Insights on Marriage and Divorce

Dave Spiker: When your life is consumed with raising little kids, it's hard to imagine a day is coming when the household will be silent. Changing diapers, chasing around town on errands, and running the washer and dryer all day long—these are telltale signs of the child-bearing years.

Today on Insight for Living, you'll hear Chuck Swindoll present the 14th and final message in his classic series on marriage, Strike the Original Match. Our attention turns, appropriately so, to the inevitable season when the children have started their lives and vacated the house. Chuck titled today's message, "What to Do with an Empty Nest."

Chuck Swindoll: The last stage of marriage is actually the longest. It's that period of time when the nest is empty, either empty of the children or one of the mates, or both. This is a crucial stage in the home. All sorts of strange and unpredictable feelings occur, and we find ourselves in need of stabilizing thoughts and clear direction.

God gives us such insight in a passage from the book of Hebrews. Although it wasn't originally written regarding marriage, it has practical principles that perfectly apply to the domestic scene: pursue spiritual maturity. I have my Bible open to Hebrews chapter five, verse seven, and I'll be reading through chapter six, verse one. Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, the author writes:

In the days of his flesh, he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his piety. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered. And having been made perfect, he became to all those who obey him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Concerning him, we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.

Dave Spiker: You're listening to Insight for Living. Having read the Bible passage, we'll begin now with prayer, followed by today's message from Chuck Swindoll, "What to Do with an Empty Nest."

Chuck Swindoll: Lord, tonight we love you and we've expressed it to you in these ways, but there really is no adequate way to tell you. To let the life within us overflow from our lips is almost an impossibility because we're trying to express through the stupid vehicle of words the deepest feelings of our hearts. The best things in life cannot be described in words.

Thank you, Father, for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that in his coming he had us in mind, and with us in mind, he gave himself that we might know what it is to really live and to give ourselves. We're reminded that the life that he lived qualified him for the death that he died, and the death that he died qualifies us for the life that he lived.

This evening, Father, we open your profound word, knowing before we ever open its pages that herein are truths in the treasures of your book which we will never be able to exhaust. May we, as we simply touch these high places upon a passage that is so important, glean from it guidance and help in our lives. I ask you especially, Lord, to bless these messages on the subject of marriage. May they never end in our lives. May they be used in a marvelous way, Father, to deepen our walk with you in the most important area of our relationship—in the home. I ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

May we open our Bibles together to the book of Hebrews chapter five. For some time, we have been in the subject of you and your marriage, and we come tonight to a conclusion. You will remember that when we began, we chose a couple of verses from Proverbs 24 which read like this: "By wisdom a house is built, by understanding it is established, and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches."

A number of weeks ago, we looked carefully at those two verses in Proverbs 24, and we discovered that the word "built" really means rebuilt. The word "established" really means set right. The word "filled" really has in mind the idea of filled to overflowing. We've given our thoughts to the rebuilding of a house into a home, that it might be set right, that the home might overflow with an abundance of life—the kind of life that God originally designed for the husband and wife to cultivate and to develop in their relationship, with or without children.

Dr. Lofton Hudson has written a couple of very keen books, one of which is on the subject of knowing yourself, which he calls "Love Yourself." The other one is a book on marriage, and from that book on marriage, I have gleaned the stages for marriage. He describes marriage in five stages.

The first stage of marriage is family founding, from the wedding of the couple to their first child—the birth of the first child. It is a critical stage because the husband-wife relationship is just getting started. You can remember back, you that are married, and you that are planning on marriage soon, you can think upon those first few days and months together. While they were hard, they were in their own way delightful years that you spent together.

The next stage is child-bearing, from the birth of the first child until that child starts to school. Then from the beginning of that first child in school until he enters college, this man describes that period as child-rearing. From the time between the first leaving home and the last leaving home, he describes it as child-launching—launching our children who are now young adults into the world about us.

You can anticipate the fifth stage, which I've borrowed from him for the title this evening: the empty nest. This is the time that follows the children when the parents are alone once again, as they were in the family founding period of their marriage. We pointed out in a sufficient way this morning how crucial and critical this time is. I just want to underscore once again that many a person asks the question: "How are we going to survive when the children are all gone?"

I can hear some busy mothers of small children saying to that question, "Try me. Just give me a try. I'll be happy to show you we'll survive very well." It's amazing the transformation that transpires as time passes and these that we have loved and cuddled and trained and nurtured and developed suddenly leave the nest one by one until they're gone. Psychologists and theologians and wise men throughout time have expressed that this is a very crucial time. Suddenly we're back together, and in some cases, we're strangers. We're not ready for that.

