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Andy Stanley - What Happy Couples Know Part 2 Its Mutual · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Sarah and Davis have chosen to write their own vowels. That so, Sarah,
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I promise to care for you and love you our entire life. I
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promise to be your best friend. Whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa. You
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can't just be saying best friend. Okay, Pete's my best friend. Hold
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up, I thought I was his best friend. We've been through a lot
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together. Gosh, we have been through so much together. Second grade was
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really rough for us. I remember when he fell off the monkey bars.
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I mean he gave me his fruit roll up. I mean I gave him
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my fruit roll up. That was like, I hope he knows that he's
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my best friend. Our friendship has survived so much. You think that this
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is gonna divide us. I promise to be your most loyal friend. I'm
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loyal too. She is confusing me so much right now. She is my
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wife. He is my best friend. Who's the best friend? Here?
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Who? No one else? Baby? Just you and me, taken on
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the world. Dude, dude, dude, due, I'm gonna have to
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be gluten free. Made you go gluten free? I have to be cluding
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free. I don't want to be in gluten free man, it's the end
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of an era, Davis, end of an era. Yes, I am
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crushing these vows. I would like to object right now, but I want
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to do it at the right time. Please don't do it, Pepe,
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I'm gonna object. I'm gonna je. My hand's going up. My hand's
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going up, it's going up. I object. Hey, we're in part
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two of this series and what happy couples know, and to recap where we
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were a last time. All of us come into relationships, or dream of
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relationships, or imagine relationships with things in mind that we want to be true
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of those relationships. We move toward engagement with those things. We move toward
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the altar with those things. And essentially, we said last week, it's
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essentially like we all have a box of hopes and dreams and desires. And
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even if you're single and not dating anybody right now, you could sit down
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and sort of script out in general terms. Hey, if I'm ever in
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a relationship, if I'm ever married, here's what I'd like it to look
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like. And all of us have an idea. You know, how much
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money will have, how we'll spend the money, if we'll have a budget,
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not a budget on where we'll live, we'll rent, we'll buy,
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we'll wait and save money, what she will or what she won't sleep in,
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how we're going to handle or how the chores will be handled, how
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conflict resolution would be handled. Some of you dream of the day that you'll
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get to be parents. And I hope you have a parent of this little
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fella right here, and I hope you aren't the parent of this little fella
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right here. I don't know if you can see the eyes on this little
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child. I don't know why they even created it, but just to play
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long, if you have, can you see the eyes? This is creepy.
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If you have this child, this child will end up on the top
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of whatever you live in at some point in your life as a parent.
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I know this. So anyway, we all have. We all have an
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idea. I'm gonna sit you right back here, honey, go to sleep,
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okay, good child, put you in one b land later. We
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all have some idea of what the future is going to look like relationally.
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Now that the problem is or the challenge, it's not even a problem,
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it's just the challenge. The challenge is this when we daydream about the future,
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our future as we daydream and as we imagine, it organizes itself around
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our box, organizes itself around our hopes, wishes, dreams, and desires.
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To put it another way, when I was single, I never daydreamed
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about becoming the perfect person for someone. I daydreamed about finding the perfect person
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for me? Is that just me? I never daydreamed about I can't wait
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until I become the perfect person for someone. I daydreamed about the perfect person
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for me. So when I met Sandra, I thought, well, she's
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perfect for me. So I brought her ring and my box to the altar.
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I brought her ring in my box to the wedding. And the thing
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is, everything in mind my box seems perfectly reasonable to me. Why wouldn't
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everybody not want to center their lives around what's in my box? And she
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brought her box to the altar and to the wedding as well, and everything
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in her box seem perfectly reasonable to her. But the problem is when we
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when we hand our box of hopes, dreams, and desires to somebody else,
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the density changes and the weight changes, and what begins and feels to
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us like a hope or a dream or a desire feels to them like an
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expectation. And the interesting thing is this, on this side of the box,
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it's all hopes, dreams, and desires. On that side of the
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box, it's all expectations. I'm like, well, why wouldn't everybody want
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to order their life this way? And the person on the other side of
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the box is going because that just feels like a lot of expectations to me
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from where I'm standing, hopes, dreams, and desires, from where you're
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sitting, from where she's standing. All about the expectations and expectation. As
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you know, or if you don't know, here's the definition. It's a
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strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future. It's
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the strong belief that something will happen. Honey. I know we're not there
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yet, but we're moving in that direction, aren't we, honey. Dear.
