Hey, welcome to One and All.

I am so excited to dive into this message with you all here.

We are starting a brand new series called How to Fix Your Marriage, and Pastor Jeff has some really great wisdom for you.

Whether you're single or you're married, whether you think your marriage needs to be fixed or not, I guarantee you're going to get something out of the message today.

So make sure you have your Bible, grab the One and All app for some sermon notes to follow along with, and let's get into it.

I'm going to turn this into a table.

Thank you.

I'm in Genesis chapter 29, and we're in a new series called How to Fix Your Marriage.

And since my wife could not be here, I decided I'd deliver the message myself.

And as we approach the series, I'm going to ask you to remember three things.

Number one.

We're going to cover a lot of territory in this series, so be patient.

I can't answer every question in one message, and there's a lot of questions associated with a topic like this.

Second, this message or series covers both singleness and marriage, so I need you to be attentive.

There will be principles that we learn all along the way that will apply to both.

And so we have a saying in ministry where we say the best time to fire someone is not to hire them.

Well, the best time to...

Divorce someone is not to marry them.

So singleness and marriage go hand in hand.

You make good decisions, you've got a great opportunity to have a long-lasting marriage.

And third, finally, we're going to move from the big idea, so we're going to cover overarching ideas like the origin, the meaning, the purpose of marriage from the beginning as ordained by God.

We're going to start with the overarching principles, and then we'll lead down into the weeds of practical everyday application.

and how to apply that into our marriages.

And in the end of this series, just wanna let you know, we're gonna end this thing with a Q&A, not in the auditorium on a weekend, but at a separate time, a separate location for all of those who have significant questions that somehow we weren't able to cover during this series.

Now, as I stated before, title of the series, How to Fix Your Marriage.

And based on the current trend, this is a much needed series.

Forbes just released the Marriage and Divorce Statistics Reviews.

For the last 20 years, they release it March 2024, so it's up to date.

The average length of marriage now is eight years.

Wow.

This is an all-time low.

Maybe that's why 90% of the jokes that other pastors send me have to do with marriage.

And maybe if we don't laugh, we'd spend all of our time crying.

Because marriage and following Jesus have something in common, and that is they both require commitment.

And commitment is something that seems to be lacking in the Western world right now.

We don't want to commit to anything that binds us or straps us.

We want to have ultimate freedom.

And if you go into marriage like that from the get-go, you don't have very much a chance of success.

So, love is bliss.

It is a wonderful thing, but it's also, anybody who's experienced it, it's kind of like a pain in the backside.

So I found something that I kept from many years ago.

It goes like this.

It says, love is like an onion.

You taste it with delight.

But when it's gone, you wonder whatever made you bite.

Love is a funny thing, just like a lizard.

It curls up around your heart and then crawls into your gizzard.

Love is swell.

It's so enticing.

It's orange gel.

It's strawberry icing.

It's chocolate mousse.

It's roasted goose.

It's ham on rye.

It's banana pie.

Love is all good things without question.

In other words, it's indigestion.

Now, that may be a humorous way to look at it, but it does signify the irony of marriage, that it can be so sweet and so good, it can be so bad at the same time, and it can be everything in between.

As I've gone into ministry over the last 40 years, and especially looking at marriage and divorce over the last decade, I can tell you that a large part of the reason marriage only lasts on the average eight years can be summed up in two words, unrealistic expectations.

This is the primary overarching reality.

And if you think for a moment, I was reviewing some of my notes in the past.

What man, for instance, does not love Bond movies?

We love James, but most of us love James Bond movies.

Skyfall, which is my least favorite Bond movie, actually gained a global revenue of $1.1 billion.

A lot of men go to Bond movies.

Twice as many men go as women, and 72% of women that go don't like them.

So why do they go?

Well, they're dragged along by their husband or boyfriend.

And if you think about the Bond movies, it's a man's dream, isn't it?

He's got a magic credit card.

He never runs out of money.

He has these endless adventures.

He travels the world, first class everywhere he goes.

Yeah, he does get shot at quite often, but the bullets never seem to hit him.

Plus, all the women in the world are lining up at his door.

And of course, the problem is right there, that's not real life.

So if you go into your relationships as James Bond, you're going to come out as Johnny English, right?

It's just not consistent with reality.

Life is not like that.

And of course, men, they get a bad rap, but men aren't the only ones with unrealistic expectations.

One of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray, Andy McDowell.

In one scene in the cafe, Andy McDowell asks Bill Murray, or Bill Murray rather, asks Andy McDowell, what kind of man are you looking for?

