Love Worth Finding

Adrian Rogers: How the Bible says that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, and that love is an unconditional love, it is not performance-based love. But God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When you have this unconditional love as Christ had for the church, let me tell you what it is going to do for your home. It's going to give security in the place of fear. It's going to give peace in the place of guilt, and it's going to give joy that's going to replace this anger.

Host (Male): Welcome to Love Worth Finding, featuring profound truth simply stated by Pastor Adrian Rogers. In part one of today's message, we were reminded of the sacredness of marriage. Despite the definition of our modern world and what they will try to sell us, marriage is a priority. It's permanent, and it serves a wonderful purpose. It is a divine institution made by God Himself to be a picture of His love for the church. But marriage has been marred by divorce. It's a tragedy in a vicious cycle. Divorce produces broken children, and broken children produce broken homes. Is there hope for our broken relationships? If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew chapter 19 as Adrian Rogers shares part two of "The Sacredness of Marriage."

Adrian Rogers: Now all marriage counseling, all marriage preaching, can be summed up in three words that Jesus just gave: leave, cleave, and one flesh. The highest relationship in human relationships is not parent-child. The highest relationship is not child-parent. The highest relationship of human relationships is husband and wife. God says that is one flesh. We leave father and mother, but we cleave unto our mate. That is, we become mentally, morally, psychologically, and spiritually one flesh. To leave speaks of the priority of marriage. To cleave speaks of the permanence of marriage, and one flesh speaks of the purpose of marriage, that we come to be one flesh.

Marriage is a divine institution made of God. Now if that is true that marriage has been made by heaven, marriages have also been marred by hell. Look, if you will now, in verse seven. They say unto Him, "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away?" And notice Jesus' answer in verse eight. He saith unto them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you or allowed you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." That is what was allowed was not God's prime purpose, not what God intended, not what God wanted.

And then Jesus said, "And I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery. And whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." His disciples say unto Him, "If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is good not to marry." But He said unto them, "All men cannot receive this saying, save them to whom it is given." Now in this passage, God allowed divorce in the case of fornication, but God did not command divorce. Now there are many reasons that people give for divorce, and they're fallacious reasons. They will not pass the judgment bar of God.

For example, there are people who say, "Well, we're getting divorced because the love has gone out of our marriage." Now if you don't hear anything else, I want you to hear what I'm about to say now. It is not love that keeps your marriage together. It is your marriage that sustains your love. Sometimes a man will come to me and say, "I'm going to get a divorce." I say, "Why?" "Because I don't love my wife anymore." He doesn't get any sympathy from me. I say, "Well, choose to love her. Learn to love her." God has commanded that you love. Now what kind of a God would command me to do something I cannot do?

Suppose God says to me, "Adrian, jump over this church building. If you don't do it, you're a sinner." Can God command me to do something I cannot do and then blame me for not doing it? If God says, "Husbands, love your wives," that means that you can love your wives. You see, love is a choice. As a matter of fact, the older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands. We're not talking about romance here. Listen to Titus 2 verse 4, speaking of the older women, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children. We are commanded to love.

Now we need to understand, therefore, the difference between what the world calls love and what the Bible calls love. The Bible word love goes far beyond emotion. Do you remember when you were dating? When you were in high school or college or wherever it was, and you were looking for a mate? If you were like the average person, this is what you were looking for. You were looking for someone who was popular, someone who had personality, somebody who thought your jokes were funny, somebody who had a beautiful face, somebody who had a nice figure. And you, if you had a chance, you would say to that person, "I love you."

But that probably was not accurate. It's certainly not accurate according to the Bible word love. What you were really saying is, "I want you. I want you to satisfy me." And she, if you were a man, would respond to you the same way because we see in this other individual certain qualities, and we think if I can acquire those qualities, then those qualities are going to make me happy. But that kind of love is conditioned upon those qualities: personality, intelligence, popularity, the face, the figure. But if that's why you get married, then you see what a trap that is.

I mean, when you married her she was beautiful, but now she's fat and forty. And he's bald and bulgy. And all of those things that you thought were so important, they're not there anymore. And so what happens to the marriage? You see, that's a conditional love. And if you have that conditional love, it's going to engender some attitudes, and we see these all the time in marriage. First of all, there's fear. "I've got to keep up the conditions that caused this man to love me to begin with," and this dependency upon the beautician and the cosmetician and the man who cannot grow old gracefully because she says to herself, "I've got to maintain this condition."