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I know this is the first year, but eventually, right, honey.
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It's that subtle pressure that things are going to be the way I imagine
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they're gonna be, They're gonna be the way that you imagine they're going to
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be. It's subtle. It's all about the future. And here's the thing.
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Anytime, anytime, we attempt to recreate or avoid something from the past.
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Anytime we attempt in a relationship to recreate or avoid something from the past,
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our hopes and dreams and our desires begin to feel like expectations because we
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want to create a preferred future. It may be a preferred future that's exactly
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like the past that we grew up in we want to recreate it. Or
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it may be it may be a preferred future that's very different than the family
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that we grew up in. But either way, as soon as we try
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to shape the future of a relationship, it begins to feel like expectations to
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the person that we're in relationship with. And when couples exchange boxes and we
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do this just happens. I don't know that it can be completely avoided.
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But when we exchange boxes, couples begin negotiating with each other, bargaining with
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each other, sometimes bribing each other. I will, if you will,
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If you'll do this the way I want to do it, then we'll avoid
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conflict and will resolve conflict the way you do it. If you'll get on
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a budget and stay on a budget, then perhaps one day we can live
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in that style that you want to live in and back and forth and back
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and forth, and what happens is without it. Ever, no one ever
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intends for this to happen. Eventually, the relationship is characterized, as we
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said last week, by a debt debtor relationship. You owe me, you
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owe me, you owe me. That's what husbands are supposed to do.
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That's what wives are supposed to do. That's what men are supposed to do
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in a relationship. That's how women are supposed to respond in a relationship.
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And next thing you know, we're negotiating, back and forth, bickering,
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and it's all about you owe me, you owe me, you owe me,
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you owe me. And the problem is, we said this last week
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that when you get into this dynamic, when this dynamic can characterizes the relationship,
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you cannot recognize you cannot recognize love. You can't give love, and
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you can't receive love because you can't appreciate it and you can't even recognize it.
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Now, let me illustrate it this way. You see, if you
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owe me money, you can't give me money. Right, If you owe
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me money, you can't give me money. If you owe me money and
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you give me money, I don't see it. As a gift, and
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I don't receive it as a gift. I see it and receive it as
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a payment. And if you owe me money and say, Andy, hey,
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I just really appreciate you. Know what you're doing. I want to
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give you a hundred dollars. Well, if you owe me more than one
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hundred dollars, not only am I not grateful and I don't see it as
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a gift, My next question is where's the rest? So consequently, so
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consequently, gratitude is minimal. So in a relationship that has become a debt
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debtor or the dynamic of the relationship is a debt debt or relationship. As
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long as somebody feels like somebody owes them, they don't receive it as love,
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They can't see it as love, and the other person can't even extend
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love. So the question is, how do we keep this from happening?
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How do we keep legitimate hopes, dreams and desires from becoming and feeling like
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expectations? And the answer is we answer the following question the way that happy
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couples answer the following question. And the question is what does he owe me?
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What does she owe me? What does he owe me? What does
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she owe me? And happy couples all answer this question the same way.
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They answer the question nothing. They don't owe me anything. They know that
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they owe each other everything but are owed nothing in return. They know that
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they owe each other everything but are owed nothing in return, which, granted,
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doesn't make any sense. But as you get to know really really happy
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couples, there's something about their relationship that doesn't make any sense. Now,
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this is the essence, this is the substance. This is right in the
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crosshairs of what a Christian marriage is all about. Now, a Christian marriage,
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and I don't know how you raise, what your background is, but
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a Christian marriage is not a marriage that is conducted according to some sort of
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Christian code of conduct. That's not what a Christian marriage. In fact,
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great marriages aren't built on codes of conduct. If you're trying to build a
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relationship, you're engaged, you're dating somebody, or you're moving toward the altar,
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and you're trying to get them to act right and behave correctly, you're
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headed for trouble. Great relationships are not built on specific codes of conduct,
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and they're not even built on specific roles, and they're not a great relationship
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is not built on a sort of an exchange of services of goods and services.