And this list, this list that she gives is laughable.

She says, first of all, he's too humble to know he's perfect.

He's intelligent, supportive, funny.

He's romantic, courageous.

He's got a good body, but he doesn't have to look in the mirror every two minutes.

He's kind, sensitive, gentle.

He's not afraid to cry in front of me.

He likes animals, children.

He will change poopy diapers.

And oh, he plays an instrument and loves his mother.

And in frustration, Bill Murray's character says, this is a man we're talking about, right?

As opposed to a God.

The article I mentioned in Forbes gives other stats that seem contradictory.

The average marriage, the article tells us, lasts eight years.

Yet, we're also told that the divorce rate in America hit a 40-year low in 2020 and 2021.

Now, how does that work?

How does the average marriage last eight years and yet we've had a low on the divorce rate?

Well, it reminds me of when I lived in New Zealand.

New Zealanders like to brag about the fact that they had less divorces in their country than most other modern countries.

Well, I like to remind them, well, first of all, you have a small country.

There's barely 4.2 million people living in the entire country at that time.

And two, The reason your divorce number, not rate, but divorce number is so low is because people don't get married in New Zealand anymore.

They go into de facto unions.

So when de facto unions split up, they're not counted as divorces because they're not counted as marriage.

So in America, the divorce rate is misleading because they don't tell you that although the Gen Z's do seek marriage and a family, the Gen Xers did not.

Many of them just lived together to see how things would go, and then they split up when things didn't go well.

Because if you don't go into marriage with an absolute commitment, you will split up.

So again, there's no real way of tracking marriage and divorce in the American culture.

But we do have the social experts telling us, after this 2024 report, Something that the Bible has said for generations.

I read it and I thought, did I read that?

I had to read it numerous times.

Couples who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce.

Let me give you the exact words out of Forbes magazine, okay?

Living together prior to marriage is one predictor of the likelihood of divorce.

It's amazing.

Forbes goes on to tell us that 67% of all second marriages end in divorce.

73% of all third marriages end in divorce.

People who blow it the first time will probably blow it a second and third time, which means perhaps it's not that you keep choosing the wrong person, but your approach to marriage is skewed.

Your expectations are unrealistic and you need a serious paradigm shift.

So, here in our church, we are passionate about giving biblical wisdom and instruction to the next generation.

And wisdom can be something that you glean from the Spirit of God through prayer and devotion, yes, but primarily the way you glean the wisdom of God is through His Word revelation, through the Scripture, what He's already written down for us.

And there's so much in the Scripture, through the principles that are gleaned through powerful narratives, as well as direct instruction.

You can prevent so much heartache and devastation if you understand the origin, the meaning, the purpose of marriage, why God ordained it, and how you and I are to operate within those parameters.

And by the way, even if your marriage is struggling, the truths discovered in the Bible, they can bring healing and restoration.

I don't think any marriage is beyond restoration.

Now, some are harder than others, but I think any marriage can be restored.

And I think even if your marriage is strong, the scripture continues to enhance and strengthen marriages to a greater degree.

So, as we enter Genesis 29, that's our setup for this series.

We're going to cover a lot of information, but I want to start with this overarching reality, this overarching truth that you would have a paradigm shift and you'll start to understand marriage and the way you and I approach love, relationship, and marriage as a whole.

All right, in Genesis 29, it's a familiar story.

We've talked about it probably at least twice in the life of our church over the last 18 to 20 years.

We're going to address it a third time.

But we're going to look at it from a different vantage point.

In Genesis 29, we find a man by the name of Jacob.

His life is a microcosm of our lives.

His life is a mess.

Part of the reason is that in his culture, he's operating and living under this idea of promogeniture.

That is, the firstborn gets everything.

So the future of the family depends on the firstborn.

And if you're not the firstborn, if you're the secondborn son, then you're really just an extra hand in the field, in the work field.

The firstborn inherits three-fourths of everything the family has.

and that comes with pressure because then because you've inherited these resources, it's your job to expand the family name and the territory.

I remember as a kid growing up, my Sunday school teacher having this big flannel board, and you had Jacob and Esau, and there was this photo of Jacob and Esau as if they were coming out of the womb.

Now, it wasn't graphic, but you had this picture of Jacob grabbing onto the heel of Esau, almost as if Jacob knew while he was in his mother's womb that he's got to get out first.

And if he doesn't get out first, his whole life will be ruined.

So he spends his life after he's out of the womb trying to take over, trying to get what rightfully belongs to somebody else.

