Marriage and Idolatry

I. Idolatry
A. In describing mankind’s most basic problem in Romans 1:25, Paul says that “ they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”
B. So it has been since the beginning that people give to created things the love and attention that the Creator deserves.
C. This is manifested in thousands of ways. As John Calvin said, the human heart is an idol factory.
D. All the creation reflects the glory of God, but some things more than others. And the things which reflect God’s glory the most, the things which are most wonderful or beautiful or pleasant, are the most tempting to worship as idols.
II. Well, what does idolatry have to do with marriage?
A. One of those beautiful parts of the creation is marriage. In Eph. 5 Paul tells us that the relationship between a husband and a wife is a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church. So marriage is a picture of our real home, our “heavenly” home, where the real Bridegroom, Christ, and the real bride, the church, dwell together in perfect union.
B. We’re going to talk about the two very different ways people treat the picture of marriage:
1. Too little devotion/attention/allegiance/love
2. Too much devotion/attention/allegiance/love
III. Idolatry of other things which damages marriage
A. There are many idolatries which undermine a marital relationship.
1. Children
2. Work, money, position, fame, power, approval
3. Hobbies: hunting, sports, video games, gardens, collecting, television
4. Houses, cars, electronics
5. Internet: illegitimate or legitimate
6. Alcohol, drugs
7. It can even be good things.
8. Things which soak up your time with your wife or husband, or your role with your children
9. Things which you love more, things you are more zealous about than your relationship with your spouse
B. In terms of earthly relationships, your spouse is of highest importance.
1. We’re told to love everyone. But of all the neighbors we’re supposed to love as ourselves, our spouse is first on the list.
2. Who else are we told to love as Christ loved the church?
3. With whom else did we take vows before God to love forever for better or for worse?
4. And yet, in the midst of life, things are pulling at us in every direction.
5. And a marriage is not like a shovel which you put in the shed and is pretty much the same months later when you go to use it. A marriage is like a garden. It needs attention. And attention means time.
6. It means seeking to understand the other, which means learning to listen.
7. It means seeking to be understood, which means sharing. Learning to talk about your relationship.
8. At times you might feel like the time and effort is a waste. For those who are tempted to give up and conclude that it’s futile to work on your marriage, here’s the decision you must make: Which do you believe in more: the dysfunctionality of your marriage or the power of God?
a. This was one of the tests for Mary Ann and me. For many years it didn’t seem like anything was going to change. It looked impossible. And it was impossible. But with God all things are possible.
C. And another thing about a painful marriage: you’re more tempted to find escapes, escapes which become idols.
D. But when Christ is first in your heart, then Christ in you is zealous to love your spouse.
1. Men who love their Savior love their wives. Women who love their Savior love their husbands.
2. That’s the effect He has on people.
IV. Idolatry of marriage
A. Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
1. In this startling statement, Jesus tells us that we must hate our spouses. Obviously He is not saying that there is no sense in which we should love them, only that in a certain sense we should not love them but actually hate them.
2. The kind of hate Jesus is referring to here is the flip-side of the love we owe to God alone. God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The kind of love He requires of us is not to be shared with any other. He insists on getting it all. With regard to this kind of love, we must hate everyone else, including our families, including ourselves.
3. What is this kind of love? It is the love of final and ultimate allegiance, the love of worship, the love of first place. To give this kind of love to another person is idolatry.
a. No man can serve two masters. This final-allegiance kind of love must be reserved for God alone. Our spouse is not God. And he/she must not be treated as such.
B. But this idolatry of marriage doesn’t just manifest itself in loving a spouse too much. Even more frequently it manifests itself in looking to your spouse for something only God can give.
1. Here’s how it usually goes: There is some deep felt need in us that our spouse is just not meeting.
2. And we push and we plead and we beg and we scrape. At times we are desperate, such that we feel like we cannot go on unless we get it.
3. But we are expecting something from our spouses that our spouses don’t have.
4. And this actually damages marriages, by introducing expectations that marriage cannot withstand.
5. Many people think their problem is a bad marriage when in reality a painful marriage is the least of their problems. Their big problem is that they don’t have God, they’re not going to God. They may go to church. But they don’t go to God. They don’t run into the arms of their only true Lover.