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That great relationships and a Christian marriage in particulars, which is what we're
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talking about. A Christian marriage in particular, as I said last week,
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really boils down to being a submission competition where both people are racing to the
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back or to the end of the line. That in a great relationship,
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in any healthy relationship, instead of there being competition, instead of their being
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trying and bargaining and negotiating, there's a sense of well, she doesn't owe
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me, he doesn't owe me anything, but I feel like I owe her.
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I owe him everything. Now, today, I want to explain where
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I learned this and where I saw this, and where we get this,
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And here's the story, here's how it happened. At the end of Jesus
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Ministry and end of Jesus Ministry, he's hours away from being interested. He
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gathers his guys together and he says to them, here's a few things I
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want you to remember. And toward the end of that time, as they're
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sharing their last Passover together, he says this. He says, I'm going
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to give you a brand new command. Now was this should have been very
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offensive. In fact, these Jewish boys should have gotten up and left the
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room. And here's why this doesn't bother us, doesn't phase us in the
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least. But the only person that could give a command was God. And
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God had given all the commands through Moses. So you can talk about the
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commands, you can exeget the commands, you can explain the commands, you
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can apply the commands, you can prioritize the commands, but you don't make
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up new ones. So there was a sense in which Jesus was equating himself
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with Moses and in a sense claiming to speak for God. And these guys
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should have gotten up and left the room. But the night had already been
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very confused. Judas had left to run an eron He just Jesus basically took
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their most sacred holiday and turned it into something all about himself. So the
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whole night is crazy. And he says, guys, I know this is
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crazy. I'm kind of stepping in front of Moses. I'm stepping between you
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and God. But I'm going to give you a new command. And here's
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what he said. He said, a new command, I give you love
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one another, to which they may have responded, that's not new, to
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which Jesus would have responded, I'm not through, because here's the rest of
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it. A new command. I give you love one another as I have
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loved Jews, so you must love one another. Now, this is an
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epic moment. This is such a big moment because Jesus says, I'm reducing
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all the Jewish law from six hundred and something to two to one. That
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at the end of the day, these are your marching orders relationally. You
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are to treat other people the way I have treated you. And he could
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have gone around the room to each one of those guys and said, Matthew,
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you remember when we met. You were a tax collector. You were
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an embarrassment to your family, You were an embarrassment to the nation. And
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do you remember what I said to you when I met you, Matthew.
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Matthew's like, yep. I remember you asked me to follow you and Peter,
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you remember how you didn't want Matthew following us because you didn't want to
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be associated with the tax, associated with the tax gathered. And Peter's like
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yep. And remember I let both of you stay in the club in Matthew,
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do you remember where we went when I invited you to follow me?
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Yep, we went to my house. Do you remember who we invited?
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Peter's like I remember who we invited, all of his tax gathering friends.
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It was the worst day of my life. And Jesus said, Matthew,
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I want you to extend that kind of grace and that kind of mercy to
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every single person you meet for the rest of your life. Nathaniel, you
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remember when we met? Oh? Yeah, remember Nathaniel, you dissed my
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whole family. This isn't really a famous Bible story, but when Nathaniel heard
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about Jesus and that he was from Nazareth, his response was Nazareth? What
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good thing could come from Nazareth? So Jesus could have said, remember,
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you dissed my family, my grandfamily, my stickball team, all of my
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childhood friends. You pretty much made us all sound like complete losers. Do
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you remember that, Nathaniel? I remember that, Nathaniel, I invited you
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to follow me, and I never brought it up again. Did I know
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he never brought it? He could have gone all the way around the room
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and said, Okay, from now on, I want you to think about
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how I treated you. That's how I want you to treat everybody. And
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a few hours later he would be arrested, and he would be tried,
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and he would be crucified, and that would be in a few days an
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aha moment from which they would never recover when they realized Jesus gave his life
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on our behalf, and he is asking us to do the same for other
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people. That's why this is sometimes called the law of Christ, or I
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call it the platinum rule. The golden rules treat people the way you want
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to be treated. The platinum rule is treat people the way that God in
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Christ treated you. The fact, let me kind of make it simple to
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remember. When you're not sure what to say or do you just love like
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God through Christ loved you. That's it. When you're not sure what to
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say or do relationally, you go, Okay, how did God through Christ
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treat me when I was misbehaving, when I messed up, when I broke
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a promise. When you're not sure what to say or do, you love
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like God through Christ loved you. This is the big one. This is
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the marching orders. Every single New Testament imperative after the Resurrection, every single
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New Testament imperative. After the Resurrection, teas off and keys off of this
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big idea, as I've loved you, so you were to love other people.