The saddest part of Jacob's story is found in Genesis 25 verse 28 when we're told that Isaac loved Esau, that's Jacob's father, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

favoritism has always and will continue to cause a myriad of problems.

So because Jacob's mother loved him, she concocts a plan to help him get or steal the right, the firstborn rights, the birthright it's called.

Isaac's getting old, that's Jacob's father, losing his eyesight.

It comes time for the patriarchal blessing.

And if you read the narrative, somebody might say, well, what's the big deal?

Well, why not just...

Why not somehow get Rebecca to give the blessing instead of Isaac?

Well, that would have been against everything that we know in the Old Testament culture.

But second, somehow when this patriarchal blessing was given, it was an actual contract with God.

It's more than just stating words.

The words the Father states, God has made a covenant with his people that those words become true.

so Jacob's mother knows this, so she dresses Jacob up to look like Esau in order that he can steal the firstborn blessing from Isaac, who's growing old, can't hear very well, can't see very well, so she places goat hair on his arms and neck.

Esau's an outdoorsman.

Jacob is an inside-the-tent kind of guy who loves culinary delights.

She buys a bottle of outdoor man cologne so that...

Jacob smells like and feels like his brother Esau, and it actually works.

It's an amazing story.

Isaac ends up giving the firstborn blessing, which is a contract between God and Isaac's boys.

The firstborn blessing that was meant for Esau then goes to Jacob.

However, the byproducts are devastating because the whole episode breaks Isaac's heart.

So now Isaac is angry and disappointed in his son Jacob, Now Jacob will be forever separated from his mother, the only woman who's ever really loved him, because he has to leave home because Esau, his brother, is trying to kill him.

So he's running for his life.

And as he runs, he runs to his uncle, whose name is Laban, Rebecca's brother.

And he begins working for Laban among the sheep and the herds, hard job as a shepherd and long hours.

And we pick up the story in Genesis 29, 15.

Laban comes to Jacob and he says, just because we're related, you're my kinsman.

Should you therefore serve me for nothing?

Tell me what it is that you want.

What shall your wages be?

And then we're told now Laban had two daughters.

The name of the older was Leah.

The name of the younger was Rachel.

Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.

Jacob loved Rachel and he said, I will serve you.

seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.

Now here's the definitive line.

I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel, says Jacob.

Wow.

Seven years hard labor.

I've often asked the question, is any woman really worth seven years hard labor?

The normal price that a suitor paid the family was somewhere around 40 shekels.

The going rate for Jacob's work is 1.5 shekels a month.

And if you do the math, you realize that Jacob is not offering double or triple, he's offering quadruple without any negotiating.

He's not haggling in a culture that is built on haggling.

The question is why?

Verse 17 gives us a clue.

The Bible says that Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.

These are two wonderful Hebrew words.

There's no easy way to put this.

The Hebrew word for form refers to sexual attraction.

It's the word for curves.

And appearance is the word referenced to face.

Okay?

So Rachel is stunning.

She has a great body and she has a great face.

She's attractive.

She's beautiful.

She's lovely in form and appearance.

So Jacob sees her and he is smitten, he is stricken, he's overwhelmed.

How overwhelmed is he?

In chapter 29, verse 11, we're told that Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted his voice and wept.

And I always like to ask the ladies, when's the last time your husband kissed you and just started crying?

So Jacob, we're told in verse 20, served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.

Now some of you women might be thinking, man.

Would I love to have a man like that who weeps and who's willing to work hard labor and in doing so it appears it seems to him just a few days.

Well something you got to realize this is not the kind of love and romance about which you're thinking.

This is not long romantic walks on the beach talking about the emotional state of the relationship because when the time ended of the courtship Verse 21 says that, and this is astounding, it's utterly outrageous to scholars who still try to figure this out.

Jacob goes to Laban and says, give me your daughter Rachel, I want to sleep with her.

That's basically what he says.

Again, this is outrageous.

It's beyond what is customary.

It's utterly indiscreet, brash, crass, offensive.

I just can't imagine after dating my wife Robin for three years, going to her parents and say, okay, give me your daughter, I want to sleep with her.

That's not the way things work.

In fact, it's quite humorous watching scholars try to explain this, but Robert Alter, I think, gives the best explanation when he says, really, here is a man, Jacob, who is spiritually, emotionally, sexually overwhelmed with longing for Jacob.

Jacob will do anything to get her.

And the question is why?

and he says because this is the manner in which Jacob is dealing with the feelings of failure, abandonment of his father, the loss of love of his mother, his feeling of insignificance, the unworthiness of his life.