Tonight, I want to pick a passage that really is not revolving around the home in any way. I want to draw from it some truths that relate to the home as we come to the end of the message. I think they are divided for us very easily by reading carefully what the verses are saying. Chapter five of Hebrews, beginning at verse seven down through verse 10—these verses are talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Beginning at verse 11 to the end of chapter five of Hebrews, we have the Christian who is brought in in bold contrast to the Lord. In the passage on the Lord, we have complete maturity, but in that section on the Christian, we have great immaturity.

Immaturity occurs at any stage in marriage, the marriage is heading for trouble. That applies to the last as well as the first stage. Then we come to the sixth chapter and the first verse, we have very simply the command. We have Christ, the Christian, and the command. Let's look at what it says about Christ as we interpret the passage and then following this interpretation, we'll want to apply it.

In the days of his flesh, when he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and who was heard because of his piety. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered. And having been made perfect—more literally, and having been brought to completion, brought to an end—he became to all those who obey him the source of eternal salvation, being designated—literally, being saluted—by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Let your eyes drift back to verse seven, and you will begin to see an anguishing picture. Here is the suffering Son of God portrayed for us probably in Gethsemane, just prior to his hanging upon the cross for those anguishing hours before death. We are told in this verse that it was in the days of his flesh—that is, when he was a man on earth. It's not describing his days with the Father but his incarnate days as man, the God-man.

It describes him as offering up prayers and supplication with loud crying and tears. It even tells us that he offered those prayers to the Father, and he was heard because of his piety. This verse seems to suggest a contradiction. You will notice the prayer is directed to the Father by the Son of God, and he is expressing to the Father his great pain of soul. He is expressing to the Father these words because the Father is able to save him from death.

Why would the Son pray to the Father that he might be saved from death if, in fact, the purpose of his coming was to die? The verse goes on to describe that he was heard, implying that the prayer was answered. Here is the Son, Jesus, offering a prayer to the Father and offering a prayer that he might be delivered from death, and the prayer was heard. All the while, we know that Jesus did die. He wasn't delivered from death.

The contradiction is answered ironically in a very small Greek word translated "from" in verse seven: "able to save him from death." There are two ways that the writer to the Hebrews could have expressed this word. One word means "from the edge of something," and the other word means "from the midst of something." This word is the latter of the two. Jesus did not pray to be delivered from physical death; he prayed to be delivered from the midst of death.

It was a prayer of resurrection. He prayed that the Father, when he was in the midst of death—caught in the jaws of it, when he had died in fact—would deliver him from the midst of it, that he would pull him out, pull him through. We know that he did, of course, and that's the whole message of Easter. He was delivered from death.

Now let's go on. The passage doesn't get easier. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things that he suffered. How can God learn anything? I've been reading a theological journal just this week, and there's a particular article on that very question. How is it that deity could ever learn? If he is the Son of God, how is it that omniscience ever needs to be informed? Why would the Son of God ever learn anything?

Once again, the original text seems to help us because it says, "though he was a son," not the son. The definite article would emphasize the identity of this person. The absence of the article conveys the idea of quality or nature. Though he was in nature the very essence of God, when he became a man in his incarnate state, he learned obedience. As God, he knew all about obedience, but it had never been an experience of his to go through suffering that leads to obedience. But when he became a man, suddenly it became a reality in his experience. Though he were in his very nature the Son of God, when he hung upon the tree, when he went through the anguish of Gethsemane, when he was brutally mistreated by the Jews and the Romans, in the midst of the suffering, he learned obedience.

The passage is saying that when he came to completion, when he reached the end of his assignment, when the mission of salvation was not aborted but in fact was completed, then all of those who believed found in him the fountainhead of eternal salvation. As the poet put it: "Whom have we Lord but thee, soul thirst to satisfy? Exhaustless spring, the waters free, all other streams are dry." Jesus Christ, when he died, when he was raised from the dead, became the stream, the source of eternal salvation. He delivered man once for all from death because he had in fact been delivered from the same.

Being designated or saluted by God, the thought is promoted, exalted, as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. The last part of this passage or this section on Christ is an exalting one. Verse seven begins in the humiliation of pain, but verse 10 concludes at the crest or the height of exaltation: the high priest.