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Then a few years later a guy named Paul, the Apostle Paul,
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who hated Christians, arrested Christians, tortured Christians, put Christians to death.
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If you hate Christians, you would love the Apostle Paul. He hated them
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more than you. You hate them in your mind. He hated them as
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a job. Okay, And the Apostle Paul becomes a Jesus follower. And
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when he does, his life is completely transformed. And he takes this big
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idea of love others the way that God through Christ has loved us. He
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takes that big idea and he begins to apply it and all of his letters
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to gentiles, non Jewish people, he begins to apply it to all kinds
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of relationships. He applies it to everything, including marriage. So whenever you
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read anything the Apostle Paul writes in his letters that says do this or don't
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do that, do this or don't do that, here's what you need to
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remember. Every one of his commands, every one of his commands is linked
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specifically and directly to Jesus' command to treat others the way that I have treated
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you. He's not making stuff up. He's applying Jesus' brand new command.
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So, in his letter to the Christians living in Ephesus, the apostle Paul
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applies Jesus' new command to marriage. And here's what he says. Wives,
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submit yourself to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. I mean,
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what could be any clearer than that. Let's pray now. If this
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bothers you, I'm so glad it bothers you. And I'm so glad you're
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here. I'm just gonna leave it up here to bother you. In fact,
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some of you would say, Aha, that's why I quit going to
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church. That verse right, there's why I quit going to church. That
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whole idea is why I don't like Christians. I am so glad you are
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watching or listening, are in church today. I'm telling you what you're about
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to hear. This is so transformational. I love talking about this. Our
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English Bibles or translations from Greek text and there were groupings of Greek texts all
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over the East, and the oldest text, the oldest manuscripts of the New
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Testament, the oldest manuscripts of the Apostle Paul's letters. Interestingly enough, if
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you read, if you took this verse and you translated it literally, here's
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what it would say. It would say, wives to your own husbands as
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to the Lord. There's no verb in this statement. In the oldest Greek
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manuscripts, there's no verb. The word submit isn't there. Now, before
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I explain why it's not there, I want to explain something else, And
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this is so important. When the Apostle Paul's first century audience heard him teach
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about women submitting to their husbands, and I'll tell you where the verb came
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from in just a second. When the first century audience heard the Apostle Paul
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talk about women and wives submitting to their husbands, whereas we go, what
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you know and huh, their response was duh huh. They were like what
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They were like, well, yeah, tell us something we don't know.
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They had no choice. I mean, this wasn't new information, This wasn't
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even a big deal. This was common ground. This didn't surprise anyone in
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Jesus' audience, and ladies, believe it or not, No one was offended
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because men in that culture, both the Roman culture and Greek culture, and
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then the Jews had a version of this. Men in that culture had something
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that's referred to as patria potestas, potria potestas, potry potestas. These two
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words put together meant they had legal jurisdiction over their children, and they had
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legal jurisdiction over their wives. Essentially, their wives belonged to them. So
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when paul'sa's wives submit to your husband, that's like right, because if we
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don't, he'll sell us, he'll trade us, he'll have us arrested,
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he'll accuse us of some crime, and there won't be any witnesses eyewitnesses to
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show up to dispute the claim. And of course we submit to our husbands.
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So this was not a big deal to them. But here's the cool
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thing. It's a big deal to us. And the reason it's a big
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deal to us is what comes later in the text. So why no verb
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and the oldest Greek text, why isn't there a verb in this verse?
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And the answer is the verb comes from the verse before. And this was
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a typical kind of Greek grammatical way of doing things that you make a statement
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with a verb, and then in the next statement you just infer the verb.
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You don't include it. You just take your verb from what came before
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that submit. The verb submit is actually inferred from the verse that came before.
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So we should ask what was the verse that came before that gives us
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the verb for this verse. And my friends, you're looking up here.
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This is a game changer. Here's what Paul said before he told wives submit
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to their husbands. Here's the verse that sets the tone for everything that follows.
