This morning we begin a new series of messages called "Families In A Fix." For those of you who may be "The Learning Channel" (TLC) watchers, you may know of a popular show on that cable channel called "In A Fix." The show is about persons who have tried to do home repairs on their own and have discovered that their "week end" project becomes a nightmare. The show’s cast is called upon to stage a "dramatic" intervention to repair the problem. They not only fix the problem but also upgrade the area that was affected by the do-it-yourselfer.

Our families can get "in a fix." Problems in our marriage, parenting, priorities and circumstances can become horror stories when we fail to care about the issues that face us. They can become worse when we try to "fix" them ourselves without the intervention of Jesus Christ. In this series of messages we are going to try to intervene in four areas where we get "in a fix": marriage, parenting, priorities and blended families. While the show "In A Fix" employs experts in the field of home repair, the true expert for families that are struggling is the presence of the living Christ. He is the ultimate source to guide us when we are "in a fix."

Another show on The Learning Channel is called "For Better or For Worse." It’s a show that uses professional wedding planners to organize the chaos, orchestrate the planning, and watch the budget of a wedding. Organizing the chaos of a wedding is one thing but trying to live together as a husband and wife for better or worse is an entirely different challenge. It is hard for me sometimes to watch as couples will focus so much money and energy on a ceremony and neglect the realities that will face them after they say, "I do."

There is no question that the institution of marriage is in a fix today. While President Bush’s "healthy marriage" initiative cost of $1.5 billion may seem to be extravagant, the reality is that in 2003 Americans spent over $40 billion on weddings. That’s a bigger business than McDonalds or Pepsi. Yet for all that we spend, still half of all marriages end in divorce. Persons who are married have dropped since 1970 from 68% to 56% and the number of households who are married and contain children has gone from 45% to 26%. When it gets to the point that it takes a constitutional amendment to define marriage and Brittany Spears claims, after being married 55 hours, she believes in the sanctity of marriage, and then it is clear beyond words that marriage is in a fix. (Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "What’s love got to do with it," 2/1/04)

What is the foundation for a marriage from God’s perspective? I believe that the foundational principle for marriage from God’s viewpoint is found in Genesis 2:18-25. After God created woman he presented her to man and the man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;

The writer’s response to this statement by the man is crucial. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." (Gen. 2:24) That phrase "one flesh" is the most crucial principle for any marriage to survive. The word in the Hebrew language means the most intimate bond imaginable between a man and a woman. It means oneness, being undivided, having the same character and simply being one. It is the ultimate goal of the marriage union and is only achieved by our willingness to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus. It is a commitment that says, "I will give up what I want to meet the needs of my mate and nothing—absolutely nothing—is going to come between the one with whom I am sexually, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually one!" Failure to make this decision in your marriage means it is only a matter of time before the better becomes the worse in your marriage.

With that foundational principle in mind I want us to see a "for better or for worse" marriage from the Bible. Most of what is said about marriage in the Bible is more by implication rather than direct teaching. Too often we think that the Bible only presents the ideal model for marriage when in reality the picture painted in the Bible is one that is very authentic. Terrance Real says, "A real relationship is the collision of my humanity and yours, in all its joy and limitations. How partners handle that collision is what determines the quality of their relationship." (Psychology today, March/April 2004, p. 37-42).

One of those couples that collided in a real relationship is the Old Testament figures of Abraham and Sarah. We don’t know how old Abraham and Sarah were when they were married. We do know that the immediate problem they faced after their marriage was Sarah’s inability to have children. (Gen. 11:30) We tend to pass over this as "Well, how sad…" but we fail to see how this put Abraham and Sarah clearly in a place of shame and disappointment within their family. The woman’s role was to produce children to continue the family line. Without children, primarily males, the family was in jeopardy. We do not know why but Abraham’s father Terah moved the family from what is now Southern Iraq to Northern Syria. Could it have been the sense of failure that Terah endured because of the disappointment of Abraham and Sarah? We don’t know but, regardless, they left their family roots to locate somewhere away from those to whom they belonged.

The issue of their not being able to have a child will be the one continuing theme in the story of Abraham and Sarah’s marriage. In fact God, in his own absolute sovereign choice, sees the plight of this couple and reveals to them that they are chosen by him to fill the earth with more children than they can count. He commands them to leave their family household again and go to a land that he has chosen for them. So, without question or complaint, Abraham and Sarah together obey God’s voice and set out for a place they have never been and in a direction they have never known.

It isn’t long, though, after they have claimed their new home as their own that a new problem faces them—starvation! They face a shortage of what is needed to simply survive. (Gen. 12:10). Abraham decided to leave the place God had sent them and go to Egypt to try to get food to exist. Abraham’s humanity is evident in an issue of deception with the Egyptian leaders and I believe sets up a pattern for himself and Sarah throughout their marriage. The pattern is: "I can fix this better than God!" Over and over again they persist in trying to resolve their problems by their own methods.

One example of this is when Sarah after years of not having children uses one of her maids as a surrogate parent in order for them to have a child (Gen.16:1-6). When the maid becomes pregnant by Abraham she allows her own anger at God to become an issue between she and Abraham, blaming him for what she told him to do! The disappointment between Abraham and Sarah over the inability to have a child would eventually bring them to a place where they both mocked God for his promises. The Lord comes to Abraham and says again that he will have a son through Sarah (Gen. 17:16). The only response Abraham had was laughter. "Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" (Gen. 17:17) Later, when God appeared to him again and told him the same thing, Sarah overheard it and she laughed. "So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ‘After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?’" (Gen. 18:12)

In spite of their own spiritual failure, God kept his word to them. After twenty-five years of waiting. God gave them a child. "Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him." (Gen. 21:1-3) Even through their imperfect lives God honored his commitment to his promise. His word could be trusted.

