Week of March 7, 2010

  • Pastor Duane Cross
  • Mar 8, 2010

NO PEDESTALS

How are you doing in relationships?  How is your marriage?  Are you passionate like Solomon and the Shulamite woman?  Do you feel guilty about the state of your love life?

These are questions that pop up as we are reading through the Bible in 2010.

It is a remarkable thing how the writers of Scripture never do what churches are so tempted to do, which is put people on a pedestal.  To illustrate how grittily honest the biblical writers are about human nature, answer this question:  Who in the Bible would you say had the best marriage?

Adam and Eve had their honeymoon in paradise, and it all went downhill from there.  Abraham lied that Sarah was his sister—twice—and impregnated her servant, Hagar.  Isaac and Rebekah spent their marriage battling because he favored Esau and she favored Jacob.  Jacob had children by two wives and the wives’ servants.  About all we know of Moses’ wife, Zipporah, is that they had an argument over circumcising their son and she called Moses a “bridegroom of blood.”  David was a disaster as a husband; Solomon was worse.  When Job’s life got hard, Mrs. Job told him to “curse God and die!”  I am not making this up:  Someone online said they thought the best marriage in the Bible was between Noah and Joan of Ark.

In fairy tales, life is a difficult adventure until you get married—and then you live happily ever after.  But nowhere in the Bible do a couple get married and then live “happily ever after.”  Marriage doesn’t save anyone.  Only Jesus does that.

The Bible is remarkably transparent about the flaws and brokenness of the marriages of every character—yet how often in churches do couples sit in silent agony?  They have an image of spiritual success to project, but under the surface the reality is that they have not slept together for months.  Or there is verbal or physical abuse going on.  Or they have a young daughter who is pregnant and they don’t know what to do.  Or one of them is a secret alcoholic.  Or they are facing bankruptcy.

Often the people who need help the most receive it the least, because that would mean leaving the pedestal.  But what if real people could be honest as the Bible about marriage?  In a community gathered around a cross, there is no room for pedestals.  In the Bible, marriage is not the fulfillment of our dreams; it is a place where we learn.

At Hope Covenant Church, where “no perfect people are allowed,” no pedestals are allowed either.  If you’re struggling, be transparent, ask for help, make the call.  We need each other, and are to find hope in our lives (Psalm 39:7) and that hope is found in the one who invented marriage and relationships.

Don’t give up.

In Him,

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Pastor Duane

 

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