Or if it doesn't bring fear, it's going to bring guilt. You're going to say, "I have failed. I no longer have what it takes. I have a Supreme Court figure, no appeal." And you feel guilty. You feel you've let your mate down. If it doesn't bring fear and it doesn't bring guilt, it's going to bring anger. When that person no longer loves you because you don't have those particular qualities that you used to have, and you're going to feel used, like a man who takes a sweet Valencia orange, takes his pen knife, cuts a plug out of that orange, puts it up to his lips and squeezes it and says, "I just love oranges, just love them."

But then when the juice and the sweetness is gone, he wipes his mouth and throws it on the ground like a piece of garbage. That's what happens sometimes to some marriages, and people feel that they have been used and because that love is conditional love. Now the Bible says that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, and that love is an unconditional love. It is not performance-based love, but God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And Romans 5 verse 6, "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

When you have this unconditional love as Christ had for the church, let me tell you what it is going to do for your home. It's going to give security in the place of fear. It's going to give peace in the place of guilt, and it's going to give joy that's going to replace this anger. This kind of love is an act of the will. How does God love us? Do you think God loves us romantically? Do you think God loves us because we're lovely? No, God loves us as an act of His will. James 1 verse 18 says, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures."

Now to the world, love is just a series of emotions. "I love you because you make me feel good. I love you because you make me happy. You're pretty, you're soft, you're good, you're strong." Read the Glamour magazines. No, don't read them. I don't read them. Why am I saying that? See what the world standards are. The world has not got the foggiest of what real love is. Ask them to explain it, they'll say something like a grasshopper on roller skates. No, real love has strength in it. Real love is commitment. You are to love your wife as Christ loved the church.

C.S. Lewis was a brilliant man. I don't agree with everything C.S. Lewis had to say, but he was brilliant. He had some penetrating insight into love and marriage, and he loved his wife dearly. Here's what he said. He said there's a difference in loving and being in love. Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below, but there are also many things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years?

He said if you tried to live with the excitement that you had as teenagers in love or young marrieds, he said you couldn't do that. But of course, ceasing to be in love does not mean ceasing to love. Love in a second sense, love as a distinct from being in love, is not merely a feeling. Listen to this. He's talking about real love. It is a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforced by the grace which both parents ask and receive from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other. Now say amen right there.

Now listen. They can have this same love even when they don't like each other. I know there are times when Joyce does not like the way I'm acting, but I know I've never doubted that she loved me. Listen to this. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. Have you ever said, "I hate myself for doing that," but you never stop loving yourself? You see, you have there's a deeper love. Now Lewis goes on to say, they can easily retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, to be in love with someone else.

Being in love first moved them to promise fidelity. This quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run. Being in love was the explosion that started it. That's the reason I said to you, friend, it is not love, the kind of in love, that keeps your marriage. It is your marriage that keeps your love, the deeper kind of love. Now sometimes people say, therefore, "Well, we're going to get a divorce because we don't love each other anymore." Friend, that doesn't wash. And then sometimes people say, "Well, you know, we're going to get a divorce because it would be better for the children."

I've heard that till I'm sick of it. It would be better for the children than for the children to hear us wrangle and fuss and fight. For the children's sake, we're going to get a divorce. Now friend, I want to see you look God in the face and tell God it's for the children's sake. It is not for the children's sake, it is your selfishness that causes you to do that. If it were for the children's sake, you would get together and you would solve this problem if the children were really in mind. If you think it's for the children's sake, ask the children and see what the children think about it, and you'll come up with a different idea.

Someone says, "Well, I owe it to myself to be happy." No, you don't. God's plan is not for you to be happy. God's plan is for you to be holy. If you're happy, that's a fringe benefit. But you don't owe it to yourself to be happy. There's no such thing as an American right to be happy. Let me tell you what you owe. You owe it to your wife or your husband to keep your word when you made a marriage vow. You owe it to your children that they will have their own parents. You owe it to yourself to be a man of honor. And if you put away the wife of your youth, you've lied to God. You have dishonored yourself.

You don't owe it to yourself to be happy. You owe it to yourself to keep your word. Why say God is telling me, Pastor, to get a divorce? No, He's not. God does not have a special dispensation for you. When you pick up the Bible and read it, God doesn't tell you that you are a special exception. When you get married, as I say, you get on the matrimonial airplane, you throw away your parachute. Now you can make a decision to do something about a bad marriage. Marriages are not generally healed overnight, but the direction of the marriage can be changed.

Why did you get married to begin with? I've seen couples who in many areas have a wonderful marriage, but ten percent of the marriage is wrong, and because ten percent of the marriage is wrong, they throw away the other ninety percent. You know, they get married looking for a new deal, and then it becomes an ordeal, and they want to throw it away. Now let me come to the conclusion here. Marriage is made by God. Marriage is marred by divorce, but marriage can be marked by hope. I'm talking to many people whose marriages have already failed, and if you think I'm trying to make you feel bad, I am not.