C. G. K. Chesterton said “Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”
1. Well, it’s also true that many of those who go to the marriage altar are looking for God.
2. I.e. they’re looking to marriage to fill a void in them that only the heavenly Bridegroom can fill.
3. So many times this is the source of dissatisfaction in marriage. The problem is not the bad marriage; the problem is that I’m asking something of my marriage that marriage can’t supply.
D. Sometimes marital unhappiness is permitted in order to expose an idolatrous heart.
1. So often we pray for our marriages and get frustrated that God doesn’t answer. But here’s what’s actually happening: we’re asking God to bless our idolatry.
2. And, because He loves us, instead of giving us the idols we beg for, He sets out to show us the emptiness of those idols.
3. When God looks down and sees my needy heart, a heart which yearns for the acceptance and intimacy and approval and harmony which we think will come from a good spouse/lover, what does He do? What does He think? Is He not jealous that we are clamoring for the love of another? Does He not grieve that we find His love so unsatisfying?
4. How many years I prayed for God to change my wife! And it just seemed so hopeless.
a. But now those prayers seem so messed up to me. Instead of asking God to make my spouse love me, I should have been asking God to help me enjoy His love.
E. When you feel neglected, when you feel insulted, when you feel disrespected, when you feel harassed maybe there is something God is trying to say to you: "You are barking up the wrong tree! You are looking for answers in a place where you cannot find them. 'Come unto Me, all you who are weary and over-burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am humble and gentle in heart and you will find rest for your souls.' " (Matthew 11:28-29)
1. Every time you feel like your spouse is failing you, God is tapping you on the shoulder saying: "Come unto Me!"
2. The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.
a. She had had five husbands — plus. She was looking for love in all the wrong places.
b. Jesus shows up and invites her to find in him all she’s been missing from her men.
c. She kept going to the husband well to try to find water that would quench her soul-thirst, but it kept not working. And now Jesus comes on the scene and says, “I can give you living water. Everyone who drinks of this well water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:10–14)
F. I don't mean your spouse isn't really failing you. I’m sure the Samaritan woman’s husbands failed.
1. And I don't mean you don't do anything about it.
2. But the woman’s problem was not bad husbands. Her problem was she was Christ-less.
3. The central problem is never around us, it is within us.
G. In the last days of Samuel the Israelites sought a king like the other nations had (1Sam.8). They were dissatisfied with the established order when in reality the problem was the condition of their hearts.
1. And it is our tendency too to think that our problem is wrapped up in the established system, in the structure, in the circumstances. And often adjustments need to be made in the system. But by and large, if we are honest with ourselves, we will see that the real problem is not the system, the real problem is us. It is not our schedule, it is not our load of responsibilities.
2. We are the problem. It is our sinful response to our circumstances that is the problem: fear, anxiety, impatience, anger, intolerance
3. And we can see this is true in us when we are more zealous for the repair of our marriage than for the repair of our heart.
V. Application
A. You see, we don’t need an idol, we need the true God. And we only hurt ourselves and our marriages when we look to idols for satisfaction.
B. Alienation between man and woman came as a result of alienation between them and God. The repair comes about the same way: repairing things with God first.
C. Jeremiah 2:13 “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
1. Think about this in the context of what we’ve been talking about.
2. Whatever we go after, whether it’s hobbies, house, or marriage itself, it’s idolatry. It’s drinking water that doesn’t quench the thirst of our souls. And it’s disregarding the fountain of living waters, where our thirst is genuinely and permanently quenched.
D. One final warning: It’s much easier to see your spouse’s idolatry than it is to see your own.
1. We are all susceptible to idolatry, but it’s much easier to see your spouse’s idolatries than it is your own. I see Mary Ann’s sins more clearly than she does. And she sees mine more clearly than I do.
2. For many years Mary Ann and I were like two dogs chasing each other’s tails, two people trying to point out the deficiencies of the other.
3. It is so easy to be outraged by the sins of another. Instead, be outraged by your own sin. Paul, after all, called himself the chief of sinners (1Tim.1:15).