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Here's our verb, submit to one another out of and there it is
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again. Every time the apostle Paul tells us to do something, he points
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us back to Jesus, not the Old Testament, not the Ten Commandments,
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Jesus, as God through Christ, has done something extraordinary for you. You
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are to demonstrate that same kind of love in your relationships with each other,
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including romantic relationships, including marriage. You are to submit to one another out
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of reverence to Christ. In other words, the submission, guys, get
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ready is mutual. And this word reverence is a sense of awe. In
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other words, in light of all that God has done for you, in
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light of the awe that comes with, Oh my gosh, you forgave me,
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died for my sins. You've forgiven me in spite of myself and all
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the times I've gone back on my promises. All that awe is to be
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translated, not simply to church attendance, and not simply the singing worship songs
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to the invisible God and the sky. That energy is to be translated into
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love for other people. This is why, This is why Christian marriage,
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This is why Christian marriage is a submission competition because the command to submit is
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mutual. It is mutual submission. My friends, if you don't hear anything
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else today, this makes marriage amazing. This makes relationships amazing. This is
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what happy couples know. They know, I'm here for you. You're here
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for me. But I'm not here for you because you're here for me.
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I'm just here for you because God was here for me when I needed my
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heavenly Father. I'm going to leverage all of my resources, all of my
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talents, all of my gifts all I'm going to leverage all of me for
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what benefits you the most. Now, we may have different roles in our
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relationship, We may have different responsibilities in our relationship. We may have different
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gifts and talents, but we do not have different value. I'm telling you,
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in the first century this was unbelievable, and Jesus is the model.
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So what Paul did is so brilliant. As Paul is beginning to make a
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very disruptive application, as he's about to make a very very very disruptive point
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in this primarily Greek and Roman culture, he begins, like any good communicator
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does. He begins where there's common ground, And the common ground was wives,
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submit yourself to your husband's as to the Lord, because everybody knew a
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wife had to submit herself to her husband. So he begins, submit yourself
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to one another out of reverence for Christ. So Paul begins where the common
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ground is, and he goes from there. But then, but then he
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applies it to men. Here's what he says. We'll go to wives.
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Submit wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do unto the Lord.
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Now when we see this one other thing, we immediately think, and
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women, I get this? Why did I get this? Ladies I get
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this? We immediately think, Okay, of all the men who are not
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worth submitting to? Right? So I did a survey, and I found
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out it's actually one hundred percent of the men are not worth submitting to.
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Okay, so, but his point is, ladies, going back to Paul,
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his point is, ladies, I want you to place your husband or
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your man's if you're moving in toward a permanent relationship, I want you to
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place your man's hopes, dreams, and desires ahead of your own. I
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want you to deal out of his box, not because he expects it,
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not because he expects it, but because your heavenly father requested it. But
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what came next, what came next was shocking. What came next had an
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effect on the audience that mimics or parallels our first our twenty first century response
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to whyves submit to your husbands because in that culture, again it was assumed.
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But what came next, I'm telling you, it was so disruptive,
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It was so unbelievable, it was so new, it was so different.
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What comes next, What comes next is why what came first is so offensive
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to us. The reason we are so offended oftentimes w wives submit to your
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husbands is because what the apostle Paul asked husbands to do. And I'll connect
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those dots in just a minute. So this is what he says to the
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men, husbands love your wives. Now we're like, well, of course,
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but in the first century it wasn't. Of course in the first century.
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Wait wait, wait, I don't have an obligation to my woman.
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My woman has an obligation to me. The apostle ball says, I'm not
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finished. Husbands love your wives just as And this is the key. This
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is the connection, This is the link. These are the two words you
23:15
should look forward throughout the New Testament when you read the New Testament after the
23:18
Resurrection. Husbands love your wives just as Christ. There it is just as
23:25
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now this is a
23:27
Christian audience in ephesis, and the guys are like, wait, wait,
23:30
wait, wait wait, I know this story. This does not end well
23:34
for Christ, this does not end well for Jesus. Okay, I know
23:38
where you're going with this. And Paul, okay, we get the wives
23:41
submit because I mean they kind of have to. But now you're telling us
23:45
that we have a responsibility toward women, we have a responsibility toward our wives,
23:51
that somehow you're inferring that there might even be a sense of equality.
