “I will do neither.”
Steve Brown, in Tabletalk, August, 1990
See God's mercy in Hosea as:
(1) Initiatory (week one) - Takes the first step in giving pity to the spouse who does not deserve this pity.
(2) Intentional (week two) - Does not overlook sin.
(3) Inclusive (week three) - Has determined that marriage is part of a bigger, broader inclusive mission.
(1) God’s inclusive mercy observed
(2) God’s inclusive mercy clarified (, , )
It’s His Job to Forgive!
Ancient paganism thought of each god as bound to his worshippers by self-interest because he depended on their service and gifts for his welfare. Modern paganism has at the back of its mind a similar feeling that God is somehow obligated to love and help us, even though we don’t deserve it. This was the feeling voiced by the French freethinker who died muttering, “God will forgive—that’s his job.” But this feeling is not well founded. The God of the Bible does not depend on his human creatures for his well-being (see Ps. 50:8–13; Acts 17:25), nor, now that we have sinned, is he bound to show us favor. We can only claim from his justice—and justice, for us, means certain condemnation.
God does not owe it to anyone to stop justice from taking its course. He is not obligated to pity and pardon; if he does so it is an act done, as we say, “of his own free will,” and nobody forces his hand. “It depends not upon man’s will or exertion, but upon God’s mercy” (Rom. 9:16). Grace is free because it is self-originated and proceeds from the One who was free not to be gracious. Only when one realizes that what decides each man’s destiny is whether or not God resolves to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision which God need not make in any single case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
Your Father Loves You by James Packer, (Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986), page for May 4
(3) God’s inclusive mercy applied
(i) Inclusive mercy begins with God’s initiating and intentional mercy whereby He includes two sinners in His own family. ,
(ii) Inclusive mercy requires us to have God’s perspective of marriage — Marriage is part of something that is far bigger/broader. , (in context:)
(iii) Inclusive mercy is the means whereby God’s purpose is accomplished.
Practical Application:
Conclusion:
5462 When Light Bulb Falls
The Rev. Earl Kelly, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Holly Springs, Mississippi, was preaching on the second coming of Christ.
He had just quoted Matthew 24:27, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.”
At this point, a large light bulb fell from its socket in the ceiling and shattered on the floor in front of the pulpit.
As reported by Baptist Press, Kelly was equal to the occasion. He told the startled worshippers, “His coming will be just as sudden, and unexpected, and devastating to the dreams that are not Christ-centered.”
—Christianity Today