He's simply saying, hey, I'm out here away from home.

I'm in the wilderness.

I'm with my uncle and his family.

I've been rejected by my father.

I've probably broken the heart of my mother.

My own brother wants to kill me, and then he sees Rachel, and he says, man.

If I can just sleep with that beautiful woman, then my life will have meaning and significance.

My life will be worth something.

The hole in my heart will be gone if I can just get the girl.

Now, let's pause just for a moment for a little bit of sarcasm.

So I'm giving you a heads up here.

Aren't you glad that we don't live in a culture that would be so archaic where we think sex would be completion of our lives?

It's amazing, we always think those cultures are so archaic, but have things really changed?

Most of us don't want to admit to the degree that people are making up for a lack of spiritual fulfillment in a relationship with God by looking out there and saying, I've got to find the one.

I've got to find the one who completes me.

I've got to find my soulmate or my life will not be worth living.

As I said before, Ernest Becker in a book, Denial of Death, calls this the romantic solution and he doesn't...

He defines it like this.

The belief that if we can find that one true love, our feelings of insignificance, purposelessness, and meaninglessness will dissipate.

So that people with this inner emptiness say to themselves, man, if I can just find that one love, the abuse that I suffered growing up, the sibling abuse, the feelings of nobodiness, the sense of failure, the neglect by my parents, the favoritism of a brother or sister over me, if I can just find the girl, if I can just get the guy, all of this will dissipate if I can just find my one true love, my one true savior.

So Jacob is employing the romantic solution to his life.

Rachel.

will be his savior.

She will rescue him, save him, redeem him.

And folks, I got to tell you, I've seen this again and again, and it concerns me.

And I'd like to say that I haven't seen it in this generation, but can I tell you, I've seen it especially in this generation where a young man thinks that sex with a beautiful woman is the pinnacle of success in life.

So he marries.

and reality sets in.

What reality is it?

Well, number one, that his wife, unlike him, has other things on her mind.

Two, that the everyday pressures of life often causes the relationship to stagnate because you're both busy doing your own things.

And finally, when children are introduced, the husband especially is about to learn what it feels like to be a back burner item.

At the same time, a young woman, she wants to get married because she wants freedom out from under the control of her parents.

And her man represents freedom.

If I can just get married, if I can get the guy.

And I got to tell you, all of those who've been married, people like me will tell you, you're living in a dream world.

If you think you're stuck now, just wait till you're married and start having kids.

I mean, it's a good thing.

It is a blissful thing.

But...

To think that somehow marriage gives you this profound freedom that you would never experience anywhere else is ridiculous.

Marriage that begins with the idea that this man or this woman or this situation is going to rescue or save me from where I am, that marriage is going to struggle because no man and no woman and no situation can live up to savior status.

As a matter of fact, part of the article that I read gave us three terrible reasons they told us to get married.

Three terrible reasons, okay?

Each one of these is a sermon on its own, but let me mention them.

Number one, because you think it will solve your relationship problems.

Well, in reality, when you get married, whatever your problems were in the relationship, they go to warp speed.

So if he's yelling at you now, he'll probably hit you when you're married.

Second, because you're afraid of being alone.

And I can tell you that if you're not happy by yourself, you're not going to be happy married.

If you're not happy and at peace with yourself, you introduce another individual into that scenario and it just gets worse from there.

The real problem with most of us is that we've not yet discovered where happiness comes from.

what your significance and value and meaning is actually tied to.

You think your value as a person is determined by who you're with or the company you keep, but you cannot be good with someone else until you are good with yourself, and you cannot be good with yourself until you are good with God.

So to solve your relationship problems because you're afraid of being alone.

And third, to escape your present circumstances.

When you get married to escape something that is not good, let me tell you what's going to happen in marriage.

You're going to go out of the frying pan into the fire.

There are a thousand little pseudo-saviors, but only one.

who can truly fill your heart and soul so that you then become a perfect candidate for marriage.

Now let me show you how this develops in the scripture and then make some application.

Unfortunately for Jacob, Jacob is a deceiver.

He's a con artist, but he's met his match in Uncle Laban.

As soon as Jacob shows his hand too soon, as soon as he says, I will work for Rachel seven years, Laban's evil mind goes to work.

because he's got an unattractive daughter.

This guy Laban's a piece of work, let me tell you.

So he's got another daughter, not Rachel, but Leah, and she's not that attractive, and he wants to unload her.