23:56
I mean, where are you going with this? And the thing is,
23:59
we know where this goes. Jesus died for the church. Paul's still not
24:03
done, he says, look at this. He says, in the same
24:06
way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. It's like he's
24:08
saying, Okay, if you can't get the theology thing about Jesus and the
24:12
church, let me make it real simple for you. Guys. You are
24:15
to love your wife. You are responsible to care for your wife. You
24:18
are responsible to protect your wife as if she is you. This was this
24:27
was just more than they could imagine. And he says this, he he
24:32
who loves his wife loves himself. Well, Paul, what are you talking
24:34
about passes, because there's a mystery. There's a mystery that when two people
24:38
are married, they become one flesh, so there's no division, there's no
24:45
pulling away, there're one flesh. Men, your wives are one with you.
24:48
I'm telling you as many times as you've heard this, and as strange
24:51
as it may be, and his biblical as it may be, this was
24:53
brand new because he was equating men with women. This was scandalous. It's
24:59
why I said, That's why I said this. What comes next is why
25:02
what came first is so offensive to us. The reason this is so great.
25:06
And if you're not a Christian, or you've left Christianity or used to
25:08
be a Christian, I'm sure you have good reasons, Fanti, I'm sure.
25:12
I'm really sure you have good reasons. So I had read what you'd
25:15
read, heard what you had heard, you know, went to school where
25:17
you went to school, or experience what you experienced in a different church.
25:21
I get that, but I want you to hear this because this is so
25:23
powerful. This is so powerful. The reason that we kind of bristle and
25:27
the women you bristle when you, you know, wives submit to your husbands
25:32
is because our culture, our American culture, our Western culture, embraces the
25:37
equality of men and women. We embrace the equality of men and women.
25:41
So the minute we hear somebody somebody's supposed to submit to somebody else, that's
25:45
like the ladies. Here's the amazing news. Guess who introduced this idea of
25:52
equality to the world. Guess who rolled this out in such a big way
25:56
that it actually made a big difference in culture. Guess who was the first
26:00
person with any authority that declared you equal with men. Jesus, I'm telling
26:08
you, I know this is naive. I think every woman should be a
26:11
Jesus follower, if for no other reason but this, okay. He argued
26:15
for your value, He argued for your worth, He argued for your dignity
26:21
before it was a category for anybody else in the world. And the apostle
26:25
Paul comes along a says, men, because of the way your heavenly father
26:29
views the women in your life, you are to treat them with extraordinary,
26:32
extraordinary value. One day, Jesus is teaching and the teachers of the law
26:37
and Pharisees come along. They're always trying to trick him and ask him trick
26:38
questions to, you know, divide him from the crowd. And they come
26:41
to him one day and they say, Jesus, we got a question,
26:44
a marriage question. Can a man divorce his wife for any and every reason?
26:49
Because there was a group of religious leaders that taught a man could just
26:52
declare it to say three times, I divorce you, I divorce you,
26:55
I divorce you. And she's gone for burning the toast, you know,
26:57
for kicking over spill the water, for not getting home on time, for
27:02
not picking up the kids on time, or he's just tired of her,
27:03
or you know, she doesn't please him anymore. What in the world does
27:07
that mean? And so there was a group of Jewish people and Jewish teachers
27:11
of the law who said, this is what Moses meant by what Moses said
27:14
about, you know, marriage and divorce, that a man could divorce his
27:17
wife for any and every reason at all. So they said, Jesus,
27:19
can a man divorce his wife for any and every reason at all? Or
27:22
is there like a list of things that a man can leverage and can get
27:26
a divorce and divorce his wife. And Jesus looks at him and says,
27:30
there's no reason. There's no reason, because you're one. A go home
27:33
and treat her like you treat yourself. Now, no, we're looking for
27:37
a list of reasons. She said, there's no reason. You see,
27:40
you think you're better, you think you're worth more, you think you mean
27:44
more to God, but you don't. And when you married her, you
27:45
became one. Now go home and treat her as well as you treat yourself.
27:49
I'm telling you the dignity, the value, the worth that Jesus gave
27:53
women and read the gospels. Ladies read the gospels. Women flocked to Jesus.
27:59
They flot they supported his ministry, they raised money for his ministry.
28:02
They were the first person to see him after he rose from the dead,
28:04
which I'm telling you that gave women extraordinary dignity as well, because a woman's
28:10
word in court was meaningless. If you called a woman to testify in court,
28:14
if they even let her in, her testimony was almost meaningless. And
28:18
yet all the gospels tell us that women were the very first people to see
28:22
Jesus alive after he rose from the dead. And the reason the gospels tell
28:26
us that is because that's what happened. And the reason we know that's what
28:30
happened is if you were making up a story in the first century about a
28:33
resurrection, you would not have women be the first people who saw it,
28:38
because nobody believed the testimony of a woman. And so Jesus rolls this out.