Now I want you to keep in mind three words. First of all, I want you to keep in mind the word "godliness." I get it from verse seven: "he was heard because of his piety." His godly walk, his godly life, his piety—that's the first word I want you to remember. The second word I want you to remember is "obedience," verse eight. "Though he was a son, he learned obedience from the things that he suffered." The third word I want you to remember is the word "source." He became the source of eternal salvation. He became the resource for man. Godliness, obedience, resourcefulness.

Now with that in mind, look at the contrast. We're turning from the preeminent Son of God to man. The link in the passage is this "order of Melchizedek" which we won't take the time to go into tonight, but it has to do with a particular man who lived in the days of Abraham, who was also a man who was a priest. The order of his priesthood is described in this passage as Melchizedek, or the Melchizedekian order.

The passage goes on to say in verse 11: "Concerning this," literally, "concerning this order we have much to say." I know how he feels at times. I think, "Oh, I would like so much to go further into depth at this point." But I can't do it, usually because of the lack of time, or perhaps in some audiences the lack of ability to take it in.

The writer has an audience like that. He says, "Concerning this order I have much more I would like to say, but alas, I can't. It's hard for me to explain it. Why? Since you have become dull of hearing." Now he is writing to people who should not have been dull of hearing. It's an interesting Greek word, this term "dull." It means sluggish and thick, and it's used to describe a limb of the body that has gone to sleep.

I'm sure you've had the experience I had a couple of Sundays ago. I sat on this bench until my right leg went to sleep. I think it was a Sunday evening, and when I stood up, I felt like a crane who stands on one leg because I was convinced I had no right leg. It was as thick, it was as dull, it was sound asleep as it could be. You could touch it, you could try to feel, but there was nothing to feel. It felt thick. That's the word.

But he's not describing a limb of the body; he's describing a brain, a mind, a mindset. He's saying, "I want to go further with you, but you're set in your mind toward dullness and sluggishness. You're not keen and accurate and ready to think." Then he describes it further: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need that someone teach you again the elementary principles of the oracles of God." Most of you know by now that these words "elementary principles" could be translated "ABCs." Here you should be handling calculus and trigonometry, and you're playing with blocks on the floor. That's the thought. You should be reading Shakespeare and the finest of American and other literature, and you're sitting down with a primer, working your way through: John sees Mary, Mary sees Spot, Spot loves Mary, on and on and on. You should be in the depths of the Melchizedekian priesthood and here you are in fact not even able to take in the basics concerning Jesus Christ.

Dave Spiker: While it may seem we're far afield from today's subject, I assure you that Chuck Swindoll's study in Hebrews is leading to practical conclusions about what to do with an empty nest. We urge you to keep listening when we conclude the classic series on marriage called Strike the Original Match. With time running out, today is the perfect time to purchase the 14 CDs in this series. You can give us a call or go online to insight.org.

At Insight for Living, we've agreed this timeless study falls into the classic series category. As such, we've completely remastered all 14 sermons on CD and put them into a sturdy slipcover. The set includes a bonus CD interview with Chuck and his wife Cynthia, a somewhat unfiltered and candid conversation about their marriage. This classic series includes a brand-new Bible companion study guide as well. You'll find it all at insight.org. That's Strike the Original Match.

As you listen to this classic series on marriage, Chuck's voice is going out around the country and around the world as well. When you give a donation, you're actually investing in the relationships of other couples who hear these biblical principles too, and some of them for the very first time. Chuck, we know that many in our listening family have good intentions to support the ministry, but either forget to do so or even assume the process will be somewhat cumbersome.

Chuck Swindoll: I suppose it can be cumbersome, but it certainly need not be. And that's one of the main reasons we've established our monthly companions program. It's designed to make giving to Insight for Living easy, so that once you've joined the team, it happens automatically and you don't even need to think about it from one month to the next.

A monthly companion is someone who is devoted to pray for us and to give a donation each month. I would imagine you have no idea how much security and stability this provides for our ministry. It's so helpful when we attempt to steward all of our resources. Why not make today the day you decide to join this team? You'll be glad you finally took the step. Become one of our monthly companions today.

Dave Spiker: Here's the number to call: 1-800-772-8888. Or go online to insight.org/monthlycompanion. Again, call 1-800-772-8888 or online go to insight.org/monthlycompanion. I'm Dave Spiker. More of what to do with an empty nest coming up from Chuck Swindoll on Insight for Living.