So Laban is thinking, here's a guy who'll do anything to get the girl.

He's not negotiating.

He's desperate.

He's over the top.

He's out of his mind.

He's not thinking clearly.

How does Laban respond to Jacob's offer of working seven years for Rachel?

I'll tell you what he doesn't do.

He doesn't say, yeah, great, let's do it, let's shake hands on it, done, done deal, agreed.

Instead, in verse nine, Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than to give her to another man.

That's an oblique, positive statement.

Better you than somebody else.

that's what salesmen do.

It's a vague promise, but no commitment whatsoever.

But because Jacob is so over the moon, he hears what he wants to hear.

So he gives seven years of his life.

And then after that seven years, he comes to Laban and says, okay, give me Rachel.

I want to sleep with her.

Now, you know, the rest of the story, let me summarize it.

You don't have to have a lot of historical, archaeological, or philosophical understanding or knowledge to know what happens next.

The bride.

In this early centuries culture, it's heavily veiled all day.

You don't see the bride until the evening.

So there's the parade where the shofar is blown and there's celebration and there's eating and drinking all day long.

And during the entire process, the bride is veiled, hidden.

and then finally at night, after hours and hours of celebration and a lot of drinking, the groom takes the bride into his tent, and remember, we're talking about at a time there are no electric lights here.

After hours and hours of drinking, Jacob sleeps with his wife, who he thinks is Rachel, but in the morning, he discovers it wasn't Rachel at all.

It was Leah, and Laban has put the older sister in the tent.

The irony is amazing because Jacob is angry.

He runs to Uncle Laban and he says, why have you done this?

You've deceived me.

You knew what and for whom I was working.

And then Laban's response in the literal Hebrew is this.

Well, around here, it's not custom to put the younger before the older.

Wow.

Jacob doesn't even argue.

He just goes, doesn't even fight it because suddenly I think a spear goes through his conscience and explodes.

The minute Laban used the word deceived, it's the same exact word that Isaac used when he said to Jacob, why have you deceived me?

And then when Laban throws in around here, it's not the custom of the younger to be preferred over the older, then suddenly, or yeah, suddenly Jacob would have said, wait a minute, that's exactly what I just did to my older brother, the firstborn.

And it dawns on him, Laban is doing exactly to me what I just did to my father.

Just like my father reached out in the dark and thought it was Esau, but it was me.

I have reached out on the dark thinking it was Rachel, but it's Leah.

The irony is amazing.

And again, take a look at Leah.

Because, you know, again, we can spend a lot of time on this passage.

But the real hero of this story is not Rachel, it's not Laban, it's not Jacob, it's actually Leah.

The Bible tells us in verse 17, Leah had weak eyes but Rachel was lovely in form and very beautiful.

What does that mean weak eyes?

Well, it doesn't mean that Rachel could see a long way off and Leah could only see a short distance.

In the Hebrew, to be beautiful or to have strong eyes was to be compelling, it was to be beautiful.

So the beauty is in the eye.

Okay, so in Leah's case, there was nothing compelling, nothing drawing you in.

So she didn't have the beauty, the form, the appearance that her sister Rachel had.

Now you think about this from Leah's perspective.

She knows what her father Laban is trying to do.

to unload her.

Imagine how she feels.

Her own father rejects her, looks right through her, has ignored her for years, and now wants to offload her onto someone else.

But Leah, and we discover this in the story, is just like Jacob.

She's also trying to deal with a hole in her heart.

So what is she doing?

What has she done to heal this rejection she feels from her father?

How is she coping with all this?

And the answer is she's dealing with this situation the same way Jacob is dealing with his.

She longs for Jacob.

like Jacob belongs for Rachel.

Think about it.

She didn't have to go into the tent.

Have you ever thought about that?

If your dad was doing, we say, I'm not going into that tent.

He thinks it's my sister.

I'm not going.

Why would she have gone?

She longs for Jacob like Jacob longs for Rachel because Leah thinks Jacob will save her.

She too is looking for a savior.

And then she goes into this life process where she says, you know what?

If I can just start having babies, which is a pretty important thing back then, then my husband will start to love me.

And every day she sees the man she most longs for in the arms of the one in whose shadow she has lived all her life, her sister Rachel.

So she starts having children.

and she names them in an effect to get Jacob's attention.

The first child is named Reuben, which means to see.

Now maybe my husband will see me and stop looking right through me.

That doesn't work, so she has Simeon, which means to hear.

Maybe now my husband will hear the cries of my heart.

And then third, she has Levi, which means to attach.