28:45
The apostle Paul pumps it up and he says, I know you aren't
28:48
surprised when I said women are to submit to their husbands. But I'm telling
28:52
you men, women, and God's eyes, you are equally value and you
28:56
are to submit to one another. This was life changing. And granted,
29:03
it took the church a long long time to catch up, and in some
29:07
quarters it's still taking the church a long time to catch up with this teaching.
29:11
But our society, do not deceive. Don't be deceived. You know,
29:15
our society that values men and women. That's not natural. There are
29:21
other places in the world where women have still treated the way they were in
29:23
the first century. You know that it's not natural. This is a shadow,
29:27
it's a shade. It's a leftover of the teaching of Jesus and the
29:30
teaching of Paul as it relates to women. So back to Paul. What's
29:36
his point? His point is, men, let me ask you a question.
29:38
What is life to you? So we talk. We're back to the
29:40
men. Men, what is life to you? Okay, I don't know,
29:42
just think what is I don't have a lot? Yeah you know,
29:45
okay, men, what is life to you? Here's his point. Just
29:48
put her before that, whatever life is to you, put her before that.
29:52
And you can't do that. You can't do that as long as you've
29:56
got a big box of expectations between you and her. And ladies, he
29:59
would say, you can't love your husband. You can't submit to your husband
30:03
as you're trying to mutually submit to each other, as long as you've got
30:06
a big box of expectations sitting between you. And this is what great happy
30:11
couples know that somehow they get rid of this and they become all for the
30:17
other person. So here's the question, how do you get everything out of
30:22
the expectation box back into the hope's dreams and you know, desires and dreams
30:26
box? And then what do you do with it once you get it here?
30:30
And the answer to the first question in terms of how you get everything
30:33
you know from here back to here is you decide, as we said last
30:37
week, that he doesn't owe me anything, she doesn't owe me anything.
30:41
I'm deciding I don't feel it. I'm deciding you don't owe me anything,
30:45
but I owe her. I owe him everything. And for this to work.
30:49
And here's the key, this is what's going to frustrate so many of
30:52
you. I understand it has to be mutual. Why Because he said this
30:56
is so powerful. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submit
31:00
to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is what oneness in a
31:04
relationship looks like. His best over yours, her best over yours. Now,
31:11
last week I gave you a little homework assignment, but it was a
31:12
thought process. I asked you two questions. I said, this week,
31:15
I want you to think about what's in your box? And then I want
31:19
you to think about is somebody carrying it around? I want you to ask
31:22
the question, Okay, what's in here? We should know what's in here?
31:25
And then secondly we should know have I accidentally or maybe purposely handed this
31:30
to somebody and I am expecting them to fulfill my hopes, desires and dreams.
31:37
And so the question that I want you your homework assignment this week is
31:42
this, and this is a little more dangerous. Okay, I want you
31:45
to ask them what's in your box? What's in your box? Not not
31:51
on the way home, you got you gotta wait for the right time.
31:53
I just want you to ask her, ask him. I just want you
31:56
to say, what's in your box? Now? For some of you,
32:01
it's say, oh no, he's here now I'm gonna have to do it,
32:05
or she's here now I'm gonna I'm just okay, because I care about
32:07
you, Okay, I want you to ask what's in your box? And
32:10
then what the next thing I want you to do. And this is gonna
32:13
be really difficult for some of you. After you ask what's in your box?
32:16
Then I want you to stop talking and listen. Now, guys,
32:24
if you ask her, your woman, your wife, your fiance, you
32:28
know what's in your box? She may faint that you've even asked her considered.