If you have children, I know you parents have hearts that have been broken. I know that. If you think that I'm trying to be a heavy and make you feel bad, I am not. And I want to tell you this, that divorce is not the unpardonable sin. Now listen to me carefully, divorce is not a dead-end street. God does not hold a grudge. God is not angry with you. There are those who would like to make divorced people second-class citizens, somehow not equal to the rest of us. Friend, if you failed in marriage, just like if you failed in any other way, God is a God of mercy and God is a God of forgiveness.

And nobody has sinned themselves beyond the love and the grace of God. And once you come to God and you failed and you confess that sin, whether it be divorce or any other kind of sin, and honestly repent of it and receive Jesus, the Bible says in Romans 8 verse 1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." And again, the Bible says in First John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from" what? "All sin."

And those of you who have friends who've been divorced, who come from broken homes, don't you look upon these people if they've come to God for forgiveness and cleansing, don't you look upon them as second-class citizens. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin, and there's not a mother's child in this building who is not a sinner who has not needed the grace of God and hopefully has received the grace of God. The Bible says also in Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

And there divorced people, they might come to Bellevue and say, "Well, Pastor Rogers is against divorce." Yes, I'm against divorce because God is against divorce. But that doesn't mean that you're not welcome here. I have a friend down in Florida, Peter Lord, who has a sign above his church door. He did when he was pastor there. And you walked into the church, there was a sign that said, "Sinners Only Welcome Here." Sinners only welcome here. This church is not a museum for saints. It's a hospital for sinners. And we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God.

I remember reading in the Bible about a woman taken in adultery in the very act. They brought her to Jesus. They wanted to stone her. But Jesus said as they went away realizing their own sin, "Doth no man condemn thee?" She said, "No man, Lord." He said, "Nor do I. Go and sin no more." I remember reading in John chapter four about a woman been married five times, a thirsty woman had gone from husband to husband trying to find surcease and happiness and joy and she never found it. She had a washed-out, broken life till she came to Jesus, and Jesus saved her and Jesus changed her.

God is the God of new beginnings. Now let me just wrap this up. If you are now married, you make very certain that Christ is the head of your home and that your home is not built on mere romance or conditional love. That you have an unconditional love for your mate. Let Jesus give you that love. Secondly, continue to feed your love day by day. Never take it for granted. You men, never flirt with another woman. Never cease to flirt with your own wife. Let her know that you love her, not necessarily for those physical traits, though it's always wise to say something about those.

But love your wife. If you don't love your wife more now than you did when you married her, the chances are you love her far less. Number three, if you have failed, if there's immorality, if there's been a divorce, ask God to forgive you. And if you are the one in the divorce and it wasn't your fault and you were opposed to the divorce, forgive the partner. Well, you say they are still doing wickedly, then ask God to give a spirit of forgiveness in your heart. And if you're married and have a Christian home, make it a testimony to the world.

Make your home a testimony in your neighborhood. These kids, this world, needs to see a godly home personified. That may be the greatest lesson that you'll ever give, just to let others see what a godly Christian home is ought to be. There are kids today, they have not got a clue as to what I'm talking about. Find some, invite them into your home and let them see what a real home ought to be. And to you kids, who are yet to be married, guys and girls, in the name of Jesus, you keep yourself sexually pure and you only marry a child of God.

The Bible says you're not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. If you marry a child of the devil, you're going to have the devil for a father-in-law. You marry in the Lord. Keep yourself pure and wait, wait for the right person.

Host (Male): What powerful words from God's Word to dwell on today. You know, at Love Worth Finding, we love to hear how the ministry and the messages of Adrian Rogers have inspired you in your faith journey. If you can, go online and respond at lwf.org/mylwfstory. There you can submit your own testimony or read others who have shared their stories with us. We often select stories to be shared throughout our Love Worth Finding community, and we'll always protect your privacy if desired. We can't wait to hear from you again. Go to lwf.org/mylwfstory.

Carry Vaughn: Hi, this is Carry Vaughn, and this program has been brought to you by Love Worth Finding, a nonprofit ministry showcasing the powerful preaching and teaching of Pastor Adrian Rogers. We operate solely through the generous gifts of individual supporters just like you. So, to give a gift today, call 1-877-LOVEGOD. That's 1-877-LOVEGOD. You can also connect with us online by going to lwf.org/radio. There we offer helpful resources inspired by the timeless teachings of Pastor Rogers. Or even write to us at Love Worth Finding, Box 38-600, Memphis, Tennessee, 38183. Thank you for listening today, and be sure to join us next time for more profound truth simply stated right here on Love Worth Finding.

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