Now finally my husband might attach himself to me, as a husband should attach himself to his wife.

So the point in the narrative, it's very well written, is that she's handling the emptiness in her life, the hole in her life, the same way Jacob is trying to deal with his.

They're both looking for a savior.

If only this man will love me, Leah thinks.

I would be somebody.

I would be visible.

I would matter.

If I could have a family and children, I would be worth something.

I would be listened to.

I would be important.

But she's in hell, and it's the worst kind of hell, because she has a pseudo-savior, and the pseudo-savior fails incredibly.

Of course he does, because no man or no woman can live up to savior status.

Now stay with me.

I wish I would have had this kind of self-awareness earlier in my ministry, because we've often said that no matter who we are, in all of life, in every aspect of life, there will always be a ground note running of cosmic disappointment.

No matter how much wealth you get, no matter how healthy you are, no matter how much liberty you have, depression and anxiety are always around the corner because your soul knows none of these can really give you what you're looking for.

None of these can save you.

Nobody says it better than C.S.

Lewis.

Most people, if they really learned how to look into their own hearts, would know that they want something that this world can never give them.

These are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning will ever satisfy.

There will always be something that we have grasped at that first moment of longing that just fades away with reality.

The thing we thought we were going to get in the new experience always evades us.

This is so crucial because for many men and women, marriage is the thing they glorify as rescue and savior.

And it's a recipe for disaster.

because he's expecting her to save him.

She's expecting him to save her.

They're looking for the romantic solution, the belief that if I can just find that one, my life will have meaning, and all this frustration and failure and insignificance and meaninglessness of the past will fade away.

But the problem is this.

There is only one who is big enough to accomplish all that.

Now, thank God, in Leah's case, This is where the healing comes, and she's the one that figures it out.

Look again.

Something happens to her.

She starts crying out to God.

God, this is not working.

I thought this man would save me.

I'm not saved.

I'm as empty as I've ever been.

In fact, maybe worse.

And she calls on the name of God, and she refers to him as Yahweh, the covenant name, not Elohim, the more generic name.

And scholars read this, and they think, man, that's...

How does she do that?

How does she know about this name?

I mean, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, they understood the name with covenant and intimacy.

Evidently, something happened in the course of Leah's life that she discovered an intimacy with God that not many people have.

And probably because she kept crying out to God day and night.

That's what happens in times of great need.

So where she's concerned, She had elevated her family to pseudo-savior, but now she's craving intimacy with God.

And by the time that she moves into this relationship with God and realizes he's the only one big enough to fill what she's really looking for, she has another child.

And the child is Judah, and this time she names him Praise. Genesis 29, 35.

This time I will praise the Lord.

Therefore she called his name Judah.

Then she ceased bearing children.

So she took the deepest, most passionate desires of her heart, took them away from her husband, and put them onto the Lord.

What do we learn in all this?

Now there's so much application to make, you can imagine.

Let's make a few just quickly and set the stage for the coming series.

Number one, there is a void in you that only Christ can fill.

Until you know that, you'll abuse and misuse marriage.

You will never find your rest until you find your rest in Jesus first.

And until you find your rest in Christ, You'll be difficult to marry.

What does that mean exactly?

People say, Pastor, what do you mean when only Christ can fill my heart and soul?

Well, there's a wonderful passage in Psalm 139 where the writer says, God, you know, you've searched me, Lord.

You know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go to the heavens, you're there.

If I go down into the depths, you're there as well.

and then he says, for you created my inmost being, and you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful, he says, I know full.

What's he saying?

He's saying, God, I've never stopped to think that you know everything about me, that while I was in my mother's womb, you put me together, you knit me together, and those two beautiful Hebrew words, wonderfully and fearfully made, wonderful is a lot like our English word awesome.

and, or sorry, fearful.

Fearful is like our English word awesome, and wonderful is a word that means intricate detail.

So basically what David is saying is, God, you know me like nobody else.

In fact, you put me together.

Personality, temperament, talents, and abilities.

And because of that, there's a calling on my life.

You obviously, you are wise, a creative God, so there must be a hole in this universe that I'm supposed to fill.

that my gifts and talents and abilities uniquely define.

And so until I find my role, until I find my place in this world that you've ordained for me, my soul will never be at ease.

My soul will never be at rest.

So God, show me your way.

Your works are wonderful.

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained before me are written in your book before one of them came to be.

See, here's the thing.

You cannot be good with someone else until you are good with yourself.

And you cannot be good with yourself until you're good with God.