32:31
She may get mad. We've been married twenty years and you're just okay,
32:36
you just don't talk. You just take it and take it because,
32:38
yeah, you've been married twenty years and you don't know what's in her box
32:42
because you've been wondering why she doesn't deal out of your box. Okay,
32:44
there may be, you know, some distance. So you just ask and
32:47
you listen. And ladies, if you ask your man, you know,
32:51
your husband and your fiance, what's in your box? I tell you what
32:52
he's gonna say. Probably he's gonna say nothing. Nothing. Aren't the falcons
33:00
on? We don't even know we have a box. We're not lying,
33:07
we don't know, we don't know what's in there. Now we expect you
33:12
to fulfill these wishes and dreams and desires that we've never defined. But ladies,
33:15
now I'm stereotyping a little bit. But there's a kind of a I
33:19
don't know how to talk about this, guys, That's why I asked you
33:22
last week to start thinking about it. You need to know, and you
33:25
do know. And ladies, here's the other thing about many of us men,
33:29
and we're scared to talk about it. And then the reason you need
33:35
to talk about it is you're scared to talk about it, but you're expecting
33:37
her to fulfill it and you've never told her, and it's scary, in
33:40
fact, it's terrorizing in some ways, but you talk about it. This
33:47
is, you know, the what's in your box? Question? This is
33:51
the I'm all in question. This is the I am more interested in what's
33:59
your box and you're boxed? And what's in mind? This is the I'm
34:01
all in. I'm all into this relationship so much. I want to know
34:06
what's your hopes and your dreams and your desires. This is the I'm all
34:10
in. This is the less self question. And you know something about less
34:15
self people. Less self people are happier, people find the happiest people.
34:21
You know, less self and less self relationships are the richest and the richer
34:28
relationships. Now I know you know, if you're paying attention to this,
34:32
in your mind, you're going, yeah, but what about what about in
34:35
your argument? I get that I would do the same thing. So I
34:37
know for some of you, there's like, wait, wait, wait,
34:38
I have one really really big objection. If I'm gonna move forward with this,
34:42
Okay, okay, any if I take the pressure off, you'd have
34:45
no idea what he's gonna do. If I take the pressure off, you
34:47
have no idea how much money she's gonna spend. If I take the pressure
34:51
off, he'll never come home from work, He'll just live there. Okay.
34:54
If I take the pressure off, He'll never follow through. She'll never
34:58
follow through if I take the pressure off. If I take the pressure off,
35:00
I'm you're what, I'm your what. I'm afraid. I'm afraid she
35:08
won't. I'm afraid he will. I'm afraid he'll start. I'm afraid she'll
35:12
stop. But my friends, this is the way forward. This is the
35:20
way forward. And if your relationship has boiled down to something simply being a
35:28
tug of war, I mean, if your relationship is all about arguing over
35:30
the box and you're on one side and he's on the other, or she's
35:34
on the other. If your whole relationship has come down to basically, you
35:37
know, if I pull too hard, he won't pull hard, if I
35:39
don't pull, if it goes back and forth, if your whole relationship comes
35:45
down to this, and the thought of laying down your side of the rope
35:51
is terrifying, I understand that. I know how this works. Okay,
35:53
it's like, okay, honey, you hear what he said about the rope,
35:55
So okay, I'm gonna count to three. We're gonna drop it at
35:59
the same time. Because if I'm afraid, if I let look pressure off
36:01
first, this is just going in your direction. We're gonna be living in
36:05
in your box. We'll just be all about. So when I count to
36:07
three, now listen, there's no hope. So you'd let go of the
36:13
rope. There's not. And because you're a Christian, if you're a Christian,
36:21
you have to go first. And I'll tell you why. Because when
36:25
you were dead and your trespasses and your sin, God through Christ, dropped
36:34
his end of the rope. Look, he did something for you. Whether
36:37
or not you ever did anything in response to what He did for you,
36:42
that is the gospel. This is why all New Testament post resurrection imperatives and
36:47
commands in the New Testament all tied back into as God through Christ did for
36:54
you. So submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. At the
37:05
Cross, God went first. Jesus followers go first, happy couples. Happy
37:15
couples put each other first by going first in an effort to be last.
37:22
That Jesus followers, they put each other first by dropping that rope first in
37:27
an effort to be last. So I want to challenge you this week,
37:30
whatever that looks like in your relationship, to just drop it and then find
37:36
out what's in their box and then listen and take notes and maybe start taking
37:45
action. And if you're concerned about but Andy, what about all of my
37:50
hopes and all of my dreams and all of my desires? I mean,
37:52
what about my stuff? I mean I still have all this stuff, and
37:54
I just you know, what do I do with it? That's what we're
37:59
going to talk about next week, So don't miss part three of what Happy Couples No