The Best Defense

There is an old adage: The best defense is a good offense. No one is sure exactly who coined the phrase. The idea has been around since George Washington, and probably earlier. But who put it into the nice concise epigram that we are all familiar with is uncertain, though many attribute it to Heavy Weight Boxer Jack Dempsey. I am going to apply the adage to marriage this morning, but that doesn’t mean that I am drawing a parallel between marriage and a heavy weight brawl. And if that is your conclusion, then this sermon is definitely for you.

Matthew 19:3–6 NKJV

The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

ASSAULT ON MARRIAGE

The secular assault

Marriage, like all things Godly, is under attack, and always has been.

The garden

Abraham, Sarah, & Pharoah

David & Bathsheba

Our text: divorce

So today’s assault is nothing new.

No moral taboos…from shacking up to the gay agenda marriage has been undermined and redefined.

Divorce, pretty much non-existent when I was a kid, is now close to 50%

The Hollywood culture, feminism, liberal education, and today’s narcissism have all served to undermine and disparage marriage so the average person today is so full of misinformation and propaganda that they are already way behind the curve if and when they actually marry.

The Spiritual assault

The devil has always had his sites on the family and marriage.

2 Timothy 3:6 NKJV

For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts,

Titus 1:11 NKJV

whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of dishonest gain.

Both these texts talk about false teachers and spiritual error that target families and households.

1 Corinthians 7:5 NKJV

Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Addressing Satan’s assault on a marriage when they are not enjoying sexual intimacy.

The assault from within

And any discussion of the assault on marriage would be incomplete without mentioning the most aggressive and dangerous enemy of marriage…us!

Obviously a great deal of the conflict between husbands and wives are the consequence of the works of the flesh:

Galatians 5:19–21 NKJV

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

This is all our flesh!! These are the things that dwell in us!! Obviously these are not a description of domestic bliss.

Later in this chapter Jesus says divorce is the result of the hardness of your heart! That is the assault from within. We build up a catalog of offenses and our heart hardens against our spouse. Love becomes almost impossible.

It’s safe to say that after God created marriage for the specifically for the good of our species, marriage has been at the epicenter of human conflict ever since. That doesn’t suggest that there is something wrong with marriage. It suggests that there is something wrong with the way we do it and there is something wrong with the fallen world we live in.

A GOOD OFFENSE

Given the martial nature that I have described, the enemies arrayed against marriage, we need to figure out how to prevail and I propose that the best defense is a good offense. You are going to have to take the initiative. You are going to have to be proactive.

Proactive Relationship

Good marriages are not the result of soul mates…the odds of your finding your soul mate in a world of 7 billion people are non-existent.

Good marriages are not the result of the right environment…money, idyllic setting, the right friends, going to church (although this does increase the odds in your favor by somewhere between a factor of 5 to 10 statistically.)

Good marriages are the result of hard work.

Communication

Time

Sacrifice

Negotiation

It’s funny that we know how to have best friends, but we don’t know how to make the one most important person in our life our best friend.

You are going to have to push against the walls of separation and alienation. You are going to have to learn to say you’re sorry when you don’t feel like it and to forgive when you don’t feel like it. You’re going to have to take out the garbage and fix the plumbing and pay the bills and raise the kids! And you husbands are going to have to make yourselves useful too!!

Just kidding. It’s all give and take and in reality it’s all give! And if you both give you both get and if you don’t give…you get nada.

Proactive Sex

You’re going to have to take 1 Cor 7 seriously:

1 Corinthians 7:3–5 NKJV

Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

A healthy sex life doesn’t just happen. You have to work through tired, and emotions, and familiarity, and kids, and tired.

Proverbs 5:18–19 NKJV

Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And always be enraptured with her love.

Proactive Christianity

You are both going to have to cultivate your spirituality. Bible, pray, evangelize.

Your spirituality is the fountainhead of a blessed marriage. Two people loving God can only grow closer together over time. They will develop the grace and love and fruit of the Spirit, the peace and joy and love that a marriage flourishes in.

You’re going to have to find God!!

THE BEST DEFENSE

Which is actually the best defense of your best defense.

What God has put together

Yes, you made the choice but only God can create one out of two!

A Spiritual Union

It was the creative work of God in the garden. It is the creative work of God in our garden

Transformed Lives

God softens the hardness of heart by His grace, by the impartation of His nature, by the presence of His Spirit in us.

It’s God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.

1 Corinthians 1:30 NKJV

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NKJV

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no question where the changes come from that make marriage what God designed it to be. The changes take place in us, personally. You Sir! You Ma’am! God in you is what is your best defense against everything that would destroy your home and marriage. He can teach you how to love and give and enjoy and by Him marriage becomes the sanctuary that it was meant to be.

You will have to pursue Him and you will have to work at it, but in the end you have something worth having. A blessed home and marriage.