Until everything you're looking for, you don't look for it in another person.

You find it and discover it in a relationship with God discovered through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So, first of all, there's a void that you've got to come to terms with that only Christ can fill.

And that's why it is possible to be ultimately fulfilled and ultimately loved and never be married.

Because Christ can give to you what it is ultimately that you're seeking.

So God, if you think about it, because he's the only one that can fill that void, has actually been courting you all of your life.

Did you know that?

I remember talking to a guy in New Zealand once.

He said, Jeff, I want to believe in God, but there's so much bad in the world.

And I said, well, let me ask you something.

Is there a lot of good in the world too?

He said, I suppose.

I said, okay, do you deserve it?

Think about it.

Think of the good in the world.

Love and relationship, community, food, chocolate, coffee, romance, nature, the ocean, the mountains.

So there's so much good.

So if bad tells us there is no God, does good tell us there is a God?

And if all of these good things represent God, then who are we to deserve any of this?

The simple point that I'm making is that the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3 that God has made beautiful everything in its time and that he said eternity in the heart of man.

So in all of us is a desire for our soul to connect with the one who made us.

There is, said Blaise Pascal, there is a God-shaped void that only God can fill.

And until you understand that, you'll try.

You've got to fill the void that you have one of three ways.

By the creative solution, separating yourself from the herd and letting everybody know that you are far above and beyond and more creative and more talented than anybody else.

And you will try to do that all your life.

But the problem is every time you get to a certain point, you'll meet somebody that's smarter, sharper, more talented than you.

And your self-esteem will once again dissipate.

You will have a soul explosion.

And then the religious solution where a lot of people say, you know what, I'm morally good.

I'll separate myself from everybody else because I'm pious.

I'm religious.

I'm spiritual.

As I've said before, the gospel of moralism is the number one enemy to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the cross because all you need is found in Christ.

You can never be good enough.

You submit to the one who gives you the gift of salvation, but primarily the strongest, strongest, most powerful alternative that people delve into other than God is this romantic solution, the belief that if I can find the one true love, all my feelings of insignificance, purposelessness, and meaningless will dissipate.

Think about it.

Most of the music is not written about separating yourself from the herd or about religion.

Most of the music is written about love.

It is the ultimate pursuit to find the person who will make everything okay.

So number one, there's a void in you that only Christ can fill.

Number two, your spouse will lead you away from God or toward God.

Okay?

So if you marry somebody, you hook up with somebody that's not gonna lead you toward God, man, two things are gonna happen.

You're gonna be more and more empty and second, the marriage is gonna struggle because you're still trying to make that person your pseudo savior rather than the only one who can fill your hopes and dreams.

Let me give you a quick test of true and false, okay?

Based on what we've just read, okay.

True or false, divorce rates of Christians are similar to those of the general population.

True.

That is true.

Divorce rates of Christians, so there's no difference between Christian and the secular world.

Divorce rates are the same.

Second question though, heavenly religious and evangelical people have a lower divorce rate than the general public.

And the answer is yes.

See, part of the problem when you hear somebody say, oh, well, Christianity doesn't make a difference.

Oh yeah, it does.

Just nominal Christianity makes no difference.

But Heavenly religious and evangelical people who are serious about their faith have a lower divorce rate than the general public.

Okay, here's the third.

Moderately to lightly religious people have a higher rate of divorce than the secular world.

And the answer is true again.

So the only thing worse than being secular is when two people come together and they each think the other is a Christ follower and the other is not, the divorce rate is higher than any other two categories.

The point is that nominal Christianity is not Christianity at all.

It's nominal means it's in name only.

But I met him at church, but he prayed with me once, but we had a church wedding.

We went to church together every weekend.

In other words, Grandpa Willie said, a cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don't make them biscuits.

All that glitters is not gold.

Just because somebody claims to be a Christ follower doesn't mean they are.

A friend of mine noticed I was dating, this was a girl, a young lady that I dated before I met my beautiful wife and we were married.

But I was going down the wrong path, dating the wrong girl.

An accountability friend of mine came to me and said, Jeff, this is not the girl God has for you.

But like Jacob, I was just overwhelmed with beauty.

And he said, you're too interested in PDA.

We know what that is, public display of affection.

Then you are PDU.

I said, what's PDU?

Priorities, disciplines, and ultimate pursuits.

What are you talking about?

Stop looking on the exterior and ask your question.

What are her priorities?

Well, I had to think about that.

It's basically the way she looks, her body, her clothing.

What are her disciplines?