Abraham and Sarah have been through so very much in their marriage but nothing could prepare them for the greatest test of their faith. In Genesis 22:1-2 the Bible says, "Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’" (Gen. 22:1-2) Abraham was being tested at the deepest point of his faith. God had kept his promise and now it seemed he was asking Abraham to be the instrument to destroy that promise. Yet Abraham has learned one thing and that is to believe that God is God and he is not. Abraham does what God asked and God stops him at the last second, telling him, " ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy’, he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’ (Gen. 22:12)

The bond that held Abraham and Sarah together at last comes to an end when Sarah dies at the age of 127. The Bible says that at her death Abraham "went to morn for Sarah and to weep over her" (Gen. 23:2). You cannot help but have your heart touched by this powerful moment. Two who have been joined in life, all of life, the better and the worse of life, has now come to an end. Abraham is not reserved in his grief but allows his soul to be poured out over the depth of his loss.

I believe from this brief look at Abraham and Sarah’s life that there are some very clear principles for a marriage to survive the better and the worse that life can bring.

• Share the same spiritual center: For all of their failings in life, Abraham and Sarah had a relationship with God at the center of their life. For your marriage to have the resources to survive the better and the worse of marriage you must have the same spiritual center. That means that each of you knows that Jesus Christ is your individual Savior and Lord. It is not that you live by the same principles or values but that you live in the power of the person of Jesus Christ. If you don’t know and share the same spiritual center, then you are missing a resource of strength that you don’t need to be without.

• Face hardship together: Abraham and Sarah had plenty of hardships from the very moment they married. Just like the famine they faced, we are all going to have things where life seems to leave us in need. Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong could conquer cancer and Pyrenees by exerting all his energy physically but he couldn’t save his own marriage. He said, "All I knew was that in trying to do everything, we’d forgotten to do the most important thing. We forgot to be married. People warn you that marriage is hard work, but you don’t listen. You talk about the pretty bridesmaids’ dresses, but you don’t talk about what happens next; about how difficult it will be to stay or to rebuild. What nobody tells you is that there will be more than just some hard days. There will be some hard weeks and perhaps even some hard years." (Every Second Counts (Doubleday, 2003), p. 221) A marriage that is for better or for worse faces hardship together.

• Accept the failures of each other: Abraham and Sarah both demonstrated their very real humanness. Marriage is divine but we are not. The closer we get to each other the more we see the cracks and weaknesses. Unless we chose to admit that the other person to whom we’re married could never meet all our needs, then we are in trouble. Marriage from God’s view is giving not getting. Sooner or later two people have to stop taking and give themselves away!

• Struggle with living life and having faith: Have you ever laughed at God? Abraham and Sarah did! Yet they are seen as persons of great faith—and they are-but they are also persons who struggled with life and faith. What makes Sarah and Abraham so real is that God was close enough to them that they could struggle with his promises—together. If you have never struggled with living life and having faith, then I wonder about how far you have come in life and how much faith you really have!

• Believe God’s word: Abraham and Sarah knew the joy of seeing God honor his word. They had a specific promise from God about his solution to a specific problem and in spite of all their failures they believed. I realize you don’t have specific answers to your specific problems but my question is, "Do you have the Bible at the center of your marriage?" I’m not asking you about your family devotions but about your personal devotion to God’s word as revealed in the scripture. Patrick Morley says, "The greatest potential for meaningful change in our marriages is to submit to the authority of God’s word." (Two-Part Harmony, p. 227).

• Trust through the greatest test: Abraham and Sarah’s greatest test was when God tested Abraham’s love for him. At some point in your marriage you will be tested regarding your trust in God. It may be in some crisis of life event or in some issue that is beyond you but the test is going to come. While Kathy and I have faced many tests, there’s still a lot of life left. None of us knows what the test might be. Yet the challenge will be when the test comes: will we trust?

• Grieve at goodbye: Abraham’s grief was deep when their goodbye came. There are so many of you that have walked this journey of grieving at goodbye. I watch you. I hurt for you but I can’t know what you feel. Life does go on for you but there is such a deep, deep sadness when you say goodbye. You grieve because you have lived all of life together—the better and the worse. You grieve because you can’t imagine life without them. You say "goodbye" because you have known the bond of living in oneness with another human.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit in the home Al and Joe Chambers. I always enjoy my visits with our Homelink folks but was especially encouraged by my visit with these two dear people. Al and Joe have been married for 63 years. They have served this nation through WWII and Korea. Their son, Lee, died in combat in 1970 in Vietnam and I have seen his name on The Wall in Washington, D.C. Their daughter Sandy was mentally challenged and died in 1994. They have two daughters, Susie, here in Jonesboro and another, Becky, in Ft. Smith. Al and Joe have served in this church in exemplary ways.

These last years have been hard on both of them. Joe is not as able as he was to get around and Al has recently been in the hospital herself. Sometimes she has to help him remember things and sometimes he needs to help her. They rise early and spend their day caring for each other all day long. They are not wealthy by this world’s standards but neither do they go without.

When you go into their home you are entering a place of love, faith, family and joy. Al told me that when she thought about their life, they "just had so many blessings" that she was afraid someone else wasn’t getting enough because they had so many! They have lived out their life for better or for worse.

Today I offer to you the life of Abraham and Sarah as an authentic example of what it means to live out "for better or for worse". It is real life, real faith and real love. Your marriage may be "in a fix" and you wonder if you can survive the worse to get to the better. It is not a TV show that fixes the problem in an hour. It is God who longs to show you his power as you open your home and your heart to him.

Sunday, May 2, 2004

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org