Well, there are no spiritual disciplines.

It was difficult to get her to pray, read the Bible, go to church.

What are her ultimate pursuits?

That's easy, money, money and stuff.

Now, you've just answered your question.

This is not the girl for you.

Women in second marriages are notorious for this.

They're so desperate to get married again because of fear of being alone.

Remember we said that up top in the sermon.

That they'll look for somebody in church and automatically assume this guy's a Christ follower.

Well, do you really know that for sure?

I do know that what women want, what Christian women want more than anything else is to be married to a man who lives his life for a purpose greater than himself.

But you've got to go in with your eyes wide open because your husband or your wife is either going to lead you further away from Christ or closer to Christ.

There is no middle ground.

And if they lead you further away, the emptiness increases.

If they lead you toward God, then even if you're not going to be able to do that, Each of you become satisfied in who you are before God, which means that you're satisfied in who you are with each other, and there will be an incredible amount of grace and mercy given to one another because God has given grace and mercy to you.

There's a void in you that only Christ can fill.

Your spouse will lead you away from God toward God.

There's no middle ground.

Third and finally, trouble marriages are redeemable.

This is the setup.

Trouble marriages are redeemable.

They really are.

They really are.

Think about Leah for a moment.

Leah got into a relationship.

Yes, I believe she could have said, I'm not going into that tent, but she's dealing with a hole in her heart the same way Jacob is dealing with a hole in his heart.

And she thinks somehow it's gonna change everything.

And it doesn't.

And we're not ever told if Leah's marriage got better, I would assume that it did not.

But her relationship with God got so strong that she was able to live a life of peace, joy, and happiness.

Now that doesn't, that's another sermon for another time.

I'm not saying that if your marriage is bad, just love God and forget about it.

the other person.

We'll talk about that later.

I'm simply saying that today you and I have something Leah did not have, and it's the Holy Spirit, the presence of God living in us.

And because we have the presence of God living in us, let me give you two quick nuggets as a starter.

If you're in this audience right now and you're thinking, man, everything you said, I violated, okay.

You're in marriage now and you've made a commitment, good, stay in the commitment.

Can I tell you, no matter where your marriage is right now, it is redeemable, you can restore it.

But it requires two things as a beginning point.

It's not a cure-all, it's a beginning point.

Number one, you gotta grow in love for the Lord.

And as you grow, as you lean into the spiritual disciplines of prayer, of Bible study, of scriptural memorization, of worship, worship, as church attendance becoming a non-negotiable when you want to be in the presence of God, what happens is as you grow more and more in love with God, I'm telling you, wherever you are in your marriage, you're going to have more grace and mercy for one another and give each other time to come together and solve these conflicts.

Second, grow in your love for one another.

And the only way you can do that is to start to spend time together.

Man, I wish I had more time to do this.

I'm going to save this.

And we're going to start with it next week because I've got a whole bunch of things to say.

In the meantime...

Grow in love for God, grow in love for one another.

I'm gonna come back next week and tell you exactly how to do that.

In the meantime, I wanna, man, we covered so much.

I wanna pray for us, okay?

Father, I pray a special prayer right now for everyone listening, watching, wherever they are.

that you would strengthen their marriage and that you would show them how.

And maybe part of that is this series.

I pray that you'd give them a commitment to come back and listen to where we go from here.

For now, I pray and I hope that singles who are looking to be married would take a good look and say, you know what?

I can't be right.

with someone else until I'm right with myself, and I can't be right with myself until I'm right with God.

And I pray they would get it, that no man or woman can rescue them from any situation, that only God is big enough to fill our hearts, soul, and minds.

And I pray for the healing of marriages that seem to be irreconcilable.

I pray that you would motivate them to come back week after week during this series and to learn and to humble themselves and to put things into practice.

For in the same way, the disciplines of our our lives, draw us closer to you.

There are disciplines we can enact in our married lives to grow us closer to each other.

I pray, give us insight and hope in Christ's name.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us.

I hope you learned something today that is going to impact you again, whether you are married or not.

I know there was a lot of wisdom that we can glean from what Pastor Jeff had for us.

I really encourage you today to go ahead and look at our conversations videos also on YouTube.

They have so much good content from this message that Pastor Jeff couldn't quite fit in there.

So he sat down with one of our pastors, Drew, and they kind of went over some more details about what to do in marriage when it's not working, how to get into a marriage that will work and what you should be looking for.

So much good stuff.

So make sure you check out that Conversations video.

Let's go like we always do with one hope, one life in Christ.